subject:the wik user instances of support for the user's misbehavior were requested: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Wik&diff=3439565&am... this edit adds the comment:
I'll be needing some help on [[Augusto Pinochet]]. [[User:172|172]] 21:57, 3 May 2004 (UTC)
i arrived at wikipedia a few weeks ago, and have not conflicted with this user, and so my evaluation may be considered more uncolored: early upon arriving here, i perused the special database features, and found the page for highest number of edits. i thought the top users were quite impressive, until learning about the bots. i noted the wik user was not a bot, and thought, well this is an impressive editor then. i checked the user page, and there found wales's very mild attempt at talking the user down, and thus began to learn that the edit count was due to the anti-social edit-warring, and that this user was legendary for this. i have reviewed the edit history extensively, and have found this reputation to be valid.
additionally, edit comments are almost entirely non-existant, with occasional outbursts of abuse and taunts. i don't recall a single usable edit comment. the edit http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Recent_deaths&diff=3349912&am... reverts an unnecessary but harmless stylistic edit by the musicitizen user, and bears the taunt
what do you think you're doing now?
as its comment. it refers to the wik user's earlier series of unprovoked and unanswered abusive comments accompanying reversions of the same user on another matter, and conveys that further edits will be discouraged with reversions. the result of a simple query of edits per this user and the comment string "rv" is demonstrative.
additionally, a few comments contain unyielding hypocrisy, such as "avoid redirect; the solution to this is to ban MusiCitizen if he refuses even to comment on the matter", and one comment suggests the cantus user "mind the three revert limit".
this makes pages a mine field. users have obtained this user as a personal troll for an edit which is adverse, and presumably more will in the future.
the current "wik2" arbitration committee is careening toward a result which is disjointed from the evidence presented: although the user is held to be abusive and problematic, the only immovable conclusion is to not cause offense or prevent editing, for fear of causing a departure. the comment
You will not get me to play along with trolls and POV pushers. If you succeed in getting me banned or prohibiting me from reverting which I'd consider equivalent, then I'll simply be off.
is not a threat to be appeased; it is a refusal to admit the very issue at hand, i.e. the user's trolling and pov pushing; it is evidence that an appeal of personality is believed to be an effective stalling tactic; and it is evidence of incorrigibility. additionally, it provides evidence that an effective ban, ever elusive, may obtain in this case.
action is required additionally due to the efficacy of this user's edit warring: although edit warriors generally stalemate each other, this user prevails via simple volume, and has driven off most editors from articles which have been claimed as personal preserves; this has established a pov for each of these articles which cannot be dislodged. presumably the recent departures are not the last, and yet more editors will be driven off from the entire project through this method.
note: the user is not merely a pure combonation of troll, vandal, edit warrior, and pov warrior. the category is instead "mixed". there is a class of edit of the sort associated with constructive users, i.e. typographical, facts, article series, informations. this is similar to the mode of the anthony user after being warned for trolling. thus the effort will have to lose the appropriate with the profligately anti-social, the baby with the bath water.
i conclude that this user may eventually plague me, and may make wikipedia unusable. due to the long-term futility of disciplinary measures in the general case due to ip technical workarounds, i recommend a code solution which reduces the fragility of the wiki contents.
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I think you've hit on the crux of the matter: if wik were merely an edit-warrior who got into fights everywhere, he would've been banned long ago. It's true some of his edit count is due to edit wars, but some of it is also due to simply being a very prolific editor with apparently a lot of time to devote to Wikipedia, much of it on relatively uncontroversial topics. Sometimes he also turns out to be right in his disputes, and his opponents use tactics no better than his, which further complicates things.
I think in general Wik's behavior isn't a major problem in terms of actual behavior, or at least no worse than any number of other users. The reason he ends up coming up a lot is that there's just so *much* of it. Other controversial users he gets into edit wars with, like User:Nico and User:Cantus, have far fewer edits of any sort (good or bad), so simply have less of a presence on Wikipedia, and therefore even when there are problems the problems are less frequent and more isolated. Wik is just everywhere, so when he gets into disputes, it's hard to ignore them.
As for what to do, it's unclear. The arbitration committee (on which I'm on) has been mulling it over for a while, and among both committee members and non-members, there are people who strongly favor banning wik and people who strongly oppose it (there've been posts of both sorts on this mailing list, for example).
The structural change is something that occasionally gets proposed but hasn't been detailed to anyone's satisfaction yet. The main issue is how we can make things less "fragile" without also losing the characteristic "anyone can edit any page" nature of Wikipedia. Personally, I wouldn't be against losing some of that for more-established pages---once an article has been hashed out over a period of a year or two by hundreds of people, the ability for anyone to change anything seems to do more harm than good. In fact, most major edits to something like, say, [[Israel]] will be reverted anyway unless there is plenty of talk-page discussion about each point first, so maybe it wouldn't hurt to make this restriction more technically-based.
-Mark
Shouldn't there be a [[hard cases make bad law]] page?
Wik-law would be a disaster (Wik being a classic ''hard case''). Laws made just to legislate round Wik, which would be the normal interpretation, risk distorting the whole enterprise.
I'm still for resource-rationing here.
Charles
On Sat, 15 May 2004, Charles Matthews wrote:
Shouldn't there be a [[hard cases make bad law]] page?
Wik-law would be a disaster (Wik being a classic ''hard case''). Laws made just to legislate round Wik, which would be the normal interpretation, risk distorting the whole enterprise.
I'm still for resource-rationing here.
Thank you, Charles. In response to your allusion to law, I consulted my 1933 edition of _Black's Law Dictionary_, only to find myself distracted by finding & reading such entries as "Butler's Ordinance", "Mason Dixon's Line", & the fact that the words "in" & "is" both have legal definitions. Now I shall hate myself unless I can spend an hour or two this weekend browsing this book, rather than busy at more important matters (like contributing to Wikipedia).
FWIW, this is one of the older editions with the legal references (I understand that the latest editions removed them, a change that made this Dictionary less useful to lawyers). For example, the phrase "hard cases make bad law" (according to my copy of Black's) appeared most famously in Moore v. Pierson, 6 Iowa, 279, 71 Am. Dec. 409; & the related phrase "hard cases are the quicksands of the law" in Metropolitan Nat. Bank v. Campbell Commission Co. (C.C.), 77 F. 705.
Geoff
Much of the fire, as opposed to the light, that eminates from Wik concerns editing disputes which do not affect the content of an article, being over such questions as whether Vietnam is in Southeast Asia or in East Asia, or whether Mongolia is in Central Asia or in East Asia, etc. So no matter whether Wik "wins" or not, and he does usually win as he never gives up or wastes time talking with other users about disputes, the article itself is basically unaffected.
He does affect Wikipedia as he serves for others as a model of how to impose your will and get your way. He will also (eventually) serve as an example of what happens if you continually buck the minimum requests Wikipedia makes of users in the way of etiquette.
Fred
From: Delirium delirium@hackish.org Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Fri, 14 May 2004 19:47:58 -0700 To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] the wik user
The structural change is something that occasionally gets proposed but hasn't been detailed to anyone's satisfaction yet. The main issue is how we can make things less "fragile" without also losing the characteristic "anyone can edit any page" nature of Wikipedia. Personally, I wouldn't be against losing some of that for more-established pages---once an article has been hashed out over a period of a year or two by hundreds of people, the ability for anyone to change anything seems to do more harm than good. In fact, most major edits to something like, say, [[Israel]] will be reverted anyway unless there is plenty of talk-page discussion about each point first, so maybe it wouldn't hurt to make this restriction more technically-based.
On Fri, 14 May 2004 19:47:58 -0700, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
I think you've hit on the crux of the matter: if wik were merely an edit-warrior who got into fights everywhere, he would've been banned long ago.
This is no doubt true.
It's true some of his edit count is due to edit wars, but some of it is also due to simply being a very prolific editor with apparently a lot of time to devote to Wikipedia, much of it on relatively uncontroversial topics. Sometimes he also turns out to be right in his disputes, and his opponents use tactics no better than his, which further complicates things.
I think in general Wik's behavior isn't a major problem in terms of actual behavior,
I disagree. When Wik's behaviour drives off respected members of the Wikipedia community such as [User:Tannin], it is a problem for us all.
Wik has made some useful edits. Unfortunately he also has a very abrasive manner. This means that his behaviour often annoys other Wikipedians, who are sometimes as a consequence discouraged from further contributing to Wikipedia as a consequence.
It seems to me that the amount of good edits Wik has made may well be less than the number of good edits other people have been discouraged from making as a consequence of Wik's actions. If this is the case, then Wik's overall effect is a negative one.
The structural change is something that occasionally gets proposed but hasn't been detailed to anyone's satisfaction yet. The main issue is how we can make things less "fragile" without also losing the characteristic "anyone can edit any page" nature of Wikipedia.
I'm not sure that's possible.
Personally, I wouldn't be against losing some of that for more-established pages---once an article has been hashed out over a period of a year or two by hundreds of people, the ability for anyone to change anything seems to do more harm than good.
That may well be the case. Consider how the front page has been protected, to stop vandals.
In fact, most major edits to something like, say, [[Israel]] will be reverted anyway unless there is plenty of talk-page discussion about each point first, so maybe it wouldn't hurt to make this restriction more technically-based.
Where there are contentious pages -- of which [[Israel]] is one -- then perhaps the software could explicitly mark them as contentious and deal with them differently from normal pages.
For example, how about a rule that contentious pages can only be edited by logged-in users whose accounts have been active for at least one month?