User:68.39.174.238/Newgatery

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A Wikipedian's "Newgate Calendar" designed to show newbies interested in the History about their Project's past Malefactors, so that they can better understand past Events, without having to slog through tedious and acrimonious Dialogs or Pages long since gone; and to preserve past History, and semi-oral History.

This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy certain standards for completeness. Revisions, additions and suggestions are welcome.

Contents

[edit] "Willy on Wheels"

This was one of WpA's first "long term" or "notorious" vandals, along with "Mr. Treason". His MOs was unique and rather inventive. He would register accounts that, in increasingly creative ways, had "Willy on Wheels" in them.

[edit] Accounts

The first was The Willy on Wheels (talk · contribs · logs · block user · block log) or Willy on Wheels (talk · contribs · logs · block user · block log), not sure. With these accounts he would then execute annoying page moves (Also called page renames) that usually involved appending the words "on Wheels" to an article. For example, see here. This vandal had an amazing number of sockpuppets, most of which were immediately blocked for their obvious names (Like the above, "Mr Treason On Wheels!"). While this vandal was extremely obnoxious, he did leave some positive effects: Prior to his attacks, the MediaWiki software (What runs Wikipedia) did not log page moves. During the height of his influence, a new version (I think it was 1.5 or 1.6) added pagemove log functionality. This still exists and can be seen here. While evidently not admitted, several users are generally considered to be running bots that will recognize and block names that look like Willy's. His "coup" was likely his successful overwriting of the official Wikipedia logo on the portal page with his logo Image:Willys-Knight1920.jpg and pink text at the bottom reading "Willy on Wheels!", as displayed here.

[edit] Sockpuppets

Most of his puppets could once be found by looking at Special:Listusers and looking for the ones that say "on Wheels". Some are only discoverable by checking their user contributions and the VERY early ones (EG. User:©) can't be understood at all because MediaWiki didn't log pagemoves back then.

Their relation is unknown, but various accounts show a prediliction for a certain area of Britian, and radio within that area:

[edit] Purported "Apologies"

Because of this vandals notoriety, there have been different persons attempting to "apoligise" for his/her/their vandalisms. The first was from a notorious generic Email to the mailing list here. That account also made the notable claim that they weren't the the first to come up with pagemove vandalism. The significance of the number at the bottom is unknown.

More recently, the user Flexiwire (talk · contribs · logs · block user · block log) attempted to do the same, using much of the same background, however no corroborating noncircumstantial evidence was provided. The username looks familiar, but the exact circumstance behind it is unknown.

[edit] The Communism vandal (Also called "Wikipedia is Communism")

The obnoxious dude seemed to take issue with either wikis (See this account), WikipediA, Wikimedia, or its administration. He continually registered accounts containing some variant of "Wikipedia is Communism" in various languages including English, or strange derivatives of other users names ("Antonin" instead of "Tony", etc) and then replaced pages or page sections with what you see on the right.

Wikipedia is Communism!
Wikipedia is Communism!

About ½way through this vandal's career, someone else showed up and claimed that all the foreign language puppets were impostors of "The Real Wikipedia is Communism" (!) many of his pupets can be seen here. Almost all of the foreign ones and many of the name impostors are this vandal. He later claimed via crappy web based proxy that he was going to post pictures of crap everywhere. While someone did manage to get it on the main page once, that was far less prolific and iconic then the original "hammer and sickle vandalism".

Much later Alvam (talk • contribs) posted to ANI claiming they were going to stop, but that same account later vandalized several pages and got blocked. Most of what's known about their motivations and beliefs comes from this. Finally, they may have been responsible for this (Note "W is C" signature) and comment about "wikilovedenial" (Note: The Register has been repeatedly critical of WikipediA).

They also once spammed a notice all over the place about going on an "Easter vandal tour" because Willy on Wheels was retiring (A possible indication of relation) and that he was going to hit Norwegian WikipediA and Meta-wiki as well.

Towards the end of their reign on eN, a similar user going under the name of "Wikipedia is Juche" showed up on the Korea WikipediA and started similar noxiousness there, however he mostly attacked user pages. Most of his attacks involved images of North Korea with partizan socialist/communist screed in English. Locally he's known as the "Communism Half moon" ("Half moon" being the phonetic approximation of "vandal" in Korean). See ko:위키백과:공산주의 반달행위, the description page on the Korean WpA.

[edit] "J—n G—ch"

While the vandalicness of this account is questionable, it is still well known because of egregious policy violations, specifically extreme sockpuppetry and setting up an external site "Wiki4Christ" to incite meatpuppets. An extreme example of his sockpuppetries can be seen here. This user was eventually banned by the Arbitration Commission for their violations, and alot of information about them can be gotten 1½st hand there: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Jason Gastrich.

[edit] Mr. Treason

This obnoxious troll was notorious for editing via AOL addrs (Making him impossible to block) and editing mostly pages dealing with old TV shows and New Jersey (Apparently where he lived). His name derives from his tendency to claim that people who were reverting him and challenging his edits were committing treason. This bizarre claim seems to have derived in the following way:

  • Treason makes edit to page of some sort
  • Other user reverts him
  • Treason doesn't like this
  • Something happens, according to secondhand accounts, Treason claims people are violating his free speech/threates to sue
  • Tries to get blocked for making legal threats
  • Claims people are committing treason for preventing legal action
  • Threatens to "SEE YOU IN A COURT OF LAW IN NEWARK NEW JERSEY", or more famously, "SUE [] IN A Court of Law IN TRENTON, NEW JERSEY"

Someone or another claimed on Talk:Wikipedia a while ago the "defeat" of Mr. Treason. Not much had been seen of him up to that time.

[edit] Science3456

This dude was notorious for creating articels on extreme (usually mechanical or electrical) trivia. His possibly most notorious was "Gas station restroom" or something like that. He was eventually blocked for notorious sockpuppetry used to fraudulate AfDs, leading to a DRV for some of the articels he had a signficant hand in influencing the deletion debates of (See Wikipedia:Deletion review/Science3456).

[edit] Lightbringer

The noxious PoV pusher existed here almost solely to invade the articel on Freemasonry with his "proof" that "Freemasonry is Satanism". For what seemed like a year he and some of his sockpuppets managed to serially ruin that page, getting its featured status revoked. Following an A.C. case resulting in him being prevented from having anything to do with that articel, he dissolved into notorious sockpuppetries; he was later banned altogether for this. He will keep showing up with his edits, however they're all pretty obvious since he's really the only one who'se been doing this or hold that point of view, and CheckUzer easily discovers the true perpetrator.

[edit] Electronical organ troll

For some time in 2005, this noxious, if hilarious, vandal attempted to have his way with the article on electronic organs. His sole "edit", which he continually repeated, was to rename "pipeless organs" to "toasters" and assert that digital organs were similar to the real things only "if you are deaf" (evidense). Evidently they got bored, forgot, or got the message.

[edit] The "Airport vandal"/Names of animals vandal

This entry was made possible by User:Wangi for allowing me to view the deleted revisions of the warning page on this malefactor.

This weirdo's main claim to fame was his MO, which was simple, if strange: Copy an articel about an airport, find an unrelated articel (Or make one up), and overwrite one with the other. See for instance this. They showed a slight predilection for localities, but hot topics of the day (EG. the Isreal-Lebanon business), pages from North Carolina (See below) and (No surprize here) the User: and _talk: pages of those users who attempted to deal with him and blocked his puppets.

Many of his puppets followed the naming scheme of "[Name] the [Animal]". For instance, the first known puppet was Philp the Moose (talk · contribs · logs · block user · block log) (The significance of the spelling error is unknown).

Moreso then most vandals (Even, it seems, Willy on Wheels), numerous people have claimed connections between this vandal and others: The blocked troll Blu Aardvark (talk · contribs · logs · block user · block log), the "North Carolina vandal", "Bobby Boulders" And His "ISV", or General Tojo (talk · contribs · logs · block user · block log). None of the known experts on the above vandals are known to have made comments about this.

Worst of all, he used AOL, which prevented blocking him (This was back before the "new" blocking options were availible) without blocking all of AOL (Which happened a few times)!

[edit] North Carolina vandal

The "North Carolina vandal" (NCV) refers to a noxious vandalous person who used several totally random sockpuppet personalities. He was originally known as "Jake Remington" after his main "identity" or the "Stokes County vandal" after his obsessive target. He was also notorious for trying to work on antivandalism work while simultaneously vandalising

He usually vandalized the articles North Carolina, [[Lentil (slur}]], and AAH, among others. He also vandalized random articles relating to North Carolina and beer.

[edit] "Bobby Boulders"/"International Society of Vandals"

This noxious troll was infamous for posting a long diatribe about how evil administrators were and how he had created an "International Society of Vandals" to vandalize (Via a lame MySpace page, evidently).

This strange "group" also hit Wikia, with most of the vandalism concentrated on the Star Wars Fanon Wiki and Wookieepedia. The "war" was eventually extended to several wikis, such as editthis.info and Encyclopedia Dramatica (the fact has been partially documented on ED in the article "Ultraviolet News Network"). Many edits usually came from the AOL IP range 207.200.0.0/16, which made them rather hard to block.

[edit] PoolGuy

This dude's annoying history can be described with a list:

  • Made some controversial edit
  • Got challenged
  • Created a blatant sockpuppet to try and fraudulate some consensus
  • Failed disastrously
  • Repeated this several times
  • Eventually got taken to Arbitration for it: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/PoolGuy — Result: PG. banned from having more then one accounts.
  • Creates multitudes of sockpuppets which are blatantly obvious due to them containing either camel casing, or overly smart variations on "sockpuppet" EG. GoldToeMarionette (talk · contribs · logs · block user · block log). Finally everyone got ticked off at his useless sockpuppetting and he was banned.

[edit] DNA Vandal

This person vandalized articles relating to DNA, especially Organelle using usernames like User:Ted Kennedy's DNA, except with many different names. The DNA Vandal stopped vandalizing in the second half of 2006.

[edit] Conclusions

While some connections can be drawn between vandalous accounts, the ease of impersonating many of these vandals makes it hard to form a definitive image without the firsthand information. On the other hand, some vandals are of such a unique nature that their antics are generally are hard to forge (EG. Very unique ways of speaking. Try and write something that mimics the phrasing of the narrator in the "Swiss Family Robinson").

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