All The Tropes Wiki Project, Part XXIV

[Bob Schroeck]

Previous thread.

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I spent some time yesterday clearing a few more of Iloveicecream's pending edits from the mod queue, and I am growing increasingly less enchanted with him. Of the pages I went through, all of them lacked proper link markup on work names, there were at least four where he dropped new examples randomly into the middle of their sections, and one (which I rejected) which completely lacked any indication what work it was for. He also still has MSWord punctuation issues. There were also a few problems we can't actually lay at his feet which were clearly caused by the brain-dead Visual Editor. (Can we kill that thing? Seriously.)

And I'm growing increasingly suspicious of how much better written his contributions are in direct contrast to how he writes messages in the various discussion threads he's participated in. I haven't caught any more TVT plagiarism (yet) in his backlogged contributions, but the difference in usage and grammar is worrisome.

Anyway, how many times now have we directed him to the Style Guide and other help pages -- pages he either is not reading or whose content he's deliberately ignoring, at that? Even if he doesn't plagiarize again, his steadfast refusal to actually do fairly minor things like mark up links is very definitely in "refusing to learn from mistakes" territory.

Thoughts, opinions?

[robkelk]

Agreed - I've seen the same thing in my slow whittling away at that backlog, and mentioned as much when I extended Iloveicecream's tempban for violation of wiki policy.

On one hand, the Sunk Cost Fallacy doesn't just apply to money; it also applies to our time. Iloveicecream made it obvious by actions that (s)he's either incapable or uninterested in learning either copyright law or the rules of the wiki. EDIT: Or, if Iloveicecream has learned the law and the rules, they're being "honoured in the breach"... and that makes this particular troper a troll.

On the other hand, the tempban might possibly show Iloveicecream that (s)he has a problem.

If this particular editor hasn't changed after the current tempban expires, then by all means invoke "refusing to learn from mistakes" and give a permaban. If (s)he has changed, though, then we shouldn't permaban... at least, not for this particular reason.

[Bob Schroeck]

Oh, another thing that annoys me about far too many of Iloveicecream's edits -- how they frequently strip out the spaces after bullets in ''everything'' after the relatively minor change that's the actual edit. I've fixed entirely too many cases of that. The next time I see an edit with that in it, I'm rejecting it for excessive unnecessary changes that reduce readability of the source and contribute nothing new to the page.

[Bob Schroeck]

And good morning to all. Is anyone else seeing odd and idiosyncratic 502 and 503 errors today? For instance, I can't reach "The Office (2005 TV series)" at all, but I have no problems reaching other pages, although the speed with which the wiki responds ranges unpredictably between "sprightly" and "painfully slow".

[robkelk]

502s have been popping up on the freebie wiki on occasion today.

I assume this has something to do with the "Upcoming changes and performance issues" that Miraheze notified all wikis about last weekend.

Server performance issues are generally random and are not always tied to server busyness or idleness

[Bob Schroeck]

Ah. I missed that.

[Umbire]

And good morning to all.  Is anyone else seeing odd and idiosyncratic 502 and 503 errors today?  For instance, I can't reach "The Office (2005 TV series)" at all, but I have no problems reaching other pages, although the speed with which the wiki responds ranges unpredictably between "sprightly" and "painfully slow".

Yeah, most recent edit I made was on the sluggish side to confirm.

[GethN7]

No one seems opposed to the change in talk page format or anything else in the staff proposal, so I'll file a Phabricator request for Miraheze to handle the backend hassle soon so they can make sure we have minimal disruptions (if we just enable CommentStreams without doing it, things will break and it will be a pain to fix).

[robkelk]

Considering that Miraheze is in the middle of a server move, we might have to wait for that request to be actioned.

[GethN7]

Considering that Miraheze is in the middle of a server move, we might have to wait for that request to be actioned.

My thoughts exactly. In the meantime, after asking they do so when it is convenient, was going to leave the notice up while we wait and some time after the changeover to make sure this does not come off a surprise when they do help us switch.

Edit: I'm going to belay making the request until they do most of the server backend changes they mentioned, no sense compounding possible issues until they suss that out.

[Bob Schroeck]

Just after 10:00 AM EST, everything in the wiki's main namespace started throwing internal errors reading "Fatal exception of type "Scribunto_LuaError" ". Nobody's been poking around under the hood, have they?

I'll be submitting a Phabricator ticket shortly.

[robkelk]

Just after 11:00 AM EST, I'm not having any problems...

[Bob Schroeck]

Yeah, RhinosF1 fixed it almost as soon as I submitted the ticket. Saith he, "Apologies, I seem to have got some maths wrong."

[robkelk]

There's a new Miraheze-wide sitenotice up:

We will be migrating to newer and faster servers. Migration will begin at 22:45 UTC on 14 January, 2021 and all wikis will be set to read-only for about 30 minutes. Please save your edits 5-10 minutes before! Images uploads will also be disabled at 19:45 UTC. For more information, click here.

Edit: I've added the tl;dr of the "click here" post to our sitenotice. Since it's important, I highlighted it in yellow (which we usually don't do).

[robkelk]

I need an opinion before I ask for a Checkuser.

Is "Thistroperz" a sock of "Iloveicecream"?

Based on the idiosyncrasies of the edits sitting in the Moderation queue (no space between bullet point and example text, no link to the work page on the work name, etc.), I'm inclined to think "yes"... but I want a second opinion.

EDIT: After reading more edits by "Thistroperz" in the moderation queue, I don't need that second opinion any more. I'm asking for a Checkuser now.

RE-EDIT: And done

Assuming the two accounts are the same person... If he'd just waited three days, the tempban would have ended and he could have gone back to editing. (Poorly, but he could have done it.) Instead, he's earned himself a permanent vacation from the wiki.

RE-RE-EDIT: And the Stewards are already on it. (The things us nerds do on a Saturday evening... during the pandemic, so maybe it isn't nerdy to be on the Internet on a Saturday evening.) Also, the Moderation queue is down to just the edits by these two accounts.

[Bob Schroeck]

Looks like the answer is "yes" -- Dmehus has globally locked Thistroperz and issued a farm-level warning to Iloveicecream on Meta.

[robkelk]

And, since I was the one who requested the Checkuser, I've implemented the permanent block of Iloveicecream on ATT.

So... reject the edits pending moderation from both accounts out-of-hand? Or do we spend time on reviewing edits that from previous experience are almost assured of needing work to bring them up to minimum wiki standards and will need to be checked for copyright infringement?

[LynnInDenver]

If it were me? Earning a permanent ban would include flushing the moderation queue of their edits out of hand. If you've earned a permanent ban for many of the reasons stated that would earn such, odds are good the remaining edits aren't really worth the electrons they're recorded with.

[Bob Schroeck]

What Lynn said. Nuke'em.

[robkelk]

And he's replied. Thrice.

I didn’t know I had been banned for two more weeks

I've run out of patience with this person. Somebody else can decide what to do, keeping in mind that as yet he has not apologized for his copyright infringement.

[Bob Schroeck]

I repeat, nuke. He's trying to excuse his actions by claiming that he's too stupid and ignorant to know better or learn from experience. We don't need someone who can't be bothered to learn how we do things and "accidentally" breaks the law with what is becoming boring regularity.

[robkelk]

Sending them to the bit-bucket... now.

EDIT: And for the first time since before Christmas, the Moderation queue is now empty.

[GethN7]

If it were me? Earning a permanent ban would include flushing the moderation queue of their edits out of hand. If you've earned a permanent ban for many of the reasons stated that would earn such, odds are good the remaining edits aren't really worth the electrons they're recorded with.

I like this idea so much I'd be in favor of making it official policy if need be.

[Bob Schroeck]

If it were me? Earning a permanent ban would include flushing the moderation queue of their edits out of hand. If you've earned a permanent ban for many of the reasons stated that would earn such, odds are good the remaining edits aren't really worth the electrons they're recorded with.

I like this idea so much I'd be in favor of making it official policy if need be.

Yes, this.

[Bob Schroeck]

And for the first time since before Christmas, the Moderation queue is now empty.

<waves arms, does Kermit cheer>