Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Ananny

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"Wikipedia is all about free speech!" -Ananny A persistent cross-wiki spammer and sock-puppeteer since December 2006, Ananny's goal is to promote the work of Terry M. Ananny, a non notable artist (as established in independent AfD discussions on the German, Russian, and English Wikipedias). To this end, the user has used more than a dozen socks and innumerable IPs to recreate the deleted article and add Ananny's name to various lists. Although low level, Ananny's spamming has affected 19 Wikimedia wikis over a 10 year period.

Ananny is presumably the artist herself, as both her username and the persistent, specific nature of her spamming indicate a deep conflict of interest. She is unlikely to stop any time soon, as she believes that the Wikipedia community opposes her inclusion for personal reasons. For example: This article is under constant attempts to be removed by possible rival artists/dealers/gallery owners. They continue to attempt to remove it by any means they can think of... One might also question why these editors would want so desperately to block an article on a notable artist who has had work reproduced on UNICEF cards over the past decade, unless they had their own personal agenda for doing so. -Ananny

History
Ananny initially created Terry Ananny, which was deleted, (now indefinitely protected because of repeated attempts to re-create the article) despite attempts to interfere with the AFD process using the sock User:Jane Rushmore. It was soon after this that the spamming began in earnest.

Initially, she would add Ananny's name and a link to the artist's official site to articles such as List of Canadian artists, List of Canadian painters, Naive art, and Christmas card. Occasionally non-art related pages like Picnic and Hockey Jersey were also affected. Most of this editing would be done using IPs from the Toronto area.

When these began to be reverted more quickly, she created List of Canadian Contemporary Painters under the account User:CanadianArtworks in an attempt to escape notice. After this was deleted, Ananny took to sockpuppetry more freely (see suspected socks, and archived sock investigations), recreating the original biography using variations on spelling, including Terry Annany, TERRY ANANNY, Terry Marie Ananny, Terry M Ananny, Terry ananny, Terry M. Ananny, Terry A nanny, T.M.Ananny, Terry (Ananny) Annany, Terry Ananny - Canadian Painter, Terry Mary Broughton, Terri Ananny and Marie Stewart (artist).

Somewhere along the way, Ananny discovered Google Translate and began to go on periodic runs of cross-wiki spamming using machine-translated articles. (see list below)

User:Freshacconci has dealt with this user both here and on the Simple English Wiki, and also reported her to WP:WPSPAM. As a result terryananny.com has been added to the Meta spam blacklist.

M.O.
Ananny at first spammed by adding her name and website to lists and other articles, but is now more focused on spamming by article creation. Also, the former method of spamming is restricted almost entirely to the English Wikipedia, where she is most active.

Ananny's article-creation spamming comes in intense but relatively brief bursts. It will last for several days, after which she appears to lose interest. Several months later, it will start up again. The link spamming, by contrast, is often more offhand and isolated.

In a typical burst of cross-wiki spam, she creates autobiographical articles on about half a dozen Wikipedia editions. Once deleted these often will resurface within a few days under variant spellings. After several iterations the spamming stops- for the time being.

Dealing with Ananny
If you run across a Terry Ananny article, be sure to google "Terry Ananny Wikipedia", as the spam comes in cross-wiki clusters. Once the articles are all deleted, continue to periodically google those terms for the next few days, as they will recur.

Roy Ananny
An article was created on May 23, 2017 for Roy Ananny. To be clear, there is nothing wrong with the article itself nor is there anything suspicious about the article creator (a long-time editor and administrator). However, with some quick digging, it turns out Roy Ananny is Terry Ananny's father-in-law. This is mentioned simply as a heads-up to other editors involved in this case as that article may be targeted as a backdoor entry for Terry Ananny who has used every trick in the book to create an article and adding a paragraph to this existing article would certainly not be beyond her. It has happened at least once, by a now-blocked sockpuppet of Ananny.

Editing by Ananny herself confirmed
Most Ananny sockpuppets, when confronted, deny any association with Ananny. However, most have been confirmed as socks, all from the same editor. A now-blocked sockpuppet of Ananny made this comment on the userpage. As such, it is believed that the spammer/sockpuppeteer is Ananny herself.

Wikis spammed

 * Simple English Wikipedia
 * French Wikipedia [//fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/T_Ananny]
 * Italian Wikipedia
 * Russian Wikipedia
 * Danish Wikipedia
 * Spanish Wikipedia
 * Japanese Wikipedia
 * Portuguese Wikipedia
 * Finnish Wikipedia
 * Swedish Wikipedia
 * Norwegian Wikipedia
 * Polish Wikipedia
 * German Wikipedia
 * Bulgarian Wikipedia
 * Greek Wikipedia
 * Romanian Wikipedia
 * Dutch Wikipedia
 * Wikiversity.
 * Esperanto Wkipedia
 * Cebuano Wikipedia
 * Icelandic Wikipedia
 * Slovak Wikipedia
 * Galician Wikipedia