Talk:Juan Branco

BLP attribution and the on-wiki record of the Wikipedia dispute

Conflict-of-interest disclosure: I am affiliated with Les Ruches, the movement supporting Juan Branco's 2027 presidential candidacy. I am not asking that criticism be removed or that Branco's account be accepted. I am asking independent editors to distinguish press allegations, his published responses, on-wiki outcomes, and uncorroborated claims.

The current sentence, “Branco has used multiple identities (sockpuppets) since 2005 to embellish his own biography on Wikipedia and to settle accounts with others”, states a disputed Le Figaro allegation as fact. The available record is more nuanced:

• In 2016 the first English AfD closed as delete (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Juan Branco), as did the contemporary French discussion. A pseudonymous Rue89 blog post alleged self-promotion. In the reply published beneath it, Branco said the French page was not created by him, that he corrected errors while disclosing his identity, and that he later undertook not to participate. That is his account, not an independent finding.
• The French article was restored and kept in 2018 after newer independent coverage was presented.
• In 2019, L’Express reported edits under the account “brc” and an alleged email to another editor's employer. Branco's published reply denied attacking people on Wikipedia while acknowledging that he had contributed since adolescence under a pseudonym linked to his identity. L’Express then maintained its reporting.
• In 2020, Le Figaro alleged that Branco had used several identities for fifteen years to embellish his biography and settle accounts. The second English AfD nevertheless closed as keep after a rewrite (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Juan Branco (2nd nomination)).
• The March–April 2020 SPI did not establish the alleged links. The closing administrator noted possible connections but was not convinced, and recommended ordinary processes for single-purpose or disruptive editing, including protection (Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Brancojuan/Archive#30 March 2020).
• A separate August 2023 SPI found the Neo Trixma account technically “possible” and the behavioural link sufficient to block and tag it (Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Brancojuan/Archive#22 August 2023). That outcome concerns the account; it does not, by itself, publicly identify the person operating it.
• In 2026, the French media outlet Aurores and another Aurores article published a counter-narrative alleging a coordinated hostile campaign by named editors. Aurores is closely connected to the subject and its claims are not independently corroborated here. Aurores may be cited for Aurores's or Branco's position, but not as proof of editors' motives, coordination, identity, payment, or legal responsibility. Edit counts and histories are verifiable; causal interpretations are not established by a history alone.

I suggest replacing the categorical sentence with a narrowly attributed version:

“In 2019 and 2020, L’Express and Le Figaro reported that Branco had used multiple accounts to edit Wikipedia articles about himself and other people. Branco denied using Wikipedia to attack others and said that he had contributed under a pseudonym linked to his identity.”

The email allegation can remain in the next sentence if it is clearly attributed to L’Express. The detailed internal chronology probably belongs on this talk page rather than in the biography. Would uninvolved editors please review this under WP:BLP, WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV, and WP:DUE? OrmeClair857801 (talk) 02:35, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

Supplement: provenance of disputed wording and independent history review

Transparency reminder: I am contributing at the request of Les Ruches, which is connected to the subject. I disclose that position so that uninvolved editors can assess the proposals; it does not replace examination of the sources, diffs, and community decisions on their exact terms.

I am adding a reproducible audit of the live French and English article and talk-page histories, through 17 July 2026. I am not presenting “obsessive”, “hostile”, or “coordinated” as facts: histories can establish frequency, topic concentration, and exact wording, not motive. An 89-page party pleading referred to in the earlier dispute is not a judicial decision and is not being used as a source; I independently rechecked only the diffs, block logs, and community closures to which it pointed.

1. Cheep's February 2020 rewrite

Across the two articles and their talk pages, Cheep made 315 visible edits: 296 to the French article, 12 to its talk page, 6 to the English article, and 1 to its talk page. On the French article, 135 edits fall between 17:51 and 23:49 UTC on 21 February 2020, followed by 59 on 22 February.

The chronology does not show that Cheep caused the Le Figaro report: his first edit in this sequence came after publication. It does show that he immediately inserted the report's allegations into the biography (167658642), changed the descriptive heading “Interventions sur Wikipédia” to “Auto-promotion et interventions hostiles sur Wikipédia” (167660226), then strengthened “for communication purposes” to “notably for self-promotion” and split the allegation into several paragraphs (167660269). That architecture and loaded heading remained influential in the current French section.

There is also a later, separate community fact. On 17 February 2022, Cheep was indefinitely blocked on fr-wiki; the block log points to the administrator discussion documenting his participation in a concealed operation promoting Éric Zemmour (community record). That 2022 finding does not prove that his 2020 edits about Branco were false or politically motivated. It does, however, make a fresh source-by-source review more appropriate than treating age or stability as validation.

The same review should consider the weight of the French “Benjamin Griveaux affair” section. It reports several press hypotheses from February 2020, but should give commensurate weight to established later outcomes: the Bar president said no conflict of interest was established at that stage; an appellate court annulled the disciplinary reprimand in 2023; and the CDJM found that one BFM TV interview showed partiality and ended with an accusation made without evidence. Those outcomes do not invalidate all 2020 reporting, but they caution against turning a media surge into an encyclopedic conclusion.

2. Three distinct editorial trajectories

The following counts likewise cover visible revisions of both language articles and their talk pages.

• Ebtpmus made 222 edits within this scope (56 article edits and 166 talk-page edits). On en-wiki, 153 of the account's 170 total contributions through 17 July 2026 were directly to Juan Branco or its talk page. The large rollbacks at 1165149261 and 1165857893 may have had editorial grounds, but the topic concentration and the “cleansing” / “whitewashing” edit summary warrant independent review of each restored item rather than an inference about people.
• EdgarAllanFrost made 85 edits within the scope; 78 of 174 en-wiki contributions were directly to the article, its talk page, or its archive. On 29 February 2020, the account removed nearly 2,000 bytes while describing a cleanup of “hagiography” (943215095), made a further rewrite of more than 6,000 bytes (943218817), and then created the categorical self-promotion/sockpuppet passage (943222267). On 29 March it reverted another version with “the sockpuppets are out in force again” (948022510). It later added neutral or favourable ICC information (994953200), so the history does not support calling the editor uniformly hostile; it does identify the provenance of the categorical wording now disputed.
• D.Lazard made 107 edits within the scope. Unlike the previous accounts, 36,688 en-wiki contributions show a generalist editor, so calling this a single-purpose account would be inaccurate. However, the editor repeatedly attributed identity without a corresponding determination: “If it is not sockpuppetry, it is meatpuppetry” (948570037), “Apparently an edit by Juan Branco himself” (990472699), and “Probable sockpuppet of Juan Branco himself” (1111542856). On the talk page, the editor also asserted without a source that “most French people believe” Branco caused the Griveaux publication and that his only success as a lawyer was a case involving his father (1172326287). This does not invalidate all of the editor's work; it supports independent review of disputed removals and restorations, including removal of the UN section (943230031) and restoration of an older version while calling the replacement “hagiography” (1139387349).

These trajectories do not demonstrate a stable “coalition”. EdgarAllanFrost's last edit in this scope predates Ebtpmus's first, and later disagreements also divided the named editors. The narrower, supportable conclusion is that a few editors had disproportionate influence over a small set of disputed passages, with edit summaries and identity allegations that justify outside review.

3. Sockpuppet, block, and current-account precision

The public outcomes must remain distinct:

• the March–April 2020 SPI did not establish the alleged links; the closing administrator saw possible connections but was not convinced (2020 closure);
• the separate August 2023 SPI found the technical link to Neo Trixma “possible” and the behavioural evidence sufficient to block that account (2023 closure);
• the public block log for “Brancojuan” records a username/identity-verification block requesting an email to the volunteer response team. By itself, that is not a public decision imposing a person-wide community ban on Juan Branco;
• on 17 July 2026, this account's direct article edits were reverted together (1364533755). A bundled rollback was defensible because factual corrections had been mixed with contestable changes and the account is connected to the subject. However, “probable sockpuppet” and “representative of a banned Wikipedia editor” were asserted in the history and on the user talk page without an identified public decision supporting those exact statements (1364535864). Clarification has therefore been requested, and proposals are now being made only on talk pages.

I ask uninvolved editors to review four questions: (1) consistent attribution of the Le Figaro and L’Express allegations; (2) strict separation of an account block, behavioural linkage, and real-world identity; (3) due weight for the Griveaux material in light of later outcomes; and (4) source-by-source checking of text produced by the 2020 and 2023 rewrites. This is not a request to erase sourced criticism or restore any version wholesale, but to apply WP:BLP, WP:DUE, WP:NPOV, and WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV consistently. OrmeClair857801 (talk) 03:46, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

• The above edit suggestion appears to be written by AI (and I would say Mistral). If so, it needs to be rewritten by a human being since we can't accept LLM editing in this context.

Having looked at the sources, including those behind paywalls, the text seems "overall reasonable" to me, when viewed against the sources, specifically l'Express and le Figaro. There are other available sources in this area (e.g. Le Nouvel Observateur) My two quibbles would be the use of the section heading wording "Questions of integrity", that seems to be pushing a point of view beyond neutrality, but can perhaps benefit from a minor rewording; second generally the wording of Questions of integrity text could be dialed down slightly for neutrality. But I don't think it can avoid the central point that the subject attempted to manipulate his Wikipedia entry to settle scores. To quote the strap from the original version in le Figaro Depuis quinze ans, l'essayiste et avocat se sert de l’encyclopédie en ligne sous diverses identités pour embellir sa biographie et régler ses comptes. which I would translate as "For 15 years the writer and lawyer edited the online encyclopedia under multiple identities to embellish his biography and to settle scores". Nothing in the screed above tackles this central point made by this reliable source, which is fairly summarised in the article, with the only editorial alteration being settle accounts with others, which is simply an obvious clarification.

(Minor COI: I went to the same school as the subject but many decades prior, and I have no other connection with the subject or the other subjects mentioned, other than being a voter.). ChrysGalley (talk) 12:47, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

Thank you. There is one further public-record point that directly bears on the 2023 attribution. APS, republished by Sud Quotidien, reported that Branco was taken to Rebeuss prison at about 03:00 UTC on Sunday 6 August 2023 after questioning by the DIC. Le Monde reports that he remained there from the night of 5–6 August until he was brought before a judge on the morning of Monday 7 August. While he was thus in custody, Neo Trixma made four VisualEditor edits on 6 August between 17:59:22 and 19:07:20 UTC (Senegal is on UTC): 17:59:22, 18:02:47, 18:04:29, and 19:07:20. The last edit, made about sixteen hours after the reported entry into Rebeuss, added the fact of Branco’s imprisonment to this biography. Franceinfo also reported on 6 August that Branco had been placed in detention. Five days earlier, on 31 July, Le Monde had reported that he had left his telephone in Paris before travelling. The 2023 SPI described the technical result only as “possible” and treated the behavioural link as sufficient to block the account (2023 report and closure).

This chronology cannot be answered merely by positing an abstract possibility of shared access. Maintaining a personal attribution despite it would require positive evidence that Branco retained exceptional device or internet access while imprisoned, shared his credentials, or coordinated a third-party operation. Neither the public SPI report nor its closure identifies any such evidence. In its absence, those scenarios are speculation, not a basis for identifying a living person as the account’s operator. The public record therefore strongly contradicts personal operation of Neo Trixma by Branco, and the omitted chronology warrants an independent review of the 2023 attribution and resulting block. For this article, the press allegation, the account-level block and any real-world identity claim should remain distinct. OrmeClair857801 (talk) 16:21, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

@OrmeClair857801 - Let me be a little clearer: have you used LLM / AI / Mistral / Claude or similar software to assist in these talk page edits? Possible answers include: Yes, no, don't know.

Second point is that your recent edit relates to the forensics of a SPI investigations, which is out of scope for this Talk page. The fact that the subject used multiple identities is mentioned in this article, but that is based on three independent reports in reliable sources, two of which are used in the English article and a third one in the French article. So that wording in English Wikipedia is linked to l'Express and le Figaro, not to the SPI investigation. It is indeed an administrator / check-user function to investigate SPIs but you are in the wrong place here. In normal circumstances administrators will not pass via this page and hence your 2023 related concerns need to go to the 2023 SPI investigation page, not here. As things stand there is reliable sourcing for the subject using sockpuppets on Wikipedia, manipulating his biography, and to settle scores with other Wikipedia subjects. Nothing you have said, at least so far, has altered that key point. The facts were reported as such, and the subject's droit de réponse is also reported. ChrysGalley (talk) 16:39, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

Any suggestions for a better section heading for the Questions of integrity section? I wondered if an edited-down version of the Skyblog bit could go in the Education section, an edited-down version of the Abdeslam approach in the Legal career section, leaving the Wikipedia editing on its own with a section heading "Wikipedia editing".

I was going to add something about the presidential election candidacy but couldn't find any RS. Southdevonian (talk) 10:16, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

I was thinking on similar lines. My thoughts, very much open to challenge, is to simply turn the heading from "Questions of integrity" to "Controversies", which emulates French Wikipedia. For the text in that section I was going to keep the meaning but change one or two words to improve neutrality, for example adding in "it is alleged". For the election candidacy, French wikipedia uses Sud Radio as a source, which I think is OK, and there is also an entry on MonVote2027. ChrysGalley (talk) 10:29, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

Per WP:CRYSTAL, we must not mention his possible candidacy. For the moment, this is only a Branco's intent, without any indication that it could be realized. Indeed, for being a presidential candidate, one must have the support of at least 500 elected persons. He will probably never got them. D.Lazard (talk) 11:11, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

The requirement for WP:CRYSTAL is that All articles about anticipated events must be verifiable, and the subject matter must be of sufficiently wide interest that it would merit an article if the event had already occurred. and those twin limbs are satisfied, there is verification and it would eventually merit an article. There is certainly a case for waiting for more verification but I think it is now legitimate to mention this. French Wikipedia, which has a nearly identical guideline (CRISTAL), is reporting his intention to be a candidate. ChrysGalley (talk) 11:18, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

NO, the Branco's intent of being a candiate is not verifiable through an independent source, and the possible candidature of Branco will certainly not be of sufficiently wide interest that it would merit an article if it had already occurred. ~~~~ D.Lazard (talk) 11:52, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

The problem with a "Controversies" section is that there are already controversies in the rest of the article - allegations of rape, etc. Southdevonian (talk) 13:24, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

Yes, I suppose his entire life has been one such event after another event after another. How about "Other controversies"? Or "Ethical issues"? Or "Ethical conduct allegations"? ChrysGalley (talk) 13:35, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

I will go with "Other controversies" if no-one objects. Southdevonian (talk) 13:48, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

@Southdevonian and @D.Lazard - I have changed "Questions of integrity" to "Other controversies" since I see no objection to that. I also removed the duplication on sockpuppet and its wikilink, so now sockpuppet is the wiki link and the text version is "multiple users".

I have not added the presidential ambition, nor added more text from the droit de réponse since I'm not seeing a consensus on that yet. I would point out that David Lisnard does have his presidential bid mentioned, and there are some parallels (but also some differences) there. Nouvel Obs has 25 potential candidates listed, about half do not have an article in English Wikipedia at all (so perhaps that's the bigger priority). ChrysGalley (talk) 07:21, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

The other thing we could consider is adding a bit more text taken from the droit de réponse in l'Express, for example that he denied creating Skyblog, and that for Wikipedia "he maintained his actions were intended to preserve the integrity of the encyclopedia", or something similar. His full wording (my manual translation) about Wiki from this very long text is I've never attacked public figures on Wikipedia, on the contrary I've been contributed to it since I was 15, rigorously and systematically - in partiucular by correcting pages about prominent people, using a pseudo ID, which is linked to my real identity via a single click. This activity was aimed, in particular, at preserving the integrity of the encyclopedia. Despite the hostility this provoked, I take great pride in having done so. ChrysGalley (talk) 11:12, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

Reporting Branco's opinion about himself and his actions is not for Wikipedia, especially when it is a pure lie as in this text. D.Lazard (talk) 11:37, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

Well we are all entitled to our opinions here, and what strikes me is what he did not say, and/or omitted to say, in his l'Express reply. And it would not surprise me that the linguistic cleansing effort currently underway is in some way linked to the 500 signatures requirement. So indeed we owe him no favours. However in terms of striking a neutral position I think it would be le fairplay to mention the reliably sourced controversies, his denial and his presidential ambitions as sourced via Sud Radio and le Nouvel Observateur. This is regardless of what you or I may think about the guy, our requirement here is WP:NPOV. ChrysGalley (talk) 12:00, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

ANI notice

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Juan Branco and user:OrmeClair857801 regarding an issue which is related to this page. D.Lazard (talk) 13:56, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

Removal of the allegation and disciplinary proceedings paragraph

I have removed the paragraph detailing the April 2021 allegation and the subsequent disciplinary proceedings, and left a single neutral line recording the existence of the investigation and the subject's denial. Rationale:

1. The judicial investigation (information judiciaire) opened in 2021 is, to our knowledge, still ongoing and is reportedly heading towards a dismissal (non-lieu). The investigative phase is protected in France by the secrecy of the judicial investigation (secret de l'instruction); setting out its details here risks breaching that secrecy and, in any event, the presumption of innocence. WP:BLP requires particular care for contentious material about living persons, especially material that has not resulted in a conviction.
2. The disciplinary proceedings themselves arose from the disclosure of details of that same ongoing investigation; detailing them in the article would amplify precisely the material that the law protects.
3. Particular caution is warranted in this case because previous published accusations against the subject have proved false in court: Le Nouvel Obs was definitively convicted of defamation against Branco (final ruling of the Paris Court of Appeal, 24 June 2026) over false claims in the same topical area.

For the same reason I have removed, in the Griveaux affair section, the statement that investigating judges suspected him of involvement in the dissemination of the video: where no prosecution is brought, recording such a suspicion is contrary to the presumption of innocence. The fact that no charges were brought is of course retained.

Comments welcome. EncreEtMarges (talk) 03:28, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

This attempt at block evasion is about as convincing as a Groucho Marx moustache. You aren't fooling anyone. Hemiauchenia (talk) 03:34, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

• If you are going to do this sort of silly rubbish, please stop using LLM. I was probably taught English by the same teacher as you, I know English is a bit strange but it really is not that difficult to string the words together. I think we need to think about protecting this article at least until the 500 signature deadline. ChrysGalley (talk) 09:16, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

Page protection requested

 Courtesy link: WP:Requests for page protection/Increase

In view of the above disruption and the evident patterns involved, I have applied for Semi protection until 10 February 2027. ChrysGalley (talk) 09:43, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

• The administrators have agreed to WP:SEMI protect the article page indefinitely, and therefore editing is restricted to auto-confirmed users (10 edits plus 4 days from the first edit). This will give more breathing space against hit-and-run editing. If you are a new editor and have a bona fide edit in mind, then you can mention it on this Talk page instead, and ideally add this template {{Edit semi-protected}} into the text window. Protecting pages is overall undesireable so if it becomes reasonable to remove this protection at some future point this can and should be requested. If this semi protection is insufficient, then it can also be tightened. As of July 2026 the French Wikipedia page also has Semi protected status. ChrysGalley (talk) 10:29, 23 July 2026 (UTC)