Anthere-
It appears the performance are much better now. At least, there are much better for the international wikis, which I think have not been moved.
The disabled functionality is of pages that do not scale well, regardless of current sever load. Unless the underlying SQL queries are rewritten and additional indices added to the respective tables, these pages will continue to generate high load. Enabling them without optimizing the code and database first would be unwise, as we would quickly find ourselves in the molasses we just crawled out of (thanks possibly in larger part to Brion's programming hacks than to the new server).
Tannin presented "Michael case" as an experiment of soft banning. IP banning and deletion on sight are hard ban tools. RainClouding, instant reversion and blanking are soft ban tools. I think an experiment has to be done completely or not done at all.
The question is: Why do you want to use that strategy? In order to make sure that Michael creates no harm, or to prove a point about banning in general? If it is the latter, you've lost me: I believe in hard bans and think they should continue to be used. I'm willing to agree on a compromise here, that is, to use a "soft ban" because it may be more effective here.
This is beacuse, if we want to prevent Michael from doing harm, we should employ the most effective strategy. It has been argued somewhat persuasively that it would not be wise to ban Michael again and again, and to continually revert his edits instead. This may be worth trying. But the "let's blank, not delete" argument does not fall into this category of argument. It is a more philosophical notion about the treatment of vandals in general which I do not agree with, at least not in this form.
Michael is a vandal. You may think that some of his pages are worth salvaging. Unfortunately, this seems to be more ideology speaking than actual experience with Michael's edits. His articles are grossly factually inaccurate and the last thing we need are people going around willy nilly and restoring pages which they "think" are OK, but which they haven't really bothered to check (Michael's articles usually contain a lot of wrong titles, dates etc.).
The fact the pages are going to be deleted anyway is "your" opinion.
Michael is a banned user, this is not an opinion, it is a fact. He was banned for virtually all violations of our rules that are possible. He was never unbanned. We have merely modified the method by which we enforce this ban. Please do not use the willingness of sysops to go along with this approach to promote a general anti-ban agenda.
More respectful? Towards whom? Michael, who has insulted virtually every Wikipedian who has tried to talk to him?
You know quite well the "toward whom" is not only adressed to Michael.
No, I do not know that. Do you see it as disrespectful if articles by a known vandal are deleted?
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.
only if it is certain, right. And only if the edits are bad, right.
No on the second point. We have already determined that Michael's edits are not worth the trouble. Will you go to the search engines and check every single date in a discography, every little factoid about a band's history? If you're not willing to do this work, you should not talk about "bad edits". If you are, make a promise now, and I will hold you to it. For every Michael edit and every claim.
I am not worried of the rift. I am worried of errors.
Everything can be reverted. This will not be necessary in the case of a known, banned user, however.
I also think you are on the verge of saying I will be responsible of subsequent errors.
See above. The last thing we need are more unchecked pages by Michael. It will take years to go through the ones he has already created and check them for errors.
Regards,
Erik