Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Vanity pages for vandals

This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record.
The result of the debate was keep both. Sjakkalle (Check!) 14:49, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Long term abuse/Willy on Wheels and Wikipedia:Long term abuse/Wikipedia is Communism

User:Willy on Wheels and User:Wikipedia is Communism are no doubt attention seekers, or as I think, one and the same attention seeker, and getting an entire entry on WP:VIP all for himself gives him precisely the attention that he desires. That WoW enjoys this page can be seen from this diff. In all likelihood, all the userpages of the blocked sockpuppets are "trophies", and these pages, in effect vanity pages for WoW and WiC, must be the biggest trophies of them all. I think we should take these trophies away. Sjakkalle 07:00, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

• I agree, I don't see why we should keep a lengthy record of every vandal. Delete Radiant_* 07:14, May 27, 2005 (UTC)
• Be bold: redirect them to Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress, or to the associated userpages (User:Willy on Wheels and User:Wikipedia is Communism), and forget about them. —Charles P. (Mirv) 07:24, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
  • With input coming in, I am moving this now to the Votes for deletion page. I would prefer to get this page deleted utterly, without even a redirect as a trace. Sjakkalle 07:54, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment: As stated on Wikipedia talk:Long term abuse/Wikipedia is Communism#This page, the original reason why these pages were created was to decrease the load on VIP. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 10:48, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
    • I have no questions about the page being set up for all the right reasons. However, I don't think there is any need to chronicle all the vandalism done by these users, and I certainly don't think there is any need for the long lists of sockpuppets that they have used. A brief description of their activities under the long term alerts section will suffice. Sjakkalle 10:54, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
• Delete I see no reason to keep these especially since they (at least in the case of WoW) are a trophy and a target for further vandalism. --nixie 08:04, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
• Delete - Wikipedia is not a trophy cabinet. Thryduulf 08:36, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
• Speedy this. Utter Vanity Lord Patrick 10:41, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
• Neutral I too have come to realize that these pages do little to manage the vandals. I made the page (WiC) simply because it was clogging up the long ternm alerts page.There have been times when one of the vandals struck repeatedly that this page was useful but I suppose short term alerts could serve that roll as well. BrokenSegue 11:20, 27 May 2005 (UTC) I switch to weak keep after reading the below. BrokenSegue 19:23, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. These pages are in fact sections of Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress/Long term alerts which were split off because they were getting too big. They are meant to help watching for new vandalism of the same kind, not as trophies. And if the vandal starts targetting them, it serves as a useful canary. --cesarb 13:20, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. People who devote their time to vandal-patrolling have kept a painstaking record of this sort of thing in order to prevent it reoccurring (which in this case has been effective). It's rather offensive to see such work brushed aside as vanity or excess. — Dan | Talk 13:23, May 27, 2005 (UTC)
  • This is not an attempt to brush aside the work of vandal hunters. The point of listing these for deletion is to eliminate pages which I feel are giving too much attention to a vandal. Sjakkalle 13:46, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, per cesarb and Rdsmith. Ambi 13:28, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
• Comment, I think a better way to keep track of these vandals is with a template, like that it already put on WiC. The template should be listed with the long term alert, and applied to new pages, it can also be used to find the already banned socks. These tropy pages aren't really necessary if such a system was in place. --nixie 14:48, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
• So the solution to the attention problem is to give him even more attention by VfDing it? Keep. silsor 15:21, May 27, 2005 (UTC)
• Keep and Refactor. Willy on Wheels, Ass Pus/Pelican Shit/Bugger, and {{{SITENAME}}} is Communism (whom several have suspected to be all one single individual) are recurring pests. But what is equally tedious to deal with are the "There's a new vandal! HE MUST BE DEALT WITH!" screaming alerts that come up on the talk pages of the various projects' main pages, VIP pages, and sysop user pages. These pages, here and on other WikiMedia projects, are not just trophies. They are ways of informing well-meaning editors that this is not some massive immediate emergency that requires spamming of talk pages, but a regular, long-term, simmering, problem, that will be dealt with this time as it was dealt with the last umpteen times. (They have also been ways of editors venting their frustrations at the perceived inabilities or unwillingnesses of developers to deal with these problems.) Recording the modus operandi of this(these) vandal(s) is important, so that well-meaning editors can recognize more of the same old vandalism from the same person when they see it. I think that information about these vandals should be merged, however. {{{SITENAME}}} is Communism has appeared on Wikipedia, Wikibooks, and Wikinews to my knowledge. Willy on Wheels and Ass Pus has(have) appeared even on non-WikiMedia wikis, such as SwarmWiki. In many cases, an attack on one wiki is almost immediately followed by attacks on others using the same user name. There's an area on Meta that is specifically devoted to cross-project vandalism. It should be employed to greater extent for this(these) vandal(s). Uncle G 15:28, 2005 May 27 (UTC)
• Keep this is valuable information for vandal hunters. Unfortunately, they're always going to have some attention. Let's make it easier to track them down and ignore them as much as possible. Besides, it provides a central point to share info on them and stops info on them from spreading too much. (I'm not against an alternative for keeping info on these vandals, but such a system should be in place before deleting this info.) Mgm|^(talk) 20:30, May 27, 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, I'm not sure they're honestly of much use to vandal hunters, but they're good faith efforts at being useful, and if some people feel they are being useful by all means let's keep them.

Unsigned by User:Weyes. Hedley 21:26, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. Sadly, I just see it as quite a necessary page, and Willy is helping us by adding his new sockpuppets to it anyway. Hedley 21:26, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, it's useful for many RC patrollers. It's also sometimes used to keep track of which IPs were used by the vandals. Their userpages need not contain extensive biographies, just their unique characteristics (i.e. "inserting the text 'WIKIPEDIA IS COMMUNISM'") and the IPs used. -Frazzydee|✍ 23:03, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, useful tool. — Phil Welch 05:45, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, nothing wrong with it. --bjwebb 09:40, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
• Keep we need this page. W.Knight 12:53, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Above vote by another Willy sockpuppet. -- Infrogmation 16:48, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, useful to keep track, but refactor as needed, obviously. James F. (talk) 17:18, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
• Keep as future evidence and for record keeping purposes. --InShaneee 03:47, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, the pages are no bigger trophies than the ones we give to all users - their user pages. Alternatively, the stuff may be taken to a user page. --Just my 2 cents -- Hemanshu 06:11, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
• Wikipedia is communism --Sockenpuppe 04:38, 30 May 2005 (UTC)
• Keep Jumbo Snails 00:06, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

  User has three edits (including the above), all made on the 31st of may. The other two edits are vandalism to User:CAPS LOCK and one rv. -Frazzydee|✍ 22:01, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Keep cos i is got a long bit a willy dat iz gonna stik it in u innit Large Remis 14:47, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  Added by [[User:131.111.8.103] This link is Broken

  Anonymous users cannot vote, and the user who signed does not exist. Striking out vote. -Frazzydee|✍ 22:01, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. I watch the WiC page, and boy, it is very userful for people who are new to the Wiki to find out who these people are. Plus, they were created since the Long Term Alerts page was flooded with all of this information, making the page very long. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 23:37, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Keep A very dangerous vandel that has caused a lot of problems on Wikipedia. A record of these actions should be kept. -Husnock 21:01, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Keep I guess they are "trophies", but this is important stuff, and should be kept around for future reference. Most likely, the vandal will pop up again, and anything here might be helpful. (Vote from User:Bratsche)
• Comment The supposed Willy on Wheels actually has this linked to from his Slashdot account. So he obviously does enjoy this page here. ral315 14:33, Jun 9, 2005 (UTC)
  • Well, He is not going to get anymore enjoyment out of this VfD page. I think that these pages ought to have been deleted, but I'm clearly in the minority in this. I am shutting down this debate now. Sjakkalle (Check!) 14:49, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.