Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Nikita

Basic information
Comprehensive edits analysis Seemingly of Russian origin, this user is also known by the community as simply "Nikita", or Никита in Russian alphabet. Before his global block he had been blocked on the Russian Wikipedia for vandalism. It later became clear he spoke almost no English after editing here; an ANI thread suggested communicating in Russian before his block, and his messages were cooperative at first. His behavior, however, did not change, and still persists to this day. As of 2017, he seems to have learned enough English (or used a translation service) to submit clear English edit requests to extended-confirmed protected pages.

Targeted areas, pages, themes
The globally blocked user has been using alternate accounts and various IPs geolocated in different countries, most often through proxies, to make edits and submit edit requests with regards to inflating certification and sales figures on music articles, mostly related to Green Day, Fall Out Boy, and The Who, more notably The Who discography, Green Day discography, American Idiot, Infinity on High, and other related articles.

Habitual behavior
The pattern is usually random, but similar in nature, that the edits inflate sales figures by the millions and change the certification by similar means. Meanwhile, edit requests to extended-confirmed articles ask for the same type of edit, usually providing an unreliable forum post as a reference (probably posted by Nikita himself). The user will never provide an edit summary. The information is always contradicted by the certification agencies themselves. When editing unprotected articles, the vandalism takes the form of changing numbers associated with certifications, and so their edits often look legitimate at a first glance.

Nikita often creates sleeper accounts and makes dummy edits in userspace to become autoconfirmed. For this reason, all protections should be at the extended-confirmed level. In at least one instance, they've attempted to follow the same strategy to become extended confirmed.

Cases

 * Sockpuppet investigations/Никита-Родин-2002
 * Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive845
 * Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive848
 * Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive910
 * Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive927
 * Administrators' noticeboard/Archive281

Confirmed and suspected accounts



 * Sockpuppet category (if any): Category:Wikipedia sockpuppets of Никита-Родин-2002
 * Suspected sockpuppet category (if any): Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of Никита-Родин-2002

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