You all may remember [[User:JarlaxleArtemis]], who has been "editing" the
English Wikipedia since 2004, at age 15. Originally he was an apparently
good-faith editor, but was sanctioned by ArbCom in early 2005 for somewhat
immature outbursts, copyright violations, and erratic behavior; eventually
he pulled such stunts as putting his teacher's e-mail address on his
userpage encouraging people to harass the "fucking bitch," e-mail bombing
people who deleted his copyvios, and finally impersonating users and
vandalizing with what would come to be hundreds of sockpuppets, all while
claiming to be the victim. He was banned:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/JarlaxleArte
mis_2
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Linuxbeak/Admin_stuff/Jarlaxl
eArtemis
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Linuxbeak/Admin_stuff/Jarlax
leArtemis&action=edit&oldid=117471376> &action=edit&oldid=117471376
He sockpuppeted and vandalized for a while after that, but apparently
disappeared in 2006. One would have hoped maybe he grew out of his teenage
phase and decided to get on with doing something productive instead.
But sadly, the story doesn't end there. In mid-2007, he reappeared with a
new "persona"... the move-vandal "Grawp." Unlike his ostensible
predecessor
Willy on Wheels, who at least had a harmless light-hearted flair to him, as
"Grawp" Jarlaxle relished in specifically targeting users and sticking their
personal information (usually gleaned from Daniel Brandt's website) in his
page-move titles along with death threats and rape threats. Eventually we
discovered that Grawp was in fact JarlaxleArtemis, and he only got more
persistent and venomous (probably because as Jarlaxle, he was very open
about his real-life identity and location himself.)
About a week ago, having been one of Jarlaxle's recent targets, I decided to
take matters into my own hand, and found his mother's contact information
and wrote to her to inform her of the awful misdeeds her son's been up to.
(While Jarlaxle is 19, he lives with his mother, and performs most of his
vandalism from her Internet connection.) Instead of replying to me, however,
she complained to OTRS that I was falsely accusing her son, who she insisted
was JarlaxleArtemis but not Grawp. Jarlaxle then proceeded to prove her
wrong... by vandalizing multiple wikis as "Grawp" later that night from the
same IP address his mother sent her e-mail from. The ticket was handed to
ArbCom, who replied to her with this evidence and the assurance that her son
was in fact the one responsible... but received a response that she didn't
believe them, didn't care, and was blocking all further e-mail from
Wikimedia. (Though it's been suggested that Jarlaxle himself may have
written that mail.) And he's continued to vandalize as recently as tonight.
Personally, I'm utterly bamboozled. This kid is nineteen years old and in
college; he's an adult, and he has his entire life ahead of him. Yet he
still continues to anonymously threaten and harass people on the Internet,
even though he's clearly stepped into illegal territory, his identity is
known along with reams of evidence of his misdeeds connecting them to him,
and his parent upon whom he's still dependent has been alerted. And he still
soldiers on, using Mom's broadband to move pages on Wikipedia to titles "I
will rape and murder (insert admin here)." What could possibly be running
through his mind? And how can he be stopped?
-Fran