I hereby issue a challenge to ALL of the Vandal Fighters on the English WP. I want as many of you as possible to come to consensus on a date in which a significant majority of Vandal Fighters agree to not vandal fight (not even for a little bit! ). If on that date, WP is completely destroyed by vandals, I will personally apologize for my disparaging remarks against Vandal Fighting (such as Ryulong, though I reserve the right to criticize uncivil behavior and/or breaking of WP policies as well as ethics) and will not oppose you on RFA for just being a vandal fighter (I reserve the right to oppose you for other reasons relating to WP policies and ethics and I reserve the right simply to not participate in anyone's RFA at all).

I don't care what any of you do on "No Vandal Fighting Day" just as long as those participating in this experiment agree not to vandal fight at all. Although I won't say "don't edit WP", I think the temptation for many of you to vandal fight would be too great. Perhaps a day-long "Wikibreak"?

I'm not sure how this "No Vandal Fighting Day" thing can be conveyed to me. If any of you posted on WP your plans, you'd likely be blocked for disruption and the admins will be panicking around that date. It also would unleash more vandal assaults than you can shake a stick at. Therefore, I would ask that one of you, after getting a sizable number of vandal fighters to agree, would join this forum and Private Message me (The Joy) with the planned date and a list of vandal fighters agreeing not to fight that day.

I promise not to reveal any part of the Private Message (PM) to anyone on WP or this forum. Its an experiment in which I personally wish to see the value of Vandal Fighting and why WP needs Vandal Fighters, not just relying on the Community to deal with vandalism.

I warn those wishing to participate that, though I promise not to betray (and some on WP would say that as a Review member, I am not to be trusted, but I hope that others will) others who know of this challenge may betray you to the Community. There's also the possibility of the Community sanctioning or shunning any participant for engaging in this experiment.

To be honest, I don't expect this experiment to fly or enough to participate (if any at all), but I am curious what the result of "No Vandal Fighting Day" would be. Others here may add other criteria if they wish, but its primarily to satisfy my curiosity of the value of Vandal Fighting on WP.

Won't happen.

Vandal fighting is the noble lie used to excuse admin misbehavior. If these people ever admitted that most vandalism could be eliminated painlessly without them, they would never admit it. THe gang would rather see the site fall apart than give up their power.

I think the operant word is "fighting". The people in this group don't care less about editing an encyclopedia. If they weren't fighting here, they'd be fighting on some listserver or chatboard. Here, they get come credibility, because they can wiki-rule themselves into looking like their fighting has a purpose. Its a perfect circle (of death?).

The Joy has a really good idea. I think one way to inspire this would be to appeal to vandal fighters to 'fight back' at SlimVirgin like editors that don't think that vandalism fighting is as important as doing something else (i.e. writing). I wonder what would happen? Hopefully an explosion...

Plus the thread where we can make suggestions to vandal fighters on what to do with their day off would be very funny. :-D

To ask a vandal fighting drone, not to revert changes, is like asking a
flock of seagulls not to eat a fish. (see finding Nemo, the scene where the seagulls blurt out..MINE..MINE..MINE...MINE...MINE....MINE...)

Wikipeidea is now beyond hope, repair or redemtion.

The concept is flawed as people are flawed, when power is handed
to snot nose punks and alowed to have deminoun over such
powerful tool of information. (in the book harry potter, harry/ dumbldore rejects the power for frear
of being corrupted by it. In Wikipeida you now see how it corrodes the minds of those, who belive they are doing "GOOD")

I SAY... Wikipedia should close down...

Good points DL. I think it is even worse from a self-delusion angle. Vandal fighters would not be causing havoc on discussion boards. They lack the requisite verbal skills and literacy to participate in discussions or to participate in an encyclopedic project. Vandal fighting is more like a first person shooter game. By making vandal fighting a common path to becoming an admin WP is establishing leadership of the least able.

Also I think their is a co-dependent relationship between cruft and vandal fighting. Much of what they defend is not worth the effort. Better that 80% of the articles didn't exist at all. Many of the so-called vandals might not harm articles deserving of respect.

They also lie and claim it's all trolling and harassment.

Thank goodness people are taking my challenge seriously. After looking at my challenge/tirade, I was worried I was going to be portrayed like the guy discussed in this forum topic:

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=8165

I don't know how WP could enforce a "No Vandal Fighting" rule if and when WP realizes how better if it would be without them. Everyone on WP is a volunteer and you can't force a volunteer to do something else on the project if they despise it.

Maybe WP can't do anything about its current Vandal Fighter Admin Corp, but if RFA becomes harder for pure Vandal Fighters go get past, things might change. Then again, all one would have to do is feign interest in article writing, talk a little to people, and eventually amass enough edits to pass an RFA... and then one could just do pure Vandal Fighting afterwards.

I just don't understand Vandal Fighting. I would be so bored and over time driven insane just watching that one Recent Changes page and dealing with all the bad (and good) users I feel the need to squash.

Update: Seems that the video has been removed from YouTube. It was a video of a crazy Fascist mayoral candidate for Tokyo. He didn't win, thank goodness.

I did some vandal fighting on another wiki but I felt the need to correct every little thing that needed correcting (must be an obsessive-compulsive thing)...I got tired of doing it.

What is this contempt for vandal fighters? They are trying to to keep the encyclopedia clean for the benefit of its readers. Most of them go out of their way to be fair; they'll usually give a vandal four warnings no matter how blatant it is. It's fascinating the way anti-vandal fighting segues into deletionism on this thread. I think that's very telling.

Hundreds of well-meaning vandalism-fighters are given a bad name by the likes of Jayjg and Ryulong, who routinely block dozens of editors instantly after a single infraction, without warning, with the message "vandalism-only account". Search their block logs to see what I mean.

everyking: I remember giving only three warnings before alerting an admin (and I stopped at three, I didn't repeat warning #3 over and over).

Obvious single purpose accounts, I alerted someone right away - but blocking was never used as "punishment". (this wasn't wikipedia though, you can tell)

I agree largely with gomi. When I think of "Vandal Fighter", Ryulong comes to mind and not those other vandal fighters willing to work with vandals (and those falsely accused) in encouraging them to work for the good of WP.

Individuals that do nothing but "vandal fight" and are more concerned with social mobility than adhering to the WikiWay (i.e. discussing and working with people, working to help and not hinder the project's goals) are a problem to WP and should be stopped. Pure vandal fighters, IMO, tend to lack the skills necessary to work one-on-one with people and solve problems.

The Joy: That's very good. I didn't think of it that way. (Wow, someone used the WikiWay in a discussion, I'm not the only one after all)

On Wikipedia, they may unblock an account after two years and then go around worrying like the account is suddenly going to do something bad. That's completely stupid.

I was talking about AboutUs.org

I tihnk purging blocks is a good idea. AboutUs doesn't even have that many active blocks. Wikipedia has oodles, as you said.