All The Tropes Wiki Project, Part XX

[LynnInDenver]

I had no idea I would wind up kicked out for it (had I been told to never post anything like it again, I would have complied), but apparently, obedience was not enough, I was to be a mindless drone, even obedience with noted reservations but still being compliant was not tolerated. I was clearly kicked out for having politically incorrect opinions (which I said would not affect my duties to enforce FANDOM will, but said profession of loyalty meant nothing apparently), and frankly, while I was not planning to suicide my FANDOM account, I already had indications they were going to purge people based on ideology prior and was sure sooner or later I might be hit by said purge. And if the price of sticking around was to put up with that, so be it, I'm out, wouldn't want back even if they reconsidered.

Bringing up your views as "noted reservations" wasn't being obedient in this case. They don't stop you from having the views and ideology, they just make it clear they don't want the views and ideology expressed on their site. If they wanted you to stop having the views and be a "mindless drone", they'd be attacking you anywhere you express it, rather than just showing you the door.

I believe you're not the first one to be banned for such expression, but I'm sure they've had enough of trying to give chances and having the chances wasted, and they're through wasting the time presenting the chances to begin with.

Also, your "politically incorrect opinion," as you put it, is, for me, someone saying that I need to be marched into a reparative therapy clinic and not be let out until I commit suicide attempting to bend that far. That is pretty much unacceptable; what I do to cope with myself presents no harm whatsoever to you.

And this is turning into a major derail now, except for the fact that this has still removed a key condition for the FANDOM fork being allowed to use the All The Tropes trademark. I will point this out where everyone can see it: it is not the fault of the fork that the license is now in jeopardy of being pulled. Nor is it technically the fault of FANDOM, even with the "no second chances" drop of the banhammer.

Regarding the plagiarists, you didn't have to explain it to try to get them to understand there's no good excuses for their behavior and that the rules are the rules. Just swing the banhammer as needed, make it clear plagiarism is plagiarism regardless of how they try to present it, and leave it at that.

And since I'm done expressing my opinion on this matter as effectively a non-contributing outsider, I'm adding a name to my Ignore list here.

[GethN7]

I had no idea I would wind up kicked out for it (had I been told to never post anything like it again, I would have complied), but apparently, obedience was not enough, I was to be a mindless drone, even obedience with noted reservations but still being compliant was not tolerated. I was clearly kicked out for having politically incorrect opinions (which I said would not affect my duties to enforce FANDOM will, but said profession of loyalty meant nothing apparently), and frankly, while I was not planning to suicide my FANDOM account, I already had indications they were going to purge people based on ideology prior and was sure sooner or later I might be hit by said purge. And if the price of sticking around was to put up with that, so be it, I'm out, wouldn't want back even if they reconsidered.

Bringing up your views as "noted reservations" wasn't being obedient in this case. They don't stop you from having the views and ideology, they just make it clear they don't want the views and ideology expressed on their site. If they wanted you to stop having the views and be a "mindless drone", they'd be attacking you anywhere you express it, rather than just showing you the door.

I believe you're not the first one to be banned for such expression, but I'm sure they've had enough of trying to give chances and having the chances wasted, and they're through wasting the time presenting the chances to begin with.

Also, your "politically incorrect opinion," as you put it, is, for me, someone saying that I need to be marched into a reparative therapy clinic and not be let out until I commit suicide attempting to bend that far. That is pretty much unacceptable; what I do to cope with myself presents no harm whatsoever to you.

And this is turning into a major derail now, except for the fact that this has still removed a key condition for the FANDOM fork being allowed to use the All The Tropes trademark. I will point this out where everyone can see it: it is not the fault of the fork that the license is now in jeopardy of being pulled. Nor is it technically the fault of FANDOM, even with the "no second chances" drop of the banhammer.

Regarding the plagiarists, you didn't have to explain it to try to get them to understand there's no good excuses for their behavior and that the rules are the rules. Just swing the banhammer as needed, make it clear plagiarism is plagiarism regardless of how they try to present it, and leave it at that.

And since I'm done expressing my opinion on this matter as effectively a non-contributing outsider, I'm adding a name to my Ignore list here.

Your opinion is noted. I have no hatred of the transgendered as human beings. I just refuse to deny what my eyes see and brain thinks and consider their current day sacred cow status a deranged cult that demands my absolute compliance or I will be silenced, and I will not lie to anyone else about it either, and I'd rather face death than do so.

If I'm not progressive enough for you, so be it, and I do not hate you nor anyone else for what you are, but I won't lie about my opinion, and FANDOM was demanding I rewrite history to lie about actors and celebrities, which I did under protest, but I did loyally, I just refused to be silent about my objections, and I own the consequences. If anything, I was a thankless janitor dealing with an ever-increasing amount of plagiarists, put under increasing pressure by the alphabet mafia to kowtow to things I did not believe, and I refused to stay silent about it.

If you want to ignore me, fine, but if you want to challenge my views (and I will hear you out), and I will give your arguments a fair hearing, here they are in black and white.

https://gethn7.blogspot.com/2021/06/just...stand.html

If anyone else wants to throw me off the other branch of ATT for where I stand, then do it, I have to sleep at night, and I won't lie or stay silent about something I believe to be based on illogic and delusion.

[robkelk]

My body, my rules, my choice for my self-identification. If I want to call myself Throatwobbler Mangrove, that's my choice and you don't get to call me Raymond Luxury-Yacht any more, whether I've had an operation to change my nose or not. And my choice of reference there isn't (just) something completely different; it's to show that this has been an issue longer than some of this thread's participants have been alive.

Lynn's body, Lynn's rules, Lynn's choice for Lynn's self-identification. No joke.

Geth's body, Geth's rules, Geth's choice for Geth's self-identification. No joke.

And so on.

It's just polite to call a person by that person's current name, even if that person used to have a different name or appearance.

---

Getting back to All The Tropes...

I think Cwf1997 has had their habit of not checking what tropes mean before posting so-called examples of them. One official warning posted - next occurrence gets a tempban for "Refusing to learn from honest mistakes, or repeatedly making the same honest mistake after it's been pointed out"

[GethN7]

My body, my rules, my choice for my self-identification. If I want to call myself Throatwobbler Mangrove, that's my choice and you don't get to call me Raymond Luxury-Yacht any more, whether I've had an operation to change my nose or not. And my choice of reference there isn't (just) something completely different; it's to show that this has been an issue longer than some of this thread's participants have been alive.

Lynn's body, Lynn's rules, Lynn's choice for Lynn's self-identification. No joke.

Geth's body, Geth's rules, Geth's choice for Geth's self-identification. No joke.

And so on.

It's just polite to call a person by that person's current name, even if that person used to have a different name or appearance.

---

Getting back to All The Tropes...

I think Cwf1997 has had their habit of not checking what tropes mean before posting so-called examples of them. One official warning posted - next occurrence gets a tempban for "Refusing to learn from honest mistakes, or repeatedly making the same honest mistake after it's been pointed out"

On ATT business, in light of recent events, I have stripped myself of all but the bureaucrat flag by my own choice and will be taking an indefinite sabbatical, Whether I come back to resume my duties anytime soon is up in the air, but I believe recent events mean I need to step away for a while for the good of the community and my own health and sanity.

I wish all remaining staff the best in managing day to day affairs.

If anyone wishes to make my leaving permanent at this point, I will not oppose it. That is the choice of the community, please follow your conscience as I choose to follow mine.

[Bob Schroeck]

Something else we may need to ask them to change... I just stumbled across one of their pages which lists our admins instead of theirs. This needs to be rectified, anywhere something like this appears. And those of us without accounts there will probably want their user pages deleted.

[robkelk]

Something else we may need to ask them to change... I just stumbled across one of their pages which lists our admins instead of theirs.  This needs to be rectified, anywhere something like this appears.  And those of us without accounts there will probably want their user pages deleted.

Agreed. (I don't have a Wikia account, either.)

[GethN7]

Something else we may need to ask them to change... I just stumbled across one of their pages which lists our admins instead of theirs.  This needs to be rectified, anywhere something like this appears.  And those of us without accounts there will probably want their user pages deleted.

I'll do the needful. I might have stepped down, but I'm not unwilling to assist with this. Updated SelfCloak on this via Discord.

Let me know if anything else needs be done.

[Bob Schroeck]

Will do.

Meanwhile, Cwf1997 has earned his (expected) two-week tempban. In a set of changes to Batman: Arkham Knight he included an example of Alice Allusion that had no one named "Alice" in it, under the obvious ignorant assumption that it was just for anyone named after a character in the Alice books.

I have also taken it upon myself to give him a Final Warning under section 2.1 point six of How We Do Bans Around Here; if when he comes back from his vacation he keeps doing this, he's going to immediately be deprived of any chance of ever doing it again.

[robkelk]

Remember those pages for PreCure fics that never materialized? Remember that I put tags on them saying:

Unless a link to an actual copy of the fic (not a set of notes, but an actual story that somebody can read) is provided before July 1, 2021, this page will be deleted as "false information".

Well, it's now July 1, and none of the pages had links added to them.

Pushing the "delete" button six times in a row, cleaning out two-thirds of the "Pages for speedy deletion" queue, was fun...

[Bob Schroeck]

<thumbs up>

[GethN7]

I'm still on sabbatical, but I decided to do some research for the future in case further MediaWiki upgrades could be an issue.

Currently, that is not an issue, but it may become so, due to our reliance on this for our templates:

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Variables

At present, all of the essential functions we require are still working, but many things the extension now depreciates may become totally dropped in future versions of MediaWiki and all of our current Lua based templates will be utterly nonfunctional, not to mention the VisualEditor may refuse to work at all as well with it.

I have sent Brent some of the error messages about deprecated functions and potential fixes for the long-term via Discord. I also want to say I know I have expressed some controversial views of late, and whenever I return I promise I will not air them again, nor will I let them affect my ability to work alongside other ATT members calmly and dispassionately. I also want to say I hold no hate in my heart for any particular person, and no matter how wrong I may feel on personal grounds about someone's politics, lifestyle, or other choices, I will never abandon my love for my fellow man as human beings, and if I have given any impression otherwise, you have my most abject apologies.

Regardless, I shall not be returning to contribute/administrate anytime soon, just in case it causes tensions to flare up that should not be stirred.

Also, the latest dump of the Miraheze ATT database has some serious corruption, a new one should be ordered ASAP for data preservation purposes on Archive.org (likely related to those ghost pages I had to eliminate that were causing issues several months ago, the last dump still has remnants of that which caused the database corruption when dumped to XML format, a new dump should be free of that)

This all said, I'll be returning to my sabbatical, but if there are further technical questions or concerns, I remain at the service of the community and will respond ASAP if required.

P.S. - Tropedia (the former ATT branch on FANDOM) has fully complied with removing any branding related to ATT that should be of any major concern. There may be remnants of the logos and other image data of the ATT trademarks in personal web caches on the computers of those who visited it recently (a simple purge will fix this), but that's all, it should be updated on most search engines to have that removed from FANDOM now. If there are further branding issues that need dealt with, let me know and I will forward said removal requests, SelfCloak has been very compliant and willing to oblige ATT on this matter.

[robkelk]

What does Lua give us that standard MediaWiki doesn't, other than "It's newer so a certain variety of programmer is drawn to it like a moth to a flame"?

Because it looks like we just might be going to be burned by it...

[Bob Schroeck]

Thanks for all your effort, Geth.

[GethN7]

What does Lua give us that standard MediaWiki doesn't, other than "It's newer so a certain variety of programmer is drawn to it like a moth to a flame"?

Because it looks like we just might be going to be burned by it...

Lua is not the issue, the Variables extension, by itself, is. Lua allows us to save backend processing time by making the same call for a function a template needs instead of having to re-run it every time for a different page as would be the default, which makes overall page loads faster.

Lua in fact could make Variables work long term if we use this with it

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:VariablesLua

Variables are valuable regardless because it allows our current templates to fish out only certain information for our templates on an as-needed basis, we just need to make sure it remains future-proofed.

I shall be looking into other potential solutions for this issue in the meantime and will leave updates with Brent, since he's the one who switched us over to using Lua (which is actually very useful for our needs and allows for far more customization than we'd have by default) based templates for works, tropes, and creator pages.

And thank you, Bob, for your vote of confidence.

[robkelk]

Ah. I get it now.

Thanks, Geth.

[GethN7]

Just want to make clear for all non-technical matters requiring a vote, all other admins can consider me voting yes by default until I resume regular admin duties, and if key technical work needs my expertise, sabbatical or no, flag me down to work on it and I will do so ASAP.

I've been taking the time off from regular admin work to examine certain technical issues anyway that could cause us long-term hassles and looking into what we can do to further increase our productivity and efficiency as compared to our alternative troping community sites, so in that regard if any tech work needs done and it's something I worked on prior (like the IRC change over business), then I'll work on that ASAP.

Edit: Recently, I've been looking at the viability of UploadWizard, since we long discussed making it so all images had to be uploaded without exception with licensing. Did find a fork that promises to be easier to use and configure minus the former's issues, but it's experimental, and I was going to set up a localhost wiki and test its viability before we do anything:

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:MediaUploader

[robkelk]

... but it's experimental, ...

I come from an environment where we do not run beta software. Ever. People count on our systems to be available.

So I'm biased against this just from this one phrase...

[Bob Schroeck]

Well, the developers themselves say not to use it yet... but if it shows promise we should at least give the 1.1 release a try. (Old PC wisdom -- never trust an X.0 release.)

[GethN7]

Well, the developers themselves say not to use it yet...  but if it shows promise we should at least give the 1.1 release a try.  (Old PC wisdom -- never trust an X.0 release.)

My plan exactly. If it shows promise, I was going to see if I could assist in helping it to maturity and we could adopt it when it hits at least beta stability, which at least half of our extensions are.

In the meantime, I will be looking into other options.

[robkelk]

Sounds good to me.

[robkelk]

Re this Forum thread on ATT

The gist is that the person registering it needs to represent it in an official capacity, e.g. someone with access to the domain registration and such.

I, for one, would be willing to offer Umbire the Phantom a seat on the moderation team, and not just for setting up the new IRC channel. Thoughts?

[Bob Schroeck]

Haven't we already offered Umbire a promotion once already, only for him to turn it down? Or was that someone else?

[GethN7]

Haven't we already offered Umbire a promotion once already, only for him to turn it down?  Or was that someone else?

I honestly can't remember, but for the purposes of getting this issue fixed, if they need admin rights to represent us and it will work on a temporary basis until the issue is resolved (should they not wish permanent powers), that would be a good compromise solution. If not, I'll do the needful, I just need instructions on how to make the proper contacts to Libera.

Update: Looked some more into the Variables issue, and while I still plan to look into alternatives, I did some technical digging and discovered the usage we employ may not be compromised eventually in the immediate short-term, seems the parties trying to depreciate its functions realized Semantic MediaWiki relies on the very same coding (and that project is used very actively by many people) they intended to depreciate, so its depreciation is still something we might want to look into future patching just to be safe, but may not be as dire an issue at the immediate present.

[robkelk]

I don't recall either way, either.

I've just made the offer - it's up to Umbrie whether to accept or not.

[robkelk]

Ah, youth... A relatively-new user with eighteen edits total, two of which were replies to mod questions, asked not-quite-demanded confirmed user status.

I'm on vacation this week., Bob's on vacation this week. Geth's on sabbatical.

Who wants to reply?