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

[james duffy]

>Since his articles are deleted
>on sight, it would be quite difficult for me to judge
>whether they can be salvaged or not. Right ?

That completely misses the point. Whether they can or cannot be salvaged is 
irrelevant. It could be a 100% accurate, well written thought-provoking 
masterpiece, but still it should be deleted. The content is irrelevant. The 
issue is that this is a multiple banned user who has vandalised user pages, 
issued threats and then sidesteps Jimbo's ban by getting on and doing the 
same thing over and over again.

Leaving a single letter that he contributed to wikipedia undermines the 
entire project, because it sends the message to him and to other banned 
users that they can circumvent the ban and get away with it. Only a scorched 
earth policy of 100% removal on sight will stop him. If he finds that the 
hours he spends adding stuff are 100% wasted because everything he touches 
is undone, every article he writes is binned automatically, that will force 
him to do one of two things:

1. If he wants to be a serious contributor who can add things on to wiki and 
have them left on wikipedia rather than deleted, he HAS to contact Jimbo, 
discuss the situation with him and get the ban lifted.

2. If he is simply interested in screwing wiki around as a joke, a blanket 
deletion policy will show him that he is wasting his time and effort. If he 
is (a) ignored completely, and (b) everything he does is shot down and 
binned on site, he will eventually give up in frustration. It may take a 
week, a month but eventually this tiresome vandal with get the message. 
There are only so many times he can devote hours and hours to working on 
things only to find every minute was wasted because everything he did was 
binned on sight.

Allowing anything he works on to be treated with the same respect as 
everyone else's articles makes a mockery of the ban. Today's Michael article 
may be 100% accurate. Tomorrow's 80% accurate, 20% complete bullshit. Next 
Friday's 100% accurate, Saturday's 50% accurate 50% completely made up. In 
the meantime serious contributors end up having to babysit this vandal, 
double-checking everything he writes. And all the time he is laughing his 
head off at our gullibility and wonder how many times in how many new 
personæ can he get onto wiki and plant rubbish in among the facts. We 
already have DW back causing chaos in his behaviour, Adam/Lir/Vera 
Cruz/Susan Mason/Dietary Fiber is back again pulling the same stunts as he 
pulled elsewhere.

Unless a ban is 100% enforced, with 100% deletion of 100% of the 
contributions of 100% of banned trolls (particularly those with a history of 
muliple identities and multiple bans) you will never drive banned users away 
or force them to contact Jimbo and get the ban lifted. To treat such users 
in the same manner as we treat ordinary decent serious contributors is to 
insult the 99% of users who are not banned and take this project seriously. 
They, not Michael, should be our first concern. Wiki should be the home of 
proper contributors, not a rest home for vandals and trolls whose behaviour 
is simply encouraged by attempts at appeasement.

JT

_________________________________________________________________
MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* 
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus