On 5/10/07, Gallagher Mark George m.g.gallagher@student.canberra.edu.au wrote:
G'day Mgm,
On 5/10/07, Gallagher Mark George m.g.gallagher@student.canberra.edu.auwrote:
Absolutely. However, a good admin should be able to help out vandals (first definition) without losing reasonable current editors. I don't recall ever losing a current editor because I was being too nice to a first definition vandal --- and that includes several situations where the "vandal" has had extremely poor social skills, or has been the very upset subject of a BLP, or was mentally unstable, or something else occurred where the vandal was not at his most co-operative.
Of course, I never said to a current editor, "Policy says give another warning. No, I don't intend to do anything yet. You must follow process. Did you use {{testN}}? The whole sequence? I didn't think so. Go back and do it again." Instead, I'd say something equivalent to the above, only shorter --- "I'm going to give her another chance. She's new here and doesn't understand our rules. How would you feel if someone had misrepresented YOU in a biography? If she goes too far, I will handle it, but until then, let's wait and see what happens."
Cheers,
-- [[User:MarkGallagher]]
Of course, again everyone neglects the fact that the administrators who chose to give the vandals another chance did nothing of this sort whatsoever, speaking to the vandals, reasoning with them.
In fact, it was essentially, assume 100% bad faith on the part of established editors, and assume, without any evidence, and without doing anything whatsoever to facilitate it, that the vandal is reformable.
That's why I never bother giving particulars or facts or examples on this list, they're completely ignored, just like the contributions of editors who don't vandalize are completely ignored on Wikipedia, and undervalued on the offchance that without any effort to do so whatsoever, a vandal may be reformed.
Isn't there any part of assume good faith that applies to those who aren't vandalizing Wikipedia? Nope.
KP