User talk:Srainwater

Hi StevenRainwater!
Good to have more advogatans here! Looks like you have already started to make your way around. --- Charles Stewart 18:06, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Editing
It is customary to include with welcome messages some sort of advice about how to start editing: I think be best, most no-nonsense summary of wikipedia culture and rules is the Policy trifecta, and Policies and guidelines is something like the table of contents to the Wikipedia case law. If you add good content and you treat upset editors with sensitivity, you should avoid the worst of Wikipedia. --- Charles Stewart 18:13, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

more block problems
Maybe Wikipedia needs to institute some sort education program for whoever these block-happy admins are. It seems our IP range (70.85.4.*) has been blocked again for no apparent reason. Probably this is the same thing that happened last time (see below) where someone, who doesn't quite understand how The Internet works, blocked half the ISPs in north Texas under the mistaken notion that they were blocking one of The Planet's web hosting facilities. Get a clue folks.

It would also be nice if there were some way of finding out more about a block. The instruction on the error message says to click the block log link on your user talk page. This reveals nothing about the current block. The user is then directed to the Blocked IP address and usernames page. The search form on that page could find nothing for 70.85.4.12, for 70.85.4., or even 70.85., making it useless. That page suggests the user try the Autoblock search, which includes no instructions helpful to someone who is trying to find out why their IP is blocked. I ended up entering my IP address into the field labelled "autoblockid" in the wild hope that perhaps that's what the designer inteneded. Even selecting the longest time spam, the result was just a cryptic one line message that says "* Autoblock ID UTC Time Blocker Blockee Reason". It's not clear if this is an error message or an instruction to the user. At this point I gave up, thinking the increasing frustration level of using Wikipedia may not be worth it.


 * You haven't given me sufficient information. What does the block message say? Who does it say blocked you, does it say "autoblocked because..." or something else? Regards the block-happy admins range blocks are only done in extreme situations, autoblocks are just that automatic we have no way of telling a users ip when we block them, hence autoblocks can have an unforeseeable impact, please see assume good faith --pgk 22:00, 12 March 2007 (UTC)


 * OK, I've tracked the block own as a range block of open proxies. I'll ask the blocking admin to take a look into it. --pgk 22:15, 12 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Block removed. --pgk 22:22, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

block problems
Hmmm... I don't quite grok this autoblock thing but apparently Someone decided to block one of the largest bandwidth and IP providers in the North Texas area. Unfortunately, all the smaller ISPs in North Texas (like NCC) that rely on The Planet for their bandwidth appear to be collateral damage to this blocking action. Sounds like this autoblock thing needs some refinement to make it more selective! Anyway, the error message page lists several things that may help fix this and one is to drop in this unblock-auto thing.

I've also emailed the person apparently responsible for the blocking. The key item to note is our IP range 70.85.4.* is provided by the Planet but we are not The Planet, don't host any servers at The Planet, and The Planet has no access to or control over our servers. So if somebody at a Planet controlled hosting facility is causing problems, that's no reason to block other ISPs who only rely on the Planet for bandwidth. It has nothing to do with us or our company. Our company is not running any proxy servers on this IP range, open or otherwise.


 * I did a scan and this no longer seems to be an open proxy. I'll let the blocking admin know.  --Yamla 19:33, 28 December 2006 (UTC)