[WikiEN-l] Rambot the User_talk: Spambot

Wed Dec 15 09:43:35 UTC 2004

Equally, there isn't any consensus against this. I received his
message; I didn't mind at all.

If it does become a problem, then it may be wise to act then - but I
don't think there is one at the moment. Ram-Man's proposal wasn't
unreasonable, and due to the number of people it needed to reach (i.e.
far more than the usual 100 people that vote on most polls), it wasn't
necessarily a bad idea to choose talk pages over a post on the Village
Pump or equivalent.

Frankly, unless this sort of thing becomes a regular occurrence, I
don't see any need for action at all.

-- ambi

On Wed, 15 Dec 2004 01:20:49 -0500, Fennec Foxen <fennec at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello. I'd just like to draw attention to
>    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Ram-Man#Spambot
> a discussion about whether Ram-Man should be permitted to use rambot
> to send unsolicited bulk messages (soliciting participation in a
> "dual-licensing drive") to thousands of user-talk pages. The bot is
> currently blocked indefinitely, pending the resolution of this issue.
> 
> Ram-Man seems to believe that an implicit community consens exists and
> approves of his use of the bot in this fashion. Currently, he claims
> to have "over 70% support" of users who responded to the message,
> although I believe this figure to be skewed by the "users who
> responded" part. I therefore would appreciate it if otherwise
> uninterested individuals provide Ram-Man with a more concrete measure
> of the level of community support which exists regarding this message.
> 
> Others have expressed concerns regarding the precedent which this sets
> for distribution of unsolicited user-talk messages, and suggest that a
> more concrete policy be formed to deal with this form of userpage
> spam.
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