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Surprise surprise, no sooner does this happen than we start getting garbage pages created by anonymous contributors for the first time in weeks.
What do you guys think about (temporarily) restricting edit rights to registered users again? We'll need to warn the few anonymous folks who've been making good contributions, though.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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That's how the freebie wiki is set up, and it works well there - but the freebie wiki is less than one-tenth the size of ATT.
Are we going to restrict editing to registered users or confirmed users? Anyone can create an account.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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Mm. Confirmed, I think, and limit page creation to confirmed users since we're currently letting anonymous editors create, obviously. This will still leave open blanking and replacing a page as an avenue of vandalism, but that can be undone with a single click, basically.
My primary concern is what we're going to do to confirm users, especially since we're blocking edits from the unconfirmed.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
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at what point is someone confirmed in this case (in terms of general editng, the concept of page creation for confirmed users only is a-ok)? once they verify emails? I remember having to wait for robkelk to approve me in the case of the freebie wiki and I don't want there to be too much discouragement of new edits like that if someone has an interest.
BTW me and our good old friend are basically bitching at each other, and you can eat popcorn here: http://allthetropes.org/w/index.php?ti ... on=history
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By default the autoconfirm process confirms a user after a few edits, although I don't know how many, and the [link=All The Tropes:Autoconfirmed users]relevant page at ATT[/url] is a bit coy on the matter. Since it's based on the number of edits made by a registered user, though, and we're proposing blocking edits by the unconfirmed, we'll probably need to institute a "mail us, show us you're real, and we'll turn you loose" thing in its place.
And I've explicitly invited John to bring his complaints about the comments you made here, here, as a neutral place where you don't have to worry about the Miraheze language restrictions, and he doesn't have to worry about perfectly innocent comments about banning being misinterpreted.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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http://meta.miraheze.org/wiki/Special:Log/globalauth
Banning me while I'm in the middle of making a response is childish NDKilla, and I expected better of you, and yes; you are obviously doing John's bidding for him.
Utter pisstake. His banning threats were proven to be such.
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Okay, seems John blew his top over that little discussion and now LK is globally banned.
I for one am not sure how to handle this, though if John wanted to leave the conversation, he probably could have without going this far if you ask me, but that's just my take.
Frankly, this comes off a bit heavy handed and I hope John reconsiders this once heads have cooled, and if he wants to declare LK is not to speak to him in any venue for whatever period he deems reasonable, I'd be fine with that, but aside from this fracas with John he's been a contributor in good standing.
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I'll post here what I just posted there, so there's no confusion about whether I meant what I said.
I, on ATT, Wrote:I have two public comments to make.
First, to LulzKiller and the ATT admin team:
I am not happy about somebody gloating about being correct.
I am doubly unhappy about being associated, however indirectly, with someone who would gloat about being correct.
In my opinion, LulzKiller crossed the line.
If I had bureaucrat rights here, I would have removed myself from the admin team in protest.
Second, to the Stewards:
I see that LulzKiller has been globally banned on all Miraheze wikis.
http://meta.miraheze.org/w/index.php?t ... =&subtype=
This is exactly what I was worried about when I asked what I did during the RfC for Miraheze's Code of Conduct.
http://meta.miraheze.org/wiki/Talk:Cod ... sive.22.3F
There was only one reply to my question and proposal, in which revi stated "Enforcement section says System administrators decide on case by case. Also this is mostly targeted towards Meta (where the coordination is happening), IRC, and Phabricator, so each wiki community is free to have their own standard on their expectation for their users."
As I pointed out earlier, All The Tropes is not Meta. ATT does not have any policy against strong language, and does have a published policy encouraging users to call out the people in charge when users think the people in charge have erred.
http://allthetropes.org/wiki/All_The_T ... Wiki_Staff
In my opinion, banning LulzKiller appears to be a violation of Miraheze's Code of Conduct.
I am serious about that intent to remove myself from the admin team in protest. If LulzKiller's ban is undone, I think folks are going to have to decide which of us you want on the admin team. (And, honestly, I have another wiki where I'm founding admin that takes up much more of my not-earning-a-living time.)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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I have to agree, LK did overdo it. But John going all Fast Eddie in response was guaranteed to annoy all of us at ATT. If he's going to crack down like this on one of us and justify it with terms of service, he'd damn well better police the entire damned wiki or look like a petty dictator who can't take criticism.
And no matter how he tries to cloak it, NDKilla just suddenly and "coincidentally" doing the very thing John had been threatening LK with makes it look like NDKilla is a sockpuppet with John's hand up his butt.
Would have been nice if he'd been this vigorous about enforcing wiki farm rules with LP-Amanda. But I suppose they sucked up to him, unlike LK.
Brent, maybe it's a good time make sure we have a very up-to-date dump of the wiki.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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If you're talking about removing sysop rights for LulzKiller on ATT, sure. A good administrator should seek to defuse conflict, not engage in personal attacks. This was not the behavior we saw from LulzKiller. John fared a little bit better, but he still decided to seek out conflict. Lulzkiller made this whole situation personal when it didn't need to be, escalated the situation after being warned not to do so, seemed a little too eager to hear the lamentations of their women, and showed he doesn't have the right stuff to be an effective administrator for ATT.
NDKilla managed to break staff policies #2 and #8 at the same time. I'm especially concerned that he didn't try to explain his rationale for the banning to LulzKiller, or explain the extent of the disciplinary action. I'll see what I can do as a Miraheze staff member, but I doubt I can get very far. If he were an ATT staff member, I'd recommend removing his sysop bit too. As the situation stands, it's much more complicated than that. I definitely get the "local policies can't override global policies" bit of it, because after all, I wrote all of these policies. But as it stands, it looks like NDKilla took sides against someone he didn't agree with with the banhammer +5.
The problem, obviously, is that we have too many killers and killas.
-- ∇×V
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Yes, I should have said that, too -- Sorry, LK, but you did keep going when asked to stop, and were vigorously taunting. It doesn't make for good relations with the landlord. For that I reluctantly have to agree that we need to remove admin rights from you. That said, you were and are welcome to gloat all you wanted here... at least until we get tired of it. (Which given recent events might be soonish.)
-- Bob
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...and my shoes began to squeak.
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Going to admit I'm sympathetic to LK on this, though I do agree he did grind in the glass to John to the point I'm not surprised it ended this way.
I think the global ban was using a nuclear weapon to kill a fly, and while I agree if LK is allowed back he'd have to lose his admin flag as part of the exchange for a period that is currently indeterminate.
Since I admit my judgment is bit clouded, I would like to recuse myself from any decisions on how we handle this loggerhead we have hit with Miraheze and LK's expulsion under circumstances we generally agree are overkill. I will go along with any decisions the community makes of course, but I'm not going to advocate anything myself.
In the meantime, I have asked LK to help out at the Wikia fork because I could always use the help there, but I would like to see him back on our main branch in some way sooner or later.
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Since we're in agreement, I went ahead and removed the mod hat for Lulzkiller.
@Lulzkiller: While I do understand that John baited you into attacking him, the way you responded was over the top. It did not show the skills that we expect of moderators, including the ability to solve problems without increasing them, blaming people for things without evidence, and letting yourself be trolled into attacks on staff. While you've done a lot in terms of controlling spam and fighting against poor users, your behavior has created a crisis that was entirely avoidable. And you did it after being asked by me to back off.
EDIT: http://allthetropes.org/wiki/Topic:Tr1o15xd666dr05u We finally have a justification for the account lock. I'd like to get y'all's opinions before responding myself, thanks.
-- ∇×V
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I'm going to take some time to cool down and think. My Fast Eddie flashbacks from John and NDKilla's behavior are clouding my judgment.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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Bob Schroeck Wrote:...
Brent, maybe it's a good time make sure we have a very up-to-date dump of the wiki. And of the freebie wiki, as well. Brent, would you be willing to do that for us, and if yes, what do I need to do to make your job easier?
Also, Brent, if John / NDKilla decides to global lock my account, would you be able to help Kerya take care of the freebie wiki? She(?) is an artist, not a techie, but Kerya is the only one who continues to put in regular work on the wiki, so is co-admin by default. (I've already given Kerya bureaucrat rights and mentioned your nic on Meta as a possible contact as someone who can point her(?) in the right direction.)
vorticity Wrote:Since we're in agreement, I went ahead and removed the mod hat for Lulzkiller. ...
I sincerely hope that my statement about me or LK wasn't the deciding factor here.
vorticity Wrote:...
EDIT: http://allthetropes.org/wiki/Topic:Tr1o15xd666dr05u We finally have a justification for the account lock. I'd like to get y'all's opinions before responding myself, thanks. If the harassment was taking place only in that thread - a thread that John started rather than coming here - then I'd have to say that both parties were goading each other, both parties were at fault, and the lock/ban/block/rose-by-any-other-name was petty.
If the harassment was also taking place elsewhere, then I'd like to see URLs of some examples.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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Rob, your statement was not the deciding factor, but it did have an influence, yes. In my experience, you're very stable-minded, and able to separate personal feelings out of situations. So if you think something is wrong, then very likely it's wrong. I didn't take the threat seriously, but I did take the implication that we maybe shouldn't have this person as staff very seriously.
Also "sure, I guess" about the freebie wiki. But trust me, you're not on the Miraheze shit list, so there's nothing to worry about. (Just in case anyone was wondering: not an actual list.)
I'll figure out something about the backups soon. It's a good idea for us to have them, anyway. It's just mw1 is under a lot of load lately, so I want to make sure I don't destabilize things.
-- ∇×V
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Thanks, Brent. (It wouldn't hurt to have a backup of the freebie wiki anyway - the last time I took an extract was over 500 new pages ago.)
The discussion about LulzKiller's account lock continues on ATT. I believe I've explained to NDKilla how the OP in this thread was viewed here. I've also extended the same invitation to NDKilla that Bob extended to John. (By sheer number of posts and ability to explain things to new users, I seem to have fallen into the role of Bob's 2IC here even without admin rights (that I don't want), and NDKilla appears from the outside to be John's 2IC, so I thought it appropriate that I should make that invitation.)
I don't know whether John is realizing anything, though. He appears to have a lot of self-image tied up in what he does and how he acts on Miraheze; if that's correct, his changing his mind would involve his changing his self-image, and that's a very difficult thing for anybody to do.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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You're welcome to the 2IC hat as long as you're comfortable with it, Rob. I certainly don't mind as I think I know you well enough after all these years and a F2F meeting that I can trust you with or without the admin bit flipped.
And to respond to a generic comment you made in the LK thread, yes, at least in my case, I am getting serious Feddie vibes off of John. Whereas before this little imbroglio as far as I was concerned John did his thing far away and well and I really didn't need to pay attention to him because it didn't impact what I did on ATT, I now have a constant low-level anxiety that I'm likely to suffer the same kind of whimsical totalitarian sideswipe as I got on TVT if I do so much as correct him on the day of the week. I'm holding off on responding to anything from him until I'm not afraid I'm going to get banned for unexpectedly offending his delicate sensibilities.
And if I get banned because I won't risk getting banned, well, maybe that just means Miraheze wasn't a place I should have been in the first place.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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Am I alone in being a little unnerved at what amounts to basically a statement of "we'd prefer you do your discussion of your wiki on our site instead of the place you've been doing it outside our venue"? Because, well, even if you guys could manage to separate the "how Miraheze affects us" and "what are we doing with the wiki specifically", that's actually not a good idea, which would mean he's asking for it to be moved over there wholesale anyway. If he wanted it 100% over there in the first place, that should have actually been made a condition of joining up, either in the Terms of Service, or via public agreement when things were being set up.
Also, this has definitely firmly cemented Miraheze as a place I don't want to do business, even as a regular user. I can understand the whole DayJob keeping one from posting the reason for a lock, but in my mind, that basically puts it as "hold off on the lock until you can post the reason simultaneously", since outside of the gloating and what John termed as harassment, Lulz doesn't seem to be anywhere near the level of Amanda and thus could have waited until the explanation was ready to post. That alone would have cut about 75% of the reactions off immediately.
Bob, maybe it's time to listen to those instincts while there's still a chance to move ATT cleanly, and with time to research where it's going to go.
--
"You know how parents tell you everything's going to fine, but you know they're lying to make you feel better? Everything's going to be fine." - The Doctor
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Well, the difference between LK and Amanda is that Amanda was actively damaging the wiki farm, and LK was irritating John. From the responses to each we can infer the relative severity of these offenses.
As for moving ATT, well, that's Brent's to act on, as he's the real owner of the wiki, insofar as anyone is the owner. It's been his baby from the start. But I am definitely voting for developing an exit strategy stat.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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JFerio Wrote:Am I alone in being a little unnerved at what amounts to basically a statement of "we'd prefer you do your discussion of your wiki on our site instead of the place you've been doing it outside our venue"? Because, well, even if you guys could manage to separate the "how Miraheze affects us" and "what are we doing with the wiki specifically", that's actually not a good idea, which would mean he's asking for it to be moved over there wholesale anyway. If he wanted it 100% over there in the first place, that should have actually been made a condition of joining up, either in the Terms of Service, or via public agreement when things were being set up. I've been pushing against that stance as hard as I believe that I can without getting Miraheze stewards annoyed at me. However, there's no way to force somebody to take part in something.
JFerio Wrote:Also, this has definitely firmly cemented Miraheze as a place I don't want to do business, even as a regular user. I can understand the whole DayJob keeping one from posting the reason for a lock, but in my mind, that basically puts it as "hold off on the lock until you can post the reason simultaneously", since outside of the gloating and what John termed as harassment, Lulz doesn't seem to be anywhere near the level of Amanda and thus could have waited until the explanation was ready to post. That alone would have cut about 75% of the reactions off immediately. Bob Schroeck Wrote:Well, the difference between LK and Amanda is that Amanda was actively damaging the wiki farm, and LK was irritating John. From the responses to each we can infer the relative severity of these offenses. My comments on many, many Miraheze Meta wiki pages already address this, so I won't repeat myself here.
JFerio Wrote:Bob, maybe it's time to listen to those instincts while there's still a chance to move ATT cleanly, and with time to research where it's going to go. Bob Schroeck Wrote:As for moving ATT, well, that's Brent's to act on, as he's the real owner of the wiki, insofar as anyone is the owner. It's been his baby from the start. But I am definitely voting for developing an exit strategy stat. I've done some preliminary looking. As far as I can tell, there is no other free wiki farm that doesn't wrap the content in ads - although I have yet to investigate whether the folks who host the FenWiki would be interested in hosting something as big as the freebie wiki, let alone ATT. (If we're going to ask about that possibility, we'd better be ready to move immediately if they say yes, because I understand from Mal that his friends are hosting the FenWiki as a favour to him. Anywhere else, we can take our time.)
Barring the possibility of sharing space with the FenWiki, either we change ATT's policy to allow ads, we pay to let somebody host ATT for us, or we find someplace to http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Download]host it ourselves. I'm reasonably sure that the first of those three options is not on the table.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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Option one is definitely off the table for me. If it ever goes on the table, I'm walking.
Option two and option three... between the two, I'd prefer #3, because that will allow us to avoid future variations on the kind of thing that just happened. As for the budgeting thereof... well, I did just come into a good-sized inheritance. A large amount of it is already earmarked for various uses, but assuming hosting costs of a wiki of our size are not too high, I could possibly offer some funding.
Edit: Do we have any idea what kind of costs we might be looking at?
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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If we're going to do it ourselves, we'd need a server (physical or virtual) powerful enough to run http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:I ... quirements]the installation requirements without a noticeable lag, and enough disk or SAN space for the database. We'd also need a relatively large network pipe - DSL isn't going to cut it. I would prefer to also have a weekly backup (to tape, so that a ransomware infection can't touch it).
The last time I contributed to Miraheze, I was told that $50 would keep the entire farm running for a month. However, they get a university subsidy.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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Money isn't a real issue in running the wiki. We're somewhere in the range of $75 a month to run Miraheze, which is not that big of a deal to me personally. I could pay for that on my own. (At 2.3% interest, my student loans can wait.) And instead of buying servers and doing colocation, you pretty much always want to start on someone else's infrastructure. This means one of the many VPS providers, like RamNode (Miraheze), Digital Ocean (Orain), AWS (my work), etc. We've never seriously discussed owning hardware at Miraheze, largely due to the odd concern of "our lead sysadmin isn't allowed in the data center because he's too young." There are advantages to owning, but for now the disadvantages are winning.
Miraheze has gotten two large grants, one from Wright State University, and the other from Wikimedia Indonesia. If we're going to be a public charity, we're going to have to run a fundraiser anyway for small donations, to show that we do in fact get public support. Grants are cool, but we've gotten extremely lucky -- I'm pretty sure we never applied for either one -- and it's not a reliable source of income.
The problem with what's being discussed here is that it puts me in a difficult situation. I have a duty of care to two different organizations, and it's starting to look like those duties are coming into conflict. I'll have to see if I can thread this needle, or delegate the responsibilities to someone else, or resign from one of the positions.
-- ∇×V
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Okay, Lulzkiller and I have been speaking, and here's what his take is, now that his lock has been rescinded.
http://allthetropes.org/w/index.php?ti ... on=history
He's still going to stay away for a few days, wants to cool things down and has other things to do regardless of the lock being rescinded, but he does eventually plan to ask for a formal RFC. He admits he was drunk with victory and ground the glass from the victory champagne in, no debate from him on that, but he does not like how the staff acted in either the LP situation or the locking situation, and he is sticking to what he sees as his principles.
As for ATT moving or not, his take is we should either commit to doing that or not, but we need to make some sort of decision soon, but for his part he supports a move.
Now, speaking for myself, I support whatever the community wants of course, but personally, if we cannot maintain our integrity as a community on Miraheze, then we should look forward to an opportunity to do so as our own masters.
Edit: LulzKiller wants to add the RFC is not something he believes is strictly needed now the lock is rescinded, but would have liked that to have been the case before he was actually locked to discuss his expulsion and/or censure before he was thrown out without warning, not after.
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