[WikiEN-l] Over the weekend...

[james duffy]

>"Wikipedians should generally refrain from witch hunts of users who
>may be reincarnations of banned users."
>
>However, grave concerns have been raised, and I have reason to think,
>based on what's been going on the past few days, that ChuckM, Joe
>Canuck, DW/Black Widow, and perhaps some others may (or may not) be
>the same person, posting repeatedly on the same sorts of topics and in
>the same sorts of obnoxious ways.
>
>So, after a bit of research by one of the sysops, who will remain
>nameless unless he wants to take public credit, we've determined that
>there is a relatively small block of ip numbers where this user is
>coming from.  At least through the weekend, we're going to block all
>of those completely.
>
>Next Monday morning, we'll assess whether it worked, and discuss when
>to unblock that range of addresses.  It seems unfortunate in case
>people in a certain ip block in Canada happen to want to edit this
>weekend, but odds are, they won't.
>
>Additionally, any and all of those names can be banned by names, and I
>authorize a witch hunt (but please, practice WikiLove) on new
>instances.  :-) Just for the weekend.
>
>My concern is that this might spiral out of control into a
>full-fledged attack, and I'd just as soon prevent that and deal with
>it next week.
>
>--Jimbo

Is there any program that can be written to keep track of any new users 
coming from those IPs and perhaps highlight them to a handful of senior 
figures on wiki? That way, subtle watch could be kept to see if similar 
patterns are appearing. Given that David Baltzer (if that is his real name, 
and not yet another phoney name) has seemingly used such an astonishing 
array of identities on wiki it seems exceedingly likely that he will not try 
to come on again. (Triton and Tritonian are just the latest two to come to 
light since my original messsage pointing out the astonishing similarities 
between DW, Black Widow, Ron Davis, Olga Bityerkokoff, Jacques Delson, Joe 
Canuck, ChuckM et al - I'm kicking myself for not coping on immediately who 
Triton was; the topic, the 'I'm just a poor foreigner whose poor english . . 
. ' malarkey, the person he ganged up on, the tone adopted, etc was all 
classic DW, he having used it all before a couple of times, but it was only 
by spending hours wading through past 'visitatons' that the pattern could 
truly be spotted and conclusions drawn.)

Ensuring a subtle private eye can be kept to spot a user with classic DWism 
from those IPs would help avoid recent situations where people in the dark 
had to spot similarities, the new 'DW' in the process having caused a lot of 
damage, bad feeling and probably as DW has managed to do in the past driven 
people away, as well as in the process having uploaded many images with 
serious copyright problems. (There are still images from past DWs that have 
yet to be examined. Those I have checked at random uniformly lacked any 
information whatsoever on source, though I strongly suspect they all came 
from one sourcebook or source, because all are almost identical in 
composition, size, colour, shape, etc.)

But that private eye program should not be generally available. All users 
should be treated with the presumption of innocence. But a quiet track of 
users from those IPs (maybe only for a couple of weeks) might help wiki spot 
the new DW within days and react, rather than the current weeks or longer it 
has taken, during which time a lot of damage has already been done by him.

One final point - even by DW's standards, his 'Sue Joe Canuck' antics hit a 
new low. To pretend to be a paedophile, editing pages on sexual matters and 
leaving summaries asking could he ''keep'' a copy of an image of 'Pan' 
copulating with an goat and especially asking could he copy a picture of a 
child from one page, was horrifying.

18:33 27 Jun 2003 Incest (a linky)
18:30 27 Jun 2003 Talk:Child (can I copy this photo too?)
18:29 27 Jun 2003 Child pornography (one teeny weenie linky!)
18:21 27 Jun 2003 North American Man-Boy Love Association (another linky 
pooh by Sue-Sue!)

God knows what visitors to wiki thought when they saw someone all this. We 
can say what he want about Adam [name omitted for privacy reasons] and Michael, but they have never 
stooped to such a  level of vandalism. If DW is willing to stoop to such 
levels, what else will he try when he comes back. This is one user that wiki 
needs to be ready and able to clamp down on as soon as possible.

JT

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