I just want to reiterate my full support for Zoe on this one. Zoe (and several other good Wikicitizens) have been implementing a soft ban on our misguided friend with the dynamic IP. People, we *can't* implement a hard ban. At least not without banning several good and useful contributors as well. On the whole, much as I'd like to see the back of our socially-challemged friend, I'd rather contribute to a Wikipedia that had Micheal around than a Wikipedia that managed to ban him only at the expense of banning Danny as well!
If Mav's suggestion of complaining to AOL works, then great! But I won't hold my breath for that.
The soft ban is the answer. Zoe and about six or eight others (incuding me) have taken to ruthlessly reverting *everything* that Michael posts. We don't bother reading it or tying to work out if it contains a shred of fact or not (with Michael's stuff, this is damn near impossible anyway - in 10 minutes he can post up enough of that devilishly twisted mixture of fact and fiction to keep two or three copy-editors busy checking on "facts" and correcting 50% of them for several hours). None of us have time for that idiocy: the only sensible way to deal with Michael is to revert on sight and without compunction. Three clicks and the 'pedia is idiocy-free once more, and *you* are back to working on something *useful* again.
Best of all, because it only takes a few moments and hardly any thought at all to blanket-revert Michael edits (excuse me while I shout this bit) ... WE REVERSE THE BURDEN OF LABOUR! For the first time, it's harder for him than it is for us. Instead of *us* taking hours to clean up the mess that *he* creates in mere minutes, when we just revert Michael unread and on sight, we can undo his many minutes of creative vandalism in just a few seconds. I know he's a determined little horror, but no-one can push that sort of load uphill for too long.
Hell, if I was Tsar Jimbo, I think I'd un-ban his user names in the hope that he started posting as "Michael" or "No-FX" again - 'cause that just makes it easier to spot Michael edits and revert them. Anything he can post in an hour, Zoe can rollback in three minutes flat.
Or me. Or Quercus. Or *you*.
Let's all pitch in, people. Think of it as an experiment in psychology. How long would *you* keep on making contributions to the 'pedia for if every single edit you ever made was reverted without coment inside of ten minutes? Tony Wilson (Tannin)
Tony Wilson wrote:
Let's all pitch in, people. Think of it as an experiment in psychology. How long would *you* keep on making contributions to the 'pedia for if every single edit you ever made was reverted without coment inside of ten minutes? Tony Wilson (Tannin)
Yes! I'm ready! :-) But, uh, how do I recognize the Michael edits?
Stan
I would help, but how do you tell that it is michael's work without reading it? --LittleDan
--- Tony Wilson list@redhill.net.au wrote:
I just want to reiterate my full support for Zoe on this one. Zoe (and several other good Wikicitizens) have been implementing a soft ban on our misguided friend with the dynamic IP. People, we *can't* implement a hard ban. At least not without banning several good and useful contributors as well. On the whole, much as I'd like to see the back of our socially-challemged friend, I'd rather contribute to a Wikipedia that had Micheal around than a Wikipedia that managed to ban him only at the expense of banning Danny as well!
If Mav's suggestion of complaining to AOL works, then great! But I won't hold my breath for that.
The soft ban is the answer. Zoe and about six or eight others (incuding me) have taken to ruthlessly reverting *everything* that Michael posts. We don't bother reading it or tying to work out if it contains a shred of fact or not (with Michael's stuff, this is damn near impossible anyway - in 10 minutes he can post up enough of that devilishly twisted mixture of fact and fiction to keep two or three copy-editors busy checking on "facts" and correcting 50% of them for several hours). None of us have time for that idiocy: the only sensible way to deal with Michael is to revert on sight and without compunction. Three clicks and the 'pedia is idiocy-free once more, and *you* are back to working on something *useful* again.
Best of all, because it only takes a few moments and hardly any thought at all to blanket-revert Michael edits (excuse me while I shout this bit) ... WE REVERSE THE BURDEN OF LABOUR! For the first time, it's harder for him than it is for us. Instead of *us* taking hours to clean up the mess that *he* creates in mere minutes, when we just revert Michael unread and on sight, we can undo his many minutes of creative vandalism in just a few seconds. I know he's a determined little horror, but no-one can push that sort of load uphill for too long.
Hell, if I was Tsar Jimbo, I think I'd un-ban his user names in the hope that he started posting as "Michael" or "No-FX" again - 'cause that just makes it easier to spot Michael edits and revert them. Anything he can post in an hour, Zoe can rollback in three minutes flat.
Or me. Or Quercus. Or *you*.
Let's all pitch in, people. Think of it as an experiment in psychology. How long would *you* keep on making contributions to the 'pedia for if every single edit you ever made was reverted without coment inside of ten minutes? Tony Wilson (Tannin)
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--- Tony Wilson list@redhill.net.au wrote:
I just want to reiterate my full support for Zoe on this one. Zoe (and several other good Wikicitizens) have been implementing a soft ban on our misguided friend with the dynamic IP. People, we *can't* implement a hard ban. At least not without banning several good and useful contributors as well. On the whole, much as I'd like to see the back of our socially-challemged friend, I'd rather contribute to a Wikipedia that had Micheal around than a Wikipedia that managed to ban him only at the expense of banning Danny as well!
If Mav's suggestion of complaining to AOL works, then great! But I won't hold my breath for that.
The soft ban is the answer. Zoe and about six or eight others (incuding me) have taken to ruthlessly reverting *everything* that Michael posts. We don't bother reading it or tying to work out if it contains a shred of fact or not (with Michael's stuff, this is damn near impossible anyway - in 10 minutes he can post up enough of that devilishly twisted mixture of fact and fiction to keep two or three copy-editors busy checking on "facts" and correcting 50% of them for several hours). None of us have time for that idiocy: the only sensible way to deal with Michael is to revert on sight and without compunction. Three clicks and the 'pedia is idiocy-free once more, and *you* are back to working on something *useful* again.
Best of all, because it only takes a few moments and hardly any thought at all to blanket-revert Michael edits (excuse me while I shout this bit) ... WE REVERSE THE BURDEN OF LABOUR! For the first time, it's harder for him than it is for us. Instead of *us* taking hours to clean up the mess that *he* creates in mere minutes, when we just revert Michael unread and on sight, we can undo his many minutes of creative vandalism in just a few seconds. I know he's a determined little horror, but no-one can push that sort of load uphill for too long.
Hell, if I was Tsar Jimbo, I think I'd un-ban his user names in the hope that he started posting as "Michael" or "No-FX" again - 'cause that just makes it easier to spot Michael edits and revert them. Anything he can post in an hour, Zoe can rollback in three minutes flat.
Or me. Or Quercus. Or *you*.
Let's all pitch in, people. Think of it as an experiment in psychology. How long would *you* keep on making contributions to the 'pedia for if every single edit you ever made was reverted without coment inside of ten minutes? Tony Wilson (Tannin)
Hum..."reverting" on sight is one thing. Anyone really wishing to work on one of his article can go dig it up.
However, "deleting" on sight is another matter. Would you (that is a plural you, not you specifically Tannin) consider please, blanking his articles instead of deleting them. Then, either list the blanked articles on the vfd in case anyone would wish to work on them, or let them blank (which would make them appear next time the "short pages" is working again).
I think it is more respectful to do this way. And blanking them hardly take more time than reverting other articles with history. Plus, blanking them is an action everybody wishing to help 'yous' can do, while deletion on sight is necessarily a unilateral decision from a sysop.
Thanks for reading me
Anthere
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On Mon, 26 May 2003, Anthere wrote:
Hum..."reverting" on sight is one thing. Anyone really wishing to work on one of his article can go dig it up.
However, "deleting" on sight is another matter. Would you (that is a plural you, not you specifically Tannin) consider please, blanking his articles instead of deleting them. Then, either list the blanked articles on the vfd in case anyone would wish to work on them, or let them blank (which would make them appear next time the "short pages" is working again).
I think it is more respectful to do this way. And blanking them hardly take more time than reverting other articles with history. Plus, blanking them is an action everybody wishing to help 'yous' can do, while deletion on sight is necessarily a unilateral decision from a sysop.
That sounds sensible to me. I think it's best if we stick with reversible actions, so that if anyone is interested they can go back through the article histories to see if anything can be salvaged, after Michael has gone.
Oliver
+-------------------------------------------+ | Oliver Pereira | | Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science | | University of Southampton | | omp199@ecs.soton.ac.uk | +-------------------------------------------+
Anthere-
However, "deleting" on sight is another matter. Would you (that is a plural you, not you specifically Tannin) consider please, blanking his articles instead of deleting them. Then, either list the blanked articles on the vfd in case anyone would wish to work on them, or let them blank (which would make them appear next time the "short pages" is working again).
Blanking leaves lots of useless pages that show up in title searches and have to be manually removed by going through the short article list, which, to top things, is currently deactivated for performance reasons. There's absolutely no point in doing this if the articles are going to be deleted anyway. More respectful? Towards whom? Michael, who has insulted virtually every Wikipedian who has tried to talk to him?
Remember, the reason we may decide not to hard-ban Michael is purely technical. I for one find it absolutely acceptable to delete new Michael- pages on sight and encourage sysops to do so -- but only if it is certain that he is really the author.
It is alright to worry a little about abuse of sysop powers, I do so myself. But I think this has been going too far in the last few days. The opposite situation to arbitrary deletions is equally undesirable: Wikipedia turning into a mess of useless pages which nobody cleans up. Many sysops are spending a lot of time doing annoying housekeeping tasks -- that's OK, that's what they expected. But a little more trust would be helpful. Otherwise I think you are contributing to the creation of the rift between sysops and non-sysops that you are so worried about.
Regards,
Erik
--- Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:
Anthere-
However, "deleting" on sight is another matter.
Would
you (that is a plural you, not you specifically Tannin) consider please, blanking his articles
instead
of deleting them. Then, either list the blanked articles on the vfd in case anyone would wish to
work
on them, or let them blank (which would make them appear next time the "short pages" is working
again).
Blanking leaves lots of useless pages that show up in title searches and have to be manually removed by going through the short article list, which, to top things, is currently deactivated for performance reasons.
` It appears the performance are much better now. At least, there are much better for the international wikis, which I think have not been moved.
Tannin presented "Michael case" as an experiment of soft banning. IP banning and deletion on sight are hard ban tools. RainClouding, instant reversion and blanking are soft ban tools. I think an experiment has to be done completely or not done at all.
There's absolutely no point in doing this if the articles are going to be deleted anyway.
The fact the pages are going to be deleted anyway is "your" opinion. Not everybody agree with that opinion (even if it is very likely 90% of articles will be deleted in the end).
More respectful? Towards whom? Michael, who has insulted virtually every Wikipedian who has tried to talk to him?
You know quite well the "toward whom" is not only adressed to Michael.
Remember, the reason we may decide not to hard-ban Michael is purely technical.
I don't think that was the only reason. At least, not for everybody.
I for one find it absolutely acceptable
to delete new Michael- pages on sight and encourage sysops to do so -- but only if it is certain that he is really the author.
only if it is certain, right. And only if the edits are bad, right.
It is alright to worry a little about abuse of sysop powers, I do so myself.
I don't think you have to worry much about errors Erik
But I think this has been going too far in
the last few days. The opposite situation to arbitrary deletions is equally undesirable: Wikipedia turning into a mess of useless pages which nobody cleans up. Many sysops are spending a lot of time doing annoying housekeeping tasks -- that's OK, that's what they expected. But a little more trust would be helpful. Otherwise I think you are contributing to the creation of the rift between sysops and non-sysops that you are so worried about.
Regards,
Erik
I am not worried of the rift. I am worried of errors. I also think you are on the verge of saying I will be responsible of subsequent errors.
This is not nice.
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Anthere-
It appears the performance are much better now. At least, there are much better for the international wikis, which I think have not been moved.
The disabled functionality is of pages that do not scale well, regardless of current sever load. Unless the underlying SQL queries are rewritten and additional indices added to the respective tables, these pages will continue to generate high load. Enabling them without optimizing the code and database first would be unwise, as we would quickly find ourselves in the molasses we just crawled out of (thanks possibly in larger part to Brion's programming hacks than to the new server).
Tannin presented "Michael case" as an experiment of soft banning. IP banning and deletion on sight are hard ban tools. RainClouding, instant reversion and blanking are soft ban tools. I think an experiment has to be done completely or not done at all.
The question is: Why do you want to use that strategy? In order to make sure that Michael creates no harm, or to prove a point about banning in general? If it is the latter, you've lost me: I believe in hard bans and think they should continue to be used. I'm willing to agree on a compromise here, that is, to use a "soft ban" because it may be more effective here.
This is beacuse, if we want to prevent Michael from doing harm, we should employ the most effective strategy. It has been argued somewhat persuasively that it would not be wise to ban Michael again and again, and to continually revert his edits instead. This may be worth trying. But the "let's blank, not delete" argument does not fall into this category of argument. It is a more philosophical notion about the treatment of vandals in general which I do not agree with, at least not in this form.
Michael is a vandal. You may think that some of his pages are worth salvaging. Unfortunately, this seems to be more ideology speaking than actual experience with Michael's edits. His articles are grossly factually inaccurate and the last thing we need are people going around willy nilly and restoring pages which they "think" are OK, but which they haven't really bothered to check (Michael's articles usually contain a lot of wrong titles, dates etc.).
The fact the pages are going to be deleted anyway is "your" opinion.
Michael is a banned user, this is not an opinion, it is a fact. He was banned for virtually all violations of our rules that are possible. He was never unbanned. We have merely modified the method by which we enforce this ban. Please do not use the willingness of sysops to go along with this approach to promote a general anti-ban agenda.
More respectful? Towards whom? Michael, who has insulted virtually every Wikipedian who has tried to talk to him?
You know quite well the "toward whom" is not only adressed to Michael.
No, I do not know that. Do you see it as disrespectful if articles by a known vandal are deleted?
I for one find it absolutely acceptable to delete new Michael- pages on sight and encourage sysops to do so -- but only if it is certain that he is really the author.
only if it is certain, right. And only if the edits are bad, right.
No on the second point. We have already determined that Michael's edits are not worth the trouble. Will you go to the search engines and check every single date in a discography, every little factoid about a band's history? If you're not willing to do this work, you should not talk about "bad edits". If you are, make a promise now, and I will hold you to it. For every Michael edit and every claim.
I am not worried of the rift. I am worried of errors.
Everything can be reverted. This will not be necessary in the case of a known, banned user, however.
I also think you are on the verge of saying I will be responsible of subsequent errors.
See above. The last thing we need are more unchecked pages by Michael. It will take years to go through the ones he has already created and check them for errors.
Regards,
Erik
--- Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:
Tannin presented "Michael case" as an experiment
of
soft banning. IP banning and deletion on sight are hard ban
tools.
RainClouding, instant reversion and blanking are
soft
ban tools. I think an experiment has to be done completely or not done at all.
The question is: Why do you want to use that strategy? In order to make sure that Michael creates no harm, or to prove a point about banning in general? If it is the latter, you've lost me: I believe in hard bans and think they should continue to be used. I'm willing to agree on a compromise here, that is, to use a "soft ban" because it may be more effective here.
This is beacuse, if we want to prevent Michael from doing harm, we should employ the most effective strategy. It has been argued somewhat persuasively that it would not be wise to ban Michael again and again, and to continually revert his edits instead. This may be worth trying. But the "let's blank, not delete" argument does not fall into this category of argument. It is a more philosophical notion about the treatment of vandals in general which I do not agree with, at least not in this form.
Well. We may disagree on that. Perhaps that does not necessarily imply who is the one, between you and I supporting the Best choice ? Another good point in soft banning is that everyone can participate (as Tannin pointed out, I think what he did was proposing people to join the reversion team, am I right ?). That is good to strenghtening a community. Deletion on sight, is not, ahma. Is not that also the goal of blacksheeping ?
Please, would you explain which would be the best form to your opinion ?
Michael is a vandal. You may think that some of his pages are worth salvaging. Unfortunately, this seems to be more ideology speaking than actual experience with Michael's edits. His articles are grossly factually inaccurate and the last thing we need are people going around willy nilly and restoring pages which they "think" are OK, but which they haven't really bothered to check (Michael's articles usually contain a lot of wrong titles, dates etc.).
The Point is Michael is not really active on the same time zone than I. And since his articles are deleted on sight, it would be quite difficult for me to judge whether they can be salvaged or not. Right ?
So I don't think I can be of ANY help here.
Also, what I was proposing was not to restore deleted pages, but rather to blank them. If the pages were first blanked and later deleted, they would not need to be undeleted, right ?
If I dare add, the only page which was restored was a request from Jimregan. If I understood well, Jimregan checked the facts and found them accurate.
As for myself, I *trusted* Martin when he told me most of Michael edits were not good to be kept, and have not asked for any further undeletions.
The fact the pages are going to be deleted anyway
is
"your" opinion.
Michael is a banned user, this is not an opinion, it is a fact. He was banned for virtually all violations of our rules that are possible. He was never unbanned. We have merely modified the method by which we enforce this ban. Please do not use the willingness of sysops to go along with this approach to promote a general anti-ban agenda.
I had the very unhealthy idea perhaps that another point of view could be proposed. But if seen as a manipulation of a sysop, I should indeed not try to challenge the current ban agenda. Apologies.
More respectful? Towards whom? Michael, who has insulted virtually every Wikipedian who has tried to talk
to
him?
You know quite well the "toward whom" is not only adressed to Michael.
No, I do not know that. Do you see it as disrespectful if articles by a known vandal are deleted?
I am sorry, but I think I already explained my position on this on the en. I don't think it is really worth explaining it again here. I fear you are not in the mood to read it :-(
I for one find it absolutely acceptable to delete new Michael- pages on sight and encourage sysops to do so --
but
only if it is certain that he is really the author.
only if it is certain, right. And only if the edits are bad, right.
No on the second point. We have already determined that Michael's edits are not worth the trouble. Will you go to the search engines and check every single date in a discography, every little factoid about a band's history? If you're not willing to do this work, you should not talk about "bad edits". If you are, make a promise now, and I will hold you to it. For every Michael edit and every claim.
I think my very initial proposition a couple of hours ago, was not restoration of his edits, but blank of his edits. So ? Perhaps I was not clear ??
I am not worried of the rift. I am worried of
errors.
Everything can be reverted. This will not be necessary in the case of a known, banned user, however.
I also think you are on the verge of saying I will
be responsible of subsequent errors.
See above. The last thing we need are more unchecked pages by Michael. It will take years to go through the ones he has already created and check them for errors.
Regards,
Erik
I think blank pages do not need to be corrected for errors. Besides, my comment here was clearly not about content errors. You were saying that I would be responsible for degradation of relationships between sysops and non sysops. I stronly trust the majority of sysops. You included, even if I disagree with you here. However, my survival instinct forbid me to trust everyone just because I am said I must trust them.
Amicalement
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Anthere-
Another good point in soft banning is that everyone can participate (as Tannin pointed out, I think what he did was proposing people to join the reversion team, am I right ?).
Wikipedia is not meant to be a group experience, it is meant to be an encyclopedia. If you itch to help clean up the mess Michael creates, drop a message to this list and apply for sysop status which as we both know, would be immediately granted. However, blanking pages only creates additional work, since these blanked pages have to be later pruned manually, whereas it is fairly quick and easy to go through Michael's contributions list and just revert/delete everything.
That is good to strenghtening a community.
No, in this case I'm afraid it might accomplish the exact opposite, burdening sysops with unnecessary work for no reason.
Please, would you explain which would be the best form to your opinion ?
I do think that in cases where a banned user is known to sometimes produce acceptable work, we should try to reintroduce them into the community (death threats are pretty much equivalent to burning down your bridges, though). So in cases of petty vandalism or wikiquette violations I find it acceptable to let the "good edits" remain. I think none of us would want all of Lir's pages to be deleted simply because they were written by Adam under one of his nyms.
But users like Michael are a different matter. Here the content is actually a threat in itself, because it is so ridden with errors, but looks like it has been written in good faith by an honest contributor. Someone who comes across such a page would not expect it to be full of errors, and would blame these errors on *us* if they locate them. "So you know this was a user who produced such pages only? So why didn't you ban him and delete everything he writes?"
I know, you are talking about blanking. But not only because of the questionable "group experience", but also because you want to restore the "good edits". I think this is a bad idea, because users not familiar with Michael's "work" could easily mistake bad edits for good ones, and restore them out of good faith. "If all the edits are bad, why didn't you just delete them instead of blanking them" would be the likely reply if a sysop then challenged that user. What should he respond? "It looked like a good idea at the time" ?
In other words, the mass blanking is likely to generate more Michael- related controversy and more Michael-related sysop work for no good reason.
I think blank pages do not need to be corrected for errors. Besides, my comment here was clearly not about content errors. You were saying that I would be responsible for degradation of relationships between sysops and non sysops. I stronly trust the majority of sysops. You included, even if I disagree with you here. However, my survival instinct forbid me to trust everyone just because I am said I must trust them.
Nobody's lives are at stake here. What is at stake, however, is the accuracy of our encyclopedia. This is not endangered by blank pages per se, but by those blank pages that are restored in good faith, in spite of the fact that they are written by a known abuser and vandal. It would be irresponsible by sysops towards non-sysops to allow this to happen -- non- sysops have a right to expect that sysops do what they were assigned to do, keep the vandals out. The only cases where blanking makes sense are pages which contain offensive messages, but can not be deleted by the person viewing them.
Regards,
Erik
--- Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote: [...]
Nod. Ok. You convinced me as far as Michael is concerned. I shut up then. I shall return to my articles. I have a [[local food]] decaying somewhere.
Another good point in soft banning is that
everyone
can participate (as Tannin pointed out, I think
what
he did was proposing people to join the reversion team, am I right ?).
Wikipedia is not meant to be a group experience, it is meant to be an encyclopedia.
Interesting link there http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is_Wikipedia_an_experiment_in_anarchy
At some point, there were more discussions about this that just your statement though.
You included, even if I disagree with you here. However, my survival instinct forbid me to trust everyone just because I am said I must trust them.
Nobody's lives are at stake here.
Quite true. Nobody's lives. Not even Mav's one perhaps.
Regards,
Erik
Yes. Amicalement. Ant
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--- Anthere anthere6@yahoo.com wrote:
--- Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:
More respectful? Towards whom? Michael, who has insulted virtually every Wikipedian who has tried to talk
to
him?
You know quite well the "toward whom" is not only adressed to Michael.
"Only"? Why had Micheal earned any respect whatsoever?
I for one find it absolutely acceptable to delete new Michael- pages on sight and encourage sysops to do so --
but
only if it is certain that he is really the author.
only if it is certain, right. And only if the edits are bad, right.
Wrong. It's impossible to tell if any of Michael's edits are bad unless you want to redo all of the original research. Sometimes he writes good things, sometimes he writes absolute lies. It's impossible to tell which is which.
Zoe
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Zoe wrote:
--- Anthere anthere6@yahoo.com wrote:
--- Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:
More respectful? Towards whom? Michael, who has insulted virtually every Wikipedian who has tried to talk
to
him?
You know quite well the "toward whom" is not only adressed to Michael.
"Only"? Why had Micheal earned any respect whatsoever?
I for one find it absolutely acceptable to delete new Michael- pages on sight and encourage sysops to do so --
but
only if it is certain that he is really the author.
only if it is certain, right. And only if the edits are bad, right.
Wrong. It's impossible to tell if any of Michael's edits are bad unless you want to redo all of the original research. Sometimes he writes good things, sometimes he writes absolute lies. It's impossible to tell which is which.
Zoe
Should there not be a boilerplate text which can be used in these events? Something to the effect of: ==Page out of service==
This page is under a [[meta:Wikipedia:Raincloud|Raincloud]] - it was written by a [[meta:bans|banned user]]. If you wish to check the facts of previous versions of this page, you may do so by selecting "Page History" at the top of this page. If you wish to write a new version of this article, you may do so by selecting "Edit this page" from the top of this page.
I'm not trying to be mean here, but has anyone ever considered that Michael may have a mental disease? He doesn't seem to get the point, no matter how many times people tell him what he needs to do, or no matter how many times his contributions are reverted. I've been a contributor for almost a year now, and he has continued to try and contribute the entire time. Another possibility is that he does not have a mental disease, but he is continuing to make these contributions under his Michael account, to try and throw dirt in our face, so we won't notice changes he makes under other alias'.
-- Michael Becker
-----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-admin@wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-admin@wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Jimmy O'Regan Sent: Sunday, June 01, 2003 5.27 To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] User Michael and ways to deal with him
This page is under a [[meta:Wikipedia:Raincloud|Raincloud]] - it was written by a [[meta:bans|banned user]]. If you wish to check the facts of previous versions of this page, you may do so by selecting "Page History" at the top of this page. If you wish to write a new version of this article, you may do so by selecting "Edit this page" from the top of this page.
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Michael-
I'm not trying to be mean here, but has anyone ever considered that Michael may have a mental disease?
*cough* Told ya so:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-May/003635.html
WikiLove won't solve all our problems. Michael is a difficult case. Establishing personal contact with someone who knows him would probably be the most promising course of action. But I do think he is getting frustrated by the constant reversions, which is what they are supposed to accomplish.
Regards,
Erik
At 02:42 PM 6/1/2003, you wrote:
Another possibility is that he does not have a mental disease, but he is continuing to make these contributions under his Michael account, to try and throw dirt in our face, so we won't notice changes he makes under other alias'.
-- Michael Becker
This is one of my biggest concerns. Sadly, there really isn't anything we can do about that except to continue our normal standards of eternal vigilance.
----- Dante Alighieri dalighieri@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
--- Jimmy O'Regan jimregan@o2.ie wrote:
Should there not be a boilerplate text which can be used in these events? Something to the effect of: ==Page out of service==
This page is under a [[meta:Wikipedia:Raincloud|Raincloud]] - it was written by a [[meta:bans|banned user]]. If you wish to check the facts of previous versions of this page, you may do so by selecting "Page History" at the top of this page. If you wish to write a new version of this article, you may do so by selecting "Edit this page" from the top of this page.
And who will go around cleaning those up? Besides, it leaves Michael's name in the history even though he is banned.
Zoe
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM). http://calendar.yahoo.com
Correct me if I am wrong Zoe, but aren't you a little too personally involved with the vandal formerly know as Michael? If so, maybe you should leave the deleting and reverting to others, b/c to me, who wasn't around when he made his attacks on you, it seems to me as a conflict of interests.
-- Michael Becker
-----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-admin@wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-admin@wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Zoe Sent: Sunday, June 01, 2003 8.08 To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] User Michael and ways to deal with him
--- Jimmy O'Regan jimregan@o2.ie wrote:
Should there not be a boilerplate text which can be used in these events? Something to the effect of: ==Page out of service==
This page is under a [[meta:Wikipedia:Raincloud|Raincloud]] - it was written by a [[meta:bans|banned user]]. If you wish to check the facts of previous versions of this page, you may do so by selecting "Page History" at the top of this page. If you wish to write a new version of this article, you may do so by selecting "Edit this page" from the top of this page.
And who will go around cleaning those up? Besides, it leaves Michael's name in the history even though he is banned.
Zoe
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM). http://calendar.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
--- Michael Becker wikipedia@jumpingjackweb.com wrote:
Correct me if I am wrong Zoe, but aren't you a little too personally involved with the vandal formerly know as Michael? If so, maybe you should leave the deleting and reverting to others, b/c to me, who wasn't around when he made his attacks on you, it seems to me as a conflict of interests.
You're absolutely right. Maybe when he says he wants to rape and kill me, I shouldn't take it so personally. How would it make you feel?
Having said that, I came back to the mailing list just now to announce that I have resolved as of this minute to no longer have any dealings with reverting or resolving the Michael issue. What's the point? First Camembert reverts [[Conflict (band)]], leaving the Michael information there, then when I re-delete and remove Michael's name, MyRedDice, who's never met a vandal he didn't like, comes along and restores the entire history so that Michael's name is still there. There's no point in anyone doing anything to stop vandals anywhere, is there, since everyone seems to want to let them have their way with Wikipedia? Well, okay, you people who don't care if there is false information and abuse on Wikipeda (see [[User talk:GrahamN]] (well, the history, anyway, since Graham has been cowardly enough to delete his nasty comments to me). I'm through with trying to fix it. You're on your own.
Zoe
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM). http://calendar.yahoo.com
Zoe, I never said what you were doing was wrong, but your not helping your position with you attitude. I understand that he made personal attacks on you, but I think you need to try and at least act like you have a NPOV towards the whole thing, b/c you make it look like you are picking on people. I realize this isn't the case, but you don't present it this way. I will support you all the way, I was just making a friendly suggestion.
-- Michael Becker
-----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-admin@wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-admin@wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Zoe Sent: Sunday, June 01, 2003 8.29 To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] User Michael and ways to deal with him
--- Michael Becker wikipedia@jumpingjackweb.com wrote:
Correct me if I am wrong Zoe, but aren't you a little too personally involved with the vandal formerly know as Michael? If so, maybe you should leave the deleting and reverting to others, b/c to me, who wasn't around when he made his attacks on you, it seems to me as a conflict of interests.
You're absolutely right. Maybe when he says he wants to rape and kill me, I shouldn't take it so personally. How would it make you feel?
Having said that, I came back to the mailing list just now to announce that I have resolved as of this minute to no longer have any dealings with reverting or resolving the Michael issue. What's the point? First Camembert reverts [[Conflict (band)]], leaving the Michael information there, then when I re-delete and remove Michael's name, MyRedDice, who's never met a vandal he didn't like, comes along and restores the entire history so that Michael's name is still there. There's no point in anyone doing anything to stop vandals anywhere, is there, since everyone seems to want to let them have their way with Wikipedia? Well, okay, you people who don't care if there is false information and abuse on Wikipeda (see [[User talk:GrahamN]] (well, the history, anyway, since Graham has been cowardly enough to delete his nasty comments to me). I'm through with trying to fix it. You're on your own.
Zoe
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM). http://calendar.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
--- Michael Becker wikipedia@jumpingjackweb.com wrote:
Zoe, I never said what you were doing was wrong, but your not helping your position with you attitude. I understand that he made personal attacks on you, but I think you need to try and at least act like you have a NPOV towards the whole thing, b/c you make it look like you are picking on people. I realize this isn't the case, but you don't present it this way. I will support you all the way, I was just making a friendly suggestion.
As I said, I've washed my hands of the whole situation. I'm always the one who comes across as the bad guy when the vandals get to have their way.
Zoe
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM). http://calendar.yahoo.com
At 17:29 01/06/2003 -0700, Zoe wrote (in part):
First Camembert reverts [[Conflict (band)]], leaving the Michael information there
The reason I undeleted that article is that most of it was not written by Michael, but by User:Quercusrober.
I agree with the practice of reverting all of Michael's edits (i've reverted quite a lot of them myself), but we shouldn't delete the work of other, entirely innocent, parties in the process.
For those interested, there is a little more discussion about this at http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3AVotes_for_undeletion
lp (camembert)
Zoe wrote:
--- Jimmy O'Regan jimregan@o2.ie wrote:
Should there not be a boilerplate text which can be used in these events? Something to the effect of: ==Page out of service==
This page is under a [[meta:Wikipedia:Raincloud|Raincloud]] - it was written by a [[meta:bans|banned user]]. If you wish to check the facts of previous versions of this page, you may do so by selecting "Page History" at the top of this page. If you wish to write a new version of this article, you may do so by selecting "Edit this page" from the top of this page.
And who will go around cleaning those up? Besides, it leaves Michael's name in the history even though he is banned.
Anyone with an interest in the topic: the hypothetical person who would end up reading the text I suggested? As to leaving Michael in the edit history, a) I didn't realise a ban meant purging all mention of the offender, b) it could cause copyright problems in the few cases where Michael or a user suspected of being Michael leaves mostly valid information (though given the type of these details, fair use probably covers them).
Zoe
And who will go around cleaning those up? Besides, it leaves Michael's name in the history even though he is banned.
Zoe
Well, he WAS a user, even if he is banned. The idea is that we should frustrate him, and not throw in a ton of effort to make the Wikipedia look like he never existed. If he had, for example, created the article [[Jimmy Eat World]] (a band I enjoy), I would still like to write on that subject, even if Michael started it. If he continued to edit it, then of course his changes should be reverted.
Jimmy O'Regan wrote:
Should there not be a boilerplate text which can be used in these events? Something to the effect of: ==Page out of service==
This page is under a [[meta:Wikipedia:Raincloud|Raincloud]] - it was written by a [[meta:bans|banned user]]. If you wish to check the facts of previous versions of this page, you may do so by selecting "Page History" at the top of this page. If you wish to write a new version of this article, you may do so by selecting "Edit this page" from the top of this page.
I suggested something similar in the thread "Alternative to Blanking Pages". I just haven't actually gotten around to writing out the boilerplate text for several scenarios where the article would be blanked, nor do I know what the appropriate namespace is. If you'd like to tackle it, be my guest, but please read that thread first, since people raised some good points that should be taken into consideration.