Admins: If one of my admin actions is clearly a mistake or is actively harming the encyclopaedia, please reverse it. Don't wait for me if I'm not around or the case is obvious.

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Bolstamar has an incredibly odd editing pattern for someone new to the site x1 day, including putting dig at RfA in here. I don't keep track on which LTA pattern this matches, but since you protected the last page to which he made an unconstructive edit, I thought I'd bring him to your (or any relevant admin TPS') attention. Jclemens (talk) 06:14, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

NVM, Izno took care of it. Jclemens (talk) 07:43, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's probably Shanateen (who caused the protection). Someone burning a 2 year old sleeper on that is... a choice. I've got an open quick CU request out but it's as liable to find socks as it is to find proxies I'd guess, given LTA's apparent knowledge. Izno (talk) 07:46, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't mind blocking some proxies. I'll have a look when I get chance. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 08:42, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Jclemens @Izno worse than a proxy, they're on a vast mobile range. I couldn't see any other accounts but that doesn't mean much. If this is going to be an an ongoing problem, we can upgrade the protection to ECP but there's always a chance they might go away if we ignore them. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 13:42, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Someone let me know it was probably A134. Izno (talk) 19:34, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds about right. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 19:36, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

and a happy new year! Sebbers10 I talk to cute people :3 17:25, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

also thanks for blocking over a hundred spam accounts in 2 minutes :3 Sebbers10 I talk to cute people :3 17:25, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Here is another med spammer, I am sure you will find more. Special:Contributions/Mukesh Chandra Kumawat. v/r - Seawolf35 ^T--C 14:36, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think you like rabbit holes with Checkuser so this should be a good one. v/r - Seawolf35 ^T--C 17:42, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I like blocking spammers! Bring me as many as you want. I will get to this, just not right now. :) HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:44, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Seawolf35 I've had a look now and blocked a few more accounts. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:59, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Then I presume the one I linked above was not related. v/r - Seawolf35 ^T--C 21:55, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ha. Forgot to block the account I started the check from! There weren't so many this time but it was a much bigger range. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:07, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good day, this is a LTA, so protecting the page is rather useless as they're targeting individuals rather than articles. --Min☠︎rax^«¦talk¦» 16:38, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Minorax I'm very well aware which is why the protection is brief. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:27, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hii sir,

Myself Dharmarajsinh, recently our medical College had given us project/assignment to learn and edit Wikipedia pages related to medical topics, however within last 2-3 days of about 120+ students out of 200 have complained that their accounts are globally blocked and it is done by you, so I want to ask why did you block them. Because out of all those barely 20 students had made a proper referenced and cited information in different wikipages and none were wrong , majority had not even started to edit, for rest their edits were removed by other editors due to different reasons , so overall the contribution to wikipages was nearly equal to null and as they haven't contributed anything means actually there is no violation of Wikipedia policies, so please help them to unblock....... Rathod Dharmarajsinh (talk) 04:38, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Rathod Dharmarajsinh I'm guessing this is related to the issue I flagged here? I found these accounts because several of them were spamming commercial links. I suppose a college assignment fits the evidence but I don't think any of the accounts I blocked made a helpful edit. Of the ones that weren't outright spam or junk, many were incomprehensible and none cited a source that complies with WP:MEDRS. Sending a group of 200 accounts to add external links to articles (or do anything to a small group of articles) from the same network without telling anyone in advance that it's a college assignment is an extraordinarily bad idea that is very likely to end with the accounts being blocked. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:24, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, the links of wikipages that you flagged with that outlink are only the ones I'm talking of, no doubt your concern is in the best will for Wikipedia development but what next ,can they do anything now..... Rathod Dharmarajsinh (talk) 16:02, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Rathod Dharmarajsinh I'm not sure. Even if they did not intend to be disruptive, I'm confident that the blocks are preventing disruption and there's absolutely no way I can allow 200 accounts to run amok on medical articles, especially when the edits range from this and this (which, out of context, are blatant SEO-type spam and what prompted the investigation) to this (which at least attempts to cite a source, though probably not one compliant with WP:MEDRS, but is almost incomprehensible and introduces far more problems than it solves). HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 18:25, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Special:Contributions/Rakib059, sure there is more. v/r - Seawolf35 ^T--C 07:58, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And another Steris Healthcare sock, caught this one through the spam blacklist. [1] v/r - Seawolf35 ^T--C 08:03, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And a casino spammer, [2] v/r - Seawolf35 ^T--C 09:59, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And another med spammer, Special:Contributions/Harsh nileshbhai pandya v/r - Seawolf35 ^T--C 16:54, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Seawolf35 the first one was on proxies; not much to see there. The Steris sock was on the same (enormous) range as the others; all the others I saw were already blocked. The casino spammer was interesting and turned up another couple of accounts. I'll leave the last one for now until the thread above is resolved. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 19:25, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! I just created the account "Screenshot test account" to screenshot the different layouts of Wikipedia. I didn't realize there was already a function for that. May you block/ban/delete that account if possible? Thanks. Sorry about that Положение - Userpage 19:58, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Положение I can block it, which I've done. There's no way to delete an account completely. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:06, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Положение - Userpage 20:09, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello there! Interested in having a chat with fellow Wikipedians? There's a meetup in Leeds on Saturday 4th May 2024, at the Tiled Hall Café at Leeds Central Library.

Full details here.

You're receiving this one-off message as you're either a member of WikiProject Yorkshire, you've expressed an interest in a previous Leeds meetup years ago, or (for about 4 of you), we've met :)

I plan to organise more in future, so if you'd like to be notified next time, please say so over on the meetup page.

Please also invite any Wikimedia people you know (or have had wiki dealings with) – spread the word! Hope to see you there.

Jonathan Deamer (talk)

20:35, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

@Jonathan Deamer: Fabulous to see the Leeds meetups coming back to life. I made it to a couple while I was living in Nottingham but it's a bit of a trek from the south coast. I hope you get a good turnout and stimulating conversation! HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:31, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What I was doing there! Thanks for fixing that. Parsecboy (talk) 22:39, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, HJ Mitchell! It would be helpful when you are reverting spam or a sock puppet if you would then leave an edit summary. Having several friends who are admins, I was surprised that upon reverting my edits you left the edit summary don't revert spam removals if you don't want to be blocked for spam, which seemed a bit testy for a response to an experienced editor. Had you mentioned spam or check user in the edit summary, I certainly would not reverted your edit, even though a cursory glance at the source did not immediately smack of spam to me.

I realize that as an admin you are probably hard-pressed with all the work that you do. While not an admin, I do a lot of page patrol myself. I do not always get it right, & I apologize if I got in the way of your anti-sockpuppet/anti-spam work that you do. Peaceray (talk) 17:18, 8 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Peaceray It's baffling to me that you would revert an admin's rollback, especially as the problems with the edit should be obvious to an editor of your experience—and if they weren't, it would have taken you a single click to see that it was a spam account blocked as a sockpuppet of another spam account. Nonetheless, I was possibly more strident than I needed to be and for that I apologise. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:41, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content Book review: Hawkeye7, Nick-D and Pickersgill-Cunliffe discuss six (count 'em, six!) works comprising eight volumes Op-ed: Hawkeye7 on a lecture by the Australian official historian

Here is another spammer, probably will lead to more, Special:Contributions/Web_soft_world. v/r - Seawolf35 ^T--C 14:43, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Seawolf35 Thanks! Nothing leapt out at me on that one but they have a very common user agent and they're on a huge range belonging to a major ISP in a vary populous country so that's not entirely surprising. It led to another handful of blocks but they could easily be different individuals. I'll still take any spammers you want to throw my way though. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 21:07, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for having blocked 70.177.14.210 , however, I think it is necessary blocking also from editing their talk page, as edits done there are clearly disruptive and in bad faith. Kind regards 14 novembre (talk) 🇮🇹 16:32, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I see it has already been done by @OverlordQ. Thanks to both of you, and kind regards 14 novembre (talk) 🇮🇹 16:35, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]