Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Lightbringer

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 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the discussion was keep and move to Long-term abuse/Lightbringer (usurped - blocked) (non-admin closure). The majority of editors agree that Lightbringer (usurped - blocked)'s history is extensive and well-documented, and that the LTA page contains useful, historical information. The page can easily be moved to reflect the SUL usurpation; even those who supported deletion recognized this as a plausible alternative. Dylan620 (t • c) 19:36, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Long-term abuse/Lightbringer
The primary account to which this page refers has now been renamed to Lightbringer (usurped - blocked) as part of a global username migration/SUL for a respected user from another project. This sockmaster has been dormant for almost three years (the last "likely" sock was identified in April 2008, and the one prior to that in July 2007), and this page is no longer required. Because of the long dormancy period, I do not see value in moving this page to match the new username, although I would not object to portions of its contents being merged to the userpage of the renamed account. Leaving this page under its current name increases the likelihood of a respected Wikimedian being misidentified as an abusive sockmaster. Risker (talk) 19:47, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Why was this named "2nd nomination"? There was no first. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • (Otters want attention) 20:03, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Erm...because of Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Long term abuse/Lightbringer (2nd nomination) and Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Long term abuse/Lightbringer. I see now that the page underwent a move to add a hyphen between "long" and "term" some time in the past year, which appears to have thrown things off. Risker (talk) 20:07, 30 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep and comment: OK, multiple issues time! One, why was no one at the Freemasonry Project informed that the username was going to be re-assigned before it was done?  As a corollary, why was it so important to do so for the sake of a unified login when said user doesn't even edit here and says as much?  Two, there's a reason it's called "long-term abuse", and just because somebody wanted the name doesn't immediately invalidate the events surrounding it.  I think that suborning policy for the sake of a single user is grossly inappropriate, and I refuse to go through another 18-month process to get a vandal blocked because somebody deleted a page instead of repointing it.  In short, this really should have been thought about a lot more than it was. MSJapan (talk) 21:06, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I did not rename the user, but instead was approached by a bureaucrat to assist in addressing the fact that the project's search parameters have changed so that the mid-word capitalization of the new (interwiki) account (User:LightBringer) defaults to User:Lightbringer. (Note that this was not the case at the time that the sockmaster was blocked.) It's been three years, there has been no further reported socking, and this information is historical at best. I do not dispute that when he was editing, the sockmaster was indeed creating significant problems; that is why he was topic-banned, then banned for a year, and community banned. The ban still holds; it is just on the clearly identified new account name. The sock category has been updated, the templates on sock pages have been updated, the list of banned users has been updated, the templates on the IP pages have been removed because they are no longer germane (his 2005-07 ISP was dynamic, and they were meaningless even back then), the RFAR has not been moved or renamed but has had a notice of the change of username placed on it. Nothing has changed about the ban of the underlying account. English Wikipedia is one community in an integrated network of closely linked and related communities. One of the key features of the Wikimedia group of communities is the Single User Login (SUL) and the global account, which is becoming increasingly important when editors contribute to more than one project. This is not the first time that dormant accounts have been usurped in this way in order to support fellow Wikimedians in their work within the larger community; it is simply one of the more high-profile ones. Our project has hundreds of thousands of dormant and blocked accounts with usernames that are desirable; this is not going to be the last time that this happens, either. So, back to this page. It is, at most, of historical value; the user behind the account has been dormant for almost three years if we consider the last "likely" sockpuppetry block to be correct, and possibly even longer. The key points on this page can easily be merged into the new userpage. The other alternative is to move the page to match up with the new username. Risker (talk) 21:38, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * So let me get this straight: If somebody comes along and wants WillyOnWheels, you're going to make a case to delete all that stuff related to him because of a "respected user"? First of all, some common sense should have been applied - SUL or not, why would a LT vandal's username be desirable, and why should this new guy's userpage have to have a hatnote to say that he's not this person, especially when he doesn't edit here?  There's too much "just because" going on here, and that's very arbitrary. Moreover, all the actions were taken, and then this is the first discussion about it.  Begging for forgiveness rather than asking permission was not the way to go here.  Some thought really needed to be put into this, because it not only affects an entire WikiProject, it sets a bad precedent, and it's a lot easier to set precedents here than to reverse them.  It's fine that he's still community blocked and everything else is in place - without the LT page, how is anyone going to find the material if for some reason he comes back?  If you now turn around and say that all this can be moved instead, you did not consider that at the outset either, and that concerns me as well.  This was controversial, and yet it was going to be treated as a standard cleanup.  If I didn't have the LTA page on my watchlist, I wouldn't have seen this at all, and I don't know that many others involved even know about this.  I think this whole issue needs to go somewhere else for wider discussion. MSJapan (talk) 17:13, 31 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I would also note that Risker also deleted the shortcut to the LTA page as "no longer appropriate." MSJapan (talk) 17:23, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * As far as I'm aware, all known Willy incarnations have been blocked everywhere on Wikimedia, thanks to Willy's activities at many different wikis; see es:Usuario:Willy on Wheels for an example. The name is sufficiently well known across that it would surely be blocked at any WMF wiki.  This is in contrast to he:משתמש:LightBringer, who has become well established over there and shows no evidence of being the same as the person who attacked Masonic topics here.  Don't blame the Hebrew user for picking a username that happens to coincide with a vandal active only here.  Nyttend (talk) 19:52, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * What I'm blaming is a total lack of foresight - the user discovered the problem, and rather than see what could be done, someone else unilaterally decided to just move things around and wipe out the whole LTA page, plus hack the redirect out. MSJapan (talk) 02:34, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep and move to reflect the username changes. Deleting documentation of this sort doesn't help the encyclopedia, especially as this one is linked by arbitration and other important administrative pages.  Nyttend (talk) 14:08, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep and move. Herostratus (talk) 03:36, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep this and all other LTA subpages. No objection to renaming, or to putting a banner at the top specifying that this is not the same person as whoever currently has the account. *** Crotalus *** 19:57, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete per Risker or otherwise address per her suggestions. Keeping the page in its current form is misleading and not really acceptable. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:58, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.