Wikipedia:Long_term

Long term abuse is a page intended to hold information describing editors or IPs who should be known by as many users as possible to aid in detecting and defeating their policy violations. This page has been confused with several other pages, so please check the "Explanation" section if this is your first time here.

Explanation

This page should contain only properly categorized, unique entries on specific vandals with enough relevant and correct information to allow other people to identify them and their tracks. To keep this page functioning smoothly, please:

Vandalism
Dealing with vandalism
Obvious vandalism Long term abuse Open proxies IP Abuse Reports
Resources & assistance
Counter-vandalism tools Cleaning up vandalism Counter-vandalism unit IP WHOIS tools
Further information
Blocking IP addresses Vandalism studies ISP contact information Do not provoke vandals v • d • e

Criteria for addition

Users listed should have a marked past of policy violations well before and after their final, indefinite, block. User accounts that are listed as vandals but only have minor blocks, or "major vandals"/"sockpuppets" that aren't blocked indefinitely, will likely be removed. The relevant logs should back up your assertions, not contradict them.

Note that shared IP addresses (e.g. Schools, libraries, prisons, legislatures, etc.) engaging in egregious vandalisms should be reported on this page as they specialize in dealing with such IPs.

Criteria for removal

Adding to this page

Necessary information in an entry

In either report, you don't need to list more than five socks/examples, barring something extremely unusual. If there are more than that many sockpuppets, consider creating a category and tagging their userpages with sockpuppet tags.

If you aren't sure that your entry is correct, it is OK to request formatting help in then entry. If people have questions when they fix the format, they may ask you for more details.

Archives

Entries

Subpages

These pages contain information on more serious or unusual cases which merit a fixed location of reference. Before creating a new subpage, please read the guidelines. Frequently people jump directly to creating a subpage instead of listing a vandal on this page which often results in unnecessary pages which serve little purpose and end up getting deleted.

Guidelines for creating subpages:

Some questions to ask of the new subpage and its subject:

Is the vandal a "long term" vandal? Remember the pages are subpages of LTA and have to fulfill the same criteria as entries on LTA.
Does the vandal deserve a more permanent information location? Why can't they be listed on LTA like any other? There has to be a definite reason (or number of reasons) for giving them a subpage beyond "the LTA page section is too long" (e.g. engages in a very serious form of vandalism; appears to suffer from a mental disorder).
Is their vandalism simple and easy to detect? If so, then there probably isn't much need to create a page describing it, as users will be able to pick up on and deal with it as typical vandalism without requiring any insight into previous vandalism and/or whether or not a particular person is responsible for it. Pages on vandals which provide little help beyond what could easily be discovered by simply monitoring recent changes serve little purpose. As above, prolixity doesn't by itself warrant a subpage.
Is the increased effort worth it? Keep in mind that subpages must be maintained and kept up to date, if no new developments are likely to occur and there is no great need to inform everyone about them, a subpage would likely grow extremely stale very quickly.

Some example of "legit" subpages and why:

Primetime - This vandal regularly engages in wanton copyright infringement that could place the Wikimedia Foundation in serious legal danger.
DavidYork71, Ericsaindon2 and Lightbringer These vandals are obsessed with inserting their POV into articles, and make no effort whatsoever to discuss their edits. To someone who doesn't know about them, they may appear to be legitimate participants in a content dispute rather than banned users. Due to this, unneeded and (proven) useless dispute resolution may be pursued rather than simply blocking their socks, wasting people's time.

Serial SPAMmers

Consider also reporting these spammers to the meta:Spam blacklist. If the addition is successful, you may wish to immediately archive or remove the section here.

Universe Today and sockpuppet-SPAMmers

AlloExpat

SexInRussia spammer

Car and Ringtone Spammer

User keeps adding external links to his car website or ringtone/phone website, which only contains Wikipedia information (directly copied with no credit given to Wikimedia) and sponsored adverts. The links appear on many 'car' pages such as those of Aston Martin, Mercedes Benz, Land Rover etc (in the external links section). Spamming has continued to this day, despite a 24 hour ban by user RadioKirk. 50+ articles have had links added, some have now been removed be me and others, but he is persistent...

Bulldog Spammer

Datasheet serial spammer

Not surprizingly this spammer hits the Datasheet page (history) and others related to electronics. The original URL (datasheet4u.com) was banned on Meta, but recently mirrors have sprung up, requiring the page to be kept under nearly constant protection.

"We are all looking fsorward to a great sseason"

SPUSA spammer

Anonymous IPs with similar IP numbers have persistently added links to the Socialist Party USA website and the wikipedia page on the organisation. These links number in the hundreds to any article on a social issue, such as black power, and re-adds the links repeatedly after they've been reverted by other editors. They are usually in the "see also" and "external links section, but sometimes, the same editor removes content critical of the SPUSA, or adds links in the body of the article (e.g. this diff, this diff and this diff). Occasionally these links may be considered legitimate, but the vast majority are things like "the SPUSA cares about this issue too" (e.g. this diff). It's hard to tell if they are honestly trying to promote the group or turn people against it! The editor/s have used the the following IP addresses, among others:

The Terry Ananny Spammer (User:Ananny)

Persistent spammer and sock-puppeteer since at least December 2006[2]- ongoing[3] as of 13 November 2008. Uses multiple IPs originating in the Toronto area to add the name of Terry M. Ananny, a non notable artist, to List of Canadian artists, List of Canadian painters, Naive art, and other pages. Variations include "paintings reproduced on UNICEF cards", the creation of useless interwiki links, an external link to the artist's website, and the addition of {{unreferenced}} tags to those same pages.

Also active on the Simple English Wikipedia[7], the French Wikipedia [8], the Italian Wikipedia [9], and Wikiversity[10].