From Wikitravel

Add nominations for user blocks to the list below, but please do so only after reviewing Wikitravel:How to handle unwanted edits. In general the preferred way of handling problem users is through the use of soft security. In the case of automated spam attacks the Wikitravel:Spam filter can also be a valuable tool for stopping unwanted edits.

For a history of older nominations see Wikitravel:User ban nominations/Archive.

[edit] Special:Contributions/193.238.213.69 & Special:Contributions/193.238.213.70

Spambot. Not readily blacklistable. ~ 203.144.143.4 09:16, 19 December 2007 (EST)

One edit every once in a while on the Talk:Main Page is very easy to deal with without resorting to hard measures—I tend to think we should reserve bans for temporary use against rapid, high-volume spambots. But I'm open to other opinions on this one, as these ips have been used over a long period of time for just one purpose. --Peter ^Talk 09:53, 19 December 2007 (EST)

Seems to me that if 195.229.242.57 & 200.226.134.53 should be blocked, then so should these. ~ 203.144.143.4 10:58, 19 December 2007 (EST)

[edit] User:JpatokaI

Due to abuse by User:Tay on Wikitravel talk:Local spam blacklist and potential for confusion, I've banned my evil doppelganger User:Jpatoka-Capital-I indefinitely. Jpatokal 01:15, 21 August 2007 (EDT)

Just to throw in my two cents, but I do not object to this ban, especially considering the user's past history of vandalism and his attempt to cause havoc by impersonating "Jpatoka-Lowercase-L". -- Sapphire • (Talk) • 01:36, 21 August 2007 (EDT)

I support the ban based on the impersonation, but not on his past vandalism... he's not too hard to keep up with :) – cacahuate ^talk 01:51, 21 August 2007 (EDT)

[edit] User:Tay

Related.... I just blocked User:Tay for one day since I see no productive contributions just trollishness combined with a willingness to revert war. -- Colin 21:30, 21 August 2007 (EDT)

I also support the indefinite ban of user:Jpatoka-capital-I. I don't object to a temporary ban for User:Tay, but in general I don't think bans are necessary in his type of case. Undoing anything that he does here could not be much easier, and there's nothing stopping him from simply using a new name. And just generally I hate to deprive such a sad, lonely person an outlet for self-affirmation ;) --Peter ^Talk 23:47, 21 August 2007 (EDT)

• Don't support. We don't have any consensus to handle unwanted edits with blocks... they should be nominated first, unless the volume of vandalism is way to high to keep up with. We've handled previous trolls (and far more destructive ones at that) with simple reverts, I really don't think this is an extraordinary case. Even looking back at Tay's history on Feb 6 there was a much larger amount of abuse which we handled the same way we've always handled these. What happened to the good old soft security measures? They've worked pretty well so far. – cacahuate ^talk 01:04, 22 August 2007 (EDT)

[edit] User:Autobot

Related to edit of Wikitravel talk:Local spam blacklist , User:Autobot(contribs) is currently blocked for one month. I support this blocking, but I'd like to propose an indefinite ban because this username may be confused with a bot passed script nominations process. I think it is equivalent to pretend a trusted user. -- Tatata 23:21, 21 August 2007 (EDT)

I would support an indefinite ban of this user, as the name was confusing enough to make me look through the approved scripts list. --Peter ^Talk 23:47, 21 August 2007 (EDT)

• Support indefinite ban, based on impersonating a bot. – cacahuate ^talk 01:04, 22 August 2007 (EDT)

• Just a note, however, this user is not a bot impersonating account. It was an account used by Tay/JpatokaI/Joesph Stalin/ etc... to run an automated script to vandalize the front page in an attempt to "punish" me for publishing his IP address, which has since changed. So this account was actually a bot, albeit not a kosher one. I support an indefinite block based on the past abuse/violation of the script policy. -- Sapphire • (Talk) • 01:54, 22 August 2007 (EDT)

Good point... but the deceitful username meant to go unnoticed is the reason I would vote for an indefite ban, script policy I would say should be far less... maybe a week to a month. We should hash this out on the talk page I think so we have some sort of standard to follow in the hopefully rare future cases that we need to block something ;) – cacahuate ^talk 02:07, 22 August 2007 (EDT)

Before we forget, have we mustered enough support to go forward with the indefinite ban of Autobot? --Peter ^Talk 17:04, 27 August 2007 (EDT)

Looks like all in favor so far... I'd say let's do it, and if someone dissents then we'll revisit it then? – cacahuate ^talk 20:10, 27 August 2007 (EDT)

OK, I blocked this account indefinitely. I think this is an appropriate response generally to accounts employing deceitful usernames like User:JpatokaI for example. --Peter ^Talk 20:28, 27 August 2007 (EDT)

Thank you. -- Tatata 20:56, 27 August 2007 (EDT)

[edit] User:200.226.134.53 & User:195.229.242.57

Apparent spambots, probably running on an open proxy but not clear. Ryan had blocked the first one for a month some time ago; I have just renewed the block, again for a month. Jani had the second one blocked for a day, I've just re-upped it for a week. Since the things don't seem to be used by an actual human, I propose to make these bans permanent. -- Bill-on-the-Hill 12:38, 1 December 2007 (EST)

The Special:Contributions/195.229.242.57 block needs renewing ASAP. ~ 203.144.143.4 12:56, 20 December 2007 (EST)

Now re-upped for three months. This is an amazingly persistent spambot. I'd still like to get a bit more endorsement before making the block "permanent," however. -- Bill-on-the-Hill 13:20, 20 December 2007 (EST)

I support the block. In fact, our script policy recommends the automatic blocking of unapproved scripts. -- Sapphire • (Talk) • 14:25, 20 December 2007 (EST)

[edit] IPs

I blocked several IPs because they were part of a spambot. I didn't block every IP and I left the option for an IP, should a real person obtain it, to sign up for an account. Here's the list of IPs I blocked. The blocks should be up in either one day or two days. -- Sapphire • (Talk) • 06:45, 29 September 2007 (EDT)

[edit] 200.169.121.244

Blocked for violating the script policy. The block will be up in three days. -- Sapphire • (Talk) • 14:24, 20 December 2007 (EST)

For what it's worth, this (200.169.121.244) is the same spambot as 195.229.242.57 (see above) ~ 203.144.143.6 14:48, 20 December 2007 (EST)

[edit] Crazychick

I blocked the account for this user for three days for uploading pornographic images. -- Sapphire • (Talk) • 02:10, 2 January 2008 (EST)

[edit] Trekinfo

This account was banned for 3 months without being nominated here, and it's not a spambot—I think that's outside the bounds of our policy. I'm inclined to oppose this block, and while my objection stands, I'm unblocking the account.

Based on the discussion at User talk:Trekinfo, I think there was some ambiguity whether people were voicing support for a block of this account, or a simple blacklist of it's touted company (I've now done this). I'm inclined towards the latter because 1) the account's edits are hardly high-volume enough to cause difficulty in cleaning them up and 2) the blacklist should suffice while also having a nice side benefit of damaging said tout's site rank on major search engines. --Peter ^Talk 12:54, 15 April 2008 (EDT)

[edit] User:MarinaK

This is an unusual case, and I'm not proposing a ban yet, I'm just sounding out community opinion.

So: User:MarinaK appears to be taking Wikitravel articles, editing them from grammar and style, and reformatting them to print as PDFs, which is fine, that's what we do at Wikitravel Press also. However, she also often removes large chunks of "stubby" content and, worse yet, strips out valid primary-site extlinks. Repeated appeals on her talk page over a period of several weeks have resulted in a few "Sorry"-type responses, but she's still doing it. What to do? Jpatokal 04:17, 9 May 2008 (EDT)

And again. Jpatokal 00:30, 17 May 2008 (EDT)

This is a tough one. The good edits are really good, but the deletions are really destructive. I suggest we take it on an article by article basis for a couple of weeks and simply do a complete rollback on any article that has destructive deletions; we will unfortunately also loose the good edits on those articles, but it's simpler than trying to manually put them together again. If the deletions still continue next month we can implement a ban --Nick 02:12, 17 May 2008 (EDT)

Nick, I second your approach. --DenisYurkin 18:41, 17 May 2008 (EDT)

Hi all. Firstly, I am really quite disheartened that my efforts to make a positive contribution to Wikitravel have been overshadowed through my lack of experience and knowledge about the wikitravel community. A thorough explaination of my actions is detailed below:

Issues such as the deletion of external primary links at the bottom of articles were made through lack of knowledge. As I said, I was deleting these as they were appearing in the pdfs, but after it was explained that these links were needed, I stopped deleting them.

Deleting stubby content. Again, this was made due to lack of experience. I was deleting empty stubby listings as I thought it made the article look unfinished and unprofessional. Having been told that not to delete these as it is supposed to encourage newbies like myself to beef them up, I stopped deleting them.

Deleting listings that do not have reviews. A concern of mine is that many listings (esp restaurant and hotel listings) just have the name and address and no review. Whenever I see these, I do my research and try to find some information that I can rewrite into a review. However, when I do not find any info on places that are listed, it is a worry to me, as this indicates that the place may be out of business, or it is spam, etc. When I do not find any information that I can rewrite into a review, I do delete the listing. My preference is on quality information and reviews rather than quantity, but if this does not bode well with the wikitravel community, then I relent and will leave empty listings.

Deleting Thai Romanisation in Bangkok. While editing Bangkok, I noticed that many Thai words had (????) after them. After researching and finding the Thai characters were correct, I deleted the (????) as I confirmed the words were correct and (??) only makes the article look unprofessional.

Please be aware that my intent is to make a valued contribution to Wikitravel. I believe that my years of editing experience in the travel publishing industry, as well as my travel experience, make me an ideal candidate to make Wikitravel articles even more stronger. As you can see, I am devoting a lot of my time into editing Wikitravel articles and do assert that I can make a significant contribution to the community. Again, I just want to reiterate that if I am doing anything wrong, please don't hesitate to let me know as it is purely from lack of knowledge. My replies have always been prompt and agreeable, as I am really enjoying the work that I have been contributing to, and would like for this to continue. --MarinaK 15:41, 19 May 2008 (EDT)MarinaK.

MarinaK,

First, if we were really unhappy with your edits, we'd just undo them. We see that there are really good edits in there, and we want to help you so that the bad parts of your edits do not detract from all that is wonderful about them.

One of the frustrations that seems to be happening is a feeling that advice to you is unheeded. Regarding Deleting stubby content, you have been asked to leave it alone. If that makes no sense to you, please talk to us about why we want that rather than continuing with what you think best. Here's the idea: we want people to be able to add stuff to our guides without having to be hyper-professional about it. If they just want to add a City with no info about it, that's fine -- the existence of the empty article encourages others to add to it. If someone comes along and adds a few stubby listings, that's fine -- it encourages others to fill out more information about it. Perhaps when an article is really at a high level one could trim some of it out, but don't do that by default.

The ???? you are seeing in listings for foreign languages is the fault of your web browser. There are no ???? on mine. Tell us about which browser you are using, and maybe we can help you with advice on how to improve your browsing experience. In the future, we expect that the font and language situation will continue to improve.

Thanks again -- Colin 16:19, 19 May 2008 (EDT)

Hi Colin and thanks for your response.

I sincerely apologise if the feeling is that advice is being unheeded, in fact, I'm after all the advice and feedback I can get! It's quite daunting dipping your toes into the wikitravel community, and I'm afraid that I was too eager to get started and jumped right in, instead of having a sneaky peek around on how this all works. Rather shamefully, I've just found the Usertalk pages for every city, and it's of such a benefit that I am rather embarassed as a lot of these issues I could have posted on the city user talk pages. Now that's it been found, I'll be asking about deletions (if any!) rather than doing.

I'm currently working on a friend's computer and it's a Mac, and I'm working with Firefox. Any suggestons? I'll ask my friend for more info if that's more helpful.

Also, I'd love to hear thoughts on the issue I had with empty listings for places such as restaurants and hotels. As I mentioned, when restaurants etc don't have any reviews, I research the place and then garner any info to rewrite into a review. However, my concern is when I don't find any info, as I feel that this may be a sign that the place is no longer operating etc. As you can tell, I've been deleting this for quality reviews rather than quantity, but please let me know if this should not be the case. --MarinaK 17:14, 19 May 2008 (EDT)MarinaK.

MarinaK,

Good comeback. I don't think anyone doubts that your intentions are good, it's just that some of the results were difficult to cope with. It would actually have been a lot simpler if you were just an average vandal, then we would just have banned you and be done with it. Since that is not the case I think a that with a bit of education you will put all this behind you and become a very valuable member of wikitravel.

So, lets start the education:

1. I have already suggested that we simply revert complete edit by you if we feel that you have gone overboard, this reduces the workload on the admins and puts it back in your hands. If you want your changes to stay, you will have to retry until they are acceptable, rather than have others try and merge the deleted contents back. This seems quite fair, you break it, you fix it.
2. No article on Wikitravel will never be perfect. No site that is open to anyone on the planet will ever be perfect. Stub and incomplete information may be quite acceptable since they act as starting points for people to add information. I used may rather than is for a reason, will come to that in a moment
3. Concensus on a community driven project such as Wikitravel is very important, one can not just do your own thing, it needs to be agreed on by the community. There are many ways to seek consensus, article talk pages, policy discussion pages and as you are already doing in this case your own talk page. If you do not agree with a policy or the way things are done, raise the issue and see where it leads, the outcome might not be what you want, but as long as one accept whatever the consensus is, we will all get along well.
4. A good example for consensus is the may I used above. Some listings (including some that you have deleted and that has been restored) might actually be valid candidates for deletion, but rather than simply deleting them it might be a good idea for you to call attention to the fact in the article talk page and give some reasons why you think they should be deleted. That way you others can follow your reasoning and are given a change to comment and give their point of view. Consensus on the matter can then be reached. The feedback will give you a good indication of what the community feel is acceptable and what is not. You don't have to do this forever, you will notice that you soon learn when to ask and when just to go ahead and do what you think is right. If you receive no feedback on the comments in the talk page within a reasonable time (we normally allow about 14 days on most things) then by all means go ahead and delete the info you find offending; no-one can blame you for not trying to find consensus first.

Colin's comment about your browser seems valid. It's quite possible that there are certain language characters that your browser is replacing with ? Give us some details on your setup and lets see if we can improve that for you.

--Nick 17:00, 19 May 2008 (EDT)

Hi Nick. Thanks for taking the time to teach me all you know, I'm an eager student!

I just mentioned this to Colin before but I only just found the Usertalk page for each city (yes, I'm embarased, perhaps one day I'll be able to laugh about it though?!). I can see what a benefit the Usertalk page is, and will definitely be using it in the future for suggestions or advice.

Regarding, point number 1, I'm totally on board with that, it's only fair.

I'm slowly realising how different it is working in this medium, rather than print publishing. As a Commissioning Editor, it was my job to make sure everything in an author's manuscript was perfect, and it's taking me a bit of time to adjust to real time Wikitravel. I'm learning to let go of my stringent editing instincts and to embrace the collabrativeness of a Wikitravel article. By explaining my past professional history, I'm trying to show where I'm coming from, and why I may seem rather stubborn in regards to perfect editing ; )

You gave me a great explanation on consensus within the wikitravel community and I will ensure that as I learn to create and edit wiki pages, I'll be looking for consensus first.

Again, I really appreciate everyone's feedback and advice.

--MarinaK 17:37, 19 May 2008 (EDT)MarinaK.

[edit] User:김인호 (delenda est) 돼지박사

Appears to be either a bot or a really dedicated weirdo cultivating a link farm about "genetic polymorphism" (!?) on his own Talk page. Jpatokal 11:15, 17 May 2008 (EDT)

Can't we just delete his talk page and ignore him? Shouldn't we delete his talk page anyway? --Jonboy 13:59, 17 May 2008 (EDT)

[edit] 125.25.142.10

This user should be banned, They often change correct information and make it false As can be seen by checking his edits. A history of changeing the phone numbers, addresses and names of establishments at will is my reason. —The preceding comment was added by 58.8.2.246 (talk • contribs) .