G'day Mgm,

On 5/10/07, Gallagher Mark George m.g.gallagher@student.canberra.edu.auwrote:

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Vandals are potential future editors. Your friends are current editors. We don't want to piss off either group. In the

clutch, we should

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be leaning towards preserving current editors; but if we can do

both, as I

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believe most admins try to do --- if ineptly at times --- this

is better.

Has there ever been research about how many vandals reform and become good editors? I would be very surprised if this was any significant percentage of the total.

If we define "vandal" as a person who, at some point or other, has been justly or unjustly accused of vandalism, then I'd say (the plural of anecdote is data!) absolutely, plenty of them "reform". If we define it instead as a person who deliberately and systematically attempted to harm the project, not so many. As I pointed out in my post, I would come under that first definition --- and, I suspect, so would you. I should hope *we* are considered reformed!

That some editors turn out to be vandals (second definition) who won't reform doesn't justify going all paramilitary on any vandals (first definition) we see. There is very rarely a need to get gung-ho and behave like a CVU member when dealing with vandals (either definition), so treating them the way I espoused in my last post is the Right Thing to do anyway. It costs us nothing if we do it right, and we might gain some good editors --- or avoid pissing off some good editors unjustly accused.

We have a policy about that --- it's called "Assume Good Faith". My reading it has always been, if there are two ways you can read a person's behaviour, choose the one most likely to accord with good faith on his part. An alternative reading that works just as well is: "cock-up before conspiracy". We don't need to (metaphorically) club people over the head for making harmful edits --- at least, not before we explain to them that the edits are damaging the real work of real people and that they're pissing in their own drinking water. We don't need to string up everyone that someone calls a vandal, and as long as we're being hasty and assuming conspiracy over cock-up every time, that's the result we'll achieve.

It's worth more to keep current editors than to help out people who are currently a nuisance and may or may not become helpful later.

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,