Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Geraldine Edwards hoax from San Diego

Basic information
This hoaxer from San Diego, California, was working to establish a hoax outside of Wikipedia starting about November 2010, by making multiple comments furthering the hoax on blogs, discussion boards, news items and online 'ask a question' sites. For details about non-Wikipedia hoaxing, see Talk:Robert Palmer (singer). The hoax is that a person named Geraldine Edwards was the last girlfriend of singer Robert Palmer, despite the fact that all the newspapers reported Palmer's last girlfriend to be Mary Ambrose, a living person. Part of the hoax is to insult or diminish Ambrose as much as possible.

Wikipedia became the focus of this hoaxer in January 2011 [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:New_contributors%27_help_page/questions&diff=prev&oldid=407138981 with this post to the new contributors' help page,] using a San Diego IP address. Nothing much happened with that, so the hoaxer started in April 2011 to change articles directly, primarily biographies, many of them about living persons. Fake references have been used by the hoaxer in an effort to convince others that the hoax text was legitimate.[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kate_Hudson&diff=next&oldid=429110459]

saw one hoax-type BLP violation in May 2011 [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bobby_Hatfield&diff=prev&oldid=427974420 and reverted it,] also blocking the IP, but other parts of the hoax stayed up. The full extent of the hoax was discovered in December 2013 by who started fixing the problem,[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Robert_Palmer_%28singer%29&diff=586800590&oldid=586012540][//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rick_Springfield&diff=586841233&oldid=583387215][//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Eric_Clapton&diff=586744891&oldid=586740976] the cleanup effort opposed by the hoaxer.[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Robert_Palmer_%28singer%29&diff=next&oldid=586800590]
 * Favonian [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/block&page=User%3A98.173.35.18 blocked 98.173.35.18 for 48 hours in May 2011.]
 * [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/block&page=User%3A174.79.253.109 blocked 174.79.253.109 for one week in December 2013.]
 * Mark Arsten [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/block&page=User%3A146.244.11.175 blocked 146.244.11.175 for one week in December 2013.]
 * A July 2014 noticeboard discussion relevant to this hoax: Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive846.
 * A January 2015 noticeboard discussion relevant to this hoax: Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive869.

Targeted areas

 * Robert Palmer (singer)
 * Cameron Crowe
 * Almost Famous
 * Groupie
 * Bebe Buell
 * Pressure Drop (album)
 * Sharon O'Neill
 * Bobby Hatfield
 * Live at the Apollo (Robert Palmer album)
 * Drive (Robert Palmer album)
 * Heavy Nova (album)
 * Jack Bruce
 * Mick Taylor
 * Eric Clapton
 * Double Fun
 * Kate Hudson
 * Rick Springfield
 * Bobby Hatfield
 * The Isley Brothers
 * Edgar Winter

Involved IP addresses

 * August 2018
 * December 2017
 * December 2013 – January 2015
 * December 2013 – March 2014
 * December 2013
 * August 2011
 * August 2011
 * April 2011 – January 2012
 * January – July 2011

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