I think that the inthenews box in general is in a state of, well, problems. In the past week or two theres been a couple of copyvios on there - One blatant copyvio, Ahmedinezhad.jpg, was on there for three days and added back again after being taken off. Theres also possibly a bit of bias to US events there, too - Often news only relevant to the US is on there, which isn't 'big news' to the rest of the world at all. On top of that, its occasionally slow to be updated.

But it DOES function that way and it IS an intentional feature. It is to stop people block-evading.

Just read, don't edit.

From: "Nathan J. Yoder" <njyoder(a)energon.org> That misses the whole point, which is that it shouldn't have been doing that in the first place as it's a bug.

Obviously, I wouldn't have ever hit edit if I *knew* it did that.

No, it's supposed to work that way. It's doing exactly what it is intended to do.

Why is that "obvious"? Why on earth would you hit the edit button when you were banned from editing?

Attempts to edit while you are blocked are attempts to evade the block.

Protects against block evasion.

Well, that's not really accurate, but most blocked users can no longer us a different Userid to avoid the block, precisely because Wikipedia blocks the IP address when attempts are made to do this. That wasn't the case before the IP blocker was added.

If only that were the case. In practice, blocked editors edit all the time; this simply stops the ones with fixed IP addresses from editing with sockpuppets.

Right. This feature stops sockpuppet editing (at least for fixed IP addresses).

Because the system can't tell whether you were trying to get around the block or simply doing something odd with no intent of actually editing when you hit the "edit" button. What, again, was the net effect of this? Your valid block was extended for a few more hours?

No, as far as I know IPs are not immediately blocked, only userids.

I think the likelihood of a true positive is vastly greated than that of a false positive, regardless of the many protestations of innocence on the part of those who get blocked by this. I also think it's easy enough to get an admin to reverse the block if you have a reasonable story as to how it happened.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Nathan J. Yoder (njyoder(a)energon.org) [050705 23:24]: As I pointed out to you before, this isn't the dev list, and people here don't determine whether this documented behaviour is a bug or a feature. So making your case here, however eloquently, isn't going to do one dot of good in achieving the change you want. I note you haven't tried asking on the dev list, mediawiki-l. Perhaps if you do, someone will explain why the feature works the way it does.

On 7/5/05, David Gerard <fun(a)thingy.apana.org.au> wrote: What a strange attitude to take toward software development! Developers don't determine whether or not a behavior is a bug. Developers fix bugs reported by users. It's the users that determine which behaviors are bugs.

From: Bishonen <bishonen(a)ungoodthinkful.com> No, the block wasn't extended beyond the original 24 hours. Whether editing from your own account is supposed to extend the block, or is doing it as the result of a bug, I didn't think it was reasonable for it to work like that. Therefore I unblocked Nathan after about 23 1/2 hours. Bishonen

So what exactly is the purpose in reblocking the original account that was already blocked to begin with?

No, it's more liked you've been tossed out of the shop for trespassing, but whever the shop door says "back in five minutes" you feel a need to go in and look around to see if the owner is back. Then when you're tossed out again for trespassing, you complain that you weren't planning to steal anything, you were just trying to find the owner.

Turns out that people keep getting kicked out of the shop for a day for disruptive behaviour, and the doors are automatically locked and their 24 hour ban is automatically renewed when the alarm system sees them trying to

From: "JAY JG" <jayjg(a)hotmail.com> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org> To: wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] more active censorship Date: Mon, 04 Jul 2005 18:42:47 -0400 > >On 7/5/05, JAY JG <jayjg(a)hotmail.com> wrote: > > > > > > > >On 7/5/05, Nathan J. Yoder <njyoder(a)energon.org> wrote: > > > > > > > So what exactly is the purpose in reblocking the original account >that > > > > was already blocked to begin with? > > > > > >It's a bug and should be fixed. > > > > > >The sign on the shop door says "Back in five minutes", but every time > > >you peer into the empty shop the shopkeeper gets a snit and waits > > >another five. > > > > No, it's more liked you've been tossed out of the shop for trespassing, >but > > whever the shop door says "back in five minutes" you feel a need to go >in > > and look around to see if the owner is back. Then when you're tossed >out > > again for trespassing, you complain that you weren't planning to steal > > anything, you were just trying to find the owner. > >If the door is locked, you can't go in, no matter how many times you >rattle the knob. Turns out that people keep getting kicked out of the shop for a day for disruptive behaviour, and the doors are automatically locked and their 24 hour ban is automatically renewed when the alarm system sees them trying to get back in wearing different disguises. Now some new guy kicked out for a day for disruption gets caught by the alarm system, and he says "but I wasn't trying to sneak in in disguise and disrupt like those other people, I was coming in openly and making note of your inventory so I could buy it legally when I'm allowed back in". So, he writes 500 abusive e-mails to the owners of the shop, insisting that he has been unjustly locked out, and demanding that the employee on duty at the time should be punished, claming that the alarm system is broken, and insisting that the shop is a disgrace. Another guy who has been kicked out for disrupting the shop has also been regularly writing the owners, generally whining and complaining about how terrible the shop is, how rude their employees are, how they practice favoritism to their regular customers, and how much better are the shops that he frequents. He takes up the cause of the first complainant, making erroneous claims, and insisting that the alarm systems are faulty, and need to be fixed right away so no-one is ever locked out like this again. What a tragedy. Maybe they should both take their business elsewhere. Jay. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

From: Timwi <timwi(a)gmx.net> The more I read from you, Jay, the more I notice that it is full of strawmen. Which is kind of ironic, because you were usually the one who most vocally told other people they were setting up strawmen, especially without explaining why you think they are strawmen.

As stated above, it also renews it for non-sock puppets. This is how it currently works: 1. Admin blocks User:foo. 2. User:foo logs in as User:foo. 3. User:foo hits 'edit page.' 4. User:foo block is renewed for another 24 hours.

Phil Sandifer wrote: user:foo block is was renewed within the didn't get extended by > more than a few seconds.

Huh? For that to be true in general, you would have to assert that every blocked user attempts to hit "edit" at least once every minute.

The assertion was that the general case is that blocks are renewed "very quickly". This does seem to be true, since most blocks are placed due to ongoing edits. Thus, the blocked user will usually hit edit soon after the block is in effect.

--- Timwi <timwi(a)gmx.net> wrote:

cool for I agree completely - this is an example close to my heart right now - reasonable people, when treated unreasonably and denied any right of appeal, start to act in ways which seem unreasonable to others, but are reasonable to them. Norrath

From: Skyring <skyring(a)gmail.com> us a the before I'm talking about the same logged-in user.

protection, then you don't need any more. Surely this is plain common sense. time; No it doesn't. In such a case they CANNOT edit. The system stops them.

The fact that the block is reset doesn't stop them editing. They can't edit anyway.

Please address the point.

From: Skyring <skyring(a)gmail.com> Yes, I've pointed this out. Why did you move away from addressing NYJ's valid point?

It doesn't STOP people from editing. The car has no engine, remember? It's not going anywhere.

new Yes, but as you've pointed out, it doesn't work, and as NJY noted, it affects the original, logged in user.

NJY, despite what other failings he might have, raised a valid point, and you've just spent three hours waffling about other things.

Thanks. It's a bug, wouldn't you say?

JAY JG wrote: He already said that. He wanted to re-read the block page. That is a perfectly legitimate thing to want. Also, by the GFDL, users *must* be able to retrieve the source code of a page. This, too, is a perfectly legitimate thing to want. Both cases *must not* renew a block. I know that most of you think Nathan is just an attention-seeking troll, but I think a lot of you would do good if you learnt to "see through" the emotional bits and look at the factual things underneath. Timwi

I've just blocked myself to check on how this process works. Among other things, the page includes the following line: "If you need to see the wiki text of an article, you may wish to use the Export pages feature." Export pages is a live link. So the GFDL problems are nil.

I also notice that no one has made an argument for why it should work that way, since it's clearly only meant to thwart block evasion (which this is not a case of).

I also notice that no one has made an argument for why it should work that way, since it's clearly only meant to thwart block evasion (which this is not a case of).

Timwi wrote: I have no comment about the rest of this thread, but I wanted to point out that this is not true. What is required by the GFDL is *not* that people be able to retrieve the source, but that they are able to get a "Transparent" copy.

That misses the whole point, which is that it shouldn't have been doing that in the first place as it's a bug. Obviously, I wouldn't have ever hit edit if I *knew* it did that.