[WikiEN-l] NO-FX ban

Fri May 23 00:26:00 UTC 2003

Brion-
> Stop giving him the satisfaction of making a big fuss. Just revert crap
> that's crap, and work with stuff that's good (should there be any). What
> more do we need?

First: Lee has banned No-Fx, so this will only be applicable to the next  
incarnation, should there be any.

Neither option is very appealing. Michael seems to be a person with mental  
problems, and I doubt he much cares about the existence of other users on  
Wikipedia at all. He considers it his playground, or maybe an information  
storage system. Those who try to talk to him are insulted.

Furthermore, it is not easy to determine which of the information he  
inserts is actual junk. For example, a couple of days ago I noticed that  
he had changed one on the articles on my watchlist and modified the  
release date of an album. I checked the date from multiple sources, and  
the old one was correct. I do not know where he gets his information from,  
but much of it is quite obviously incorrect.  Add to this the personal  
insult to people like Zoe, on whose user page he put the text "I like oral  
sex" and pasted the whole oral sex article.

Just reverting everything he writes may be an acceptable solution for the  
time being, but it's also considerable work, and needlessly spams the  
server. Every couple of days some newbie will ask why we do it because his  
edits seem to be acceptable. I would really like to see these matters  
resolved more quickly and concentrate on writing an encyclopedia.  
Otherwise I fear at some point we might have 10 or 20 users like him at  
our hands in the future.

There may be the option of threatening legal action, but if Michael is as  
stubborn as I think, that will also not really deter him.

>> I should point out that the problem of users appearing under dozens of
>> names would probably go away if we required an email confirmation during
>> signup, although that might deter some users from creating an account.

> You have heard of hotmail and yahoo, right? :)

True, but signing up for a new account takes time -- all these email  
account providers ask plenty of questions. He may go through it a couple  
of times, but unless he is a script kiddie, he'll probably get tired of it  
soon enough.

Regards,

Erik