All The Tropes Wiki Project, Part XXVII

[GethN7]

Netflix is being indicted for the movie "Cuties" by the State of Texas, citing it was produced to appeal to the prurient interest concerning minors.

Just to follow up on this, I just stumbled across the following:

Judge dismisses Tyler County lawsuit against Netflix over ‘Cuties’ film

This happened a year ago.

There isn't much in the article -- by the time it came out the whole Cuties kerfluffle had turned into a nothingburger -- but basically the District Attorney petitioned the judge to dismiss the case on the grounds that (if I'm reading this correctly) the law that Netflix was indicted under was inapplicable.

“While the State believes the charged portion of Texas Penal Code 43.262 is constitutional, the facts of this case are better suited for other statutes”

 
And basically that's it.  As far as I can determine now that I'm actively looking, there was no further action against Netflix in the last year.  No child pornography, no great triumph over the librul mainstreem meedya by a crusading republican.  Just the DA, who would have prosecuted Netflix, telling the judge they had nothing in the way of a case.

EDIT:  Oh, wait, there is a little more.  Six months after the case was dismissed, a Federal judge blocked all further prosecution of Netflix in Texas because the charges were bogus -- the allegedly "underage" actress who was the basis for at least some of the child porn charges was over eighteen:

Section 43.25 [under which Netflix is prosecuted] is a child pornography statute, but the Court is unconvinced that Cuties contains child pornography. In all of Cuties, there are no sex scenes and there is only one scene that contains nudity. In that one scene, the Cuties are watching a video on one of their phones when a dancer in the video flashes her breast for a fraction of a second. But that dancer ("Jane Doe") was not a minor. Therefore, her nudity cannot constitute child pornography.

Further, evidence had been presented to him that the legal team behind the original indictment and an attempt at a second try at prosecuting Netflix knew this well before at least the second try but still claimed the actress was underage in the new indictment.

I've noted this before, but it seems the would-be censors are just as willing to lie about what they want to censor as they are to trust that their evidence is sufficient on its own.

Okay, seems I was wrong, and I'll eat crow on this.

[Bob Schroeck]

Thank you for being gracious about this, Geth.

Since I posted that, I found out that the DA involved with the second attempt at an indictment (the same one who asked for the first one to be dismissed, as it turns out) tried to file an appeal of the injunction in early December so he can go ahead with an attempt at prosecution anyway. I hesitate to say that it's gone nowhere, because every time I think I've found the most recent news coverage on this I find something newer.

[Bob Schroeck]

Completely different topic: a couple-three years back we were talking about extensions which made it mandatory to include a license selection on a file upload, but at the time there was nothing functional/trustworthy/compatible. Has anything changed since then?

[GethN7]

Completely different topic:  a couple-three years back we were talking about extensions which made it mandatory to include a license selection on a file upload, but at the time there was nothing functional/trustworthy/compatible.  Has anything changed since then?

Sadly, very few, here is what is available:

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

Perfect for our needs, but ancient and unmaintained, unlikely to work with recent MW.


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

Very good and usable for our needs, but it requires some setup and is English-specific, being a direct port of the Wikimedia-based version. Highly recommended if we get it working, it's still very actively used and unlikely ever to break down if we get it, Wikimedia Commons leans on this as their foundation 24/7. 

Miraheze can do most of the specific tech work for any backend tweaks we cannot do, but I recommend religiously referring to the documentation for any tweaks. If we do not have the option to require a license as a tweak to enable on our end (this should be a default feature), I would suggest we request Miraheze enforce that for us on the backend.

Note: We can keep the old Upload around until we are sure we have it tweaked adequately for our needs, then retire the old upload form or merely depreciate it, as our needs may be.

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


A third party, "brandless" fork of UploadWizard, but information is scanty and it's not currently supported by Miraheze

[Bob Schroeck]

It sounds like UploadWizard might be worth asking for... but when you say "some setup", how much are we really talking?

On another topic, I've been watching GalaxySagi777 for a while now. He/she has been contributing since January, has only been pinged once for a copyright issue, and generally has been making good contributions and seems amenable to taking advice from the mods. What do folks think about promoting them to autopatrolled?

[Bob Schroeck]

On yet another topic, in between other tasks I brought the mod queue down from nearly fifty entries dating back almost a month to twenty entries dating back just under a week. I know Rob deals with the queue, but someone else really has to step up when both of us are burnt out on it.

Edit: If no one else wants to bother, I move we kill Moderation and just deal with the spam and the copyright violations as they appear in the main namespace.

[GethN7]

It sounds like UploadWizard might be worth asking for... but when you say "some setup", how much are we really talking?

On another topic, I've been watching GalaxySagi777 for a while now.  He/she has been contributing since January, has only been pinged once for a copyright issue, and generally has been making good contributions and seems amenable to taking advice from the mods.  What do folks think about promoting them to autopatrolled?

Some setup means a few settings will need to be tweaked in the control panel provided by Miraheze, generally. Actual backend stuff should not be required unless we run into issues. All we really need to do is make sure the settings we want are ticked appropriately, it uses the licenses templates we have (should not be an issue, it should forward that from the stock upload form, being an elaborated version of it), and we can keep the old form around till we sure Upload Wizard works fine.

So moderate hassle at most, but it should run itself once we are satisfied with our configuration settings.

As to the other, sure, go 4 it.

As for offing Moderation, I unfortunately have not be able to check it as frequently as I would like, I have a lot of work to do, so I'll concur with any decision on that without objection.

[robkelk]

I've been too busy lately to look at either GalaxySagi777's contributions or the Moderation queue. I'll abstain on both counts.

[robkelk]

Where does this go? It isn't Non-Indicative Name (which is the page that turns up when I search for that Simpsons line '"Inflammable" means "flammable"?! What a country!'), nor is it something for The Big List of Booboos and Blunders.

* "Cleave" can mean "to hold firmly or loyally" or "to cut away or separate into parts".

[GethN7]

Bob, if you want to try out UploadWizard and mess around with it without being public, we can restrict it's use to admins only while we tweak it and see how it's features would adapt to our needs, then we can make it usable by all editors once we are satisifed.

[Bob Schroeck]

Let's do that. I am pathetically under-informed about the technical side of the wiki, and I had no idea where to start on my own.

[GethN7]

Let's do that.  I am pathetically under-informed about the technical side of the wiki, and I had no idea where to start on my own.

Well, it's enabled, but not accessible except via Special:SpecialPages thus far, which effectively means our regular form is still in place.

We do need to do some minor backend work, mostly adding a "fair use" license option to the stock choice and/or just having the licenses options they provide forward our regular ones.

As is, aside from lack of fair use options, it's generally usable out of the box, just definitely will bear the mark of Wikimedia Foundation specifics all over it, which we can minimize if we replace their licenses with ours and disable the WMF specific tutorial.

See here for more information on the licensing that it ships with and what we need to add (start at line 255, options in general start at line 80)

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/g/mediawiki...config.php

I'm willing to file a Phabricator request for anything we can agree on to make this work once you and everyone else look over the options available.

[Bob Schroeck]

Thank you, Geth. I will try to take a look at everything sometime before the end of the evening.

[robkelk]

We do need to do some minor backend work, mostly adding a "fair use" license option to the stock choice and/or just having the licenses options they provide forward our regular ones.

We should standardize our license choices while we're at it. Some are all-caps, some are mixed-case... and that's just the Creative Commons licenses.

[robkelk]

Guess what's locked again.

Phabricator ticket entered

[robkelk]

We're back.

[Bob Schroeck]

That's what I love about ATT. You never know what you'll get, day to day. <sigh>

[Labster]

I haven't been involved here for quite a while, but I've been wanting to do something creative and technical, and I thought about finally implementing the thing where page descriptions (i.e. "Laconic") shows up in the search bar suggestions.  And by the search bar, I meant like the search bar in Vector2022, not the classic Vector.  See, I've really not been around enough -- not around enough to not bother with changing my skin for ATT.

If you want to know what it would look like, head over to mediawiki.org and type a single letter into search, like 'c'.

But then I got to thinking, gosh, Vector2022 is ugly.  All of the website controls seem more emphasized than before, distracting you from the page content.  Because there's only a little white space between the left-hand table of contents and the article content, my eye gets consistently drawn into the TOC at the end of a line.  And combined with the {{trope}} menus (and the page-top translation lists on mediawiki.org), the top of the content area of a page looks really messy with another level of menus.  I asked on the Miraheze discord about getting new search behavior in old Vector, which isn't an option yet but doesn't seem too hard to implement.

But how about another skin?  Something of a rebrand, with a new default skin?  I found I really liked Skin:Citizen, which you can see in action over on the Star Citizen Wiki.  Is anyone interested in playing around with that skin?  It does the search thing; it displays the page description right where I'd want it to be displayed.  The only bit of workflow it breaks for me is not autofilling the search bar for copy/pasting page names, which could be generally fixed with a page autofill extension.  I'd probably make the left-hand bar (bottom-hand on mobile) be a different color, but otherwise I rather like.

I'm also considering category pages that automatically fill in the short description, so we'd have category pages with more context.  Oh, and the short descriptions are made with Extension:ShortDescription so we don't have to rely on Wikidata.

Oh just as a vote that probably doesn't matter: I never liked having a moderation queue.  Having a wiki that doesn't give instant feedback on your edits just feels wrong, and contrary to the plain language meaning of wiki (in Hawaiian).  That said I am not doing any moderation work so it's really not fair for me to impose on the people who are doing it.  (Honestly what I'd like is a bot that automatically bans every new user until they posted "I am not a spambot" on a Talk page.)

[Bob Schroeck]

I really haven't messed with skins, staying with the legacy Vector (but looking at the new Vector now, I have no idea why I stayed with classic). That said, I do like the look of Citizen. (And I've just confirmed that I find every other skin we offer besides the Vectors profoundly ugly, but that's just me.)

If I'm properly understanding ShortDescription and how it ties into the search change you want to make, I'm definitely for it.

I do regret suggesting we dump Moderation in a moment of frustration -- I think it serves a vital purpose in keeping spam, copyright infringement and low-quality edits out of the wiki. I just think we are not serving our users properly by not reviewing things with alacrity. Plus I would feel considerably less frustration if I could take a break from moderating and not come back to fifty unreviewed edits.

I have to admit the "I am not a spambot" idea has its merits... Probably won't stop the determined plagiarists and the borderline-illiterate, though.

[Bob Schroeck]

... I've been watching GalaxySagi777 for a while now. He/she has been contributing since January, has only been pinged once for a copyright issue, and generally has been making good contributions and seems amenable to taking advice from the mods. What do folks think about promoting them to autopatrolled?

Just re-raising this. I've been modding a lot of GalaxySagi777's edits, and despite writing multi-kilobyte additions to various pages, since that one time they've never taken the easy way -- everything is original text, and often stuff that doesn't exist at all in the corresponding TVT pages. I'm formally nominating them for promotion.

[GethN7]

... I've been watching GalaxySagi777 for a while now.  He/she has been contributing since January, has only been pinged once for a copyright issue, and generally has been making good contributions and seems amenable to taking advice from the mods.  What do folks think about promoting them to autopatrolled?

Just re-raising this.  I've been modding a lot of GalaxySagi777's edits, and despite writing multi-kilobyte additions to various pages, since that one time they've never taken the easy way -- everything is original text, and often stuff that doesn't exist at all in the corresponding TVT pages.    I'm formally nominating them for promotion.

Fine by me.

Also like Labster's suggestions and look forward to their bearing fruit.

[robkelk]

I do regret suggesting we dump Moderation in a moment of frustration -- I think it serves a vital purpose in keeping spam, copyright infringement and low-quality edits out of the wiki. I just think we are not serving our users properly by not reviewing things with alacrity. Plus I would feel considerably less frustration if I could take a break from moderating and not come back to fifty unreviewed edits.

I'm pretty sure that we can promote somebody to queue moderator without making them a mod. If we want to do this, the question arises: who do we trust with that sort of power? (I'd be willing to grant it to Jlaw, but do they want it?)

EDIT: And agreed regarding GalaxySagi777.

[Bob Schroeck]

Okay, next time I'm on the wiki I'll promote GalaxySagi777 if someone doesn't beat me to it.

I like the idea of a queue moderator, but I'm not sure would be the best candidate.

[Labster]

I'm trying out the Citizen skin on our ManaChara wiki.  Mary Sue found two different bugs right away, because she's that good at QA.

[Bob Schroeck]

<snrk>

Meanwhile, has anyone else noticed that DemonDuckOfDoom appears to be engaged in a project to label just about every work a Cult Classic?