Nikita
Shortcut: WP:LTA/NR2002
Original name(s)Никита-Родин-2002
(Nikita-Rodin-2002)
WikilifespanAugust 2014 – present
Physical locationRussia, South Korea via proxies
Sockpuppet investigationsWikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Никита-Родин-2002
InstructionsSuspected socks should be tagged and reported to sockpuppet investigations for confirmation. When reporting, please link to this long-term abuse report. If they edit through semi-protection with an autoconfirmed account, request extended-confirmed protection for a duration of at least two months at WP:RFPP. When the active abuse has been taken care of, please update this report with the latest information.
StatusActive

Basic information

Никита-Родин-2002 (talk · contribs · block log · arb · SPI confirmed suspected)
Comprehensive edits analysis
Seemingly of Russian origin, this user is also known by the community as simply "Nikita", or Никита in Russian alphabet. Before his global block he had been blocked on the Russian Wikipedia for vandalism. It later became clear he spoke almost no English after editing here; an ANI thread suggested communicating in Russian before his block, and his messages were cooperative at first. His behavior, however, did not change, and still persists to this day. As of 2017, he seems to have learned enough English (or used a translation service) to submit clear English edit requests to extended-confirmed protected pages.

Targeted areas, pages, themes

The globally blocked user has been using alternate accounts and various IPs geolocated in different countries, most often through proxies, to make edits and submit edit requests with regards to inflating certification and sales figures on music articles, mostly related to Green Day, Fall Out Boy, and The Who, more notably The Who discography, Green Day discography, American Idiot, Infinity on High, and other related articles.

Habitual behavior

The pattern is usually random, but similar in nature, that the edits inflate sales figures by the millions and change the certification by similar means. Meanwhile, edit requests to extended-confirmed articles ask for the same type of edit, usually providing an unreliable forum post as a reference (probably posted by Nikita himself). The user will never provide an edit summary. The information is always contradicted by the certification agencies themselves. When editing unprotected articles, the vandalism takes the form of changing numbers associated with certifications, and so their edits often look legitimate at a first glance.

Nikita often creates sleeper accounts and makes dummy edits in userspace to become autoconfirmed. For this reason, all protections should be at the extended-confirmed level. In at least one instance, they've attempted to follow the same strategy to become extended confirmed.

Cases


Other notes

Confirmed and suspected accounts

Categories