Wikipedia talk:Long-term abuse/Archive 4

Pioneer Courthouse Square vandal
Two years of abuse from a gang of sockpuppets. Has started using "good hand/bad hand" accounts, registers sleeper accounts months before using them to make edits, makes a few unnecessary but usually harmless edits in order to be autoconfirmed then launches into the same trolling behavior. See also the article's talk page and archives and especiallyRequests_for_checkuser/Case/Pioneercourthouse Other reports can be found here. Is this vandalism serious enough to list on the Long Term Abuse page? My goal is to have enough people who recognize the MO that we can block socks quickly and not waste any more time negotiating with this person, so s/he will get bored and go away. Thoughts? Katr67 (talk) 22:04, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Help Dealing With Vandal on Brother Wease
A user named User:Mosslandingpowerplant was blocked for repeatedly vandalizing the Brother Wease page. This went on for over three months, and all of that users edits were to the same page, and all were reverted as vandalism. Since the user was banned, the vandalism has continued under a variety of usernames: User:Alanlevingreed, User:Alanlevinsgreedy, User:95.1fox,User:Garbageplate. In the last 24 hours, the vandal(s) struck 8 or 9 times using at least three of these accounts. I'm not sure how to proceed, but the problem is getting out of hand, and the article is suffering. Any suggestions from more experienced editors? Anson2995 (talk) 02:45, 10 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Hi, Anson. I've replied on your talk page. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 11:16, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

JarlaxleArtemis subpage not listed on main page?
Is there a reason that the Long term abuse/JarlaxleArtemis was not listed on WP:LTA, and that Grawp had a section on the main WP:LTA page (in addition to Jarlaxle/Grawp's subpage)? The subpage had more or less the same content (about "Grawp") as the Grawp section on WP:LTA. I added the Jarlaxle page to the list and removed the Grawp section...let me know if it was supposed to be like that for a reason! scooteytalk 05:36, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Clean up
I have moved the following entries to Page 2:


 * User:Ukbjjf - Old spammer.
 * ColourWolf - Has his own subpage.
 * "South Park" vandal - Unnotable vandal. Entry contains almost no information. WP:DENY.
 * Banned user Ararat arev - Has his own subpage.
 * User:Kermanshahi - Some Dutch high school kids whose school was contacted in April last year. According tothe Dutch Long term vandalism page, they are no longer active (I can understand what is said there because I am Dutch).
 * Genesis vandal (Aka user:Tile join) - If the only thing this user does is replacing content with Bible/Qu'ran texts, I sayWP:DENY.
 * ClaimJumperPete - Old attention seeker. Easily fought off. WP:DENY.

More entries may need to be archived but, as I already said some time ago, this page is badly maintained, poorly organized, and almost no entry contains an indication of recent activity. Vice versa, I have moved two entries from page 2 thatdo have some indication of recent activity back to the main page:


 * Sneaky Stats Vandal - "still active in late 2008"
 * Suki vandal - Update on 14 January 2009.

Furthermore, I've deleted the following links from the Subpages section:


 * General Tojo - Last message on this CU page about him was on May 30, 2008. I've seen no evidence that he's still active. See also this.
 * Lightbringer - Easily fought off. Does not seem to be active anymore, so no longer relevant.
 * MascotGuy - Possibly autistic. Still active, but fought off successfully because of the unoriginal names of the accounts he creates.
 * Mmbabies - Also possibly autistic. Long gone, so not relevant anymore.

The above pages will of course remain accessible for historical reference. Cheers, theFace  19:28, 30 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Regarding Sneaky Stats Vandal, most of the editing activity by since 30 September 2009 seems to follow a similar pattern. -- Avenue (talk) 13:29, 9 November 2009 (UTC)


 * This has always been a hard page to maintain because people dump stuff here and leave it. I honestly wonder if it would be more useful to strip it down and vigorously reroute people to other places. Unfortunately, someone protected it so I can no longer work on it as I used to. 76.117.247.55 (talk) 22:44, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Serial spammers section
I'm wondering what the point of this section is if we already have MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam as two central places to keep information about serial spammers. In case a spammer still doesn't stop after their accounts are blocked, their IPs blocked, articles protected/monitored/salted, and their sites blacklisted, we could add an entry to this page with information about information on how to help stopping them. But I see no reason why we should put those entries in a seperate section instead of among the other entries. I suggest removing the entire section, except for the entry on Terry Ananny spammer, a recent abuser, which can be moved to the bottom of the page. Cheers, theFace  19:28, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Done (cut -paste). Cheers, theFace  14:05, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

AnonTalk
While I happened to be at the sandbox, I noticed this. It's probably nothing, but I think this user should be watched, especially considered his contributions.  Intelligent  sium  03:07, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Can illiterate editing be defined as vandalism?
And if so, why? I have run into a userhere who has stated previously that he has a learning disability, and, really, I believe him. His edits are just awful, but he does communicate, sometimes angrily, sometimes piteously, with other editors. Well, the question is, Is he capable of "vandalism" when he appears to be using his best efforts to (in his mind) improve the articles. Sincerely, GeorgeLouis (talk) 03:17, 27 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm pretty sure "vandalism" requires deliberate malice. Unfortunately I don't know that that will help him edit...76.117.247.55 (talk) 22:43, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Please take a look
I'm new to all this and I have no idea how you all go about doing what you do, but I'd like to bring something to your attention.

An Editor who seems to have a history of bias is marking pages as biased when it seems she has a bias herself.

Re: Puella Nivis

Just a thought. --Renner8592 (talk) 15:25, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Not sure about applying here
User Annoynmous User talk:Annoynmousis active in Wikipedia since 2006. Although he's not very active, when considering his number of edits, he accumulated at least six blocks till today, of which, three in 2009. Also, as one can be impressed from his talk page, his manner of editing seems to others too frequent as disruptive. He only made slightly more than 50 edits since 2010 began and yet he already seem to violate WP:CON and to fuel edit war on this article. Now, there is discussion going on this article talk page, the article page was protected for 5 days as a result of edit warring -and by now there is certainly no consensus with at least 8 editors involved to different extents. Annoynmous made his first revert without no discussion, and without no previous involvment on this article talk or main pages (as far as I can tell). He was the first to make revert on this article since the protection was removed about two days ago. He replyed on the talk page only after his second revert and after I opened there a new section. Usually, these cases go to "page protection" notice board. But taking this step is in serious risk to to run over WP:CON. So, I would be grateful for any advice. --Gilisa (talk) 10:40, 16 March 2010 (UTC)


 * From the main article page, "...vandals should only be added here if their vandalisms are serious (A good rule of thumb is whether or not their primary account has been indefinitely blocked)".


 * This page is mainly for banned/blocked accounts that keep coming back from the dead to cause disruption and grief. So probably normal dispute resolution still applies in this case.


 * Regards Bksimonb (talk) 10:57, 16 March 2010 (UTC)


 * (ec)This dispute has absolutely nothing to do with long term abuse. As the project page spells out, "This page should contain only properly categorized, unique entries on specific vandals with enough relevant and correct information to allow  other people to identify them and their tracks." This forum shopping by Gilisa could almost be described as an abuse of process RolandR (talk) 11:01, 16 March 2010 (UTC)


 * RolandR, I didn't ask for your opinion nor advice. And your accustion of "forum shopping" is of course baseless. However, you seem to be stalking. Thanks,--Gilisa (talk) 11:07, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
 * This is an open discussion page, you do not have the right to decide who may or may not comment here. RolandR (talk) 11:10, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
 * And of course you came over my comment here by accident, right? Let's not bring here WP:SOAP--Gilisa (talk) 11:12, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Do I need to make a report?
There is a vandal who targets various articles, often relating to Sony and MGM related articles, James Bond films, Irish American, German American, Harry Potter films and various other things. The edits are generally illiterate or introducing factual errors into articles. A partial list of the IPs is below, there are many more though. Despite being blocked many times for vandalism (may not be apparent from the IPs above, but I lack the energy to track down more IPs than a representative sample) they seem to be back on a regular basis, possibly daily but I can only go by the articles I know about. Can anything be done about this to assist dealing with this vandal? O Fenian (talk) 16:35, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Add the suspecting pages to your watch list and keep an eye on them as a first step. A second step id look into is having a sock puppet investigation just to collect the information as it goes so its all together in once spot, there may be some accounts here that are being hidden by the IPs. Some IP edits though maybe copy-cats or other vandals and not the same person. You may consider formulating an WP:ABUSE report (they were active some time in the past i dont know if they still are) where the Interente provider is contacted . Its very difficult to handle those who work ith rotating ips, but you can manage them with persistance. hope this helps a bit. Any other opinions out there? Ottawa4ever (talk) 16:58, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

WP: Long term abuse
I am wondering if this works. Ive been doing some checking of some people listed here and ive seen a few circumstances of those on this list bragging about being on LTA. Which would be going against wp:deny? It is very difficult in the pages current state to get information off this and to interpret it correctly (seems to be vague collections of partial SPIs). Essentially if someone on the list comes back and someone can identify its prudent to build a SPI about them to keep track of the new socks and Ips. But thats just the point, why not merge the information here to the releveant SPIs. At the very least perhaps have the SPI cases that are archived sorted here so they can be easily refrred to in case they do come back. Im just brainstorming but Id like to know others opinions of this page I just think theres a few fixes that could be done for improvement to make this run better. Happy editingOttawa4ever (talk) 13:49, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Maybe to get the ball rolling; Ive been thinking a few options in order to condense and possibly get this page under control. One option I had been thinking of, in more serious circumsatnces can we not append the information here to the SPI investigation archive of the individual. Sort of like a summary to the archive, secondly could we then summarize this information in say a maximum of one senatnce and then list the SPI relevant to the individual. It may reduce the clutter on the page and certaintly help with archiving. Any thoughts out there? Ottawa4ever (talk) 21:13, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'd say this won't work, as the primary purpose of this page is to inform uninvolved and unknowledgeable users about the behaviors and tendencies of the abusers. Whatever bragging these impotent, sad little people whom can't get a friend to save their life do is minor compared to the service a good LTA entry provides. —  Jeremy  ( v^_^v Dittobori ) 21:56, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Actually doing something?
Wouldn't it be more beneficial to actually do something regarding these long term vandals instead of creating a museum of their works? LTA holds information regarding these vandals that other users can supposedly look up, but that doesn't help the regular recent changes patrollers who have no reason to look at this project. I'm thinking it would be more beneficial and might actually help stop the abuse if we contacted the ISP. A lot of these reports already have CU/IP information associated, so it wouldn't be too hard to contact them for action. You might already get what I'm trying to say =D - LTA probably needs tighter integration withWP:ABUSE so it can be more efficient while still doing what it was intended for. Also, can we do a complete revamp of this project? It's so messy and unorganized that it's almost useless. If no one else wants to help, I can do this by myself, with community consensus of course. Thanks. Netalarm  talk  00:04, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Just a quick comment - in many cases of long term abuse if action could have been taken to prevent the abuse then it would have. Many abusers use open proxies, or a variety of ISPs and ranges where neither abuse reports nor rangeblocks will make any difference. Many ISPs of course simply don't care. It would be good to remove material which is already at ABUSE or SPI, or various other tracking pages, leaving only a link and a few examples. There is a bit too much information here. -- zzuuzz(talk) 10:09, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

A full record is sometimes handy. Every now and then one walks into an editor doing something strange where you think 'This editor is not new, there is something structural here'. You are right, most recent changes patrollers don't work with this page in the back of their mind, trying to spot them, but I come here every now and then the other way around. If you then find that the editor is one mentioned here, then WP:RBI is more efficient than having to go through ANI or projects, which always takes time and in a way is 'recognition' for the editor. This minimizes that. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:17, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The main thing is that this project is half-dead. Previous MfD's have failed, because some editors believe LTA still holds valuable information. While I do not fully agree with that, I see no point in LTA's existence if it's in this half-dead state. Since Wikipedia has decided that this project is worthwhile, why not make it more useful and efficient? I'm thinking of creating a subpage for each vandal, so the main page can stay relatively uncluttered. A central list like this would be displayed on the main page, linking to the various subpages. A form would be used for creating new reports. This would make LTA much more organized, in in turn, more efficient. My belief is that since LTA is staying for now, let's make it more efficient. Netalarm talk 12:23, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

That there is no addition, or editing to it does not mean it is dead. As I said, some editors use it as a quick place to find stuff, I believe it gets more read than that it gets edited, and I don't think there is anything wrong with that.

Making it more into a repository might be fine on one side, though then the individual pages become real 'treasures' for the vandal that is mentioned there, now that is less clear. Moreover, then the overview is also gone, everything is now in one page, you can browse up-down and find what you look for, find the pattern. Then you would have to click every single link and see on every subpage. And no, I don't think that you can write a search that can find the pattern one is looking for, these are specialist vandals, their patterns are difficult. I think I'd prefer the one-page format. --Dirk BeetstraT C 13:17, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I believe a simple chart on the main page would be much more effective, particularly with what you describe (browsing up and down). Having everything on one page makes the main page large and difficult to navigate since one has to dig through all the other entries before one can find the proper entry. A chart would make this much easier by listing the core characteristics, which I believe is what people browse for, on the main page with a link to a more detailed entry. The short description would be concise and accurate, so an interested editor can easily find the long term vandal he is looking for without digging through a huge page. For example, if I was looking for a vandal that kept blanking AIV, I would just be looking in the short descriptions for "Continually blanks AIV" and click into the relevant entry. Using the current system, I would have to look through an entire page to find it. Yes, you can do a Ctrl+F on the current page, but you can also do the same with a new system. Thoughts? Netalarm talk 13:07, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm afraid you missed the point here. If I see some strange editor creating race categories in a way that shows that they have been here before, or starts with a Disney film making a fully formatted page, or I see false information appear in baseball articles, or has a username with Elokobi scrambled in it, name it. I don't see how you are going to put that in a table. Unless you manage, these search terms on this page quickly give you answers who it might be. If it is in subpages, you don't find it. You don't look for core characteristics, you look for the whole pattern, see if it fits, extrapolate on that. A table might become huge, and it is not going to help as it will probably scroll of the page.

That being said, you could try and make the table, and see if it works, before considering to actually reformat this page.

I don't see the problem with this page. OK, it is big and difficult to read, but it is not an article. It might give credit to the vandals mentioned on it, but a) they don't need this page for that, they can show individual edits, sock categories, etc. to show who they are, this extra page does not make a difference (and even worse, if you make individual subpages per vandal, they can use that as a trophy, here it shows that they 'share' their faith). I hope this explains.  --Dirk BeetstraT  C 13:20, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The Japanese Wikipedia is able to do it. Now, let's focus on the English Wikipedia. A solution to your examples would be to do a Ctrl+F on those keywords, which would point you to the correct sub entry. There is a lot of information (IPs, sockpuppets, etc.) that is not useful in identifying the vandal. That information could be moved into a subpage, and only the identifying keywords, description could be kept in a nicely organized chart. The chart won't be too small, since it still has to have a concise description of the vandal (enough to hit the keywords). The benefits of an organized LTA with subpages outweighs it being treated as a trophy by vandals, in my view. Netalarm talk 13:58, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, the sockpuppets are sometimes handy to identify the vandal. And how do you define the 'identifying keywords'. But as I said, you could start making such a table with all info, and see whether the difference is significant or not. I agree that organising it could be good, and subpages does not exclude that they are all again transcluded onto a top-page for those cases where the table does not give the solution in the end. There are solutions, but I don't think that a table alone will be sufficient to be able to find the cases. Some have complex modi operandi. Remember, some (most?) of these are specialised vandals, it is not 'the Disney vandal', or 'the baseball vandal', it is a whole story sometimes that makes the vandal. I think that bringing it back to keywords ('Disney') would make every vandal vandalising Disney be a possible hit here. --Dirk BeetstraT C 14:14, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Note that some of these long-term vandals are just trying NOT to be caught by the keywords, and can go on long undetected. But if you see the full story you can see the patterns. --Dirk Beetstra T C 14:15, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * (EC) Correct, this isn't a perfect solution, but I think it's better than what we currently have. Identifying keywords would be the characteristics (all of them) that define the vandal. As you have previously pointed out, you only come here when you notice something odd about an editor. The thing that you notice odd would be one of the keywords here, so an easy search would turn up in the table. Do you think there are any other viable solutions? I ask because I don't believe the current state is viable at all - it's way to ineffective and confusing for people to find information. I've actually already started here, Netalarm talk 14:21, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

No, I hope it is one of the keywords, but some do try to evade that (quite effectively). But as I said, splitting up this page, making a table of WP:LTA itself, and having all separate cases as subpages (WP:LTA/Vandal 1, WP:LTA/Vandal 2 is the first half. Having the keywords gives you CTRL-F and find that, and one could make a searchbox to search all subpages for 'keywords' that have not previously been recognised as keywords.

If those sub-pages are formatted nicely, one could transclude ALL those subpages again onto one page ('WP:LTA/Vandal 1&lt;br />WP:LTA/Vandal 2'), which is then cluttered up, but when you are sure that the person is not new, and the keywords (and non-keyword search) don't help (or you can't guess it, or they really changed modus operandi, then either you scan some likely subpages, or you take the big page with all the transclusions on it (and that page does not have to be a high-visibility page likeWP:LTA itself, it could be WP:LTA/FullList). In that case we have a solution that would satisfy all, and the huge messy page is just for occasional use, but would not be 'in the way', nor would it really duplicate anything.  How would that be? --Dirk Beetstra T C 14:39, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm reading this as we create a table on the main page like User:Netalarm/LTA, but also create a FullList which transcludes every listing that can also be used. All the vandals would have their own subpage, etc. Am I reading this correctly? Netalarm talk 15:12, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

I've expanded User:Netalarm/LTA with another example, and created User:Netalarm/LTAFull as the transclusion page (I hope you don't mind). As you can see there, it shows all the subpages that are now transcluded in full. In the end that page will look like the current LTA page, but there is an actual layer between. --Dirk Beetstra T C 16:54, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I've created User:Netalarm/LTA/Richard Daft as a full scale test. I chose Daft because he was the newest entry, so it could be used in the future. The template is modeled after what's already being used on some LTA cases, but the Infobox vandal isn't displaying properly. I'll look into that more, but what do you think of the general template and design? Netalarm talk 22:20, 12 June 2010 (UTC)