Repeated throwaway edit warring accounts that are deliberately rotated and created at high rate is, by itself, enough to qualify as damage to OSM as it makes harder to others to understand what is going on and wastes their time. People like to do many things in OSM, but dealing with long list of throwaway hit-and-run revert accounts is not one of them. Cleaning up such edits is not hard to do but annoying and just wastes everyone’s time to revert such edits.
You were repeatedly advised to stop such behaviour and that it is unwanted, but you continued, so it is also wilful.
What you did IS a vandalism.
Again, please stop creating new accounts or using previously created ones. Or we will just need to waste more time to create dedicated tools to catch sockpuppet accounts of fully banned vandal.
If your goal is to waste our time by vandalising OSM, then I admit: it is achievable. If you want to achieve literally anything else then please stop creating new accounts. If you will keep creating new accounts it just confirms that you are malicious vandal that should be banned.
I think it could be interpreted in a positive way, deleting sock puppet accounts. Another way to deal with it would be linking the main account in the user description (IMHO preferable)
Mammi71
(One feature, Six mappers and still More ways to map it)
44
It rather gives the impression that sock puppets are deleted when they are exposed. Instead, they continue with what feels like five new sock puppets.
Just to be clear yes saifanjahmal is one my accounts, I can’t delete or access it because I don’t remeber the password.
What are you referring to when you say “five new sockpuppets accounts”? I gave up by now, do you think I have any interest in fighting the windmills trying to improve OSM anymore?
If I had any left you all made sure I understood it’s a total waste of time.
Good luck and farewell.
Mammi71
(One feature, Six mappers and still More ways to map it)
46
At intervals of a few days, there are reports in several places in this forum about odd changes by (more or less) new users, all of which have the same editing pattern. All tracks lead to you! I lost count and have lost the overview of how many of your accounts have already been identified. (maybe @SomeoneElse knows more?). And you still ask why I have the feeling that five new ones appear for every deleted or blocked account?
I’ve also had a periodic look here and yes, there are “new accounts” popping up. I’d expect most of those to be genuinely new users though - we shouldn’t treat them with suspicion until we have some evidence that they are just more sockpuppets. It’d be unfair on genuine new users in Italy to not assume good faith, just because Martino is behaving like an arsehole.
A user that creates an account, makes one set of edits and then immediately deletes their account (following a long-line of such behaviour) is not acting in good faith. If anyone needs any help reverting this please let the DWG know - email data@openstreetmap.org with a subject of “[Ticket#2023041110000115] [OpenStreetMap] deleted account”.
The gentlemen goes around, still, the explanation of why the edit was made is useless “fixed town”
Changes city to town and the population to a round 80000, which is the coincidental threshold to distinct between city and town. The node is representing is seems the district and not the main residential area by itself. Think a revert is in order,
There definitely have been severe problems with this city on the carto rendering, as it made disappear Naples in certain zoom levels, but this is something I would expect to be fixed in Carto and not necessarily in the data. If Giugliano is better represented as city or town is something that can be discussed but should be discussed and not just changed.
Would it help if I reverted those on principle (to make it clear to @user_10901495 that this sort of behaviour isn’t OK (who, for the avoidance of doubt, has denied that some of this behaviour isn’t theirs, but the changes above are “somewhat characteristic”).
Sorry, I read this message only now (after I reverted the edits myself already). The reasons are the same I stated already in the past, the user can use his main account instead of creating disposable accounts non-stop. This make difficult to take track of discussions, understand what’s going on ecc. as stated many times.
For the record I reverted this sockpuppet also: user_19193084
Since people from other communities (New York, Andorra, Spain, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and San Marino mainly) have posted or are following this topic, I want to make it clear that I’m only tracking new sockpuppets in Italy. Therefore, I don’t know if there are any others in those places/countries.
Reverting edits from ban evading accounts seems a good idea in general (without applying it blindly to all edits before block).
And in general I would treat editing and then immediately deleting account as admission to vandalism and a request to revert all their edits.
And in cases where user was repeatedly requested to cease such behaviour as a malicious trolling, intentional attempt to waste time of others and in general being rude and annoying and breaking OSM rules.
So +1 to reverts on sight in such cases.
Obviously some effort is needed to avoid affecting unrelated editors, but edit+self deleting account is quite revealing.
For the record, this is the message I left to the user when the last sockpuppet was created: “Ciao, come richiesto numerose volte, perché non usi il tuo account principale?” (DeepL: “Hi, as requested numerous times, why don’t you use your main account?”). He played dumb in response. I think I’ve been polite enough, his main account is still not blocked and he can use it without limits.
Now I find out that a brand new account has been created and performed a complete revert again:
Meanwhile he keeps editing with other sockpuppets, such as:
An overpass query that can find data by one of the sockpuppet accounts created by @user_10901495 here is https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1vHF. The userid in that search is the one for the first of the “freddieforbes” accounts.
Also note that I’ve blocked Martino’s main account until they contact us: https://www.openstreetmap.org/user_blocks/7168. They won’t be able to post here after any authentication they have in a browser expires. However, I’ve said that if they wish to continue as part of the OSM community they should email the DWG and we’ll revoke that block.
Edit: Somewhat later, the third “gapathys” account was deleted, and @user_10901495 has created and deleted a fourth with userid 19480213. Revert of that is complete in https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/136934793. Some nodes gave 400 errors, but I suspect that is just a difference between how JOSM and other edit methods treat null changes:
cannot restore node 10951331381 to version 2 (put): 400 Bad Request
cannot restore node 10951331383 to version 2 (put): 400 Bad Request
cannot restore node 10951331384 to version 2 (put): 400 Bad Request
cannot restore node 10951331382 to version 2 (put): 400 Bad Request
Edit: likewise a fourth account, 19480843.
Edit: likewise a fifth account, 19481216
Edit: Likewise a sixth account, 19486309
(and several more - see below)
If there are any other accounts I have missed, please email data@openstreetmap.org with a subject of “[Ticket#2023041110000115] other accounts” to let us know. If any accounts are on this list in error, please email data@openstreetmap.org with a subject of “[Ticket#2023041110000115] account on list in error” to let us know (although most of the block messages say that already).
