"Martial arts vandal" aka "Burton-on-Trent vandal"
Wikilifespan2010–present (possibly 2008)
ISPBSkyB
Known IPs2.120.*.* to 2.223.*.*
90.195.*.* to 90.221.*.*
94.0.*.* to 94.7.*.*
Physical locationUK
InstructionsRevert non-constructive edits on sight. Report new accounts to AIV with a link to this page.
StatusActive

Basic information[edit]

The martial arts vandal is a long-term disruptive user who primarily targets Hong Kong martial arts films, especially those that star Sammo Hung and Jackie Chan. He also targets American action films that star Dolph Lundgren, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Cuba Gooding, Jr., and Cynthia Rothrock. Any film in these stars' filmography should be considered to be at high risk. His edits generally fall under several narrow behaviors: genre warring, removing categories, enforcing alphabetical order in categories, adding unsourced information, and edit warring to maintain these changes. He is on a highly dynamic IP range, but the IP addresses generally stick for about three to seven days, during which he will be inactive if blocked. Once his IP address changes, he will evade his block and immediately return to edit warring. Short blocks (less than three days) may prove ineffective in preventing further disruption. Although he has never had a known user account, he can be identified by IP range, behavior, or geolocation. Attempts to reason or converse with him are ignored, and he almost never uses an edit summary. He has certainly been active since 2010, and some reports date back to 2008.

This is a tenacious edit warrior. He will patiently wait out blocks and page protection, even if the protection lasts a month. He likely uses his browser to bookmark articles in lieu of a watchlist. He checks the articles daily, and it is likely that he will revert dozens of articles in a single session. He has been repeatedly blocked and was subject to a community ban proposal; this LTA report was filed as an alternative to the ban.

He was blocked until March 2017 in a range block (2A02:C7D:9EC5:3800::/64).

Targeted areas, pages, themes

His primary targets are Hong Kong martial arts films, but he will occasionally target American action films, especially if they star a martial artist. He seems to keep an eye on certain categories, such as Category:Hong Kong martial arts films and Category:American martial arts films, and he will target new articles as they are created. His most commonly targeted articles include:

Most edited articles as of August 2014
Article Edits IPs Notes
Yes, Madam 30 10 disruption going back to August 2011. Indefinitely semi-protected
Don't Give a Damn 30 9 article created in June 2014. Indefinitely semi-protected.
Double Impact 33 11 disruption going back to April 2011
Project A Part II 37 24 disruption going back to November 2011
Ninja in the Dragon's Den 40 22 disruption going back to February 2011
Rob-B-Hood 44 26 disruption going back to October 2010. Indefinitely semi-protected.
Legacy of Rage 46 10 disruption going back to August 2011
Heart of Dragon 53 24 disruption going back to April 2011. Indefinitely semi-protected.
No Retreat, No Surrender 2 55 17 disruption going back to October 2011
SPL: Sha Po Lang 85 24 disruption going back to October 2010
No Retreat, No Surrender 95 35 disruption going back to October 2010
Crime Story (film) 125 20 disruption going back to October 2010. Indefinitely semi-protected.

Edits is number of obvious edits by this vandal counted until August 2014. IPs is number of individual IP addresses used. A small number of IP addresses means constant edit warring in a short period of time.

Other commonly targeted articles include:

List courtesy of StG88, AWNH, and others

Low risk topics include articles on United States-based professional wrestling, such as wrestlers and wrestling films. These articles are traditionally subject to fewer edits and much less disruption. Rare targets include American and British heavy metal bands, which are generally not subject to disruption.

Articles listed as indefinitely semi-protected have been protected per request against this vandal; if protection is lifted, please consider adding the article to your watchlist.

Habitual behavior

The most obvious and recognizable behavior is genre warring. This generally takes the form of editing the lead and the categories to remove unwanted genres. He may cite Allmovie in HTML comments for genre in the categories. He may also add information sourced from the IMDb, which WikiProject Film considers an unreliable source. Categories will always be forced into alphabetical order. Also possible are minor incidents of content blanking, removal of templates, and changing sourced text to values based on original research. In all cases, he will edit war for days or even weeks to retain his changes to the article. Continuing edit wars with Soangry (talk · contribs) are iconic and help to identify both old and new accounts. These edit wars may persist almost indefinitely. The vandal may even target new articles shortly after Soangry creates them. Continuing edit wars with other anti-vandals also exist, but they are not pathological.

Cases

Diffs, discussions, and evidence are posted in the above cases. Refer to them for more detailed information.

User pages with information incorporated here:

Several further discussions can be found linked from those pages.

Other notes

Proven and suspected accounts[edit]

IP accounts are normally in the 2.120.*.* to 2.222.*.* and 90.195.*.* to 90.221.*.* ranges. Additional ranges include 94.0.*.* to 94.2.*.* and a one-off at 176.251.46.19. IP addresses outside these ranges are possible but break with habitual behavior, which does not seem to indicate the use of VPNs or proxies. Compulsive genre warring across dozens of Hong Kong film articles from non-habitual IP ranges should be treated as suspect regardless of geolocation. Note that geolocation might not always result in Burton-on-Trent; neighboring cities are occasionally possible, and locations as distant as Singapore have been suspected. Due to the BT system in the UK, any geolocation with a UK address will be the address of the ISP offices for that range of addresses, and will never be the location of the user.

More-or-less proven:

Since June 2016, he's begun to be addressed IPv6 ranges, which may make a range block easier.

IPv6 addresses
Range blocks
Date Admin Length IP range
20 June 2016 Malcolmxl5 two weeks 2A02:C7D:9EC5:3800::/64
5 July 2016 KrakatoaKatie 45 days
21 August 2016 NeilN 1 month
21 September 2016 NeilN 3 months
28 December 2016 Black Kite 3 months
27 January 2017 NinjaRobotPirate 3 months 2a02:c7d:9e64:2c00::/64
28 April 2017 NinjaRobotPirate 6 months
October 2017 NinjaRobotPirate 1 year

Suspected:


Category