Some sites ask users to "sign" agreements related to their activities on the site and absolving the site owner of any damage the site may cause the user's computer or brain. I don't recall having to agree to anything when I first joined Wikipedia except to allow my work to be mercilessly edited should I choose to submit any. Had I signed an agreement to abstain from behavior that could be considered mischevious or detrimental to the safety of Wiki and its members, on the consequence of (fill in here), then (a) I might be less inclined to launch vandal bots in the first place, and if I did then (b) all the yelling to lawyers I wanted to do would serve for nothing when I got banned for life.
The actions the bot took yesterday did not just affect Angela, Texture, and other users whose user pages were trashed, it affected a whole community. The letter replacements on Town Pump and cleanup were offensive to me, and the condition of the VfD page was such that I just refrained from participating.
When the action of one user has an impact such as this on an entire community, then there should be reasonable consequences. Certainly a hard ban, whether for three months or one year or life would not be inappropriate. It is time to kill the clowns.
Denni
-- "The difference between extra-marital sex and extra marital sex is not to be sneezed at." --George Will, on hyphen use _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Visit my Wikipedia user page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User%3ADwindrim Do you ICQ? I do - 276534369 Magpie