I make my return!

Alas, it may be short lived but I've realized some how admins (and editors, mainly admins) think. Flies are constantly getting into my room, either through a window crack (one of them doesn't close properly) or some other way I'm not aware of. Now I could ignore the flies and let them be but then you have this constant buzzing as they fly against the walls and ceiling. So you decide to kill it when you have enough.

Admins view problem editors like this in a sense. Some have higher tolerance to them, others don't and are quick to get the swatter. The flies may poof for a while and the admin feels they're safe, but eventually they return.

Just a thought or two.

When you have a pile of shit the size of Wikipedia it can't help but to attract flies.. .

Excellent point.

TOG, I don't think that there are many here at the Review who are objecting to the normal vandal-fighters and janitorial types. I can't speak for all the Reviewers, but as for myself, I came here some years ago for a very specific reason: those admins who became admins in order to game the system and pursue a WP:ACTIVIST agenda. We used to use the term "cabal" to describe those admins. They are the reason that the public at large needs to be warned about Wikipedia, because they have succeeded in making it a Soapbox for Propaganda.

I object to them. They are the reason that 'anyone can edit'. If they just stopped their stupid 'vandal fighting' it would force Wikipedia to put reasonable controls around account opening. Plus, they make vandal fighting into what the community mainly does, the entire model around which Wikipedia operates. Bringing knowledge etc is a mere side effect.

This is the policy the wikiadmin loves

Wikipedia:Witchhunt

I'll admit that I've been prone to checking the contribs of vandals I've reverted now and then, more often IPs than actual users (and especially if it's a school IP), though only the edits that are top one to each article.

You are right, in many respects it's a massive waste of human resources - people wasting their lives shovelling shit to keep Wikimedia in clover. It's just seems to keep everything the same (which is nothing less than what WM wants imo, as I've always said) When people like RodHull use it to become administrators it becomes sinister too. Mind you, Wikimedia are so desperate for admin now that wannabees don't even need to go on a vandalism-removing spree to show their worth, they merely need to brown-nose and emoti-con to the correct frequency of human repulsiveness and they just slide into the job like a shite down the porceline pan.

That's an interesting point. I'm not willing to object to RC patrollers, given the existing structure, but what's being pointed out is quite true: the existing structure is only possible because of RCP, which is highly inefficient.

I know, I've done quite a bit of it. I'd pour over 50 contributions from the last minute (which was only a fraction of them) looking for anything suspicious, and by the time I found something, almost always it had already been reverted. And I assume that this was true for many other RC patrollers. So one has many, many people, doing the work of one. But Wikipedia never valued editor labor, not really. It came to value, to some extent, administrator labor, but the hell with regular users!

On the other hand, when a global RCP user sees and reverts vandalism on Wikiversity, I not infrequently thank them. Not everything is caught, except for brief periods when some user really looks at everything, which can still be done on Wikiversity, though it can be difficult.

Wikipedia became seriously unwilling to examine structural problems, and practically paralyzed when it comes to proposing even simple changes, which, of course, is a structural problem. There are known solutions to many of the problems, but they are rejected because the status quo benefits the active core, which is the active core because it's benefited by the status quo.

Structure could, for example, be set up so that every edit is examined in detail, possibly by more than one user, with less labor than is currently being wasted on RCP. Hah! Try to propose it! "Not a bureaucracy" is what you will hear, because it would involved setting up structure, probably with some defined responsibilities.

Flagged revisions was a software solution that would make this simple. Rejected, right?

Bureaucratic control is okay for Raul654 (Featured article!), but not for ordinary mortals.

Wikipedia Review presents: Real Men of Genius

Real men of genius

Today we salute you Mr. Recent Changes Patroller

Mr Recent Changes Patroller

Some people edit wikipedia to add knowledge to the world, you spend all your waking hours making sure vandals get reverted

Obsessive Compulsive

Nothing gets you to be an admin quicker than racking up tons of edits while not adding anything significant to the world

Gonna pass that RfA yeah!

Who needs a girlfriend when you can spend your whole life making sure none of those trolls get any edits to stick around even if it's something useful

Don't feed the trolls now

So crack open a Bud Light O' Reverter of the Retards. You may have no life but you get to have some special tools

Mr. Recent Changes Patroller

Well, it is in fact not a policy, it is only an essay. It could never be a policy, because it says the following:

Be aware, action that is taken against editors is not punitive. The only purpose of blocking, banning, and other sanctions is to protect the encyclopedia from harm. It is not to "punish" the offender for their wrongdoing.

This has an important bearing upon another current thread here at the Review.

The thing is all "preventative actions" are in essence punitive. For example a vandal goes and vandalizes 3-4 different articles, and gets blocked. While yes there is a strong argument that the admin blocked them so they stop vandalizing, it's based off what they did prior to the block. So in reality, it's more like "Only block when it will prevent more disruption", making all preventative blocks punitive, cause there has to be actions prior to warrant a block. I think they want to avoid blocks that are strictly punitive in nature which is next next to impossible if you ask me.

Wow, I somehow missed this. Very good material for Wikipedia Review -- well done!

(For those who may not know the spoof, here's a good example of the Bud Light advertising parodied here.)

Wikipedia admins work to subvert The Internet.Everything must be trolled*, so Don't feed the trolls is a lie.

* Apart from the truth