Re: Johannes misbehavior in the wiki, and a request for admin rights (was: wiki "abuse")

From: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
Date: Aug 10, 2010, 18:37 UTC
Message-ID: <AANLkTikEZ1DJSjSSE4o5XxMp_P0knT6e=874kRxkNypZ@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <AANLkTinNnchHQHvN6FnqF_E5NCVxQvE+T_gOD0z2-MUY@mail.gmail.com>

On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 9:03 PM, Avery Pennarun <apenwarr@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 10 quoted lines

> On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 1:54 PM, Felipe Contreras
> <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'm not going to go into details as why I think no warning was issued,
>> just that we need this:
>> https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/WikiIdeas#Allow_users_to_see_deleted_pages
>
> Keep in mind that 99% of the unwanted crud that gets posted to a wiki
> is spam and absolutely doesn't deserve a fair warning before it gets
> deleted.  Just based purely on the list of usernames that was posted
> earlier, it looked mainly like spammers to me.

Sure, if it's clearly spam (as in created by a spam bot) it doesn't deserve a warning, but as Amir's case demonstrates, not all of the deleted content was like that.

> If you want to implement a huge big process before deleting/banning
> users, you'll want to be sure what you're getting into.

There's no big process: warn before you ban if the user is not a bot. Simple.

Show 6 quoted lines

> I personally don't think that anything that was done originally was
> necessarily wrong, or that the wiki management itself needs to be
> fixed.  If it were possible for people to simply look at deleted
> pages, this thread would have been "Hey, you deleted me and it was
> unwarranted!" -> Someone checks it out -> "No, it was warranted, don't
> post swearwords to user pages" -> "Oops, sorry" -> Unbanned.

That can't be right because the reason wasn't that, but "Spamming links to external sites", and that hasn't even been decided yet.

But if that's what you meant, here's a more likely case:
1) Join the wiki
2) Fill the user page as requested
3) Get blocked permanently
4) Give up

Just by having a *temporary* ban instead of a permanent one (when the user is clearly not a spam bot) would not have only decreased the thread, but it wouldn't have happened in the first place and wouldn't have caused the case I just mentioned.

> The thread went on as long as it did simply because verification was
> impossible.

No, it did because there was no admin willing to fix the problem: unban.

-- 
Felipe Contreras