[Wikipedia-l] Re: User:Fire

Sat Jul 31 21:40:52 UTC 2004

Ray Saintonge wrote:
> I am annoyed by the behaviour of user:fire.  He is not a sysop on 
> Wikisource, yet he was able to come and block a user indefinitely with 
> no better excuse than a non-working link to wikipedia about name-change 
> policy.  I immediately reversed the block.
> Those who participate in Wikisource are quite capable of deciding who 
> should be blocked.  We don't need this loose cannon who has not 
> otherwise participated in Wikisource to sneakily acquire some kind of 
> superior access for no other reason to block a user that he does not like.
> 
> Ec

Hello Ray,

I was doing username changes  requested on this page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Changing_username

There was also a user, 'Spik dk', who asked to get his username changed. 
That's what I did. The instructions say also, that I have to move the 
User: and the User Talk: Page from the old to the new nick.  For 
security reasons ("This prevents a new user claiming the name, which 
would mean the signatures and author attributions made by third party 
users of our content would all be pointing to the wrong person."), 
there's also an instruction to block the old username.

After changing the username(s) in the database, I asked Angela to get 
temp sys-op on the Wikis were I had changed the usernames of the people 
who requested to block the old nicks.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_permissions/Archive1

So: I was not blocking the user because I "don't like him" ( I even 
don't know him :) ), but because he asked for a username change and 
(following the instructions) it also included to block the old username :)

Yours,
Fire