QUOTE(Tarc @ Sun 10th July 2011, 10:22pm)
And if you didn't notice what he's been upto the last few days, then you missed
the AN/I discussion about the Wikialpha, a MediaWiki site that was bot-mailing editors that their articles were being culled from the AfD logs and preserved.
That is such a great example of "I'm in charge here! You WILL do as I say!" -- from Ironholds.
"No. You will not notify editors that their contributions have been hosted on Wikialpha. I don't care if some of them want it. I don't care if it's useful to them."
QUOTE
Let me make it clear, because you obviously haven't grasped it yet. Wikipedia and its email functions do not exist to provide either a catalyst or a carrot to your project. If you attempt to use the email function, the talkpage function, data gathered on wikipedia, contact information gathered on wikipedia or anything else from wikipedia in what amounts to advertising for your website, whether it violates the letter of policy or not, I. Will. Block. You. If anyone else does it, I will block them too. If it keeps happening we'll checkuser them, block all the accounts, and so on and so forth until you get the hint. Ironholds (talk) 18:11, 9 July 2011 (UTC)
Mmmmm.... I wonder how far they will go. If Wikialpha has a user base, if it's more than one person, this could get ... interesting.
The idea of a "deletion space" for Wikipedia is an old one. I proposed it years ago (I called it "junkyard space," and the only thing excluded from it would be illegal content, stuff would be moved there instead of deleted), and the basic idea wasn't new. There was deletionpedia, as I recall. If a project like this gets a user based, like more than one person who actually maintains it, it could be quite helpful. The idea that you have to be an admin to read a deleted article is nuts.
Would I want to know if an article I'd written was hosted at Wikialpha? Sure, I would. I can't imagine anyone that would not to know, unless a deletionist who was emailed only because of the AfD tag placed!
However, it would be best if the notifications were simply on-wiki. That's what's crazy here. Instead of looking for how to cooperate, the wikipediots only think of one thing: control. An opt-out list was suggested. It might be opt-in, if that were properly publicized.
What Ironholds is asking for, I'd say, is a campaign. Where do I sign up? Seems he'd like to push his block button a few times, or a few hundred thousand times with range blocks. I got lots-o-range to contribute. I'll check out wikialpha.
Should someone who cares about Wikipedia tell Ironholds that daring people to edit Wikipedia "disruptively," by threatening them, tends to cause the behavior?
How many emails can a mailbot send before being detected? I'm curious. Anyone know?
I suspect they are emailing because they can get more messages out before detection than if they use on-wiki notification.