wiki "abuse"

wiki "abuse"

[Amir E. Aharoni]

Hallo,

I have accounts on dozens of wikis and i am an admin on a few of them.
I opened an account on https://git.wiki.kernel.org/ , created a user
page and put there a link to my blog. That's always the first thing i
do on wikis to which i plan to contribute, because that's the easiest
way to tell the world who i am before i start changing pages that
other people wrote. It's not so different from filling in the
"website" field on the profile page on GitHub, Twitter, LinkedIn or
any other website and it's pretty normative.

On the Git wiki, however, the user page i created was deleted for
"link spam" and my account was blocked for "Spamming links to external
sites". I asked on the deleting admin's user talk page what is wrong
about putting a link to my blog. The admin didn't reply, but deleted
my question with the comment "Inappropriate abuse of the Wiki as a
messenger, as well as abuse of the admin". On all the wikis i know the
whole point of user talk pages is sending messages between users and
with all seriousness i just can't understand how what i did
constitutes "abuse of the admin".

It is possible, of course, that this wiki has different rules. For
example, you may want nothing but technical pages and no personal
content whatsoever. Although it is quite contrary to the wiki idea, it
is legitimate, but you should at least write it somewhere. Wikis
usually have a "Help" or a "Community portal" page - i couldn't find
anything like that on yours. And if you don't want user and user talk
pages to exist, just don't allow people to edit them in the first
place.

I would be glad to have my account, Amire80, unblocked. I can open
another one, but i happen to like this user name.

Thank you,

--
אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
Amir Elisha Aharoni

http://aharoni.wordpress.com

"We're living in pieces,
 I want to live in peace." - T. Moore

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Michael Witten]

On Sat, Aug 7, 2010 at 12:56, Amir E. Aharoni
<amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
> I opened an account on https://git.wiki.kernel.org/ , created a user
> page and put there a link to my blog. That's always the first thing i
> do on wikis to which i plan to contribute, because that's the easiest
> way to tell the world who i am before i start changing pages that
> other people wrote.

I say this without malice: Nobody really cares who you are.

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Amir E. Aharoni]

2010/8/7 Michael Witten <mfwitten@gmail.com>:
> On Sat, Aug 7, 2010 at 12:56, Amir E. Aharoni
> <amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
>> I opened an account on https://git.wiki.kernel.org/ , created a user
>> page and put there a link to my blog. That's always the first thing i
>> do on wikis to which i plan to contribute, because that's the easiest
>> way to tell the world who i am before i start changing pages that
>> other people wrote.
>
> I say this without malice: Nobody really cares who you are.

And you are quite right, but from several years of experience with
wikis i saw much more misunderstanding coming from editing without
creating a user page than from creating a user page without editing,
so what happened to me today was quite shocking.

And all the more: if you don't care about user pages, just lock them
for editing.

-- 
אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
Amir Elisha Aharoni

http://aharoni.wordpress.com

"We're living in pieces,
 I want to live in peace." - T. Moore

Re: wiki "abuse"

[david]

On Sat, 7 Aug 2010, Amir E. Aharoni wrote:

> 2010/8/7 Michael Witten <mfwitten@gmail.com>:
>> On Sat, Aug 7, 2010 at 12:56, Amir E. Aharoni
>> <amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
>>> I opened an account on https://git.wiki.kernel.org/ , created a user
>>> page and put there a link to my blog. That's always the first thing i
>>> do on wikis to which i plan to contribute, because that's the easiest
>>> way to tell the world who i am before i start changing pages that
>>> other people wrote.
>>
>> I say this without malice: Nobody really cares who you are.
>
> And you are quite right, but from several years of experience with
> wikis i saw much more misunderstanding coming from editing without
> creating a user page than from creating a user page without editing,
> so what happened to me today was quite shocking.
>
> And all the more: if you don't care about user pages, just lock them
> for editing.

the git developers (and the portion of the community that they represent) 
tend to care far more about the content of the contribution (either in 
documentation or in code) than who the author is.

I agree that if user pages aren't wanted on the wiki they should just be 
disabled, but for whatever reason they are not.

there is a lot of spamming happening nowdays in wikis and other web 
forums, so it's not too surprising to me that a page that is just 'this is 
who I am and here is a link to my blog' would be considered spam. There 
are companies who are out there trying to get improved google ratings by 
having lots of pages with links to their page. many of them do this by 
buying lots of domains and hosting them in different places, but there are 
a lot that are unethical enough to put pages very similar to what you 
describe as having posted on any site they can manage to get into.

so, what Michael posted really is true (or at least very close to true), 
the git community really doesn't care who you are, feel free to contibute, 
ask questions, etc. As you contribute you will build a reputation within 
git, but you will never be grilled about your outside expericance, and 
unless you have something directly related to what you are submitting 
(i.e. I did this before, <here> and it worked really well) nobody will 
care about it.



Remember that when Linus started coding linux, he was a nobody, and the 
established experts were telling him that what he was doing was the wrong 
way to do anything. With that sort of background, the community cares 
about what you do, not who you are.

David Lang

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Amir E. Aharoni]

2010/8/8  <david@lang.hm>:
> On Sat, 7 Aug 2010, Amir E. Aharoni wrote:
> there is a lot of spamming happening nowdays in wikis and other web forums,
> so it's not too surprising to me that a page that is just 'this is who I am
> and here is a link to my blog' would be considered spam. There are companies
> who are out there trying to get improved google ratings by having lots of
> pages with links to their page. many of them do this by buying lots of
> domains and hosting them in different places, but there are a lot that are
> unethical enough to put pages very similar to what you describe as having
> posted on any site they can manage to get into.

There are people on this list who know MediaWiki much better than i
do, so you don't need technical support from me, but i'll mention
anyway, that installing a Captcha extension, even a simple one such as
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ConfirmEdit , lowers automated
spamming.

And if the suspected spammer is a human and not a robot, talking to
him is better than blocking on sight.

Can anyone please unblock my account Amire80 and IP 132.64.34.38?
There are some contributions i want to make. Thank you.

-- 
אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
Amir Elisha Aharoni

http://aharoni.wordpress.com

"We're living in pieces,
 I want to live in peace." - T. Moore

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Štěpán Němec]

"Amir E. Aharoni" <amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> writes:

> 2010/8/8  <david@lang.hm>:
>> On Sat, 7 Aug 2010, Amir E. Aharoni wrote:
>> there is a lot of spamming happening nowdays in wikis and other web forums,
>> so it's not too surprising to me that a page that is just 'this is who I am
>> and here is a link to my blog' would be considered spam. There are companies
>> who are out there trying to get improved google ratings by having lots of
>> pages with links to their page. many of them do this by buying lots of
>> domains and hosting them in different places, but there are a lot that are
>> unethical enough to put pages very similar to what you describe as having
>> posted on any site they can manage to get into.
>
> There are people on this list who know MediaWiki much better than i
> do, so you don't need technical support from me, but i'll mention
> anyway, that installing a Captcha extension, even a simple one such as
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ConfirmEdit , lowers automated
> spamming.
>
> And if the suspected spammer is a human and not a robot, talking to
> him is better than blocking on sight.
>
> Can anyone please unblock my account Amire80 and IP 132.64.34.38?
> There are some contributions i want to make. Thank you.

To the people who have replied so far: please read Amir's original
message again. The point is not if you or anyone is interested in Amir's
blog or who he is or whatever (some possibly appropriate measures were
already mentioned in this thread), the point is that if what Amir
described is true (and I see no reason to doubt that), some Git Wiki
admin obviously behaves like a jerk. I admire Amir's patience,
politeness and constructive reaction to that and hope the person who
abused him will give up admin privileges or at least apologise.

Štěpán

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Mihamina Rakotomandimby]

> stepnem@gmail.com :
> I admire Amir's patience,
> politeness and constructive reaction to that and hope the person who
> abused him will give up admin privileges or at least apologise.

So do I. But we can also notice everyone stayed polite.

-- 

       Architecte Informatique chez Blueline/Gulfsat:
    Administration Systeme, Recherche & Developpement
                                    +261 34 56 000 19

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Felipe Contreras]

On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 12:48 AM, Štěpán Němec <stepnem@gmail.com> wrote:
> "Amir E. Aharoni" <amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> writes:
> To the people who have replied so far: please read Amir's original
> message again. The point is not if you or anyone is interested in Amir's
> blog or who he is or whatever (some possibly appropriate measures were
> already mentioned in this thread), the point is that if what Amir
> described is true (and I see no reason to doubt that), some Git Wiki
> admin obviously behaves like a jerk. I admire Amir's patience,
> politeness and constructive reaction to that and hope the person who
> abused him will give up admin privileges or at least apologise.

That would have to be:
https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/User:Dscho

See:
https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Special:BlockList

-- 
Felipe Contreras

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Matthieu Moy]

"Amir E. Aharoni" <amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> writes:

> 2010/8/7 Michael Witten <mfwitten@gmail.com>:
>> On Sat, Aug 7, 2010 at 12:56, Amir E. Aharoni
>> <amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
>>> I opened an account on https://git.wiki.kernel.org/ , created a user
>>> page and put there a link to my blog. That's always the first thing i
>>> do on wikis to which i plan to contribute, because that's the easiest
>>> way to tell the world who i am before i start changing pages that
>>> other people wrote.
>>
>> I say this without malice: Nobody really cares who you are.
>
> And you are quite right, but from several years of experience with
> wikis i saw much more misunderstanding coming from editing without
> creating a user page than from creating a user page without editing,
> so what happened to me today was quite shocking.
>
> And all the more: if you don't care about user pages, just lock them
> for editing.

Just adding my 2 cents: I don't think user pages are terribly usefull,
but I don't think they harm either. I also have a user page on the
wiki with a link to my homepage, and I find this to be a simple and
good way to actually identify myself on the wiki.

-- 
Matthieu Moy
http://www-verimag.imag.fr/~moy/

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Felipe Contreras]

On Sat, Aug 7, 2010 at 10:25 PM, Michael Witten <mfwitten@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 7, 2010 at 12:56, Amir E. Aharoni
> <amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
>> I opened an account on https://git.wiki.kernel.org/ , created a user
>> page and put there a link to my blog. That's always the first thing i
>> do on wikis to which i plan to contribute, because that's the easiest
>> way to tell the world who i am before i start changing pages that
>> other people wrote.
>
> I say this without malice: Nobody really cares who you are.

Unless somebody wonders... Who did this change? The answer is one click away.

It's a feature of mediawiki, so either turn it off, or allow it.
Personally I don't see any harm in user pages.

-- 
Felipe Contreras

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Sverre Rabbelier]

Heya,

[+Dscho]

On Sat, Aug 7, 2010 at 12:56, Amir E. Aharoni
<amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
> I have accounts on dozens of wikis and i am an admin on a few of them.
> I opened an account on https://git.wiki.kernel.org/ , created a user
> page and put there a link to my blog. That's always the first thing i
> do on wikis to which i plan to contribute, because that's the easiest
> way to tell the world who i am before i start changing pages that
> other people wrote. It's not so different from filling in the
> "website" field on the profile page on GitHub, Twitter, LinkedIn or
> any other website and it's pretty normative.
>
> On the Git wiki, however, the user page i created was deleted for
> "link spam" and my account was blocked for "Spamming links to external
> sites". I asked on the deleting admin's user talk page what is wrong
> about putting a link to my blog. The admin didn't reply, but deleted
> my question with the comment "Inappropriate abuse of the Wiki as a
> messenger, as well as abuse of the admin". On all the wikis i know the
> whole point of user talk pages is sending messages between users and
> with all seriousness i just can't understand how what i did
> constitutes "abuse of the admin".
>
> It is possible, of course, that this wiki has different rules. For
> example, you may want nothing but technical pages and no personal
> content whatsoever. Although it is quite contrary to the wiki idea, it
> is legitimate, but you should at least write it somewhere. Wikis
> usually have a "Help" or a "Community portal" page - i couldn't find
> anything like that on yours. And if you don't want user and user talk
> pages to exist, just don't allow people to edit them in the first
> place.
>
> I would be glad to have my account, Amire80, unblocked. I can open
> another one, but i happen to like this user name.

See also the rest of the thread on gmane [0].

[0] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/152861

-- 
Cheers,

Sverre Rabbelier

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Tay Ray Chuan]

Hi,

On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 11:02 PM, Sverre Rabbelier <srabbelier@gmail.com> wrote:
> Heya,
>
> [+Dscho]

there, fixed that for you.

> On Sat, Aug 7, 2010 at 12:56, Amir E. Aharoni
> <amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
>> I have accounts on dozens of wikis and i am an admin on a few of them.
>> I opened an account on https://git.wiki.kernel.org/ , created a user
>> page and put there a link to my blog. That's always the first thing i
>> do on wikis to which i plan to contribute, because that's the easiest
>> way to tell the world who i am before i start changing pages that
>> other people wrote. It's not so different from filling in the
>> "website" field on the profile page on GitHub, Twitter, LinkedIn or
>> any other website and it's pretty normative.
>>
>> On the Git wiki, however, the user page i created was deleted for
>> "link spam" and my account was blocked for "Spamming links to external
>> sites". I asked on the deleting admin's user talk page what is wrong
>> about putting a link to my blog. The admin didn't reply, but deleted
>> my question with the comment "Inappropriate abuse of the Wiki as a
>> messenger, as well as abuse of the admin". On all the wikis i know the
>> whole point of user talk pages is sending messages between users and
>> with all seriousness i just can't understand how what i did
>> constitutes "abuse of the admin".
>>
>> It is possible, of course, that this wiki has different rules. For
>> example, you may want nothing but technical pages and no personal
>> content whatsoever. Although it is quite contrary to the wiki idea, it
>> is legitimate, but you should at least write it somewhere. Wikis
>> usually have a "Help" or a "Community portal" page - i couldn't find
>> anything like that on yours. And if you don't want user and user talk
>> pages to exist, just don't allow people to edit them in the first
>> place.
>>
>> I would be glad to have my account, Amire80, unblocked. I can open
>> another one, but i happen to like this user name.
>
> See also the rest of the thread on gmane [0].
>
> [0] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/152861
>
> --
> Cheers,
>
> Sverre Rabbelier
> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
>



-- 
Cheers,
Ray Chuan

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Johannes Schindelin]

Hi,

On Mon, 9 Aug 2010, Tay Ray Chuan wrote:

> > On Sat, Aug 7, 2010 at 12:56, Amir E. Aharoni
> > <amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
> >> I have accounts on dozens of wikis and i am an admin on a few of them.
> >> I opened an account on https://git.wiki.kernel.org/ , created a user
> >> page and put there a link to my blog.

It is funny. I still find this very inappropriate. Nobody else did it, yet 
you feel fit to just force your ways onto the Git wiki.

I would have welcomed edits that add to the value of the Git wiki as an 
information source about Git. Not as an information source about you.

Whatever.

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Johannes Schindelin]

Hi,

On Mon, 9 Aug 2010, Johannes Schindelin wrote:

> I would have welcomed edits that add to the value of the Git wiki as an 
> information source about Git. Not as an information source about you.

Just to make things crystal clear. The _only_ edit was this link to your 
blog. You contributed nothing else. Nada. Zilch.

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Valeo de Vries]

On 9 August 2010 17:24, Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Mon, 9 Aug 2010, Johannes Schindelin wrote:
>
>> I would have welcomed edits that add to the value of the Git wiki as an
>> information source about Git. Not as an information source about you.
>
> Just to make things crystal clear. The _only_ edit was this link to your
> blog. You contributed nothing else. Nada. Zilch.

Would the same have happened if someone like Randy Dunlap or Linus
himself had created an account, added a link to their blog or whatever
to their user page *before* making contributions? I'm guessing not.

This is quite common practice on the 'net. I personally think that,
before one goes and advertises one's site on some else's (and let's
face it, with zero contributions in your history, that's what it is -
advertising), that you should contribute something of more value
first, but that's just my personal opinion. However since this is
clearly disliked on the Git wiki, user pages should either be disabled
(which is quite easy to do) or there should be a *disclaimer*
somewhere that this sort of behaviour will not be tolerated. Somewhere
like, oh I don't know,
<https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Git_SCM_Wiki:General_disclaimer>
(which is, quite helpfully, blank).

Banning users without letting on what the rules are isn't very polite,
or productive for that matter. Unless the goal is to drive folks away
and stop them contributing... which is what wikis are there for
(outside contributions), right?

Valeo

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Johannes Schindelin]

Hi,

On Mon, 9 Aug 2010, Valeo de Vries wrote:

> Banning users without letting on what the rules are isn't very polite,
> or productive for that matter.

When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Going about in Rome, spitting 
everywhere, is rude, even if it is considered polite in your home country.

https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php?title=Special:ListUsers&limit=500

... and yes, you will find that e.g. Matthieu Moy has a user page there, 
which should answer your other question.

As for the other two user pages: I was not sure about them, so I left 
them, even if I don't believe that they should live at the primary source 
for information about Git.

Hth,
Johannes

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Valeo de Vries]

On 9 August 2010 19:08, Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Mon, 9 Aug 2010, Valeo de Vries wrote:
>
>> Banning users without letting on what the rules are isn't very polite,
>> or productive for that matter.
>
> When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Going about in Rome, spitting
> everywhere, is rude, even if it is considered polite in your home country.

Not that dissimilar to "my neighbour beats his wife, so I do too"...

That little nitpick aside, you've completely avoided

> https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php?title=Special:ListUsers&limit=500
>
> ... and yes, you will find that e.g. Matthieu Moy has a user page there,
> which should answer your other question.

Ok, so some users are allowed links on their user page and some are
not. The point I was trying to drive home, which I think you may have
possibly missed, is that nowhere on the Git wiki does it say that user
pages cannot be used in such a way. Nor is there any mention that
using *enabled* features such as reaching an admin via their talk page
will get them banned for life.

> As for the other two user pages: I was not sure about them, so I left
> them, even if I don't believe that they should live at the primary source
> for information about Git.

Then why aren't these features disabled, if using them will result in
an infinite ban (which is a little bit too strong, no?) from the Git
wiki?

Valeo

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason]

On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 18:08, Johannes Schindelin
<Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Mon, 9 Aug 2010, Valeo de Vries wrote:
>
>> Banning users without letting on what the rules are isn't very polite,
>> or productive for that matter.
>
> When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Going about in Rome, spitting
> everywhere, is rude, even if it is considered polite in your home country.

Going to Rome and introducing yourself would probably be more
analogous in this case, and then being kicked out when you find the
Romans don't care :)

Anyway, people are wont to treat things they've seen in the past the
same, and most wikis have and encourage user pages & associated talk
pages.

If the Git wiki doesn't want them that could be advertised more
prominently, here are some suggestions:

  * Change this to cite some community rules page or whatever, it's
    what users see when they sign up:

        https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/MediaWiki:Welcomecreation

  * Disable links to talk / user pages, e.g. I have this (incomplete)
    thing in a LocalSettings.php for a wiki that doesn't want talk
    pages:

        // No user/talk for anonymous users
        $wgShowIPinHeader = false;

        $wgHooks['SkinTemplateNavigation'][] = 'vfRemoveWikiLikeLinks';
        function vfRemoveWikiLikeLinks( &$sktemplate, &$links ) {
            // Remove talk page links
            unset($links['namespaces']['talk']);
        }

    I have some other stuff, but it's mostly specific to the Vector
    skin (the Git wiki uses monobook). You can also add a page view
    hook that redirects users visiting User_talk:* or User:* pages to
    some page explaining that they're not wanted using similar hooks.

    Having two red links on every page on the wiki saying

       "There is currently no text in this page. You can search for
        this page title in other pages, search the related logs, or
        *edit this page*."

    Is a pretty big invitation to edit your userpage.

  * Add something to your user / user talk page (since you're an
    admin) indicating how to contact you, e.g.:

        Hi. I'm an admin here. Please don't use this page to message
        me, but
        [https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Special:EmailUser/Dscho
send me an E-Mail]
        instead.

And I'm sorry that I called you an "out of control admin" in an
earlier mail, that was uncalled for.

But I do think it's important that we as a project try to project a
friendly attitude to newbies. Doing thankless admining is hard, but
how we (people helping on IRC, the list, the wiki etc) talk to and
interface with new people interested in Git can have a lot of positive
or negative effect on the reputation of the project.

In this case it sounds like the problem can be solved in the long term
with some software modifications to the wiki, I happen to have some
experience with MediaWiki, and I'd be happy to help with that.

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Johannes Schindelin]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: TEXT/PLAIN, Size: 3184 bytes --]

Hi,

On Mon, 9 Aug 2010, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:

> On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 18:08, Johannes Schindelin
> <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > On Mon, 9 Aug 2010, Valeo de Vries wrote:
> >
> >> Banning users without letting on what the rules are isn't very polite,
> >> or productive for that matter.
> >
> > When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Going about in Rome, spitting
> > everywhere, is rude, even if it is considered polite in your home country.
> 
> Going to Rome and introducing yourself would probably be more
> analogous in this case, and then being kicked out when you find the
> Romans don't care :)
> 
> Anyway, people are wont to treat things they've seen in the past the
> same, and most wikis have and encourage user pages & associated talk
> pages.
> 
> If the Git wiki doesn't want them that could be advertised more
> prominently, here are some suggestions:
> 
>   * Change this to cite some community rules page or whatever, it's
>     what users see when they sign up:
> 
>         https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/MediaWiki:Welcomecreation
> 
>   * Disable links to talk / user pages, e.g. I have this (incomplete)
>     thing in a LocalSettings.php for a wiki that doesn't want talk
>     pages:
> 
>         // No user/talk for anonymous users
>         $wgShowIPinHeader = false;
> 
>         $wgHooks['SkinTemplateNavigation'][] = 'vfRemoveWikiLikeLinks';
>         function vfRemoveWikiLikeLinks( &$sktemplate, &$links ) {
>             // Remove talk page links
>             unset($links['namespaces']['talk']);
>         }
> 
>     I have some other stuff, but it's mostly specific to the Vector
>     skin (the Git wiki uses monobook). You can also add a page view
>     hook that redirects users visiting User_talk:* or User:* pages to
>     some page explaining that they're not wanted using similar hooks.
> 
>     Having two red links on every page on the wiki saying
> 
>        "There is currently no text in this page. You can search for
>         this page title in other pages, search the related logs, or
>         *edit this page*."
> 
>     Is a pretty big invitation to edit your userpage.
> 
>   * Add something to your user / user talk page (since you're an
>     admin) indicating how to contact you, e.g.:
> 
>         Hi. I'm an admin here. Please don't use this page to message
>         me, but
>         [https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Special:EmailUser/Dscho
> send me an E-Mail]
>         instead.
> 
> And I'm sorry that I called you an "out of control admin" in an
> earlier mail, that was uncalled for.
> 
> But I do think it's important that we as a project try to project a
> friendly attitude to newbies. Doing thankless admining is hard, but
> how we (people helping on IRC, the list, the wiki etc) talk to and
> interface with new people interested in Git can have a lot of positive
> or negative effect on the reputation of the project.
> 
> In this case it sounds like the problem can be solved in the long term
> with some software modifications to the wiki, I happen to have some
> experience with MediaWiki, and I'd be happy to help with that.

I welcome you warmly to do all that.

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Daniele Segato]

On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 8:08 PM, Johannes Schindelin
<Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:
> When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Going about in Rome, spitting
> everywhere, is rude, even if it is considered polite in your home country.

This is racist.

I'm Italian, I can't say I love my country or my people manners but
nowhere here "spitting everywhere" is considered polite, nor everybody
does that.

And you missed the point here.

Does the wiki allow a personal page?
If it does then don't bother people who create their personal page and
don't ban them without asking - contacting them in advance.

If you simply don't want personal pages in the wiki then disable them.

This is the second time I see you acting like that (judging people
without knowing the background or without letting them explain them).
The first time was some day ago in a bug report from msysgit which is OT now.

This kind of behavior cut out people who could or are willing to help
git and the git community like me or Amir.

My 2 cent

Daniele Segato

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Johannes Schindelin]

Hi,

On Tue, 10 Aug 2010, Daniele Segato wrote:

> On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 8:08 PM, Johannes Schindelin
> <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:
> > When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Going about in Rome, spitting
> > everywhere, is rude, even if it is considered polite in your home country.
> 
> This is racist.
> 
> I'm Italian, I can't say I love my country or my people manners but 
> nowhere here "spitting everywhere" is considered polite, nor everybody 
> does that.

You completely missed the point. You assumed that I said spitting 
everywhere is what Romans do. In fact, I said the opposite.

And you missed the point even more completely: there are societies, where 
spitting is not considered rude. If you are there, and you consider this 
rude, you are in for trouble.

So you missed the point utterly, therefore I repeat it here in more clear 
English: if you want to add a page as you do everywhere else in the 
internet also on the Git Wiki, then look around first, and see if others 
have behaved about the same. If not, don't (unless you are 
super-optimistic that your inflammatory self-promotion will gain you many 
friends). This is basic etiquette, not only in the nets.

As for the accusation that there was no explanation: this is false. I did 
not want to address this accusation because it is so plainly ridiculous, 
but it seems that everybody and her dog thinks "yes, Dscho is such a nasty 
person, he would do that, so let's assume that the other guy did not lie". 
In effect, all who keep this thread alive, reinforcing the accusations, 
getting emotional and stuff, are feeding the troll. And making sure that 
the task of keeping the Git Wiki clean is as undesirable as [censored]. 

So, sure, keep on going with this thread. I'm done.

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Daniele Segato]

On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 11:09 AM, Johannes Schindelin
<Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Tue, 10 Aug 2010, Daniele Segato wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 8:08 PM, Johannes Schindelin
>> <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:
>> > When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Going about in Rome, spitting
>> > everywhere, is rude, even if it is considered polite in your home country.
>>
>> This is racist.
>>
>> I'm Italian, I can't say I love my country or my people manners but
>> nowhere here "spitting everywhere" is considered polite, nor everybody
>> does that.
>
> You completely missed the point. You assumed that I said spitting
> everywhere is what Romans do. In fact, I said the opposite.
>
> And you missed the point even more completely: there are societies, where
> spitting is not considered rude. If you are there, and you consider this
> rude, you are in for trouble.

Sorry,

I misunderstood your sentence reading it.
I apologize.

Daniele Segato

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Joshua Juran]

On Aug 10, 2010, at 1:03 AM, Daniele Segato wrote:

> On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 8:08 PM, Johannes Schindelin
> <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:
>> When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Going about in Rome, spitting
>> everywhere, is rude, even if it is considered polite in your home  
>> country.
>
> This is racist.
>
> I'm Italian, I can't say I love my country or my people manners but
> nowhere here "spitting everywhere" is considered polite, nor everybody
> does that.

I don't see the above statement as an example of that or problematic  
in any way.

First of all, it says that "spitting everywhere" is considered rude,  
not polite in Rome.  Your objection regards an assertion that wasn't  
made.

Second, if anything, he implied that spitting hypothetically might be  
considered polite in the home country of Amir Aharoni, or maybe Valeo  
de Vries -- not yours.  Another interpretation is that the second  
person was used as a variable for whomever, not a specific person.

Third, references to Rome and Romans generally refer to the historical  
Roman Empire, not modern Italians living in Rome.  Except in the case  
of "When in Rome" where it's invariably a metaphor, and not actually  
referring to Rome at all.[1]  Here it refers to the Git wiki, and the  
'home country' is some other wiki.

> And you missed the point here.

Watch out -- I hear it's contagious.

Josh

[1] This holds even if the speaker is referring to Roma, Italy, which  
is not the same place as ancient Rome.

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason]

On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 16:21, Johannes Schindelin
<Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Mon, 9 Aug 2010, Tay Ray Chuan wrote:
>
>> > On Sat, Aug 7, 2010 at 12:56, Amir E. Aharoni
>> > <amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
>> >> I have accounts on dozens of wikis and i am an admin on a few of them.
>> >> I opened an account on https://git.wiki.kernel.org/ , created a user
>> >> page and put there a link to my blog.
>
> It is funny. I still find this very inappropriate. Nobody else did it, yet
> you feel fit to just force your ways onto the Git wiki.

Why do you think noone else did it? There are several user pages:

    https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php?title=Special:AllPages&namespace=2

and the deletion log suggests that other users are having their user
pages deleted, including Jakub Narebski (a list regular):

    https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Special:Log/delete

> I would have welcomed edits that add to the value of the Git wiki as an
> information source about Git. Not as an information source about you.
>
> Whatever.

It's not like he had much of a chance to do so, being banned within a
day.

I don't know what exactly went down here (the pages have been deleted,
and I'm not a sysop on the wiki). But from the discussion in this
thread User:Dscho seems to be an out of control admin. A user:

    1. Created an account & Added a user page
    2. Had the user page deleted as "link spam" (I'll grant him that,
       it's somewhat spammy behavior with no other contributions.
    3. Was banned when asking the admin on the admin's user page what
       was wrong, the admin subsequently deleting his user talk page.

#3 could easily have been handled by explaining that the git wiki
doesn't use user pages like other wikis, and that adding one with a
link to your blog looks spamming, not by banning the user right away.

And as an aside, it's relatively easy to configure MediaWiki not to
use user pages (or at least, not to make them visible anywhere).

If the admins at the Git wiki really don't want user pages there doing
that would reduce a lot of friction in the future.

Users create these pages out of habit when using MediaWiki because the
software and most MediaWiki installations encourage it.

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Felipe Contreras]

On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 7:21 PM, Johannes Schindelin
<Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:
> On Mon, 9 Aug 2010, Tay Ray Chuan wrote:
>
>> > On Sat, Aug 7, 2010 at 12:56, Amir E. Aharoni
>> > <amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
>> >> I have accounts on dozens of wikis and i am an admin on a few of them.
>> >> I opened an account on https://git.wiki.kernel.org/ , created a user
>> >> page and put there a link to my blog.
>
> It is funny. I still find this very inappropriate. Nobody else did it, yet
> you feel fit to just force your ways onto the Git wiki.

And I find inappropriate for an admin to ban people without any warning.

If the change is done by a real well-intentioned user, then you should
revert the change explaining your reasoning, and allowing counter
arguments, not ban.

-- 
Felipe Contreras

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Sverre Rabbelier]

Heya,

On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 14:03, Felipe Contreras
<felipe.contreras@gmail.com> wrote:
> If the change is done by a real well-intentioned user, then you should
> revert the change explaining your reasoning, and allowing counter
> arguments, not ban.

Come on people, let's be serious here. The guy is not a real
well-intentioned user, he's a troll trying to use the git wiki for
pagerank. Let's stop feeding said troll and let this thread die.

John, can you turn of user pages on the git wiki? It seems that Ævar
can help you do this if need be.

-- 
Cheers,

Sverre Rabbelier

Re: wiki "abuse"

[J.H.]

On 08/09/2010 01:03 PM, Sverre Rabbelier wrote:
> Heya,
> 
> On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 14:03, Felipe Contreras
> <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> wrote:
>> If the change is done by a real well-intentioned user, then you should
>> revert the change explaining your reasoning, and allowing counter
>> arguments, not ban.
> 
> Come on people, let's be serious here. The guy is not a real
> well-intentioned user, he's a troll trying to use the git wiki for
> pagerank. Let's stop feeding said troll and let this thread die.
> 
> John, can you turn of user pages on the git wiki? It seems that Ævar
> can help you do this if need be.

If that's the consensus and such it's doable (I believe), take a little
finagling.  So I'll put this out there now, is there any objection to
this course of action, if so now would be a good time to speak up before
I turn the user pages off.

- John 'Warthog9' Hawley

Re: wiki "abuse"

[René Scharfe]

Am 09.08.2010 22:03, schrieb Sverre Rabbelier:
> Heya,
> 
> On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 14:03, Felipe Contreras
> <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> wrote:
>> If the change is done by a real well-intentioned user, then you should
>> revert the change explaining your reasoning, and allowing counter
>> arguments, not ban.
> 
> Come on people, let's be serious here. The guy is not a real
> well-intentioned user, he's a troll trying to use the git wiki for
> pagerank. Let's stop feeding said troll and let this thread die.

In the mails in this thread he doesn't look very trollish to me, and he
didn't have much of a chance to contribute something useful to the wiki.
 What are the grounds of your verdict?

Can user pages be excluded from indexing by search engines?

René

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Sverre Rabbelier]

Heya,

2010/8/9 René Scharfe <rene.scharfe@lsrfire.ath.cx>:
> In the mails in this thread he doesn't look very trollish to me, and he
> didn't have much of a chance to contribute something useful to the wiki.

He had a full day.

>  What are the grounds of your verdict?

Contents of the profile page, and high troll content of this thread.

> Can user pages be excluded from indexing by search engines?

Yup, by disabling them :P. Mediawiki has rel="nofollow" on all
outgoing links, but I don't know how easy that is to turn on. I see no
use in having user pages though, so I'm in favor of just turning them
off.

-- 
Cheers,

Sverre Rabbelier

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason]

2010/8/9 Sverre Rabbelier <srabbelier@gmail.com>:
> Heya,
>
> 2010/8/9 René Scharfe <rene.scharfe@lsrfire.ath.cx>:
>> In the mails in this thread he doesn't look very trollish to me, and he
>> didn't have much of a chance to contribute something useful to the wiki.
>
> He had a full day.

You must be one of those übermench to whom the concept of
procrastination is unknown :)

>>  What are the grounds of your verdict?
>
> Contents of the profile page, and high troll content of this thread.

FWIW the contents were (sorry Johannes):

    Amir E. Aharoni, a proud SVN user.

    * [http://aharoni.wordpress.com/ Aharoni in Unicode, ya mama - blog]
    ** [http://aharoni.wordpress.com/2010/08/05/advocacy-for-the-uncool/ a
    reality check for git fanboys]

FWIW he seems to be able to contribute to Wikipedia without being
banned for trolling: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Amire80

As an aside, that's not an unusual user page for Wikipedia. Which I
think goes a long way to clearing up the obvious culture clash here.

Anyway, let's try to shoot first and ask questions later, or was that
the other way around?

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Sverre Rabbelier]

Heya,

2010/8/9 Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>:
> You must be one of those übermench to whom the concept of
> procrastination is unknown :)

Not that, but I am leery of people trying to promote their site like this.

> FWIW the contents were (sorry Johannes):
>
>    Amir E. Aharoni, a proud SVN user.
>
>    * [http://aharoni.wordpress.com/ Aharoni in Unicode, ya mama - blog]
>    ** [http://aharoni.wordpress.com/2010/08/05/advocacy-for-the-uncool/ a
>    reality check for git fanboys]
>
> FWIW he seems to be able to contribute to Wikipedia without being
> banned for trolling: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Amire80

I think there's a significant quality difference between that
wikipedia profile and what was on the wiki.

> As an aside, that's not an unusual user page for Wikipedia. Which I
> think goes a long way to clearing up the obvious culture clash here.

I agree, the Wikipedia page looks a lot more like a user page, and a
lot less like a shameless plug because his wiki profile links to other
wiki pages, not to his personal website.

-- 
Cheers,

Sverre Rabbelier

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Michael J Gruber]

Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason venit, vidit, dixit 09.08.2010 23:21:
> 2010/8/9 Sverre Rabbelier <srabbelier@gmail.com>:
>> Heya,
>>
>> 2010/8/9 René Scharfe <rene.scharfe@lsrfire.ath.cx>:
>>> In the mails in this thread he doesn't look very trollish to me, and he
>>> didn't have much of a chance to contribute something useful to the wiki.
>>
>> He had a full day.
> 
> You must be one of those übermench to whom the concept of
> procrastination is unknown :)
> 
>>>  What are the grounds of your verdict?
>>
>> Contents of the profile page, and high troll content of this thread.
> 
> FWIW the contents were (sorry Johannes):
> 
>     Amir E. Aharoni, a proud SVN user.
> 
>     * [http://aharoni.wordpress.com/ Aharoni in Unicode, ya mama - blog]
>     ** [http://aharoni.wordpress.com/2010/08/05/advocacy-for-the-uncool/ a
>     reality check for git fanboys]
> 

[Thanks for sharing.]
That was actually part of this thread's problem: There was no easy way
for none-admins to even see *what* had been deleted since there was no
easy way get at the history for the deleted user page of a banned user.
Based on that content, probably most people would have sympathized with
the deletion, although not necessarily with the (lack of) communication
flow.

Michael

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Felipe Contreras]

On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 10:29 AM, Michael J Gruber
<git@drmicha.warpmail.net> wrote:
> Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason venit, vidit, dixit 09.08.2010 23:21:
>> 2010/8/9 Sverre Rabbelier <srabbelier@gmail.com>:
>>     Amir E. Aharoni, a proud SVN user.
>>
>>     * [http://aharoni.wordpress.com/ Aharoni in Unicode, ya mama - blog]
>>     ** [http://aharoni.wordpress.com/2010/08/05/advocacy-for-the-uncool/ a
>>     reality check for git fanboys]
>
> [Thanks for sharing.]
> That was actually part of this thread's problem: There was no easy way
> for none-admins to even see *what* had been deleted since there was no
> easy way get at the history for the deleted user page of a banned user.

There was no way to see that at all.

This is the first time I see that content, and yeah, it does appear trolly.

> Based on that content, probably most people would have sympathized with
> the deletion, although not necessarily with the (lack of) communication
> flow.

No, I don't sympathize with the deletion, I would have sympathized
with reverting that change; one thing is the trolly content, and
another thing is the user pages.

-- 
Felipe Contreras

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Felipe Contreras]

2010/8/10 Sverre Rabbelier <srabbelier@gmail.com>:
> 2010/8/9 René Scharfe <rene.scharfe@lsrfire.ath.cx>:
>> In the mails in this thread he doesn't look very trollish to me, and he
>> didn't have much of a chance to contribute something useful to the wiki.
>
> He had a full day.

Huh? He is still blocked AFAICS:
https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Special:BlockList

>>  What are the grounds of your verdict?
>
> Contents of the profile page, and high troll content of this thread.

Definition of troll:
In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory,
extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an
online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent
of provoking other users into a desired emotional response or of
otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.

I don't see any of those things. If his change was reverted with an
appropriate comment, or his account was blocked *temporarily*, he
wouldn't have had to post anything on this list.

>> Can user pages be excluded from indexing by search engines?
>
> Yup, by disabling them :P. Mediawiki has rel="nofollow" on all
> outgoing links, but I don't know how easy that is to turn on.

That would make certain pages not useful:
https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/GitProjects

-- 
Felipe Contreras

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Sverre Rabbelier]

Heya,

2010/8/9 Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>:
> Huh? He is still blocked AFAICS:

Yes, but _before_ he was blocked.

> That would make certain pages not useful:
> https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/GitProjects

That page is just as useful as or nofollow attribute. The only thing
the nofollow attribute does is makes the pagerank not flow through. It
doesn't make that page any less useful as a jump-board for humans.

-- 
Cheers,

Sverre Rabbelier

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Felipe Contreras]

2010/8/10 Sverre Rabbelier <srabbelier@gmail.com>:
> 2010/8/9 Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>:
>> Huh? He is still blocked AFAICS:
>
> Yes, but _before_ he was blocked.

He said the first thing he does in a wiki is to edit his user page.

Anyway, I don't see why are we arguing this, by well-intentioned I
meant not linking to party poker or something like that. He couldn't
know that editing his user page was frowned-upon since there are no
guidelines about it, so he didn't do anything wrong. Just unblock him.

Here's a useful Wikipedia guideline: assume good faith:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Assume_good_faith

>> That would make certain pages not useful:
>> https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/GitProjects
>
> That page is just as useful as or nofollow attribute. The only thing
> the nofollow attribute does is makes the pagerank not flow through. It
> doesn't make that page any less useful as a jump-board for humans.

Oh, OK then.

-- 
Felipe Contreras

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Johannes Schindelin]

On Tue, 10 Aug 2010, Felipe Contreras wrote:

> Here's a useful Wikipedia guideline: assume good faith: 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Assume_good_faith

For the dear love of God.

Just assume -- hypothetically -- for one second that you, Felipe 
Contreras, tried to create a user page on 
http://subversion.tigris.org/wiki/ reading like this:

-- snip --
Felipe E. Contreras, a proud Git user.

* [http://felipec.wordpress.com/ Felipe Contreras]
** [http://felipec.wordpress.com/tag/git/ Keep an open mind]
** [http://whygitisbetterthanx.com/ Git is better]
-- snap --

only that the last link was to one of your blog posts and was not well 
researched.

If you still think that such a completely unbiased and uncontroversial 
user page was a good idea, well, you should take over the monitoring of 
the Git Wiki, I guess, and make sure you remove all link spam. Actually, I 
like that idea. Can you do that, please? Can you watch the recent changes 
of the Git Wiki and keep it a place where information is king? Thank you 
so much in advance!

Re: wiki "abuse"

[A Large Angry SCM]

On 08/09/2010 07:00 PM, Johannes Schindelin wrote:
> On Tue, 10 Aug 2010, Felipe Contreras wrote:
>
>> Here's a useful Wikipedia guideline: assume good faith:
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Assume_good_faith
>
> For the dear love of God.
>
> Just assume -- hypothetically -- for one second that you, Felipe
> Contreras, tried to create a user page on
> http://subversion.tigris.org/wiki/ reading like this:
>
> -- snip --
> Felipe E. Contreras, a proud Git user.
>
> * [http://felipec.wordpress.com/ Felipe Contreras]
> ** [http://felipec.wordpress.com/tag/git/ Keep an open mind]
> ** [http://whygitisbetterthanx.com/ Git is better]
> -- snap --
>
> only that the last link was to one of your blog posts and was not well
> researched.
>
> If you still think that such a completely unbiased and uncontroversial
> user page was a good idea, well, you should take over the monitoring of
> the Git Wiki, I guess, and make sure you remove all link spam. Actually, I
> like that idea. Can you do that, please? Can you watch the recent changes
> of the Git Wiki and keep it a place where information is king? Thank you
> so much in advance!

Dscho: Thank you for the excellent job you _are_ doing keeping the spam 
on the git wiki under control. Please continue.

Warthog9: Please take this as another vote to disable the user pages.

Everyone else: Most of this thread was/is well intentioned but there is 
a significant problem with spam on high profile wiki sites (like ours) 
and the information readily available (from what I've read on this 
thread) to the _volunteer_ wiki admin slash spam fighter fit the pattern 
of a spammer. If you believe that Johannes is not doing an acceptable 
job policing the wiki _AND_ you are willing and able to do the job then 
speak up with that information.

Re: wiki "abuse"

[david]

On Mon, 9 Aug 2010, A Large Angry SCM wrote:

> On 08/09/2010 07:00 PM, Johannes Schindelin wrote:
>> On Tue, 10 Aug 2010, Felipe Contreras wrote:
>> 
>>> Here's a useful Wikipedia guideline: assume good faith:
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Assume_good_faith
>> 
>> For the dear love of God.
>> 
>> Just assume -- hypothetically -- for one second that you, Felipe
>> Contreras, tried to create a user page on
>> http://subversion.tigris.org/wiki/ reading like this:
>> 
>> -- snip --
>> Felipe E. Contreras, a proud Git user.
>> 
>> * [http://felipec.wordpress.com/ Felipe Contreras]
>> ** [http://felipec.wordpress.com/tag/git/ Keep an open mind]
>> ** [http://whygitisbetterthanx.com/ Git is better]
>> -- snap --
>> 
>> only that the last link was to one of your blog posts and was not well
>> researched.
>> 
>> If you still think that such a completely unbiased and uncontroversial
>> user page was a good idea, well, you should take over the monitoring of
>> the Git Wiki, I guess, and make sure you remove all link spam. Actually, I
>> like that idea. Can you do that, please? Can you watch the recent changes
>> of the Git Wiki and keep it a place where information is king? Thank you
>> so much in advance!
>
> Dscho: Thank you for the excellent job you _are_ doing keeping the spam on 
> the git wiki under control. Please continue.
>
> Warthog9: Please take this as another vote to disable the user pages.
>
> Everyone else: Most of this thread was/is well intentioned but there is a 
> significant problem with spam on high profile wiki sites (like ours) and the 
> information readily available (from what I've read on this thread) to the 
> _volunteer_ wiki admin slash spam fighter fit the pattern of a spammer. If 
> you believe that Johannes is not doing an acceptable job policing the wiki 
> _AND_ you are willing and able to do the job then speak up with that 
> information.

the big problem is not that his page was removed, there's some problem 
around the fact that there was not hint to him that it wasn't allowed.

the big problem that I think many people see is that when he asked the 
admin why it was removed, instead of being given an explination (or 
ideally, beping pointed to an explination) his questions was deleted as 
being 'admin abuse' and he was banned, still without explination.

This thread has explored why the content he posted was not desrirable, but 
if you are banning someone, you should not assume that they know why you 
are banning them.

David Lang

Re: wiki "abuse"

[John Tapsell]

On 10 August 2010 08:18, A Large Angry SCM <gitzilla@gmail.com> wrote:
> Everyone else: Most of this thread was/is well intentioned but there is a
> significant problem with spam on high profile wiki sites (like ours) and the
> information readily available (from what I've read on this thread) to the
> _volunteer_ wiki admin slash spam fighter fit the pattern of a spammer. If
> you believe that Johannes is not doing an acceptable job policing the wiki
> _AND_ you are willing and able to do the job then speak up with that
> information.

The problem though is that Johannes does not see anything wrong with
his actions.  It's not like it was just a mistake, but he is pretty
much saying that he will repeat his behavior of banning people for
asking polite questions.

I can understand being reluctant to criticize him for fear that if he
leaves someone else will have to take up the job (or worse, noone
does).  But I do think it's important to not let such issues slide out
of such worries.  It should be important for you guys to attract new
blood to the project, and things like this does put a sour taste in
mouth of new developers.

Amir has shown nothing but ultra politeness throughout this thread,
and has even apologized to Johannes (though I do not see why), and in
return he has been attacked.

John

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Ted Ts'o]

On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 07:46:29PM +0900, John Tapsell wrote:
> 
> Amir has shown nothing but ultra politeness throughout this thread,
> and has even apologized to Johannes (though I do not see why), and in
> return he has been attacked.

Have you read the rest of his thread?  The pointer that he was trying
to put on his user page points to contect that isn't all that polite,
and definitely trollish.

Johannes probably would have avoided most of this if he had used a
custom reason, "user attempt to put pointer to an anti-git trollish
screed; banning as a troll".

					- Ted

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Wincent Colaiuta]

El 10/08/2010, a las 12:46, John Tapsell escribió:

> On 10 August 2010 08:18, A Large Angry SCM <gitzilla@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Everyone else: Most of this thread was/is well intentioned but there is a
>> significant problem with spam on high profile wiki sites (like ours) and the
>> information readily available (from what I've read on this thread) to the
>> _volunteer_ wiki admin slash spam fighter fit the pattern of a spammer. If
>> you believe that Johannes is not doing an acceptable job policing the wiki
>> _AND_ you are willing and able to do the job then speak up with that
>> information.
> 
> The problem though is that Johannes does not see anything wrong with
> his actions.  It's not like it was just a mistake, but he is pretty
> much saying that he will repeat his behavior of banning people for
> asking polite questions.

Seriously, Dscho is serving as a wiki gardener as a volunteer, on his own time, for the good of the community. He is not being paid to do it, and in order for him to keep his daily gardening down to a few minutes' work, it's quite reasonable of him to make rapid assessments of edits and then decide what to do about it. 

Completely unknown stranger walks in (never posted to Git mailing list, never submitted a patch) and the first thing he does is set up a user page with links back to his own site, which happen to be of a trollish nature. Dscho quite reasonably identifies it as likely spam, trolling or otherwise undesirable content, and deletes and bans. I would have done the same thing.

If the user in question really does have legit contributions to make, he'll come here and ask about getting unbanned, which is what this guy did, surprisingly. Having read the guy's blog post, however, I seriously doubt that he has anything useful to add to the wiki. Let him contribute something useful here first (ie. patches, or answering user questions) and he'll have proved himself to be something other than what he appears to be (a troll).

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Felipe Contreras]

On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 2:00 AM, Johannes Schindelin
<Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:
> On Tue, 10 Aug 2010, Felipe Contreras wrote:
>
>> Here's a useful Wikipedia guideline: assume good faith:
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Assume_good_faith
>
> For the dear love of God.
>
> Just assume -- hypothetically -- for one second that you, Felipe
> Contreras, tried to create a user page on
> http://subversion.tigris.org/wiki/ reading like this:
>
> -- snip --
> Felipe E. Contreras, a proud Git user.
>
> * [http://felipec.wordpress.com/ Felipe Contreras]
> ** [http://felipec.wordpress.com/tag/git/ Keep an open mind]
> ** [http://whygitisbetterthanx.com/ Git is better]
> -- snap --
>
> only that the last link was to one of your blog posts and was not well
> researched.
>
> If you still think that such a completely unbiased and uncontroversial
> user page was a good idea,

That's a straw man fallacy.

What I think is a good idea to have in a wiki is irrelevant; we are
talking about how to deal with (apparently) unwanted content coming
from good faithed user. Banning right away without warning, nor
guidelines is *definitely* not the right thing to do.

> well, you should take over the monitoring of
> the Git Wiki, I guess, and make sure you remove all link spam. Actually, I
> like that idea. Can you do that, please? Can you watch the recent changes
> of the Git Wiki and keep it a place where information is king? Thank you
> so much in advance!

Yes, give me the admin rights, my user is 'Felipec'. Apparently this
is the only way to get rid of spam false positives.

-- 
Felipe Contreras

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason]

2010/8/9 Sverre Rabbelier <srabbelier@gmail.com>:

> 2010/8/9 Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>:
>> That would make certain pages not useful:
>> https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/GitProjects
>
> That page is just as useful as or nofollow attribute. The only thing
> the nofollow attribute does is makes the pagerank not flow through. It
> doesn't make that page any less useful as a jump-board for humans.

Yes it does. Most people that are using that information are likely
*not* reading the wiki. They're looking at some search result for a
project whose pagerank is being partially boosted by the Git wiki.

If we turn on nofollow on the wiki we remove the wiki from the link
tree on the web, and turn it into a leaf node.

That's just not worth it, especially since it seems to do very little
to stop vandalism (which we're not even discussing here).

Wikipedia still gets a lot of linkspam after they turned on
rel=nofollow, but the web is poorer as a result since Wikipedia is now
one giant leaf node on the web.

We like trees too much around here to turn Git into a leaf.

Re: wiki "abuse"

[Matthieu Moy]

Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com> writes:

> If we turn on nofollow on the wiki we remove the wiki from the link
> tree on the web, and turn it into a leaf node.

nofollow are enabled by default, and if I read the page sources
correctly, they _are_ enabled on Git's wiki (and yes, that includes
user pages).

(in case someone wants to change that, it's this in LocalSettings.php:
$wgNoFollowLinks = False;
)

-- 
Matthieu Moy
http://www-verimag.imag.fr/~moy/