[WikiEN-l] 172--what happened

Tue Apr 1 04:50:52 UTC 2003

On Mon, 2003-03-31 at 22:35, daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
> Actually, Eric, I disagree. 
> 
> Trolling is a form of vandalism. This could justly be interpretted as 
> trolling. (I am reminded of the constant edit wars with Helga, which cost 
> Wikipedia quite a lot in terms of time and people who were disgusted and 
> left)
> 
> For me to just ask some other "neutral" sysop to do it instead of me is 
> hardly a neutral step. 
> 
> I was not involved in an edit war. It was not an article that I care too 
> deeply about. I was protecting it from what I (continue to) perceive as 
> trolling.
> 
> Given the situation with Lir/.Vera Cruz/Susan Mason as well as Michael/Weezer 
> and 172, perhaps its time sysops took more steps to limit trolling and not 
> just the "George Washington had big balls" kind of vandalism. I open that for 
> discussion. 
> 
No, it's not time. And it should never be. "vandalism" is a loaded,
poorly defined term that should never been introduced to the Wikipedia
lexicon, but since it was, its definition definitely shouldn't be
extended.

And page protection should just about never be used. It's much healthier
to just ignore the page for a while.