G'day KP,

I have to give up on Wikipedia, probably just a break, but maybe for good. I think all of the balance on Wikipedia belongs to the vandals, and none to editors trying to improve Wikipedia or trying to make it what it was intended to be. I find many of the administrators I deal with on Wikipediato be arbitrary and capricious.

The last straw was an administrator who permanently banned a user for "Simply wearing out everyone's patience" based upon a request by two users who got banned for harrassing this and another user.[ http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=block&pag... ]

Hmm, I'd be wary of any administrator who so proudly proclaims his allegiance to CVU. I mean, I could replace the "WikiDefcon" template with a flashing neon sign --- "This user is clueless and proud of it" --- and achieve effectively the same result.

Then, the same administartor, who can block someone just because he/she'shaving a bad day, decides not to block an account that has done nothing but vandalize Wikipedia [ http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Administrator_inter...], costing Wikipedia an excellent editor (one of the few taxonomists on Wikipedia). Topped off with a brainless reply by another admin who is actively encouraging ticked off editors to leave Wikipedia, and seems to think the whole thing is about the use of the word poop [ http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk%3AAdministrator_int...]. It's not, it's about the high preference given to vandals over solid contributers by a number of admins with precisely this attitude: if you get irritated at vandals, you're just not tolerant of poop.

Admins are no wiser than any other user. They *used* to be more clueful (I think the effect of Esperanza, userboxen and CVU on RfA has changed that to a degree) on average, but they have the same problems other users have --- including the ability to occasionally misread a situation from time-to-time. Admins doing so once, twice, even three times is not evidence that all admins are dumb. It just means they're human, and make mistakes --- even the better ones.

As for "encouraging users to leave", while there's a lot not to like about ReyBrujo's referenced comment, I don't read it that way. He's just saying: if you aren't enjoying yourself, go do something that you *will* enjoy; don't hang around making everyone else equally miserable. I am an editor (when time permits, which isn't often any more) for one reason: because I like doing it. Do you?

It's not this one incident, it's that Wikipedia is biased towards the vandals. All the discussion about whether or not to credential certainusers is worthless if Wikipedia has administrators who actively encourage research scientists and qualified technical researchers to leave, so that one child vandal who has done nothing but vandalize Wikipedia accounts, can be encouraged to stay and contribute.

I'm not so sure that's a fair characterisation, although arguably admins acting hastily, behaving in a process-oriented manner, or failing to make their reasoning clear, can have that effect.

It's true, we aren't harsh on vandals. We don't want to be. The vast majority of vandals are: a) People thinking they can have a little "fun" with the resource, not realising what Wikipedia is for or why this is Really Bad; "Yeah, it's funny to change my school article to say it's a concentration camp" (vast majority) b) People who aren't really vandals at all but are testing out the editing ability, not realising what they're doing (minority) c) People who aren't really vandals at all but whose edits are wrongly labelled as vandalism by over-hasty admins; e.g. I was once accused of vandalism for blanking an IP talk page that hadn't been used in a year. (C is not common, but happens more often than you'd think)

Of course, you get the career vandals who actively try to hurt Wikipedia, but they don't tend to be treated with kid gloves. Of the categories above, A may, if made to realise the damage they're doing, become a useful editor; B wants to be a useful editor, and if not bawled out will become one; C is the opposite of what you've noticed, and is quite a problem. If someone writes "poop" in an article, informing them that they're pissing in their own drinking water (not quite in those words, of course) is something that the warner should do (this is one reason why I hate the {{test}} templates) before any block occurs, to see if it has any effect. My warnings, back when fighting vandalism was something that people could do casually, always tended to be along the lines of, "Your changes to [foo], [bar], and [baz] are damaging the hard work of others. Please pull your head in, or we'll have to block your ability to edit."

And, please notice, neither of the administrators so gung ho on Curtis and I leaving, ever bothered to take their BS about encouraging folks to contribute positively to the vandal's page to ask him to stay. It's simply empty rhetoric espousing a viewpoint that neither admin even practices,except to encourage scientific knowledge to leave Wikipedia as being less useful than a 7-year-old who has added poopy to 16 articles.

Vandals are potential future editors. Your friends are current editors. We don't want to piss off either group. In the clutch, we should be leaning towards preserving current editors; but if we can do both, as I believe most admins try to do --- if ineptly at times --- this is better.

-- [[User:MarkGallagher]]