[WikiEN-l] Michael again sigh

Sat Aug 30 03:25:53 UTC 2003

Some thoughts on the "Michael" affair:

With regards to contacting AOL, this would be most effective if done 
thoroughly, and (as you mentioned) by someone with some official 
connection to the Wikimedia Foundation (perhaps Jimbo).  Probably the 
best thing to do would be for someone with access to server logs to dig 
up a lengthy list of IPs and the times they were used.  Then the letter 
to AOL could include a large amount of evidence of repeated vandalism 
over an extended period despite multiple bannings.  Having a few dozen 
IP address / time pairs might make it easier for them to track down the 
user account as well, assuming they can be motivated to do something.

Email's probably the best first option, but if no response is 
forthcoming perhaps a letter by registered mail might get some more 
attention.

As for additional powers to deal with things like this, one useful and 
power-neutral code addition would be something analogous to the 
sysop-quick-rollback, but for page moves.  If I could click "unmove" to 
undo the effect of a move, that'd make it easier to deal with these 
things (we could just go down his user history and click "unmove" on all 
of them).  Not being a PHP person, I'm not familiar with the wiki code, 
so have no idea how easy this would be to implement.

-Mark

[WikiEN-l] Michael again *sigh*

[WikiEN-l] Michael again sigh