[WikiEN-l] more active censorship

Tue Jul 5 13:06:40 UTC 2005

> Actually, I have.  It's an alleged phenomenon, and if it happens in the real
> world, it's extremely rare, and caused by completely unnecessary activity. 
> The solution is simple; go cool off for a day.  And if you simply must hang 
> around, then don't hit edit.

It's not an alleged phenomenon any admin can create a test account and
reproduce the behavior.  I've already presented perfectly valid
reasons why someone would hit 'edit page' which you haven't addressed
(even snowspinner acknowledged you haven't)

And no, saying you "should go cool off for a day" doesn't actually
address them if you read them and it's also imposing a requirement on
the person to counter a BUG. You REALLY keep avoiding this and
absolutely insist on using examples (e.g. sock puppets) that aren't
applicable to this.  Ther is no "disguise" and logs can easily prove
that.

> I think it's a feature that's working quite well, and that might *in very
> rare circumstances* provide a minor inconvenience to a banned user who is, 
> at the very least, doing something odd and unnecessary.

You don't seem to understand something, regardless of how rare it is,
this is something that can be fixed in the software.  All it takes is
a few lines of code added in the right place(s) and it wouldn't renew
it if they were logged into their regular account.  I'm not sure if
you just don't understand VERY basic programming concepts or if you're
being deliberately obtuse, since this is something that can be fixed
whilst causing 0% false negatives.  The is literally no drawback to
fixing the code, other than however much time it takes to make the fix
itself.

> His *claim* is that he got innocently caught; I've pointed out that for
> every *claim* of innocence, there are hundreds who are validly blocked, that 
> there was no need for him to do what he did to get caught in the first 
> place, and that if he was indeed innocently caught the "punishment" is minor 
> and the fix easy.

Yeah, the fix is easy--by correcting the code, that's something which
you keep overlooking.  You seem to be using this mistaken philosophy
that if a bug occurs in code, that the users of the software should be
forced to work around it and the bug itself should never be fixed in
the code.

> Concientious admins tend to either leave a message about the block or
> remove the second autoblock when it happens, in practice.

Even if that's true, it really doesn't mean you should continually be
forced to do a human-based work around rather than fixing the code.
The code can easily distinguish between an account that was originally
blocked and a new account, some time this week I'll just submit a
patch for it so this can stop.

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Nathan J. Yoder
http://www.gummibears.nu/
http://www.gummibears.nu/files/njyoder_pgp.key
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