Though not yet reflected here, there's 4 new checkusers on enwiki.

ArbCom bestowed access to Blnguyen, Kirill Lokshin, FloNight and Alison and it was applied by Cary Bass yesterday.

So we can stop complaining that there are no female CheckUsers.

What, no Durova?

I'm surprised they gave it to Alison. She's intelligent, reasonable and knows more about IP addresses than the whole ArbCom put together. Oh dear, now I've said that they'll take it away.

Most of those people were on Arbcom. They didn't have the power before?

Anyways, Checkuser isn't that big a deal. What you need are people, on top of checkuser, who can run tracenets, or get creative when they hit proxies and tunnels and such.

That said, the only people who really need to identify people are the police. If someone does something illegal, like hack your computer and access private material, or damage hardware - or unless real stalking, in the criminal sense, is taking place, then there is almost no point in knowing who it is. Only the authorities can do something about it, so why bother if they aren't involved. And if something is seriously going on, like hardware damage, hijacking, or whatever, then by all means call the police, and send Durova home to get a new hobby.

I know the net is the wild west, and everyone likes to play coyboy (or Nancy Drew) and there can be shootemups to be sure. But this is what it boils down to. Finally.

Is that Alson the same Alison who is member here? Just wondering.

Yep

Yep. 'tis me :-)

Intresting, explains some stuff.

I see your avatar is hosted at http://www.e271.net/~alison/avatars/livingdead.jpg. Do you have log access to that site?

Ah. Wow. I'd not considered that.

No, I don't currently have access to the Apache logs there. I do have an unused shell over there and a friend of mine is sysop there, so yes, I see your point.

I'm on my phone right now (check the logs :-) ) but when I get home, I promise to change it, in deference to you all here. Fair is fair. Can I host that image locally, as I'd like to keep it?

Thanks. We seem to not be able to upload graphics to WR. I use ImageShack myself. It both provides for my privacy and addresses concerns of IP harvesting.

You can upload graphics, and you can even get the uploaded graphic to appear in the avatar slot, but not if you do it the default way. The default method has a bug in the URL path, but with a little inside information, the URL can be fixed up so that it works after all.

Sure - I'll take care of that right now...

(Mere seconds later...)

OK, Alison's avatar is now being hosted right here on wikipediareview.com. Alison, this is going to have to be on the honor system - I can't deny people the ability to change avatars, at least not without either messing with the board's PHP code or denying the ability to change profile info altogether.

By the way, that's a photo of Kyra Schon, who has a bio on Wikipedia despite the fact that she never had another role after Night of the Living Dead. Oooh, total meme possibilities!

I remember Kyra Schon going on Wikipedia to ask that details of where she worked at be withheld because some fans are creepy and have stalked her while she worked.

Jonny

Sure enough, it's still there on the talk page... And I didn't even check first! I wonder if that's why Alison chose that photo?

I'm sure Alison doesn't worry about people contacting her at work, though - she probably has some sort of mundane, boring job anyway, like working for MI5 or something.

Hi again, all,

I'll keep this shortish here & bung all replies into the one response.

Sorry about the avatar business. It's basically been set that way since I got here months ago & I'd thought nothing of it, really, until GBG brought it up. I've used that avatar on other boards and no, there's no significance to it! I just liked the movie and the pic. To Somey's comment about trusting me not to change it, what I'm going to do instead is have no avatar at all. Thus, if I change it, you get to know about it. Thanks, Somey, for changing it in the interim.

Yez, I haz checkuzar - that's going to be controversial in itself. No, I'm not interested in snarfing anyone's IP addresses here. That's not my thing at all. Anyone who's concerned should probably cash in their DHCP lease from here on anyway, just to be sure. I'm not a regular here and Somey or someone should maybe go back and edit my old postings to remove any funny URLs or whatnot. There's only 20+ messages.

I don't know why I'm telling you this, but anyway; you know I'm Alison - it's my username & I've already disclosed that I'm "that" admin over there. Fair enough. But of all the other accounts here, you don't know who's avatar is where and right now, you should maybe think about going into the BB code here and taking out that external URLs ref thing. At least one other checkuser has posted here in the past, y'know.

I'm not going to talk about CheckUser here; how it works, what goes on or anything to do with it. Sorry! Having said that, I *will* say that it's pretty well logged from the inside and anything I do is 100% visible to all other checkusers and devs. I intend sticking to the WP checkuser policy on all matters, so no messing about. You can all read the policy on Meta for yourselves.

Possibly the reason I got chosen is because I do have that bit of extra technical knowledge to do other stuff with IP addresses. I've been a *nix sysop for almost 20 years, am a professional software engineer and my career today involves certain aspects of that. 'nuff said! Admins here can prolly snarf my IP addr and put that together. At least one of you knows already where I work. I live somewhere in Sili Valley, so go figure (such an MI5 hotbed, that )

Ok - I'm done. Seeya.

I'm sorry to go off-topic, but I don't get it. What's the deal?

The deal is that when you guys read my postings, you download the cutesy Schon avatar from a server within my control. I go through the Apache access logs, grep out HTTP requests for the image, pull your IP address, pop it into Checkuser and presto - I get to b4nz0r all your sock accounts

Or not. Anyways - done now on this subject!

Alison is mean and beat me to the explanation. I declare cabal.

You posted funny URL's? Why didn't anyone tell me? I could always use a good laugh...


Who, Dave Gerard? He just makes everything up anyway, doesn't he?


Ehh, don't worry about it! There's plenty of documentation out there on how it works, not to mention the actual source code. I keep meaning to install it on our sooper-sekrit MediaWiki installation here too, but I never seem to get around to it due to my extreme laziness for some reason. One of these days, maybe...

Lol.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=167276250

"The last in a long litany of offenses" occured 6 months before the block... I remember rolling my eyes hard from that one. I thought your name sounded familiar. Other than being my sister's name, of course, but hers has two "l's".

I'm just glad you didn't dress it up with anything more substantial, or I would never have remembered it ;-)

I thank God every day I got brains instead of looks. Forgive me for being all Durova-esque pleased with myself, but something just clicked:

Durova gives the following evidence that "they" aren't aware of her secret mailing list full of evil, bitter adults who must not realize they are closer to death than birth (ok, everything after secret mailing list is not actually part of its official description I guess):



The diff in question is Privatemusings commenting on my block, specifically saying the rushed support is an indication of off-wiki discussion of said block. The implication is that since Privatemusings expresses unsurety as to how and where my block is discussed off-wiki, he doesn't know about the list. The only reason this would make sense is if MY block were at one point discussed on the list.

Alison was one of the first to support this block, as indicated in my earlier post. I'd say there is a good chance that Alison is on this list.

This thread hasn't been on topic since Alison's name came up, but I don't want to cross the line. Shall I start a new topic in the "Editors" forum?

Miltopia, I guess you can start a threat in Editors.

No need to ask. Be Bol...AAAAHHH! Wikipedianism! Get it off! Get it off!

Let me answer right here. Am I on that private mailing list (I'm just reading the arb case now, BTW)? Nope. Did I receive the sekr1t "evidence"? Nope. Did I receive anything on you in pmail from anyone? Nope.

Make of that what you will, but I'm telling the truth here.

Yes, re. the "last" comment. That was quite incorrect. Sorry The AIDS lulzy comment pushes a lot of my buttons though, and I'll admit to that.

Congrats Alison. Having seen your interactions here I have a great respect for you.

Hmm... you're sorry, and I'm banned... looks like you come out ahead on that one. I wonder how many more Wikipedia "endorse block ~~~~"-s would melt away into "sorry"-s when confronted on neutral ground by the person on the other end of the ban. I also wonder if you would still be one of these new checkusers if you had said anything different.

It's a good thing that people like Somey are more common than people like me. "Honor system" indeed.

I'm posting here, aren't I? Do I have to? Nope. Do I owe you an answer? Yes, I do. I was certainly wrong on the "last" part of the comment - that is true and I apologise. I was not wrong on the "long list" part, however.

If someone calls me on a block I do, I examine it. If someone calls me on an endorse, as above, I examine it. If I was wrong, I'll admit it. The other option is to ignore & I haven't done that.

A fair point. In fact this bitterness is uncharacteristic for me... I'd be willing to bet I'll be over this tomorrow if not in a half hour. Whatever the exact time, I'm sure it'll take less than the 6 months between my AIDS edit and your very early "endorsement".

Actually, this comparison really puts Guy's accusations of "vendettas" and "extended campaigns of harassment" and"unwillingness to drop grudges" into perspective... it's good to have reminders that I'm not the person he makes me out to be. I don't know what I'd do with myself if I put any stock into what his type said about me. I'm sure many of you can empathize... I've heard the most awful, awful things from the JzG-types. I don't think Wikipedians often consider what they are really saying about another person.

But I'm getting waaaaaaay off topic here ;-)

Congrats Ali..

(teasing, do not take this seriously, anyone)

So since you couldn't get me to run for ArbCom to get teh soopersekrit CheckUser toys, you had to ask for it yourself huh?

(teasing mode off)

edit: Actually, now that I think about it.. hmm.. this will take some thinking about..

Veropedia userbox + Durova sleuthing award + barnstar from Durova + first mentioning possibly candidacy here = doomed.

True, but it's a fairly broad topic...

I have to admit, in spite of my general enmity towards all things WP-related, I was genuinely pleased to see that they'd given CheckUser rights to not one, but two female admins. (I'm fairly certain Kirill Lokshin is male, but I haven't seen him close-up or anything.) Clearly it's considered a promotion, though of course they're still not getting paid... so in effect, it's more like an additional burden. Still, it shows that they're trying, which (as Martha Stewart used to say, before they threw her in the slammer) is a Good Thing.

I mean, it's not all good, since FloNight is part of the Official Slimcabal™, but nobody's perfect, right?

If it's doomed, it's doomed. Hell, I never thought I'd become an admin on WP, and I was probably the most surprised out of anyone involved when it went through successfully, and Alison had asked me previously if I had considered running for ArbCom, so its a thought. Besides, having been in front of ArbCom twice (first for the Great Irish Famine ArbCom, and then the massive and overbearing "Troubles" ArbCom..).. I can see how a fully functional, give and take ArbCom (not the one or two people write the bulk of a Proposed Decision and then everybody jumps in with supports or opposes I see in some cases) would be of benefit to Wikipedia.

With regards to Durova.. well.. I'm not going to speak too much about the situation, because I think it's a sad situation all around.

In general, I understand both sides of the story.. there are a lot of folks who are quite properly banned on WP, who quite frankly, DESERVE their bans, who actively seek to continue disrupting Wikipedia. Knowing certain things, such as linguistic tips and tricks (such as common misspellings, etcetera, I knew one person who always spelt irrelevant as irrelevent, which was usually a give away as to a possible Sock) can only help minimize the disruption these folks can cause.

I think that the problem is two-fold, however.. first off is that there's an old saying.. "if you look for something hard enough, you'll start seeing it.. EVEN IF IT DOESN'T EXIST." There was a time where I firmly believed a user was a reincarnation of a certain banned user, even though I was mistaken. (and yes, I did apologize to the user in question) As it turns out later, the user was banned for disruption.. the discussion of which I stayed FAR away from, because well.. my judgement had been proven incorrect before, so why should it be any better at a later point in time? The second part of that is.. eventually, you can argue yourself into believing that anyone with enough POSITIVE checkmarks off a list is a sock account, or what have you.. only if you ignore the differences. The things that don't match. You become convinced that the data in front fo you is all that matters. "Look, Factors A, B, and C are all similar..." and become convinced that you're right... despite the fact that there are other factors which DON'T match.

The 2nd part of it is that it takes over your time. There's a lot of good editors out there who get the mop, who then spend all their time doing mop-things, and WP loses out, because they no longer have time to do the things that earned them the mop in the first place. In my case, I earned the mop due to constantly doing mop-type things without the mop, so in my case at least, it wasn't such a loss..

And before any accusations get thrown around, no, I'm not part of any cabal, real or imagined. I have a couple good friends on Wikipedia, and those are Alison, and One Night In Hackney (who will be leaving the project soon now that The Troubles ArbCom is over). I'm not on any of the mailing lists, etcetera.

So.. why not? I may not make it, but it's still worth a try, if I think I can actually help WP, right?

I'm sure everyone here who isn't blocked will vote for you if you promise to re-open the Poetlister block.

An Arbcom can not be fully fonctional, it's a failure just like the project.

I second Viridae's assessment.

Alison has exhibited uncommonly high levels of frankness, integrity, and ethics.

Were that more WP admins were like her.

FloNight helped me with my appeal to ArbCom. She's no Lar.