All The Tropes Wiki Project, Part XV

[Bob Schroeck]

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.

[robkelk]

I just edited MediaWiki:Protect-dropdown - the list of predefined reasons to protect a page now numbers six instead of five.

Please note that the sixth reason is specifically for use with semi-protection from anonymous edits.

[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.

[GethN7]

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.

[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).


EDIT: But we should tell people beforehand. I propose modifying one of our core Policy pages, specifically adding the following to All The Tropes:Literary Criticism#Academic Freedom

Rights come with responsibilities connected to them, and the right to Academic Freedom is no exception. The responsibility connected with Academic Freedom is to take ownership of one's statements and accept the consequences for making them. On this wiki, this means that anonymous editing is a privilege, not a right; if it becomes necessary, we can require people to create accounts to edit here.

Oh, and since it is a core Policy page, I've just permanently protected All The Tropes:Literary Criticism so that only admins can edit, move, or delete it.

[Bob Schroeck]

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

I think it's five now -- but I haven't looked at this morning's recent edits page yet. And no, I don't.

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.

Yes. This.

And I second Rob's suggestion about editing the policy page. Further, I suggest we put it in the sitewide banner for a week or so as well.

[robkelk]

I've just made the same edit proposal on the wiki, pinging all of the other admins.

[Bob Schroeck]

I'm going to wield the tempbanhammer on those IPs anyway, because I did threaten such for nonresponse, and we need to be consistent in such cases.

[LulzKiller]

what's the chance it's the same guy from the 2600 range?

[Bob Schroeck]

No, I don't think so. Different idiosyncracies. 2600 didn't make possessives with commas ("Jim,s car"), and this guy doesn't have the habit of labelling his changes as "added content".

[Bob Schroeck]

And he just popped up now on "The Amazing Atheist", on IP 2a02:c7f:9871:9700:e8e8:15ae:2cf0:190e. Per the above, I rolled back all his edits (four or five in rapid succession, all virtually illiterate) and whacked the IP for a year for ban evasion.

[robkelk]

I've just made the same edit proposal on the wiki, pinging all of the other admins.

Wiki copy of the proposal.

It's been up for 11 hours, and three out of four Bureaucrats like it. I'll let this sit for another half-day or more because I would like to hear some comments (even if they're "me too" comments) from folks who aren't on the mod team... but I'll do something with this within 72 hours. EDIT: I should invite comments from non-mods, then... so I just did.

[Bob Schroeck]

Can someone else please take a quick look at the recent anonymous additions to Hate Sink? They strike me as being a bit too extreme to be Hate Sinks, but I'm unfamiliar with the works they're in so I can't really judge them in their proper contexts.

[Labster]

It's been a couple of weeks since I posted about this, but I'm at something of an impasse with Miraheze Limited and I don't know what to do.  As background, when John had major health issues several years ago, I ended up taking on full financial responsibility over Miraheze, just to keep it running.  I was really involved for a couple years, but have generally cut back on my involvement since.  Lately, it's just been keeping the finance page updated sometimes.  But for the most part, I was not involved; I was often having months between wiki edits -- even longer if you excluded the finance page.  I was also contributing $1000-$2000 a year.  The most recent change is that since Rob made a There's Nothing Better wiki, I started editing much more frequently.

Basically some of our people got tired of waiting for me to incorporate, and made a nonprofit company called Miraheze Limited in the UK.  Cool.  Now other people can work on this project that I wasn't really managing.  But then, some guy in Spain decided he was going to sue me over some content on the wiki, and throw me in Eurojail.  Now, I haven't been managing the project for a while, so I don't even have rights to edit the wiki in question, and I'm not particularly eager to do tourism inside of a Spanish prison.  So I think, hey, I have a solution -- let's just transfer all the property to Miraheze Limited, and then they can deal with it and not me.  Like, that's what "Limited" means -- limited liability.

Instead, I got a stone wall.  Board members still insist that the organization can't own the property because they don't have a bank account open yet.  Board members repeatedly saying that they are not (yet) responsible for Miraheze.  I basically had to kick and scream to get someone to take down the page -- which, whether or not it was legal content, none of us felt like fighting it.  The solution was really simple -- just offer me some sort of contract accepting the donation, and then I could legally say I don't own the property, even though my name is still on the account for the time being.  But instead I got insults about how I was mismanaging things.  OK.

So it comes down to this.  I cannot trust Miraheze Limited.  I know it has a lot of people who were involved in the community for a long time.  But to basically take your biggest donor and give him a big "fuck you" doesn't give me confidence in the long-term viability of the wiki.  So my first inclination is to not transfer the property to Miraheze Limited, ever.  It feels like taking the ball and going home -- especially on a project I don't contribute much to -- but my concerns about the management are real and unlikely to go away.  I don't know who would be actively running the wiki in this case, where Miraheze and Miraheze Limited go their separate ways.  I could probably throw some time in, but I'm not a true sysadmin.

The other alternative is to just stop caring and walk away.  Transfer the servers to Miraheze Limited, and let them figure out how to pay for them.  It's similar to what I was doing before, that's for sure, and the community seems to be leaving without me.  I don't know that I could run it on my own either, so just let them make their own mistakes instead of making mine.  But I still don't trust them, and all that money I had pledged is never going to see the light of day.  And I'm not sure how well they'll be able to find money on their own.

You guys are the community I care about, so I'm asking you what I should do.  I'm not sure how long the wiki survives down either path, to be honest.

[Bob Schroeck]

I honestly don't know how to advise, save to encourage frequent and complete backups of ATT.

[LynnInDenver]

In other words, "we'd prefer you still be legally responsible on paper for this whole thing, especially since someone's already shown where that may lead."

I don't really have a dog in this fight as I'm a non-contributor overall, but I've also been in fandom too long; it's time to wash your hands of it, and make them take it, either by transferring it to them over their protests, or making them have to find a new set of servers on their own. At this point, the long-term viability of the wiki is in question regardless of what happens, or whether or not you continue to stay in to help it, what matters is that it's likely that the longer you stay in it, the more likely it becomes you'll become resentful on some level or another, or even burnt out.

[robkelk]

Well, I've just asked a question of all the candidates in the current Board election. Let's see how that goes.

https://meta.miraheze.org/wiki/Talk:Comm...candidates

[Labster]

In other words, "we'd prefer you still be legally responsible on paper for this whole thing, especially since someone's already shown where that may lead."

I don't really have a dog in this fight as I'm a non-contributor overall, but I've also been in fandom too long; it's time to wash your hands of it, and make them take it, either by transferring it to them over their protests, or making them have to find a new set of servers on their own. At this point, the long-term viability of the wiki is in question regardless of what happens, or whether or not you continue to stay in to help it, what matters is that it's likely that the longer you stay in it, the more likely it becomes you'll become resentful on some level or another, or even burnt out.

I mean, I don't think it was about putting it on my responsibility as being inflexible.  Mission parameters change.  I guess we all agreed to some sort of timeline, but then I decided that I really didn't want to deal with legal threats, so I asked them to assume responsibility.  They were like, hell no, that's not the plan.  And I'm thinking that if they don't want responsibility now, why would they take responsibility later?

But I think you hit the nail on the head on burnout.  I feel burned out on everything right now.  Work for sure, since I'm transitioning to leading a team -- but only of two, and the other guy is so new that it's still adding more work rather than subtracting.  I'm months if not years behind on everything in my life. Everything seems fine on the outside but I just can't shake the feeling that future generations will curse my name, you know?

[Reception123]

In other words, "we'd prefer you still be legally responsible on paper for this whole thing, especially since someone's already shown where that may lead."

I don't really have a dog in this fight as I'm a non-contributor overall, but I've also been in fandom too long; it's time to wash your hands of it, and make them take it, either by transferring it to them over their protests, or making them have to find a new set of servers on their own. At this point, the long-term viability of the wiki is in question regardless of what happens, or whether or not you continue to stay in to help it, what matters is that it's likely that the longer you stay in it, the more likely it becomes you'll become resentful on some level or another, or even burnt out.

I mean, I don't think it was about putting it on my responsibility as being inflexible.  Mission parameters change.  I guess we all agreed to some sort of timeline, but then I decided that I really didn't want to deal with legal threats, so I asked them to assume responsibility.  They were like, hell no, that's not the plan.  And I'm thinking that if they don't want responsibility now, why would they take responsibility later?

But I think you hit the nail on the head on burnout.  I feel burned out on everything right now.  Work for sure, since I'm transitioning to leading a team -- but only of two, and the other guy is so new that it's still adding more work rather than subtracting.  I'm months if not years behind on everything in my life. Everything seems fine on the outside but I just can't shake the feeling that future generations will curse my name, you know?

I'd like to add my point of view to this discussion. I personally think that this situation has been blown out of proportion and that the handling of the particular situation that Labster mentions has been largely misunderstood. 

As John mentions in the reply issued to robkelk, it is not the fact that Miraheze Limited does not want to be responsible it is the fact was that at the time when you requested the transfer (as my understanding is) Miraheze Limited was not yet prepared to assume the role, since it had barely been incorporated.
The fact is that the schedule announced was that there would be a transition period and assets would be transferred until the 31st of December 2019. The way I see it the board saying they are not yet prepared to transfer assets has been interpreted as "are not ready at all" which I don't think is at all the case.

So I don't see the point of holding a grudge against the board for not agreeing to an immediate transfer and I think that the only way everyone wins from this situation is if the transfer takes place as originally planned and agreed on. Rather than presenting things this way I think that the way to proceed is to attempt to have a civilized dialogue with members of the board. We (sysadmins) have been trusted with day-to-day management of Miraheze until now so I think that we deserve a dialogue and to have a say about this. 

This comment is made using information I have in my role as a System Administrator but does not reflect Miraheze in an official capacity.

[LynnInDenver]

...then wouldn't they really need a bank account if they're already incorporated? Seems like someone over there may have put the cart before the horse in terms of what they were doing; if one doesn't have a bank account by the time of incorporation, then they should have literally been opening the bank account as one of the first steps right after incorporation.

I can fully understand the whole "we had a timeline already set up", but it seems incredibly inflexible to demand holding to it, and that the demand was in relation to a "I can't be in the liability position anymore" request, which from the outside can look like "please keep holding this liability bag for right now until it blows over".

Labster, something that does come up in this is that there might have been a need to incorporate some sort of incorporated entity much earlier, if only to have put some legal remove on yourself in regards to the EU legal threat regarding disputed content on one of the wikis. It might still have required removal as the easiest solution (which is why SLAPP is a thing, it counts on concessions being much easier and cheaper than fighting it), but it would probably have removed the jail threat.

[Reception123]

...then wouldn't they really need a bank account if they're already incorporated? Seems like someone over there may have put the cart before the horse in terms of what they were doing; if one doesn't have a bank account by the time of incorporation, then they should have literally been opening the bank account as one of the first steps right after incorporation.

I can fully understand the whole "we had a timeline already set up", but it seems incredibly inflexible to demand holding to it, and that the demand was in relation to a "I can't be in the liability position anymore" request, which from the outside can look like "please keep holding this liability bag for right now until it blows over".

Labster, something that does come up in this is that there might have been a need to incorporate some sort of incorporated entity much earlier, if only to have put some legal remove on yourself in regards to the EU legal threat regarding disputed content on one of the wikis. It might still have required removal as the easiest solution (which is why SLAPP is a thing, it counts on concessions being much easier and cheaper than fighting it), but it would probably have removed the jail threat.

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.

[robkelk]

As I replied to John's reply, my current concern is for the timetable to get things moved over. I'm not particularly interested in he-said-she-said or trying to pin blame somewhere; my concern is in getting this done... or, at least, having a plan to get this done.

If there's already a timetable, good.

[Norgarth]

not actually involved in the situation, but have they shown/presented the timetable or are they just telling you that there is one without giving any details as to when things are supposed to happen?

[robkelk]

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

[Labster]

So I don't see the point of holding a grudge against the board for not agreeing to an immediate transfer and I think that the only way everyone wins from this situation is if the transfer takes place as originally planned and agreed on. Rather than presenting things this way I think that the way to proceed is to attempt to have a civilized dialogue with members of the board. We (sysadmins) have been trusted with day-to-day management of Miraheze until now so I think that we deserve a dialogue and to have a say about this. 

Oh man, it must really suck for you that something important to you is happening and you ask for help and understanding, yet all you get back is sass from the people who could fix your problem.