http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=172495691

It doesn't get any weirder than this. An editor of many things Canadian wants to know why one of his collection of Alberta town articles has gone poof.

The explanation was undoubtedly puzzling to the man, who rather politely (he is Canadian, after all) decides not to press the issue.

Arguing with the insane does not lead to any resolution.


== Deletion of [[Swalwell, Alberta]] ==

You deleted the article [[Swalwell, Alberta]] with the remark: "created by trolls". I remember creating that article, providing a source for it, and the article had nothing trollish or offensive about it, and followed the usual layout of other articles listed in [[Hamlets of Alberta]]. Would you care to give a valid reason for deletion, or else restore the article? Thank you. --[[User:Qyd|Qyd]] ([[User talk:Qyd|talk]]) 19:32, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

:I see, I wasn't aware of that (and I rarely check my email). I can't figure out why such a page can be a dispute reason, but I'll trust you on that. Once this dispute is over, could you please unlock the page, so we can go on with completing the subject in a normal fashion? Thanks. --[[User:Qyd|Qyd]] ([[User talk:Qyd|talk]]) 20:20, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Note the red link on this Alberta page. Can you spot the weirdness?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kneehill_County,_Alberta

Qyd can.


* 20:18, 16 November 2007 Crum375 (Talk | contribs) deleted "Swalwell, Alberta" ‎ (created by trolls)
* 20:30, 12 November 2007 Crum375 (Talk | contribs) deleted "Swalwell, Alberta" ‎ (trolling)
* 22:24, 11 November 2007 Crum375 (Talk | contribs) deleted "Swalwell, Alberta" ‎ (trolling)
* 14:01, 12 October 2007 Crum375 (Talk | contribs) deleted "Swalwell, Alberta" ‎ (trolling)
* 19:11, 17 September 2007 ElinorD (Talk | contribs) deleted "Swalwell, Alberta" ‎ (Created by troll)
* 13:01, 9 September 2007 ElinorD (Talk | contribs) deleted "Swalwell, Alberta" ‎ (Created by troll)
* 21:49, 22 June 2007 Crum375 (Talk | contribs) deleted "Swalwell, Alberta" ‎ (created by troll)
* 00:00, 13 June 2007 Crum375 (Talk | contribs) deleted "Swalwell, Alberta" ‎ (troll account)
* 15:23, 11 June 2007 Crum375 (Talk | contribs) deleted "Swalwell, Alberta" ‎ (trolling)
* 14:57, 10 June 2007 Crum375 (Talk | contribs) deleted "Swalwell, Alberta" ‎ (troll account)
* 23:34, 27 May 2007 Musical Linguist (Talk | contribs) deleted "Swalwell, Alberta" ‎ (Created by troll/stalker)
* 00:10, 6 May 2007 Crum375 (Talk | contribs) deleted "Swalwell, Alberta" ‎ (content was: ''''Swalwell''' is a small town in Alberta, Canada.Category:Locations' (and the only contributor was 'Schloff') created by troll)
* 23:09, 20 April 2007 Doc glasgow (Talk | contribs) deleted "Swalwell, Alberta" ‎ (created by troll)


All of the other Hamlets on the Alberta page have articles. Other Wikis have an article.

Simple question, Crum/Doc/Slim - you're admins - why don't you just protect the damn page and put Qyd's work back.

Idiots - that red link says "something is wrong here". When is Jimbo going to realize he has given the car keys to the family lexus to the meth addicts in the trailer next door? I know its Florida, and there's methtrailers everywhere, but someday you gotta move on up out of the Redneck Rivera, jimbo.

Since most of your admins can't legally drive yet, that's probably not a good analogy.

So, Wikipedia isn't going to have an article on Swalwell, apparently, just because SV happens to have some association with that place. Every other town and hamlet gets an article--just not Swalwell. To repeat that one more time, there is one--and only one--inhabited place of settlement on the Earth that cannot have an article, and that is Swalwell, Alberta. The community did not decide that: one person, Crum375, made that decision. According to that person, an article created about Swalwell can only be the result of trolling, even though articles are created about comparable places all the time, and even though the editor who created this iteration of the article was clearly just someone who writes a lot about Canadian places and had never even heard of this insanity before.

This is a problem.

I'm starting to suspect that she really is still in Swalwell. How many poodles are there in Swalwell? If it's true that she is still there, how difficult would it be to spot her walking a poodle (plus that other dog)?

The smartest thing the wikifascists could do at this point is pretend that there's nothing special about Swalwell. Slim, tell your meatpuppets to back off, before Swalwell is swarmed by journalists.

Yes, it is a problem.

A case needs to be opened, and Qyd included in it.

There is absoultely no excuse for this. None. If vandalism is a problem, you don't delete articles, you protect them.

Several admins need to be taught that they are not above "the project".

Better delete the article on Toronto as well.

I'm amazed that they can't understand that their heavy handed approach just makes it worse. Create a stub, protect it, problem solved.

They don't know anything other than the heavy handed approach. That's why Wikipedia is the mess that it is.

There is something odd about a slice of swiss cheese that has exactly one hole in it.

Theme —



Variations —

There is something odd about a ho house that that has exactly one ho in it.

There is something odd about a baudy house that has exactly one bauder in it.

And so it goes …

Jonny

Just redirect any reference to Canada to "Dragons be there."

Why stop there? Who knows who might be "living in Canada in a similar way"?

They've restored the article now... full-protected, as somebody in this thread suggested. (Those guys do seem to listen to this site, even as they insist that there's nothing of any value in it.) The talk (discussion) page is also protected (in a deleted state), showing a mode of insistence that nobody even be allowed to discuss the status of the article, but that's typical of the people involved.

All happy Canadians are living in Canada in a similar way — except for the Snowbirds, who are living in Florida in dissimilar ways.

Sorry bout that, Leo …

Jonny

Gee whiz, I didn't realize it was 62 miles from Calgary. I thought it was right on the edge of Calgary, because it uses the same telephone exchange. I'll bet everyone knows everyone in Swalwell (that's what a hamlet is, no?), and I'll bet they remember way back to 2002, when the owner of slimvirgin.com claimed that this hamlet was her place of residence. No wonder they had to keep this vital information under wraps. I think they better delete that stub before some journalist sees it.

I did a little digging, and apparently "Swalwell, Alberta" was the "current target to get salted" in ED's Criteria for Speedy Deletion article, for almost two full days.

After it was salted, they moved on to another article (or more accurately, article-creation link). But presumably the WP'ers don't check that ED article on a regular basis (as that would be too logical, and besides you never know when the goatse images will appear), so they just kept salting the Swalwell article out of force-of-habit. But since they changed it over a week ago, it's probably "safe" now... but wait! ED is a wiki, so they could - in theory - put the Swalwell reference back virtually any time they want! My God, it's just like... terrorism!

Anyway, blame them, right?

This is the thread, and Qyd is the perplexed originator of that article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=172495691

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Qyd

note this: "restart"

The history of that article was erased prior to Qyd's restoration of it here

(cur) (last) 17:01, 16 November 2007 Qyd (Talk | contribs) (1,279 bytes) (re-start page - AB settlement)

Qyd had no idea why a wingnut Crum375 was doing this nonsense. And no one else knows why either. Instead of protecting the article from editing, he nuked it. What an idiot.

Huh. Well, either his work's been oversighted or he's mistaken, because he doesn't show up in the deleted history of Swalwell, and it doesn't show up in his deleted contributions. But I know Qyd, and I'd be surprised if he was mistaken about that. Passing strange, to say the least.

Okay, mystery solved, I think:

April 20, 2007: Troll creates article.
April 20: Doc Glasgow deletes article.
May 5: Troll creates article.
May 5: Crum deletes article.
May 13: Troll creates article.
May 27: Musical Linguist deletes article.
June 10: Troll creates article.
June 11: Crum deletes article.
June 11: Troll creates article.
June 12: Crum deletes article.
June 22: Troll creates article.
June 22: Crum deletes article.
September 9: Troll creates article.
September 9: ElinorD deletes article.
September 17: Troll creates article.
September 17: ElinorD deletes article.
October 12: Troll creates article.
October 12: Crum deletes article.
November 11: Troll creates article.
November 12: Crum deletes article.
November 16: Qyd creates article.
November 16: Crum deletes article.
November 19: Qyd goes all WTF on Crum's talk page.
November 20: East718 undeletes the article.

Qyd just had the misfortune to innocently create the article in the middle of a trolling spree. Of course, the fact that it's impossible to tell the difference between a troll's creation of an article and a good-faith editor's creation of the same article probably says a certain amount about the merits of deleting the article.

# 14:01, 12 October 2007 Crum375 (Talk | contribs) deleted "Swalwell, Alberta" ‎ (trolling)
# 19:11, 17 September 2007 ElinorD (Talk | contribs) deleted "Swalwell, Alberta" ‎ (Created by troll)
# 13:01, 9 September 2007 ElinorD (Talk | contribs) deleted "Swalwell, Alberta" ‎ (Created by troll)
# 21:49, 22 June 2007 Crum375 (Talk | contribs) deleted "Swalwell, Alberta" ‎ (created by troll)
# 00:00, 13 June 2007 Crum375 (Talk | contribs) deleted "Swalwell, Alberta" ‎ (troll account)
# 15:23, 11 June 2007 Crum375 (Talk | contribs) deleted "Swalwell, Alberta" ‎ (trolling)
# 14:57, 10 June 2007 Crum375 (Talk | contribs) deleted "Swalwell, Alberta" ‎ (troll account)
# 23:34, 27 May 2007 Musical Linguist (Talk | contribs) deleted "Swalwell, Alberta" ‎ (Created by troll/stalker)
# 00:10, 6 May 2007 Crum375 (Talk | contribs) deleted "Swalwell, Alberta" ‎ (content was: ''''Swalwell''' is a small town in Alberta, Canada.Category:Locations' (and the only contributor was 'Schloff') created by troll)
# 23:09, 20 April 2007 Doc glasgow (Talk | contribs) deleted "Swalwell, Alberta" ‎ (created by troll)


Glasgow was the original idiot on this. no surprise there. The other slim posse idiots joined in.

Slim, get some new friends. Those above made it worse.



before the 20 April 2007 edit, the actual history of that article will show it was created by Qyd. That got erased. I would guess that it was done by Jayjg if its not viewable by admins now. Just like Slimmy's Pierre Salinger edits. The BLP of the guy that fired her. And folks are surprised by her involvement in the Patrick Byrne-Wordbomb-Weiss wars. Yeah, there's a history there too.

I think Slim's learned some history lessons since jayjg's oversight shenanigans. Good thing wordbomb got a WP database dump before jayjg went offroading.

brandt's concerned with the lockerbie part of those oversights. but that's mainly because he's pissed about the Slimmy Creates Brandt BLP Out of Spite For Her Buddy Berlet.

And this person is still an admin on WP. Amazing. And Cla68 isn't. Even more amazing.

Now she's a Bunny Boiler Martyr. Way to go DL and other nutjobs, you've turned the worst bully to ever use WP as a personal revenge tool into its martyr du jour. Step aside Ryan Jordan, lol.

JzG made a point of bashing Cla68 for questioning this Swalwell stuff during the interminable recent ArbCom case, and I had a few words in rebuttal in the next evidence section below that.

that makes absolutely no sense at all, except in the WP world of trolls, goblins, and slim virgins. The article was created before the "trolling" spree.

Youll note that the first edit tha exists now by Qyd is to "recreate" the article. There is no Qyd edit that shows when he originally created it. Any more. He did so before April 2007 when the "trolling" spree started. He also created articles for all the other towns and hamlets in that region for an article that detailed all these places.

And after the ShootOnSight Team deleted it, his article had a big honking redlink for Swallell just sticking out like an "Investigate Why This One's Different and Mysterious!" red push-me button.

Keystone Cop Admins making it worse. It was jaw-dropping to see this deletefest draw so much attention to something that would otherwise get none. Protect the page from editing and be done with it.

Like this Andrew M crap on W-R where the person who should of all people not be giving him his name in lights (bet he loved that), continues to do so at every opportunity to make it worse, well, these things astound. Oh the drama.

Some things are best handled by not giving them further wiki or forum publicity, or any unusual attention whatsoever. These instances are such cases.

He was recreating others' work. That would have shown up when he started editing the article. If it was his work that had been deleted previously, he would have been asking questions well before November.

that's some swell rationalisation. it's great to have a pre-conceived notion and run with it! happens a lot here too, not just on WP.

So because Qyd wasn't guard-dogging articles on his "I own them!" list, he's recreating others work.
Note the part in Crum's talk page where he says he 'remembers creating it" and did so with "references".

He didn't say, hey, I found a cached version of a deleted article on the nets somwhere, and re-created someone else's stuff.

Not everyone is JzG.

How exactly could he be recreating others work? From where? do you think he's an admin that can grab other people's deleted work, like JzG did to Kohser, and "re-create other people's work'?

Have you read Qyd's editing history? It's not quite Cla68's stellar history before/after he stepped into a pile of Weiss (as I did too), but he wasn't lying on Crum's talk page.

But then it makes it quite difficult to piece together these things who wrote what when, and that's just the way the Jayjg, JzG's, Crum375, DogGlasgows, and SlimVirgins of the world like it. It works for them, and that's all that matters.

Who cares about the Qyds and the Cla68's of the world. Collateral damage is going to happen when a bunch of wingnut napoleons go to war.

But I think Docglasgow has since met his Watterloo ("I was defeated, you won the war...") and now wears Wikipedia Wellingtons, and maybe even throws one in their direction, now and again.

Hey, doc! There's always Medpedia, if you come out of that coma.

As I believe I have remarked, the problem with Wikipedia is the same as with any large corporation: You have a spate of firings, and then you realize (finally) that it's your middle-level manager that's the bad egg, NOT all the people he fired. Wups. So you fire him.

But what you DO NOT do, is contact all the people who were his victims and offer to hire them back. Which, in any rational world, you would. But that would be admitting corporate error and we don't do that.

I think NYB will fill you in there, if you need it.

Qyd's trip down the Swalwell rabbit hole was circa July 2006 after he created this:


http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...&oldid=59192596


Note the edit's creation of hotlinked towns/hamlets. Swell-wall is one of them. I'll call it Swell-wall to protect the innocent, lol.

If the oversighted/deleted/whatever edits could be "recreated", you'll find that Swell-wall was created on or soon after that above edit.

It's not preconceived: I'm staring at the deleted reversions right now, and this earlier creation by Qyd you're alleging does not exist. From this evidence, I have reached the conclusion I expressed above.

No, because there's not a scintilla of evidence that he created the article before November 2007, that was the first time he created it. Since he could tell at the time that this wasn't the first time the article had been created, he summarized it as "re-creating". He wouldn't have been able to see what previous versions looked like, so he wasn't copying others' work; he was just noting that this wasn't the first time that the article had been created.

Once again, Sarc has nailed it. Qyd really had no idea what was going on.

I always hope that wikipolitics will never spill over into content censorship, but it may not be possible to achieve that. Deleting a perfectly valid article by assuming that a "troll" created it is problematic and sets a horrible precedent.

As though this precedent hadn't been set a million times by reverting good content due to WHO CREATED IT.

Have some balls, you WP admins who read here. One of you slap a delete tag on [[WP:IAR]], since it's a lie through and through. You don't really care about the content. What you care about who loses in the social wars and is found a WP heretic, and therefore has all their works burned in the pile of wood, at the foot of their stake.

sarcasticidealist is right. Swalwell was linked from "List of communities in Alberta" since 2005, but you can find mirror sites that capture it in earlier states of development. This list was full of redlinks until very recently (no censusbot in Canada, I guess).

Qyd knew it was a recreation, as evinced by the edit immediately before he started the modern article. He wanted to give the hamlet a proper start so that people would stop acting POINTy about it. He doesn't hint that it was ever started by him before, and seems unaware of the SV angle.

I agree that Qyd's a good faith editor (and a good editor to boot), but you're just wrong about the date of creation, Piperdown.

I know better here... BUT

I think there's a difference in degree here that matters... certain users are so thoroughly unhelpful that reverting everything, and then asking for a sifting through to see what's worth restoring and standing behind, is the right approach. For them WP has the "block on sight, revert on sight" policy... the edits themselves are not the main point, it's trying to counter the harassing or BLP violating effect that the banned user is having.

Other bad users, not so much. The policy allows, but does not require, "block on sight, revert on sight"... so if no admin chooses to revert, it doesn't get reverted. Once it does though, that policy applies.

In my view, the hapless little town article was an innocent victim of a much larger game... whoever kept recreating it wasn't doing it because WP needs a Swalwell article, but rather to get someone's goat. Hence it's an example of a good edit that has to go. Where I think the error came in was in not having some user come in after the revert, unrevert and stand behind the edit, while repudiating the user.

Once the article exists, I suspect its usefulness as a way to annoy people goes way down.

I know better here... BUT that's my view.

----
Note the other side of the coin: I happen to know of a user that recently got indef blocked, but has come back with a new ID. I know for sure it's the same user I blocked indef but as long as the user keeps their nose clean I see no reason to do anything about it at all. If someone else catches them, too bad for them, because that means they had went back to their old ways enough to be detected. That defacto tolerance is rather wide spread I think. It just doesn't extend to ALL indef blocked users.

I strongly disagree; if there's one thing that characterizes Wikipedia governance, it's a belief that rules are there to be ignored.

But that's not what IAR says. It doesn't say "Rules are there to be ignored." It says rules, when they harm content, may be ignored. I believe WP governence has interpreted that to mean "Rules, when I don't like them, or when they stand in the way of getting at my enemies, may be ignored."




That policy cannot be defended unless it's a timesaver, on grounds you don't have time to go through 100 bad edits to find the one good one. But only if you really have a way to batch delete all edits of a given editor, without looking at them. How come I've never seen that applied to a hundred vandal IPs I've identified? "Reverting all and then sifting and restoring??" What are you talking about, Lar? Either this function exists and is only used (very occasionally) against nameusers, for political reasons (since I don't see it used on usual-scatalogical vandals), or else it doesn't exist and you just made it up.


Whoever created or recreated the articles on Brandt and his website didn't do it because WP needs those articles. They did it to get someone's goat. So how come those people aren't labeled vandals whose every edit is to be deleted on sight? Double standards, Lar. You don't mind bio'ing somebody or writing about their company just to tweak them-- that's not harassment. But if it's one of your own, you'll delete ANY REFRENCE TO THE WHOLE TOWN THEY LIVE IN, and salt it, so it leaves a hole in the frigging map like Dick Cheney's residence on Google Earth. Do you not the see the hypocrisy of this?

And I think, BTW, we've established who created the Salwell article (user:Qyd), and they did NOT do it to get somebody's goat. Their work was simply shot on sight because somebody and somebody else's kabal of friends decided they had the right to do anything at all on Wikipedia, and to its content, because they were paranoid. We're not talking about deleting somebody's social security number, or their street address, or even their street (though there are articles on many streets in Wikipedia--- look it up). This is whole town. About all you can say of it, is that isn't a large city. However, it was large enough to be noticed for its own sake.

Look, Wikipedia is a work which has an article on every London tube entrance, and (in addition) on literally hundreds of Canadian towns. As you can see, there are Wikis on 111 OTHER towns in Alberta alone, but none on Swalwell. How long did you really think you were going to keep the town of Swalwell, Alberta, Canada, out of Wikipedia? 5 years? 10 years? Did anybody even bother to think about it? This is so incredibly stupid! Wikipedia is coming for you-all, and us-all. And all you can think of is the Dick Cheney solution: delete MY house, but tap YOUR phones. ARGGGH.

I'd mostly agree, though I think that almost everybody who invokes IAR believes they are doing so to improve the encyclopedia, including those who do so dishonestly or disingenuously. Take the out-of-context deletions of Swalwell. You and I agree that that was a ridiculous invocation of IAR (in that the deletion was outside of the deletion process). But do you have any doubt that the admins doing it believed
1. SlimVirgin is a valuable contributor.
2. The trolls creating these articles are trying to harass SlimVirgin.
3. If we tolerate the harassment of our valuable contributors, they will leave, thereby harming the encyclopedia.
4. Therefore, in the interests of helping the encyclopedia, we must undo the activities of these trolls?

Or let's talk about Wikipedia admins who push a POV and summarily block troublesome newcomers who object to that POV: these admins believe that their POV is the correct one. Moreover, in most cases they believe their POV is so overwhelmingly correct that any encyclopedia that does not make clear, explicitly or otherwise, that their POV is correct will be devoid of any credibility. Therefore, for the sake of the encyclopedia, they must drive these newcomers off, and fortunately ignoring all rules makes doing so easier.

Sometimes admins abuse their tools because they don't like somebody. But even in those cases, their original dislike stems from one of the above chains of logic, or something similar to it ("So-and-so posts at Wikipedia Review, therefore they enable harassment that drives off valuable contributors, therefore for the benefit of the encyclopedia I need to thwart them").

I can promise you that if I ever nominate IAR for deletion, it won't be because I believe it's not applied, but because I believe that it shouldn't be.

That was the case the eleventh time it was created. The first ten times, Lar had it right.

Possibly. Who can tell? It's also possible that these people were thinking of their own privacy, or each other's privacy, and didn't give a damn about the encyclopedia, when self-preservation takes hold. They only invoke the Good of the Encyclopedia later, as the ultimate excuse.

Look, every tinhorn dictator takes that line: the PEOPLE are all-important, and inasmuch as *I*, as Leader, am the embodiment of The People, if you attack ME, you're attacking Der Vaterland itself! Godwin.

Richard Nixon justified his burglaries and wiretappings and dirty tricks, on grounds that attacking him was attacking America. You see, he saw himself as not a crook, but rather a valued contributor.

Our present Bush/Cheney are similar. They've confused themselves with America, and tend to view anybody who disagrees with them, as not only unpatriotic, but (if a foreignor and not expected to be patriotic) possibly/probably a terrorist.

Every abusive dictator wraps themselves in a flag. The difference between America and Wikipedia, however, is that America actually IS a democracy. We booted Nixon, even while in office, because he wasn't The People. He wasn't even The Silent Majority. And we're about to boot the present bastards out, too. They're lame ducks in 18 days and thank god for the 22nd amendment.

But who knows how long we'll have to suffer with SlimVirgin and Jimbo Wales?

I'm getting two stories. One is that the article was created many times before Qyd did in late 2007, and the other that it wasn't. Show your evidence.

Say, is this going to be one of those cases where Slim claims harassment, but all evidence has been oversighted, so we just have to take her word for it? And why not, since she never makes allegations without the stuff to back it up.

And anyway, none of this helps you. If the point of "shoot on sight" is to ban the work of malefactors, you should have shot Qyd on sight. The problem is nobody did. They shot the article. Which means THEY didn't believe Qyd was a malefactor, either. So that's a problem, and you've got no defense.

So quit trying to defend that which isn't defensible. You're starting to sound like a corporate lawyer....

Hey--- are YOU NYB????

I explained my evidence above. I can't show it to you because it's been deleted, but I've given you a full account of the contents of the article's creation and deletion log; this has been corroborated by another admin, One. Piperdown has apparently decided to believe that we're lying, or that Qyd's first creation of the article was oversighted (but not the ten subsequent creations by trolls?) or something, which is his right I suppose.

Besides, I'll ask you the same question I asked Piperdown: if Qyd had created the article before, how come he didn't question its deletion until November 2007?

Where did I defend "shoot on sight"?

Excuse me, that was Lar and Jimbo and Gerard and WP. I had you all somehow confused.

Don't lose any sleep over it, Moulton.

Ouch.

I stay awake just to read this?!?

I just don't believe this argument; I've seen several users who were indef blocked, then returned as a new account and did nothing wrong, but were still detected and reblocked. You assume a user won't be detected unless they "go back to their old ways", as if that implies mischief, but in fact a user can be detected based solely on interests and writing style, no matter how well they behave. If I was blocked and chose to return as a new account, it would be instantly obvious that it was me unless I took drastic measures to disguise myself, such as writing about things that don't interest me and adopting an artificial "voice". Furthermore, I think the risk of these new accounts being blocked upon detection is pretty high; it depends solely on the attitude of whatever admin does the detecting, and admins who busy themselves with that kind of thing are typically not inclined to mercy, or even pragmatism.

The original interest in Swalwell has to do with this.

Most of the info on that whois record is several years old. The telephone number now seems to be owned by a company in Calgary. The email address was changed in March 2007 from slimvirgin1 AT yahoo.com to smcewan11 AT yahoo.com. At that time it was also moved behind a privacy proxy. Apparently the privacy proxy expired in March 2008, which is why we can see it listed today. Everything else is the same. The domain itself is parked.

I see no reason to come back as another account.

The literature of Western Civilization has no shortage of exemplary resurrection stories. One thing we learn from such stories is that there is no need to alter one's identity when ambling back from the Desert of Azazel.

Reaching conclusions from evidence? That's not allowed around here. Shoot on sight... somebody ban Sarcasticidealist now! You're supposed to be jumping to wild conclusions that support bizarre conspiracy theories, like a normal WR participant!



But slimvirgin.net, .org, .info, .biz, and .name all appear to be available at the moment.

I speak only to what I do, not what policy may or may not be or other admins do. If I find a user I know is a reincarnation of a run of the mill vandal who is doing nothing bad, I'll let it slide, with a note to myself to keep an eye on that user. What other admins do, within policy, I cannot control.

Therefore it matters not whether you believe it or not, as it's merely a statement of my behaviour.


You're not a run of the mill garden variety vandal. You, I'd probably block as soon as I detected you.

Moulton is worse than a vandal?!

In some ways, at this point in time, yes. Garden variety vandals are easy enough to revert. And there is some hope that they'll grow up at some point.

But Moulton doesn't attack the encyclopedia like a vandal does; he just disagrees about some things and has a stubborn attitude. Don't you think it's strange to rate a critic as being more harmful than a vandal?

I don't know if Moulton fits this category, but POV pushers, who are trying to improve the encyclopedia with their mistaken perception, do much more damage than vandals.

Vandalism actually isn't very harmful in a wiki. Anyone can spot it and eliminate it in all but its most subtle forms. POV, on the other hand, can only be eliminated by one knowledgeable in the subject who actually care about neutrality. Hence, its much more persistent and damaging than simple vandalism.

I agree with you about that, but I don't really perceive Moulton as a POV pusher. He argued about that Picard article, but I think it was established that he was right and the article really was slanted. I think the only reason he's banned right now is because he's playing Socrates.