Friends of gays should not be allowed to edit articles

One of the biggest problems on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects is vandalism. By this, we mean the introduction of non-sequiturs into articles and pages.

Vandalism is an important issue, in that it drains literally minutes of valuable time each day for more dedicated contributors, who could be spending that time in more productive pursuits, such as, for example, en:Minesweeper.

Several suggestions have been made to identify types of editors that are more likely to commit vandalism than others; see Anonymous users should not be allowed to edit articles for one such idea.

The problem with most of the blocking strategies suggested so far is that they don't accurately identify vandals. It is apparent that we need to analyze content of vandalism edits to understand who vandals are. In only this way can we really get a fine-grained blocking mechanism that allows legitimate editors to work with pages, while preventing those most likely to vandalize from having access to our system.

Types of vandals

A systematic analysis of vandalized pages on Wikipedia has turned up the following three categories of potential vandals.

• Typing students. Many instances of vandalism show the telltale sign of typing students abusing Wikipedia to practice their home-row keyboard technique. Although editing Wiki pages is an educational pursuit, we are not here to provide a blank white page for prospective stenographers. A typical example:
  • "asdfasdfjkl;asdfasdfjkl;jkl;"
  • "aaaaaasssssddddddffffff"
• The curious. Another community of vandals are curious people. These people seem bent on using Wikipedia to investigate their own questions about Wiki in general and Web browsers in particular. As we all know, Wikipedia is for people who are already certain about everything, not people open to discovery, research, or new knowledge. Some example vandalisms by the curious:
  • "Does this work?"
  • "TEST TEST TEST"
  • "Just seeing if this actually works."
• Friends of gays. The last and most active group of vandals is, unfortunately, overly proud friends and acquaintances of gays and lesbians. Note that it's not gays or lesbians themselves who tend to vandalize, but rather people who know them. While being proud of one's gay acquaintances is a positive characteristic, Wikipedia is not the place to publicly announce a friend's sexual orientation or proclivities. Some examples:
  • "BRANDON IS GAY"
  • "Judy Anderson is a lesbian."
  • "Mr. Carpenter at Hamilton High likes to suck big wangs. Pass it on!"

Note that there are exactly zero vandalism instances that say, "I AM VERY GAY" or "I, Anita Flugelhorn, appreciate a good roll in the hay every once in a while with a member of my own sex." It can be inferred that gays and lesbians are exceptionally good Wikipedia contributors, and only their very proud but misguided acquaintances feel the need to broadcast their friends' sexual orientation.

Editing process

It should be apparent that we need to, at all costs, prevent people in these three groups from having edit access to Wikipedia. For this reason, the following process for preventing access is proposed.

1. Prospective editors must submit an application on an online form to get access privileges. The form fields will include their name and home mailing address.
2. Each prospective editor will receive a copy of a form letter (see below) through regular post.
3. The prospective editor will fill out the form letter, sign it, get it notarized, and return it by mail to the Wikimedia Foundation.
4. After careful review, the editor's user account will be activated and they can then edit pages.

A draft of the form letter follows:

I, the undersigned, do hereby declare that, to the best of my knowledge:

1. I already know how to type, or if not, I am not currently learning to type, nor do I plan to learn in the near future.

2. I am not curious about the way things work. I do not tinker with or take apart machines or other apparati to see how they function. I never pull up curtains, check out strange noises, experiment, tinker, hack, or otherwise show curiosity or a quest for knowledge.

3. I myself may be queer, but I do not know anyone else who is gay, bisexual, lesbian, transgendered, or otherwise queer.

Signature: _______________

Name (please print): ________________

As witnessed this day, ___________ , by _________________ .

Phase II

Preventing these three groups from using Wikipedia should cut down vandalism to zero. However, the main problem with the above proposal is that editors' non-membership in the groups is self-reported. There is no way to tell if the people are lying or not. Particularly dangerous would be curious people, who would have a strong desire to fill out and send in the letter, just to see what happens.

For this reason, a phase II stage of the project would be to hire private investigators to do background checks on prospective editors. These private eyes could look for clues that would indicate membership in one of the above groups, including but not limited to:

• inky fingers
• PFLAG brochures or t-shirts
• disassembled radios on editors' garage workbench

Although the cost may be high, this phase II effort is the only way to truly eliminate vandalism once and for all.

Note: If you've read this far, you should probably have already figured out that this is a parody. If not, well, it is. The original author has nothing in particular against typing students, curious people, or friends of gays and lesbians, nor against gays and lesbians themselves. The original author (65WPM) is in two of these three groups and would be prohibited from editing under these rules.