Forum:How to handle an inconsistent editor?

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User:AKR619 confuses me. On the one hand he does make useful, small edits. If you look through his contribution history, there are examples of occasions on which he'll add a useful category to a page, or make a grammatical improvement to an article. But when he adds anything more than a word or two to an article, it's usually a rambling mess that reads more like he's trying to take the mickey. He's been given a few suggestions on his talk page, but he doesn't seem to be improving. Check the edit histories of Australia, Steven Moffat, Matt Smith, Russell T Davies, God, Stephen Fry, Carol Ann Ford, Distress signal receiver, the examples on his talk page, and many others for samples of his recent work. I think if all his edits were like these, we'd easily suspect him of vandalism. But, as I said, there are times where he does something useful.

So the question is, are his minor edits of enough value to have to constantly monitor and fix what he does when he gets his hands around a whole paragraph? Since he has been warned about his "sins" on his talk page — and has failed to improve — should we ban him? Or is there some way to "rehabilitate" him? I'm l'm loathe to suggest banning any user, but on the other hand I'm not too thrilled about spending time cleaning up things that read like intentional, well, vandalism. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 03:47, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm almost never in favour of blocking relatively useful editors, though of course there are exceptions to ever rule. But I think for the most part editors can be educated if enough pointers are left on their talk page showing them the errors or mistakes and what not.

I suppose we could impose a 'half dozen warning' rule (as three times is a little harsh) or something like that that maybe earns you a 3 day block, but I'm very uneasy about going down that route, after all many of the editors that make their way here haven't edited in any major way on a wiki and it's a learning process. --Tangerineduel 16:35, 1 May 2009 (UTC)