[WikiEN-l] Re: User Michael and ways to deal with him

[Daniel Mayer]

Erik Moeller wrote:
> No on the second point. We have already determined that Michael's edits  
> are not worth the trouble. Will you go to the search engines and check  
> every single date in a discography, every little factoid about a band's  
> history? If you're not willing to do this work, you should not talk about  
> "bad edits". If you are, make a promise now, and I will hold you to it.  
> For every Michael edit and every claim.

I wholeheartedly agree and would like to add that undoing such a revert or 
undeleting a page is further enabling the vandal or banned user to subvert 
the ban and continue to do the things that got them banned in the first 
place. That makes the ban useless and the way I see it, it is more than a 
tacit act indicating that whatever the banned user did was OK. 

So since I was the recipient of a death threat by a now banned user then 
pardon me if I may be a bit perplexed and hurt when that user's post-ban 
edits and pages are restored. I know the intent of the person restoring the 
edits are to save what they see as useful content but please consider the big 
picture and understand that by restoring such an edit you nullify the ban and 
encourage the banned user to stick around without having to bother with 
reforming their ways. 

I know our goal is to build an encyclopedia but the wrong way to do this is to 
keep around sloppy, rude and destructive workers who either do not share our 
goal of creating a respected, accurate and free encyclopedia or who have 
other agendas alltogether. 

I would also like to know why if each edit by a banned user is supposed to be 
viewed on its own merits then how the hell is this different than any other 
edit? 

Nobody is compelled to work on enforcing a ban, but please do not work against 
those that do. However, preventing innocent people from getting caught in the 
crossfire is another matter entirely and /is/ a good thing to avoid and /is/ 
something that needs to be further discussed. I also find Martin's ideas for 
SoftBans to be intriguing as a possible way to deal with troublesome users 
before a HardBan is needed.  

Jimbo said it best:
"If we don't revert every change made by a banned user, then we implicit 
encourage them to keep coming back and pulling their stunts over and over."

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)