Wikipedia:Long term abuse/Lightbringer
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| Lightbringer | |
| Original name(s): | Lightbringer |
|---|---|
| Wikilifespan: | September 8, 2005 (from IP address) - present |
| ISP: | Shaw Communications Inc |
| Known IPs: | Generally 24.6x.x.x range (Allocated to Shaw): User:24.64.223.203 (Also used by legitimate editors) |
| Known hostmasks: | |
| Physical location: | Victoria, British Columbia, Canada |
| Severity: | High |
| Requests for comment: | |
| Requests for arbitration: | Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Lightbringer |
| Instructions: | Revert and block on sight |
Lightbringer is a stubborn user who has extremely POV and fringe beliefs regarding Freemasonry. He repeatedly edit wars through sockpuppets to insert his beliefs into all Freemasonry- related articles. He steadfastly refuses to engage in discussions or negotiate his poorly sourced (and often incorrect) edits. His egregious violations of policy resulted in him being indefinitely banned by community consensus after the ArbCom banned him for one year (on top of his previous indefinite ban) from editing articles on Freemasonry. Following every block or ban, Lightbringer has used sockpuppets to attempt to fraudulently claim consensus suppporting his earlier edits, or to re-insert the same material. His modus operandi, his POV, the material he edits, and the summaries he uses means it is often easy to recognise him.
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[edit] Modus operandi
Lightbringer's main attribute is his fixed, non-negotiable belief that "Freemasonry is Satanism" and his entire existance onwiki has been dedicated to adding that in various forms into all even tangentally related articles.
More specific or unique and noteworthy behaviors include:
- A firm belief that anyone who disagrees with his view must be a Mason, and he makes this claim in edit summaries in articles and on talk pages of administrators.
- Referring to Masons or suspected Masons (See above) as "gentlemen".
- Frequent demands that editors who identify as Masons must be banned from editing any articles related to Freemasonry. ([1], [2], and more)
- Misuse of edit summaries: When he uses them at all, they are usually misleading or malicious attacks ([3], [4])
- Numerous rapid edits to articles he's in the process of adding his material to. This may be to fill up the edit history with multiple edits, obfuscating what his actual changes are, or simply because he has a hard time spotting typos.
- Claims that other editors (whom he will often claim are Masons, see above) communicate and presumably conspire against him via "backchannel": ([5], [6], and others)
- Claims (In his edit summaries, see above) that removal of his edits are vandalism: ([9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], and many more)
- Rudeness to and personal attacks against other users who have reverted his vandalism or attempted to discuss his edits with him.
- Particular attention paid to refuting cited material regarding Freemasonry and the Holocaust - in short, either the claimed figures are wrong or the entire situation is wrong, but has no proof. Most recent attempt claimed a book was not encyclopedic because it did not have footnotes.([16],[17], [18], [19], [20], and many more)
[edit] Means of identification
- Be wary of any user whose initial and vast majority of edits are repeated reversions or deletions on Freemasonry or a related article (see Category:Freemasonry). Note that this is NOT conclusive proof that the user is Lightbringer (but it's usually a good indicator).
- An article or section about "Masonic Secrets" is a dead giveaway that the contributor is a Lightbringer sock. As a note, the section was not accepted because neither the uploaded pictures nor the associated material were sourced properly. Every time LB was asked to source, he gave a different answer. The relevant material is buried in an archive that no new user would likely check. Example diffs are: [21], [22], and [23]
- Using Freemasonry Watch, an anti-Masonic conspiracy site which is in no way a legitimate source, as a source or external link. FMW is, at the time of writing, listed as #2 on Top Conspiracy Sites. Following repeated invasions of this link, it was blacklisted WMF wide on meta.
- Repeated attempts to remove references to Freemasons being victims during the Holocaust, or claiming that Masons colluded with Hitler (via historical transposition, namely that because the Masons sent a congratulatory note to Hitler on his election in 1933, Masons were complicit with Hitler's actions taken years afterwards).
- Lightbringer has gone through several distinct phases regarding usernames:
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- Originally, he chose names particularly antagonistic to Freemasonry, such as User:Freemasonry is permanently condemned, User:The Brotherhood (referring to the anti-Masonic book by Stephen Knight) and the immediately obvious User:Why are Masons afraid of these links?. Likely because these are immediately obvious he no longer uses them too often.
- Names that are at the very least Christian, and generally are particularly Catholic such as User:Sunday Service, User:40 Days of Lent and User:Humanun Genus. This seems to be his current practice, although to find out what the connection is sometimes takes a little work.
- Names that falsely portray him as a Mason, such as User:PM GL PA (Which he claimed stood for "Past Master of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania", a designation which does not exist), or otherwise tie into Masonry in a positive light such as User:Anderson12, referring to James Anderson and his "The Constitutions of the Free-Masons". He seems to have discarded this practice.
- Occasionally in the past, and now as a standard practice, Lightbringer has created accounts with names that do not fall into the above categories as attempt to deceive others into believing he is a good faith editor (see, for example, Anna2005 and Vitamin a).
- He has tried at least once to create a 'sock farm', and may do so again.
| Vandalism |
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| Dealing with vandalism |
| Resources & assistance |
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Counter-vandalism tools |
| Further information |
| Blocking IP addresses ISP contact information Don't provoke vandals |
[edit] Sockpuppets
At the time of writing there are over 80 accounts known or suspected to be sockpuppets of Lightbringer. See Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of Lightbringer and Category:Wikipedia sockpuppets of Lightbringer for all tagged accounts and IPs.
Also see Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Lightbringer for the discovery of many of his socks. Request number 31 was filed February 27, 2007.
[edit] Other notes
- It is worth noting that due to the narrow field of articles Lightbringer vandalises, his vandalism and reversions are sometimes mistaken for a legitimate content dispute by those administrators who have no prior experience with him.
