User talk:Bovlb

This user is fallible and encourages other admins to be bold in reverting their admin actions. Archive 2004 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 2005 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 2006 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 2007 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 2008 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12

All admins are fallible. Wheel wars are bad. I therefore follow a 1RR rule for admin actions. If you are an admin, and you disagree with an administrative action I have taken (e.g. block, protection, deletion), then please go ahead and reverse or modify it. You don't need to try to contact me first, although a notification afterwards would be polite. If I disagree with your change, then I will seek support from a third admin to reinstate mine. If you are a non-admin reading this, and you take issue with an admin action of mine, I recommend that you raise it with me in the first instance, and take it to other admins only once you exhaust that avenue. If I have blocked you, you should probably mention my policy in any {{unblock}} request.

I hate having conversations that are split between two pages: If I leave a message on your talk page, I will try to watch, so you are welcome to reply either there or here. If you reply here, I encourage you to copy or link to my original comment to avoid any confusion. If you leave a message for me here, I will usually reply here unless you request otherwise. I may refactor split conversations to make threading clear.

Wiki help

Thanks for your reply. I have responded. Timneu22 (talk) 03:04, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Another response, thanks again. Timneu22 (talk) 15:45, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Another response; I'm not doing anything different than I do on WP. Timneu22 (talk) 16:01, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Another response; thank you again for helping to troubleshoot this... Timneu22 (talk) 17:55, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

The mystery gets deeper... your sample code is in my EditPage.php verbatim. Timneu22 (talk) 23:00, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your help attempts, but like you said that last shot-in-the-dark didn't apply. I have two plain-vanilla wikis with no customization to things like EditPage. Neither of these take me to the section. :( I just don't know what it could be. Timneu22 (talk) 23:55, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Another response, thanks again. Timneu22 (talk) 12:07, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Another response, thanks again. Timneu22 (talk) 00:56, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Sub-page creation

As you may have noticed, or not, I have been doing some serious crime fighting. how would I create a sub page on my user page?WilliamMThompson (talk) 06:01, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:SUBPAGE#How_to_create_user_subpages. Basically start by creating links like User:WilliamMThompson/Sandbox.

Um, I guess I should warn you not to create pages like "editors to keep an eye on". Some people view those as attack pages and kick up quite a fuss. But I'd expect, given your own experiences with being talked about, that you'd avoid that anyway.

Oh, and sorry to be over-literal (a flaw of mine that makes me a good engineer, but a bad writer), but I suspect that what you've been fighting is not strictly speaking "crime".  :) Bovlb (talk) 14:47, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism is a crime, whether the crime on wikipedia is criminalised is another matter. Wikipedia is not a democracy. Which therefore limits the capaity of crime, because crime is what each person sees as crime, I can leave a message on a talk page (which I have been doing) saying things along the lines of "that was a personal attack" etc, and another user may change that. I want people to question. I want people to understand, that wikipedia IS a democracy. Because it is. We may not tend to vote in a democratic way, but the way we interact, the way we can protestchanges, make this place a democracy. And what do you mean "editiors to keep an eye on"? I don't understand. WilliamMThompson (talk) 07:05, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

New editors who get very involved in vandal hunting are often tempted to use their user space to track users they consider to be disruptive. This can generate a lot of WikiDrama, as it can easily be considered to be a personal attack in itself. Imagine that you found out that scurrilous things were being said about you on an obscure page somewhere.  :) I just took "vandalism fighting" and "user subpages" in combination and got worried.

By the way, and I say this without having reviewed your crime-fighting, I find it's wise not to over-label disruptive edits. Better to talk about "test edits" rather than "vandalism" (or crime). Better still if you can treat them as misguided good faith edits. This seems to increase the likelihood that people will stop treating damage to Wikipedia like a game, and settle down to be productive editors, which is better for the project in the long-term.

As an aside, one thing I'm still working on is how to ask people not to make personal attacks in a way that they're likely to accept. I recently added an epigraph to my user page that seems to express it, but it feels like overkill to post that on someone's talk page.

Is Wikipedia a democracy? A hierarchy? An experiment in anarchy? It's (a project to create) a free encyclopedia. Issues of governance are subordinate to that. Bovlb (talk) 16:03, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Classical languages

History: [1], [2]

You'd do well to look into the history of the article and research the situation before you jump in with gratuitous advice to people who've been here as long as I've been. The ip has been trolling on the talk page and rv warring with multiple users (not just me) on the article page and has broken 3rr many times over in the last 48 hours. Just because other editors have better things to do than file tedious 3rr reports even in open and shut cases like this doesnt mean the ip gets to ride his luck and troll unabated. In all fairness, if an admin had blocked the ip when he started his nonsense, we'd not be having this conversation. Sarvagnya 21:21, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not an expert in the field, but it seems to me that what we have here is a content dispute, escalating into an edit war, and not clear-cut vandalism. I know that reporting incidents can be a chore, but we can't be everywhere, so you can't assume we are going to intervene unless you bring the issue to our attention. Regardless, the other editor might be wrong, rude, and a serial reverter, but unfortunately, none of that relieves you of your responsibility to treat him with respect. Telling you this is not gratuitous, except in the sense that I'm doing it for free. If it makes you feel any better, you'll note that I had some suggestions for the other editor as well. Bovlb (talk) 03:03, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi

Thanks for your message, and sorry for not being clearer in my explanation. Here is the short story: Tom.mevlie (talk · contribs) was found using sockpuppets to support his own wikiproject and make personal attacks. He was blocked (temporarily) but before the block had expired he came back as DangerTM (talk · contribs). He was quickly identified but since he seemed interested in getting a clean start he wasn't blocked at once. He continued his apparent quest to rule a wikiproject by getting involved in Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels and setting up an election (with the hope of becoming the coordinator), but eventually was blocked for personal attacks and disruption. The day after he was blocked User:WilliamMThompson appeared, and the first thing he did was to join Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels and get into the election discussion. Several people realized it was him but again, but he seemed to do some good work so he wasn't blocked. By now he should know our policy on sockpuppets very well, but that didn't stop him from using Tom.mevlie (talk · contribs) and 165.228.1.208 (talk · contribs) (both identified as sockpuppets of DangerTM well before this) to commit vandalism and "attack" WilliamMThompson to make that account look better. All of his accounts have used adoption as a way of trying to find support (I was the one who adopted Tom.mevlie). Let me know if I was unclear in anything. I do think that he might become a good contributor eventually, so I only blocked him for two days.

Best wishes Pax:Vobiscum (talk) 22:35, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. I will ruminate. Bovlb (talk) 00:50, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

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Block

Hey, I have just come off my block. It gave me time to ponder. Do you believe me when I say that I am not those two users? In response to the vandalism etc. I was going to say something along the lines of: "I don't think it would be wise to add to their page "test", because it will probably just reafirm them. If someone writes "FUUCKKKK" on a talk page or blanks an article and puts the afformentioned word in instead, I think it would be counter productive to call it a test." By test, do you mean test in the sense that they were testing wikipedia? Or test in that they were testing their own ability or what they could and couldn't do. If you could reply on my talk page, that would be great. Thanks. WilliamMThompson (talk) 09:44, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Response: [3] [4]

I think I am somewhat different to the person mentioned on the ANI, but as you may have noticed, I have two templates that I use for vandalism. They are not templates, they are just words with an image. I change them, and I have been changing them a lot, you can look at them here feel free to make any changes to them, but I use them at different points. If I notice a lot, or even few, prior warnings, I use the one with the red hand. Otherwise I use the information i. I have changed the information one, it now has test edit etc on in. Thanks. Doctor Will Thompson (talk) 22:31, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

As I said, I was not attempting to draw a parallel between you and the subject of that thread; the case is clearly very different. I just thought that it might be instructive for you to see some of the attitudes on display in the responses. Sorry if that was unclear.

I think your first notice could go a bit more softly, make a bigger show of assuming good faith, and talk less about blocking. Persuading people to be productive is our first line of defence, not blocking. I'll see if I can come up with specific suggestions for re-wording later. Bovlb (talk) 22:40, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay, thanks.I just wanted to add that I have cracked the 100th main namespace edit mark. I am currently sitting on 102, I took your advice and spent a half an hour editing the crusade of 1101, how would I get on suggestbot's list for pages that should be cleaned up. Doctor Will Thompson (talk) 23:44, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

See User:SuggestBot/Requests. Bovlb (talk) 00:04, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Edit War

I am currently the target of an edit war. I started at first to redo my edits when they were removed for no reason. I was given the advice to place references, which I did, but then every edit I had done about the perticular subject was removed with the reason given that it wasn't related to the articles, which it was. I tried to redo my edits again, but then was accused of starting an edit war, where soon after many different users started accusing me of various things. Most of whom I can see on each other's talk pages. They removed one more of my edits that had valid information and references and stated the removal as "Fanmade Bootleg" or something like that. I went on to the editor's talk page and gave him all the info to prove that it was not a "Fanmade Bootleg", and asked him to put the info back, since I was warned of the 3 edit rule. He then immediately removed my comment from his talk page.

I decided not to continue to talk to any of the editors involved and try to seek help in the situation. I need an opinion on whether you believe they are correct to continuously remove any information about the topic, or whether I am in the wrong. I can give more info if you are willing to help me with the situation. TheWrench (talk) 05:00, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Reply

History: [5]

It is challenging becuase you have to find the hidden link to find the secret page. They are usually created for fun. Any comments?--RyRy5 talk 03:43, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Response: [6]

Yes it is.--RyRy5 talk 03:51, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Response: [7]

I'm glad to help.--RyRy5 talk 03:56, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Prod templates

Thanks for your note. I had no idea that template existed - or if I knew, I totally forgot. I'll add it to my list. Thank you! - Philippe | Talk 05:43, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Adoption

Perhaps now that I have gotten a better feel for the wikipedian community, I should be leaving your tuition, I am removing my adoption notice from yours and my user pages. No doubt that our paths will cross eventually, but for now, goodbye. Having a conversation on one page really irritates me by the way, not reflection on you as an editor, I just keep forgeting to check your page, etc. Byeeeeeeeeeeeee. Doctor Will Thompson (talk) 10:18, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Response: [8]

It was helpful, and I thank you for it greatly, now I want to try going on my own. Doctor Will Thompson (talk) 21:03, 31 March 2008 (UTC)