Forum:Dealing with problem users

Every once in awhile, there are users that come along to a wiki project that just seem to grate on the sensibilities of the rest of the community. They are often active enough that they do some good, but irritating enough that many of the community would rather they simply go away and not be around any more.

In general, I'd be curious about how some of the various wiki communities deal with this kind of issue, particularly when broad policies that have been established by the wiki community are being generally ignored by a particular contributors, but otherwise are at least adding some content every once in awhile that in the long run is beneficial to the wiki. All Wikia wikis claim to be open for "anybody to edit", and that includes those with a different philosophy in life from your own as well.

Something else I've thought about, just wondering aloud here, is if perhaps there could be a tool developed for admins/bureaucrats that could be used to impose additional restrictions on a user's account. The list of tools and options available to registered users is rather extensive, but I'm thinking here that perhaps instead of a complete block of an account, perhaps the user account could be "reverted" to being treated like a brand-new account (no page moves allowed) or perhaps even treated like an anonymous IP user (no image or media files permitted to be uploaded) so far as what tools are available to that account? At least in theory such a user group could be created and a bureaucrat could have the option of placing a user on such restricted access instead of being completely blocked.

Yes, this is in response to a specific user on one of the wikis that I'm participating on, but this is a general enough question that I think it applies to multiple wikis as well. It is also something I've seen happen time and again over the years, with some rather frustrated users wanting to "punish" a user but not necessarily drive them from the community altogether. --Robert Horning 16:04, May 1, 2010 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately, that's life, to be quite honest. It's certainly difficult to deal with people you don't necessarily like, but at the end of the day we often have to. If they're good at what they're doing and they're productive on the wiki, the best thing to do is to ignore what annoys you. There's no reason to punish a good faith, productive user just because they may be a tad on the annoying side. =) - Brandon Rhea (talk) 17:47, May 1, 2010 (UTC)


 * The degree that users like this can massively disrupt a wiki can not be underestimated. Heck, I've seen even Wikipedia get shut down with problematic users that just sort of stick in the craw in some way and are purely annoying, and this is something that the Wikipedia Arbitration Board was actually established in the first place to deal with.


 * I agree that good faith is generally something to presume. Often it becomes a huge problem when there is a significant faction on the project that has an axe to grind against one individual, and they are on a desperate witch hunt to drive that person from the project.  When that faction includes veteran members of the community (aka bureaucrats and admins) and then somebody stands up to say "Whoa!  Not so fast there!" to defend who the mob is going after, sometimes the defenders can get beat up pretty badly in the rush to judgment.  You gotta wonder what sort of actions would be done to piss off veteran users too, but it does happen.  --Robert Horning 22:00, May 1, 2010 (UTC)