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@kingturtle.com To: wikien-l@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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