User talk:Billinghurst

Hello, can my account be unlocked now? Pardon and thanks!

I was bothered and offended by comming across a racial slur name that should be visibly kicked off of any project it's on, not just as a username violation, but to show that no WMF community accepts racism, even when it's been overlooked or missed for a while. I was simply doing what I felt was right, and now you tell me I'm the asshole on this one? Fuck you Andrew, you arrogant shitbag. You leave me alone elsewhere, and I'll do the same with you. Feel free to block my account. INeverCry 21:50, 14 August 2014 (UTC) Reply

@INeverCry: So you are upset about an insulting username, and you come here and leave a comment insulting a user in the process. This seems a bit off to me... reacting to incivility with incivility. --Rs chen 7754 02:21, 15 August 2014 (UTC) Reply

What caused that rant? Nothing that I said should bring such a reaction. You came to stewards and you got a response, and now you don't like it. What you are proposing to do puts that word out there in full display, and sets up further conversation and may upset multiple people ... It is not incivil to point that out to you, or to put an emphasis that what you are doing may have negative consequences, despite your good intentions.

Old inactive accounts are virtually done and dusted, whereas new accounts would invoke a different response. It is a less than perfect world, learn to accept that it is a balance. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:18, 15 August 2014 (UTC) Reply

Wikidata weekly summary #114

Dear user Billinghurst,

I have noticed that you reverted 3 pages that I have altered to the previous version they had.

The only issue is that probably by the fact that you are not able to speak Portuguese you removed relevant content from Wikipedia. Please indicate the reason why you reverted and removed relevant content that other users will no longer be able to access.

My revisions included gramatical and orthographic corrections that you reverted. I just don't understand it...

I am not trying to challenge your status, however, I think you went way beyond your knowledge/skills this time.

https://pt.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Para-sol&oldid=39688674&diff=prev https://pt.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Balan%C3%A7o_de_cores&oldid=39688677&diff=prev https://pt.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vinheta_(fotografia)&oldid=39688679&diff=prev

Regards, Ellen

@Pabst.ell: Feel free to redo the grammatical changes. Please omit the links to cameraneon.com which as a blog is not an encyclopaedic quality link that is required for WPs, and to which you had a tendency to add and would have been the target of the reversions. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:41, 20 August 2014 (UTC) Reply

Although the discussion sort of [d]evolved into an RfD there was no consensus to move the page either. So I think the closing reason should be clarified. PiRSquared17 (talk) 04:28, 21 August 2014 (UTC) Reply

Hi, I read and took note of your suggestion on ULS talk page at Mediawiki. I am waiting for some stats from ULS team to come after August end and after studying those stats I shall implement your suggestion.

Thanks for your suggestions and warm regards

Mahitgar (He who knows ,wants to know and and loves to keep others informed) (talk) 06:29, 22 August 2014 (UTC) Reply

@Mahitgar: Thanks for the note. English Wikisource now has full webfonts reactivated, so as time permits, I intend to look to house some adjunct help pages, and we will have the ability to fully represent fonts. And we will host these until they are able to be moved to a more suitable site once whichever site that is has webfonts back. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:07, 22 August 2014 (UTC) Reply

Hello Billinghurst. I updated your common.js page to the latest version of...

• TemplateScript. You were using a much older version called 'regex menu framework', so the main difference you'll see is an improved regex editor (with many new features for text snippets and scripting).
• StewardScript. This one is mainly to enable automatic updates, but it also includes a few fixes.

If you notice any problems or have questions, let me know! :) —Pathoschild 00:56, 27 August 2014 (UTC) Reply

@Pathoschild: thanks for the migration and the update. Thanks for all that you do to maintain these tools, and to support the community; your work is invaluable. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:16, 27 August 2014 (UTC) Reply

Why did you remove my message - is there something wrong in posting it here in order to find intersted editors who like to work on small Wikis, or is the Small Wiki Monitoring team against expanding content on those Wikis? CFCF (talk) 07:20, 29 August 2014 (UTC) Reply

It is completely wrong place to put it. That page is for those who monitor the small wikis for spam. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:51, 29 August 2014 (UTC) Reply

You're kidding, right? How is providing content to small Wikis irrelevant to that project?

Do you personally know that noone there has so much as a fleeting interest in actually working to curate content on small Wikis? Just today we have released the following to "small" Wikis:

• xh:Ebola
• ts:Ebola
• nso:Ebola
• zu:Ebola
• st:Ebola

Most other project-pages allow messages to invite editors to help out on other projects with similar goals. Is The Small Wiki Monitoring Team unique in that it doesn't? CFCF (talk) 13:59, 29 August 2014 (UTC) Reply

Did you even read the first line at SWMT? Apart from that I told you above, and still you come here and telling me that I don't know what I am talking about after years working in the area. When you don't know what you are talking about, then it is probably worthwhile stopping talking. Now please go, and read, and stop berating me. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:07, 30 August 2014 (UTC) Reply

You misunderstand, it is my profound belief that anyone working on small Wikis in whatever way may also be interested in seeing them grow and potentially prosper. The demands of our project are not limited to translation itself, as I tried to make clear. In order to provide content it is necessary to run many maintenance tasks, such as building and installing templates–and at the same time assuring that content on the Wikis is left in a decent state. Seeing as the scope of SWMT is similarly maintenance-focused, I thought it possible that individuals working on SWMT could be interested in building the framework needed for actual content. If you feel I am berating you, maybe you should have taken the time to explain your motives before simply reverting ad lib.CFCF (talk) 08:55, 1 September 2014 (UTC) Reply

As someone coïncidentally noticing this small discussion, I need to agree with CFCF in this case. Though the post does not fit 1:1 to the SWMT's scope, it might be something SWMT members are interested in. And speaking as a SWMT member, I can surely confirm the SWMT consists of a few users willing to work on small wiki's infrastructure and helping them to develop. Regards, Vogone (talk) 09:09, 1 September 2014 (UTC) Reply

Thank you for moving the section to my own talk, please feel free to comment or to act as you prefer. --M/ (talk) 07:11, 2 September 2014 (UTC) Reply

Can you contact me on email? --Kolega2357 (talk) 21:12, 4 September 2014 (UTC) Reply

@Kolega2357: I tend not to do business by email. I have found it preferable to act openly, and to be seen to do so, though that doesn't preclude me receiving information if that is necessary. If it is stewards' business, then you can email stewards(_AT_)wikimedia.org — billinghurst sDrewth 23:20, 4 September 2014 (UTC) Reply

Hi Billinghurst. Do you know the mail for permissions in sr and who can handle it if a user would send one? Thanks in advance. --WizardOfOz ^talk 12:35, 6 September 2014 (UTC) Reply

@WizardOfOz: The mail queue is permissions-sr(_AT_)wikimedia.org, though I know not if anyone is tending the queue. @Tiptoety and Rjd0060: ??? — billinghurst sDrewth 13:37, 6 September 2014 (UTC) Reply

Thanks, but answer will be on bosnian, so i will ask dungo or someone other who understand it for ticket. Thanks once again. --WizardOfOz ^talk 13:40, 6 September 2014 (UTC) Reply

@WizardOfOz: There is no specific Bosnian language queue that I can see. So the choice is as above, or to send it to the generic queue (削除) -sr (削除ここまで), and again, I know not who pokes that. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:45, 6 September 2014 (UTC) Reply

I know, therefore I ́m using sr. Did it already once with dungo so it will be ok. Thanks anyway --WizardOfOz ^talk 13:50, 6 September 2014 (UTC) Reply

It does appear that permissions-sr is monitored, but that response times are not great. The queue currently only has two tickets in it one of which has been open for 33 days. Tiptoety ^talk 02:07, 7 September 2014 (UTC) Reply

Dear billinghurst, thank You very much for this edit. --Kusurija (talk) 06:30, 13 September 2014 (UTC) Reply

It is one of two to the administrators on site. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:05, 13 September 2014 (UTC) Reply

Hello, Billinghurst.

I don't think we've crossed paths too often before—I'm primarily active on copyright cleanup on English Wikipedia and on Commons. You may recall that in response to various requests from myself and User:Callanecc, you applied global locks [1] [2] to sockpuppets operated by Beleiutz, a user who has been engaging in years-long disruption across various Wikimedia projects through promotion and copyright violations. (Beleiutz also has a history of claiming to be or to represent celebrities and company directors; User:Mdennis (WMF) recently acted on a case where Beleiutz was impersonating a WMF official.)

I recently filed a global lock request for the latest cross-wiki sockpuppet [3], and was surprised to find an uninvolved user, User:Abd, immediately leap to Beleiutz's defence, starting a cross-wiki campaign to rehabilitate him and to obstruct or reverse his blocks. This would be of little concern to me, except that most of Abd's efforts seem to be aimed at discrediting me personally. This is strange as I'm far from the only person tagging and reverting Beleiutz's socks, and Beleiutz is not the only long-term spammer/copyright violator currently handled this way by myself and others. I don't recall having had any prior interactions with Abd.

Nonetheless, Abd moved an abuse report on Beleiutz which I'd been maintaining at Vandalism reports to a dedicated project-space page, refactored and edited my own comments while leaving my original signature in place, and filled it with annotations highlighting my involvement (but not anyone else's) [4]. Within a day he dumped nearly 20 kilobytes of text into the report and its talk page which, among other things, speculate that I am myself a perpetrator of long-term abuse, belittle my edit count, imply that I'm impersonating an administrator, speculate about my ethnicity, and label me as "hostile, vengeful, punitive" [5]. Meanwhile, on Commons, he called my competence and impartiality into question in an effort to overturn the block of the latest Beleiutz sockpuppet [6] and continued his complaints even after a checkuser confirmed the identification [7].

In some of his shorter posts (such as [8]) I can see that literally every single statement he makes is false—I hesitate to say "a lie", since I have no idea whether he's being wilfully deceptive or just carelessly neglecting to research his claims. However, most of his contributions are just giant walls of text containing all sorts of bizarre inferences and half-baked speculations about me, Beleiutz, and project policies, which I couldn't hope to read carefully enough to rebut point by point. I regret to say I already responded to a couple of his shorter posts before I realized who I was dealing with [9] [10]. Having read through the complaints from his community ban discussion I see a lot of similarities to what's going on now ("placing huge walls of text", "maintaining unacceptable pages" to gather "evidence", "support for other site-banned editors", "participation at... sister-project sites where they pursue the same agenda", "massive timesink", "massive communication issues", "blatant ignorance of anti-socking policy", etc.).

I've already completely disengaged from him, and would have left things as they are, except that I noticed you and User:M7 recently intervened in a similar problem with Abd [11]. If the present incident with myself is a continuation of the same or similar behaviour, then I suggest it's time to do something to curb his disruption here on Meta. Otherwise, I'm happy to migrate my report on Beleiutz to en:Wikipedia:Long-term abuse where it can be communally maintained without further interference. (In which case, would it be OK if we moved Abd's version to his own userspace?) —Psychonaut (talk) 13:43, 17 September 2014 (UTC) Reply

Gday @Psychonaut:. To let you know that abd watches this page, as we have had (umm) disagreements previously and discussions about actions and their appropriateness. I am not in disagreement with your assessments, though I will admit to standing up for due process, not necessarily the person, with some of the proposals surrounding our most significant of sanctions. This user has a specific and some may say unique approach, though while may be okay for an ideal world with ideal people, may not be considered particularly reasonable and practical in the dynamic environment of a wiki, and you have (umm) encountered some of the well-intended earnest advice and opinion. While I have my more personal opinions, and I may share them over a beer, it would be unfair to express them on a talk page. Your opinion and your approach will have been noticed, so hopefully a head will be pulled in somewhat; creating more enemies is not good for a performance review if there are no benefits.

To the specific issue of placement, I would suggest that it can stay where it is, it is now just a subpage of the main, I have added it to my watchlist, it doesn't make a large difference in the end, though amazing how annoying such 'assistance' can be. There is a collapsed section listing subpages, so the page is readily available, and I have added the link for respective checkusers to find it for information. All opinions expressed are noted and evaluated, credibility of approach, knowledge of subject matter, and practicality of desired outcomes are all part of a decision-making process. [What I call the 'Animal Farm' evaluation process]. My suggestion is to continue on offering your advice on the LTA/vandal, and stewards will support actions that have high value preventative actions, and low impacts on other users. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:31, 17 September 2014 (UTC) Reply

Many thanks for your insightful and reassuring comments, which I have taken under advisement. —Psychonaut (talk) 15:52, 17 September 2014 (UTC) Reply