Walter, perhaps it sounds rude, but else do you want?
There will
surely be something serious (a vandal bot with open proxies, for
instance), otherwise they will not take such a rigorous step. And to
be quite frank: I prefer excluding some good-willing people from
editing Wikipedia to letting a maniacal nerd ravage the whole project.
I quite clearly remember such an attack on li:, some time ago.
Yes Wouter I am extremely offended and disappointed by your answer and
also by the lack of reactions by boardmembers such as Anthere, Angela
and Jimbo. It is very simple it is the fourth time this is happening to
me. And I am sick and tired of it especially because everybody is
ignorong the problem. Because they have selfish reasons like yours: "I
can edit wikipedia why should I care about others?" How about me putting
a vandalwarning on your account in nl.wikipedia Wouter? Wouldn't you be
offended? Yes you would. And it is exactly this what I read when I try
to create a new account in a wiki. And ironically enough I am creating
an account to get rid of vandalism.
How many vandalbotoperators are there? Maybe 30 - 40 around the world?
How many people do we block from editing wikimedia projects? Well at
least 500.000 in Thailand. And that is just a very small set of the IP
adresses we block. We are blocking currently probably over 10 million
people from potentially editing wikimedia projects. Isn't that like
using a flamethrower to kill a mosquito? It is not as if li: is the only
vandalized project. So far all damage has always been able to be
restored manually usually within a short space of time.
Actually even though we are smuck about the closure of the LA Times
wiki, we have lost already just as much as they did. Wikimedia is not
open anymore, nor does it care about the "right" we actually state
everybody has to edit. And why? Because a couple of handfull have
dictated that. So we should actually take the free editable for all out
of our mission statement as it is a lie.
Walter/Waerth