User talk:AssistantWikifag/2012

Old conversations from the year 2012. It was my first full year as an admin.

Zabasaz and such

http://1d4chan.org/index.php?title=User_talk:174.106.244.48&diff=108032&oldid=107861

This individual is repeatedly linking some blog drama to my IP discussion page, can you tell him to stop? Sidenote: Are you at any authority to even do so? If not I'll just email Wikifang. --174.106.244.48 06:05, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

I was deputized to deal with spam. User:Wikifag is the individual with authority on these matters. --AssistantWikifag 17:33, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Gotcha, well good work on the spam and carry on then, I'll get to him if the problem escalates. Thanks! --174.106.244.48 03:43, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Zabaspaz is a tool and a menace, and the sooner you get rid of him, the better. He's been trolling this place for years, griefing and griefing and griefing and griefing. Him directing racial slurs at other users is enough for a banning, above and beyond his incessant trolling. Please, just look at his record here.

I'm not an expert on Dungeons and Dragons and have no interest in how easy or difficult it is to kill a Tarrasque, but I can judge misbehavior. I will likely have a complete investigation and policy recommendation in not less than a week and not more than three weeks. --AssistantWikifag 15:55, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

It's important that you understand that this goes way back, AssistantWikifag. This individual Sanity (also known as Doom and BobtheMighty) has been sort of harassing me on this wiki, following me around and vandalizing every edit I make, for the last two or so years. I'm not really sure what the issue is but it began when we got into an editwar because on the 4E page he made an enormous list of "flaws" for 4E that weren't exactly grounded in fact and when his section repeatedly got blanked, then ultimately removed by Wikifag and the page locked, he blamed it on me and continued the fight on the Tarrasque page. As of the last year or so I've mostly ignored him but I'm getting a little annoyed that his activity is building up again. In the past he's blanked my campaign pages, blanked mine and other people's edits, vandalized 4E related pages, sent people messages on their talk page saying things like "Want to know the truth about Zabasaz? E-mail me," and other such weird nonsense. At this point it's gone from being a vendetta to a discomforting obsession. I sent Wikifag emails about it in the past and he ended up banning the person twice, but he's back now. Be informed that there's more to this than meets the eye, it isn't just an editwar, there's some seriously weird shit going on. I'm reluctant to send him anymore e-mails since I imagine he's tired of putting up with it and the guy himself is more or less harmless (other than flooding Wikifag's talk page with repeated requests to ban me.) That said, it's a hell of lot of information that's all in the past and has been dealt with so its not entirely relevant. It's hard to honestly prove this is the same person as the one who was banned but they behave exactly the same so it shouldn't matter. Anyways, thanks for reading and good luck with your investigation.--174.106.244.48 01:59, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

>implying you were any better in all the aforementioned cases. Fatum 23:34, 27 May 2012 (BST)

It's funny, I read "tool" as "troll", since that's usually the best word for Zabasaz. Still, "Tool" seems pretty appropriate, since he's incredibly deferential to authority, as least when he thinks you're looking, and has a completely different face otherwise. Go and look at this guy's 'edits'; and be sure to talk to NotBrandX, who's been forced to undo a few of his page-blankings. It's worth noting that Zab has been warned in the past about this behavior which he's been warned about, and note that he has been warned that calling everyone a sock puppet is a bannable offense. The poor guy has so many 'enemies', as well as victims, that he can't keep them all straight, so he just assumes they're all the same person, as near as I can tell. Anyway, investigate away. In the meantime, can you ask Zab to stop his reign of terror with all the goofy deletions and violating additions? --Sanity

To clarify my course of action: I will review the edit logs of the Tarrasque page and related pages (4E, talk pages, user pages, etc.), and contribution logs of related editors. I have not begun yet, and it may take some time (especially if the spam maintains its recently elevated levels), but the result will be a recommendation -- I may suggest that some party or parties be banned, or that some page or pages be protected, or that no action be taken besides the donning of sunglasses and admonishing all parties involved to "deal with it." In any case, neither of you are helping your cases by arguing on my talk page, so cut it out! My recommendation will be posted here when it is finished, and not a day sooner. --AssistantWikifag 06:24, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

I didn't come here to argue, I came here to inform you. Thanks. --174.106.244.48 06:02, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Spammer

112.205.235.54 is a very sneaky spammer who's been inserting plain links into Angry Marines. Tim 10:16, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Good catch! --AssistantWikifag 15:31, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Ward troll

If it's not too much trouble could please semi-protect the Matt Ward page? That annoying little troll who was vandalizing my userpage is back, and now he's changing my talk page edits. Banning him won't do anything (he's bouncing off IP addresses so much I doubt he'd even notice) and it's pretty clear he's not interested in talking it out. -- SFH 14:19, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

• Now we have confirmation that Tim doesn't want his page like that and the guy doing it is a troll. Is that enough to delete and make a few blocks? -- SFH 23:34, 16 April 2012 (BST)

Yes. The IP addresses which vandalized the pages in question have been blocked for two weeks (it seems that at least some are Tor exit nodes, so I'm hesitant to block them permanently), and your and Tim's user pages have been protected for the same amount of time, to be extended if vandalism continues subsequently. I'm sorry that you've had to deal with this. --AssistantWikifag 02:53, 17 April 2012 (BST)

Got another, 146.185.23.179. These guys also think it's hi-fucking-larious to swap the heresy and awesome templates / links. That guy vandalised the Oldschool template by doing that. Tim 16:25, 18 April 2012 (BST)

I blocked the users above because they were vandalizing your userpages and attacking you (Tim and SFH) personally. I am hesitant to block for a lesser offense (Wikifag, if you have input, especially the kind that will help us hammer out some hard guidelines, it would be appreciated), though I have decided to protect the template for the time being. If 146.185.23.179 continues to vandalize, I will consider escalating. --AssistantWikifag 01:10, 19 April 2012 (BST)

Personally I see fucking with the templates as a more serious problem than dicking about on someone's userpage, since it's actually affecting pages in the main article namespace. My general approach to clear-cut "humorous" vandalism and disruption would be to ban freely but lightly; a few days is enough to let someone know their shenanigans are not appreciated. There's no need to ban for longer unless they keep on doing it. --87.194.31.223 10:35, 19 April 2012 (BST)

Pretty much this. If someone does a spot of vandalism but doesn't go on a massive spree, short-term ban just to ensure they stop and are conveyed the message that they shouldn't do that again. Sometimes it's people trying to be funny and even if they're not very good at it, it doesn't feel necessary to use serious measures. I'd be inclined to agree that vandalism which affects article pages is more signficant than posting crap on someone's userpage, as well, but if someone is persistent and annoying they should get a knock-it-off ban as well. --Wikifag 11:06, 19 April 2012 (BST)

Uploading

Not entirely sure if you're the person to talk to about this but is it possible to upload a .pdf file similar to the one on the Angry Marines page (the 4E one, I'm not going to bother to thread it on /tg/)? I've been working on a revised fan codex for the Angry Marines for a long while here, play tested over and over again, and gave it to a couple of fellow war gamers who've given their approval on my work so far, so I would like to get it on 1d4chan and link it to the bottom of the corresponding article page. I'm also planning on doing a similar thing for the Knights Inductor in the future. -- User:Remoon101 17:02, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Wikifag's the sysop, but I can think of a couple of alternate courses of action if uploading PDFs is not an option: you could add a link to a file-sharing website (Mediafire is quite good), or upload screenshots of each page (maybe just the crunch-pages -- the actual Army List, wargear, special rules, and such).

Board Games

Wouldn't it make sense to semi-protect that page so bots at least have to create accounts to spam it? Tim 18:52, 7 May 2012 (BST)

I generally lean against protecting pages (since it prevents contributions from our many anonymous editors), but seeing as how the Board Games page is basically static (undoing spam aside), it does make sense to protect it. Anonymous editors can propose changes on the article's talk page. --AssistantWikifag 06:38, 8 May 2012 (BST)

Back to square one as they are hammering away. I'm requesting the anonymous protection be reinstated. FourierSeries 16:19, 23 September 2012 (BST)

Right on schedule (ten minutes after the protection expired), the spambots are back. I guess they keep hitting pages that attract them (whatever it is that summons them), regardless of how effective they are. Or maybe their controller keeps a note of when protections expire (I have no idea how much "personal attention" this site receives).

Also, you (and Wikifag) missed these two guys last time you came through: 94.23.12.62 and 50.93.203.164.

I know you said before that you don't like that the Recent Changes page fills up with blocks and deletions, but it keeps the Wiki clean, so thanks! --Not LongPoster Again 16:34, 23 September 2012 (BST)

I wish I could punch spammers over TCP/IP. That, or understand what motivates them and how they work. Oh well.

Board Game has now been protected indefinitely, and it will likely remain so. As I've said before, anonymous users can use the talk page to suggest changes.

Thanks for the thanks, and the heads-up about those spammers. --AssistantWikifag 18:38, 25 September 2012 (BST)

lotsa edits

in b4 you went and reverted my large amounts of relatively small edits... -Windows2000pro 19:28, 27 May 2012 (BST)

Fear not, your edits are secure -- your username just gave me a scare the first time I saw it. --AssistantWikifag 04:04, 28 May 2012 (BST)

the 1d4chan IRC is pretty dead usually isn't it... -Windows2000pro 07:00, 28 May 2012 (BST)

I've never used it before (well, I popped in for a second just now, and it looked pretty dead). --AssistantWikifag 17:06, 28 May 2012 (BST)

SG/tg/

Hey - thanks for putting that page where it needed to be, I have one more request - would you be so kind as to place it in the catagory: homebrew linkpage itself? it's the one issue I am still stuck on - after that I am set to go. Many thanks good sire. ----

You can add any page to a category by adding a special wikilink to the bottom (or anywhere, really, but by convention, we put them at the bottom): [[Category:Foo]] (to put it in the "Foo" category) --AssistantWikifag 11:13, 27 June 2012 (BST)

Thanks dude, I am being somewhat tarded at this - getting there however ----

Talk:Main Page

I don't really know what happened there but long story short derps were herped. --Petro 05:50, 7 July 2012 (BST)

CSS and Javascript

I have no indication that this is your wheelhouse, but I'd like to get the ball rolling on this and emailing wikifag has not been productive so far. So. This is an ease of use and organization thing.

I was wondering if you guys would consider adding some provided text to a couple of pages on 1d4chan to allow a user to make text hideable or collapsible. I'd like to use these features to better organize campaign, setting, and project pages for things like the Chapter Master game page and so forth, as I'm one of the Chapter Master guys and the sheer amount of dev information we want to track in the fucking thing won't ever be easy on the eyes otherwise. Also there's a few other pages I'd like to make/help manage here and a huge table or list more for reference than anything else is probably best if hideable, as is a block of information that's rarely useful if everything in the at-a-glance section is enough for, say, functional understanding of a rule or mechanic or something. I'd like to be able to hide everything that isn't the bullet points in a few places, basically.

Normally we'd just put this sort of thing on our own free wiki and do it ourselves, but seeing as it'd be quite useful to keep said information on 1d4chan as this place has become a fixture for /tg/ and projects like ours can look more appropriate by maintaining a page here, I thought I'd ask.

The relevant pages are here:

[1] and [2]

both indicate that the relevant code resides in:

[3] and [4]

if that makes anything easier. This is a copy/paste job and is completely reversible with little work, if that makes things less hairy. And if the answer's no, rest assured there will be no bitching - we have other options.

Ash Mantle 09:36, 7 July 2012 (BST)

I don't think I can make those changes. There aren't many wiki-related rights that I don't have, but I don't have access to the server itself. It seems that Wikifag's made the relevant changes, anyway -- check out his user page. --AssistantWikifag 13:59, 7 July 2012 (BST)

Troll notice

Just so you know, there's a guy trolling with multiple accounts here, here, and here. -- SFH 04:23, 6 August 2012 (BST)

I've had run-ins with this guy too. I can't tell if he's a really subtle troll or just a well intentioned but highly excitable editor. --Petro 04:54, 6 August 2012 (BST)

I take offense to that! --31.172.30.4 15:54, 6 August 2012 (BST)

I would have been suspicious if I had come upon a user whose first edit was to make a generic-sounding user page and user talk page (I realize that JackalRobot had made one edit previously, but that could have been overlooked), and I have sometimes caught myself clicking the "block" link first and checking edit histories later. Since the matter has been cleared up (JackalRobot is not a spammer, in case anyone hasn't been paying attention), I don't see the need to block anybody. --AssistantWikifag 23:19, 6 August 2012 (BST)

• SFH, that's not one guy with multiple spam accounts. One of them is me. I've only created a few articles; (mostly copypasta from /tg/) non of them spam. SkyDog 00:39 7 August 2012

In that case, I apologize. -- SFH 20:36, 7 August 2012 (BST)

Protection

I'd like the CATastrophe pages to be shielded from non-registered users to avoid spam wars about the setting, so that setting dev's can continue working on it in peace.

As it says on the bottom of the editing page, "If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then do not submit it here." If the CATastrophe pages were being vandalized, I might protect them (or more likely, I would block the vandals for a little bit -- it's better to block access to the troublemakers than to block a whole class of users), but since that isn't happening (based on my examination of the page histories), I plan to leave the pages as they are. --AssistantWikifag 15:03, 27 October 2012 (BST)

Warhammer High and The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

Looks like the same batch of spambots that hit the TES3 page are after Warhammer High. Maybe, instead of protecting the pages and stopping legitimate anons from editing them, you could block the spambots? --Not LongPoster Again 06:57, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

I agree that blocking spambots is a better response to spam than blocking all users (I didn't block the spambots on the TES3 page because I didn't have the time then -- a situation which is now rectified), but I think my decision to (temporarily) protect TES3 is justified; it has not changed nearly as much as Warhammer High has, and the spambots attacking that page were much more persistent. I will let the protection lapse as planned, and then see what happens next. --AssistantWikifag 01:41, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Need a hand?

I've had quite a bit of experience acting as an administrator for a few wikis in the past and have dealt with problems like this before. (At least the spam here makes sense- on one of the wikis I've worked on, half of the spam was copypasted from Twilight and the other half was in Chinese. Ended up having to block well over a thousand spambots before we could make it stop.) If you can, let Wikifag know that I can help with the spam problem- I'm online almost all the time, so I can make sure most of the spam doesn't see the light of day.--Newerfag 19:38, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

You've asked the wrong person to be made an admin. That's up to Wikifag, and his email is on his user page. I can tell you that he reached out to ask me if I wanted to be an admin, and not the other way around, but that's only one data point.

As far as workload goes, the present rate of spambot registration is not unmanageable -- I've just been away from my computer for an unusually long period of time due to travel. Having another hand to clear spam would be nice, but I'm on more frequently than you think -- it's just that I'd rather create content (with my non-admin hat), so I often leave it for another day.

I don't think the pace is as bad as it was this summer, when I had to ban something like fifty spam accounts every day (and if I let them be, they would create spam pages a day or two later), but it is picking up. In response to that surge, Wikifag set up the wiki to use a DNS blacklist, which was successful in stemming the flow. It is possible that he needs to add another blacklist, or implement some kind of heuristic (e.g. "bad behavior" and/or "abuse filter" extensions -- though automated systems run the risk of inconveniencing legitimate users more than the spammers did). --AssistantWikifag 04:14, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Gotcha. Hopefully things won't get that bad. --Newerfag 04:57, 31 December 2012 (UTC)