All The Tropes Wiki Project, Part IX

[Bob Schroeck]

Previous thread is here.

robkelk wrote:

---

A/LP blanked a User page and replaced it with a "speedy deletion" box, with the cited reson being inappropriate content for Meta.

And what was the content of that original page? When I try to follow that link, I get a "Bad title" error page.

Edit: Ah. Never mind, found a way to look here. I'm not entirely sure this is what it looks like... The user posted a whole bunch of stuff about mental health issues in the navy and the consequences of looking for help; Reception added a little note at the bottom saying basically "this is a page for discussion and not content", and the user nuked the page, after which Reception restored the note about use of the page. A bit heavy handed, but hardly deleting the page themselves.

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[robkelk]

It was a long list of suicide-prevention tips for naval personnel - not something that one would expect to find on Meta, but it was a User page.

John is saying it was blanked by the user, not by Amanda. I've asked for a double-check on that, since I have no access to deleted pages on Meta.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Bob Schroeck]

Ccrossed posts -- see my edit to my post above. The nukage was done by the user, not Amanda/Reception/whoever.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[LulzKiller]

BTW this individual continues to edit other peoples comment on their own personal perception of fiat power.

http://meta.miraheze.org/w/index.php?t ... eta_policy_(draft)&type=revision&diff=20837&oldid=20832

[Bob Schroeck]

And looking at the edit warring on that little page over the last hour, I can see that Amanda is very vigorously defending her right to stalinize anything anyone says that she doesn't like.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Labster]

Indeed.  He's proposing this policy: http://meta.miraheze.org/wiki/User:Ama ... al_attacks
I'm pretty sure that means you can just delete anything Amanda writes, as Amanda refers to himself with the incorrect gender constantly.  Until there's some sort of proof to the contrary, I assume that Amanda is a male who identifies as masculine in real life.  His first account was MatthewPW, after all, and he only took the name AmandaQuad because he was imitating AmandaNP/DeltaQuad from Wikipedia, who is a bona fide human woman.
-- ∇×V

[Bob Schroeck]

You know, I was out of touch for a few days. Just how did this person go from a near-pariah to getting access again?
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[robkelk]

Near as we can tell, John caved to the threats of the harassment spam continuing unless access was restored.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[LulzKiller]

As soon as the person gets unbanned he is allowed to just start dictating policy that would allow him fiat control of all of Miraheze, just this lets him frame any criticism as a personal attack.

I like getting vindicated. Every. Fucking. Time.

[LynnInDenver]

So, basically, my take is: person who wanted absolute power over their little portion, to the point they could effectively control what happens all over in the quest of that, and email spammed until they were allowed back in after being locked out for doing the same stuff earlier? Am I missing something here?

I'm putting this out there: If I was thinking about opening a wiki anywhere, Miraheze just became one of the last places I'd do it at. Because it just got shown that there is no guarantee that John wouldn't let someone else just roll over everyone else on the site. There are better ways to deal with harassment spam than just letting them back in to do whatever they want.
--

"You know how parents tell you everything's going to fine, but you know they're lying to make you feel better? Everything's going to be fine." - The Doctor

[Bob Schroeck]

Yeah, I'm not happy about this development. If this person starts messing with ATT, I would rather bail than have to deal with the headache.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[NDKilla]

I feel the need to point out that they aren't dictating policy. We've talked about NPA policies before and the extent to which one exists will be up to the community as usual, not Amanda. Me and Reception (and others) have been talking about such a policy long before Amanda proposed one. Personally I think it should be up to Stewards or Meta admins to actually remove attacks, but Amanda and anyone else should feel free to point out attacks to local and global users with the proper authority.

Also, John did not cave into demands and threats of spam. Like him and most of the staff had said since the user initially made the ban, they were banned by the community and could appeal to the community. John merely created a proposal that got decent support, and the RfC was closed by Southparkfan.

[robkelk]

I feel the need to point out that they aren't dictating policy. We've talked about NPA policies before and the extent to which one exists will be up to the community as usual, not Amanda. Me and Reception (and others) have been talking about such a policy long before Amanda proposed one.

The timing of presenting it is very bad, then. As is the content - it looks like everything that LP/Amanda wants is in there.

Personally I think it should be up to Stewards or Meta admins to actually remove attacks, but Amanda and anyone else should feel free to point out attacks to local and global users with the proper authority.

Which is what we have now, correct?

Also, John did not cave into demands and threats of spam. Like him and most of the staff had said since the user initially made the ban, they were banned by the community and could appeal to the community. John merely created a proposal that got decent support, and the RfC was closed by Southparkfan.

Amanda/LP was blocked/banned/whatever and the abuse started. John writes a proposal that lets Amanda/LP post again and the abuse disappears. What conclusion are we supposed to draw?
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[LulzKiller]

http://github.com/miraheze/mw-config/pull/1378/files

"Amanda" wants steward/checkuser rights on "her" own wiki.

Hmm.

[LulzKiller]

http://phabricator.miraheze.org/T1685

http://phabricator.miraheze.org/T1686

"Amanda" closing other users tasks on "her" own fiat and therefore causing that user to want to exit Miraheze even though "she" doesn't know whether they were actually banned or not.

I love being proven right.

[robkelk]

Those two phabricator tasks look to me like a reason to remove LP/Amanda's phabricator account rights other than baseline user, on grounds of incompetence.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Labster]

Rob, Amanda's Phabricator account is already the same as a standard user.  In fact, in Phabricator I only have the same access as a standard user.  Feel free to claim tasks, mark them or declined, or reopen them as appropriate, Rob.
-- ∇×V

[NDKilla]

I feel the need to point out that they aren't dictating policy. We've talked about NPA policies before and the extent to which one exists will be up to the community as usual, not Amanda. Me and Reception (and others) have been talking about such a policy long before Amanda proposed one.

The timing of presenting it is very bad, then. As is the content - it looks like everything that LP/Amanda wants is in there.

It probably is bad timing, but as with a lot of documentation and other things, nobody has bothered to draft a policy. For probably understandable reasons, Amanda has the motivation to do such things.

Personally I think it should be up to Stewards or Meta admins to actually remove attacks, but Amanda and anyone else should feel free to point out attacks to local and global users with the proper authority.

Which is what we have now, correct?

More or less yes. Stewards are (to an extent) responsible for content everywhere. Meta admins are responsible for Meta content. Until an approved policy says otherwise, it should probably be up to them. However I do think that personal attacks should be disallowed, but I don't want the removal of "personal attacks" to be a form of personal attack.

Also, John did not cave into demands and threats of spam. Like him and most of the staff had said since the user initially made the ban, they were banned by the community and could appeal to the community. John merely created a proposal that got decent support, and the RfC was closed by Southparkfan.

Amanda/LP was blocked/banned/whatever and the abuse started. John writes a proposal that lets Amanda/LP post again and the abuse disappears. What conclusion are we supposed to draw?

John and Amanda (and to an extent, me) discussed this for a while before the proposal was made. Personally I thought it was best. Community wise, I think Amanda should be allowed to have her own wiki with her own configuration, etc, etc, but I am a disturbed by the actions on Phabricator especially since I can't see Amanda's removed comments.

http://github.com/miraheze/mw-config/pull/1378/files

"Amanda" wants steward/checkuser rights on "her" own wiki.

Hmm.

In what way does this give them checkuser rights on their wikis?

The checkuser permissions were added to the local steward group so that the local checkuser group could be removed.

Amanda still can't add themselves to the local steward group, or otherwise attain checkuser permissions.

Setting checkuser as an implicit group was an attempted (i don't know if it worked actually) fix to hide the checkuser group from the list of groups when it had all of it's permissions removed.

[LulzKiller]

I feel like this is more a post-rationalisation of "her" actions. Of course I am beginning to understand that we have to wait until a certain person realises it is beyond all doubt that another certain person is the same person as a third certain person. Which judging by time will not be an exceptional amount of time, of course users have already quit because of that person deciding to hold fiat power just like that third certain person did funnily enough.

"Motivation" being silencing dissent of course. I don't think certain persons really understand the implications of what is in effect a user without any powers suddenly wanting to push through certain changes to their own advantage, which brings me into a state of Deja Vu.

Of course considering the habits of "her", we know that "she" likes to remove a lot of content, which means that I would not like "her" defining what other users can or can't say.

Of course this was "discussed". Behind the back of the community that certain people claim to support, and of course "discussed" to the point where a simple vote would not pass through and instead to the subject view of the person who "discussed" this with "her".

Of course staff are so behind supporting "her" that when they fraudulently privately contact those with concerns and want answers out of "curiosity", and then they re-feed these private conversations (without permission of the person they talked to, funny that they don't like asking others) to those higher up in a chain in order to try to coerce them into following the party line. The party line that Miraheze was set up to avoid.

Ain't it funny how it happens?

[Labster]

Just an FYI on the downtime: MySQL on db2 is in the process of recovery, again.  On the upside, All The Tropes is now on db3, so there's no risk that we lost data.  (As for the freebie wiki, no guarantees.)  But because of CentralAuth being on db2 along with a few other services, our wiki isn't actually usable now.
-- ∇×V

[robkelk]

Still not usable, four hours later... "Cannot access the database: Connection refused (81.4.125.112)" error on ATT, the freebie wiki, and Meta.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[robkelk]

I feel the need to point out that they aren't dictating policy. We've talked about NPA policies before and the extent to which one exists will be up to the community as usual, not Amanda. Me and Reception (and others) have been talking about such a policy long before Amanda proposed one.

The timing of presenting it is very bad, then. As is the content - it looks like everything that LP/Amanda wants is in there.

It probably is bad timing, but as with a lot of documentation and other things, nobody has bothered to draft a policy. For probably understandable reasons, Amanda has the motivation to do such things.

I trust that Miraheze staff and stewards won't object to an alternate proposal from somebody other than LP/Amanda, then.

...

Also, John did not cave into demands and threats of spam. Like him and most of the staff had said since the user initially made the ban, they were banned by the community and could appeal to the community. John merely created a proposal that got decent support, and the RfC was closed by Southparkfan.

Amanda/LP was blocked/banned/whatever and the abuse started. John writes a proposal that lets Amanda/LP post again and the abuse disappears. What conclusion are we supposed to draw?

John and Amanda (and to an extent, me) discussed this for a while before the proposal was made. Personally I thought it was best. Community wise, I think Amanda should be allowed to have her own wiki with her own configuration, etc, etc, but I am a disturbed by the actions on Phabricator especially since I can't see Amanda's removed comments.
...

Discussion beforehand? Not only caving in, but apparent collusion to overturn a decision made by community consensus.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[LynnInDenver]

I'm with Rob. Knowing there was discussion beforehand, under the timing and the behavior after, makes the situation look even worse.

NDKilla: Has John ever administered any sort of forum or social media site before? Because I'm seeing a lack of transparency, and worse, a lack of potential knowledge regarding what "toxic to online community" people look like, and how they need to be handled.

And I'm still feeling like Miraheze is the last place I'd be willing to run a Wiki. Nothing said so far makes me feel any better.
--

"You know how parents tell you everything's going to fine, but you know they're lying to make you feel better? Everything's going to be fine." - The Doctor

[robkelk]

I see here that there's a MediaWiki host in Canada, and I know Canadian privacy and copyright laws. The downside is that they aren't free.

(And I really should get an alias for the freebie wiki - but do I want poserdazfreebies.org , poserdazfreebies.ca , or both? Still pondering this...)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[LulzKiller]

@JFeri. His known previous experience was at the practical predecessor of Miraheze, Orain, that got hacked/shutdown of course, I believe John left before that happened but other users here would be able to tell you more because I was never at Orain or even aware of it during it's existence.

@robkelk. .org is first priority, .ca second. Personal view of course but it's not as if the wiki subject matter/language pertains solely to Canada, of course if you want to get both, knock yourself out.