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Revision as of 02:08, 13 September 2006 editTony Sidaway (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled, Extended confirmed users, Pending changes reviewers81,722 edits →Polls are evil: So remove the count.← Previous edit Revision as of 02:09, 13 September 2006 edit undoTony Sidaway (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled, Extended confirmed users, Pending changes reviewers81,722 edits →Messing with the tag: It's already been implemented. The discussion is over and this is policy.Next edit →
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: Policy is descriptive, not prescriptive. --] 02:05, 13 September 2006 (UTC) : Policy is descriptive, not prescriptive. --] 02:05, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
::THe dispute is not over whether or not this should be "implemented in the future", it's about whether or not it's a good idea in the first place. I think you're misunderstanding the scope of conflict. ] ] 02:07, 13 September 2006 (UTC) ::THe dispute is not over whether or not this should be "implemented in the future", it's about whether or not it's a good idea in the first place. I think you're misunderstanding the scope of conflict. ] ] 02:07, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
:::: It's already been implemented. The discussion is over and this is policy. --] 02:09, 13 September 2006 (UTC)


== Straw poll == == Straw poll ==

Revision as of 02:09, 13 September 2006

DenyRecognition (talk page) archives (latest)→

Evidence of notoriety-seeking?

I still haven't seen any evidence that the "vandal hall of fame" actually encourages vandalism. This seems to be speculation. --Ryan Delaney 00:26, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, no, the recent juvenile-feline-obsessed vandal didn't ever say "Hey everyone! I've thought of an eye-catching way to vandalise and I've got an ISP that will allow me to create lots of socks! Where's my unique sockpuppet template? Oh there it is, thanks!" But it's not really the sort of thing people say, and I can't think what actual 'evidence' you're expecting to see. IMO, it may be speculation, but it's speculation rooted in a very strong understanding of people's craving for attention, consistent with how Internet trolls generally work. On the other hand we have very little that justifies ignoring the basic Internet law of 'don't feed the trolls'. --Sam Blanning 00:33, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
If you're looking for an admission from a vandal that they're seeking notoriety, please see Administrator intervention against vandalism (oldid 46068278). Of particular relevance are "To do list: Become notorious" and "Start getting the pencil and pad out, from what I plan to do, you all better make a page for me like you all have done for the Misplaced Pages is Communism and Willy on Wheels! vandals. By the way, I’d prefer to call myself either “the perfect vandal” or better yet, the “Why was I blocked?” vandalized.". // Pathoschild (/map) 00:54, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
On that note, see also Misplaced Pages talk:Long term abuse (oldid 11349398), where a user claiming to be a notorious vandal claims notoriety (through Google bombing vandal userpages) to be their goal. // Pathoschild (/map) 01:29, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Are you sure that's what they want? Just because there vandalising wikipedia pages saying that they want to be recogntion doesn't mean that what they want.---Scott3 Talk Contributions Count: 950+ 03:36, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
The comparison links I provided above are just supporting evidence for the well-known fact that trolls like to be fed, as Sam Blanning pointed out above. Returning your question, do you have any evidence that indefinitely keeping User:Hall Monitor is an unfair jerk who never answers questions containing {{attackuser-m|Hall Monitor}} helps countervandalism and does not in any way encourage vandals à la Herostratus? Does the fact that the page is indexed by google make a difference? // Pathoschild (/map) 10:13, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
"Don't feed the trolls" is good advice to a point, but WP:LTA pages help administrators fight vandalism by keeping track of the strategies of some of the most common vandals. I think that the example of ThePowerOfChaos's edit to AIV was a more extreme example. If I see some vandal and know that it's just one of the more well-known vandals, then it helps me because I can give him an immediate indefinite block rather than cycling through WP:WARN like I usually do with first-time vandals. We just shouldn't present it as a "gallery of all-star vandals"... maybe more as a short, one-page list of certain people to watch for, like the list of most vandalized pages. --Idont Havaname (Talk) 20:48, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

This all seems to me a bit like saying news media shouldn't make reports about terrorist attacks because then they wouldn't be effective at creating terror. There will still be vandalism whether we have these pages or not. The only difference is that the lack of information will make it harder to fight. --Ryan Delaney 20:00, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

is an example of the sock of one prolific vandal asking for an LTA page --pgk 12:34, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Deleting information

I personally thought those pages were immensely useful in identifying why future incarnations of the editors are blocked on sight. For example, they may often try to mix in "good" edits with the bad ones so it can be difficult at times to keep up with the latest "automatically blocked list of users". However, I can see how they may be construed as benificial to the vandals in question. So, the question is where does one then go for their vandal information :D? For example, without these pages one may have to dig through 5000 edits or something to find what could be presented on one nice little page - this isn't beneficial to anyone and likely leads to more accusations of admin abuse etc.. Maybe just keep the ones that have reappeared in the last 90 days or something? RN 03:23, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

It would make a lot more sense to put a time limit on keeping pages, otherwise it causes problems for vandal fighters and dealing with identifying those. While you might argue that any experienced vandal fighter may be well aware of all major issues and problem users currently, what about in 6 months, or a year? This type of thing makes things much less friendly and inviting to new users when information is being removed. This proposal is ill thought out, and there really should be more discussion before pages are continually deleted en masse. --Crossmr 21:59, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Proposal vs guideline or Policy

From what I've seen, this has become a very popular essay to be used. Perhaps it could become a guideline? —this is messedrocker (talk) 21:32, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Feel free to propose it. :) // Pathoschild (/map) 02:37, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Is this essay a proposed guideline or policy? -- FrostytheSnowman 20:56, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Just an essay, which is apparently almost like a proposed guideline, but not. Certainly not policy. (That said, it's good sense.) +sj + 21:53, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

In a few days this proposal seems to have changed the way we deal with recording vandalism. I guess we should stick a policy tag on it. --Tony Sidaway 15:03, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

did. ++Lar: t/c 15:16, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Talk page time : )

Scrolling up, I see that others have already commented that it's not policy, though could be considered close to a guideline.

While I agree that it's being used as a rationale for "actions" and "opinions", that doesn't mean that it's justified to do so.

To use some allegories:

  • Just because a group of individuals claim "might makes right", that doesn't make that the policy on Misplaced Pages : )
  • Just because a group of individuals claim that fair use images can be used anywhere, doesn't make it Misplaced Pages policy.

Besides that, I suggest that you read:

Specifically:

  • A guideline is something that is: (1) actionable and (2) authorized by consensus. Guidelines are not set in stone and should be treated with common sense and the occasional exception. Amendments to a guideline should be discussed on its talk page, not on a new page - although it's generally acceptable to edit a guideline to improve it.

That's very much the goal of this essay, and please look at the associated list, for comparison.

To take it a step further, if you nominate it for guideline, I would likely vote for it. : )

- Jc37 17:24, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Guideline, policy, call it what you like. It's Misplaced Pages policy. And no, we're not going to vote on it. --Tony Sidaway 17:33, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
I appreciate you taking the time to share your point of view, but since it is totally counter to the 5 pillars, I obviously must disagree.
btw... who's "we"? : ) - Jc37 17:38, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
I can't make sense of your responses. I've tagged it as a guideline, which you have indicated you would accept. The meaning of "We" in this case should be obvious. --Tony Sidaway 17:50, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Which responses? I would be more than happy to clarify. And no, to me, the "we" wasn't/isn't obvious. Because I still don't think the two three of us can make this decision alone, I'll start a straw poll below. - Jc37
"Guideline" is OK with me, too (though I'd like to see it become policy at some point). It seems to have gathered quite a bit of support recently. Antandrus (talk) 17:58, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

I will support if revert becomes deletion of record of vandalism. If there is no record of vandalism then that will be really denying recogntiion. WP doesn't need waste bandwith and memory on keeping records of vandalism. But of cource it shouldn't be done all the time just on WP:LTAers---Scott3 Talk Contributions Count: 950+ 20:44, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Do you mean, for example, a "destructive rollback" button, which when clicked would remove the previous edits from the article history entirely? (Interesting idea; I wonder if it has been debated somewhere?) Antandrus (talk) 23:30, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Straw poll

Well, wow.

On one hand, I wondering what you all are so afraid of. (I am, of course, referring to the repeated removal of an attempt to start a straw poll, in order to determine concensus about whether this should actually be a guideline, as according to actual Misplaced Pages policy.)
On the other, presuming that you all aren't just sock or meat puppets, I suppose that I could be content that we've at least begun to find out concensus. (Well, at least we can see one side of it : )

As I said, I don't necessarily oppose this as a guideline, but, again, wow at the lack of good faith. - Jc37 18:51, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't doubt your good faith in this. Your proposal to have a poll, however, did not command support. --Tony Sidaway 18:53, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
"command support"? - Jc37 18:55, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
It was opposed by three other editors, each of whom went so far as to remove it. --Tony Sidaway 18:59, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Hmm, I was under the impression that you weren't to remove anything from a talk page (except to move it or archive it), save blatant vandalism. But be that as it may, perhaps the sentiment was correct, and I should have made this an RfC to begin with. Thank you for your help : ) - Jc37 19:06, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
  • I believe the point Tony makes here is that proposals are not, as a rule, decided upon by voting on them (which, incidentally, is the very next line after the quote you made from WP:POL; see also WP:VIE). Removing other people's comments is not very nice, but a poll is not really a comment, and polls tend to create a barrier to further comments. So instead we ask, what are the objections to this proposal, and discuss those. HTH! >Radiant< 16:53, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Success of WP:DENY and strong consensus

The following deletion discussions were found by examining the links to WP:DENY:

In nearly every case, longstanding pages have been deleted, and the arguments that have carried the day have been those presented in WP:DENY.

In the circumstances, the onus is on those who would argue that this is not a guideline or official policy of Misplaced Pages to present evidence to refute this evidence of strong support. --Tony Sidaway 23:05, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Official policy sounds a little strong, but this may be entering guideline territory. — xaosflux 05:52, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Not to be snarky (really!), but this is a bizarre argument coming from you, Tony. You know better than anyone that support doesn't turn a bad policy/guideline/whatever into a good one. --Ryan Delaney 16:32, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
I know nothing of the sort. Misplaced Pages guidelines are precisely descriptions of what prevails on Misplaced Pages. --Tony Sidaway 10:48, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

List of reasons why this is a bad idea?

OK, there are some people who don't like this, and there are some people who are sceptical as to whether it will achieve much in the way of vandal reduction. I've heard one sensible person arguing for preserving the odd exceptional LTA page on a more subtle vandal. But can those opposed help me? Can they set down their reasons why this is in principle a bad idea? Why the notion is harmful? Please be explicit. Because, so far, I'm seeing no coherent reason why this isn't in general a good idea. Maybe I'm missing somthing? --Doc 23:39, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

It's unfunny? To be serious though, I'd selectively oppose it due to the fact that it removes a significant portion of Misplaced Pages's record. Because of this, I'm opposed to its being used as a retroactive law on existing pages. I have no problems with its being applied to future vandals, but deleting all reference to, for our most famous example, Willy on Wheels, including his archived case on the Long Term Abuse page, simply erases a major piece of Misplaced Pages's cultural history. I think some people also oppose it due to "zomg censorship!" reasons. --tjstrf 00:53, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
I already raised some points up where it says "Deleting information". It isn't an objection, but a call for a bit more brainstorming on the issue... right now, my current thought is that perhaps read-only admin access for vandal pages might be an idea. I'd encourge people to think of ways to improve the proposal. RN 06:23, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Administrators do in effect have read-only access to all deleted pages. --Tony Sidaway 11:00, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
I'd like to see admin-only access, but only if we could actually update the pages. Right now, there is no easy way to:
  1. Edit a deleted page
  2. Watchlist a deleted page
  3. Post talk message and other communication related to a delted page
  4. Etc
If there were some way to make the pages function as normal Misplaced Pages pages, but only be viewable to admins, that would be great. Of course, you would get accusations of cabalism and "secret police" or whatever. But, whatever. --Ryan Delaney 16:35, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
That's a good point, actually... RN 11:07, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
  • My main objetion is that there isn't any evidence that this will reduce vandalism. --Ryan Delaney 16:35, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
    • On the other hand, neither is there evidence that keeping this information will help fight vandalism. And any psych student will tell you that attention seeking is a plausible motive for at least some vandals.
    • I think the main point here is that we're keeping way too many records. All the information we need to fight off present vandals could probably fit on a single, neutral page. A Category:Impostors of Jimbo or List of non-Misplaced Pages sockpuppets of Willy simply serves little purpose, if any. We don't really need to know that pageblanking or massive page moves is the modus operandi of any particular known vandal; we only need to know that if an account does nothing but vandalize in whatever way, we block them.
    • Of course this proposal should not be blindly invoked to strike any and all information on vandals, only the parts that aren't actually useful (which, incidentally, seems to be about 90% of it, but keeping info on linkspammers and subtle vandals sounds like a good idea) and possibly any vanity-seeming userpages of said vandals. The irony is that such information shouldn't really go to WP:MFD because in effect that's creating yet another page with (meta-)information on vandals.
    • Bottom line, we don't need excessive record-keeping. WP:NOT a bureaucracy. >Radiant< 16:53, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
      • Hi Radiant! I didn't know you had returned to the project. I'm very happy to see you commenting on this issue. :-)
      • Unfortunately, I don't think you've answered my objection here. I still don't see evidence that this will reduce vandalism. If the pages are in fact not useful, then they aren't hurting anything. Anecdotaly, I've found them quite useful myself, since about 90% of my edits on the article namespace are vandalism related. Now, that doesn't establish that they are generally useful, but it does establish that they are useful to someone, and I think the precedent toward inclusionism ought to apply here. --Ryan Delaney 20:52, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
  • I repeat my question - why is this a bad idea? Because I'm still getting no coherent answer. I'm only seeing two things said:
  1. "Record keeping is good". But why is it good, and why is it helpful? I certainly don't want to delete anything that helps revert vandalism. Ryan Delaney says 'I've found them quite useful myself' - could he please be specific. If he can show what has been useful and why, then I'd certainly not want to delete it.
  2. "There's no evidence that this will reduce vandalism". That's not actually a good argument in itself. If deleting vanal-cruft it is not harmful, and it might do some good, then there is no loss and a possible gain in doing so. Further, there is evidence that vandals are interested in their records. M62Manchester was one of those tagging and categorising indef blocked accounts - checkuser showed him also to be responsible for vandal accounts. There are several other single purpose accounts that have also been vandal record keeping - I'm highly suspicious of them. So there is at least some evidence that WP:DENY might be a helpful principle - so I ask again what is the actual practical downside to adopting this that counterballances that possitive possibility? --Doc 21:22, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
There is only one major downside, and that's when a single purpose account designed for vandalism does pattern vandalism, they should be blocked quickly, without the need for counting up the warnings. If you know the account is going to just be a vandalism account, as newbie vandalism isn't pattern vandalism, why bother warning for it? But that's the trick. How do you record certain types of recent pattern vandalism without giving recognition and self-satisfaction to them? Where's the limit? But there is no question that the concept behind deny recognition is a good idea, its how far to take it to eliminate the glee from vandalism. The person who joins wikipedia today, and in 2 years is an admin, how to tell them that replacing a page with a sickle and hammer image as the first edit an account makes should be something warrenting an immediate block? How much information do they really need in order to make that decision? That is the merit of why this proposal needs discussion before its really a guideline to be followed. Kevin_b_er 22:04, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi Doc. You said that my request for evidence that the vandal pages encourage vandalism is not an argument. That is accurate; I am not making an argument here. I view this as an issue of burden of proof. I do not consider the burden of proof to be on me to show that the articles are not harmful; rather I consider it to be on those who support this essay to show that they are. Does that clarify your difficulty? --Ryan Delaney 22:13, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but it still doesn't answer it. Even if there is only a possible benefit in adoping this, if there is no downside, then there is no reason not to do it. What's th downside? Futher I think the evidence of benefit is actually quite strong (see above). --Doc 22:17, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Here's one downside: It makes even more redlinked pages, and destroys the context of talk page posts. In other words, it damages the archive. When we revert vandals, the edits are left in the history, and people can go back and see what people were talking about. When you actually delete the pages, you can't. Under this, unless you're an admin you cannot effectively read archives or tell what people are talking about when they mention some long-dead vandal unless you were there.
By deleting all the records, but still making it bannable to impersonate them, we turn major vandals from "Oh, he was this moron, and we banned him, as you can see here, here, and here" into a legend. Only now, due to the deletions, he's a mysterious legend. In other words, for an archive reader WP:DENY has an inverse effect to the one it's intended to have, making the vandal larger than life. --tjstrf 23:09, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Eh? --Doc 07:30, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
I hadn't even thought of this. A clearer record is inherently more useful than any sort of mythological status that could be gleaned by troublemaking vandals. --badlydrawnjeff talk 12:13, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Vandals favor this guideline too

I'm currently trying to examine this deeper, but Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_checkuser/Case/Dr_Chatterjee shows that a vandal was actually active in pushing for this as a guideline/policy. The vandals want vandal info pages deleted? What? Some sense needs to be made of this. To a degree, the cutting down of things like Willy seems appropreate, as according to an email on the listserv, there were 6 people participating in it and its likely people have been duplicating that for fun. The communism vandalism is like to the point of , and many of the bad nickname vandals. The trick is to cut down on vanity for the vandals, while not destroying information pertaining to tracking them. The kind of irony is severe. The person behind Dr Chatterjee is also responsible for vandalism involving the identity 'bobby boulders', but checkuser shows them to have also done pagemove vandalism. Yet Dr. Chatterjee argues greatly that the 'bobby boulders' identity is not after a pagemove vandal when his LTA page was deleted by Cyde! So what, we've got a vandal who had fun with pagemove vandalism, then decided he wanted to make a personal glorification for himself. He or she decided to take up the name bobby boulders, and possibly enlist others to help. After the deletion of his subpage, he tried to target other stuff. See this. His rival subpage is deleted, though it probably should've gone anyways, but so is his/her. Ha, funny. The trick is that we find a good way to see to the erasure of their petty nonsense's identities without unrecording information to quickly render their attempts at damaging the encyclopedia useless. Kevin_b_er 21:56, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Who the fuck cares what the vandals think, or what they do? revert block ignore, move on. --Doc 21:59, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Uhm, this entire proposal is based on a psychic reading of the mind of the wily Misplaced Pages vandal. Saying we don't care what they think is obviously untrue, since we're discussing this propsal. --tjstrf 22:02, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
I don't care, no one should, that's why I support this policy. --Doc 22:05, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Actually, caring enough to go around hosting MfD's, large talk page discussions, and undoing the work of other editors just so that you can spite the fame-seeking vandals is far more "caring" than just slapping a "yet another idiot sockpuppet of x" template on them ever will be. If you really didn't care, you would not participate in the discussion at all, as it's just one more supposed glorification of them.
This entire proposal is based on spiting the motivations of certain vandals. However, the fact that certain vandals support it either means they've moved beyond merely disrupting articles into attempting to disrupt the meta, and are playing games with our discussions, or that its premise is inherently flawed. --tjstrf 22:16, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Utter codswallop! Vandalism is countered by revert block ignore. The role-playing game of cops and robbers is just bs, which both distracts from the encyclopedia and encourages vandals to enter into the same game. We've got hard evidence that's what's happening. This isn't psychoanalysis it's just common sense. --Doc 23:40, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Oh yes, I want to revert the vandalism and then get an admin to block them. Then I want to be rid of them from sight and mind(ignored) so I can go back to seeing the encyclopedia grow nicely. Revert block ignore is probably what they did years ago, then it got annoying enough that they started recording it. They must've recorded too much, and we're at now. If every last tidbit of information about vandalism is deleted, then people will get slowly get dumb about it, and I don't want to see 4 years down the road some new admin thinking that some newer editor reporting an account needs to be given a warning for moving a page to its name with "on goodyears" at the end. RBI could be applied in excess, and newbies get bitten. But as long as there's enough information to differentate that, everything's cool. As I said, need to record just enough to know what to do. Anything more could glorify or be a how-to guide. And the what-to-record needs to be specified better. Kevin_b_er 06:59, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
So stick a sentence on the username blocking bit of the blocking policy to point out certain vandal memes that should be instantly blocked. But the problem with your argument is that a) it isn't the end of the world if these accounts are not instantly blocked. b) I routinely block vandal accounts at creation - and I've never read an LTA page in my wiki-life. I suspect I'm not alone in that.--Doc 07:28, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
To me, this is all a waste of time. That's my verdict. :) --Woohookitty 12:14, 6 September 2006 (UTC)


From my point of view the ones who have got LTA pages have done so because they are active over a period of time. Those doing RC Patrol soon notice a new format of vandalism. Along the same line as Doc, I've blocked plenty of these and I've never felt the need to read an LTA page to tell me history behind them. As to if everyone forgets, to me this seems unlikely, but assuming it does happen does it really matter if we have no page move vandalism for the next 4 years, that we then get a week or two when we have to deal with it as if it were a new form of vandalism? Quite honestly if someone offered me that deal 4 years of no type x vandalism, but then a week where you have to get up to speed again, I'd quite happily take it. Blatant vandalism will always be readily recognisable and blockable. --pgk 18:54, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Whether bobby/wow/kitten/etc supports or opposes this is irrelevant. There are two possible scenarios:
  1. They like WP:DENY, so they push for it. They didn't mean to get caught, and did.
  2. They don't like WP:DENY, so they push for it. They meant to get caught, did, and now we're saying that they want it, so let's trash it, playing into their hands.
It's a psychological game. Who gives a flying rip what they think. --Chris (talk) 06:22, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Oppose proposal

By nature vandals are attention seeking people, and the barebone logic behind this proposal (from what I understand) is that if you take that away what vandals want (attention/recognition), vandals wont be vandalising as much as they would get bored.

However in my opinion, this proposal emboldens vandals. Vandals will now be much more destructive to get their "recognition"/"attention". Even if we dont give them what they want, they will still work "hard" for it.

That is at the very least apperant with Dr Chatterjee's case, or shall I call that WoW, BB or wharever. The deletion of CVU is warmly welcome by him.

Furthermore this lack of information makes it harder to deal with vandalism. Information such as what ip ranges WoW uses is more than useful. Keeping track of the user accounts created by him or his imposters can also be useful, I made heavy use of that when writing my vandalism detection bot. Those keywords were more than useful.

--Cat out 17:59, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Vandals and other attention seeking people have always existed throughout history. People like Herostratus will exist weather or not we have an article about Herostratus or not.
Vandalism is no big deal, nor is it a state secret.
--Cat out 22:16, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Useful information?

It is my opinion that, unlike articles, pages in Misplaced Pages space need to be useful (or funny, I suppose) in order to be kept. "It does no harm" is no compelling reason to keep pointless clutter in our project space. The main argument against deletion of vandal-related pages is that some of the information would, in fact, be useful. Note that nobody here suggests blanket deletion of such pages, only of the parts that are pointless or vandal aggrandizement.

So the obvious question is, what of the vandal-related pages are useful, and what for? And I'm talking about real usability, not hypothetical situations. Now frankly I'm not familiar with all of those pages, but if a disruptive account is permablocked I don't see any need at all to neatly pigeonhole it as an "imposter of foo" or "sockpuppet of bar". It's a permablocked vandal, so who cares? Similarly, I fail to see the point of Misplaced Pages:Favorite pages of banned users. I'm sure the main list page WP:LTA is useful as a noticeboard, but please point out the other useful stuff. >Radiant< 20:04, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

This sort of debate is puzzling to me. Some people do apparently find these pages useful. If you go around deleting everything you think isn't useful, sometimes you'll be right, and sometimes you'll be wrong. Is it worth the times you'll be wrong to go through the debate and process and drama to delete all that "clutter"? The people who do think it's useful will obviously not want to let it go because they feel like they are losing something, both in terms of past effort (effort taken to create these pages) and future effort (the expected gain). Why not just leave it alone? --Ryan Delaney 20:13, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Yep, that's why I'm asking "which parts are useful" before deleting anything. This guideline needn't state "delete everything", it could give an indication of what is and is not necessary. If people indeed find all of these pages useful, that would be a surprise to me. >Radiant< 21:38, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
  • In general I think it is best to bring any contentious case to MFD, and the community will be able to decide whether or not the benefits on keeping such tabs on vandals outweighs the benefit. Although a page like Administrator intervention against vandalism, gives attention and a brief recognition of vandals, it is a functioning page with an obvious benefit, and I don't think we would get a consensus to delete that. I remember tagging the WoW and WiC pages for deletion over a year ago and losing (Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Vanity pages for vandals) because several users at that time felt that the pages were beneficial in combatting the vandals. I disagree with them, but fair enough. Attitudes towards such pages have obviously changed over the past year and both pages are gone now. In general, I think WP:DENY has some very useful arguments against such pages, but it should be used as an argument in a broad discussion, and not on the whim of a single admin who decides to delete right there. Arguments against inclusion of indiscriminate lists, speculation on future events, one-man companies, etc. have also made their way to guideline status, but are still only used as arguments in a discussion where people may present valid counterarguments. By putting more borderline cases up for discussion, a decision which everyone accepts and respects is far more likely. Sjakkalle (Check!) 11:17, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Compromise?

Would supporters of this measure be satisfied if we could get the devs to implement a page protection level that included "viewable only by admins"? --Ryan Delaney 13:59, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that's neccessary. I think there's a consensus for the principle, but also a consensus that stuff that is actually and specifically useful should not be deleted. Perhaps we need to list the different things that WP:DENY might encompass and try to work out what is 1) vandal-forensic cruft - which should be speedied. 2) What is actually useful and for which a real convincing case can be made - which should be kept whilst it remains useful - but minimised. 3) What is debatable, borderline, or about which we have no consensus - which should also be kept or only be deleted upon a successful xfD.--Doc 14:27, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

All right well this sounds like a jumping off point for discussion -- it sure beats unilaterally speedying all of the anti-vandalism pages outright. --Ryan Delaney 22:54, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

To make a page viewable only by administrators, you can delete it. There is no need for extra developer work, and I'd rather see them get on with other stuff that we need. --Tony Sidaway 00:32, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Deleting it to make it read-protected cures the disease by killing the patient because it's far too much effort to update the pages. If you won't accept any compromise, discussion is pointless. --Ryan Delaney 02:29, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
Yes, being able to update the pages would be good. This could be achieved equally well by using an external, private, wiki. You can get one at schtuff.com. No need to bother the busy devs. --Tony Sidaway 02:38, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
And then vandals would get their "notoriety" from the off-wiki site instead. Again, I'm not optimistic about the productivity of this line of dialogue. --Ryan Delaney 02:54, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
Absolutely not. schtuff.com wikis, for instance, have full access control systems. The dialog will only become productive if you accept that you may not know everything and that the suggestions I'm making could be implemented here and now by anybody who wants to. No developer expertise required, no long waits for the devs to code and test. Just do it. --Tony Sidaway 03:27, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
It's incredible to me that you could turn this into a personal issue. I'm not going to respond to this anymore. --Ryan Delaney 13:47, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
Sorry about that. I've toned it down a bit. --Tony Sidaway 05:04, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to agree with what Doc said above, but doing things like going after the CVU is deleting everything including that which is useful. In that same way, I'd like to agree with the basic idea of what this essay is, but it seems to me that this is just a way to sneak in flat out deletion rational instead of improvement. I'm sorry that some people want to glorify vandals (even if they don't mean to), and I agree with many of the points made, but the spirit of discussion is going down the wrong path. We're supposed to improve things, not destroy things. I don't think WP:DENY will be used responsibly, but instead it's a knee-jerk reaction out of frustration. We all know that stuff like this happens with articles, where two editors disagree so one of them makes a POV fork of the article. We don't allow that, so why is this different? If you don't agree with how some pages and groups (such as the CVU) handle things then change the issue there and place this as a guideline in those places. Right now this is just a band-aid. -- Ned Scott 01:13, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

In other words, I agree with the text, but it seems to have different meaning to different people right now. A lot of that misinterpretation has to do with how these recent events have been handled, causing a lot of mistrust and resentment. -- Ned Scott 01:15, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Number of mirrors

"Vandal userspaces are archived and exported to over twenty thousand mirror websites, including highly visible websites like About.com"

Most don't bother with the wikipedia namespace and I don't think we have 20,000 mirrors.Geni 01:57, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree 20,000 seems like a lot. Æon EA! 03:38, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
That number was derived from the number of Google-indexed mirrors of a given userpage, although in retrospect the number is flawed. It counts one mirror's copy of several projects as several mirrors, for example. I've changed "twenty thousand" to "hundreds". // Pathoschild (/map) 16:27, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
how many grab the wikipedia namespace? In a form that can be acessed?Geni 22:36, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
for the record User:genidealingwithfairuse gives four results. Misplaced Pages:Requests for adminship/Genisock2 produces 2. "Requests for adminship/Genisock2" produces fewer still.Geni 22:41, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
"Willy on Wheels" produces 34,800 results (the phrase "This user is a suspected sock puppet of Willy on Wheels" obtains 9,740). On a lesser note, "User:Pathoschild" produces 13,200 from the dozen or so user pages I have. // Pathoschild (/map) 03:20, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
that is because theuy appear on wikipedia a lot and google finds them all. by comparison the ones I used only appear in a very small number of places in wikipedia so they gave a much better idea how much they are mirrored.Geni 11:38, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
By the way, Google shows Misplaced Pages pages that are not up-to-date, as well as the current version. That is why you get a lot of search results of Willy on Wheels.
site:en.wikipedia.org "Willy on Wheels" returns only 3,290 pages. // Pathoschild (/map) 03:40, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Start off somewhere

Okay, just to find some common ground to start from - does anyone disagree with me that the following are pointless and thus deletable:

  1. Any categories or templates of "this user is an imposter of <foo>", as that is generally bloody obvious from the username
  2. Any list or page about vandalism in wikis unrelated to Misplaced Pages, as it is not our job to coordinate worldwide vandal control.
The second one is unquestionably useless in my opinion. Only information about the Misplaced Pages project should go in the Misplaced Pages namespace. As for the first, categories are most likely not needed. Templates can be useful but I would let them go in favor of a generic one since people can always look at the block log to find out why the user was blocked. --Ryan Delaney 19:47, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
the second one has use in the case of trying to predict future attack styles.Geni 23:22, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
That's really a stretch. Since we're trying to compromise I think it's something we ought to let go. --Ryan Delaney 04:59, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
I see no reason to compramise with something that is a bad idea.Geni 11:34, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
Then please remove yourself from a discussion. This isn't a democracy, but it isn't a dictatorship either. --Ryan Delaney 13:14, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
interesting. Yuo take the position that other people are so closed minded that they will not withdraw from their position even when shown that it is logicaly imposible to support.Geni 13:47, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Marking as rejected

I've yet to see a valid use of or for this proposal, so I'm being WP:BOLD and marking it as rejected. Marking it as an essay was another option suggested, but this seems to run up directly against Misplaced Pages:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_censored. Luc "Somethingorother" French 06:18, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree that this proposal is a pile of crap. Knowing vandals and their patterns is necessary to defend from then. I don't know who got the ridiculous idea that vandals are doing it for recognition. Recognized vandal is much less effective than unrecognized one.  Grue  07:05, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
"Recognized vandal is much less effective than unrecognized one." absolutely. So you think the user(s) creating the "outoftune<whatever>" usernames are doing so because it's likely to keep them incognito and therefore more effective as a vandal? It is exactly that sort of stuff that suggests the motivation is more about attention and "recognition" in many cases. Why else create dozens of obvious sockpuppets name "outoftune<whatever>" which is so easily recognisable? Why move everything to "on wheels"? why have dozens of people decided to create "on wheels" usernames? etc. etc. If as a vandal you weren't attempting to be recognised you wouldn't keep these patterns and many of the LTA pages would never have been created since the absolutely bloody obvious connection between the accounts wouldn't be easily spelt out. Now there are some much more subtle vandals and having details of that can be useful, and indeed most people seem in agreement about that. The willy on wheels type vandals are so blatant that writing a page about it is at best a waste of time and worst it is giving undue recognition to a page move vandal. --pgk 11:40, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
I don't agree with it either, and I think there's enough resistance to avoid marking this as any kind of policy or guideline, but it does describe the strong opinions of several users. Marking it as an essay makes most sense in my opinion. --Ryan Delaney 08:32, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
I don't think the censorship policy completely applies outside of the article namespace. I would agree that this is better as an essay than a guideline. -- Ned Scott 09:38, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
  • This is little if anything to do with censorship; I'd call that a straw man, actually. While I see several strong objections here, an interesting question would be how this page works in practice. Now I haven't waded through any deletion logs lately, but are pages being succesfully deleted per WP:DENY? If there are, then in my opinion we should reduce this page to something like this:
Some people believe that one motivation behind vandalism is attention-seeking. As such, it may be useful to deny recognition to vandals. If you see any page that describes vandalism and seems to serve no practical purpose, take it to WP:MFD.
I think it's seen enough highly successful use to be marked as a guideline. See my thread above: "Success_of_WP:DENY_and_strong_consensus." --Tony Sidaway 10:43, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
I would not call that success. -- Ned Scott 11:56, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
And would you stop editing people's signatures. -- Ned Scott 11:58, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
It's a wiki. Tony has stated that he will edit down sigs that make it hard to edit comments, if he sees them. You may not agree with it but it's within guidelines... "If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed by others, do not submit it.". I found it annoying enough when it happened to me that I changed my sig to be shorter. Perhaps that was his intent. ++Lar: t/c 13:54, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
Lol, this page is full of people who absolutely must have everything their way...written exactly the way they think it should be written, right down to wiki markup and so forth. They can't even let minor things go. And that's the main source of the problems with Misplaced Pages. Just thought I would point that out. --Ryan Delaney 14:19, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I guess I don't see how it can be effectively argued that DENY isn't at least a guideline if not actual defacto policy at this point. It's certainly not "rejected" it is used all the time. ++Lar: t/c 13:54, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, we should mark it as policy or guideline, whatever. Somebody restored a whole heap of those pages yesterday but I understand they were all deleted again. It's being enforced. --Tony Sidaway 16:19, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
Sounds more like it's being fought over, but that's all a question of semantics : ) - jc37 16:25, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
In this case, it was undeleted by one admin on one side, and all the MfDs, CfDs, and other admins were on the other side. —Centrx→talk • 16:37, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Compromise/start somewhere

Looking above, attempts so far seem to have degenerated into personal attacks.

We also have the "confusion" caused by several vandals/sockpuppets/etc.

However, I'm going to try to restart the discussion, since I do think at least some of what WP:DENY is trying to do does have value.

Let's start with some basics:

  1. WP:DENY status:
    1. WP:DENY is currently a work-in-progress (not yet "stable") essay.
    2. Several editors would like to see it elevated to at least guideline status, and have made proposals to that effect.
  2. WP:DENY content:
    1. Several editors would like to see vandal listings, such as list pages and categories, reduced (at least), including those which may be seen as "trophy" lists to the vandals themselves, and/or those which may not be effectively useful in preventing vandalism (such as "generic" block lists).
    2. This also includes such pages like: "Wikipedians who have had their user pages vandalized", or "Articles which have been vandalized" - which, depending on how one defines vandalism, could include the whole of Misplaced Pages.

If we can agree on the above as a starting point, then I think we'll be much more able to move forward in developing the essay. (Compare this to work on an article towards making it a featured article.) - jc37 14:26, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, nothing about those statements seems controversial. --Ryan Delaney 14:57, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
I also agree to that. If I understand correctly, the contention is (1) the scope of what is deletable, and (2) whether it should be speediable or MFD. I think a good place to start is to mention that "vandal listings" can be listed on MFD and have in several cases been deleted as such. The good point of MFD'ing is that it allows for debate on specifics and on scope. >Radiant< 15:00, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
I agree, this sounds good so far. -- Ned Scott 15:04, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Scope

Ok Basics for scope of what should go or stay.

Contentions:

  1. Such lists may be used as "trophy" lists for vandals.
  2. Such lists may be used for dealing with repeat vandalism
  3. Such lists may be too expansive to be helpful
  4. General "who's been blocked" lists duplicate existing admin tools
  5. Some of the LTA pages/lists only exist on the basis of the vandal having been prolific in obvious vandalism, rather than any value in detecting future issues.
  6. The lists can out live their initial usefulness, certain material may only be valuable in the short term.

(add any more you think appropriate at the bottom, to retain number reference consistancy for comments) - jc37 15:43, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Comments

Personally, I think these block lists tend to perpetuate the idea that "once blocked, you're always considered a vandal", which is contrary to "wikilove", "Wikiquette", etc. The list in question shouldn't be about the block, but the user action which caused the user to be blocked. It's about the action, not the user (keeping in line with "no personal attacks"). I also think that lists about the targets of vandalism are not useful either, and should be removed, since they could become "reverse" trophy lists. - jc37 15:43, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you when it comes to the categories of blocked sockpuppets and think it's a good idea to avoid "branding" users as vandals with the use of these pages. I have to take strong exception when it comes to the "list of common targets" however, as this is, in my opinion, the most useful function the pages served; when a vandal hits a page, I know to check all the other pages he commonly hits for edits by sockpuppets. --Ryan Delaney 17:08, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
Making my job in dealing with vandalism difficult by eliminating tools should not be the intention of this campaign (this is neither a policy, guideline or an essay but a full scale lobbying). Mass deleting pages wont prevent vandalism. Also see: #Oppose proposal.
I need information (ISP info, IP ranges, and etc) on MARMOT, WOW and other vandals in dealing with them on other wikis.
Detectable vandalism should not be discouraged. Removing a hitlist only means that the vandal will have to select a random target (some vandals already do this).
Please dont act over your analysis of human/vandal behavior (dont mass delete pages thank you). I think WP:NOR can be interpreted to apply here.
--Cat out 22:20, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
Ironically, interpreting No original research to apply here would mean the immediate deletion of all relevant pages, which are original research in their entirety. That aside, MARMOT has been unblocked, and Willy on Wheels is a vandal meme (ergo having no set ISP or meaningful IP ranges). Putting that too aside, this page originally stated (explicitly) that it didn't concern informational pages like Long term abuse subpages; I think any such opposition should concern that change in particular, and not the essay itself. // Pathoschild (/map) 03:51, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
I agree. It seems that a great many "Long term abuse" pages have been deleted as an (in)direct result of this essay though. --Ryan Delaney 00:58, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
"in dealing with them on other wikis", then take it to meta, I'm sure those other wikis also have their own unique vandals are we going to start hosting information about those on en wiki also? If it's outside mediawiki wikis, take in somewhere else, the suggestion of needing this information to help me deal with vandalism have been touted before but when challenged no one has been able to actually say what they use that information for and how it helps them preventing vandalism, MARMOT as we know used NTL, the largest (or second largest) broadband ISP in the UK, that's 100s of thousands of IP addresses and 100s of transparent proxies, what value is there in that list? WoW well there isn't a WoW anymore is there, it's so generic any page move vandal is WoW in fact anyone who vaguely mentions WoW without pagemove vandalism is WoW these days. Really I understand what you are getting at that some information is useful but much of the stuff on the LTA pages is pretty worthless (allocating pretty pictures to a vandal is pointless, IP addresses for vandals who unever edit anonymously (WoW type vandals can't), is also pretty useless). etc. etc. We could probably distill the useful information down into no more than a couple of sentences and in many cases need nothing at all. (I know of at least two highly prolific vandals where there have never been LTA pages, and I've never seen huge amounts of discussion on, we've coped quite nicely with those). I'm not sure if you'll remember but a certain person once told me when describing the IRC bots functioning that the fairly simple techniques worked well because most vandals fundamentally want to get caught, blanking GWB and replacing with a picture of a penis is about attention, no one believes it will stay that way for long. The person who told me that was User:Cool_cat --pgk 09:47, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Simplify

Since I felt the discussion wasn't going anywhere in particular, in a potentially overly bold move, I have reduced this page to "Some pages glorify vandals. If you see any, drop them on MFD". That's what makes sense, and it's what we already do, and it allows for discussion on MFD on whether a page is in fact useful.

Think this could work? I'd hope so, but I'd like some feedback and additions, as always. Please do not revert unless you really really must. >Radiant< 17:08, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

I've partially unsimplified it, but left it much simpler than it was before your change; some explanation and details are still needed. // Pathoschild (/map) 03:07, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
Oddly enough, I see nothing in this formulation that I particularly disagree with. So it is a matter of curiosity to ponder why the other side of this debate thinks this means the Long term abuse pages should be deleted and I don't? How is our thought diverging here? --Ryan Delaney 05:40, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Messing with the tag

Messing with the tag is ridiculous. Obviously this is a de facto policy, we have implemented extremely successfully in the past few weeks. Playing silly games with the tags isn't a good idea. I propose that we either keep the existing tag or, in the interests of avoiding silly wars, remove all tags. --Tony Sidaway 01:31, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Maybe you should assume people actually have a reason for putting it up. It's obvious, obvious that this is in dispute. Why not talk it out instead of cutting off discussion and steamrolling any dissenters? That's essentially what you are doing by removing acknowledgement that this is in dispute. How could you not know an action like that would be inflammatory and distracting? What can such a childish and dismissive method of "getting your way" hope to achieve? Karwynn (talk) 01:42, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Additionally, have a read. As intentful on reducing frivolous discussion your actions may be, sometimes the best way to avoid having to deal with complaints is to not generate them in the first place. Karwynn (talk) 01:48, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
There is really nothing to be gained by such inflammatory and emotionally loaded language. Please try to discuss this rationally and with civility. Thanks. --Ryan Delaney 01:46, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Well, this is completely ridiculousness. It is a childish and counterproductive way to achieve one's ends, and it is hard to believe one wouldn't know that such an action would incite outrage, whether valid or not. THese sort of steamrolling is completely against any principle of consensus, and generates unnecessary conflict. THere is absolutely no reason to remove an indication of dispute - there are much better ways of dealing with people who have the "wrong" opinion than just silencing them. It shows no respect for discussion nor consensus, something we should all agree are two fundamental concepts to Misplaced Pages's improvement. Bluntness is not the same as incivility, by the way.Karwynn (talk) 01:51, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
De Facto Policy? I don't think those exist, nor should they. Also, its relative importance is at best, guideline level. Even Vanity is just a guideline. --tjstrf 01:49, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
De facto policy exists. That's just the way it is. --Tony Sidaway 01:50, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
You just said we have a de facto existance of de facto policy. The levels of logic, justification, and coherent explanation here are overwhelming, to say the very least. Non-sarcastically, I respectfully request a reasonably well-thought explanation for why a policy, of all things, should need to be de facto rather than have a consensus-determined status. --tjstrf 02:00, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
It would seem to rely on the premise that most people who participate in discussion of Misplaced Pages policy don't know what's best for it. Karwynn (talk) 02:03, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Tony, if that is your attitude, it is really pointless to discuss this with you. If your mind is totally made up and you have no intention of explaining yourself to anyone, then I'm sorry but I don't think you have any authority to edit this page. I can't believe I have to say something so obvious but Misplaced Pages is supposed to be a collaborative project. You don't get to say "that's the way it is" as if people should just accept your view. --Ryan Delaney 02:02, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Indeed. Having the "product" of Misplaced Pages in mind is great, but not so much when you don't have the foresight to see what sort of conflict this action or that edit will generate. THere are others here as well, who have input in how best to write Misplaced Pages. Karwynn (talk) 02:05, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Policy is descriptive, not prescriptive. --Tony Sidaway 02:05, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
THe dispute is not over whether or not this should be "implemented in the future", it's about whether or not it's a good idea in the first place. I think you're misunderstanding the scope of conflict. Karwynn (talk) 02:07, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
It's already been implemented. The discussion is over and this is policy. --Tony Sidaway 02:09, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Straw poll

I'm making a straw poll on whether this should be a guideline or not? Right now it isn't clear to me that there is a consensus. Almost all the admins involved(including me) seem to agree that this should be a guideline (heck I wouldn't mind if it were policy) but I'm not convinced there is any real consensus at this point. Until this poll is finished could we please refrain from edit warring over the status of the page?

Support as a guideline

  1. . Vandals seem on the whole to be an egotistical bunch. This proposed guideline doesn't anywhere say that we can't store small amounts of information if necessary about specific vandals. That doesn't mean we need pages and categories devoted to them. JoshuaZ 01:33, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Don't support as a guideline

  1. Recognizing vandalism to a point is effetive in countering it. Putting "this userpage has been vandalized X times" sends the message "lol vandalism", showing that it has no effect in the long run. Additionally, vandalism, even copycat vandalism (ON WHEEELS!!!) may be from potentially curious contributors, and things like the {{test}} series are good for turning that curiousity into productivity. Besides, recognition of long-term vandals helps to identify more vandalism, and copycat vandalism as well. This is more something that should be applied sporadically on a case-by-case, moreso than is fitting for a guideline, so I think it should be an essay. Karwynn (talk) 01:59, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
    Way too early for a poll, however. It doesn't seem so because any discussion was pre-emptively declared dead by certain editing. Karwynn (talk) 02:01, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Polls are evil