I came across what most likely was a vandal bot using IPs on the range 152.163.100.*, and some other IPs I don't remember, creating a couple dozen articles with random titles and the same block of nonsense in the body. They would appear 3 or 4 at a time, each on a different IP. I've been told this is an AOL range, and that if it's a bot, that's bad. So, just letting you all know....
--brian0918
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Wikipedia e-mail: AOL vandalbot Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2005 09:26:18 GMT From: David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com To: Brian0918 brian0918@gmail.com
(I also put this on your talk page.)
Please hop on IRC and let the devs on #wikimedia-tech know straight away - vandalbots coming from AOL is a doomsday scenario, owing to their stupidly broad proxy network, and Tim Starling really wants to know about this stuff if it springs up. Try to keep it to as small ranges of AOL as possible, though Tim says he'd happily block the whole ISP if the alternative is making the wiki read-only. Drop a line to Wikitech-L as well (you have to subscribe first), detailing what makes you think it's a vandalbot and so on, best detail possible. (If it turns out not to have been a bot, blame me ;-) I'd rather you raised an unnecessary alarm than fail to raise a necessary one.)
- d.