User:Term19/Anwir Prota: A Case Study

In political environments, we see trolls arise. This is the inevitability of political settings. User AZ/Anwir Prota was one such figure. Most vandals are short-lived, or continue until a ban, and then stop. But Anwir Prota was no such vandal. He was so persistent that he created hundreds of sock-puppets to vandalize WikiMedia domains using WikiMedia's own Wikitext Markup Language as seen here: https://pastebin.com/FLRyMUWR.

His motives seemed to change over time, from vigilant attacks, to doing it just for the sheer fun of it. Like other vandals, he craved attention and loved watching the stir he created in communities. His first non-anonymous account was AntiProxima on June 6th, 2019. He previously harassed Liberapedia administrator, Proxima Centauri. He loved to get noticed, especially by other local administrators, and global staff. Most vandals attempt at avoiding detection, but he would put the effects right in their face.

Next, he vandalized templates themselves, meaning he likely wanted to hide his methods, while having his results placed out in the open. These were features only the best editors of WikiMedia sites knew how to utilize. In late December, of 2019, he stopped. He would make very few accounts here and there. He would attempt to vandalize most likely but running into new spam filtration systems.

Because by now, most wikis were not open to public editing, he would have to create another account to repeat phishing and wikitext vandalism attacks. By late 2020, he was posting threats on Fandom-Wikia forums. He attacked administrators, rumor having it that he doxed a multitude of them, as well as countless Fandom-Wikia users.

One of our best sources of information on Anwir is his account, Anti Sinistram AZ on Fandom. This would tell us that Anwir's ultimate goal was antagonism towards the Liberapedia community and spread outward across Fandom from there. He claims to be a member of multiple prominent Discord troll groups. There may even be multiple "Prota" or "AZ" figures competing for his name. Some believe Anwir Prota to be the new alias of older vandal, Liam Rutherford, a previous Liberapedia vandal from as early as 2016, likely beginning his career in mid-2017, only a few months apart from Anwir.

Multiple users and clans across various isolated platforms claim affiliation with Anwir Prota, even though it appears he has retired altogether from vandalism within the last month as of January, 2022.

Profile edit

  • He is an expert in the software and user behavior. He knows many features, notable influential characters in the community and may be a prominent wiki administrator himself.
  • He uses Firefox and has a 32-bit machine and seems to be a former member of countless online troll forums & organizations.
  • He despises the user status inequalities of WikiMedia, as evidenced by his proclaimed affiliation with a multitude of vandal groups such as Project Sengula, strongly suggesting him as a normal user of no importance, but is odd considering his claims, or perhaps deluded fantasies, of owning a wiki named Moderate-Rightpedia in mid 2019.
  • From the association with Project Sengula we know he is a libertarian and despises leftist politics.
  • His sockpuppet name references to staff show that he watches everything and enjoys gaining the attention.