[WikiEN-l] I just blocked someone for 9999 hours

Wed May 12 00:45:24 UTC 2004

I deleted that nonsense yesterday.  If it returns, it should be immediatley deleted again.

RickK

daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
I have just blocked Yammy Yamathorne for 9999 hours. I did not go through Quickpolls. I have no regrets. 

This user created a page, [[The Lyceum]], based on the [[Akhmad Kadyrov]] page, in which he claimed that the "super smart kids" in his school are planning to bring down Wikipedia. The page itself was an act of vandalism, and I have deleted it (without going through Speedy Deletions).

This is an increasing problem here on Wikipedia. As we grow, we are no longer able to monitor the Recent Changes adequately. If I recall correctly, Horace had been vandalized for two weeks recently before someone noticed. 

I am proposing the following radical solutions:

1. Empower sysops to make on-the-spot decisions and act accordingly. If most people don't trust them to act wisely, they should not be sysops.
2. Reinvigorate Seth Ilys's New Pages Patrol and expand it to include Recent Changes in general. Lots of crap is getting through, as well as considerable the duplication of articles. 
3. Stiffen penalties. If a group of people (like a school) are planning to damage Wikipedia, it will last longer than 24 hours. 
4. Act quickly and decisively with POV pushers. I recently received an email from a colleague at work, that was forwarded to her. Someone posted to a professional mailing list, asking them to join Wikipedia en masse to ensure that certain articles maintain their point of view. Their POV is often close to my own, however, I am disturbed that a group can potentially band together to push a particular POV, regardless of what it is. At one point, such a group will succeed. (I have forwarded the email to Jimbo, but will say no more about it to protect the confidence of my colleague).
5. Put together a SMALL group of trusted users to consider ways to redefine Wikipedia, considering the remarkable growth spurt we are experiencing. This can be a blessing, but it can also lead to our complete collapse. I propose that Jimbo select the users and oversee the process, since he is the one person who is trusted by everyone and whose authority is (more or less) unchallenged.

Danny
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