Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Current issues and requests archive 8

Return of Jackjack

After a rash of vandalism that was very familiar, I ran a little check to confirm something. This turned into a large check to get to it all. Several socks of Jackjack were discovered. Many of these were named after En:wp users. Other accounts which have been used for good editing were also a perfect match. All the accounts were centered on two seperate IPs and most crossed over from one to the other at some point.

Vandalism

The main act of vandalism is centered around the topic "El Punyak" and recreating that page under as many different names as they can in a very short time. The page inaddition to a made-up subject also includes a large image which many people would consider pornographic or unsettling.

Accounts

• jackjack (talk · contribs · logs · block log) - Indef ban: vandal only account. was banned quickly so only used one of the IP addresses in question.
• Merbabu (talk · contribs · logs · block log) - Indef ban: vandalism, incivility (En:wp user was informed of probable impersonation)
• Calliopejen1 (talk · contribs · logs · block log) - indef ban: (En:wp admin was informed of probable impersonation)
• Bilal Skaf (talk · contribs · logs · block log) - indef ban: user linked as "Me" to en:wp of a serial rapist of the same name
• Alan Liefting (talk · contribs · logs · block log) - indef ban: en:wp impersonator
• Nikkul (talk · contribs · logs · block log) - indef ban: (En:wp user was informed of probable impersonation), User matches checkuser profile but also has other details. No vandalism from this account but blocked as a precaution until confirmation from the en:wp user can be received. Added (Jan 16) - En:wp user Nikkul contacted me and confirmed this is not his account.
• One other user was identified but not blocked: This user self-identified his simple account on En:wp. He is a perfect match to original vandal with the exact same additions as Nikkul but there is no vandalism. With his en:wp verification and clean history, I felt blocking was unneeded.

With the exception of the one unblocked account and Alan Leifting (not blocked by me), I have left messages on the En:wp talk pages of those impersonated in case they somehow actually did create these accounts. -- Creol(talk) 10:59, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

• Added note: One of the two IPs had a two month soft block on it from the original block, All the accounts blocked except Jackjack were created on the second IP then edited as registered users on the blocked one. The second IP has now been blocked (soft) for 3 months for evading the original block. -- Creol(talk) 17:39, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh man! I thought we had seen the last of Jackjack. Being the only one at the time who was looking at the recent changes, I wish that there was something I could've done to help, but alas, there was nothing I could do. I actually brought in a steward because I didn't know if there were any admins on at the time, so Spacebirdy came on to help. Razorflame 17:27, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Just a question, but Nikkul on here is not indefinitely banned. I just looked in the block log for him/her and have found nothing that would relate that. Razorflame 17:30, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Fixed that, thanks for letting me know.-- Creol(talk) 17:39, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Not a problem. Razorflame 19:55, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

User:LanarkGrammarSchool

User:LanarkGrammarSchool is an account created by a self-identified 14 years old user. There are two matters we need to settle about such an account.

1. Do we want shared accounts at all

2. If we do, how are they to be set up? Informally, as this one has been, or by more formal contact with the school?

Anybody got any thoughts --Bärliner 19:58, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

We should be against shared accounts. This could easily lead to compromised accounts and possibly, in the worst case scenario, prolonged vandalism. Razorflame 19:53, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I have blocked this account, to prevent abuse from the account, until we come to a decision if this should be allowed. Oysterguitarist 22:49, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm in support of shared accounts for schools - I actually wrote the guideline advising schools to do it, and no-one seemed to have a problem at the time so it stuck. Probably best to review it - a few schools now have begun to put their students on the Simple English Wikipedia to edit as part of a class project. However, 30 accounts, although individually blockable, are impossible to monitor by teaching staff, and I believe shared accounts in a classroom environment would stop a lot of the vandalism we'd expect by sharing the responsibility. If 30 accounts all begin editing at once on different articles, no-one can manage that, and testing and vandalism are going to happen. That's my justification for it anyway, but another possibility could be creating individual accounts, and giving each school a category listing usernames to give a little more control if you really hate the idea. Archer7 - talk 00:44, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Maybe more prominence should be given to the school guidelines, and also a better way of starting a school account than has happened here. It seems one of the students created this account. If school account are to carry on then there needs to be email contact with the school first. We also need school hours, to minimise vandalism from students and ex students logged on at home or out of hours.--Bärliner 11:06, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Shared accounts can easily lead to vandalism if the password to the account is widely spread to numerous vandals. While meta or en wiki currently has no such guidelines or policies regarding school/shared accounts, I think that it would a bad idea for compromised accounts. Anyhow, several incidents caused by compromised accounts in en wiki have stirred up some commotion about shared accounts. --§ Snake311 _{(T + C)} 08:16, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I think the accounts should not be shared. The teacher should have his own account and name there all accounts in context with his project. Then one could block the single accounts and tell the teacher about problems of his useres if there should be some. --Cethegus (talk) 09:43, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

One of the big pluses of this wikipedia is the lack of formal ways to do things; Things can be done in different ways, sometimes they are better done in a very specific way. I think, the idea behind having one "user" for a given project is to be easily able to identify which edits are from that specific user (As in; a group project building an article on ....). Personally, I think the same could be achieved by using the respective article's talk page. There it could be mentioned, that users foo, bar and baz from Parksdale School are involved in the creation of this article (as a community project). Perhaps a special tag could be designed to do that. Such a system would be good for both sides: On the one hand it is easy to see who vandalises, if there is vandalism (there does not need to be a "shared secret" password, on the other; it is easy to identify which edits come from the school. In that way, "shared" accounts should be discouraged. --Eptalon (talk) 12:57, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Prominence of Vandalism

I'm not sure if this should be posted here or on the Simple talk, but I have noticed a huge amount of vandalism as of late. This is a problem. As far as I know, back in December, the amount of vandalism was nowhere near what it is today. How can we better prevent a greater influx of vandalism? To me, it seems as though we've become a much bigger target for vandalism, and I think that it needs to be addressed. What could some solutions be to this? I urge all of the administrators to be on their guard, because this is troubling. Razorflame 15:19, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I had the same feeling (although I appear less online these days) so I ran some queries and gathered some statistics. This table is generated based on the data for day 1 to 15 of each month:

Month	Deletes	Blocks	Protects
Jan 2007	254	23	12
Feb 2007	465	149	11
Mar 2007	448	281	27
Apr 2007	329	49	11
May 2007	402	115	10
Jun 2007	348	71	13
Jul 2007	171	37	11
Aug 2007	257	43	11
Sep 2007	350	43	33
Oct 2007	306	78	9
Nov 2007	281	190	11
Dec 2007	654	90	9
Jan 2008	439	193	105

I think we're on the correct point; there is more vandalism these days. - Huji ^reply 08:09, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

By the way these graphs are also made available. - Huji ^reply 08:10, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

One thing of note about the raw date. January's number have some non-vandalism reasoning for some of the increase. The Protections are affected by both a increase in user space protections as well as the shift to Special:Protectedpages. Protected pages alone covers about 60 of the protections but is not a sign of current vandalism. A large chunk of the blocks (20-25%) is covered by the increase of blocking Open proxies as policy. In most cases there was no actual vandalism there, just the threat of vandalism. Both Protections and Blocks were also affected by noticeably by actions dealing with IamAR and the Jackjack sockpuppet farm. Jackjack created a lot of deletes as did routine actions by users (Lights redirect deletes for asteroid pages greatly affects the deletes). Two account count for about 15 blocks and 20 some protections. While it is disruption/vandalism, cases of vandalism are different than instances of vandalism. One person can cause hundreds of deletes and reverts (and blocks in the case of Kate McA) but should not be seen as an increase. -- Creol(talk) 13:30, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Good catch! Actually, when calculating these numbers, I adjusted them in some ways (like ignoring deletes made by some Wikimedia account). I also noticed some of what you said above, but thought it may be better not to adjust for them. All in all, I think some issues like Jackjack's along with an increase in IP edits has resulted in the feeling of having more troubles these days. - Huji ^reply 21:36, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

New Deletion Rule

I also don't know where to post this, but since this involves administrators, then I will post it here. I have added a new rule under the articles section for articles that are not created in English. After a short discussion on Simple talk, I went ahead and added it to the articles section of the deletion policy as per the discussion on Simple talk. The code for it would be A5. Do you think that this is needed? Razorflame 18:24, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Not really. Articles should be in Simple English, anything else is already liable to deletion, reasonable quotes etc excepted. Also shouldn't changes to the policy be discussed on the policy talk page?--Bärliner 15:30, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I discussed it in Simple talk. It seemed that it was a definite good addition to the policy, but not many people voiced their opinions there. Razorflame 15:40, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Category:Suspected sockpuppets

There are several IP's on there that are probably not used by the suspected scokpuppet anymore, I was wondering if we should delete them or... Oysterguitarist 03:35, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I recently created one wanted category into sockpuppets, but there are others. So there are of articles using the sockpuppet template which are not categorised.--Bärliner 15:33, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Main page article

This week's mainpage article on evolution had a very troubling lead, which was not supported by the source. I have rewritten the lead para, but cannot change the main page to reflect it. Update the mainpage or revert the lead in the article, it's all the same to me. I will make the observation, though, that I am surprised that article made to to gold star status. Jeffpw (talk) 13:33, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

We have a few problems with the VGA process and it is currently being reworked. It is a fairly new process and only in its first draft. Hopefully version 2 will help prevent issues like this one.-- Creol(talk) 14:55, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

 Done Oysterguitarist 14:00, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

While we are discussing the Main Page abstracts, I'd like to let all know that I've updated the abstracts to work smoothly (based on previous decisions) till late February. After we settle the new VGA guidelines, we should decide how to continue with our Main Page abstracts as well. - Huji ^reply 07:06, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

IamAR

I know this issue has been repeatedly brought up every week, but I have seen Iamandrewrice's behavior go off the hook since many admins have been repeatedly frustrated about him. Initally, me and other users decided to give him a chance to become a productive editor, but I think that probably a mistake now (or regrets to several users). I have sent a few messages directed to him explaining about his behavior and to stop going on a wiki-mad rampage although it seems that he was overlooked them, just like he has done to the other admins/users. Tygrrr has before restricted his editing ability although it seemed fruitless (no offense Tygrrr:) ). I even tried to help him by pretending that he was "doing" a good job, so he would be moved to be a good editor, although that failed too; in other words I was using reverse-psychology.

So now I think the admins should decided wether to ban him or not. Because from what I have seen (from the sidelines), he seems to be disruptive, unproductive, harrassing, irritating, and up to a point unkind and selfish. He has also been given a lot of more chances than before and seems to be a nuissance to editors when it comes to write/edit articles in a productive and positive way. One of the things that kinda surpisies me his that he has been insulting admins and has still gotten away with a handful of those. From what I here in en wiki, such users would be blocked (maybe banned) for harassement, personal attack, sock-puppet user, disruptive behavior, etc., from admins who are generally strict.

Right now, I think that he should be banned from wiki for being disruptive/annoying despite being warned repeatedly. I don't know what the admins think, but I have lost all of my sympathies to him to give him a chance to stay. Additionally, he should be banned for breaking numerous wiki policies repeatedly and evading his block(s) using IP proxies. By now, he should have learned his lesson, although he doesn't cares to improve his behavior. I think the admins who have all dealt with him should discuss on wether to ban him. Other than that, I hope that anyone who got stress from him will feel better and help to continue editing here. Peace to all;-))) --§ Snake311 _{(T + C)} 04:18, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Snake311. We've given him many chances, all of which he took advantage of. I move for a block/ban on him. He has failed to understand that his actions are not appropriate on this site and he has attacked many different users. He has evaded blocks and has harassed/spammed other editors and administrators. Therefore, he needs to be blocked. Razorflame 04:25, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

NOTE FOR INFORMATION IamR's block expires today at 15:34 his time. It is now 13:54 his time, ie about one and a half hours from now.--Bärliner 13:56, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

User:Iamandrewrice is now known as User:benniguy. He wants to try a new start. I have welcomed him as Benniguy.--Bärliner 21:30, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

I know. But I posted this up to ask admins if they wanted to ban him, not block. --§ Snake311 _{(T + C)} 21:31, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Firstly, I'll add that I agree with what Jeff said to me on IAR's talk page, but I thought I should mention here that IAR has apparently confirmed that User:IuseRosary is the "Joe" who has been mentioned as one of those who hacked his account on EN. MindTheGap (talk) 22:50, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Name is Jose People. I.Rosary 22:52, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Two points

• Rosary, I know you name, no need to post it here
• MindTheGap why mention Rosary here. You make it appear as if you refuse to even think about moving forwards, and you involve a third party whose actions have no bearing on the matter this post was raised to consider. As I and a bureaucrat are against the ban, and other admins seem in favour of allowing Benniguy to edit, and to judge a future block or ban on his future actions, not his past history, I fail to see why you so often mention his SEWP and ENWP past.--Bärliner 23:48, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

If you wanted Benniguy to remain editing here, why do you make such restrictions such as this. To me, I highly doubt it that he will mature up or follow his new restrictions. Also by letting him stay has caused numerous discussions and issues that pop out at least twice a week. Several users (mostly admins) have been bothered by IamAR before. Blocks seems to have accomplished little in order to have Benniguy stay here. Like I've stated above, Benniguy is really lucky since he has been given more than god-knows-what number of chances more than what normal people would get. Monitoring his behavior has caused dispute among admins before and it would suck to everyone in this wiki if it happens again. --§ Snake311 _{(T + C)} 01:43, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Account confusion?

Hi there, I'm User:PrestonH from the English Wikipedia, and I have been noticing that an account named "PrestonH" has been creating an account here less than a day ago. I did not create an account here, so it could be an impersonator or a good-faith account who dosen't know who I am. Can anybody help me on handling this situation if 2 accounts with the same username are controlled by two different people? 69.228.1.122 (talk) 05:44, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

If you wished to create an account here, but someone by coincidence already took it, you can set up your account using a slightly different username. That is if you want to join this wiki. But if it is an impersonator, I'd advise you to request the checkusers about the impersonator so that they can confirm it. Other than that, I don't know anything else except to have a wikimedia developer erase that account permanently from the wiki database. --§ Snake311 _{(T + C)} 06:49, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

I'll assume good faith and allow his account to run in this website under his/her username. I'm just mildly concerned if someone is trying to impersonate me over a different wiki. But let me now on my talk page in the English Wikipedia if he/she is a comfirmed imposter. 69.228.1.122 (talk) 07:00, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Because of an ongoing case dealing with impersonations of en:wp users here, any threat of a new account is often checked. Given you refute this is your account (and the user page on En: for the name listed brings up issues that this may be an imposter and that you are likely the actual user), the account was checked for sockpuppetry related to the case. The account does not appear to be related to that case at all, but is tied to an account here of the same name as an account on en:wp which has been involved in sockpuppety. The en:wp account also seems to have interaction with your account there. The account here has been blocked and a message was left on your En: talk page. -- Creol(talk) 07:27, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

ChristianMan16

Obviously a returning vandal user, should suffice for a block I think, as per this and this. Razorflame 23:43, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Except my vandalism is not exsistence. I a banned user on the English Wikipedia. Not here. Your blocking of me here would be a abuse of admin powers.--ChristianMan16 23:56, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

No, it wouldn't, it is in our blocking policy that we can blocked banned users on other projects. Oysterguitarist 23:58, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Recent actions would suggest that users can only be judged on their actions on this Wiki and not others, including EN. Not saying I support that view, but just commenting it appears to be the view. MindTheGap (talk) 23:59, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Policy doesn't make it moraly right.--ChristianMan16 00:10, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

It says that i may only be blocked that way if it seems that I will repeat what I did on EN here.--ChristianMan16 00:13, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

That is was example, it says "Administrators also have the right to block users who have been banned on other Wikipedias or other Wikimedia Foundation projects. This will be decided on a case-by-case basis" –Wikipedia:Blocks and bans Oysterguitarist 00:19, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I suggest you both stop being disruptive. If he breaks the rules, than a block will be in place.--Yegoyan (talk) 00:25, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you.--ChristianMan16 00:26, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

He was referring to you and oyster. Razorflame 00:28, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I was talking about what he said about the block.--ChristianMan16 00:31, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

How am I causing disruption? Oysterguitarist 00:32, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Don't take it personal Oyster. Just chill out! :) - Huji ^reply 08:47, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

No I meant Razorflame and Christianman :P --Yegoyan (talk) 06:10, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

But I wasn't the one being disruptive but ok.--ChristianMan16 02:01, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Elementx

Hey there, I think Elementx is a spambot. Can someone please confirm this? Razorflame 16:39, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Yep, I've blocked it. Oysterguitarist 16:44, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Blocked Ninja gaiden...

Hello all,

I just wanted to inform you that I have blocked the IP (which is static), Ninja gaiden edited from for 6 months. As far as I can see there have been other problem users from that IP, As far as I can tell no regular (unblocked) users will be affected by this block. Account creation is disabled; the block is the result of a CheckUser. --Eptalon (talk) 16:33, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Username change

Greetings. I would like to change my username from its current name (Baccyak4h) to the very similar "Baccyak4H" (emph added for clarity only). This was the name I intended to sign up as, but I simply missed hitting the Shift key. I cannot register that name on account of similarity to my current name. Many thanks, and let me know what else I may need to do to help this process along. Baccyak4h (talk) 17:32, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

 Done --vector ^_^ (talk) 17:37, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Mahalo! Baccyak4H (talk) 17:41, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Benniguy and IuseRosary

I propose a permanent ban on User:Benniguy. Since his return from a week long ban he has edited some, mostly from ENWP.

Disruption and general edits to admin talk pages has been the main thrust of his "work".

Today's disruption vandalism was at User_talk:Gwib#slt_gwibgwibgwib with the usual claims of "what have I done wrong" at User_talk:Tygrrr#Block.

I also propose action be taken against IuseRosary. Benniguy's willing aide to disruption. He claims to Rupert who edits from a school in Yorkshire, bit this is again shown to be patent nonsense.

Both users waste our time more than they enable contributions. I suggest a permanent ban for User:Benniguy, and invite suggestions as to action to take about User:IuseRosary

--Bärliner 17:45, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with a permanent ban on Benniguy. All Benniguy has been doing is posting to talk pages. He does not post enough articles and he definitely wastes lots of users' time here. He has been given plenty of chances, and has failed each and every one of them.

IuseRosary has been actively contributing towards this site, although a lot of his edits are directly from the English Wikipedia. He needs to work on simplifying articles that he posts before moving onto the next one. He is definitely useful when Benniguy isn't around, however, I have had to spend time telling him that he is possibly reverting good edits. Razorflame 17:49, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Like I have already said, I am for a permanent ban of Benniguy. He's certainly earned it, and in my opinion, he earned it quite a while back. I'd suggest a week for IuseRosary. He is at least tolerable when Benniguy's not around, although he will obviously need to continue to be closely watched after returning. · Tygrrr... 17:51, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, IuseRosary has done valid contributions; sure they still need to learn some policies and usage patterns here, but they should not be punished for being newbies; Benniguy is a slow learner, to put it positively. --Eptalon (talk) 18:36, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I would like to apologise for being silly on Gwib's user page, I assure you that that was all we were doing, being silly. At first, we were just trying to get our school soft blocked, because I logged on today in geography and saw that an IP adess, or more were making a lot of vandilistic edits, and only creal was on and the IP adress/es were were working fast. I wanted to revert their edits and help, but I couldn't, but luckily it has all been returned to normol now :-). Yeah, so ben brought up the issue about getting the school soft blocked instead of hard blocked, but then when I joined into the conversation, then ben replkied, we got a bit silly and it was not our original intention, I promise. And, My edits are not directly from enWiki, well they are, but I do try to simplify them, i'm just not all that good at it. Block me if you see fit, but I can assure you that I will make sure I do not involve myself in sillyness again. I realise that that conversation on Gwib's page was not necessary/ or good in anyway and I should have just stopped after the first post, i'm sorry. Thank-You IuseRosary ^(talk) 18:41, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

To tell you the truth, I believe that IuseRosary definitely has made very valid contributions to this site. He still has much to learn, but that is easily remedied. I would be against blocking IuseRosary at all. Razorflame 18:50, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I am defiantly for a ban, he has mostly been causing disruption, wasting resources and the time of other users. Oysterguitarist 22:46, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

A Ban for Ben. --Gwib ^-(talk)- 06:19, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm also in agreement with banning User:Benniguy. As administrators, we are supposed to protect this Wiki against people who harm its contents or its users. We are not supposed to let people do harm as their process of slow learning. There is always a way to learn without disrupting. User:Benniguy is apparently unable to practice such a way. - Huji ^reply 10:32, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

(unindenting) Just to let people know, if you look back at the earlier topic on this page, you will see that he knows how to evade IP blocks. This may be a problem if we indef block him. Razorflame 18:11, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

A quick comment (I'm not going to take a view on the matter) - if Benniguy is indefinitely blocked, he is still allowed to come back under another account or via an IP address. It appears many of you think the problem would still be there in that case. So I assume you are talking about banning rather than blocking? The only way would be a wide-ranging range block, and that could prove to be disruptive to other editors who use those ranges Whitstable 18:16, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

This comment was left on my talk page by Benniguy. As he cannot edit here, I am going to post it here for him as his one "formal request" to not be banned. I think this is only fair since IuseRosary was allowed an apology to the community and a request to not be blocked. Without further ado...

"As I do not wish to be banned, obviously, i have come up with a suggestion that will hopefully prove that I really do have good intentions for here and I will try my total very best.

1. On this first week, the only thing i would be allowed to edit is articles... nothing else... so i cannot talk to anyone at all... apart from possibly my talk page if you wish.
2. Then, on the second week, if I have abided by the rules, you would consider allowing me to talk on Administrators talk pages and Article talk pages.
3. Then, on the third week, if i have abided strictly by the rules, caused not one single bit of disruption, and done everything i was told to... then you would possibly eventually allow me to talk to the other editors.

This is a long time-period, so I hope it shows how serious I am about trying to show that I have changed my ways here. I have been thinking a lot about everything that has happened here, and I have come to realise that I was in fact in the wrong. Honestly. I focused too much on talking rather than editing, which is something I wish to change, if you will give me the chance.

Please reply to this so I know where I stand. I cannot express enough my repentance for the mistakes I have made, but I have never intentionally vandalised or anything, so I hope you realise that my intentions are good.

Thanks Benniguy ^{talk•changes} 19:29, 24 January 2008 (UTC)"

· Tygrrr... Tygrrr (talk) 19:52, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

We've given you enough chances. Razorflame 19:53, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Just saying here (not taking positions; I fell rather inactive at the moment) that a very similar message was also left on my talk page (pointing to the message posted by Tygrrr above); Other admins probably also got that. Again. I am not taking position here, as (for various reasons) I feel rather inactive at the moment.--Eptalon (talk) 19:56, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I think that if you do follow these suggestions, that this will be your sort of last chance. I think one final chance is in order before a permanent ban. Razorflame 20:18, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

The first suggestion is fine, but I think he should be allowed to respond to his talk page, and only his talk page. Razorflame 20:56, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I think that 184 kilobytes of arguing points should mean that even his own talk page is off limits. --Gwib ^-(talk)- 20:57, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

He's been on step 2 for 2 weeks now (as of tomorrow) and hasn't yet been able to handle it. Even after his so-called reform yesterday to "only edit articles", he's still spending the majority of his time talking. Imho, he'll never be ready for step 3 (the step that all other users are expected to be at from the start, I might add). This is just another way for him to prolong his disruption. That of course, is simply the humble opinion of someone who's spent a lot of time talking to this user. I stand by my opinion that his actions earned him a ban a while ago. · Tygrrr... 21:11, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

The overwhelming response has been that User:Benniguy should be banned. I have blocked that Username indefinitly --Bärliner 22:14, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Benniguy requested unblock and I have declined it. Oysterguitarist 22:53, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia policies and guidelines

I just wanted to ask why none of the official guidelines or policy pages are semi-protected. Shouldn't they be semi-protected in order to protect them from getting unwanted changes? Just a thought. Razorflame 18:48, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Because of the nature of wikis, we try not to protect pages unless necessary. Most of the time, there aren't problems. When there is a problem, we act accordingly. · Tygrrr... 18:51, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Alright, that makes sense. I have another question now: A couple of days ago, when I tried to see how my RfA was doing, I hadn't logged in yet, and it wouldn't show me the current RfAs. Is there a reason why I couldn't see them? Razorflame 18:53, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

A couple of days ago they were all archived, so there was nothing to see--Bärliner 19:16, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

This was when the RfA that I posted was still ongoing. Razorflame 19:16, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Yeah thats happens to me when I use WP:RFA to get there, but it doesn't happen when I don't use the shortcut. Oysterguitarist 22:36, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I see. I'll make sure to not use the shortcut anymore.  :) Razorflame 20:29, 7 February 2008 (UTC)