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Requests for comment/Global ban for Tobias Conradi

< Requests for comment

The following request for comments is closed. The request for comment has been resolved by enacting a global ban.

Statement

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Statement by GZWDer

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Tobias Conradi (talk • contribs • block • xwiki-contribs • xwiki-date (alt) • CA • gblock • ST • lwcheckuser) (socks) This is a request to ban Tobias Conradi globally. This user meets three general criteria of global ban:

  • Cross-wiki abuse: This user has recurrently disrupted English Wikipedia and Wikidata. He also often disrupts German Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.
  • Carefully informed: The first block of him in Wikidata (as Tamawashi) and in Commons (as FreightXPress) allowed him to appeal. However his talk page accesses were later revoked because of abusing talk pages and harassing.
  • Banned: This user and his socks are currently blocked in five wikis, which are English Wikipedia, German Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata and MediaWiki.org. The English Wikipedia block is a community ban and blocks in Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata are endorsed by many administrators and other users.

The main reason of the global ban request is to prevent him from disrupting Wikimedia projects. This user has made a huge mess which is not easy to find before he is blocked. For example, Tamawashi has made more than 520k edits before it's blocked in Wikidata, and FreightXPress has made more than 19k edits before it's blocked in Commons. Recently this user's sock EfrinEfrin make 1000+ edits in eowiki, and may cause larger disruption if he uses new accounts to disrupt it. It could be difficult to clean up the huge mess if this user disrupt a new wiki, and it's difficult to stop his disruption without a global CheckUser. Also it's not easy to be managed by local community as he usually does many edit which looks good at the beginning.

This user disguises himself by changing his edit pattern, and using different languages (example of disguising himself as a native Swedish speaker).

As said above, this user also threaten other contributors. This user also forum shops by creating new RfCs.

Neither he nor his recent sock is locked or blocked in Meta Wiki, So this user can participate the discussion freely. --GZWDer (talk) 09:38, 28 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Anonymous User via IP 91.9.96.0/19

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Side effects of the treatment of User:Tobias Conradi

  • 2015-10-04 19:23 Bbb23 (talk | contribs) blocked 91.9.96.0/19 (talk) with an expiry time of 3 months (account creation blocked) ({{CheckUser block}}) [1]
  • 2015-10-07 18:50 Jasper Deng (talk | contribs) blocked 91.9.96.0/19 (talk) with an expiry time of 6 months (anonymous users only, account creation disabled) (Abusing multiple accounts) [2]

The IP range belongs to a larger German internet access provider and several users will be prevented from editing. Additionally, since Wikidata has a central position, user may e.g. edit in German Wikipedia, but not be able to adjust related data in Wikidata.

2003 - first edits

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The initial edits by the Tobias Conradi account group were related to geography:

  • 2003-05-06 04:24 IP 217.235.5.222 adds ISO 3166-2 codes to country subdivision articles [3]
  • 2003-05-06 06:14 User:Tim Starling deletes the ones for Australia [4]
  • 2003-05 IP creates stubs for the states of Mexico
  • 2003-05-06 06:53 User:Tim Starling proposes to delete the stubs for the states of Mexico [5]
  • 2003-05-06 15:08 oldest edit for the account Tobias Conradi that is visible as of 2015-09-14 [6]

As of 2015-10-08 the articles for the states of Mexico exist. Additionally these articles and the articles about the first-level administrative territorial entities of Australia contain ISO 3166-2 codes - as added by Tobias Conradi. Furthermore the ISO 3166-2 set pages exist in several Wikipedias, e.g. ISO 3166-2:AU (d:Q21047) in 29 Wikipedias.

2005 - happy to not become an admin

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The decision to decline the invitation to become an admin may have changed a lot of things in the future of this users and of several other users.

  • 2005-06-26 User:Rick Block writes on User_talk:Tobias Conradi "I made a list of users who've been around long enough to have made lots of edits but aren't admins." and invites TC to state whether he is interested in becoming an admin [7]
  • 2005-07-01 User:Tobias Conradi declines "happy to remain as is for time being. thanks for creating this list and pointing me here :-)" [8]

2006 - top 20 most active non-admin, top 100 most active overall user, first abusive blocks by admins

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User:Tobias Conradi ranks high in edit counts. A cascade of out-of-policy blocks unfolds in 2006 [9]:

  • 2006-02-24 1st block (no evidence provided): User:23skidoo blocked User:Tobias Conradi for violation of 3RR - but never provided evidence that the user knew about the policy, nor that he even violated 3RR.
  • 2006-02-26 User:Tobias Conradi one of 20 editors that are not admins and have more than 20K edits [10]
  • 2006-04-20 2nd block (no evidence provided): User:TexasAndroid blocked User:Tobias Conradi with an expiry time of 24 hours (WP:CIVIL violations. Warned, but continued the same behaviour. See user's talk page.)
  • 2006-06-29 3rd block (anyone finds the "vandalsim to people's user pages"?): User:Pschemp blocked Tobias Conradi "with an expiry time of 24 hours (vandalsim to people's user pages)"
  • 2006-06-30 12:36 User:Jimfbleck out-of-policy deleted "Eisenkappl", without notifying the creator [11]
  • 2006-06-30 19:03 User:Tobias Conradi re-creates a stub under that name [12]
  • 2006-06-30 19:07 User:Tobias Conradi moved Eisenkappl to Bad Eisenkappel [13]
  • 2006-06-30 4th block User:InShaneee blocked Tobias Conradi with an expiry time of 48 hours "(vandalism, personal attacks)"
  • 2006-06-30 19:32 User:InShaneee out-of-policy deletes page Bad Eisenkappel
  • 2006-06-30 20:43 User:InShaneee claims 'Tobias was actually blocked for disruption (he moved a town page to "Bad (town)"), and for placing "this user is a deletionist" on other people's userpages.' [14]

As of 2015 the article exists at "en:Bad Eisenkappel". Other abusive blocks that followed can be seen in the block log. Later on the user is denied rights because of "block logs":

  • 2006-09-16 User:Winhunter denies access to AutoWikiBrowser for User:Tobias Conradi "Tobias Conradi NOT approved because of block logs" [15]

The user continues to edit:

  • 2006-09-23 User:Tobias Conradi among the top 100 editors by edit count [16]

2007 - admin right abuses continue, user collects evidences, ArbCom disallows that

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Admins continue to abuse admin rights and User:Tobias Conradi collects diffs to document the abuses.

Starting 2007-07-20 User:Tobias Conradi is blocked from editing:

  • 2007-07-20 User:Akradecki blocked Tobias Conradi with an expiry time of 48 hours (account creation blocked) (violation of probation)
  • 2007-07-20 User:Isotope23 blocked Tobias Conradi with an expiry time of 1 week (account creation blocked) (continued incivility in response to block)
  • 2007-07-23 User:Akradecki blocked Tobias Conradi with an expiry time of 1 month (account creation blocked, email disabled) (Attempting to harass other users: extended plus added email block after extremely abusive email sent to admin)
  • 2007-07-24 during time of the block some editors gathered at a now defunct Community Sanction Notice Board and decided to ban/ indefinitely block the user [18]
  • 2007-07-28 User:Chairboy blocked Tobias Conradi with an expiry time of indefinite (account creation blocked, email disabled) (Per Community ban decision at

No contribution by User:Tobias Conradi to the English Wikipedia article name space anymore.

2009 - last edit of User:Tobias Conradi

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  • 2009-07-09 last edit by User:Tobias Conradi that as of 2015-09-14 is visible [19]

2015 - Tobias Conradi account group has 650 000+ edits, admins vandalize

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As of 2015-10-08 the are:

  1. a group of accounts and IP editors that support the work that Tobias Conradi started (some admins think they have 650 000+ edits, but there are probably many more) The achievements of the accounts are massive.
  2. several admins that are
    • vandalizing Wikimedia projects
    • blocking IP ranges and by doing so, preventing new users from contributing
    • blocking unrelated third-party accounts

Every time an admin thinks, "this accounts is run by Tobias Conradi" and blocks the account, and users appear to revert the edits and delete articles, not due to bad content, but based on en:WP:G5, they are actually vandalizing Wikimedia projects.

One example for a vandalizing admin is User:The Blade of the Northern Lights:

  1. Moving of articles about municipalities of Mexico, just picking one example out of hundreds that the user moved: From "Huehuetla Municipality, Hidalgo" to ambiguous "Huehuetla, Hidalgo"[20]. Eldizzino moved "Huehuetla" to "Huehuetla Municipality, Hidalgo" [21]. This seems to have been the most correct. Due to a move by User:Sphilbrick [22] the article now resides at the highly ambiguous title "Huehuetla". And due to edits by User:Reinheitsgebot the page is linked in Wikidata and tagged there as "disambiguation page". But it is not a disambiguation page, it is an article page. So, if the user moves pages in English Wikipedia, why don't he fix Wikidata? It seems Eldizzino did a lot of disambiguation work, and the user destroyed all this and even made the situation worse than it was before. Purpose?
  2. out of 559 edits by that user, that are visible in Wikidata, 557 [23] look like vandalism. Deleting pages about subdistricts of East Timor, moving disambiguated articles about municipalities of Mexico to ambiguous names, moving items against naming conventions that have been moved by admins shortly ago, e.g. "X (valley)" and "X valley" had been moved to "X Valley".
  3. vandalizing articles related to Hungary: ~160 times changing link from pointing to "Zala County" to instead pointing to "Zala", the latter is a disambiguation page [24]. So, this vandal created extra work for other users, which re-disambiguated the links to disambiguation pages that the vandalizing user did create [25] [26]

91.9.96.147 16:02, 9 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by IP 92.229.163.8

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Involved projects

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Indefinite blocks exist for

  • English Wikipedia - "community ban"
  • Mediawiki - imposed single handed by one admin
  • German Wikipedia - no idea, several blocked
  • Commons - single handed by one admin, only few edits
  • Wikidata - no connection to User:Tobias Conradi, the user never edited there

Main affected seems to be English Wikipedia

Type of edits

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The edits are heavily related to naming of geographic objects. Bold edits, but no vandalism. Most edits seem to be policy based.

Conclusion

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English-language naming issues for geographic objects affect English Wikipedia, Commons and Wikidata - if one wants to have consistency. That is a content issue.

Global ban

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A global ban should be thoroughly justified and decision be based on policies. "Vote" seems to be not enough.

Please bring more evidence.

Statement by 91.9.105.115

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It is weird that users claim disruption but when asked for evidence they bring up nothing. 91.9.105.115 00:35, 21 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Support

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  1. This user used every possible way for sabotage good faith users, such as launching concurrent intiative of mine without even notifying me and was a provocative pain in the ass for months or more, reappearing with other accounts pretending to be someone else and deliberately expanding controversies ... I can only support this ban. TomT0m (talk) 10:28, 28 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Per above. Multichill (talk) 20:36, 28 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    Does User:Multichill dare to present why "This user used every possible way for sabotage good faith users" should be applicable in a ban of accounts of the Tobias Conradi account group? 91.9.105.115 12:59, 20 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  3. As per request. --Kudpung (talk) 21:50, 28 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  4. For a very demonstrative recent example of the damage he can do, see en:Special:Log/move/Eldizzino, which took me (with a little help from a couple other editors) 4 days to undo at 1 1/2 hour per day. Although it's a shame, since he's a bright guy, the disruption has wasted literally thousands of editor hours. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 23:52, 28 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    1. User:The Blade of the Northern Lights - Just picking one example out of hundreds: Why did you move "Huehuetla Municipality, Hidalgo" to ambiguous "Huehuetla, Hidalgo"[27]? Eldizzino moved "Huehuetla" to "Huehuetla Municipality, Hidalgo" [28]. This seems to have been the most correct. Due to a move by User:Sphilbrick [29] the article now resides at the highly ambiguous title "Huehuetla". And due to edits by User:Reinheitsgebot the page is linked in Wikidata and tagged there as "disambiguation page". But it is not a disambiguation page, it is an article page. So, if you move pages in Wikipedia English, why don't you fix Wikidata? It seems Eldizzino did a lot of disambiguation work, and you destroyed all this and even made the situation worse than it was before. Why? 91.9.118.222 19:00, 6 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    2. User:The Blade of the Northern Lights - maybe well intended, but out of 559 edits by you, that are visible in Wikidata, 557 [30] look like vandalism. Deleting pages about subdistricts of East Timor, moving disambiguated articles about municipalities of Mexico to ambiguous names, moving items against naming conventions that have been moved by admins shortly ago, e.g. "X (valley)" and "X valley" had been moved to "X Valley". Why do you vandalize? 91.9.103.80 00:04, 7 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    3. User:The Blade of the Northern Lights vandalizing : ~160 times changing link from pointing to "Zala County" to instead pointing to "Zala", the latter is a disambiguation page [31] - then within 24h other users removed his vandal-linking [32]. 91.9.97.245 14:07, 7 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    Because Tobias is banned on the English Wikipedia. Nothing more needs to be said. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 16:34, 1 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Creates too much disruption on multiple projects and learns absolutely nothing.--Ymblanter (talk) 03:02, 29 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    What one person of the Tobias Conradi account group knew before [33], User:Ymblanter did learn later [34]? 91.9.118.222 19:07, 6 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    Sometimes assholes also make correct edits. But they still remain assholes.--Ymblanter (talk) 23:40, 6 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    It seems that the accounts of the Tobias Conradi account group are performing more than 99% correct edits. On the other hand one has
    1. User:The Blade of the Northern Lights vandalizing English Wikipedia [35]
    2. User:Ymblanter vandalizing Wikimedia Commons (moving items from specific category to less specific parent category [36])
    3. User:SpacemanSpiff vandalizing English Wikipedia (redirecting disambiguation page to one of the disambiguated items [37], delete page about regions of Argentina, removing valid item from disambiguation page and claiming existence of a municipality in Jalisco that is not found in Wikipedia [38], editing against WP:NATURAL and WP:MOS:DAB [39])
    the admins are the vandals. 91.9.103.80 01:16, 7 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    This comment perfectly demo0nstrates why TC and the socks should be banned from all WMF projects. This is their usual communication style, which goes forever, sucks a lot of time of users in good standing, and actually causes a lot of frustration. It could have been tolerated it TC had any useful contribution, but unfortunately they have none.--Ymblanter (talk) 02:50, 7 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    Pointing out that admins vandalize Wikimedia projects is a reason for banning the reporters from WMF projects? 91.9.97.245 14:10, 7 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    Ymblanter, I'm not defending the users actions here, but referring to them as assholes is far from appropriate in a discussion like this and doesn't do anything except unnecessarily provoke an already tense situation. There are better ways to say what you said, I recommend using one of them next time instead. Reguyla (talk) 14:40, 19 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Enough and more time of other editors is being wasted on this, so it's a support. —SpacemanSpiff 04:05, 29 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    User:SpacemanSpiff vandalized English Wikipedia, here are some occurrences including specific diffs: redirecting disambiguation page to one of the disambiguated items [40], delete page about regions of Argentina, removing valid item from disambiguation page and claiming existence of a municipality in Jalisco that is not found in Wikipedia [41], editing against WP:NATURAL and WP:MOS:DAB [42]. 91.9.97.245 14:15, 7 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  7. No hope for him. Max Semenik (talk) 19:26, 29 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    Which policy states, that an absence of hope for a contributor is a reason for banning that contributor. Why not ban those that lack the hope? 91.9.105.115 12:44, 20 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  8. After reviewing Requests for comment/Global ban for Tobias Conradi/socks I support this ban, also it might be possible for stewards to lock them all (de facto ban) right now without waiting for this RfC to reach consensus under reason of "Long Term Abuse"/LTA.--AldNonymousBicara? 04:48, 31 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    What did your review find? 91.9.118.222 19:08, 6 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  9. --Luke081515 10:57, 31 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Watching for his contributions (under his several accounts), nothing more to say... --Amitie 10g (talk) 02:44, 2 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    What accounts are "his"? What did you find when "watching for", did you also "watched at" the contributions? 91.9.97.245 14:17, 7 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  11. --Antigng (talk) 06:52, 4 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  12. Enough is enough. Muhraz (talk) 10:51, 5 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  13. John F. Lewis (talk) 16:00, 5 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  14. I watched the discussion on his Wikidata block a while ago, it was bizarre – he refused to accept that he did anything wrong, instead attacking other community members. Good riddance —Galaktos (talk) 16:25, 5 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    Maybe he did nothing wrong? You seem to have been happy with the edits of that account of the Tobias Conradi account group, your only concern was that they flooded RC [43]. Now, if the accounts would not be blocked, then there would be no need to create new accounts - and no flooding of RC. 91.9.118.222 19:13, 6 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    “Now, if the accounts would not be blocked, there would be no need to create new accounts” – this is a spectacular illustration of the problem with you (I assume that you’re Tobias Conradi). If you get blocked, you’re doing something wrong. Just creating another account and continuing to do the same wrong thing is a ban circumvention, which is verboten. That’s what got you banned on Wikidata, and since you clearly don’t get it (as demonstrated on the Wikidata ban discussion), that’s why we want to ban you globally.
    Regarding my six months old comment which you now present as evidence that I’m secretly in love with you – no. No. I was already very annoyed with RC being flooded, so I left that comment. After the “will slow down” response, I was happy, so I left a thankful comment, including a generic polite “thanks for your contributions” (which I didn’t actually look at very much – IIRC they were about locomotive classes or something, an area which I know nothing about). What actually happened was that the edits did not slow down, RC continued to be flooded, and so I wasn’t exactly sad when the account was blocked a while later. —Galaktos (talk) 19:44, 6 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    User:Galaktos, "If you get blocked, you’re doing something wrong." - If person X does something to person Y, then person Y did something wrong? The doctors and patients in Kunduz did something wrong - they were in the "wrong" place when USA bombed them? Or could it be the other way around: If Y creates a new account, then maybe X did something wrong. If doctors and patients are in a hospital it might be wrong to bomb the hospital? "I was already very annoyed with RC being flooded" - thanks to the admins that blocked former accounts of the Tobias Conradi account group. Autoconfirmed account, no flooding per your very own statement "Would it be possible to postpone your edits until you’re an autoconfirmed user and your edits are patrolled automatically? (Shouldn’t be more than a couple days.)". And why it the Wikidata UI that stupid in the first place? 91.9.103.80 00:46, 7 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  15. Per above. He keeps moving on to new projects after existing projects block him, so I see a use for a global ban.--Jasper Deng (talk) 18:29, 5 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    Since when is "moving to new projects" a reason for blocking? 91.9.97.245 14:19, 7 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  16. Absolutely disruptive, coming from an admin (Wikidata) who has dealt with this user first-hand. --AmaryllisGardener talk 04:33, 6 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    Of the 500 000+ edits in Wikidata, made by accounts of the Tobias Conradi account group, which does User:AmaryllisGardener regard as "absolutely disruptive"? 91.9.97.245 14:21, 7 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    Attention admins: This IP and others on this thread are Tamawashi (aka Tobias Conradi) editing logged out. Therefore these IPs are blocked on Wikidata. Please see [44]. Aldnonymous, could you deal with this? --AmaryllisGardener talk 23:55, 8 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    You better ask local Checkuser and Admin for that, I'm only Checkuser from Indonesian Wikipedia who happen to read the report.--AldNonymousBicara? 13:04, 12 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    The individual should be allowed to comment in their own defense here. If their account is not blocked here, they should be using that though as opposed to an IP. They definitely should not be using multiples in the same discussion though. I would ask the user to stick to one identity while commenting on this discussion. But this isn't Wikidata or the English Wikipedia so their block there, doesn't equate to a block here and even then, as I said above, they should be allowed to comment in their own defense. Even if that commentary isn't particularly helpful to their case. Reguyla (talk) 14:45, 19 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    @Reguyla: All but one should be blocked here then. --AmaryllisGardener talk 16:25, 21 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    @AmaryllisGardener: I do agree completely that they should stick to one account or IP. With that said, if they are blocked or keep getting blocked on the grounds that they are blocked, then I don't fault them for wanting to comment on their own behalf. Anyone who is a party to a ban, especially a WMF wide one like this, should be afforded the opportunity to comment on their own behalf, even if those comments do more to hurt them than help them as in this case. Reguyla (talk) 17:06, 21 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    Of the 500 000+ edits in Wikidata, made by accounts of the Tobias Conradi account group, which does User:AmaryllisGardener regard as "absolutely disruptive"? 91.9.105.115 12:55, 20 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  17. disruptive and agressive when his edits are discussed. --Hsarrazin (talk) 19:02, 7 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    Of the 650 000+ edits, made by accounts of the Tobias Conradi account group, which does User:Hsarrazin regard as "disruptive"? 91.9.105.115 12:52, 20 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  18. Clear evidence of cross-wiki disruption and none that they will stop any time soon (see the comments on this RfC if nothing else) Ajraddatz (talk) 06:45, 9 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    Does User:Ajraddatz dare to declare where one can find the alleged "Clear evidence of cross-wiki disruption"? 91.9.105.115 12:40, 20 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  19. x-wiki trolling. --Steinsplitter (talk) 09:41, 9 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    Does User:Steinsplitter dare to present why "x-wiki trolling." is relevant for a ban of accounts of the Tobias Conradi account group? 91.9.105.115 12:58, 20 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  20. Per above. --Ochilov (talk) 07:08, 10 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  21. Treating WMF-projects as a personal playground. Natuur12 (talk) 19:00, 19 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    Can User:Natuur12 provide evidence that any of the accounts of the Tobias Conradi account group were "Treating WMF-projects as a personal playground." more often than is the norm for the average user? 91.9.105.115 12:50, 20 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  22. Trolling and sockpuppetry are never acceptable. Jianhui67 talk★contribs 12:43, 20 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    Does User:Jianhui67 dare to declare why "Trolling and sockpuppetry are never acceptable." is relevant for banning long inactive User:Tobias Conradi? 91.9.105.115 12:47, 20 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  23. Sockpuppetry as exhibited in this thread ~~~~ — The preceding unsigned comment was added by StudiesWorld (talk) 23:34, 7 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose

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  1. Like User:Rschen7754 below, I don't believe LTAs are appropriate for long-term bans, but my level of disagreement is higher, so I'm opposing. When one perceives disruption, a desire to sweep it all under the carpet and take an easy way out is understandable, but it also diminishes us all as a community when it's acted upon. There must be better ways to deal with this kind of a situation.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 5, 2015; 16:58 (UTC)
    @Ezhiki: Do you mind elaborating on "it also diminishes us all as a community when it's acted upon"? Sweeping things under the carpet isn't a good analogy here either.--Jasper Deng (talk) 16:39, 18 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Opposing on the point that it won't be effectual and its a bad use of an RFC. The individual is banned on multiple projects and it hasn't worked. They change their editing pattern, use IP's, is assisted by other people, etc. So adding a WMF global ban won't matter. It will have the same effect as the current one against Russavia where it causes additional disruption, fans the flames and adds an unnecessary level of provocation to an already sensitive matter. If the edits are positive, and it appears many of them are, then let them stand on their own merits. If its vandalism revert it and if its something that can be prevented through an edit filter, then employ one. But creating an RFC for a global ban that won't be effectual is a pointless waste of time. Reguyla (talk) 14:35, 19 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    User:Reguyla, you wrote "The individual is banned on multiple projects and it hasn't worked." - On which projects is "the individual" banned? 91.9.105.115 00:41, 21 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    According to the submission, its way up above in the bullets of the original submission but includes the English Wikipedia, Commons and Wikidata among others. Reguyla (talk) 02:08, 21 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    User:Reguyla, I only see one ban, and even that only enacted by a small group of users on a now defunct "Communiy Sanction Noticeboard" - whilst the user was blocked. Some users simply didn't like some actions of "User:Tobias Conradi" and banned the account. On Commons one single user, namely Admin User:Ymblanter (the one that used the word "asshole" above) enacted a block, look into it. 91.9.120.193 06:59, 23 October 2015 (UTC)i[reply]
    Would you please stop lying. You lied enough in this thread, including a diff of my action which I reverted myself a minute later to illustrate my "vandalism". It is not difficult to check that on Commons users complained about your actions, you were blocked, and subsequent reincarnations were blocked for block evasion. I did not enforce anything. It is you who exhausted the patience of the community.--Ymblanter (talk) 01:43, 27 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral

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  1. I don't oppose this as there has clearly been disruption, but I don't think LTAs are what global bans are for, and I am concerned that the requirements (2+ community bans) have not been met. --Rschen7754 22:56, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    User:Rschen7754, you wrote "I don't oppose this as there has clearly been disruption". Disruption of what by which account? 91.9.105.115 00:42, 21 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Agree with above colleague. RfC's should not involve people, just things. Don't judge, lest... (Matthew 7:1-3)  Klaas `Z4␟` V: 14:37, 18 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

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  • What he do wrong? — The preceding unsigned comment was added by 166.170.50.156 (talk) 09:15, 29 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, that would be interesting to know.
    1. It seems the accounts made at least ~ 650 000 edits. The accounts seem to be enthusiastic about cleaning up errors in articles about linguistics, geography, software, and general content organization.
    2. Where are the "disruptive edits"? What edits had to be undone from a content point of view? Admins in English Wikipedia deleted several articles, e.g. in 2011 [45] (mainly Russia, India), in 2014 [46] (mainly Bulgaria). While several have been recreated, several others are still missing.
    3. What will Bulgarian, Mexican, Russian etc. people think, if they see that the Tobias Conradi account group creates articles about the geography of their countries, and admins delete them for some subjective reasons?
    4. What was the reason for the community ban? Are there edits of the main account that violated content policies? The community sanction notice board only lists some third party statements about the user.
    5. What is the master plan behind the edits? The "Tobias Conradi account group" only makes constructive edits and every time these get deleted or reverted, they can be used to demonstrate the stupidity of the Wikimedia admins? The "Tobias Conradi account group" fixes Wabern bei Bern as not located in Germany and an admin comes around and re-inserts the claim that Wabern bei Bern is located in Germany? [47]. Or revert and then notice it was useful and revert back [48].
    6. How many time did admins spend on this, instead of fighting vandals and improving content? 91.9.116.65 17:08, 5 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    I find it hilarious that both these comments come from IPs, but sure, I’ll bite.
    1. Not a question. Also, not “accounts”. “person”. That’s kinda the point behind sockpuppetry.
    2. Plenty of examples for disruptive edits can be found on this page if you bother looking for them. E. g. in Statement, Support#4, and Recording blocks/bans.
    3. Leading question, who said the deletions were for “subjective reasons”? “Bulgarian, Mexican, Russian etc. people” are presumably glad that the admins don’t let anyone write bullshit about their country – especially not someone who pretends to speak other languages with Google Translate (see Statement and Comments about his attempt at Swedish).
    4. The reasons for the community bans so far can of course be looked up on the respective user pages, see section Recording blocks/bans.
    5. How would we know what the “master plan” is? What kind of question is that? And the claim “only makes constructive edits” is ridiculous, see 2.
    6. “instead of fighting vandals” I actually laughed out loud. Thanks, that was amusing. —Galaktos (talk) 17:20, 5 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    1. There is no proof it is one person. That is why I used "accounts" and "Tobias Conradi account group". The first account is stale for years.
    2. In Support#4 there is a link to a move log. But the moves are in accordance with WP:NATURAL.
    3. "subjective reasons" - that means, not based on violations of content policies. Only based on the subjective claim that account X is run by Tobias Conradi. If it would not, the deletion would not have been carried out. "write bullshit about their country" - can you give some diffs?
    4. "The reasons for the community bans" - I could find one community ban, but no content related reasons.
    5. '"only makes constructive edits" is ridiculous' - I could find nothing but constructive edits by the accounts in question.
    6. I find it much more important to revert vandalism, than to counter a user that only makes constructive edits and has been with these among the "Top 100 Wikipedians by edit count" and "Top 2 Wikidata contributors by edit count". 91.9.116.65 17:44, 5 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding GZWDer comment above that he "disguised himself as a native Swedish speaker". His disguise would not help him on a Swedish project, I guess even Danes or Norwegians would have detected his knowledge-level as poor. The spelling was correct, but his choise of words and prepositions made it look like he was translating word by word. And that can only be done on projects like Wikidata. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 12:21, 31 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Innocent bystander: However non-Swedish speakers may be confused. This is how this user disguising himself - users may need requesting another CheckUser to find it, not just block it as a DUCK. Also this user also edits eowiki, so probably he will disrupt svwiki sometime. --GZWDer (talk) 05:29, 1 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Comment Please identify how a global ban is beneficial to the community, and how it has benefits over the individual communities each managing their own bans. Also please address the question of whether this user has done any good work through the community of wikis that should be considered by other wikis when they consider that this ban will impact upon any work that has happened in their community.  — billinghurst sDrewth 11:21, 1 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I completely understand the motivation behind this, but I'm not sure what a global ban for his accounts would actually achieve. If you ban one user, he will just create a new one or he'll edit anonymously (which is what he's currently doing, as far as I can tell). If you block one IP address he's using, he will just change his IP address. - Nikki (talk) 01:02, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Billinghurst, Nikki, and Rschen7754: The ban is mainly intended to prevent him from disrupting new projects (such as eowiki).--GZWDer (talk) 14:37, 4 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Nikki: The global ban has a powerful symbolism, and a necessary component to it. The symbolism is that this is a community acting together to produce works of quality and thoroughness, and that when someone steps outside the community norms that we will take actions to protect our site from unwanted editing. It also permits anybody to act against the user, knowing that the community will support their efforts, and they do need to promote a case at every wiki, for every example of this person being unwanted. So the ability to act is the necessary part, and ultimately it is what gives the Foundation the ability to escalate through legal processes if it ever gets to that point of action. Least favoured, though sometimes necessary.  — billinghurst sDrewth 15:15, 4 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note that while Wikidata has no de jure community ban policy or process, the fact that the local community is not willing to allow him or her to edit (i.e. not willing to unblock) means they are de facto banned there. --Jasper Deng (talk) 03:00, 7 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Notification of this ban request

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Please indicate here where this ban request was announced on community portals, mailing lists, etc.

I have added a link to the meta main page.  — billinghurst sDrewth 08:59, 5 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I have posted a notice on Wikidata's project chat page, as well as the administrators' noticeboard. - Nikki (talk) 15:58, 5 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Commons' village pump was informed in August by GZWDer. - Nikki (talk) 16:05, 5 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I've also posted on en:Wikipedia_talk:Sockpuppet_investigations/Tobias_Conradi to let them know, and asked if they can post a notice in other appropriate places on enwiki. - Nikki (talk) 16:23, 5 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It turns out GZWDer also notified the English Wikipedia's administrator's noticeboard back in August too. - Nikki (talk) 17:32, 5 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I've posted on the Esperanto Wikipedia's page for non-Esperanto messages. - Nikki (talk) 14:00, 6 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Recording blocks/bans

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  • Tobias Conradi, 2 wikis, 37,617 edits
  • Tamawashi, 120 wikis, 533,071 edits
    • Blocked at Commons Reason: Abusing multiple accounts (11.7k edits)
    • Blocked at enWP Reason: Abusing multiple accounts: Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Tobias Conradi (0.3k edits)
    • Blocked at WD Reason: Abusing multiple accounts (520k edits)
  • FreightXPress, 70 wikis, 33,702 edits
    • Blocked at Commons Reason: Abusing multiple accounts: now also threats (19.9k edits)
    • Blocked at enWP Reason: Abusing multiple accounts: Tobias Conradi, checked on Meta by stewards (0.2k edits)
    • Blocked at WD Reason: Abusing multiple accounts: CheckUser-confirmed sockpupet of User:Tamawashi (13.5k edits)
  • EfrinEfrin, 35 wikis, 6,590 edits
    • Blocked at Commons Reason: Abusing multiple accounts
    • Blocked at enWP Reason: {{checkuserblock-account}}: Please see: Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Tobias Conradi
    • Editing at eoWP (not blocked, 1.3k edits)
    • Blocked at Wikidata Reason: Abusing multiple accounts: enwp CU confirmed, see en:Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Tobias Conradi (5.1k edits)
  • Subpage shows 175 account names, of which 60 are an unmerged version of the same account.
  • Earlier WD investigation by a steward shows
    • Andrea Shan
    • Frank Robertson
    • Perfektinski
    • John B. Sullivan
    • Vladimir Gribochev
    • Tajistan
    • Derianus

Ping accounts proposed to be banned

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To ensure that the proposal is identified to the user and should they wish to make comment, then that opportunity exists. I would suggest that the proponents put specific mention on the user's meta account talk pages.  — billinghurst sDrewth 10:09, 1 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ping is useless if no-one logs in into these accounts. And there is no evidence, that anyone logged in into any of these accounts, after they had been blocked. 91.9.96.147 16:16, 9 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Again: Neither he [Tobias Conradi] nor his recent sock is locked or blocked in Meta Wiki, So this user can participate the discussion freely. These accounts have not yet been blocked on Meta (so of course no one has logged in “after they had been blocked”, which they haven’t). You don’t need to comment as IP. —Galaktos (talk) 16:28, 9 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Haha. Did you try explain how the ping to Tobias Conradi|Tobias Conradi~metawiki|EfrinEfrin|FreightXPress|Tamawashi works if no one logs in into these accounts? 91.9.112.72 21:45, 9 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
No. I also didn’t try to explain how magnets work, or why the sky is blue, or why there is suffering in the world. What’s your point? All I’m saying is that if Tobias Conradi happens to read this, he doesn’t need to comment as IP (for example 91.9.112.72), he could just log in and discuss as Tobias Conradi or one of the other accounts. I suspect that people might be more inclined to discuss the issues at hand with the subject to be banned, rather than some random IP. —Galaktos (talk) 22:12, 9 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Recording deletions of contributions to the ban discussion

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  • User:Steinsplitter deleted several requests for clarification, calling them trolling [49]
  • User:Nemo bis deleted several requests for clarification, claiming they "don't help anything". Also stating "Tobias Conradi has the right to defense here, a random IP not." - The questions are no defense, they are requests for clarification. [50]
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