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(a)gmail.com>
To: Brian0918 <brian0918(a)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.