User talk:Mthomas1776

Hi Mike, I've updated my page to create one around my actual name. Check out User:David Youngberg.

Cliff Clavin
Given your usage of User:UBX/SaintCliff on your user page, I thought you might be interested in knowing that I added him to a Wikimedia vote on the Wikipedia mascot! Staxringold 19:27, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Shared IP addresses
Why does your IP address look "shared"? The "whois" report on 129.123.120.99 says it is part of a block of 65536 addresses (129.123.0.0 - 129.123.255.255) registered to USU. The assumption is that these are "dynamic" addresses; that is, when your computer requests a network connection it will be given any one of these addresses that are currently unused. In this sense it is "shared". The "sharedIP EDU" box is merely a warning to admins (and others) that this is the case, so that long-term blocks should not be applied to such addresses.

This is not an attempt to witch-hunt certain IP addresses; quite the reverse, it's a warning that an IP address from which vandalism was emanating may very soon be used by a completely innocent user. Regards Tonywalton Talk 01:01, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

How to get to be an admin
If you're interested in the whole grisly process, start here. Basically what I said wasn't disingenuous, admins are just editors with a few more buttons to click, namely "block", "delete" and "protect". We can block persistent vandals (and other disruptive users) according to strict rules, we can delete pages (as opposed to blanking content - a deleted page becomes a redlink ) and we can protect pages against editing and/or being moved. That's pretty much it. And we're really, really not allowed to do any of these things arbitrarily.

If you want to see the sort of unholy disputes that do lead to blockings, blood on carpets, heads rolling and so on (together with an almost incomprehensible use of abbreviations), try here. Cheers, Tonywalton Talk 01:16, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Women in Red World Contest
Hi. We're into the last five days of the Women in Red World Contest. There's a new bonus prize of $200 worth of books of your choice to win for creating the most new women biographies between 0:00 on the 26th and 23:59 on 30th November. If you've been contributing to the contest, thank you for your support, we've produced over 2000 articles. If you haven't contributed yet, we would appreciate you taking the time to add entries to our articles achievements list by the end of the month. Thank you, and if participating, good luck with the finale!