All The Tropes Wiki Project, Part XXV

[robkelk]

That didn't take long...

WDStudios came back, and immediately repeated the abusive behaviour that warranted a tempban in the first place. One-month tempban.

I say we show him the door permanently next time. If WDStudios cannot resist the urge to be a huge jerk, then he can unleash that urge elsewhere.

Agreed. We don't need somebody whose behaviour is indistinguishable from trolling. Three strikes and he's out.

[robkelk]

I'm going to make a proposal. Based on Happybirthday's record (and their previous account), I believe they are more trouble than they are worth, on the basis of known evidence.

I propose every last edit they have made be rejected and they be given one last chance to not test our patience. They fail the test, they are permabanned and all future socks (if any) should get the same treatment). They come off as either incurably hard headed or an attempt at a subtle long-term troll given their feigned ignorance, blatant defiance of our style rules, and socking, and we'd be better off without them IMO.

Any objections to this?

Well, I promised a tempban if they did it again... and they did it again in their edit to "Properly Paranoid", so I have to follow through.

And we already have a policy of rejecting anything still in the Moderation queue if somebody's tempbanned.

I agree that this user is more trouble than they're worth. I'd support a permanent ban after the current tempban ends.

I concur, both on the tempban+last chance and subsequent permaban.

Opinions, please: Judging by the pending edits in the moderation queue, is "ObstinateOwlbear0" the new userID for "Happybirthday"?

If yes, then we have him on ban evasion as well as repeatedly making the same errors.

[Bob Schroeck]

That didn't take long...

WDStudios came back, and immediately repeated the abusive behaviour that warranted a tempban in the first place. One-month tempban.

I say we show him the door permanently next time. If WDStudios cannot resist the urge to be a huge jerk, then he can unleash that urge elsewhere.

Agreed. We don't need somebody whose behaviour is indistinguishable from trolling. Three strikes and he's out.

Likewise. The guy's been an asshole since he first showed up, and has spent more time arguing on Talk:Artifact Title than doing anything else on the wiki. He's not going to stop, and when he fails to stop, nuke him and the horse he rode in on.

[Bob Schroeck]

I'm going to make a proposal. Based on Happybirthday's record (and their previous account), I believe they are more trouble than they are worth, on the basis of known evidence.

I propose every last edit they have made be rejected and they be given one last chance to not test our patience. They fail the test, they are permabanned and all future socks (if any) should get the same treatment). They come off as either incurably hard headed or an attempt at a subtle long-term troll given their feigned ignorance, blatant defiance of our style rules, and socking, and we'd be better off without them IMO.

Any objections to this?

Well, I promised a tempban if they did it again... and they did it again in their edit to "Properly Paranoid", so I have to follow through.

And we already have a policy of rejecting anything still in the Moderation queue if somebody's tempbanned.

I agree that this user is more trouble than they're worth. I'd support a permanent ban after the current tempban ends.

I concur, both on the tempban+last chance and subsequent permaban.

Opinions, please: Judging by the pending edits in the moderation queue, is "ObstinateOwlbear0" the new userID for "Happybirthday"?

If yes, then we have him on ban evasion as well as repeatedly making the same errors.

It's hard to tell with just three samples, but I'll admit it does look like him.

[GethN7]

I'm going to make a proposal. Based on Happybirthday's record (and their previous account), I believe they are more trouble than they are worth, on the basis of known evidence.

I propose every last edit they have made be rejected and they be given one last chance to not test our patience. They fail the test, they are permabanned and all future socks (if any) should get the same treatment). They come off as either incurably hard headed or an attempt at a subtle long-term troll given their feigned ignorance, blatant defiance of our style rules, and socking, and we'd be better off without them IMO.

Any objections to this?

Well, I promised a tempban if they did it again... and they did it again in their edit to "Properly Paranoid", so I have to follow through.

And we already have a policy of rejecting anything still in the Moderation queue if somebody's tempbanned.

I agree that this user is more trouble than they're worth. I'd support a permanent ban after the current tempban ends.

I concur, both on the tempban+last chance and subsequent permaban.

Opinions, please: Judging by the pending edits in the moderation queue, is "ObstinateOwlbear0" the new userID for "Happybirthday"?

If yes, then we have him on ban evasion as well as repeatedly making the same errors.

It's hard to tell with just three samples, but I'll admit it does look like him.

It's our problem child. The spacing stuff is too on the nose.

[Bob Schroeck]

Guys, please check out the edits dropped by Bulmabriefs144 into the mod queue. I'm inclined to nuke all of them -- especially the page she created for her own personal religion -- but I'd like a second opinion on whether anything in the change to "Start My Own" is salvageable.

[robkelk]

The key edit is the creation of a new page... without the template text. We've rejected new-page submissions for that reason in the past.

The edits that depend on that page existing will produce redlinks if that page is rejected. But the redlinks can be undone.

As for the edits to Start My Own... well, two of the three lines reference books on Amazon, so we aren't looking at an "unpublished Troper Works" situation here. And that's all we've cared about in the past.

[robkelk]

I'm going to make a proposal. Based on Happybirthday's record (and their previous account), I believe they are more trouble than they are worth, on the basis of known evidence.

I propose every last edit they have made be rejected and they be given one last chance to not test our patience. They fail the test, they are permabanned and all future socks (if any) should get the same treatment). They come off as either incurably hard headed or an attempt at a subtle long-term troll given their feigned ignorance, blatant defiance of our style rules, and socking, and we'd be better off without them IMO.

Any objections to this?

Well, I promised a tempban if they did it again... and they did it again in their edit to "Properly Paranoid", so I have to follow through.

And we already have a policy of rejecting anything still in the Moderation queue if somebody's tempbanned.

I agree that this user is more trouble than they're worth. I'd support a permanent ban after the current tempban ends.

I concur, both on the tempban+last chance and subsequent permaban.

Opinions, please: Judging by the pending edits in the moderation queue, is "ObstinateOwlbear0" the new userID for "Happybirthday"?

If yes, then we have him on ban evasion as well as repeatedly making the same errors.

It's hard to tell with just three samples, but I'll admit it does look like him.

It's our problem child. The spacing stuff is too on the nose.

Thanks for blocking the account, Geth. I just perma-blocked the other two accounts.

Given this person's past behaviour, I'm assuming that it'll only be a matter of time until he creates another account. I propose that when he does, we just quietly mark the account as a spammer in Moderation and never even acknowledge the edits.

[Bob Schroeck]

Given this person's past behaviour, I'm assuming that it'll only be a matter of time until he creates another account. I propose that when he does, we just quietly mark the account as a spammer in Moderation and never even acknowledge the edits.

Sounds good to me.

[GethN7]

Given this person's past behaviour, I'm assuming that it'll only be a matter of time until he creates another account. I propose that when he does, we just quietly mark the account as a spammer in Moderation and never even acknowledge the edits.

Sounds good to me.

Same.

[Bob Schroeck]

Okay, I've cleared out everything in the Mod queue except for a long-pending edit to the 8Chan article. Something about it rubs me wrong -- some of the new material feels like very carefully phrased trashtalking, but I'm not familiar enough with the site and its history to be certain. Could the other mods please take a look at it and let me know what they thnik?

Thanks.

[Bob Schroeck]

Well, Miraheze is crapping out right now. Recent Changes is consistently "502 Bad Gateway" after churning for a couple minutes at a shot, and things like the pop-up displays of messages and alerts takes nigh unto forever to appear. Just showing a page doesn't seem to take too long, but god forbid you want to do anything more complicated, you slavedriver.

[Bob Schroeck]

Gah. Got sloppy when going through the moderation queue last night. I let a case of copyright infringement through. What really bugs me is that it had a fully-qualified link to TVT's Steampunk page in place of a link to ours. How the hell did I miss that? Argh.

[GethN7]

Gah.  Got sloppy when going through the moderation queue last night.  I let a case of copyright infringement through.  What really bugs  me is that it had a fully-qualified link to TVT's Steampunk page in place of a link to ours.  How the hell did I miss that?  Argh.

Two things.

1. We're not perfect, mistakes happen. You admitted and fixed yours, you did good.

2. The 8chan edits look legit and match up with what I know of their history.

[robkelk]

Given this person's past behaviour, I'm assuming that it'll only be a matter of time until he creates another account. I propose that when he does, we just quietly mark the account as a spammer in Moderation and never even acknowledge the edits.

Sounds good to me.

Same.

So, is "Charlie Barnes" this person's new account?

[robkelk]

Just noticed this option at the very end of "Manage this wiki's additional settings | Anti Spam":

Moderation Enable Edit Change ($wgModerationEnableEditChange)
If enabled, moderators are allowed to edit pending changes before approving. DANGEROUS: moderator can accidentally delete the text of pending change. Enable this only when you use Moderation for pre-publish review.

We certainly do use Moderation for pre-publish review.

Should we enable this?

I note that it doesn't indicate whether the edit summary will or won't be changed to indicate that a mod edited the change.

[Bob Schroeck]

Yes, enable it. It's one way to deal with the deleted whitespace problem. Plus there have been any number of edits I've approved but then immediately had to edit to fix spelling or markup errors. Fixing them at approval would save me time and effort.

[GethN7]

Fair enough, sounds like a good thing to enable.

Also, looks more like the entries are being fleshed out massively, not socking, but Charlies Barnes needs their work compared to TVT to make sure it's not copy-paste.

[Bob Schroeck]

Another heads-up for everyone: I just had to drop a fairly minor "you need to do this" note on the talk page for SmileyB, who gave us all that involved drama back in March 2021 over picking image licenses. This isn't a repeat of that, just a note that a fair use image needs to actually be used, but I wanted to give everyone fair warning in case he erupts again.

[Bob Schroeck]

Miraheze appears to have gone down about twenty to thirty minutes ago. All The Tropes, There's Nothing Better... Downforeveryoneorjustme.com reports even meta is unreachable.

[robkelk]

Two hours later and Miraheze is back.

[Bob Schroeck]

Also, looks more like the entries are being fleshed out massively, not socking, but Charlies Barnes needs their work compared to TVT to make sure it's not copy-paste.

I just took a look at the first of his edits, to Lost Girls (comics), and it isn't copied from TVT -- for one thing, Lost Girls got nuked during the content purge in 2012 and as far as I can tell never came back. If it's HappyBirthday, he's upping his game at least where quality of content is concerned.

EDIT: The next one, though -- to The Wild Bunch -- is definitely plagiarized. The edit to Trading Places/Trivia looks like he just pasted in a copy TVT's page right over our page with no regard to its original content. I'm going to keep checking, but now I'm wondering where he got the content for Lost Girls -- it's unlikely he plagiarized dozens of kilobytes on other pages and put in the effort to create original material for just one.

EDIT 2: Okay. I went through everything. Lots and lots of plagiarism, with occasional (small) original bits to break up the monotony. I'm going to reject everything (I've already approved the Lost Girls edit) and mark this guy as a spammer on the assumption that even if he isn't HappyBirthday he's unlikely to stop plagiarizing. (We can always unspammerize him if everyone else disagrees.) I'm not even going to bother with a note on his user page. And when I'm done here I'm going to see if I can't google search a possible source for the Lost Girls material -- based on everything else I can't imagine it not being plagiarized from somewhere, but damned if I can guess where.

EDIT 3: And found it. Some of it was text copied from Tropedia, which would be okay, but the rest was material painstakingly assembled from examples left on TVT trope pages after the content purge. Undid the approval.

[robkelk]

Agreed on the block and not leaving a note. If this is Happybirthday, maybe he'll keep using the account if we don't tell him about it being re-routed to dev/null.

[robkelk]

Opinions, please: User "MuhammadTheEditor2022" was created automatically in March (which means the account came from a different Miraheze wiki) but not used until yesterday. The one edit in the mod queue has all the hallmarks of being yet another Happybirthday sockpuppet. Block? Route to dev/null? Ask Miraheze for a Checkuser so we can permaban the IP range?

[Bob Schroeck]

IIRC, the last time we tried a CheckUser, Happybirthday had basically fallen off the data cliff and they couldn't do a checkuser against it. Plus, don't they need at least a couple edits allowed into the wiki to work with?

Regarding whether this looks like another sock, I'll take a look shortly and offer my opinion.