User talk:Mike.lifeguard

butic,i"choos"mydisabilty[quot=varies en.wt-ns---Please note, I have [[Repetitive Strain Injury]] and find typing very hard. I use a form of shorthand, which may be difficult to understand. I can be contacted through MSN (sven70) or Skype (sven0921) if my meaning is unclear. 23:35, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, you already know I don't think so. I think some of the stuff directed at you is pretty despicable. On the other hand, they have the right to be treated with respect as well. While I don't think you should be blocked, you need to understand that they feel, with some justification, that your attitude isn't conducive to a healthy community. Clearly, you're being treated unfairly by some people. But the justification given for that block is your conduct, not your disability. Now, we could discuss how much of that is true - I think people are probably frustrated by the difficulty of communication, and that may well have had some influence in the decision (especially given some of what was said about/to you). But what I think doesn't much matter, since I can't override that community's decision. It is up to that community to decrease or remove your block, and while I can perhaps help you to get them to listen, that's about all I can do.  — mikelifeguard@meta:~$  01:42, 4 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

1. iREACTDgenstde namcalin[mainly afte-blok/email-wich=usd as'andl genstme[av email blokd?noprob
2. wt=not wmf-proj boundby wmf[+society i/wich=embeded]ruls?
3. otheppl cald[uponme providinlinks/difs]wt=toxic atmsfr+goin on4 1.5yrs now[blok=sec.importns,wt=UNhelthy=mainprob.-----Please note, I have [[Repetitive Strain Injury]] and find typing very hard. I use a form of shorthand, which may be difficult to understand. I can be contacted through MSN (sven70) or Skype (sven0921) if my meaning is unclear. 05:22, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Obviously, I don't know the history of this dispute, so I only have limited insight here. If you want the block lifted, speaking to me about it is useless. I cannot unblock you. You need to deal with the community that blocked you, though I don't know if they'll be interested in hearing from you on this. I think both you and they need to realize that you've done wrong, and endeavour to change that. Take the high road  — mikelifeguard@meta:~$  18:44, 4 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

meta=not ovesite proj.gunrong??-----Please note, I have [[Repetitive Strain Injury]] and find typing very hard. I use a form of shorthand, which may be difficult to understand. I can be contacted through MSN (sven70) or Skype (sven0921) if my meaning is unclear. 01:41, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Co-ordination! Not oversight (or at least, not that kind of oversight).  — mikelifeguard@meta:~$  01:47, 5 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

then hu is resp4such oversightpl?-----Please note, I have [[Repetitive Strain Injury]] and find typing very hard. I use a form of shorthand, which may be difficult to understand. I can be contacted through MSN (sven70) or Skype (sven0921) if my meaning is unclear. 09:14, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Nobody. Individual wikis are independent. There are some things that are binding (CU, privacy, and licensing policies for example) , but this isn't one of them.  — mikelifeguard@meta:~$  15:33, 5 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

tolratDISCRIM=putinWMFi/hazard-----Please note, I have [[Repetitive Strain Injury]] and find typing very hard. I use a form of shorthand, which may be difficult to understand. I can be contacted through MSN (sven70) or Skype (sven0921) if my meaning is unclear. 19:03, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure it's fair to lump this all together as discrimination. You did say some hurtful things too - whether you think it was justified or not. From their point of view, they're simply keeping a rude person from disrupting their community. I happen to think that they've gone quite overboard, but I cannot tell them what to do in this case. You should try to speak with that community about this, not me.  — mikelifeguard@meta:~$  21:59, 5 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

ivpointed2CONTXT=partoFAIR/DUEprocedur&btw,hurtful things like/difs??~indefsven70blok oct08>WHER=alegd disruptivnes??[likmy"rudnes"i/broad unsubstantiatd"comunity"statmnts??[butnote ima"vandl"2coz ofmydisability(c usr史凡）&ur UNwarndblok ofme@stwrds/irc4me pointinoutSTWRDRUDNES]

• wt=defactoCLOZDCLUB[fe last1/2YR>10,000(sic!)INDEFBLOKS],indefians w/wmf-setup-----Please note, I have [[Repetitive Strain Injury]] and find typing very hard. I use a form of shorthand, which may be difficult to understand. I can be contacted through MSN (sven70) or Skype (sven0921) if my meaning is unclear. 01:22, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't know, I'm just going by what I see in the community discussions. That's what they claim. Whether it is true or not, that is the rationale. You need to address that with the community that blocked you - not with me. As I said previously, I cannot overrule them, and I cannot tell them what to do. If you initiate a dialogue, and you or they want to have a third party involved, then we can talk about it. But until that happens, I can't do much of anything for you.  — mikelifeguard@meta:~$  01:51, 6 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

You have a message at the Wikimedia Forum, regarding the recent change to Vector. Best wishes. Immunize 18:45, 6 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

As I said, there's no point in even discussing it until you have evidence  — mikelifeguard@meta:~$  20:42, 6 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hi. My Internet connection failed at the most unfortunate moment. I am now using my mobile and therefore can't reconnect to IRC. The page now has a red link, so thanks! As for the other two pages I asked about, I'm assuming that you don't intend to suppress them? That should be fine, actually. Again, thanks for your help! Benny the mascot 04:12, 8 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Please see the discussion page Woopon 23:30, 8 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

[1]

Hey boy, this edition was not vandalizmë! Silly boy. Pay attention at what you do, bastard. --94.110.155.33 15:25, 18 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

You should stop vandalising.  — mike@meta:~$  15:26, 18 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

This is not concerning any current discussion, but something from last year that I reread just now and still makes me angry. See Talk:Spam blacklist/Archives/2009-10#sulekha.com. Why did you make me go through so much trouble for so many hours (days)? When I said "mostly legitimate uses, and hardly any spam" and even "I cannot find any link that could be classified as spam", why did you refuse to believe me? (Even the non-legitimate uses were not spam!) More importantly, if some useful website gets erroneously put on the spam blacklist as happened here, does it take so much effort by some unconnected user to convince overlords like you? What about the harm you caused by causing the links to be removed from other wikis for years — did you ever go to all those wikis and restore them? I'm still hurt by the way this issue was treated and ignored, and what it must mean for others in similar situations. Is it normal here to dismiss whatever users say, and go by your own biases? Shreevatsa 00:11, 23 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

I'm not sure I understand. You're upset that we don't blindly say "yes" to every request to remove a domain from the blacklist? You're upset that we actually require some evidence that doing so will benefit the projects? I have to assume I've misunderstood you - otherwise, what you've said here would show a startlingly brazen willingness to allow disruption of our wikis.

On how the system works: We rely heavily on a network of contributors who go to great lengths to provide us with accurate information about spamming on our nearly 800 wikis. We miss a lot of spam, and we're working on improving detection rates. We also sometimes mis-categorize what's going on, as happened in this case. However, I don't see that what's happened there is somehow that your concerns were dismissed out-of-hand. Based on the information available at the time, you wanted us to remove a domain that was part of a huge spam ring. When you showed evidence that that was incorrect, the domain was removed. Seems straightforward and reasonable to me.

 — mike@meta:~$  00:56, 23 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

I'm upset that you seem to require less evidence before adding something to the blacklist than removing it. Obviously I don't expect you to say "yes" on the first request, and wait for an explanation. So your first reply ("this was blacklisted due to…") is perfectly ideal. But even after a reasonable explanation is given, if you refuse to take it seriously, what should one conclude? I told you: "if you look at the actual spamsearch results for sulekha.com, you will see that most (all?) of the links are not adsense spam, but at most unreliable sources". I also said "Looking more closely, I cannot find any link that could be classified as spam". I also said "The report doesn't come with the dates when the links were inserted into the articles, but is quite likely that many of the links were in fact added to articles through the normal process (i.e., by article-writers and not by spammers)". So yes, I am upset by the fact that even after all this pleading, even though taking a careful look would have confirmed these assertions in general, your second reply after that (and after several days), ignores all this and simply says:

"Looking at User:COIBot/LinkReports/sulekha.com, I don't see the "mostly legitimate uses, and hardly any spam" - thus  Declined again."

This is distressing, because you did not respond or even acknowledge any of my concerns, and there is no indication you actually looked at the link report. To me, the link report shows quite clearly that the added links — several by whitelisted users, added over the course of several years, and not in any "spree" — were not spam, and mostly added exactly in the manner I described (by article writers). So how can you claim to have looked at the list, and perfunctorily dismiss everything that has been said? You did not even say whether you disbelieved my claims that they were not spam — you simply acted as if they were not worth replying to, and even falsely claimed to have evidence from the very list that showed you were wrong. If you were unwilling to spend the effort to take a careful look, and had said "this evidence is insufficient for me, give me more evidence", even that would be ok. Instead you "declined" in bold letters, as if you had evidence of the opposite. This seems like a clear case of bias. Shreevatsa 01:31, 23 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

I'm not in the habit of writing novels in response to requests. Occasionally, I do though. It didn't seem warranted in this case. As I said previously: According to the information available at the time... — you simply asserted something and provided no evidence at first. I'm not sure why a bald assertion from someone we don't know with no actual facts should be taken seriously. And again as I said previously: Once evidence of such was shown, we did take it seriously.

As to a bias in the workings of the blacklist. There is and should be a bias in favour of blacklisting (most requests are ones where blacklisting is clearly correct) and keeping things blacklisted (most requests are probably made by the spammers themselves, most of the remainder is cases where spamming would likely continue). However, this also means that in cases where the original rationale was incorrect some evidence-gathering has to happen. I do not see any problem with this. There should be such a bias. Evidence should be required in such cases. Just because you don't happen to like it doesn't make it wrong.

 — mike@meta:~$  02:41, 23 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

(Sorry, I forgot about this thread :p)

This is rubbish. I did not have any more information than you did — the information available at the time was perfectly sufficient to determine it was not spam. You don't have to believe an assertion, but when I claim that not a single link is spam, you can take it seriously and give it at least a cursory examination. You failed to do even that. When an editor with several thousand edits comes and makes a request, you assume he's a spammer even if he says he's not connected with the website?! On Wikipedia we have a policy, based on fundamental principles of humanity, that we "assume good faith". Apparently, you do not. The most galling thing in all this is that you lied — you claimed that

"Looking at User:COIBot/LinkReports/sulekha.com, I don't see the "mostly legitimate uses, and hardly any spam" - thus  Declined again."

when it is quite clear that you didn't look at all — if you had actually looked at them, you would have seen it, because I was able to look at the same list, with no more information than you, and see it. And now you are shamelessly trying to defend yourself; I don't know what to say. The mistake was originally on your part. I claim that there is no spam, you claimed that it was mostly spam, and if you wanted to persist with your false assertion, the burden of proof is on you — under any reasonable terms of engagement — to provide at least one example. The fact that you act high and mighty and assume everyone is a spammer and refuse to even pay the slightest attention to claims of your error shows the asymmetry of power in this situation. If you cannot step back for a moment and see that there is something wrong with this... Look, to find one example of spam would have taken you minutes. To go through hundreds of uses and classify each of them as legitimate took me hours. What makes you think that, even when it's you who has screwed up in the first place, a few minutes of your time is worth more than hours of someone who is actually contributing to the encyclopedia? Shreevatsa 19:08, 4 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

To be precise, I claimed that spam was the original reason for blacklisting. Which it was. As for "reasonable terms of engagement" - one might think such terms would include actually assuming good faith as opposed to making baseless accusations of lying. More to the point, such terms include an assumption that the initial blacklisting was correct. That's almost always true, and that assumption saves us countless hours of work, as you found out when you did a thorough review of every link addition. While I'm glad to see you're interested in these issues, I am not convinced that routinely wasting such effort is good for the projects (not "the encyclopedia"). Your parochial view aside, the current system serves us well in the vast majority of cases but fails spectacularly in a tiny proportion of them as you discovered. That ridiculously good track record is fine by me. You can thank the meta spam team on your way out.  – mike@meta:~$  15:34, 5 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

Dear Mike.lifeguard, you added totalreal.com to the blacklist, because I added following link totalreal.com/wiki/hattussas/galerie.htm to a lot of slavic wikipages like ucraina or serbia.

I don't know why you hated it, this pages were very poor with informations about that ruins. So from my view it was a nice add of fotos, .... Even there are no copyright-problems, I made researches and photos on my own.

If you want to remove totalreal.com from blacklist, than do it. Thanks Pedja

Not copyright problems - spamming. Several IPs (was that you?) were pushing the link on several wikis.  — mike@meta:~$  13:02, 29 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Mike, The SUL Thekohser had been unlocked in the beginning of May, and it appeared to be consensus to do that, generally, allowing each WMF wiki to make its own decisions about allegedly disruptive users. May 30, however, you re-locked, citing an unspecified discussion.[2] As you know, Thekohser attempted to open dialog yesterday, starting the account Thekohser-2 on Wikiversity. There seemed to be some consensus to allow him to, at least, use his original talk page to negotiate return. However, I discovered your May 30 relock, which made it impossible for him to use Thekohser for this, defeating my allowance of Talk page access for him. And now you have globally locked Thekohser-2 as well.[3] What's happening and why?

The appearance is that you are unilaterally making decisions about who can edit Wikiversity, and every WMF wiki, without any consideration of what the local communities prefer, effectively undoing the actions of various administrators who have unblocked him or allowed Talk page or email access. What's the reality? Thanks. --Abd 01:47, 2 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

The reality is he's banned, and the ban is being enforced.  – mike@meta:~$  16:10, 4 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, Mike. I don't think you answered my question, which was about the "discussion" you mentioned with the lock, and the appearance that your action might be unilateral, or might have resulted from a private discussion with unspecified participants. "Being enforced" is passive voice. Who decided he is banned, under what authority, and where is this documented? In any case, you need not trouble yourself, this will be handled as a routine matter, it's just that it would be simplest if resolved here. --Abd 19:25, 4 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

"Being enforced" is passive voice because I'm not the only person enforcing this, but I couldn't be bothered to figure out who else had locked accounts etc. Jimbo banned him from all WMF projects.  – mike@meta:~$  15:23, 5 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

What an odd thing. I thought Jimbo had given up the tools in a very public spat with WV. It doesn't really mean much if you give up the tools but then have others with those tools carry out your wishes... What do you think Mike? 64.139.4.129 17:01, 5 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

IP, I'm not sure that it matters what Mike thinks. Mike, I'm sorry for troubling you, but your answers imply to me that there was no specific discussion to point to and that your action was really unilateral, or based on some small-scale discussion, perhaps off-wiki, or just some general impression. It implies that you are not acting at the direction of the Foundation, nor of Jimbo. Yes, there are others "involved," though there is only one global lock, yours. Various admins, however, have acted to unblock the user or to allow him Talk page access. The global lock prevents that, thus representing meta interference in local authority. The steward manual implies that great caution should be exercised with using a global lock, but, of course, you have years of experience. My question here was simply an opportunity for you to explain. Thanks for your time, it's appreciated. --Abd 01:56, 6 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

There was both general and specific discussion. Much of the general discussion was in IRC (over a span of weeks); the specific discussion spread between stewards-l, checkuser-l, and some by private email. There's not one place I could point to for "The Discussion" which is why I didn't. I don't think you noticed that there are other stewards locking his accounts as well... though given the volume in Special:Log/centralauth, I can't say I blame you if you didn't look for it (and sorry, I don't remember who it was or the account name). If there's community consensus to allow him access to talk pages or something, you'll want to bring that up with Jimmy, I think. When he's wrong, I'm happy to contradict him, but in this case I think he's right, so I wouldn't blithely ignore his wishes.  – mike@meta:~$  11:06, 6 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

I'm really sorry but I absolutely not have the time for this for a completely month. I was taking pictures in 3 festivals and now I have to work on the 2500 of them ^^' Some are for Wikimedia. But my idea is you can take a look at deviantart. There is a Creative Commons licence there now. They have a lot of this sort of stuffs. Say me if you find something there! Good luck, Ceridwen 17:47, 5 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly :)  – mike@meta:~$  20:51, 5 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

No problem, you're just very lucky, it's my first day of vacation XD Ceridwen 21:06, 5 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

I saw your mentioning in the header of your talk page that spamlist issues belong to that talk page. However, a request posted there more than a month ago still remains unanswered and I'm at loss, whether there are issues unsolved or something else. The previously blacklisted URL has a legitimate article in several Wikipedias (CozyCot). I know that the fact that you're the most active there does not give you the responsibility of answering every request, but I'm not sure what happened in this case. Gatyonrew 09:48, 6 July 2010 (UTC)Reply