[WikiEN-l] User Michael and ways to deal with him

[Erik Moeller]

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