Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Andrew5

Targeted areas, pages, themes

Notable, post-2010 tropical cyclones, winter storms that occurred in the 2020s, recent tornado outbreaks, sports-related articles, (especially baseball and ongoing seasons for MLB teams), and U.S. politics (especially U.S. elections) are frequent targets for this sockmaster. He may engage in protection-related disruption of Israeli-Palestinian topic areas as well. Outside of the English Wikipedia, he targets talk pages of editors who report his sockpuppetry, and noticeboards of the sites which Andrew5 attacks them on.

Habitual behavior

• Seemingly legitimate edits which usually include minor details about weather events, often ones that affect the Northeastern United States, such as daily rainfall records within cities, road closures of roadways in certain regions, and closures of parks which may take place during storms. Some of these edits may be kept as minor improvements, but most are trivial and don't need to be included.
• Inclusion of controversial details and starting conflicts on such details. (example)
• Resubmitting declined drafts and asserting that the editors who declined the draft were doing so in a way that was invalid. (example)
• Including sources for damage totals that aren't from NOAA and starting numerous conflicts/discussions regarding the source, then dubiously attempting to justify his inclusion. (example)
• Engages in revert-warring across multiple different accounts and IPs when his edits are removed. He does so in an attempt to keep his edits in articles, citing policies such as the three-revert rule to prevent editors from reverting.
  • It is suggested that when accounts revert edits, they should be reported to administrators or stewards for blocking/locking. Wait until they are blocked, and then revert their edits. This page, Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Andrew5, may also be linked in edit summaries to help explain why reversions are taking place. This essay is helpful to remember when reverting sockpuppets of his, and provides multiple avenues for reporting socks and requesting revision-deletion on the English Wikipedia.
• In addition to above, when being reverted, he may attempt to justify the edits made by his other sockpuppets, sometimes including personal attacks or threats within edit summaries (which may be revdelled, if necessary).
• He may make sleeper accounts to gain auto-confirmed status, making a number of "good" edits to weather or sports-related articles before engaging in vandalism on semi-protected pages. (Examples: CrossBayFan (also see meta-wiki contribs), 89.41a, StormsFan)
  • Usernames of sleeper accounts typically reference being a fan of Taylor Swift, are variations of previous sock names, are in CamelCase with the suffix "-Fan" and often, but not always, include multiple numbers at the end, or are a combination of these frequent username patterns.
• Posting unblock requests that focus on the nature of the IP's (saying it's a school or train station) and emphasizing how many people are affected.
• Requesting pre-emptive protection on articles under contentious topics (usually Israel-Palestine based on an ArbCom ruling) where no disruption or disputes have recently occurred. He may vandalize such articles (as well as relevant discussion pages) in order to get them protected. (example of protection request, example of vandalism)
• Taunts admins when pages are not protected. (example)
• He targets people who report/block his sockpuppets or revert his edits by harassing them cross-wiki, spamming talk pages with personal attacks and threats, which, again, may be revdelled if necessary. If you personally feel threatened, feel free to email emergencywikimedia.org or cawikimedia.org with information regarding the threat.

• Talk page harassment and "warnings" are also expected from this user in the instance of concluded deletion reviews (example 1), (example 2)
• This also includes falsely accusing other editors of being Andrew5 sockpuppets (example).

• He accuses other editors of paying administrators to block his sockpuppets. (example)
• Reports may be made on cross-wiki administrator noticeboards to attack the editors who report his sockpuppets or revert his edits, such as this discussion on the English Wikipedia, or this discussion on Wikimedia Commons.
• He may register usernames which impersonate, attack, or harass users as well.
  • Impersonation may come in the form of creating accounts that seem visibly similar to the impersonee including WėatherWritor impersonating WeatherWriter, United States Stan impersonating United States Man, and multiple accounts named CheeseEric impersonating ChessEric
  • Some accounts pretend to be alternate accounts of editors including Quxyz Mobile and Quxyz Alternate, both impersonating Quxyz
  • Usernames registered to attack or harass editors should be privately reported to stewards for locking and/or hiding, which can be done by following the instructions here.
• He habitually seems to know about SPIs and are known to randomly comment related to the SPI, even if the reporter has not interacted with the account being reported.

• Knowledge of other on-wiki procedures is expected, and a new user who demonstrates this knowledge should be suspected. (example)
• New/temporary accounts editing this page are also likely A5 sockpuppets.

• Posting {{block}} (example) and {{nothereblock}} (example), among other block templates (example), on the talk pages of users who revert or report his sockpuppets.
• He often makes comments on talk pages of blocked users, encouraging them to take part in sockpuppetry. (example, cross-wiki example)