Monday, December 28, 2015

Zzuuzz: Example of a Minor Threat

One of those "evil patrollers" my source notes are shot through with, Zzuuzz (yes, that is his Wiki-handle) is mostly used to block the living hell out of any IPs (internet protocol numbers) that might be spamming or hoaxing articles. Zzuuzz's true name is unknown; my sources think he is a gamer kid from London, England. He showed up on August 3rd, 2005 and was reverting vandalism manually by August 9th....my sources believe he is a sockpuppet of some insider, which puts him in good stead with a number of those people. It's now 2015 and Zzuuzz is still doing the patrolling and article-gnoming he was doing ten years ago.

We are bringing up this clown because his successful Request for Adminship in 2007 marked the point where the "patroller" types were held in higher regard then the people who actually wrote new material. Zzuuzz had tried to get an RfA going in September of 2006 - he was shot down:

Final (55/16/7) Ended Sat, 17 September 2006 21:54 (UTC)
Zzuuzz (talk · contribs) – A solid vandalism reverting user who has been serving the wiki community in an exemplary manner for over a year now. I must admit when I saw that he wasn't an admin I had (a first for me) the cliched 'oh, he's not one?' thought. The user has already been entrustd with Vandal Proof and Zzuuzz's regular speedy-article tagging, 3RR and vandlaism reports indicate a thorough familiarity with policy.
Put simply, a perfect example of a dedicated user who would serve the community as a civil, intelligent vandal-busting admin. Robdurbar 09:59, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: I do, thanks. -- zzuuzz (talk) 09:36, 10 September 2006 (UTC) Thank you all for your comments. I am withdrawing this nomination. -- zzuuzz (talk) 21:54, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate
Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia in this capacity. Please take the time to answer a few generic questions to provide guidance for voters:
1. What sysop chores, if any, would you anticipate helping with? Please check out Category:Wikipedia backlog, and read the page about administrators and the administrators' reading list.
A: I will mainly continue the battle against vandals by helping with AIV, which I already monitor - I like to have all the vandalism reverted by the time the user is blocked :) I will also help with the speedy deletion backlogs, PRODs, page move/merges, and category renaming. I would like to get more involved with determining and removing copyvios - it is quite inefficient to get involved as a non-admin, but it's something I have an interest in. I will also help with open proxies and closing xfDs. Basically, any backlogs and processes I have the ability to help with.
2. Of your articles or contributions to Wikipedia, are there any about which you are particularly pleased, and why?
A: I am very pleased with all the little edits. I have created only a handful of articles (egs [1] [2]), but stubbed many. And prodded quite a few too. I often trawl the trashier categories and special pages, sifting the junk, wikifying, and dampening the POV, introducing newbies to the way of the encyclopaedia. My work on vandalism and preserving the integrity of Wikipedia is obviously a key thing - I am pleased with whichever contributions it was that prompted my RickK barnstar[3]. I am especially pleased with every reference I have added (I am a verifiabilist, but they are also great for helping with POV and vandalism), and some of my talk page contributions have been quite helpful too.
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or do you feel other users have caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: I don't think I get into conflict, or get stressed - but I see most editing as a process of negotiation. If people have a point of view it will usually have to be catered for eventually (subject to NPOV and verifiability etc), so I tend to make corrections and balance POV in small stages and over the longer term, using references and the talk pages. I am of the opinion that the vast majority of disagreements can be overcome with reliable references and that is how I generally approach things.
There was one episode which once caused me to despair a little. This edit was never really going to stick. I tried discussing it on the talk pages (before and after) but no one was convinced. I will leave it to readers to see if they can spot the problem I was addressing. Though I think I had policy, encyclopaedic values, and common sense in my favour, I had consensus against me. If I had pursued it further I would probably have put in a RFC and/or summoned some independent third parties, but after some effort I just gave up on it. I have worked on quite a few religion/statistics articles, and gradually got used to the idea that some of them are just full of unverifiable numbers. I have to admit I am not that bothered by it now - there are worse things, and I usually have better things to do than continually try and convince people that that you can't just make up numbers and make whole populations appear and disappear. Unless it's vandalism or I have support of course. I usually just put the verifiable facts on the talk page [4], safe in the knowledge that encyclopaedic standards will prevail one day. 

Then the second RfA happened:

Final (42/1/1); Ended 03:28, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
Zzuuzz (talk · contribs) - This user is yet another great user who would be an asset to the administrator community. He contributes strongly to all areas, and has improved since his last RfA, which may have passed if he didn't withdraw. He's great at vandalism-patrolling, he also contributes quality disussion to AfD, and he has improved his article-writing, which was the reason for most opposes last time. Definitely deserving of the tools. Wizardman 04:10, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: I accept thanks. -- zzuuzz(talk) 21:40, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Questions for the candidate
Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia in this capacity. Please take the time to answer a few generic questions to provide guidance for participants:
1. What sysop chores do you anticipate helping with? Please check out Category:Wikipedia backlog and Category:Administrative backlog, and read the page about administrators and the administrators' reading list.
A: I will mostly use the sysop bit to help with the backlogs at AIV and CAT:SPEEDY. I have much experience of cleaning up vandalism which has given me a good idea who needs blocking to prevent further damage and who doesn't. I will probably also help with protection where appropriate, and I anticipate assisting in other areas with frequent backlogs such as copyvios and open proxies.
2. Of your articles or contributions to Wikipedia, are there any with which you are particularly pleased, and why?
A: I am pleased with all the contributions I have made to cleaning up Wikipedia, improving its quality, and helping others improve their contributions.
A2: In light of some requests, I will try and expand this answer. I've improved thousands of different articles and I'm pleased with just about all of it. I don't really focus on improving the coverage of subject x or topic y, or adding significant text to any particular article. I prefer to focus instead on introducing elementary encyclopaedic standards across a broad range of articles. There are many articles I revisit of course, and slowly improve over time. The list of articles I have edited most (as mentioned below) contains some of the following... I help a bit with the MySpace article, both in the article and the talk page. The article is a magnet for vandalism and original research. But I can't take too much credit for that. I help to maintain the List of Internet slang phrases which is one of the most-edited and best-referenced articles on Wikipedia, though you will either love it or hate it (or try and transwiki it). The List of London School of Economics people is another list I have edited frequently, along with quite a few of its sub-articles. The United Kingdom, England, and London articles get their share of vandalism removed by me, but I have also improved them in some other ways. I have also helped a fair bit with CAT:NOCAT and Category:Lists, as well as numerous articles within Category:United Kingdom and its sub-categories. My article creations include the notable Clara Furse and the significant Sandy Gall. I will also take credit for rescuing Ray Moore (broadcaster) recently, and I have created an article for Roncq which still needs a bit of work before it reaches featured standard. I've removed libel from literally hundreds of articles, especially but not exclusively from school articles, several hundred of which I have been helping to clean up over the last few months. I've removed a further load of copyvios, hoaxes, spam, vanity, abuse, and fake deterrent protection templates which were all quite embarrassing to the encyclopaedia. My favourite AfD recently was Fecal vomiting which was headed quickly for a rather unpleasant end before I contributed. I also take a small amount of credit (rightly or wrongly, probably wrongly) for the first eight words of the Northern Ireland article, which are now stable following an extensive debate about them into which I interjected. I have contributed significantly to our knowledge of which statistics we lack about English people, and for that matter, Irish people, Cornish people, and perhaps also to some extent Asian (people). I contributed stability to the year of establishment of the term chav, and I have added some good references to the article about Wanker. I have also been active at the Help Desk and at the other end of the {{helpme}} tag, assisting many other editors with their questions and problems to help them contribute what they can. I help a fair bit with new pages and new users in a similar vein, and I obviously assist to quite a large extent in the effort to help vandals find the right path. These are a few of the various things I have worked on, and I take pleasure in it and credit for it to varying degrees.
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: I don't really get into conflicts over editing. I generally only add material that is well referenced and NPOV, and I find this is a good ingredient to prevent and even resolve conflicts. If there are disagreements of opinion or fact then I will normally open or join a discourse and attempt to negotiate a suitable narrative within the editorial guidelines.

Supposedly there was a lot off-wiki arm-twisting in the first RfA, paving the way for the "success" of the second. Since winning, he has been known to ban the IPs of entire colleges to shut down one troll; he has blocked nearly 14,000 users (mostly by 'bot) and others have had to unblock more than 1000 users he has shut down. He is also as clumsy in chasing suspected socks, which is hilarious if he actually is one. Zzuuzz deserves to be unmasked and kicked out.

Because Ian Frasier "Lemmy" Kilmister died today, some music:



You will be missed.

3 comments:

  1. i tried to post on wikipedia and it turn me down and this was just about cats so wtf wikipedia f off

    ReplyDelete
  2. What a joke. I expose his wrongdoing and him alongside Sro23 up and ban me.

    ReplyDelete