[WikiEN-l] Indefinite Bans with No Oversight

Wed Sep 14 04:55:52 UTC 2005

On 9/13/05, Zephram Stark <zephramstark at yahoo.com> wrote:
> It is not usually my nature to bring others into my problems, but I think this has gone too far.  People are effectively being banned indefinitely without any oversight, in order to associate their misdeeds with me.

Zephram Stark is trolling and everyone's tired of him, except for his
many anonymous fans around the world who instinctively know when to
turn up to revert to his preferred version.

At [[Terrorism]], he inserted a bunch of made-up and bizarre
definitions of terrorism, claiming he'd been working on that version
(the consensus version, as he called it) for over a month with other
editors, none of whom he could name; and when he was reverted, used
several sockpuppet accounts and about a dozen open proxies to keep
reverting, which he then cited as evidence that ordinary readers from
around the planet supported him. Jpgordon protected the page, but the
trolling continued on the talk page,  with him holding forth,
organizing polls, insulting people etc. He was opposed by Carbonite,
Commodore Sloat, Jayjg, Calton, Humus Sapiens, Brandon Yusuf Toropov,
Smyth, and others, and Smyth filed an RFC about him, which 17 editors
have certified or endorsed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Zephram_Stark

Ed blocked him twice on Sept 4 and 5 for personal attacks and legal
threats, then I blocked him on Sept 8 for three hours for disruption,
after which he made an edit to his talk page with the summary: "This
place is a joke. It's too bad, because it had possibilities before all
you fucking Jews came along ..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AZephram_Stark&diff=22814466&oldid=22814157
Trilobite blocked him for 48 hours for that comment. During the block,
Zeph created [[User:Go Cowboys]], who starting posting the same
nonsense at [[Talk:Terrorism]], so I blocked that account indefinitely
and extended Zeph's block by 48 hours for block evasion. Then
[[user:Felice L'Angleterre]] turned up on several pages, including
[[Talk:Terrorism]], claiming to be a major publisher and the editor of
two newspapers which were investigating Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3ATerrorism&diff=23063599&oldid=23031192
It was clearly Zeph, so Felice got blocked too. Zeph's block was
extended by another 48 hours, and I've told him if he does it again,
I'll block him indefinitely.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AZephram_Stark&diff=23073044&oldid=23061910

That's about it, but it's hopefully enough.

Sarah