WikiIndex talk:Community portal/Archive 4

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WikiIndex talk: Community portal archives of older talk pages: 1 (2006), 2 (2007–13), 3 (2014–16), 4 (2017)

Happy New Year!

WikiIndex wishlist What would you like to semediawikisticte]] (talk) 22:44, 2 February 2017 (PST)

Comment According to the users above, he has already had multiple warnings and temporary blocks, yet has refused to listen. Also, please keep politics out of community discussions. Many people, myself included, will disagree with your point of view. Thank you. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 04:19, 3 February 2017 (PST)

Was he given an official warning, or was it just a bunch of people coming up to him at various times and saying, "I find your behavior objectionable; cut that out" which led to him saying, "Who are YOU to tell me what to do" or "I did nothing wrong" or whatever? I don't recall there being a situation where MarkDilley told him, "Hey, knock it off or I'm gonna block you." Had that happened a long time ago, maybe Sean wouldn't have gone on his hiatus.

Anyway, if someone got offended by a racist remark, that means politics already got injected into the discussion, because racism is very political (what with all the white nationalist movements coming out of the shadows these days). I'm not saying we have any people like that around here, but entryist SJWs have been known to go around the Internet trying to get codes of conduct enacted (formally or informally) banning racist remarks, so that they can censor their opponents. To the extent this is an opinion poll of the users, I'm registering my dissent with norms of political correctness.

Having said that, if someone called me a honky, I'd be offended, but no more than if he called me an idiot or some other insult. Leucosticte (talk) 06:50, 3 February 2017 (PST)

It was an official warning - from a crat, no less - and he was blocked after refusing to listen and then he socked over said block. --This is MY book, and I'm gonna READ IT!!! 08:35, 3 February 2017 (PST)

Official warnings Yes, I have warned him on multiple instances in the time that I have been an admin/bureaucrat/staff member. There isn't a process for "official" warnings but it's also clear that if you're harassing and annoying multiple users over the course of years and driving them away from the project, then something has to give: either you get blocked or everyone else concedes defeat and makes this your personal playground. Not having many official rules is nice in a way but it also ends up being a problem at times. Lacking that, common sense is a decent rule of thumb (which is also imperfect). We also don't have a particular rule about offensive speech and I generally think that's a good thing as well but there is also speech that serves no purpose other than to irritate or harass and the community stands nothing to gain by having someone be provocative without repercussions. Koavf (talk) 08:55, 3 February 2017 (PST)

I consider any warning from a sysop to be an official warning. Leucosticte (talk) 17:57, 3 February 2017 (PST)

Comment I do note that the user being discussed is currently blocked, which I don't think is very fair. Assuming that I am not mistaken, I believe what is being discussed here is an indefinite block or even a permanent ban from WikiIndex. In either case, the user in question should be allowed to defend themselves or otherwise comment before the discussion is closed. If the user makes disruptive comments to the discussion, then they should be blocked. But not before they'd had a chance to defend their actions. Just my personal opinion, but I think that it is important to consider. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 09:04, 3 February 2017 (PST)

As other users stated, he has been warned multiple times. When his block expires, he will be able to explain and defend his actions. --TheTVFan (talk) 09:12, 3 February 2017 (PST)

Ban You are mistaken, Jamie--he is blocked for seven days (expiring soon) and I am certainly willing to let him contribute if all he wants to do is contribute. Someone who is simply trolling will be blocked indefinitely, no problem. Someone who has many demonstrably constructive edits but who is also abrasive is a lot trickier and that's why I hope that he can come back and play nice. He's had plenty of opportunities to defend himself which mainly amount to tu quoque fallacies and mind-games ("yeah but you did [x]" or "how can you prove that I intended [y]"). It's inarguable that his behavior is inappropriate and lacking a clear policy, the repeated warnings over the course of years should be sufficient. I sincerely hope that it's onwards and upwards once his block expires if he chooses to return. Koavf (talk) 09:17, 3 February 2017 (PST)

Request for Comments

User:HAL-9000 This user emailed me personally asking for an unblock. I explained in email and via his talk that I will be holding him to extra scrutiny and may have to consult IP logs due to the nature of prior disruption. His unblock was adjusted from "indefinite" to a few days from now to solicit community feedback. I'm a believer in second chances and I remember him being a productive member of the community. Thoughts? Koavf (talk) 13:24, 4 February 2017 (PST)

As I saw from his profile that he made some productive edits,  Support, but the community should keep in mind that I didn't know him before, so I'm not aware of his previous actions. TheTVFan (talk) 13:37, 4 February 2017 (PST)

Also, I received a private e-mail from him asking to remove his personal information on Community Portal. For the admin team: I have removed it, please revert my edit if you think it's not okay. I have unblocked him assuming good faith, but will be monitoring his edits. --TheTVFan (talk) 04:49, 5 February 2017 (PST)

Lift infinite blocks for IP-spammers?

I think that IP-spammers should not be blocked for infinite, because they use proxies or dynamic IPs. I think a 1-year block is enough. Comment with your ideas below :-) --TheTVFan (talk) 04:34, 5 February 2017 (PST)

•  Support Indefinitely blocking IP's is never a good thing except in the most serious circumstances, and it is not allowed on WMF unless deemed absolutely necessary (and any indefinitely blocked IP's are subject to review). Regardless of the reason, I'd say 365 days should be the maximum block for any IP address. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 09:15, 5 February 2017 (PST)
•  Support A long block on an IP is frequently unnecessary as someone is likely to just move on after [x] days/weeks. There are about 700 IPs which are indefinitely blocked and I'm removing them for the ones that are a decade old--very unlikely they will cause any problems. And if they do, we have several active admins here. Koavf (talk) 10:50, 5 February 2017 (PST)
•  Support I agree about the one-year maximum. Leucosticte (talk) 20:41, 5 February 2017 (PST)

Category:Inactive

The Inactive category is deprecated and has been replaced by Dormant. Using the "inactive" entry returns an error message saying that it's not in the list of possible values, even before I deleted it from the wiki status comparison table just now. I would propose removing all entries from the category and updating them with a different status, but the issue is that there are 777 pages in the category. This would take forever to orphan. Advice? OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 09:51, 6 February 2017 (PST)

Those kind of of edits should be done by a bot. --Manorainjan 10:06, 6 February 2017 (PST)

Botwork I am doing them with AWB and I have tagged my account as a bot at the moment. There is also Category:Pages that use Template:Inactive from Template:Inactive which should be emptied and all instances of Template:Inactive should be converted to Template:Wiki with status=Dormant but in the meantime, this will fix all of the error thrown up by the invalid status. Thanks, Jamie. Koavf (talk) 10:14, 6 February 2017 (PST)

Deprecation It looks like User:MarkDilley had some reservations about deprecating the template. Mark, if you're viewing this, can you explain more? Koavf (talk) 10:29, 6 February 2017 (PST)

It's true that the Inactive category can be considered deprecated, but there wasn't an official community consensus about it. I also agree that the edits should be done with a bot, to avoid obstructing RecentChanges. --TheTVFan (talk) 10:56, 6 February 2017 (PST)

Bot flag I amended my user rights so that it would pass through the bot filter but it evidently didn't work--not sure why. Sorry for clogging up the Recent Changes but it's a done deal now. Koavf (talk) 11:14, 6 February 2017 (PST)

Not a problem. I wanted to remove "Inactive" status from WikiStatus template, as we don't use it anymore, but I see it was alredy done. Good work. :-)--TheTVFan (talk) 11:38, 6 February 2017 (PST)