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[edit] User name blocking

User name blocking is not yet enabled. See bug 65. Angela 12:37, 30 Jan 2005 (PST)

[edit] Dittoboy should be blocked

Replacing good pages with an angry message: http://lotr.wikicities.com/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=Dittoboy

I don't know if he or she has done similar vandalism elsewhere. Robin Patterson 21:34, 14 Dec 2005 (UTC)

Yes, there was similar vandalism of about 4 pages on the Neopet Guilds Wikicity. --RJ 23:32, 14 Dec 2005 (UTC)

Using the same nickname this user has also posted the spam at Wikipedia and the Wikicities Creatures Wiki (detail) claiming to want to block Bar Ilan University's Wiki access - Don 12:29, 15 Dec 2005 (UTC)

As someone at Wikipedia, I believe that Dittoboy there is different from Dittoboy here. There are two reasons for this:

1) Dittoboy hasn't been at Wikipedia this academic year.

2) Dittoboy here refers to himself as "The great devolved Bulbasaur; Dittoboy from Wikipedia refered to himself as a devolved Bulbasaur. Claiming to be a Ditto, the second would make sense to anyone who knows a lot about Pokémon; the first doesn't.

This Dittoboy has been a big vandal. On the 11th of December, he vandalised the Pokemon wiki. He later vandalised several other wikis, also vandalising the description pages of them - Quaker, Asylum, IAudio, UGIR and Film Guide. He did other vandalism at Wikicities. As a result, Jellochuu blocked him.

WHen he made an other visit to the Pokemon wiki, I suspected that he was vandalising other wikis, so I decided to do a manual search. As of now, I've checked the first 215 wikicities, and found that since then, he has vandalised 11 of the first 215: Alternative History, Ancient Coins, Answers, Anthropology, Artemis Fowl, CamarilaRequiem, Clocks, Creatures, Dentistry, Dungeons and Dragons and Evolutionary Business. One of these, he vandalised twice. All of these have already been reverted by now (some by me), but on some of these he created pages which should be deleted, and he may have went back and re-vandalised some.

As of now, he hasn't been blocked at most wikis. I blocked him at Pokemon, where I'm a sysop, and he was blocked at Creatures.

On 19th of December, I did a search at Google, and discovered 2 more wikis he vandalised - Shakira and Vancouver. I reverted his vandalism at both.

For the most part, he just vandalised pages opf the Main namespace and their talk pages; however, I did notice that in a few of the wikicities, he also vandalised Jellochuu's User Page and Talk page.

He should defiunitely be blocked ASAP in all the wikicities.

User142 13:14, 15 Dec 2005 (UTC)

So block me. The great devolved Bulbasaur from Wikipedia 15:58, 20 Dec 2005 (UTC)

I've checked his edits across all wikis and will revert those now. I'm not sure blocking the username everywhere would help since he could just create a new account and it would make it harder to find his edits. Angela (talk) 05:33, 28 Dec 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Link-spam

The page doesn't mention link-spam. Link-spam isn't obviously vandalism if (as mostly happens these days) it's invisible to a viewer of the page. But it's misappropriation of Wikicities resources and should result in punishment (as well as being nullified). It's not mindless defacement; it's deliberate, slightly clever, theft.

What length of time is recommended? I have been setting "1 year" on a few Wikicities and Wikipedias, but have reduced it to "1 month" since reading that that was the Wikipedia recommendation. Link-spam wasn't mentioned in WP either, so I think it may be such a new phenomenon that this sort of page hasn't yet assessed it.

Robin Patterson 04:35, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Usually, a long block will pointless for spammers since they simply use open proxies and change IP every time. 1 month seems fine. Angela (talk)

But does it matter much? The Wikipedia spam project has a note about the "no-follow" tag on external links, which means the linkspammers get none of the search engine exposure they want. Is that in effect here? Robin Patterson 11:40, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

It is in effect here (and not on the English Wikipedia), but it doesn't seem to deter them. Angela (talk)

[edit] Anonymous or open proxies

How do we recognise them? Robin Patterson 11:40, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Searching for the IP plus the word "proxy" in Google will often give you a clue since they may appear on lists of open proxies. There are also tools like [1] and [2] if you actually want to check the proxy. Wikipedia:WikiProject on open proxies might have more info on this. Angela (talk)

[edit] Blocking several addresses

Getting repeated vandalsim of Sustainable Community Action - typically pattern is 15 to 20 pages vandalised from almost same number of different IP addresses. Advice seems to be to block each of the new addresses, which we have been doing, and can continue to do (blocking for 1 year) but am just a bit concerned in case this goes on a long time and ends up storing up problems for later - i.e. requests for unblocking from people who say they are legitimate users, which frankly I wouldn't know how to deal with - cause presumably one would like / need (?) to see if they can show any evidence that problems not likely to be repeated? Philralph 09:10, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Blocking, then blocking again, then again...

There's a user who has appeared on at least three wikis - the StarCraft, Teletraan-1 and Command and Conquer wikis - who has been banned from all three due to spamming (and, in the case of Teletraan, extremely foul language).

His talk pages can be seen for Teletraan, C&C and StarCraft. He has a bad habit of removing warnings from these pages.

Unfortunately, he keeps coming back with a different name (almost always a military-based name) and different IP addresses. I'm slightly leery of banning his new accounts since I'm only 99% sure it's him. Short of banning him each time, is there something less time-consuming that can be done about him? PsiSeveredHead from StarCraft wiki