[WikiEN-l] JarlaxleArtemis/Grawp

[Marc Riddell]

on 12/15/08 7:58 PM, Kevin Wong at wikipedianmarlith at gmail.com wrote:

> It makes sense to take a further action with this vandal. Unlike every
> internet troll I have handled so far, Grawp doesn't stop when he dosen't get
> the reaction he wants.

Kevin,

The targeted person's reaction is secondary to him. And the targets are,
most likely, chosen at random. He is more stimulated by seeing his work
there, in print, than anything else. It's like some persons who write
graffiti on a wall; they are less interested in the reactions of those who
see it, than in looking up and seeing that their work is there. And only
strong outside intervention will even begin to stop him.

Marc Riddell

> 
> On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 3:04 AM, Fran Rogers <fran at nutmeg.ws> wrote:
> 
>> You all may remember [[User:JarlaxleArtemis]], who has been "editing" the
>> English Wikipedia since 2004, at age 15. Originally he was an apparently
>> good-faith editor, but was sanctioned by ArbCom in early 2005 for somewhat
>> immature outbursts, copyright violations, and erratic behavior; eventually
>> he pulled such stunts as putting his teacher's e-mail address on his
>> userpage encouraging people to harass the "fucking bitch," e-mail bombing
>> people who deleted his copyvios, and finally impersonating users and
>> vandalizing with what would come to be hundreds of sockpuppets, all while
>> claiming to be the victim. He was banned:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/JarlaxleArte
>> mis_2<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Jarlaxl
>> eArtemis_2>
>> 
>> 
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Linuxbeak/Admin_stuff/Jarlaxl
>> eArtemis
>> <
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Linuxbeak/Admin_stuff/Jarlax
>> leArtemis&action=edit&oldid=117471376<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit
>> le=User:Linuxbeak/Admin_stuff/JarlaxleArtemis&action=edit&oldid=117471376>>
>> &action=edit&oldid=117471376
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> He sockpuppeted and vandalized for a while after that, but apparently
>> disappeared in 2006. One would have hoped maybe he grew out of his teenage
>> phase and decided to get on with doing something productive instead.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> But sadly, the story doesn't end there. In mid-2007, he reappeared with a
>> new "persona"... the move-vandal "Grawp." Unlike his ostensible predecessor
>> Willy on Wheels, who at least had a harmless light-hearted flair to him, as
>> "Grawp" Jarlaxle relished in specifically targeting users and sticking
>> their
>> personal information (usually gleaned from Daniel Brandt's website) in his
>> page-move titles along with death threats and rape threats. Eventually we
>> discovered that Grawp was in fact JarlaxleArtemis, and he only got more
>> persistent and venomous (probably because as Jarlaxle, he was very open
>> about his real-life identity and location himself.)
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> About a week ago, having been one of Jarlaxle's recent targets, I decided
>> to
>> take matters into my own hand, and found his mother's contact information
>> and wrote to her to inform her of the awful misdeeds her son's been up to.
>> (While Jarlaxle is 19, he lives with his mother, and performs most of his
>> vandalism from her Internet connection.) Instead of replying to me,
>> however,
>> she complained to OTRS that I was falsely accusing her son, who she
>> insisted
>> was JarlaxleArtemis but not Grawp. Jarlaxle then proceeded to prove her
>> wrong... by vandalizing multiple wikis as "Grawp" later that night from the
>> same IP address his mother sent her e-mail from. The ticket was handed to
>> ArbCom, who replied to her with this evidence and the assurance that her
>> son
>> was in fact the one responsible... but received a response that she didn't
>> believe them, didn't care, and was blocking all further e-mail from
>> Wikimedia. (Though it's been suggested that Jarlaxle himself may have
>> written that mail.) And he's continued to vandalize as recently as tonight.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Personally, I'm utterly bamboozled. This kid is nineteen years old and in
>> college; he's an adult, and he has his entire life ahead of him. Yet he
>> still continues to anonymously threaten and harass people on the Internet,
>> even though he's clearly stepped into illegal territory, his identity is
>> known along with reams of evidence of his misdeeds connecting them to him,
>> and his parent upon whom he's still dependent has been alerted. And he
>> still
>> soldiers on, using Mom's broadband to move pages on Wikipedia to titles "I
>> will rape and murder (insert admin here)." What could possibly be running
>> through his mind? And how can he be stopped?
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -Fran
>> 
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> 
>