Wikinger
Original name(s)User:Wikinger, User:CBMIBM
Wikilifespan2007–present
ISPNeostrada Plus, Poland
Known IPs83.16.0.0/13, 79.184.0.0/13; 2A00:F41:2800::/40; and others; many open proxies
Physical locationPoland
InstructionsBlock sock IPs on sight; always check if they are open proxies (they usually are unless they are his Polish home ISP); semiprotect any page he touches to prevent follow-up disruption. Confirmed socks should be reported to m:SRG or #wikimedia-stewards connect for global locking.
StatusActive

Basic information

Wikinger (talk · contribs · block log · arb · rfcu · ssp · SPI confirmed suspected)
Comprehensive edits analysis

Persistent spreading of misinformation about Greek alphabet topics across multiple language Wikipedias. Persistent sockpuppetry, including good-hand/bad-hand schemes, edit-warring against his own socks; verbal abuse, fake death threats and outing attacks against administrators, joe jobs and impersonation of other vandals, use of open proxies. Wikinger's account was globally locked on 24 March 2015 due to cross-wiki abuse.

He is banned by the Wikimedia Foundation and may not edit any Wikimedia project. All accounts/IPs should be globally locked/blocked on sight.

Targeted areas, pages, themes

Persistent obsessive tinkering with pages relating to the Greek alphabet and its minor additional characters (Greek alphabet, Template:Greek alphabet sidebar, Ϝ, Ϛ, Ͱ, Ϙ, Ϻ, Ϡ, Ϸ), on en-wiki and multiple other projects. All Wikipedias that have equivalents of the above articles have been affected.

Habitual behavior

  • Abusive behaviour
    • persistent edit-warring through dynamic IPs, usually his own Polish IPs and open proxies in rapid sequence
    • sock tricks: e.g. making his desired change through one IP, then reverting it back or adding vandalism through another strawman IP, hoping that an established user will revert back to his first edit
    • creates impersonation accounts named after unrelated established users (e.g. User:Blablaaa1, User:ΚεκρωΨ, User:Ϛτυχ, User:Stvx, [1], User:Njgos)
    • uses impersonator accounts of unrelated users and then reveals them to be his socks, trying to fool administrators to block the original impersonation victim as his sock too (known victims of these tactics: User:Aminullah, User:Marco9673)
    • mimicks other banned or blocked users with sock accounts or IPs pretending to be theirs [2]
    • creates strawman sockpuppets and revert-wars against them or raises extensive complaints against them with administrators. Abuses his own socks or lets them adopt strawman positions in order to "prove" they can't be him. (e.g. here)
    • attacks other users with verbal insults, attempted outing attacks, and fake death threats (mostly directed against FPaS)
    • several abusive alter ego personalities: "Wikinger"/"Penguin Eater" using nazi-themed and sexual abuse, "Aminullah" pretending to be a fundamentalist Islamist or Chechen separatist making terrorist death threats
    • Messing with other editors' postings on talk pages: falsifying, aping or mimicking other editors' edits
    • Tinkering with the block and sockpuppet tags on the user and talk pages of his own abandoned socks
    • On the German Wikipedia, Wikinger called others “dog”.
  • Imitates behavior of other LTAs:
  • Content edits: persistently pushes a number of idiosyncratic notions about obscure Greek characters, based on an idée fixe of achieving maximum systematicity and uniformity, with complete disregard to factual correctness. Examples:
    • insists on the (ahistorical and nonsensical) made-up spelling of "Ͳαμπι" for "σαμπι"
    • insists that Ͱ, Ϻ, Ϸ had numerical values
    • insists that Ϸ had a letter name and phonetic value in Greek
    • insists that "Greek Yot" was a letter of the Greek alphabet
    • insists that "Heta" has a name and sound value in Modern Greek
    • insists that "Sampi", "Stigma" or "Disigma" are ancient Greek letter names
    • tries to unify naming and presentation schemes for Greek characters across all Wikipedias, based on mistaken notions of analogy between them, often using one Wikipedia as an alleged source for justifying his edits on another (e.g. [3])
    • creates articles about these characters in languages he doesn't know, by blindly copy-pasting text from other articles without regard to factual correctness (e.g. [4])

Cases

Other notes

  • All Greek alphabet pages on enwiki are currently semiprotected indefinitely because of him. Disruption on other wikis continues.

Confirmed and suspected accounts

Blocks, bans and protections on other projects

  • commons: [8] (indef block of main account, after several blocks of socks)
  • de-wiki: [9], [10]
  • ja-wiki: [11] (local long-term abuse case page: ja:LTA:YOT)
  • pl-wiki: [12]
  • no-wiki: [13]
  • sw-wiki: [14]
  • el-wiki: [15][16] (permanent protections), [17] (one-year block of recent sock)
  • zh-wiki: [18] (local long-term abuse case page: zh:WP:WIKINGER)