User:BaronLarf/GRider

Who is/was GRider and why is he controversial?

Here are some statements about him, collected here for ease of dissemination.

Okay, it's can of worms, but since you insist... I'm not sure whom he was a sock of, I believe User:David Gerard is keeping an eye out for possible other misbehavior from that area.

GRider started out fine. He was sifting through cat:Bio-stubs, recatting and clearing out the junk. At roughly the same time, I was sifting through special:Deadend pages, doing the same. Between the two of us we were unfortunately responsible for putting stress on VfD, but note that there was a lot of junk in both cats. I eventually started VFD/PC to alleviate this.

Gradually, GRider's behavior became controversial, because he was marking VfD nominations as minor; usually starting the VfD pages as "what should be done here, discuss amongst yourselves" rather than giving a solid reason for deletion; and most importantly, not responding to his own talk page.

At a certain point, he nominated over a dozen Chicago aldermen for deletion ("discuss amongst yourselves"), which promptly spurred a VFD/PC discussion, in which he refused to participate. Then the same thing happened about items from Nintendo games. By this point, many people were so thoroughly fed up with his behavior that "keep - Grider nominated it" was a common vote. People were beginning to suspect GRider of WP:POINT - making mass nominations because he wanted them deleted, but because he wanted to break up VFD somehow.

Around this point, GRider started notifying people of school articles on VfD, causing a flood of 'keep' votes. This method of vote-stacking was not appreciated by several people. Eventually he created his schoolwatch rather than repeatedly posting to 20+ talk pages. The 'neutral' schoolwatch was created shortly after, since GRider instantly reverted many edits to his schoolwatch (such as 'please do not copy/paste votes'). Also around this point, GRider created his rather offensive user page, which still stands.

Also, a couple of GRider-clones appeared (G Rider, GRuder, stuff like that) that made random vandalizations and were quickly banned. It later turned out that these were not impersonators, but rather were accounts created by himself.

When GRider nominated a dozen Tolkien-related articles, a couple of Tolkien fans got angry and started the first RFC (this also caused a VFD/PC, in which he didn't participate). Also roughly about this time, GRider started nominating random fiction-related articles, e.g. major characters from Harry Potter, which could hardly be taken as anything other than bad faith.

Because the first RFC was created somewhat in anger (citing WP:DICK as a policy, among others) but there were legitimate concerns, the second RFC was created. Because GRider refused to respond to either, the matter was taken to the ArbCom, and you can see the findings-of-fact from there. Ironically, the only people who support GRider are fans of school articles, and most of them are unaware of the many other things he did. I find David Gerard's quote very appropriate - "with friends like these, who needs enemies..."

Well, there you go. Hope it wasn't too lengthy a rant. Yours, R adiant _* 10:28, Jun 3, 2005 (UTC) [1]

From User talk:Tony Sidaway

David Gerard ran a check and has posted at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Developer help needed that GRider was being used as a role account (along with several other accounts) by the sockpuppeteer and that he has suspicians (sp?) of who this is. To my knowledge though he hasn't posted anywhere public who he suspects. See [2] and [3] (see the last added paragraph). Thryduulf 21:18, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC) [4]

From Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Developer help needed

Thryduulf requested (on WP:AN/I) a check into GRider and Tallyman's correlating behaviour is of interest. They have similarities, but there wasn't enough for me to be reasonably confident they were the same person. There does appear to be sockpuppet theatre going on here, though. A combination of reviewing edits, IP checks and a check with Tim Starling for further technical info lets me state with reasonable confidence that GRider, HERMiT cRAB, Tallyman, ..-. ..- -.-. -.- ..- and almost certainly Jonahhh are the same person. Furthermore, they have also set up accounts G Rider, HERMiT CRAB, HERMiT cRAB and TallyMan (note subtle variation). I've blocked the lot as sockpuppets. There's another bunch on associated IPs I'm still checking further. I'd always thought GRider behaved oddly differently from a regular single-account editor, and this would explain it a bit - the sockpuppeteer, whoever it is, was treating it as a role account for particular types of edit and not bothering to humanise it much - David Gerard 12:02, 4 May 2005 (UTC) [5]

More GRider socks: Relax, Abort Retry Fail, Sexy Schoolgirl, Maggie311. I have a very good idea who the sockpuppeteer is, but they appear to have cooled it with the l@m3r behaviour - David Gerard 08:43, 17 May 2005 (UTC) [6]