User:Chanting Fox
Hi, I'm Chanting Fox.
Barnstar
Got this Barnstar 2 to 3 days after registering my account. I probably wouldn't have gotten my Barnstar so quickly if there weren't so many events of vandalism. It's sad how many vandals are out there... and how pathetic some of their attempts can be. My rule of thumb is that I look at the Recent Changes page and every once in a while, I'll check out an article that's been changed by an anon. user. Now initially I'm assuming that it might be a vandal (under the assumption that most vandals aren't going to even bother registering an account because it means that they're delayed from vandalizing other people's work), but I always check the page history to be sure,and you should as well. I once reverted a page assuming it was vandalism, but when the person returned what he'd put in, I realized that it was just a case of multiple spelling errors. That proved to be correct, as the editor continued to make minor edits to correct his spelling. Nevertheless, checking the history of a page is an easy way to tell whether or not the change is vandalism most of the time. I don't take any action until AFTER I do this check. Another rule of thumb is that if the topic is something that I don't understand or if it's hard to tell whether or not the change is legitimate, I don't do anything. My final rule of thumb is that you vandalize my user page, I will report you. Legitimate criticism is welcomed... insults and other offensive forms of expression are not.
Some random thoughts
So many vandals, so few original ideas. (Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is up to debate.)
If stupidity were a crime, we'd all be in jail. Unfortunately, some of the people we meet sometimes make us think that making stupidity a crime is a good idea.
Thomas Alva Edison is supposed to have said: "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." What I say is: "Vandalism is 1% silliness, 49% stupidity, and 50% aggravation."
You know... I do so many reverts on Wikipedia that sometimes I think I should get paid for it!
Userpage Vandalism Count
So far, my userpage has been vandalized 19 times.
Wikipedia Activities
As my barnstar should tell you, one of my activities is monitoring for and dealing with vandalism to the extent of the abilities of any registered user. I also look for the creation of new articles. The unfortunate fact is that a lot of the time these new articles are nothing but mere nonsense, and I mark those with a speedy tag. Not really out of the ordinary IMHO. As for articles.... don't have much to attribute to myself there. My activities there consist mostly of occasional spelling and grammar edits. I'm working on one article right now... I don't think I'll be able to get it up to the point where I can remove the cleanup tag I placed on it... but it's quite a bit better than it was before I started working on it.
Wikibreaks
7/20/05: Back from my Wikibreak... vandals beware (and be aware!)
Main Annoyances on Wikipedia (doubtful that I'm the only one that thinks this)
Number one: Vandals that use dynamic IPs/proxies... its fun, fun, fun for the vandal... but everybody else wishes that they could find the vandal and strangle them because the admins can't permablock the vandal... and because they keep getting disgusting and obscene images placed on their userpages and talkpages.
Number 2: Vandals using school/college/university computers. Same problem, and just as problamatic if not more so. At least THESE vandals aren't as likely to plaster images of certain parts of the human body on pages they don't belong in...
Number 3: People who remove the shared IP notices from talk pages. They're there so the IP address doesn't get blocked indefinitely! These guys are a pain unless you've got a registered account... and aren't a admin who blocks the page for a week because you didn't know the IP was shared by a number of users equivalent to the population of a small city. (That's a ballpark estimate.)
Number 4: People who remove the sandbox header. Yeah, it doesn't seem that big of a deal... but it is stated right on the header to NOT REMOVE it! At least the majority of these people are anon. users who are probably new and/or just fooling around rather than serious vandals.
Number 5: Sockpuppets. Double (or triple or multiply by 10 or 20) the fun for vandals, same multiplier in annoyance for everybody else.
Fawcett5
Hello,
That lil monkey Fawcett5 is still stalking me and messing around with my User Talk page any chance you can advise the people in charge to discipline this guy !! Thanks LaLa 22:21, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
There has been a lengthy and exhausting discussion at Talk:Abraham Lincoln and now at Talk:Elvis Presley and its archived Talk pages surrounding the exact same issue as was discussed and voted upon already on the Abraham Lincoln matter. Because this has the potential to create a new standard for what is acceptable Wikipedia sources, I thought that you might want to be aware of it. If the policy consensus arrived at on the Abraham Lincoln issue is set aside in the Presley article it will result in new ones for countless others. I think the existing determination of what constitutes a proper source should be defined by the Wikipedia community and set as firm policy which would go a long way in helping to substantially reduce the tiresome and repeated edit wars. Thank you for your interest. Please note I have left the same message for others who worked on this matter. Ted Wilkes 20:53, August 18, 2005 (UTC)