User:Jamesofur/pakistanandnuke

Ok, this was made easier because I have less desire to provide a lot of links since Eptalon was great and provided them while I was writing (and sidetracking). I totally understand why people are frustrated by this editor but to be honest I'm torn. As a project we want as much of the best content we can get. Preferably we have a wide variety of topics from around the globe. We also are the encyclopedia(s) that anyone can edit, though of course "anyone" is going to be understandably limited when it comes to people who are being disruptive.

The honest fact is that even after going through all the discussions and most if not all of the guys contributions spread out over an amazing amount of IPs I am STILL not comfortable just labeling him as a "vandal." (with the period being spoken). Looking through the articles on Pakistan there is some very good material that has been added by what appears to be the same person. Adding images like [1] is a great example of something that added to the encyclopedia and likely wouldn't have been done in any timely fashion (if at all) by someone else, pictures like that (which are not on En) are great for Simple.

While I'm still not totally sure about his faith with everything it is clear that YES he has/is caused/causing disruption within the project (and maybe worse, the small community it has). It is quite clear he pushes one POV over and over again. I am fairly certain that the editor is the same editor who "corrects" thing across a broad spectrum of wikis that I have seen in the past couple weeks doing SWMT work. Unfortunately that makes it quite likely that it is a DRIVING force behind his edits which makes me sad because it makes it much less likely that we will get him to change. The amount of discussion about the problem with no conclusion, outreach to the IPs without resolution and warnings regarding the conduct without change concern me especially given my disbelief that he does not understand at least some of what is said to him given his location (per whois). I also agree that it appears to be one person, or at the very least interrelated people, given that every single ip geolocates to similar locations within the UK.

I think it's high time this was resolved as much as possible.I absolutely abhor the idea of protecting all of the pages under a long standing belief that IPs should be able to edit as freely as possible. That doesn't mean I don't understand the desire to do it since it is much easier then blocking every new IP that pops up (you would have to blacklist basically everything to do with Pakistan to). I do think that if you wanted to do this correctly it would be an enormous amount of protections and filter changes. It is also quite clear that the user changes IPs frequently and those IPs are all over the spectrum, it would be futile to try and range block them all (even if you didn't cut off half the internet doing so). The other issue is that despite what we chose to do we need to cull through basically every article that mentions Pakistan/Kashmir and decide what is notable enough to keep as an article and cull out POV crap that is everywhere. Hopefully this can be done by multiple people because it will not be a short task.

Obviously anyone can make additional proposals but these are the options I see:

1. Ignore it completely let them edit - obviously not really an option

2. Let them edit but cull through everything they add and make sure it works in the project - I think would quickly result in burn out by those involved in the editing and would likely result in the user getting angry and becoming more of a normal vandal.

3. Revert vandalism and warn user as we see it (blocking as we go along when they don't listen) - basically what I see as the status quo, we've seen that this lets a lot fall through the cracks that isn't seen by the vandalism patrollers (either because no one was watching at the time or that particular person didn't see the POV problem when it streamed by.

4. Have someone decide to reach out to the user on their talk page, maybe try to get them to come to IRC etc and work with them to become a legitimate an less controversial editor on the project. If it doesn't work we come back here.

5. Ban them outright, by community consensus. Ban is enforced by immediate blocks for any ip that edits an on topic article that geolocates to that location/exhibits that behavior. Ban length is as long as admins are willing to block an IP with IPs that seem to be static (being used over and over after unblock) blocked either indefinitely or for very long periods of time.

6. Some combination of 4+5 - my preference, see below

I would prefer a combination of 4 and 5:

I don't want to just try and reach out and then be right back here once someone decides we've been reaching out to long without response (or get a response and it doesn't pan out) and then either have to have the debate again or go back to the status quo with spotty and inconsistent enforcement across admins.

I also don't really want to do a straight ban because I still think that they could be a valid resource to the project and whenever possible we want to try to encourage that. A focus is NOT a bad thing it just can't get in the way of neutrality.

My thought would be sort of multi phased. We have to agree on a plan off attack here and follow through with it:

a) Agree to the terms of a ban preferably terms that we think will be as easy as possible for admins to enforce.

b) Agree on terms to offer to the IP to allow them to continue (Create an account, work with us on POV etc)

c) Agree on concrete triggers that repeal the offer and begin the full Ban immediately

1) 2 or 4 weeks after offer is made

2) continued edits from different IPs after being warned and given a link to offer on blocked IPs talk page (preferably a couple warnings to make sure they have time to see them, I would think 3/4)

d) Offer the terms (and the ban triggers) on the currently banned IPs talk page along with hopefully a link to talk on IRC since most of us are there.

e) follow through, if we make contact follow through with that and try to work with them. If we don't make contact or they don't listen then regrettably a ban it is. A ban agreed upon by the community and enforced until the community agrees to remove it.

Ok.. enough rambling on this topic for now (though I have more to say regarding the topic closure thing above, that's later). Please let me know what you think in the end that's what matters I'm just one outspoken and verbose wikipedian :)