AN INVESTIGATION ON VITUZZU

The following is another evidence of how bad & uncivil is a Mafioso sysop of the Italian Wikipedia, who is nicknamed "Vituzzu" (indeed to understand the "bad to the bones" admin Vituzzu, please read OUTING MY EVILNESS  at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Vituzzu&diff=662072374&oldid=596379010 ).

Photo of a "Rattus rattus", an animal that perfectly represents the so called Bastard Rat Vito, as one of my friends nicknamed the evil Vituzzu last month.



This Vituzzu is damaging Wikipedia, as explained with detailed data & information on the 2015 issues of my blog "Manmer2015". Additionally, here it is a group of excerpts about an investigation done in 2014 on him by an experienced and serious person, "Abd" of Wikipediocracy:


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"I am currently investigating a situation where stewards (two or three of them) appear to be violating global ban policy. Rschen7754's initial violation was minor, if a violation at all. The serious violation is Vituzzu, who has globally locked a series of accounts with no disclosure except what an investigator will extract from logs.

The offense of those accounts is being single-purpose accounts interested in and only editing with respect to an apparently notable photographer. SPAs like this exist very commonly with no sanctions. None of these accounts had been warned. It's quite clear they are not all the same person. Only one had been recently editing, and it was the actions of this single account that brought down what I'm calling the "Spamish Inquisition".

The account violated no policy. It is possible that the actions of this account could be considered disruptive: the account, Augusto De Luca, created 557 user pages, one on each of 557 WMF wikis, each with no text other than a single link to a file hosted on Commons, work of the photographer with the same name.

However, this action resembles the action of a spambot. It was asserted by those involved -- a global sysop, Rschen7754, and Vituzzu, and one steward took one questionable action in this case, the steward is also a local sysop, so the issue is muddied, that this was a "spambot," but spambots don't act like this. The global sysop involved, in one of the two deletion discussions -- both of which I triggered -- showed sorted account creation times from CentralAuth as "proof" that this was a bot, but CA account linking times are ''not'' edit times, and I just demonstrated that in a trial. Further, if I decided to create an account on all WMF wikis -- which this user apparently decided to do -- I could do it in roughly ninety minutes if I was willing to work hard for that period. It is still unclear to me how long the user took, but a figure of 13 hours has been stated.

"Spambot" is stated for obvious reasons: spam is extraordinarily unpopular, and adding spam by bot? That's horrible! Can we ban this person from the internet? If an account is editing cross wiki, it *must be a bot* and unapproved bots are prohibited, right? They will be locked, for sure.

No, not right. Bots operating at a rate not exceeding 1 per minute do not require authorization. 1 edit per minute, times 557 edits, is about 9 hours. I don't know about peak rate, because most of the evidence has been deleted, is not visible to ordinary editors, but the average rate was certainly under the limit.

Because this mass user account creation was noticed -- and there are people who watch for this kind of thing -- the articles on the photographer were examined. The home wiki of the creators of these articles is it.wikipedia. There is an article on en.wikipedia which has been edited by many others. Once the idea was created that this was "promotion," and Vituzzu tossed in "paid editors, SEOs," every SPA invoved was assumed to be part of a conspiracy to promote the photographer.

Vituzzu blocked almost all of the SPAs without any discussion at all. One was the daughter of the photographer (this is clear from Commons uploads), and she had been warned about COI editing on it.wikipedia, and she politely stopped, continuing to edit for a short time on general purpose edits, and stopped completed in November, 2011. He locked her account.

I believe at this point that all the other accounts, while not warned at all, had stopped. The only active account was the one in the photographer's name. I've spent a lot of time with the issue now, and this is what I would do if I wanted to set up communication with the world wiki community, and I wasn't aware of the "Spamish Inquisition":

I would create all the accounts, and as a photographer, by way of introduction, I'd put up a link to my work. Is this "promotion"? Sure. It happens to be a kind of promotion that is "allowed* on user pages. Then, resting for a bit, "Whew! 557 accounts created! I think I'll rest for a day!" -- he came back the next day to set up email notification, because that requires a separate step per wiki, it's actually more than double the work. But by then, he could not log in to do it because the SUL account was locked.

Most of the created user accounts have been deleted. Most were deleted by the global sysop, by Rschen7754, and by Vituzzu. However, some wikis have not opted in to global sysop actions. So some of the files were tagged for speedy deletion. The reason for deletion was "cross wiki spam," or in what would be telling and seems to have been quite successful, "cross wiki spam, see CA."

So if a sysop looked at CA, they saw 1 edit per wiki, 557 wikis. OMG! Massive spam! Delete!

Some of the deletion reasons show that very little thought was given. One called the edits "vandalism." I'd think that was pretty crazy, but ... I mentioned that there was no discussion.

Normally, global locks will be discussed on meta at Steward requests/Global. Still nothing there. However, Vituzzu just mentioned his actions on meta, Vandalism reports. Hello? He gives no details, nobody could make any sense out of that report if they don't do a lot of digging.

Now, as to Rschen7754, why I'm mentioning this here:

Wikiversity Request for deletion. This RfD also links to my study pages, the study is in progress.

The point here is that we have a global sysop and two stewards commenting in a local RfD on Wikiversity. Highly unusual in itself. The claim was not made that they were wrong to tag a suspicious page. But the defense of their actions went way beyond any necessity. And I was, of course, attacked.

The RfD was filed and the first comment, immediately, was from Wim b, with a total error, treating account attachment time as if it were edit time. In fact, to accomplish the account creations efficiently, one first sets up the account links. I do not yet know the exact process, and simply being logged in to one wiki and looking at others isn't enough. But then a second login appears to trigger a rash of account creations. Once CentralAuth shows all accounts desired, then one uses a page of links, I created such a page to study the edits of Augusto and the response, trivial with a spreadsheet. With a few tricks, the whole process can be done very, very quickly with no bot and no script. A more sophisticated computer user (but naive as to WMF practice) would use a script.

Wim b never responded to his obvious error being pointed out. Instead:

	Quote: Ah, ok, so: URL = spam, using a bot for created 557+ user's pages with your photos, orverlinking (also off-topic, edited by Ferdinando Castaldo, monotematic user whit user page identical at Augusto, a test before bigger spam?) and create a biography in NS:0 in much wikis using a babelfish and a sockpuppet (like Ferdinando Castaldo or Elvira Pisanti, another monotematic user with identical user's page) ≠ spam... Sure?!--Wim b 04:22, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

This is a global sysop! Nobody in that discussion knows who Castaldo or Pisanti are. I do, of course, because I just spent an insane amount of time researching it. The concept of a "test before bigger spam" is insane. Basically, do something to call attention to everything that has been done? No, it's almost certain: the photographer had no clue that this would be considered improper. There had been a lesser action by Pisanti, he did create user pages with single images. No problem. Pisanti had stopped editing, and never did what I'd expect a true paid editor to do: some ordinary wikignoming. Play a little whac-a-mole on Recent Changes. The antispammers will only catch the inept. And what he did wasn't spam. It was arguably promotion. These antispammers are clueless about the difference.

	Quote: Abd feel free to say it's a fan rather than a hired SEO, feel free to say SEO is fine, feel free to deal with a lots of crappy non-relevant stuffs ("federal police" is what in communication is called "propaganda") but that won't change the simple fact you've made a personal quarrel out of a simple clean-up. --Vituzzu (discuss • contribs) 18:41, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

(I don't think that anything above was "personal quarrel." Vituzzu had made a comment about "pride" and I turned it around, that was trivial -- and brief -- dicta. I often use the analogy of "campus cops" for sysops, it's apt for Wikiversity. An analogy for global sysops and stewards would be "federal police." He thinks this is "propaganda" but he is projecting arguments that I wasn't making. And this demonstrates the level of thought involved. My comments here are far more personal than there. I attempted to stay focused on the issue, whether or not the page should be deleted on Wikiversity.

It's clear that Wikiversity deletion policy does not contemplate deleting pages like this. You can see the initial comment from the Wikiversity sysop. The page does not violate our policy. But there is another issue raised. If the account is globally locked, it can't edit, so it can be argued that it's useless.

But the page does not appear to violate policy on any wiki, as far as I've seen. It certainly does not violate any en.wikipedia policy, which didn't stop Rschen7754 from deleting it there. "Cross-wiki spam" is not a mentioned speedy deletion reason. Placing links to Commons photos on user pages is a very poor way to "promote" them. The only people who will find or see those pages will be those who are looking at the user's edits.

Wikipedia WikiProject spam is blatant that those fighting spam should dump "Assume Good Faith". And they do. There is an obvious explanation for the user's behavior, and it isn't to spam. It may be some sort of promotion, a kind that is allowed.

	Quote: [WV user] a SEO teaching and writing stuffs on 557 wikis? That people have been teaching anything than how to spam for almost three years... --Vituzzu (discuss • contribs) 18:41, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

"Promote," Vituzzu. It's not contrary to policy. If these people were paid, it may be contrary to policy, but under the circumstances, it's unlikely. The daughter has a COI. She made no attempt to conceal it. The others may or may not have any connection with the photographer, other than obvious interest. He's a spectacular photographer!"....Abd

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The above excerpts show that Vituzzu has blocked a group of persons with his tricky tactics and that his behavior is "contrary to policy", as stated by the honest Abd.

Many others have done similar complaints against this mafioso admin....so why he "keeps going and going and going" inside Italian Wikipedia? The answer can be found in the comment done by "ing Andrea" on Wikiperle! He wrote that: "Blackcat (an admin cousin of Frieda Brioschi, the "fat queen of Italian Wikimedia") and his friends are those who support the web helping Vituzzu in the italian wikipedia; and they work together in the other areas of Wiki on commission. If you pay attention the "Cricca"(Wikimafia) of Vituzzu has jobs everywhere: Blackcat & Jaquen in Commons, Sannita in Wikidata, M7 in Wikiquote, so when a favour/help is needed it is sufficient to do an e-mail message and the evidences disappear. And nobody dares to denounce because afraid to be banned......   (Lui e tutti questi amichetti sono quelli che sostengono la rete di soccorso di Vituzzu e agiscono su commissione negli altri progetti. Se ci fate caso la cricca di Vituzzu ha incarichi dovunque: Blackcat e Jaquen su Commons, Sannita su Wikidata, M7 su Wikiquote, quindi quando serve un favore basta lasciare un messaggio in e-mail e la roba sparisce. E nessuno denuncia niente perché ha paura per la propria utenza......)

	JIMBO, WHERE ARE YOU AND YOUR HONEST MANAGERS? THIS WIKIMAFIA/CRICCA  IS SLOWLY BUT STEADILY DESTROYING YOUR WONDERFUL CREATION OF ITALIAN WIKIPEDIA & WIKIMEDIA!!! AND STARTING TO INFECT ALSO THE ENGLISH WIKIPEDIA......