[WikiEN-l] blanket reverts

[Andrew Smith]

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 at kingturtle.com>
To: <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Monday, June 02, 2003 12:29 AM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] blanket reverts


> pages that are blanked for reasons regarding banned users should be marked
> as such. please make it very clear to the other users why you are doing
> it. -kingturtle
>
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