Wikipedia:Long term abuse/JB196

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JB196
Original name(s): JB196
Wikilifespan: April 17th, 2006 - present
ISP: Optimum Online
Known IPs: 67.86.149.41, 207.195.254.172
Known hostmasks:
Physical location: Unknown
Severity: Moderate
Requests for comment: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/BooyakaDell
Requests for arbitration:
Instructions: Revert, speedy new AfD's and block on sight. Uses a high number of open proxies; be prepared to seek admin help on blocking proxies.

JB196 is the Wikipedia alias of a professional wrestling fan, who prior to being banned had used Wikipedia to hype up excitement for his unpublished (and likely to never be published) book on Xtreme Pro Wrestling, Bleeding Was Only Half The Job. JB196 was known for being disruptive by entering into edit wars over what he saw as stealing of move lists he wrote for the website obsessedwithwrestling.com; however, it was illustrated numerous times that the information was just his recitation of other information that he didn't own, and that some of the move lists he said were stolen did not remotely match the move lists on obsessedwithwrestling. JB196 was commonly known for spamming large amounts of tags, usually related to notability, on articles the subject of which he wished to delete or had a personal grudge against. The cumulative size of the tags usually resulted in the entire screen being covered in templates before the article was even visible (for an example see here). When these would be removed, due to the excessiveness of their usage, he would revert the users who removed them and then attempt to exploit loopholes in Wikipedia policy in an attempt to keep them. He was also known to use wikilawyering tactics in AfD's to ignore arguments from other people who saw his behaviour as being detrimental to Wikipedia, such as when people criticised him for removing every line from an article if it was not 100% sourced.

[edit] Banning and sockpuppetry

JB196 was originally indefinitely blocked in September of 2006 for incidents that derived from the Vic Grimes article where he violated WP:OWN by listing himself as the author of the article in the article. When this was removed he attempted to remove all the information he had added to the article stating that he owned his contributions to the article leading to an edit war. The indefblock was converted to a community ban later after he continued to argue with administrators citing numerous policies as to why his reverts were correct as well as violating WP:NPA, WP:TROLL, WP:POINT among his previous escapades. He attempted to disrupt Wikipedia articles several times through anonymous AOL IP sockpuppets afterwards, and pages were semi protected to get around his efforts.

On November 19th, 2006, BooyakaDell started editing articles, with many similarities to JB196, including a near total focus on professional wrestling, causing havoc on many articles, as he would disruptively edit against wrestlers and organizations outside of the United States, removing information if it was not 100% sourced, and frequently targeting the resulting stubs for Deletion or Speedy Deletion. After a mediation failed, a request for comment was filed during which a checkuser confirmed that BooyakaDell was a WP:SOCK of JB196, and received an indefinite block, as did his hidden account, User:BertoBowdoin, and the IP's he was using at the time to anonymously edit were blocked for a year and six months, respectively.

On 27 January, 2007, another checkuser was carried out on accounts that were believed to be sockpuppets of JB196, having been created and immediately nominating wrestling related articles for deletion based on notability. The resulting checkuser uncovered over sixty sockpuppet accounts that had been used in the last month alone.

In the middle of February, a third checkuser found additional sockpuppets that had escaped notice, bringing the total number of sockpuppets to over a hundred, and the underlying IP was blocked as a proxy.

In April, he switched tactics after the main site who had previously hosted his columns removed them after constant linkspamming on Wikipedia landed them on the Wikipedia spam blacklist, spamming across various foreign-language Wikipedias for various other (unrelated) wrestling websites, in an attempt to Joe Job them into being blacklisted as well.

From March to November 2007, he used a meatpuppet, Burntsauce (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log), to edit on his behalf. Burntsauce was exposed as a JB196 meatpuppet during an Arbitration case, and was banned on November 8, 2007.

[edit] Modus Operandi

Most of JB196's sockpuppet accounts usually follow one, if not all, of the following:

  • Nominating Professional wrestling related articles for deletion, or nominating for speedy deletion as their early edits. Sometimes these socks will remove information that would make the article keepable and then nominate the article for deletion.
  • Almost always tagging articles with notability tags, or nominating/prodding articles based on notability.
  • Links to the Obsessed with Wrestling website citing JB as the author. Previously some of the sock accounts would link to articles written by JB on the Declaration of Independents professional wrestling website on wrestling pages but the website has since been blacklisted. The articles are also hosted on a Geocities site (xpw5yearslater), which is also blacklisted.
  • Deleting references in wrestling articles from rival websites such as Wrestling Clothesline or Death Valley Driver Video Review.
  • Usually any user who removes information posted will be reverted with the text RV VANDALISM, irrelevent of the justification for the removal.
  • After his banning, he has switched to using open proxies to attempt to get past his various bans. Make sure to list accounts at IP checkuser so open proxies can be identified and blocked.
  • Creating sock accounts that exist solely to spam links to rival wrestling websites or wrestling promotion websites he doesn't like, including gerweck.net and tnawrestling.com, in an attempt to joe job them onto the Wikipedia blacklist.
  • Showing particular interest in wrestlers or articles related to Xtreme Pro Wrestling, possibly creating articles on the wrestlers as their first edits.
  • Uses open proxies to comment on BLP-Related users talk pages, informing people who stub information on BLP articles that their edits have been reverted.

[edit] Sockpuppets

See Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of JB196 and Category:Wikipedia sockpuppets of JB196 for all tagged accounts and IPs.