[Gendergap] Hello and a (small!) manifesto

[Daniel and Elizabeth Case]

The comments by
> the new-page patroller made it clear to her that he hadn't even read the
> article. Her second article was speedied by a new page patroller within
> minutes of her first clicking Save, while she was still in the process of
> expanding the article and adding sources. This patroller is a chap who,
> somewhat unusually, has awarded himself eight barnstars on his user page –
> one of them patting himself on the back for the fact that "You play 
> whack-a-
> mole with terrible new pages like no one I've ever seen! Awesome!" He made
> himself look ridiculous in her eyes,

It isn't just *her* eyes. Based on the information provided, I found the 
user in question. He *is* ridiculous. No, scratch that. He would be 
ridiculous only if he didn't hurt anybody, and if he had that effect on your 
wife imagine how many other people out there gave up as well.

As I would have suspected, he's a heavy Twinkle user. He has been on 
Wikipedia a little less longer than I have; he has rollbacker and  reviewer 
rights but is (thankfully) not an admin. He has, in addition to all the 
self-applied barnstars (a practice that should be forbidden), two userboxes 
near the top of his page proclaiming his use of Twinkle (only one is needed, 
really, if that's something you want to brag about). *And*, near the top of 
the page, links to both WP:VANISPAM (which I haven't seen invoked in 
deletion discussions or anywhere for that matter in a long time) and a short 
essay of his own where he complains about some inconsistencies in the speedy 
deletion criteria (OK, somewhat rightly) and other aspects of the deletion 
policies. The solution he advocates is (surprise!) more admins invoking 
WP:IAR to resolve those conflicts in favor of ... deletion!

Elsewhere on his userpage, his boxes indicate interests in energy, classical 
music, piano, various Google apps and aspects of computer programming. I 
hate to say it, but the whole thing just adds up to "extremely socially 
awkward geek". I'm not at all sure I want to meet him in person.

And looking over his user history, his recent contribs show, indeed, a lot 
of AfD nominations, talk pages, and very little actual content editing. 
Nothing on his userpage indicates any interest in content; he doesn't point 
you to any GAs or FAs or anything else he's had a hand in, or suggest he's a 
member of any WikiProject save the one on infobox creation. He's, frankly, 
the stereotypical deletionist (and makes me not doubt the wisdom of taking 
that box off my own userpage a long time ago). Reading his page and thinking 
about it, I wish there was some reality to the old "In Soviet Wikipedia, 
article delete YOU!!" joke.

Frankly, this guy isn't an editor. He's a [[griefer]]. This is a prime 
example of someone for whom Wikipedia has become a video game where he tries 
to rack up points by getting as many articles as possible deleted. What else 
can you say about someone who so clearly brags about this sort of thing and 
says he enjoys it? This guy screams "referral to the school psychologist 
needed".

Of course, here I am trashing him out, in a forum he'll likely never read 
and wouldn't care to know whether it exists or not.

The question is what can we do to prevent people from becoming this sort of 
user.

I do have some ideas. I have long said we could benefit from making the 
block function page specific, so that editors could either be allowed to 
work on a set of pages and those pages alone, or otherwise more effectively 
topic-banned by being blocked from a certain set of pages, but free to edit 
anything else (The current setup would be a bit like if, instead of issuing 
a restraining order that says "don't go within 150 yds/meters of X", the 
judge had only the option of forcibly excluding the individual from the 
city, state or country for the time period in question). This would be an 
extreme option, but better than blocking them wholesale (and might cut down 
on socking as well).

It could be used to enforce a policy whereby editors are watched via a 
filter/bot for patterns that suggest this sort of behavior (i.e. X large 
percentage of deletion-initiating edits vs. Y really small percentage of 
namespace edits) and then it would be suggested to them that they take a 
break and do something constructive instead for a while, with the 
possibility of a page-specific block on AfD etc. and temporary suspension 
of, say, rollbacker rights, to make sure they do, beyond a certain point. 
Yes, some editors might consider this heavy-handed and just leave. But look 
at what they become without this kind of shepherding ... I think the 
community and the encyclopedia would, on the whole, benefit.

Daniel Case