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Wikipedia:Annoying users

With a common goal of accumulating, ordering, structuring and making freely available what knowledge in mind, if we concentrate on achieving NPOV even when it is difficult, if we try to actually understand those we label annoying users, then we can reach the state of WikiLove. If we fail to achieve WikiLove, the encyclopedia as a whole will suffer. Some key components to achieve WikiLove and work in the general spirit of collegiality and mutual understanding is to

Follow Wikiquette -- respect other contributors
Follow our policies -- they make it easier to work with one another
Keep the neutral point of view in mind -- write articles that people from all sides can read and agree with
Forgive and forget. Don't allow yourself to be hurt; to hurt others; to allow others to be hurt. Do try to accomodate other people's views.

In general, time spent complaining about annoying users is less productive than an equal amount of time spent writing encyclopedia articles. But if you must complain, please sign and date your entries so they can be removed when they are no longer relevant. Please also list the most recent additions at the top of this page.

Requirements for adding users to this page

First discuss the issues with the user in question, and do everything in your power to get a resolution that way. In many cases it's possible to resolve the issue with discussion, without getting the rest of the community involved.
Be specific in your criticism. Give diff links to individual edits that demonstrate the problem. Say exactly why you find these edits a problem.
Sign and date your comments

List of controversial users

Most recent at top.

User:64.203.44.179[?] (contributions} keeps removing perfectly good content from articles related to Spongebob Squarepants - this edit (/w/wiki.phtml?title=Spongebob_Squarepants_(character)&diff=1084821&oldid=1084812) being a fine example. Appeals to his/her user talk page have gone un-heeded. Not an all-out vandal, it seems, since there has also been some useful (albeit badly formatted) info added.

On a side note, a page related to Spongebob (specifically Tom Kenny) was edited by Michael shortly before. Whether this is co-incidence I don't know. Evercat 02:16 27 Jun 2003 (UTC)

User:Michaelism has been running amok on several places. He's has one user (User:Zoe) quitting (hopefully temporarily!) and been acting in a manner best described as very bitter elsewhere. He bears watching (at the very least!). Arno 07:56 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Michaelism is User:Michael. He's officially banned by Jimbo, and knows it, but keeps on coming back. He is slowly becoming more destructive, and seems to relish causing trouble. At the moment, he's hiding behind the supposed IP anonymity of a logged-in user, although the actual server logs will still have his IP recorded. The policy regarding this needs to be discussed in more detail on the mailing list. -- The Anome 08:39 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I am being patient with an unregistered user appearing as 63.190.168.92, 65.177.144.97, 65.177.41.219, 67.30.41.149 and 65.177.8.200...but he/she isn't getting the message. See: [1] (/w/wiki.phtml?title=Evelyn_Hernandez&action=history) Kingturtle 00:15 10 Jun 2003 (UTC)

User:195.194.148.18[?] is making unhelpful contributions, and so far has not made one useful edit. Not quite vandalism yet -- on the border of newbie experiments. The Anome 08:36 5 Jun 2003 (UTC)

This man User:RK is an error. User:anthere

surely in error? Martin

sometimes, being non-english is a blessing :-)

I agree. The ease in which he calls people who disagree with him anti-Semitic (or uses very obvious insinuations that they are) is a blatant violation of community rules and the fact that no one of the higher-ups has held him accountable for this is very telling of the bias which is displayed here by Wikipedia. This kind of intellectual terrorism[?] has to stop!

User name issue again... User:PhatJew. Need I say more? -- John Owens 20:59 23 May 2003 (UTC)

Actually, I take his side on this. There is a difference between phat and Fat, and there is nothing wrong with being a jew (which I am)

209.175.115.8 has been adding weird little comments to fascism and anarchy (As well as anarchism)

Little things like Ben is a Taco. Qwertyqwerty. and Fascists ae freaks.

I'm sorry to say that this is an IP of one of our school computers, and this is my friend who did this, I have already told him to stop. Please do not ban this IP permanently as I use that computer at school to access wikipedia...

I'll try to keep this to a minimum Ilyanep

64.175.250.115 has been inserting asinine things about George Washington's sex life into his bio. I have been reverting it after every change he's done. -- Goatasaur 18:47 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

5 Feb 2003: 194.207.237.26 added 'Gandhi stinks' to the Gandhi page

Please ban 194.207.237.26 - if you look at his contributions he's vandalising articles. Besides the above, take a look at his contributions...

64.175.251.49 restored the copyright violationg at Stabbing Westward that I deleted yesterday. -- Zoe

This person ignored a 24 hour warning block by replacing copyright violation notices with the old copyright violations. I therefore blocked this IP. They can post a message to the Wikipedia mailing list asking for the block to be removed. --mav

Two16 seems to think that all contributions by any banned IP should be censored, even if they are unrelated to the issue involved in the ban, and even if they are presently being discussed rationally by the parties. See recent history of Wikipedia:edit_wars_in_progress

This is ad hominem censorship, at best.

216.129.198.41 thinks that all contriibutions from vandals and his banned cohort need to be examined. Especially if they they have been playing with the Wikipedia. I made my intentions to examine every post those 2 made, known at the village pump. I received cautions not to remove useful content and read everything that was on the page. When the cascade of my changes rolled across recent changes, people left messages on my user page to question wheather I knew what I was doing. Many more looked at the older versions to see if my judgement was sound without taking the time to message. We are the checks and balances.

One wikipedian looked at the size of an article, entirely emptied, and decided to replace the content. This is also consistant with the ethos here. I replied with an explanation of my actions:

The article got off to a false start with:

Canadian political culture is in some ways part of a common North American political culture, emphasizing constitutional law, religious freedom, personal liberty and regional autonomy[?], and generally deriving from the ideas of Thomas Jefferson on these matters.

Usually some mention is made of a common heritage through British Common Law with other English speaking countries,Quebec's Civil Code derived from Roman law, First Nations, the British Empire, the Conscription Crisis , vast geography and short history ....

Most emphatically the Canadain political ideals of "Peace, Order and Good Government" evolved in Great Brittan and pre-Confefederation Canada and are very distinct from Jeffersonian "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."

The second paragraph contains additional sperious Jefferson material, falsely says that Canada bans private private universities (Education is a provincial responsibility under Section 92 of the BNAA (1867), opens 9 links to empty pages including BCBud[?] and Canada's Marijuana law[?]

The title is going to be impossible for to write a standard opening sentence for.

It isn't worth having especially given the high chance that an article is emerging right now from alarger article. An article this shoddy and top of the head is more trouble to edit than to writte new.

The truth will out: so lets not say any more about ad hominem censorship.

3 False edit war warnings against the same wikipedian, which I investigated, were removed.

Well back to writing brilliant prose 216.129.198.41

I note that 142.177.76.233 is on a roll again, this time with a Rollerball theme: see the articles on Energy Corporation etc. -- The Anome

Also see similar contributions such as race to the bottom, this time as IP 142.177.103.239 The Anome 21:53 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

And Dubya Dubya Three and Bush League this time as 142.177.108.15. (142.177.0.0/16 is an Aliant Telecom netblock.) The Anome 10:21 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)

Also see cargo cult business[?], cargo cult investment[?], musical chair finance[?] and founder's fever[?]. It's a shame: some parts of these articles are sensible, but they are buried in the ranting. The Anome

Hm. All of the above is from an IP that is very similar to an IP used by a person who is permanently banned from Wikipedia for making physical threats. They also appear to be the type of articles that this banned user edits. I am tempted to ban the above IPs too but I am not certain this is the same person - it could be a freak coincidence that somebody with similar idiosyncratic political views are using the same ISP in Toronto. What is everybody else's feeling on this? --mav

Indeed they are very similar. Should you wish to ban this user, the problem is that the 147 user is now using an ISP with a /16 allocation to access the Wikipedia, getting a different IP address every time. To ban them would require blocking all customers from this particular /16 block, potentially blocking off a lot of Canadians from editing. Perhaps this is time for the 'soft block' idea, where users from certain IP ranges are blocked from editing anonymously? The Anome

Hm. I don't know. A call to the ISP would probably be better to start with. This might be something better discussed on the mailing list. --mav

This user appears to have returned again, this time at 142.177.106.217 (/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=142.177.106.217) The Anome 10:30 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)

I think it is time to take this to the mailing list. --mav

Done. waiting for your comments, --Elian

There is an ungoing problem with Daeron which I thought was over but he has now started phase 2. After a war to make the Australia page claim that Australia is a republic (which as the entire world knows is wrong), and 7 reversions by a number of people, he stopped doctoring that page to move on to Constitutional monarchy which he doctored, again to suggest Australia is a republic. JTD 06:06 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

JTD's post snipped at this point by me, Tannin. The full version - quite a deal more detailed than the bit I left above - is now at Talk:Constitutional monarchy, or possibly at an archived version of that page. I also moved a long off-topic discussion of constitional monarchies and republics (by various contributors) to that same page, to leave some space for on-topic posts. The text below picks up at theend of that discussion. Tannin 03:02 Mar 8, 2003 (UTC)

Anyone mind if I move the long, off-topic discussion of constitutional monarchies to somewhere more appropriate? Tannin

No problem. I am going to put my reply on Susan's page. JtdIrL 02:44 Mar 8, 2003 (UTC)

AlbertJacherHolyProphet is repeatedly adding pages dealing with his/her 'religion' (pages that have been deleted in the past) and reverts deleted text.

Also vandalizing Religion and various user pages. 66.167.135.162[?] 02:49 Mar 13, 2003 (UTC)

user JTD and Mav149 both violate nearlyevery stated principle of Jimbo Wales, in an ongoing manner. Consult the records of their post. A good place to start is Irish potato famine; but if you cross index against my user contributions you will be able to see exactly what was going ( and still goes on. if you look at my page you can see every violated principle. you need to see with your own eyes the examples. Every listed principle was violated by the two screwballs. (screwball is used in an uncomplimetary manner.)

I worked with JTD (who's an historian with expertise in Irish history) and Mav on this article. They're doing a fine job.

172

User:Wanli2 is adding dumb entries, such as the first revision of Jessica Lynch and a dumb article called Love Hate Relationship[?]. Chadloder 03:14 Apr 2, 2003 (UTC)

Perhaps I'm being uncharitable, but new user User:Hemant kumar appeared shortly after a Michael/weezer vandalism spree, and is now making Michael/weezer style edits but with a 'physics & electronics' theme this time... quercus robur 23:12 Apr 14, 2003 (UTC)

Seems to be working under the name Lavanbhaskar[?] now. -- John Owens 08:42 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

Could anyone get an idea that might amuse º¡º. He is *very* bored. -Anthere

User:Fred Bauder is continually adding in a POV agenda to the page on Communist state. The article is not about communism, where some of his observations, if toned down a bit might have some relevance. It is simply about the political science definition of what type of system of government the term Communist state refers to. But Fred keeps screwing up other people's NPOV edits and adding in paragraphs about concentration camps and liquidations of anti-communists. This is no more relevant on this page than a long discussion on Prince Charles' sex life is in the page defining the political science definition of constitutional monarchy or talking about the US budget deficit is on a page defining the political science term federal republic. But no amount of reversions seems to stop Fred in his crusade to POV the page. Can someone please intervene with him. I am fed up having to clean up is POV mess. ÉÍREman 02:08 Apr 26, 2003 (UTC)

I happen to disagree with the above, and expressed so; asking Jtdirl to discuss this objectively, instead of referring to Fred as a "POV crusader". 172 then accused Mr. Bauder, and myself, of forming an "Axis of Evil". I think these sorts of statements are extremely inappropriate and has crossed the line of acceptable behavior. (anon)

JTD and I don't give a damn about your view of the "communist state". Fred Bauder's ploemics and personal theories have no place in an encyclopedia. 172

Could you clarify what these ploemics and personal theories are? (anon)

Anyone interested can see JTD's statements above and see the version that Fred's trying to insert. I don't feel like wasting my time by repeating arguments that have been laid out very well already. 172

24.44.8.140 (/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=24.44.8.140) has been starting many articles with incomplete sentences, no highlighting, etc. I wouldn't consider that terribly annoying itself, but then he responded to User:Michael Hardy by blanking the comment on his (24.44.8.140's) talk page with the summary "Michael Hardy chew my shorts!", and commented on Michael Hardy's talk page with "From anon (a wikipedian since day one who did not bother to log on): Michael, will write incomplete sentences from now on just to disorder your pedantic mind. edit as you wish.", and the summary "Bite me". Seems a little weak on the Wikilove; probably warrants keeping an eye on. -- John Owens 22:12 Apr 29, 2003 (UTC)

We have a problem with Zhongguotaiji about the articles Wushu, Wu Shu, Kung Fu, Gong Fu, Tai Chi Chuan, Tai Ji, Taoism, Daoism and maybe others. Help is welcome to explain him our convention. -- Looxix 13:09 May 11, 2003 (UTC)

I made, imho a very bright ;-> attempt to solve a small (actually quite small!) dispute on Germany regarding the year of Germany's "independence". The issue had been discussed on Talk:Germany, and I admit that I didn't contribute in the debate there before my try to act as midleman. Nevertheless, it turns out, to my own surprice, that I'm that very sensitive, that when my small change was erased (actually, it didn't last more than 6 minutes), and when I discovered that the person who made the express change wasn't even logged in, however seemingly identical to another user with a rather similar IP-nr, who had discussed the issue but seemingly concluded that discussions were like throwing perls for swine, then I began to feel that these Wiki-projects are nothing for me. Now to my question: Who is the Annoying user? Is it me, or is it him? :-> -- Johan Magnus 02:05 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

Well, I know his changing "German" to "Deutsch" annoyed me at the time. It's my best language besides English, but still, in this Wikipedia, English goes, obviously, with some parentheses or a note giving the German form, of course. So he gets my vote in this one, if for slightly different reasons. -- John Owens 02:18 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

User:FuckMenchi[?] on Wikipedia:Village pump. Kingturtle 23:19 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

user:No-Fx has a habit of leaving misleading edit summaries with his edits. Koyaanis Qatsi

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