LittleDan wrote (about Jimmy's comment on Michael): It doesn't prohibit your checking all of the facts in his edits and placing back what is correct under your own name, that is taking responsibility for the facts yourself. But if you do this, then I strongly suggest that you *not* simply revert to a previous version with rollback, or else nobody will know that you're taking responsibility. Instead, write a summary along the lines of "I stand behind these facts.", so that we know that you're not simply undoing a deletion. IOW, there's good evidence that Michael can't be trusted, so other editors will trust you only if you make it clear that you're not just writing something because you trust Michael! For added safety, never edit a previous version that Michael wrote, but instead make all of the changes in the reversion by hand. This will remind you if you ever write down a fact that you haven't checked. (But now I'm getting into advice on the details of your editing process, so you could probably ignore this paragraph.) -- Toby

--- Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren(a)yahoo.com> wrote: Yes, it does. There is no such thing as a good Michael edit. Unless you want to to go the trouble of verifying that every single thing he wrote was correct, don't even try to think that there is a good Michael edit. And besides, Jimbo has said he is banned until he sends him an email saying that he wants to be reinstated. He is specifically contraverting Jimbo's stand on the subject until such a time, and because of that, and because of the time-consuming problem of verifying each and every thing he writes, blanket reversion is the only recourse. Zoe __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM). http://calendar.yahoo.com

Jimmy O'Regan wrote: Spoke too soon. Sorry 'bout that.

--- Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren(a)yahoo.com> wrote: The owner of the site has declared that Michael is not allowed to make edits on Wikipedia, good or bad. Lacking the technical means to enforce this ban, we have decided to try a soft ban. It would be nice if you didn't subvert those efforts. A little analogy: suppose you had a child who keeps screaming for sweets. You have three options: 1) always give in 2) sometimes give in 3) never give in. Option 2 is by far the worst. Axel __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM). http://calendar.yahoo.com

At 12:08 PM 6/2/2003, you wrote: Anthere, you take the analogy too far. Of course you are correct that it is about more than just sweets with the children, and that the two absolutes would be bad... but only because you care about the children, and your goal is the long term welfare of the children. In the analogy though, the child is Michael, and our goal is not his long-term well-being, but getting him to stop vandalizing the Wikipedia. Therefore, I hold that option 3 (never giving him sweets -> always reverting everything) is the best way to handle the situation. ----- Dante Alighieri dalighieri(a)digitalgrapefruit.com "The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of great moral crisis." -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321

I agree with Anthere and Axel on this, and I think they are talking past each other. The issue here is rewarding bad behavior sporadically -- that's a good way -- the best way I can think of -- to get lots and lots more bad behavior out of someone. So, it isn't really similar to decisions about candy. --Jimbo Anthere wrote:

Hi All, I guess that as the person doing most of the reverting I should say something about my actions. I put this on KF's talk page after he/she asked why I was reverting changes made by 24.130.213.242; ------------------- Hi KF, I'm certain that User:24.130.213.242 is User:Michael. It's an IP address he's used before (look at the contributions), they edited 1991 in music and then 2 minutes later User:Michael/Crass did the same and the edits are on Michael's pet subjects. The IP has just been banned, see Vandalism in progress. The issue of what to do with Michael's contributions has been debated at length and I'm sure will continue to be, I'm in the revert on sight camp. Not wanting to sound too self-important, with my finals fast approaching, I can't afford to spend time cross-checking everything Michael adds with other sites on the internet before deciding whether or not it is accurate. He has a history of adding incorrect information and I hate the thought of leaving incorrect information on here. So, for me, reversion is the only choice. Please feel free to go and revert me if you wish but please check the information against something. Anyway, I must sleep now, have fun -- Ams80 22:57 31 May 2003 (UTC) -------------------- While I was writing the above someone (I think The Anome) blocked the IP address and things quietened down. As an example of why I feel reverting was the right thing to do, [[The Rescuers]] was added to [[1978 in film]] which looks completely innocuous. However, [[1977 in film]] lists The Rescuers as being made then, The Rescuers article says 1977, IMDb says 1977, a Google search for 'The Rescuers movie' brings up lots of 1977 and no 1978 that I can see. So now the page history has the slightly comedic; a.. (cur) (last) . . M 00:17 1 Jun 2003 . . JohnOwens (Reverted to last edit by Ams80) a.. (cur) (last) . . 00:07 1 Jun 2003 . . LittleDan (Reverted to last edit by 24.130.213.242) a.. (cur) (last) . . 23:20 31 May 2003 . . Ams80 (Reverted to last edit by 67.80.218.119) a.. (cur) (last) . . 23:19 31 May 2003 . . 24.130.213.242 I've watched the Michael situation develop ever since he's been here, right back to the days of Graham (Quercus Robur) (an infinitely more authorative source) attempting to keep the Crass page free of Michael's rubbish, the Crass talk page and the Crass page history are both perfect examples of Michael's behaviour, insisting he's correct and abusing others about things which he is demonstrably wrong about. Add to this vandalism of user pages and many page's histories filled with filth (look at the contributions from Michael/Crass for examples) and you have the Michael picture. The argument against reversion on sight seems to me to be mainly that there's no point in removing valid information and for the vast, vast majority of users I would agree with that. I personally feel that it is more important for the project that the information we have is factual, I would much rather lower the amount of information we have by removing Michael's additions than leave the site growing in the knowledge that a proportion of what Michael adds is incorrect. The suggestion to me that "If you don't have any time to check the accuracy of Michael's edits, perhaps you shouldn't revert his edits at all." I completely reject, if Quercus and Zoe and Camembert and John Owens and Dante and countless others had done just this then there would be a lot of pages in worse states than they are now. For a while there was a concerted effort to be nice to Michael and to check everything he did, leave the good and remove the bad. In my opinion this just said to Michael that he could crash around writing whatever the hell he liked, swearing at others, abusing others, vandalising user pages, insisting he was right about everything and people would go around tidying up after him and being nice to him. I really do not think that that is an effective way to do things. Why, if I want to keep this place accurate, should I trawl the internet looking for obscure information about bands and films that I have no interest in? Perhaps I should be a little more explicit. I would like Michael to leave the project, I think he has outstayed his welcome and I trust nothing that he writes. Unless a definite policy is made regarding what to do with Michael's edits is made, or unless Jimmy Wales tells me not to, I am going to continue reverting Michael's contributions without discussion with him. In the hour I spent with Michael last night I also did an hour of revision, spending a few minutes in total pressing refresh on his contibutions page and reverting anything new. Following him around checking all his additions would have meant not revising and wasting hours of my time. If someone would like to assure me that they will check each and every fact that Michael adds then I will happily just leave a note on that person's talk page every time Michael shows up and let them deal with it. And I don't mean just looking at the addition and checking the spelling and that there's no swearing in it, each and every fact about bands and films from the 70s and 80s need checking and I think few of us are expert enough to be able to do this without spending time checking with another reference. Michael spent between two and two and a half hours editing yesterday and apart from a few reversions un-reverted by other users Michael's contributions sum to nothing (apart from having got to swear a lot at others and telling them he would rape them if they reverted his additions). Personally I hope that he will get bored, if I was putting in hours of effort every day, all of which got removed I would eventually stop. His latest additions form User:Administrator only lasted 10 minutes before he stopped (with everything being reverted), perhaps he is getting bored, on the ohter hand this is Michael who appears almost impossible to psychoanalyze. Sorry that this has turned into a bit of a rant, I just don't have much sympathy for Michael right now. I also haven't really responded to Kingturtle yet, I admit that while I was reverting Mchael's anonymous additions it wouldn't have been clear to some why or what I was doing. I'm not really sure of what the best thing to do would have been regarding informing others. A note on my own talk page perhaps? I guess it's easier when he's signed in as then we can link the user name to Michael/ban or something. If someone has a good idea for what to do I will happily do that in the future. Anyway, have good days, Andrew (Ams80) ----- Original Message ----- From: "Oliver Brown" <oliver(a)kingturtle.com> To: <wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org> Sent: Monday, June 02, 2003 12:29 AM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] blanket reverts

Kingturtle wrote: This is a quite reasonable request, but the technical system that we have to make reversion easy -- the rollback feature -- doesn't have a space for comments. And ideas for aiding that? -- Toby

Brion Vibber wrote: So do you think that reverting Michael's edits require comments? If so, then it'll be a lot slower for Zoe et al to do so. Or, do you think that Kingturtle (and newer users) don't need to be reminded in every reversion about Michael? If so, then there'll continue to be mistaken re-reversions. -- Toby

Brion Vibber wrote in large part: Yeah, that's about what I could think of. That's why I asked if anybody had any ideas. ^_^ -- Toby

i have come across blanked articles. articles should be deleted, or marked for deletion. they should never be blanked. -kingturtle