All The Tropes Wiki Project, Part XV

[LynnInDenver]

Please note that there is now a bank account, and that the request that Labster made to trasnfer the assets was only a week after registering the company even though banks in the United Kingdom require 2 weeks as a registration period. My knowledge is that a bank account was requested the day that the company was incorporated, so I think there is another misinformation here.

I wasn't aware that there was a requirement for the bank account waiting period based on the registration dates, and that it was a requirement to have it done before the requested asset transfer could actually be arranged. That said, Labster gave at least me the impression he wasn't given this information during what was effectively a stressful situation where he was under a significant legal threat, and worse that the communication that it wasn't actually possible yet was not professionally handled, so I can understand where he might have suffered a loss of trust even though the legal threat was (at least temporarily) resolved.

[Owen]

Please note that there is now a bank account, and that the request that Labster made to trasnfer the assets was only a week after registering the company even though banks in the United Kingdom require 2 weeks as a registration period. My knowledge is that a bank account was requested the day that the company was incorporated, so I think there is another misinformation here.

I wasn't aware that there was a requirement for the bank account waiting period based on the registration dates, and that it was a requirement to have it done before the requested asset transfer could actually be arranged. That said, Labster gave at least me the impression he wasn't given this information during what was effectively a stressful situation where he was under a significant legal threat, and worse that the communication that it wasn't actually possible yet was not professionally handled, so I can understand where he might have suffered a loss of trust even though the legal threat was (at least temporarily) resolved.

The information was communicated directly by me, numerous times. I made it clear that we were not able to assume ownership of the assets yet as without a bank account and without being registered for Tax, we'd not be in a position to take financial responsibility for Miraheze. It's important to note that at the time, any communication breakdown would have been because Labster started demanding we take assets we were clear we'd not be able to take and even started forcing us to take them at threats of bringing down the service. Further, the demeanour of communications I received from Labster were more attacking of my ability rather than concern, polite requests to do things or even progressive. Labster knew without a bank account we wouldn't be able to progress and regularly asked for an update on this.

I have not yet seen a detailed timetable, but I have been told that the changeover is expected for December 31 of this year.

December 31st was an arbitrary date agreed for a budgeting period and non-disclosure agreements - it had nothing to do with the transfer for assets. Our position remained we'd work to have the transfer happen as soon as it is possible for us. Our current position on this timetable is, "Everything is ready. We are waiting for Labster to start the transfer". This is after receiving access to our bank account last Tuesday and have our registration confirmation for tax come through.

[Labster]

I mean, it's kinda sad what happened here. Really, the whole point of this topic was so that I could bitch about it to some friends without making a big deal out of everything, so I could figure out what I wanted to do.

Since everyone came to talk about how wrong I am, and how they can't understand what I'm doing, that means I really couldn't get that kind of catharsis. I'm on the defensive again.

So it seems the only step left to me is open warfare. See you all on Meta!

[robkelk]

And he's back, and leaped right back into The Sopranos as soon as the lock expired.  I relocked it for a week this time, and posted another message to this new IP.  Tomorrow I start swinging the banhammer.

How many different IPs has this user used, Bob? Do you really have time to play wack-a-mole?

I propose that poor-quality edits from anonymous users be reverted altogether - at least until the poster asks why the edits are consistently being undone. Then we can tell him to read the messages you've already left for him.

I have a different idea, let's establish a new rule.

Anonymous editing is privilege, not a right, and if people abuse the privilege, we reserve the right to force people to make an account to edit.

Miraheze allows us to do this, and given some of our anon editors are good and some are miscreants, this allows us punish the miscreants while minimizing the penalty to legit anons, as we can always re-enable anon edits after the miscreants get the point.

I like that. Not only is it fair, it also has the appearance of being fair. And it reduces the amount of work we need to do (letting us spend that time on other projects such as identifying file licenses or cleaning up old page formatting).
...

Hoping we don't need to use this, but better to have it and not need it.

1. Login to the wiki with Bureaucrat rights
   
2. Select "Manage this wiki's permissions" from the bureaucrat-only menu
   
3. Select group "*" to edit
   
4. Remove these rights: createpage , createtalk , edit
   
5. Commit the changes
   

[Labster]

An armistice has been declared, thanks to all who participated.

[Bob Schroeck]

Good to hear, Brent.

Meanwhile, on the anonymous illiterate front, I had to crash several hours before the deadline (which was bound to happen, given that I set the deadline in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep). I haven't hit the wiki yet this morning, so unless he's actually responded, he got a grace period...

[robkelk]

(goes and looks)

No posts to any User Talk pages by anonymous posters. To (mis?)quote Bugs Bunny, "You may fire when ready, grizzly."

EDIT: Oh, and the "Added content" anon poster is back.

[Bob Schroeck]

"Added content" guy is back, but the change of his I found looks acceptable, save for a little missing markup. Could it be he's learned something over the past couple months?

[Bob Schroeck]

Guys, something weird is going on. We got three spam pages created overnight by (newly) registered users, and I can't delete the pages or block the users. Any attempt I make just comes back to the block or delete pages, with no change applied to the wiki.

UPDATE: I got them blocked/deleted -- it took multiple repeats over a short time for each action, but they're taken care of. But something was definitely wrong. I could create and delete a test page in my sandbox with no problems, but these spam pages resisted deletion, and the users which created them resisted banning.

[robkelk]

File a Phabricator ticket about it if you haven't already.

[robkelk]

What's our policy for user names that are similar to existing user names?
https://allthetropes.org/wiki/User_talk:Robertlek

[Bob Schroeck]

File a Phabricator ticket about it if you haven't already.

Done, and it seems that it was an accidental side effect of a separate issue.

[robkelk]

The National Film Registry's annual list of films is up. As usual, there's a bunch of stuff nobody's heard of: Amadeus, Clerks, Coal Miner's Daughter, Old Yeller, Platoon, Purple Rain, Sleeping Beauty...

I've updated all ten of the works pages we already had, and added links to those and 15 redlinks to the National Film Registry page.

EDIT: I've gone and turned those red links blue...

[robkelk]

This is what I get for not looking at that page for a few months... I just hung a big MOD note and a Cleanup tag on the "Donald Trump" page, reminding people that the wiki is All The Tropes, not All The Politics.

How did we all miss the growing number of Justifying Edits - on both sides of the debate - on that page? It's as much my fault as it is everyone else's, I know.

EDIT: Commenting out the list under Arch Enemy got rid of nearly a quarter of the justifying footnotes. I'd say that list was Egregious.

[LulzKiller]

What's our policy for user names that are similar to existing user names?
https://allthetropes.org/wiki/User_talk:Robertlek

IDK but ban cases of obvious cases of impersonation, and clarify with non-obvious users per intent.

[LulzKiller]

This is what I get for not looking at that page for a few months... I just hung a big MOD note and a Cleanup tag on the "Donald Trump" page, reminding people that the wiki is All The Tropes, not All The Politics.

How did we all miss the growing number of Justifying Edits - on both sides of the debate - on that page? It's as much my fault as it is everyone else's, I know.

EDIT: Commenting out the list under Arch Enemy got rid of nearly a quarter of the justifying footnotes. I'd say that list was Egregious.

HighComs seems to be the main, if the only, person contributing vastly to that page.

[robkelk]

Good to hear, Brent.

Meanwhile, on the anonymous illiterate front, I had to crash several hours before the deadline (which was bound to happen, given that I set the deadline in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep).  I haven't hit the wiki yet this morning, so unless he's actually responded, he got a grace period...

I see he's come back and you've already played wack-a-mole with him again.

Doing a lookup, I see that the IPv4 address that he uses is assigned to Sky UK Limited and is used in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, UK. This means that (unless he's using Tor nodes or something else to obscure his tracks - but who does that to edit a wiki?) he most likely resides in an English-speaking community. Thus, it is unlikely that he might have been making errors because he did not speak English on a regular basis.

Repeating part of what I said in my reply to your messages to him: This wiki is, in a large part, a resource for writers. Having poor grammar or poor spelling on its pages makes the wiki less useful for that purpose. This needs to stop.

If the new two-week tempban doesn't work, then I'll be proposing that we invoke the new clause in our core policy about Academic Freedom. But I'm not making that proposal yet.

[robkelk]

What's our policy for user names that are similar to existing user names?
https://allthetropes.org/wiki/User_talk:Robertlek

IDK but ban cases of obvious cases of impersonation, and clarify with non-obvious users per intent.

Three days, no reply. What's our next step? (Whatever it is, I'd prefer somebody else make it - I have an obvious conflict of interest.)

[Bob Schroeck]

If the new two-week tempban doesn't work, then I'll be proposing that we invoke the new clause in our core policy about Academic Freedom. But I'm not making that proposal yet.

If you move so, I'll second, with the caveat that it be -- at least initially -- for a limited time, say six months or so.

[Bob Schroeck]

Three days, no reply. What's our next step? (Whatever it is, I'd prefer somebody else make it - I have an obvious conflict of interest.)

I would think a pre-emptive block is not out of place here.  I have trouble imagining a legitimate new user of the wiki waiting several days before even using his account and thus seeing your query.  It's a simple fact that the vast majority of new accounts registered on the wiki are spammers or potential spammers; this seems to be just another one of them.  If he's actually real, sooner or later he'll ask what gives and we can recreate the account for him.  But if he never responds, he's not a real user.

[Bob Schroeck]

Everyone's favorite hard-of-thinking illiterate made another edit (from a new IP) without responding to any of the threads on his many talk pages. He's been tempbanned on all of them for 2 weeks.

Rob, I'm seconding that motion to lock down the wiki to registered users only, even if you haven't made it yet. Again my only caveat is that it be made temporary -- 6 months should do.

[robkelk]

I did say that I'd wait until January... so expect a forum post on the matter on January 2.

[robkelk]

Just in case FlowMention doesn't work: Input on this page is requested from all mods and all interested parties. Unlike other sandbox pages, I grant permission for all mods to update this page.

[robkelk]

Three days, no reply. What's our next step? (Whatever it is, I'd prefer somebody else make it - I have an obvious conflict of interest.)

I would think a pre-emptive block is not out of place here.  I have trouble imagining a legitimate new user of the wiki waiting several days before even using his account and thus seeing your query.  It's a simple fact that the vast majority of new accounts registered on the wiki are spammers or potential spammers; this seems to be just another one of them.  If he's actually real, sooner or later he'll ask what gives and we can recreate the account for him.  But if he never responds, he's not a real user.

Six days, no reply. I've blocked the account from editing anything but the account's User page.

[LulzKiller]

who knew in almost 2020 we would still be having debates on GG on ATT