Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Spaceastronaut

Basic information
Comprehensive edits analysis The first edit made by the vandal occurred in October 2017 to Commonwealth of Nations with page blanking. Targets of the vandal have changed frequently since the vandal's return in early 2018. Attacks have mostly come from IPs geolocated to New South Wales, with the most common providers being Telstra Internet and TPG Internet.

From as early as June 2018, this vandal has continued to remove content from articles, including sister city sections from national capitals in Asia and Africa, a statement about Fred Hollows in Australian dollar, and the replacement of the Protecting power article with a personal essay.

In January 2019, the user Spaceastronaut was created. The user began to exhibit the same behaviours as the IPs, including removal of Fred Hollows, removal of sister city sections, and removal of the Imperial Seal from Template:Japan topics. When the user became autoconfirmed, he began creating senseless redirects, such as Felicity Dayhew to Diana Simmonds, and Graag to random pages, as well as creating hoaxes like Pokemon Chaos Black. The vandal would only edit as the user when at least one of his IPs was blocked, until finally blocked on 27 January. Talk page access was revoked on 30 January, at which point the IP vandalism resumed. Protections of one to two months were applied in February to Australian dollar and Protecting power respectively as a result of the vandalism.

Targeted areas, pages, themes

 * Commonwealth of Nations
 * List of diplomatic missions of the United Kingdom
 * Camel case
 * Pastagate
 * Certain African nations
 * International currencies (i.e. Australian dollar)
 * National capitals Twin/sister city section removals
 * Japan topics, the Japan portal and Help page
 * Protecting power

Habitual behavior
Before mid-2018, the vandal had exhibited blanking behaviour to articles such as Commonwealth of Nations, List of diplomatic missions of the United Kingdom, Zimbabwe, and Liberia. More recent edits show the following patterns:
 * 1) Removal of twin city / sister city sections from various national capital articles (e.g. Taipei)
 * 2) Changing "People's Republic of China" to "China" (e.g. Xiamen and Foreign relations of Cape Verde)
 * 3) Removal of and requests to remove images from country topics navboxes (e.g. Template:Japan topics)
 * 4) Random redirecting (most common target is Toronto van attack)
 * 5) Removal of the Fred Hollows petition sentence in Australian dollar
 * 6) Removal of exchange rate links at Moldovan leu
 * 7) Complete replacement of the Protecting power article with an unsourced essay (an attempt to recreate the essay by the account was made under the title Electricity conservation)
 * 8) The account had created implausible redirects under the titles Felicity Dayhew and Graag (each pointing to Diana Simmonds and a random article, respectively.)

Cases
Sockpuppet cases exist at Sockpuppet investigations/Spaceastronaut.

Other notes
Related abuse and new developing abuse from known IPs should be reported to WP:AIV or WP:ANI. Where that fails, a report to WP:SPI without requesting CheckUser is recommended.

Confirmed and suspected accounts

 * Last used April 2020
 * Last used June 2019
 * Last used May 2019
 * Last used May 2019
 * Last used May 2019
 * Last used March 2019
 * Last used March 2019
 * Last used November 2023
 * Last used February 2019
 * Last used January 2019
 * Last used January 2019
 * Last used October 2018
 * Last used September 2018
 * Last used February 2018
 * Last used February 2018
 * Last used February 2018

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