Forum:Papa-Smurf, VSTF, Protectsite and SckrTrckrBot

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Alright, people. Anyone who's been paying attention lately likely knows that we've had a bit of a vandal problem. A troll, whom I refer to as Papa-Smurf, has been using dynamic IPs to frequently vandalize Uncyclopedia- several times a day in the last week or two. He is also in possession of an unknown number of sockpuppet accounts, some of which appear to be legitimate users (they've written their own articles and everything). Short of a rangeblock- which was briefly discussed here and which is evidently considered an unacceptable measure- we cannot stop him from vandalizing with our currently available wiki tools. To complicate matters, whether coincidentally or by design, Papa-Smurf often attacks the wiki when no administrators are around to delete his spam pages and block him. While a number of users have been on the line to revert his edits and report him- myself included- this isn't enough, as ultimately we must have a sysop around to take care of him.

Papa-Smurf is no ordinary troll. He has a decent knowledge of the workings of a wiki, has demonstrated extreme persistence in his frequent attacks, possesses an effective means of ban evasion, and is in control of an unknown number of sockpuppet accounts which, to my knowledge, cannot be quickly or reliably identified before he reveals them. I believe that effectively countering him is beyond our current means; therefore, I have three proposals that I would like to make in response to Papa-Smurf's trolling. I'll give each its own section so that people can vote, discuss and debate on them as necessary.

One: Grant powers to VSTF users

VSTF- the Volunteer Spam Task Force- is a cross-Wikia group of volunteers who assist in counterspam and countervandalism. I am given to understand that on most wikis these users have a number of useful powers, such as blocking and deleting. I also understand that when VSTF was formed, Uncyclopedia decided not to grant any such powers to VSTF users, under the rationale that we can handle everything ourselves. As the Papa-Smurf case is demonstrating, this is evidently not the case. VSTF's section in the list of group rights (towards the bottom) details a list of powers that could be available to VSTF members; presumably, these powers can be individually tweaked, in case the community doesn't want to grant a specific power to VSTF. And, of course, VSTF would be subject to any community-imposed restriction, if anyone out there is paranoid that these mysterious users would destroy the wiki.

VSTF members are often available for help in #wikia-vstf on Freenode, and in the event that Papa-Smurf vandalizes and no sysops are present, VSTF can come in and deal with it. A list of VSTF users and some information about them can be found here, for the curious. Anyway, I propose that we grant to VSTF users powers that would enable them to effectively fight vandalism on Uncyclopedia. Frankly, I'm a little surprised that one of the more popular wikis- and thusly, one of the biggest targets for vandalism- would discard this resource in the first place. I am, however, willing to hear about why VSTF was shut out in the first place, and to hear whether such reasoning continues to apply today.

Vote

Score: 1

• For per above. --Andorin Kato 05:45, August 20, 2010 (UTC)

Two: Grant sysops access to Special:Protectsite

Special:Protectsite is a tool that can apply protection settings to the entire wiki, from semiprotection to full protection. Currently our sysops and bureaucrats do not have access to this tool; only Wikia staff and helpers can do this for us. This has obvious value as a countervandalism tool in extreme circumstances, yet we can't use it without help from Wikia. I recognize that this tool is unlikely to be useful against Papa-Smurf unless he goes berserk and starts dropping hundreds of edits per minute from rapidly changing IPs, but I think it's a bad idea for our own admins to not have access to Special:Protectsite. This proposal, therefore, is to give administrators and bureaucrats access to Special:Protectsite.

Vote

Score: 0

• For per above. --Andorin Kato 05:45, August 20, 2010 (UTC)
•  Against. Per below. This is unnecessary.--HM (T) 07:10, August 20, 2010 (UTC)

Three: Build an auto-reverting bot

This is my favorite of my three proposals, and the one that I think will be most effective against Papa-Smurf and any future trolls like him. My proposal is to develop a bot that will automatically revert the edits of a given user or IP, list any spam pages they create on QVFD, and optionally report them to Ban Patrol or to an administrator. With regards to the auto-reverting, we mostly have that with SckrTrckrBot, though this bot is currently nonoperational. I do not think, however, that getting it to work would be terribly difficult, as Olipro put a good amount of work into it. This bot would be very useful to our bottom line for two reasons:

1. By automatically reverting Papa-Smurf's vandalism, the bot will free up users from having to do tedious countervandalism
2. More importantly, by automatically reverting Papa-Smurf's vandalism, we will remove a large reason for him to continually attack us. Trolls are trolls because they want attention, and by reverting, blocking and deleting Papa-Smurf, we are in effect giving him the attention he wants. (It also does not help that a few select users have been feeding the troll and encouraging his vandalism.) Going the opposite route and completely ignoring him is bad for the obvious reasons, but if we had a bot that took care of him, we could ignore him and get on with our lives without consequence for the wiki. He could spam and vandalize all he wanted, and it would only result in automatic reversion and- hopefully- very quick banning. Without any attention from humans, he'll hopefully go away. At the very least, it will be easier for us to deal with him.

Also, with the way SckrTrckrBot is designed, only users with rollback can utilize it. I think this is a very good idea because it prevents Papa-Smurf from using one of his sockpuppets to revert those of us who are reverting and reporting him.

I think such a bot would be more useful if it were an administrator, so it could straight-up ban him and delete his pages... but yeeeah, I don't think we're going to be allowing that. I don't even know for sure if I would vote for such a thing.

Development of SckrTrckrBot or any such bot would require a user proficient in .js. I know that we have a few such users, but if they aren't up to the task, we can always ask Wikia or perhaps Wikipedia for help. I'm sure they have plenty of users who could get the job done.

Vote

Score: 1

• Strong for per above. --Andorin Kato 05:45, August 20, 2010 (UTC)

Four: Ban All Users

It is obvious to me that if this Smurf character has managed to insert himself into the foundations of Unicyclepedia this deeply, and transcended bannability, we must do the most drastic thing possible: Ban all users. I know, it seems like a radical thing to do, but imagine! A world without vandalism, without change, where articles are free to live without fear of molestation, huffing, or being beaten by a gang of rabid IPs. They can be free to grow old, live their lives, and die happy and content at having made everybody happy.     EugeneKay wuz here (whine thank)   06:55, Friday 20 August 2010  

Vote

Score: 1

•  Ban All Users     EugeneKay wuz here (whine thank)   06:55, Friday 20 August 2010  
• Strong For. We should start with Hinoa -- T​K​F​​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​UU​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​CK 07:12, August 20, 2010 (UTC)

General questions/comments/discussion

Have at it. --Andorin Kato 05:45, August 20, 2010 (UTC)

We get vandals all the time. This guy's no worse than (and I'm going to speak unspeakable names because you've gone and made a 7000+ character topic about it so all rules about "feeding the trolls" are basically completely out the window at this point, thanks guys) NXWave, raep, or Grawp. I feel that everyone's completely overreacting to this. I don't know what's in the air that's suddenly making everyone take this way too seriously for anyone's good (except the vandal's), but I don't like it. -- T​K​F​​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​UU​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​CK 05:51, August 20, 2010 (UTC)

Grawp rocked. Always about the cock... I like how the simplest solution wasn't mentioned. Guess because you've all already said no to it. MegaPleb • Dexter111344 • Complain here 05:54, August 20, 2010 (UTC)

People are welcome to vote on having a VFS if they really want to, though considering last month's VFS shenanigans and subsequent drama, I think a VFS would have unintended consequences that we really don't need right now. It's probably not the simplest solution. --Andorin Kato 06:12, August 20, 2010 (UTC)

So you don't think that additional countervandalism measures are necessary? Do you think that the current level of vandalism from Papa-Smurf, which I will remind you forces the sysops to lay out several dozen bans and deletions per day, and which also ties up the users' time and effort in reverting, is acceptable? Also, wasn't Grawp basically the reason we got a limit on page moves for non-admins? --Andorin Kato 05:56, August 20, 2010 (UTC)

No, that was the Nigger dogshit guy. MegaPleb • Dexter111344 • Complain here 06:04, August 20, 2010 (UTC)

Case in point: Noteworthy vandals can result in policy changes. --Andorin Kato 06:12, August 20, 2010 (UTC)

Yes. No additional measures are necessary.--HM (T) 06:14, August 20, 2010 (UTC)

On what logic do you base that assertion? --Andorin Kato 06:16, August 20, 2010 (UTC)

The logic that reverting, deleting and blocking isn't that hard. Putting in additional measures gives him a sense of entitlement. --HM (T) 06:18, August 20, 2010 (UTC)

You're missing the point. His vandalism ties up users that could be doing something constructive instead of reverting his crap. Additionally, 22 of the last 50 blocks have been for him, and 25 of the last 50 deletions have been for his pages. This is, without a doubt, not the average vandal, and unless we change something to more effectively stop him, he'll just keep fucking with us. I don't give a crap about any sense of entitlement of his, I care about stopping him from vandalizing the wiki. --Andorin Kato 06:23, August 20, 2010 (UTC)

Think about it this way, everyone: He is on vandalising over 50 pages in a short period of time, somebody has to revert all that and put his stuff on QVFD and him on BP. That means other vandals are going unnoticed because of one guy. Vanity and cyberbullying are being inserted on pages, but nobody even sees it because of one guy. That is the main problem right now. MegaPleb • Dexter111344 • Complain here 06:29, August 20, 2010 (UTC)

Oh please. I can revert someone, press the recent changes button, and revert someone else. If he did 30 "bad things" that I have to revert, it would take about 60 clicks. Which is about 5 minutes of work. Oh noooooooooooooooooo it's so hard.--HM (T) 06:32, August 20, 2010 (UTC)

Sure, and that account might get blocked after those 5 minutes if a sysop is around. If not, it's another 5 minutes of countervandalism, until that sock/IP gets permabanned. Anywhere from 10 minutes to a few hours later, he's back, and you start from square one. Over and over and over and over because he can just keep vandalizing from new IPs and socks. --Andorin Kato 06:36, August 20, 2010 (UTC)

Eh, still not a big deal.--HM (T) 06:38, August 20, 2010 (UTC)

I'm guessing you haven't had to revert any of his crap, which would explain why you aren't taking it seriously. --Andorin Kato 06:40, August 20, 2010 (UTC)

You're guessing wrong, then. --HM (T) 06:47, August 20, 2010 (UTC)

You still need to offer an explanation as to why you don't think it's a big deal and doesn't justify extra countervandalism measures. --Andorin Kato 06:48, August 20, 2010 (UTC)

There's a difference between me not offering an explanation and you ignoring my explanation, you know. That aside, it's not a big deal because it's not that much work.--HM (T) 07:02, August 20, 2010 (UTC)

You're repeating points to which I've already responded. --Andorin Kato 07:03, August 20, 2010 (UTC)

So? Every single point is not magically put to rest just because you addressed it. The truth is, I have no other points, but my only point is usable against your entire argument. I don't see why we should take a bunch of huge measures just because of one troll. It's like putting a moat in front of your house because you got robbed once.--HM (T) 07:09, August 20, 2010 (UTC)

Fine. What are the consequences of putting these measures in place? You know, the sorts of things that would justify going against them? --Andorin Kato 07:14, August 20, 2010 (UTC)

TKF took the words right out of my mouth. Thief.--HM (T) 05:58, August 20, 2010 (UTC)

I'd just like to take the time to thank you Andorin for being so much fun to fuck with - you truly take the bait because of your desire to actually be a "somebody" - you must find ways to ban any who dare defy you despite the fact you actually started this flamewar when you and RDB messed with my userpage (I forgive RDB because me and him go back, you on the other hand - no) so I shall continue to fuck with you, even if you get the bots: just because I know deep inside my very existence pisses of Andorin, thus it is good. --Hogwashery 06:57, August 20, 2010 (UTC)

Do you get it now Andorin? I may have taken the words right out of Helpme's mouth but I think the vandal himself just proved that you're grossly overreacting. I sincerely hope you get it now. Antivandalism measures are nice but nothing additional is necessary (though a successful VFS would be a welcome addition), this guy is just another vandal. I've outlasted better vandals in the past even before I was an admin. Honestly, he's got nothing on Jayson Hallemaya. -- T​K​F​​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​UU​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​CK 07:03, August 20, 2010 (UTC)

Is it just me, or does the internet seem to be filled with malevolent thirteen year old boys? Sir Modusoperandi ^Boinc! 15:45, August 20, 2010 (UTC)

Yawn

Oh good, another Troll. Wake me up when they've finished. -- Sir Mhaille  (talk to me)

Sorry, was there a poin... ZzZZzzz --UU - natter 09:37, Aug 20

Good show guys, write a a whole forum over a troll, that will surely diminsh his motivation to come around. Use the usual method, ignore him and he'll get bored and go away. They all do. Stop dramatsizing any little lifeless idiot that knows how to switch IPs. ~ Mordillo where is my FUCK? 19:49, August 20, 2010 (UTC)

Also, I've updated the spam regex with some new values. If any of the admins wants to know how to update it (or what it is!) drop me a line. ~ Mordillo where is my FUCK? 20:53, August 20, 2010 (UTC)

Andorin, you're stupid. And you smell too. You're never gonna score (unless you have then fuck you). --Roman Dog Bird 23:54, August 20, 2010 (UTC)