We have stewards who impose global IP locks and global account locks frequently for the purpose of blocking spam. Would it make sense to develop a tool that globally removes every edit of an editor who has been blocked by a steward or global admin for spamming, or is that too much power to give to stewards and global admins? My guess is that this would remove a lot of spam from smaller wikis that lack the volunteer resources to do a lot of local spam cleanup, but there are tradeoffs.

Pine

Date: Thu, 2 May 2013 21:03:07 -0300
From: tom@wikimedia.org
To: wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org; wikimediabr-l@lists.wikimedia.org
CC: jxavier@wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Why are users blocked on Wikipedia?

I really would like to see such analysis for other Wikipedias where we have a much more limited number of volunteers working to combat spam.

I remember of a WikiMeeting in São Paulo (one of the biggest so far, I think in 2012 when global development folks visited here) where some very commited wikipedians where trying to explain non addicted wikipedians on the importance of removing those spam links added consciously by paid people.

Spam is a real issue and I am afraid it can somehow damage some communities health leaving them overloaded, hence less tolerant to new editors. Maybe when this happen to the English Wikipedia then it will become a real issue.

Tom

On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 7:45 PM, Sumana Harihareswara <sumanah@wikimedia.org> wrote:

http://blog.ironholds.org/?p=31

Ironholds looked at a sample of users with one or more edits to enwiki
who were blocked in 2006-2012. The short version: spam is a bigger
problem than vandalism or sockpuppetry, and the spam problem is growing.

--
Everton Zanella Alvarenga (also Tom)
"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing."

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