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Bishonen accused of supporting attacks on users

Posted: Fri Feb 14, 2020 8:09 pm
by Mrspaceowl
A discussion which just said 'please spank Mrspaceowl'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_ ... ghty_pages

Directed at me for some unspecified issues months after my last edit. I blanked this as its only possible purpose is harrassment. A message was then posted on my page accusing me of various things after my user page was vandilised by the same user posting the 'spank' request, carrying the nonsensical suggestions that this was because my page is not a template and yet carried a template of a cat and thus was 'causing problems'.

The user's stated belief was:

"Thanks for the odd message on my talk page, but this page needs fixing as the inclusion of a template cat when the page is not a template is causing errors that require cleanup. Discussion is at Category talk:Food user templates, where I have reverted your removal of the relevant discussion."

The discussion was just the suggestion to 'spank'.

There is barely any pretence anymore. It's pure bullshit.

Re: Bishonen accused of supporting attacks on users

Posted: Fri Feb 14, 2020 9:31 pm
by Abd
What does this have to do with Bishonen? There is no "open attack" here, only a dumb and careless usage of language ("spank") that could deserve a warning but that is of little consequence.

I get that you don't understand what was happening, but your removal of that discussion could be considered vandalism, an actual problem, whereas the commentary itself was really just about a problem category within <noinclude> tags needing fixing on your user page, and not in any way an attack on you.

Okay, from what I saw at first I suspected there might be a response to what you did. There was, and it was Bishonen. But you have radically misunderstood what happened. At first glance, Bishonen's response may have been overkill. Was this a first block? So I look at your block log.

Ew. Not good. Mrspaceowl, that's more than a few blocks in a little over a year. And this was over something entirely useless.

If you were not planning on editing, what was the problem with fixing that template, exactly? You saw it because you were mentioned on that page, along with other users. It wasn't really personal.

I think you still don't understand the issue, and if you don't understand, maybe time to step back until you do. Nobody was out to actually "spank" or punish you. It was just a problem to be fixed. But by making a fuss about it, by removing discussion -- very much a no-no -- you made it much more of a problem. If you do want to edit Wikipedia, I suggest:

1. apologize to the others involved.
2. admit error. specify it, so that a promise not to repeat means something.
3. promise to not repeat it.
4. make an unblock request on that basis that you made a mistake and didn't understand.
5. Revise your attitude. Wikipedia is broken in many ways, but when it works, it's because it is a collaborative project. Develop and carry a attitude of cooperation. Be slow to disagree. What's the hurry?

and I recommend. Do nothing until you are very clear on the way forward. Never attack a blocking admin, it's simply a bad idea even if you are "right." The real issue is not the blocking admin (which you seem to think it is, here), It is the admin who sees the unblock request, more or less at random -- if you are lucky and there is no cabal against you, which is unlikely -- who will not care whether the admin made a mistake or not, but will look at the situation anew.

You have been blocked by four administrators now, with no obvious factional affiliation. Something obviously isn't working, Mrspaceowl. As well, your comments, such as this, don't make sense to me -- nor did they to another. And you vandalized Bishonen's user page. -- convincing her to block you, whereas she had merely warned.

Frankly, if I were a WP sysop, I'd indef block you as a vandal, based on what I just saw, until some reason were given to unblock.

Something is off. What is it?

Why did you come here with this misleading story?

Re: Bishonen accused of supporting attacks on users

Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2020 5:33 am
by Mrspaceowl
First: you are very clearly a factionally affiliated editor based on your comments and immediate decision to assume good faith on the part of established editors but not other users.

Second: the suggestion (along with deliberately antagonistic language you are attempting to downplay) was first that there was an issue with a food template then with a cat template. No attempt was made by any involved editor or yourself (assuming if we must that they might be different) to clear up this very obvious inconsistency. At the very least, if I were minded to believe it was anything other than deliberate, this is a failure to clarify at a surface level combined with clearly insulting, bullying language. From my knowledge of Wikipedia, failures to clarify on a surface level are always deliberate and carry with them an alternative implicit goal. When combined with a request to 'spank' surely no-one in their right mind can see this as anything other than a deliberate attack. That I should have been 'warned' at all for a technical error that a) wasn't mine and b) no-one seems to agree on the parameters of, whereas the person who directly posted an insult next to my username was not... It beggars belief.

It is a very simple ploy (and I work as a computer programmer so I have seen it time and again) to pretend technical issues which are in fact nonsensical as a means of intimidation and to cast aspersions, particularly when coupled with language which is obviously intended to be inflammatory and to blame a user for something they were not at fault for, furthering a long-standing push to create a particular narrative regarding said user by particular Wikipedia factions pushing specific agendas, safe in the understanding that few non-techies will realise what's really going on and the few familiar with the system are a known quantity who can be individually appealed to via political methods to overlook technical incorrectness... Something that can destroy whole projects. With Wikipedia because the markup language is pre-rolled this is not so much of a factor and such things can go on indefinitely. On genuine software projects the obfuscatory attitude and lack of care for clarity is a cancer that destroys otherwise useful technology. But I digress...

If the technicality were known to have important real-world consequences you would be able and willing to explain in full these real-world consequences in both technical and non-technical language. To make yourself understood rather than to claim ignorance on the part of the person you purport to be educating. Instead you make a passing pretence at explanation (<noinclude>) with no connective tissue. Given the number of words you *were* willing to use I can't believe there could be any accident here. Instead you resort to attacking my character because the case you are attempting to make is not strong enough to stand on its own.

Not to belabour the point, as a person who has written a dynamic UI API quite similar to the Wiki system myself, if you're not 'able' to make it understandable to me then the fact is you don't want to be understood at all, or do not sufficiently understand the subject about which you are claiming greater knowledge. On my own project if the Junior Dev doesn't understand it, I take that as my cue that the window to inclusion has been overlooked and I have made unmerited assumptions of knowledge. I cannot begin to convey the merits of continually revisiting assumptions of knowledge, as over the long term these pay highly significant dividends.

All the rest of your post can be boiled down to a) understand the rules b) follow the rules. This is very obviously because you are one of the people who has invested the time to learn all the labyrinths therein, to apply them where they suit you and not where they do not, and, if previous experience on Wikipedia is anything to go by, to creatively interpret all the gaps and grey areas until you get to a point where what is written in a published book is no-longer evidence of what is written in said book because that's what you decided the rules mean (I kid you not). This reading of rules is thenceforth used to lend spurious credibility to what is transparently about a small cabal controlling what the public are allowed to know and think. You claim to believe there are problems with Wikipedia. I doubt very severely you believe in any real sense and suggest that your presence/position on this forum is in and of itself willfully misleading.

I would be very surprised given your response if you are not one of the involved parties.

Also, why aren't there better emoji on this forum? It's 2020: there are snazzier ones built into utf-8!

Re: Bishonen accused of supporting attacks on users

Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2020 1:09 pm
by Abd
My comment here attracted the attention of a troll on Wikipediocracy. He does not care in the least about giving you sane advice, he only cares about attacking me and this forum. However, it's claimed you would be welcome on Wikipediocracy. Tell them I sent you! Or don't, your choice.

You are also welcome here, except for one thing: presenting thin evidence with misleading conclusions doesn't fly well here. But I did and do Assume Good Faith. That is why I spent substantial time investigating.

As pointed out on that trollsite, your "treatment by the Wikipedians was completely predictable."

The topic is, then, highly misleading. There was no "open attack on users." There was no threat to you, and "spank" was a bad joke. The WP community can be faulted for insensitivity, but nobody is responsible, that's the basic Wikipedia problem.

The OP there simply wanted the templates fixed, that was the extent of the "spanking." It was your user page, so some level of revert warring on it might have been allowed, but blanking that discussion, repeatedly, no. Any admin would block -- given your history --and this has nothing to do with Wikipedia factions.

And you have again shot off your mouth without doing any checking.

I am Wikipedia user Abd, hated by the factions, "community banned" after I abandoned the project in 2011, and more recently WikiMedia Foundation office-banned for . . . for what? They don't say, but the obvious thing I did was to confront an avalanche of sockpuppets supporting the agenda of . . . a certain faction, two of whose prominent members apparently filed complaints.

But that's me and this is about you and your Wikipedia experience.

People are very welcome to come here and report or complain and will be treated with kindness. My view is that the kindest thing to do with what you brought is to comment on it with knowledge and frank opinion.

And in return, you reacted with blind attack. Not surprising. Why would your behavior change?

Sucks is a more serious critical site than Wikipediocracy, my opinion and is associated with projects to actually build useful content.

Because we have open registration, we get our share of loons and crazies -- and normal people driven a bit crazy by abuse on Wikipedia.

You could also comment on the subreddit, WikiInAction, which sees many complaints. And once in a while a complaining user actually pays attention to the advice that shows up, even if Vagilant from WPO attacks it. That user listened and learned and acted, in fact. By admitting error, the possibility of growth was created. Those who do this may go on to do something more useful, for themselves or for the rest of us.

Meanwhile, this title has to go, my opinion. The title can be edited, there is little or nothing here about Bishonen, who is a quite prominent administrator, long-term, already becoming well-known when I was a noob in 2005.

I'll consider that for a bit, taking suggestions. "[blank] complains about Bishonen"? What goes in the blank? What best serves this site?

Re: Bishonen accused of supporting attacks on users

Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2020 1:37 pm
by Kumioko
This is a perfect example of why my posts will always be deleted. They need to conserve server space for abd's posting walls of text to himself.

Re: Bishonen accused of supporting attacks on users

Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2020 4:30 pm
by Mrspaceowl
Abd wrote:
Sat Feb 15, 2020 1:09 pm
I'll consider that for a bit, taking suggestions. "[blank] complains about Bishonen"? What goes in the blank? What best serves this site?
I considered it after reading your reply, and I did feel the bad vibes from it, but no. The issue, though it might not be clear from cursory inspection, is that a small number with power abuse in-group knowledge to appear as if they are being fair while in reality they are not.

I appreciate you've gone to a lot of trouble to rebuff my points while remaining sporadically congenial. However, I do not habour any significant interest in Wikipedia enough to demean myself with an apology I do not mean. I would rather develop my own solution to a different problem, and hopefully profit by it in the fullness of time, though the landscape is such that user-driven contributions are now the only way forward for anyone looking to carve out a signficant niche -- though that doesn't mean you can't handle things ethically in that space.

It only mildly pisses me off the lengths some will go to troll people who actually tried to help out the project, and the degree to which long time administrators will support or at least turn a blind eye to it. That this is a predicable action on Wikipedia (and other sites with a similar demographic) absolutely *does not* make it ok.

If you are honest in what you say, and I actually do believe you are on *some* points based on your last response, then you must surely know how those communities work by now?

Re: Bishonen accused of supporting attacks on users

Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2020 7:19 pm
by Abd
This thread continues to attract the interest of a troll, who obviously is using it as a coatrack on which to hang more trolling. If you have any questions coming out any of that, ask.

Meanwhile, I don't see any evidence or "points" to "rebuff."

First of all, yes, there are "a small number with power" and they sometimes "abuse" that power, but how does one "abuse in-group knowledge to appear as if they are being fair". Appear to whom, and who cares?

Yes, admins on WP do seek to appear to be fair, but who doesn't? The only power used here was the block tool, and you clearly did things that are normally considered "blockworthy," so . . . what does this show about Bishonen, other than "ordinary administrator"?

"while in reality they are not." While in reality they are not fair, I assume. Yet what is the evidence for that? (And what does "fair" mean? Based on what expectations?)

This was an ordinary sequence, that only turned into a block, because you saw your name pinged, because it was linked from an action request, and reacted as if it were an attack, by violating guidelines (combined with comment that, to me, was unintelligible.

That "spanking" request was about a series of user pages with a problem placement of a userbox with template markup. There was really nothing for you to do, no need that I can see to react at all, beyond your own offense to the use of the word "spank" which you took as meaning an attack. That's about you, not about Wikipedia, really, except that the site was "insensitive," but it never has been particularly so. (The "spanking" was to be of the pages, not of the users. There was absolutely no suggestion of any action against the users.)

(But I haven't seen everything, necessarily, and I also know nothing about your prior history except what the block log shows.
Were those "unfair"? Maybe. I don't know. Obviously, you were offended by them as well, I suggest.)

The headline purports to present this sequence as involving "open attacks on users." Okay, where was an "open attack," one, or to justify the title, more than one? Who judges that as an "attack?" -- and even more as an "open attack"?

Have you ever noticed that when we believe people are attacking us, it can come true even if it wasn't before we developed the belief?

Re: Bishonen accused of supporting attacks on users

Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2020 7:56 pm
by Mrspaceowl
Abd wrote:
Sat Feb 15, 2020 7:19 pm
This thread continues to attract the interest of a troll, who obviously is using it as a coatrack on which to hang more trolling. If you have any questions coming out any of that, ask.
[etc., above post quoted in its entirety -- comment now added by Mod while deleting the rest of the quoted material]
TL;DR: I don't think you made any points; what even is fair?; You were pinged with an offense comment and that's the only reason the whole thing occured; really when someone directly accuses a user of messing up the site on a public page that doesn't actually mean what it says, it just means that bit about a page that was mentioned later on, as an aside; *actually* it was just a technical issue that I can't fully explain that caused the abuse; what even is an attack?; An attempt to reconcile past attitudes with a particular belief system...

Re: Bishonen accused of supporting attacks on users

Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2020 8:36 pm
by Abd
Please don't quote a long post and follow it with tl;dr, that is terminally disrespectful of all readers, not to mention the OP. If you didn't read it, why are you quoting it? It's already right there above your post. Thanks.
And by the way, I did read your response and did not understand it. It was like what I saw on Wikipedia.

Re: Bishonen accused of supporting attacks on users

Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2020 8:58 pm
by Mrspaceowl
Abd wrote:
Sat Feb 15, 2020 8:36 pm
Please don't quote a long post and follow it with tl;dr, that is terminally disrespectful of all readers, not to mention the OP. If you didn't read it, why are you quoting it? It's already right there above your post. Thanks.
And by the way, I did read your response and did not understand it. It was like what I saw on Wikipedia.
The response on Wikipedia with the fake error message was a satire of the original attack, which pretended an error where there was none. I'm aware it was subtle but I think that user understood, even if they pretended not to.

The tl;dr seemed very fair to me.