Forum:Accounts flooding, possible threat?

Hello, I'd like to have more opinion on this matter: on One Piece Wiki we have tons of new users per day (in the last month we had about 500 new users) but the most of them don't ever make an edit. Probably similar situations occur on other wikis, but what concern me the most is among these users there are many with absurd names, like Asahhhfhdhhhhtfhhgh, Asahhhfhdhhhyhtfhhgh, GAsahhhfhdhhhyhtfhhgh, GAsahhhfhdhhjhyhtfhhgh, GAsahhhfhdhhjhyhutfhhgh, Qqqqqai etc., and the strange thing is that they are created "in progression" like Qqqqa, Qqqqb, Qqqqc, Qqqqd, Qqqqe and they were all made with a gap of only 3 seconds between them (11 feb 2012 14:34, 14:37, 14:40, 14:43, 14:46), hence these is definitely weird and possibly prove that is the work of an automatic software. Since the talk pages are useless (they don't answer, and if they are sock puppets they won't get the notice of new messages if they don't log in), I proposed to temporary ban some of them and leave them a message asking to explain their intentions, basically something like "if you want to edit here tell me and I'll unban you" (but the ban will expire anyway). This way if they don't mean any harm they are more then welcome, it's just an expedient to get their attention. To read more, see this forum.

Again, we are talking about hundreds of accounts possibly in the hand of one or few users. I'd like to ear more opinion on this, thank you.


 * Looks like some form of spam. I'd notify the staff or VSTF.


 * Maybe they're running some sort of advertisement scheme - trying to increase pageviews for the ads on your wiki or something. Or manipulating google search results...-- 22:38, February 11, 2012 (UTC)