User:TenOfAllTrades/Shustov

This page has been removed from search engines' indexes. While this individual's contributions to Wikipedia are in desperate need of attention and cleanup, I don't wish to taint his professional reputation – whatever it might be – by having this page appear in Google searches. Consequently, I have NOINDEXed this page.

Please do not remove the tag without contacting me first. When the cleanup process is complete, I will blank or delete this temporary page. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 00:21, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Description of the problem

Shustov (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

The user account Shustov appears to be closely related to the earthquake engineering researcher V. Shustov. He has been creating a series of articles related to that topic. While normally the participation of subject matter experts is valuable and strongly encouraged, Shustov's contributions to Wikipedia have been problematic.

The serious problems fall into roughly two categories. In many cases, Shustov has added substantial amounts of material to Wikipedia which has been plagiarized from other sources. Verbatim copies of both copyrighted and public domain materials have been added, in some cases making up the bulk of entire articles. He has also violated Wikipedia copyright policy on a number of images, including by adding false public-domain tags to copyrighted images. Text was also often copied from other Wikipedia articles without acknowledgement in edit summaries.

A failure to recognize the problematic nature of this type of editing – up to and including edit warring to preserve plagiarized content – has led to an indefinite block of this user.

The second major area of concern is related to self-citation, -quotation, and -promotion. In the area of earthquake engineering, he has added direct copies of material from his own web pages, along with frequent citations of his own publications, YouTube videos, and websites. References to non-Shustov publications or web resources are few and far between — if present at all.

External links

https://central.nees.org 19 links, to 5 unique pages (all Shustov-related)
*.epet.space3d.biz 2 article-space links, to 1 unique page (Earthquake simulation software created by Shustov)
http://www.ecs.csun.edu/~shustov 46 article-space links, to 19 unique pages
www.seaint.org 9 article-space links (7 to Shustov publications), to 2 unique Shustov pages.
A large number of links are also to Shustov's demo videos on YouTube. (See videos by vshustov on YouTube.)

Sockpuppetry

Rather than acknowledge or attempt to resolve the issues which have led to his indefinite (not necessarily permanent) block (not necessarily a ban), Shustov has now resorted to sockpuppetry in order to push his agenda. Instead of stopping the sockpuppetry and responding to the concerns about his conduct, he has raised accusations of "paranoia", and seeks to have me "neutralize[d]".

The following sockpuppets have been identified so far.

enwiki only socks

Lhosuna (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - removing a PROD tag, adding additional information about his patents to Earthquake Protector. Identified as likely sockpuppet by Checkuser: [1]. (Similar geographic location).
Hofferrich (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - removing a PROD tag, restoring plagiarized content to George W. Housner. Identified via WP:DUCK: restored same edit as Lhosuna, and then went to another Shustov article.
SoSoEngineer (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - reverting (as usual) at George Housner and Earthquake Protector.

Crosswiki socks and accounts

Shustov (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (Global contribs) Blocked on de, en.
Vsemthem (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - Block evasion to restore links to his own web pages to Earthquake engineering; uploading File:Fluid viscous damper.jpg with false CC license tag. A few minor edits on Commons. Blocked on en.
Shu0010 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (Global contribs) Blocked on en.

IP addresses

Logged out edits by Shustov have come from the following IP addresses:

76.87.107.54 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) (edit warring)
69.227.189.80 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) (edit warring)
69.233.8.214 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) (to his own talk page during block)
69.108.101.89 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) (block evasion to make attacks at Talk:Earthquake engineering)*

Meatpuppet recruitment

Using deceptive messages, he has attempted to recruit meatpuppets from Structural Engineers Association - International. (Message archive by author, denial of plagiarism, request for meatpuppetry.)

Jrwhite2013 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - Meatpuppet (now unblocked in good faith) recruited to restore plagiarized material.

Checklist for cleanup

enwiki articles: 14 articles, 4 redirects.

Entries in italic have been examined and (to the best of my ability) fixed.

Articles

Earthquake engineering structures (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Earthquake engineering (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
While this article was not created by Shustov, many of the serious problems with this article were added by him. Substantial cleanup required. (See Talk:Earthquake engineering#Article problems.) Cleanup in progress.

Resolved enwiki articles

Earthquake engineering research (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Done. Contains virtually the same text and other content as Earthquake engineering. Redirect.

Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Done. Looks okay.

Earthquake loss (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Done. Portions of the article (including figure) describing a "Damage Ratio Charts Method" are copied directly from Shustov's web page [2]. This method appears to be unique to Shustov. Google searches on that term and on "Damage ratio chart(s)" come up empty, save for Shustov's work and Wikipedia mirrors.

Absent any indication that this method (presented, apparently, by Shustov in 1997) is recognized, recommended, or used, it should be removed from the article.

Earthquake performance evaluation (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Done. Contains merged information copied from original, now-redirected article at Earthquake Performance Evaluation Tool. Bulk of article is about Shustov's own EPET software. ~~Needs judicious trimming. Is this software notable?~~ Trimmed out EPET-specific material; toned down number of images; cleaned up prose; removed way-excessive wikilinking. Next thought — merge and redirect to Earthquake simulation.

Earthquake Protector (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Article deleted. Device/concept designed/patented by V. Shustov. No obvious Google hits for non-Shustov web sites, documents, or engineering projects; article appears to be self-promotion only. Recommend deletion. (PRODded on 00:44, 12 January 2009 (UTC)). NB: Shustov's sockpuppets keep returning to this article.

Earthquake simulation (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Done. Cleaned up prose; removed Shustov promo links; merged content from Earthquake performance evaluation.

Elevated building foundation (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Done. A made-up term of art that Shustov tried and failed to patent. Redirected to Base isolation.

George W. Housner (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Done. Almost entirely plagiarised from a pair of obituaries. Needs to be stubbed. NB: Sockpuppets have returned to restore plagiarism - watch closely.

Prestressed concrete (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Done. While not created by Shustov, his major additions to this article were to add links to his own publications, websites, and/or devices. Links removed. (Total reduction was one figure, half of one sentence, and three external links: [3].)

Prestressed structure (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Done. Removed gratuitous references to Shustov's publications, cleaned up some phrasing.

Seismic loading (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Done. Looks okay.

Seismic performance (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Done. Apparently a content fork of existing article on seismic analysis. Article has few non-Shustov contributions and no non-Shustov sources. Should probably be redirected without merge, but merge tags added pending further review.

Seismic performance analysis (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Done. Implicitly a subarticle of the equally-stubby seismic performance. Explicitly synonymous with our preexisting (and more-detailed) article on seismic analysis. Should be redirected there, after mergeable material (if any) is transferred. Merge tags added.

Shake-table video (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Done. Should be merged-redirected to Earthquake shaking table.

Vibration control (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Done. Removed links to Shustov's web site, self-promotional references to EBF (elevated building foundation; a Shustov patent that no one else refers to: Google).

Explosion protection (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Done. This article was not created by Shustov, but most of its references were added by him. The bulk of new text is aimed at promoting his 'sails-rigging blast protective structural shield'. Removed text specific to his structural shield; there are no apparent installations of this technology, and the link seems to be simple self-promotion by the patent holder.

Redirects

Other language Wikipedias

frwiki articles: 2 articles, 1 redirect.
eswiki articles: 1 article.

Non-engineering issues

Shustov appears to be persistently promoting his 'Upstream Fitness' exercise program. There appears to be no online recognition of this program – Google search – save for his own web site and some promotional content he has added to various Wikimedia projects.

Shustov's Upstream Fitness page: [4]

December 2009

And self-promotion of Upstream Fitness on ruwiki.

Other notes

The history of User:Epic1218/Practice page shows the evolution from copy-paste to badly-concealed plagiarism on John Blume. This isn't Shustov's fault, but I needed to keep a note of this somewhere.