Brion, I think that ultimately, you are right -- vigilance and patient deletion or reversion is the only way to deal with such a troll. But even reverting crap is a form of swatting. If the question is whether we simply ignore someone and let them do what they want, or act in some way against vandalism, it seems we all agree on some form of action.
The question is, what form. From context it seems like you are arguing against banning. Well -- and I raise this as a general question, not just concerning No-FX -- would you ban under any circumstances?
Clearly, banned people will always have a way to work around a ban. But from the discussion I have seen on this page, the main point of banning is not that it effectively keeps someone out; rather, once it is clear that a banned person has returned, other members of the community have more authority (ok, not a great word here -- let's say less cause for self-doubt?) in deleting or reverting.
Steve
At 03:34 PM 5/22/2003 -0700, you wrote:
On Fri, 23 May 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:
No-Fx has vandalized Zoe's user page. He appears to be yet another reincarnation of the banned user Michael, working on the same articles in the same style and not responding to messages.
So, should we ban him? He will probably just reappear under a new name, but if we do this often enough, he might be deterred.
It seems he's found a delightful game: bait the Wikipedians and watch them swat. People play this game with their cats all the time; neither cat nor human ever seem to tire of it.
But what if the cat stops swatting? The cruel human will get bored and stop taunting the poor cat with yarn / flashlight / laser pointer.
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?
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? :)
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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