[WikiEN-l] NO-FX ban

[Daniel Ehrenberg]

Don't throw around the term 'mental problems'; my
little brother is autistic.<p>
Erik, it takes no work to type in 'a' for each
criterion when signing up for yahoo or hotmail.
<p>Erik said:<p>
<blockquote>
Brion-
> Stop giving him the satisfaction of making a big
fuss. Just revert 
crap
> that's crap, and work with stuff that's good (should
there be any). 
What
> more do we need?

First: Lee has banned No-Fx, so this will only be
applicable to the 
next  
incarnation, should there be any.

Neither option is very appealing. Michael seems to be
a person with 
mental  
problems, and I doubt he much cares about the
existence of other users 
on  
Wikipedia at all. He considers it his playground, or
maybe an 
information  
storage system. Those who try to talk to him are
insulted.

Furthermore, it is not easy to determine which of the
information he  
inserts is actual junk. For example, a couple of days
ago I noticed 
that  
he had changed one on the articles on my watchlist and
modified the  
release date of an album. I checked the date from
multiple sources, and  
the old one was correct. I do not know where he gets
his information 
from,  
but much of it is quite obviously incorrect.  Add to
this the personal  
insult to people like Zoe, on whose user page he put
the text "I like 
oral  
sex" and pasted the whole oral sex article.

Just reverting everything he writes may be an
acceptable solution for 
the  
time being, but it's also considerable work, and
needlessly spams the  
server. Every couple of days some newbie will ask why
we do it because 
his  
edits seem to be acceptable. I would really like to
see these matters  
resolved more quickly and concentrate on writing an
encyclopedia.  
Otherwise I fear at some point we might have 10 or 20
users like him at  
our hands in the future.

There may be the option of threatening legal action,
but if Michael is 
as  
stubborn as I think, that will also not really deter
him.

>> I should point out that the problem of users
appearing under dozens 
of
>> names would probably go away if we required an
email confirmation 
during
>> signup, although that might deter some users from
creating an 
account.

> You have heard of hotmail and yahoo, right? :)

True, but signing up for a new account takes time --
all these email  
account providers ask plenty of questions. He may go
through it a 
couple  
of times, but unless he is a script kiddie, he'll
probably get tired of 
it  
soon enough.

Regards,

Erik
</blockquote>

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