User talk:Wimt/Archive/Feb-2008

February 2008
Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, one or more of the external links you added do not comply with our guidelines for external links and have been removed. Wikipedia is not a collection of links; nor should it be used for advertising or promotion. Since Wikipedia uses nofollow tags, external links do not alter search engine rankings. If you feel the link should be added to the article, please discuss it on the before reinserting it. Please take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Will (aka  Wimt  ) 11:21, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Very interesting, I am aware of all of the above but thank you for reinforcing, I think you will find that the links to cemex.co.uk page actually provide extremely valuable information and are not for the purposes you claim, quite simply links lead to valuable information that is not represented on wikipedia and they are from a trusted and industry leading source. Never the less it is now apparent that you like other wiki users are so badly educated in the freedom/ethic of the web & wiki that you contradict yourselves constantly (probably as a result of spammers miss using the site & a touch of paranoia) and by following wiki rules so closely to the letter one really does miss the point. Take a look at all of the related pages and you will see many other external links to COMPANIES (yes and industry associations), the external links are what they say - and readers/users know this, they provide readers with a valuable resource in which to further pursue their searches.

Don't worry about responding you will just repeat the same old same old - I can assure you CEMEX links are not for traffic purpose, certainly not for search engines (I am well aware of the fact that wiki does not affect listings) and finally I create pages on wiki which include company profiles - lets delete all of those and any links to their websites shall we. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 57.66.53.93 (talk)


 * I would suggest you have a read of our guidelines on reliable sources and take a look at what Wikipedia is not, particularly not a directory. Whatever your motive in adding these links (which I note you have been doing almost exclusively with your Wikipedia edits for the past couple of months) merely adding external links to this one merchant is not beneficial. Will (aka  Wimt  ) 11:46, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Fighting Vandals
In the words of Simon and Garfunkel: Slow Down, you move to fast! Give me a chance to get to some of the vandalism reversions. What are you on - speed??? (Grin) Seriously though, keep up the good work! StephenBuxton (talk) 13:43, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Hehe, just coffee ;-) Thanks. You too! Best regards. Will (aka  Wimt  ) 13:45, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

helperbot7 time format
I just remembered one more important thing when setting up the AIV helperbot - you need to update the account's preferences to use the "2001-01-15T16:12:34" date format to allow the bot to parse dates properly. This is why your instance of the bot isn't currently listing the length of time blocks are issued for. Making that preference change (logged in as the bot) should take care of it. —Krellis (Talk) 20:17, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Ah right thanks - I'll fix that now. I had figured it might be something to do with the DateTime module or something, but I didn't want to shut off the bot while I investigated because I saw it was the only one running earlier. Thanks again. Will (aka  Wimt  ) 22:08, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, my dedicated server host had some issues earlier :| - I'm shopping around, because they've had way too many issues lately, unfortunately. It's tough to find a good reliable host that doesn't break the bank! —Krellis (Talk) 22:32, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Mmm yeah that's why I went for a VPS rather than a full on dedicated server. I've updated the bot's preferences and it seems to be reporting times properly now too, so it looks like it's all set, finally! Cheers :-) Will (aka  Wimt  ) 22:46, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Yup, looking good now, cool! —Krellis (Talk) 23:51, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

HBC AIV helperbot 2.0.13 code posted
Greetings! I've posted version 2.0.13 of the HBC AIV helperbot code here - please update at your convenience. By the way, I have a private mailing list for these updates, I forgot to ask you before if you want to be subscribed - let me know, and I'll add you (let me know via e-mail if you want to use something other than the e-mail address we've corresponded on previously). Thanks! —Krellis (Talk) 22:35, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, being on the mailing list would be a very good idea. Please do add me - the email address you already have would be fine. Thanks. I'll get the new code running now :-) Will (aka  Wimt  ) 23:35, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Great - I've added you to the list, you should get a subscription notification e-mail shortly. Thanks! —Krellis (Talk) 23:56, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

DELETE
cuold yo please delete User:Altenhofen/future WWW Titles? its useless, because i replaced it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Altenhofen (talk • contribs)
 * Done :-) Feel free to ask me if you need any more help. Regards. Will (aka  Wimt  ) 01:12, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Eager blocking
You blocked the anon vandal 139.222.236.238. While I don't want to shed tears over the blocking of such an obvious vandal, I'd like to point out that the blocking may have been a bit at the eager side. The user did not make any edits after the first warning. Here is the timeline: Quite possibly the first time the user ever saw "You have new messages (last change)" was after committing the last edit. --Lambiam 08:03, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
 * 04:50 vandalism of Bukkake (first edit by anon)
 * 04:51 continued vandalism of Bukkake
 * 04:52 vandalism of David Irving
 * 04:52 vandalism of Osmosis
 * 04:52 continued vandalism of Osmosis
 * 04:53 vandalism of Triangle
 * 04:53 welcome message (Welcome-anon-vandal)
 * 04:54 vandalism of Gravitation (last edit by anon)
 * 04:54 friendly warning (uw-vandalism2) (first warning)
 * 04:54 final warning (uw-vandalism4)
 * 04:55 user blocked
 * 04:56 "You have been blocked"
 * I'm well aware of the timeline involved in that vandal, but I would invite you to check the diffs of all seven of the IP's edits from which their intention to disrupt is very clear. There is no right to a final warning before blocking, or indeed any warnings at all, and if that IP does suddenly want to start editing constructively they would be more than welcome to do so after their 24 hour block. Will (aka  Wimt  ) 13:45, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Welcome back
dihydrogen monoxide (H20) 00:40, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Aww thanks :-) Will (aka  Wimt  ) 01:47, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Freddie Mercury
The other contributor started the edit war, with absolutely no justification. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.225.56.251 (talk)
 * It takes two to edit war - who "started it" really isn't the point. Moreover, your edits were being undone by more than one person with reasoning, and you have made no attempt at any discussion on the talk page. I suggest that you stop now, and engage in conversation with those you disagree with, rather than repeatedly reverting back to your version, which is not a useful way of doing things. Will (aka  Wimt  ) 14:45, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Shared IP vandals
I'm sure this issue has been hashed over and over before, but there has to be something that can be done. I've tried getting maybe 50 users blocked over the last month or so, and probably 49 of them were automatically turned down because they were shared IP's. We keep getting vandals from campuses or other places that use shared IP's, and were suddenly at the vandals mercy. "Oh well, its a remote possibility that someone from the same IP will try and contribute, and we have to assume that they're not smart enough to just create their own account." That seems ridiculous. Why can't we just block anonymous accounts from shared IPs that produce more vandals than actual users?

Sorry if you're not the right person to whine too, but you're the contact for the bot that covers AIV.Brinlong (talk) 18:27, 19 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Hey, I run one of the bots that automatically remove blocked users from AIV, yeah, and indeed I often block people from AIV reports myself. As far as shared and dynamic IPs are concerned, we do block them all the time if vandalism is actively coming from them. However, it is important to make sure that we don't block innocent people in the process, which could scare off potential valuable contributors (and most blocks of IPs will also disable account creation too from that IP, or else the vandal could just create an account and carry on). There is therefore, a difficult balance to be struck. Generally, the way this is achieved is to make sure that vandalism is coming from that IP at the current time when blocking, rather than a few hours back in which time the IP could quite easily have changed to a different person. As far as IPs that are repeat offenders and seem just to have vandalism coming from them is concerned, we do often block them for extended periods of time (each subsequent block is generally longer than the previous). In the case of schools, it's not uncommon for blocks of six months or even a year to be placed on anonymous users if it is clear that pretty much all the contributions are vandalism. So basically we do block shared IPs for long periods of times when appropriate, but at AIV blocks tend only to be made on IPs if they are active at the time when they are reported to ensure the block catches the right person. If you want to get more perspectives than just mine on this issue though, I'd suggest perhaps asking the question on the AIV talk page which gets watched by quite a few of the regular admins at AIV. Best regards. Will (aka  Wimt  ) 19:09, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

February 2008

 * ~  Mønobi  00:38, 17 February 2008 (UTC)


 * :O Martinp23 20:42, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

A strange page
Hi Will, I was wasting some time on wikipedia and came across this: EBL_DIV1_Map_v2. I imagine it's meant to be an image page, but appears to be an actual article. Since you know about these things, I thought I'd refer it to you! Jetekus (talk) 00:09, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Hehe yeah that's an interesting find. It seems someone was experimenting and copied the formating of an image page onto an actual article page and created it. Since it doesn't seem to have anything useful on it that isn't already replicated elsewhere I've deleted it as a test page :-) Best regards. Will (aka  Wimt  ) 00:28, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I missed you!


has smiled at you! Smiles promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by smiling at someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Cheers, and Happy editing! Smile at others by adding {{subst:Smile}} to their talk page with a friendly message. NHRHS 2010 NHRHS2010 00:50, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Heya :-D Thanks for the smile :-) Hope things are good with you. Regards. Will (aka  Wimt  ) 00:51, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
 * You can look at my userpage to see how I'm doing. NHRHS  2010 NHRHS2010 00:53, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks
Thanks for reverting the vandalism to my user page so quickly. Much appreciated! Alanraywiki (talk) 01:41, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
 * No problem :-) Always happy to help. Regards. Will (aka  Wimt  ) 01:47, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Barnstar

 * Thanks :-D Will (aka  Wimt  ) 18:46, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

AIV Bot
Hello Wimt, the AIV bot is slightly malfunctioning today. For example, it forgot to remove an IP which had already been blocked here and re-added a listing that had been removed by myself here. The problems have not reoccurred so I do not think there is a need to shut off the bot at the moment, but just wanted to let you know.¤~Persian Poet Gal (talk) 20:43, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Hey - yeah those are somewhat strange. My version of the bot is running the latest version of the code (which is kept updated by Krellis these days) so I'll notify him of those errors. I saw another issue earlier today too with a different helperbot removing something it shouldn't due to an edit conflict, so perhaps something has been changed in the mediawiki interface which is causing issues. Thanks for pointing them out. As you say, it seems only to be a small issue at the moment so I won't switch it off unless it gets worse. Regards. Will (aka  Wimt  ) 20:48, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

TheLightElf
Hey Wimt, this is Hfollower(if you now what i mean)...Sorry for having you to go through all that trouble to delete my profile...this is my new one..this one okey? —Preceding unsigned comment added by TheLightElf (talk • contribs) 18:25, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Replied over here. Will (aka  Wimt  ) 18:28, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Thx!!here. —Preceding comment was added at 18:31, 29 February 2008 (UTC)