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User:AP 499D25/LTA Tracking/Xselant

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Xselant (talk · contribs · block log · arb · SPI confirmed suspected)
Comprehensive edits analysis
XTools Timecard

Xselant is a user from UK (approx. Northern Ireland) who was blocked indefinitely in August 2022 for edit warring and personal attacks.

Since Xselant was blocked, they have went on to create 8 sockpuppet accounts as well as use at least six different distinct IP addresses/ranges (as of March 2024) to evade blocks on their original account and continue pushing disruptive edits on various articles.

Topic interests

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Xselant's topic interests may seem vast and wide-ranging at first, but upon a closer look, their interests are actually quite narrow and rather specific:

Keep in mind these are not strictly the only topic areas they edit in; they do edit closely and loosely related topics as well, but these are the common topic areas the user edits in.

Common behaviour

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  • Prefers templates over HTML tags for non-breakable spaces, {{nbsp}} instead of  , sometimes outright replacing existing tags with templates (example 1, example 2, example 3)
  • In citations, they write the parameters in a very specific order like how you see it in reading view, i.e. lastname, firstname, date, title, url, name of source, access date (example 1, example 2)
    • In existing citation templates, they will reorder the parameters of the cite template, add spaces before |, as well as "align" the format of the dates to the rest of the article (example 1, example 2, example 3, example 4)
  • Adds "Use ___ English" and/or "Use ___ dates" templates to the topic of the article if they aren't present already (example 1, example 2, example 3)
  • Bypasses links to redirects, i.e. turns them into piped links that link directly to the target article (example 1, example 2, example 3)
  • Hardly ever uses the edit summary (or often blanks it if there is a pre-filled one as in the case of the "undo" feature)
    • They "silently" make major changes to articles as a result
  • When an edit they make is disputed, they usually revert it back to their version, often without an explanation (or even with a blank edit summary)
  • They may attack or harass editors that they disagree with
  • Their English is of a very high, native-like quality

Accounts

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Involved IP addresses and ranges

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Likely unrelated user with similar behaviour

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For a brief few months of time between late 2023 and early 2024, some Algerian IP addresses were heavily editing various computer hardware articles, displaying some behavioural similarities to Xselant, such as:

  • Preference of templates over HTML tags for line breaks: {{br}} instead of <br> (example)
  • Bypassing links to redirects, using piped links (example 1, example 2)
  • Obsession of spacing in source code (example)
  • Obsession of things "taking up too much space" in tables (example)

However, there are also some stark habitual differences that strongly suggest that it is not Xselant:

  • Use of VisualEditor ('Visual edit' tags)
  • Exclusive focus on computer topics
  • No adding/reordering of cite template parameters in a very specific order, no aligning citation dates, no addition of language parameters
  • Very untidy addition of infobox parameters (example)
List of IP addresses/ranges
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