User talk:Ecstatic Electrical/Socks, vandals, and AGF

Not workable
The first obvious problem with this essay is that it assumes that a level-1 vandalism template is some kind of horrible condemnation, and a black mark forever and ever. It's not. It's actually quite politely worded, and after a month or so no one will care, but will have good-faithedly assumed that the user has gotten that clue.

Secondly, AGF applies to editors who follow the rules, those who may not know the rules yet but do not show incontrovertible signs of destructive and disruptive editing, and those trying to follow the rules but doing it poorly. It doesn't not apply to anyone who is clearly not here to work on an encyclopedia but to just grief the project. See WP:DUCK, WP:SPADE, WP:CIR, WP:ENC, WP:NOTHERE, WP:5THWHEEL, etc. When someone repeatedly vandalizes, attacks people, or is otherwise being a drain on the project, the good faith was already assumed and burned up before we got to that point, and we don't keep assuming good faith after the bad faith has become clear; that would be a combination of insane and stupid, like "I noticed you assaulted two of my neighbors last week and tried to light our building on fire. Would you like to come inside and meet my children?" — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ &gt;ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ&lt;  03:28, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

Blanking ≠ deletion and my thoughts as a whole

 * users are usually quick to revert vandalism and warn the vandals fairly harshly after one polite message, usually through the use of template messages. We have to be quick. Millions of people view Wikipedia every minute. False, juvenile-based humor, illegal, or libelous information needs to be removed ASAP. Keeping that material around breaks the very tenets of DENY. We don't want a vandal (or if you prefer, misguided new user) to have time to ring up his lads and say "Go to XYZ page and see what I replaced the image of De-Anne Kelly with! Ha ha!" When they can see the fruit of their labours, it encourages vandals to come back and do it again and again. I don't approve of the camp of editors who believe that "creating" an encyclopedia is the Foremost and Important Duty of all editors, but you can't deny that repeat unblocked vandals tie up human resources which might be doing something better.
 * You never know if the vandals might have a motive to be vandalizing. I'm sure they do. They believe it was a good idea at the time. They believe it is hilarious. They are mad at the world. This is en.Wiki. We have no time and less patience for any of that.
 * you should never assume that someone is vandalizing just because they want to deliberately create a mess That's why we have Good Faith Reverts. Whether something gets a GFR, a rollback, or a rvv is totally dependent on content. Vandals are known by their fruit. I have to look at the fruit and attempt to determine if the mess was an accident/unintentional, a good faith attempt to improve the encyclopedia, plain inappropriate, or blatant vandalism. Determining whether NPOV editing falls into the second or last camp is going to be dependent on many factors:
 * -What exactly is the content they are attempting to NPOV?
 * -What is the editor's name (I'll bet that Mr. TRUMPNEVER is going to be a bigger pain than a JoeWiki198)
 * -Is this the first time the've done this?
 * -Any other historical behavioral issues?
 * -Which response is more likely to produce the desired response?
 * -What is that desired response? They go away? Become productive editors?


 * What if someone simply doesn’t know better? Has no bearing on our response in the case of blatant vandalism. For things more in-depth I think you will find that most good editors will hand write notices, or have helpful edit summaries rather than uw-vandalism2.
 * Many users won’t understand at first that most everyone can edit and create pages, but that only administrators can delete them. Therefore, users may blank a page, expecting to delete it. Never revert such actions as outright vandalism. Instead, revert the page blanking and politely inform the user how to request deletion. You know how many vandals blank a page because they don't like it? We don't need to bait them with "I'm sorry, but I reverted your blanking of Margaret Thatcher because only administrators can delete pages. If you would like to request deletion for this page, please file a request at WP:AFD." I find that to be a bit far gone. It makes me wonder what if any experience you have with vandals. I won't lie and say all vandalism is created equal. Vandalism is tailor made to suit each vandal and the actions they do.
 * However, sometimes, users will be blocked for vandalism, disruption, etc. and then they will come back under a new name and start making productive/constructive contributions. Such users should never be blocked on-sight, even if it is obvious that the user is a sock. Ummm. I sorta agree, but then again, we block people, not just the account. If they wish to repent of their ways and contribute helpfully, they should be honest and either come out and apolgise, request an unblock, or take up the Standard Offer.
 * otice how more lightweight in tone that message is, compared to “CheckUser evidence confirms that you are a sock puppet of XYZ — get the hell out of here”. Please do not go over to the camp of Reading More Violence Into Templates Than Exists. Please. Please. Our template does not say "get the hell out of here". The template means what it says, and is right.

I feel you are overgeneralizing the issues. 99.5% of vandalism is pure vandalism which should be attacked with immediate reversion, a warning, and probably a block. It is the other .5% that requires non standard reactions such as you are writing about. I'm aware you're retired and don't expect an answer, but these are my thoughts. Thanks for hearing me, L3X1 (distænt write)  16:22, 13 October 2017 (UTC)
 * This user Special:Contributions/Little_Jackie may interest you. Good faith? IDK, probably. Disruptive and in need of an immediate block? Yes. L3X1 (distænt write)  19:17, 21 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Wrong venue. This is a talk page about an essay. If you want to make a vandalism report, see WP:AIV. If you want to make a report about non-vandalism disruptive editing, the venue is WP:ANI.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ &gt;ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ&lt;  07:46, 23 October 2017 (UTC)
 * . ?? I was posting Jackie as an example. S/He had been indeffed 3 days prior to my post. L3X1 (distænt write)  13:24, 23 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see. I thought you were trying to deal with a disrupter.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ &gt;ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ&lt;  13:39, 23 October 2017 (UTC)