Autograph pages - WikiEN-l - lists.wikimedia.org

List overview All Threads
Download

Autograph pages

yet another credential idea...

Re: [WikiEN-l] Conservapedia

Steve Bennett

7 Mar 2007 7 Mar '07

10:34 p.m.

Oh god. Userboxes were bad enough. What on earth is this new "sign my autograph page" trend? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/ANNAfoxlover I got a request from a different user. Rather than [[WP:BITE]] their head off, I thought I'd vent here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Smartie960/Autographs Ack. Steve

Reply

Show replies by date

Guettarda

7 Mar 7 Mar

10:44 p.m.

On 3/7/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Oh god. Userboxes were bad enough. What on earth is this new "sign my autograph page" trend? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/ANNAfoxlover I got a request from a different user. Rather than [[WP:BITE]] their head off, I thought I'd vent here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Smartie960/Autographs Ack. Steve

Oh dear. Wow. It's so sweet and pre-teen. "Please sign so I can contact you later. Maybe the next time you change your signature you can sign again so I can see it." And this is a sig?? <span style="font-family: Monotype Corsiva; font-size: 12pt;">[[User:Cremepuff222|<font color="#008000">Cremepuff222</font>]] ([[User talk:Cremepuff222|<font color="#2F4F4F">talk</font>]], [[User:Cremepuff222/Autograph Book|<font color="#2F4F4F">sign book</font>]]) </span> I am all for making Wikipedia as much fun as possible...but autograph books?

Reply

Will

10:48 p.m.

Don't forget the complaint at AN/I when someone joke signed Cremepuff22's with the "Can I really edit here? Jimbo Wales 04:31 6 Mar 07 (UTC)" edit, which was a total waste of time.

Reply

David Gerard

10:50 p.m.

On 07/03/07, Guettarda <guettarda(a)gmail.com> wrote:

I am all for making Wikipedia as much fun as possible...but autograph books?

I'm tempted to make my sig a hesitantly-rendered 'X'. - d.

Reply

geni

10:53 p.m.

On 3/7/07, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 07/03/07, Guettarda <guettarda(a)gmail.com> wrote:

I am all for making Wikipedia as much fun as possible...but autograph books?

I'm tempted to make my sig a hesitantly-rendered 'X'.

I seem to recall a guideline against images in sigs. Generaly they are a really bad idea. -- geni

Reply

Aude

10:51 p.m.

Problem is the talk page spamming. User has been warned to stop spamming people's talk pages. If they continue, the user should be blocked per WP:CANVASS. If they spam my talk page, they will be blocked because it's too disruptive. -Aude On 3/7/07, Guettarda <guettarda(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 3/7/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Oh god. Userboxes were bad enough. What on earth is this new "sign my autograph page" trend? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/ANNAfoxlover I got a request from a different user. Rather than [[WP:BITE]] their head off, I thought I'd vent here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Smartie960/Autographs Ack. Steve

Oh dear. Wow. It's so sweet and pre-teen. "Please sign so I can contact you later. Maybe the next time you change your signature you can sign again so I can see it." And this is a sig?? <span style="font-family: Monotype Corsiva; font-size: 12pt;">[[User:Cremepuff222|<font color="#008000">Cremepuff222</font>]] ([[User talk:Cremepuff222|<font color="#2F4F4F">talk</font>]], [[User:Cremepuff222/Autograph Book|<font color="#2F4F4F">sign book</font>]]) </span> I am all for making Wikipedia as much fun as possible...but autograph books? _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

-- Aude

Reply

Steve Bennett

11:21 p.m.

On 3/8/07, Aude <audevivere(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Problem is the talk page spamming. User has been warned to stop spamming people's talk pages. If they continue, the user should be blocked per

Yeah. I can sort of pretend we don't have these kiddies using Wikipedia as a Myspace when they do it on their own page. But when they poop on my talk page, that illusion evaporates. Steve

Reply

geni

10:52 p.m.

On 3/7/07, Guettarda <guettarda(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 3/7/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Oh god. Userboxes were bad enough. What on earth is this new "sign my autograph page" trend? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/ANNAfoxlover I got a request from a different user. Rather than [[WP:BITE]] their head off, I thought I'd vent here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Smartie960/Autographs Ack. Steve

Oh dear. Wow. It's so sweet and pre-teen. "Please sign so I can contact you later. Maybe the next time you change your signature you can sign again so I can see it." And this is a sig?? <span style="font-family: Monotype Corsiva; font-size: 12pt;">[[User:Cremepuff222|<font color="#008000">Cremepuff222</font>]] ([[User talk:Cremepuff222|<font color="#2F4F4F">talk</font>]], [[User:Cremepuff222/Autograph Book|<font color="#2F4F4F">sign book</font>]]) </span> I am all for making Wikipedia as much fun as possible...but autograph books?

Been around since before the new year. Harmless really. If you don't like them don't sign them and don't have one. Instead click [[special:random/image]] untill you find a copyvio then mark it for deletion. -- geni

Reply

Robth

8 Mar 8 Mar

3:40 a.m.

On 3/7/07, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Been around since before the new year. Harmless really. If you don't like them don't sign them and don't have one.

See, it's tempting to say that...until you realize that the moments when we're at our worst are those in which we most strongly resemble the internet at large, and in which Wikipedia editors behave like your standard internet denizens. Having these things around makes it mighty easy for folks to forget that we're in the free encyclopedia business. We're already well behind in the battle against standard internet practice of grabbing random images or text from wherever and barely even kicking when it comes to advancing the crazy notion of checking your facts with print sources; this being the case let's think about what we can do to make ourselves more distinct from the myspaces of the world, not less. -- Robth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Robth)

Reply

geni

3:47 a.m.

On 3/8/07, Robth <robth1(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 3/7/07, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Been around since before the new year. Harmless really. If you don't like them don't sign them and don't have one.

See, it's tempting to say that...until you realize that the moments when we're at our worst are those in which we most strongly resemble the internet at large, and in which Wikipedia editors behave like your standard internet denizens. Having these things around makes it mighty easy for folks to forget that we're in the free encyclopedia business. We're already well behind in the battle against standard internet practice of grabbing random images or text from wherever and barely even kicking when it comes to advancing the crazy notion of checking your facts with print sources; this being the case let's think about what we can do to make ourselves more distinct from the myspaces of the world, not less.

Most problem images are not upload by members of the community. The amount of damage such pages cause is less than the damage that would be caused by fighting them. Thus the do nothing approach would appear to be the logical course. If you want people to stop uploading copyvios you educate them about copyvios. If you want people to use sources you educate them about about sources. There are no shortcuts. -- geni

Reply

Oskar Sigvardsson

7 Mar 7 Mar

10:52 p.m.

On 3/7/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Oh god. Userboxes were bad enough. What on earth is this new "sign my autograph page" trend? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/ANNAfoxlover

Oh dear lord. I never had that big of a problem with the userboxes (except when it got insane), but this is so MySpace that I want to vomit! "Please be my friend!" I want to hurl! --Oskar

Reply

Mets501

10:57 p.m.

Oh god. Userboxes were bad enough. What on earth is this new "sign my autograph page" trend?

I agree. I got the message too. MFD? --Mets501

Reply

Aude

11:06 p.m.

Smartie960's user page has this bouncing Wikipedia logo, which clicking on takes you to Special:Random. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Bouncywikilogo.gif I know the logo is copyrighted, but I suppose people can put it on their userpage? I find it distracting in this case, but since apparently a number of other users put it on their user pages then it's okay?

Reply

David Gerard

11:08 p.m.

On 07/03/07, Aude <audevivere(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Smartie960's user page has this bouncing Wikipedia logo, which clicking on takes you to Special:Random. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Bouncywikilogo.gif I know the logo is copyrighted, but I suppose people can put it on their userpage? I find it distracting in this case, but since apparently a number of other users put it on their user pages then it's okay?

Put it this way: the risk of the Foundation suing is 0. And apparently the strident enforcement of the visual identity guidelines only applies to the Wikimedia Foundation logo, not the actual fourth-best brand in the world. So that's all right then. - d.

Reply

Ken Arromdee

8 Mar 8 Mar

12:22 a.m.

On Wed, 7 Mar 2007, David Gerard wrote:

Smartie960's user page has this bouncing Wikipedia logo, which clicking on takes you to Special:Random. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Bouncywikilogo.gif I know the logo is copyrighted, but I suppose people can put it on their userpage? I find it distracting in this case, but since apparently a number of other users put it on their user pages then it's okay?

Put it this way: the risk of the Foundation suing is 0.

But Wikipedia's fair use policy is not just based on people suing; in fact, there are things which are legal fair use under the law which are prohibited by Wikipedia's policy against using copyrighted images. So I don't think "obviously the Foundation won't sue" applies here. It's still a copyvio.

Reply

geni

7 Mar 7 Mar

11:11 p.m.

On 3/7/07, Aude <audevivere(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Smartie960's user page has this bouncing Wikipedia logo, which clicking on takes you to Special:Random. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Bouncywikilogo.gif I know the logo is copyrighted, but I suppose people can put it on their userpage? I find it distracting in this case, but since apparently a number of other users put it on their user pages then it's okay?

The answer to the west lothian question is not to ask the west lothian question Yeah tehnicaly a copyvio but the foundation hasn't complained and the copyright cabal has 146609 other more important issues to deal with first. -- geni

Reply

David Gerard

11:17 p.m.

On 07/03/07, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Yeah tehnicaly a copyvio

Er, how? I appreciate someone wanting to mirror the userpages might have some trouble. (Cue picture of 100nm violin.)

but the foundation hasn't complained

Well, yes.

and the copyright cabal has 146609 other more important issues to deal with first.

Not that that ever stopped a really dedicated rabid semi-Aspergic human killbot on Wikipedia. - d.

Reply

geni

11:43 p.m.

On 3/7/07, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 07/03/07, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Yeah tehnicaly a copyvio

Er, how? I appreciate someone wanting to mirror the userpages might have some trouble. (Cue picture of 100nm violin.)

Derivative of a copywritten work made without permission

Not that that ever stopped a really dedicated rabid semi-Aspergic human killbot on Wikipedia.

He who dies haveing delt with the most copyvios wins. Nah there are various odds and ends that we know are potential problems (game screenshots people didn't make themselves the old GFDL presumed images) but we are not careing about for the time being. -- geni

Reply

Mark Wagner

8 Mar 8 Mar

12:41 a.m.

On 3/7/07, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 3/7/07, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Not that that ever stopped a really dedicated rabid semi-Aspergic human killbot on Wikipedia.

He who dies haveing delt with the most copyvios wins.

Guess that makes OrphanBot the perpetual winner-in-waiting. (73,553 removals and counting) -- Mark [[User:Carnildo]]

Reply

geni

7 Mar 7 Mar

11:08 p.m.

On 3/7/07, Mets501 <mets501wiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Oh god. Userboxes were bad enough. What on earth is this new "sign my autograph page" trend?

I agree. I got the message too. MFD? --Mets501

You want another usebox fiasco? let it go with have other bigger problems (copyright, copyright, false info in articles, copyright and admin backlogs). -- geni

Reply

Puppy

11:11 p.m.

I'm in favor. Does not facilitate, etc. OTOH, I am ill, and I tend to be less tolerant when I don't feel well, so that may be affecting my attitude. Mets501 wrote:

Oh god. Userboxes were bad enough. What on earth is this new "sign my autograph page" trend?

I agree. I got the message too. MFD? --Mets501 _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

Reply

Oskar Sigvardsson

11:15 p.m.

On 3/8/07, Puppy <puppy(a)killerchihuahua.com> wrote:

I'm in favor. Does not facilitate, etc. OTOH, I am ill, and I tend to be less tolerant when I don't feel well, so that may be affecting my attitude.

Lets just politely ask them to stop, and it they do, we leave it alone. If they persist, then we'll figure out the next step --Oskar

Reply

David Gerard

11:18 p.m.

On 07/03/07, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 3/8/07, Puppy <puppy(a)killerchihuahua.com> wrote:

> I'm in favor. Does not facilitate, etc. OTOH, I am ill, and I tend to be > less tolerant when I don't feel well, so that may be affecting my attitude.

Lets just politely ask them to stop, and it they do, we leave it alone. If they persist, then we'll figure out the next step

I'll stop when given an actual reason. (Fun Fact! The bouncy wiki logo comes from Uncyclopedia. Your starter for 10 is why the Foundation couldn't stop them using it even if they wanted to.) - d.

Reply

Stan Shebs

11:23 p.m.

Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:

On 3/8/07, Puppy <puppy(a)killerchihuahua.com> wrote:

I'm in favor. Does not facilitate, etc. OTOH, I am ill, and I tend to be less tolerant when I don't feel well, so that may be affecting my attitude.

Lets just politely ask them to stop, and it they do, we leave it alone. If they persist, then we'll figure out the next step

My pipe dream is to tie it into a status system - for every 1,000 edits in article space, you get to add one userbox. Or one could get a little nasty, and publish ratios of user page editing vs article space editing, give out a "Most Useless Wikipedian" award to the person at the top of the list. :-) ... maybe ... Stan

Reply

Guettarda

11:33 p.m.

On 3/7/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs(a)earthlink.net> wrote:

Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:

On 3/8/07, Puppy <puppy(a)killerchihuahua.com> wrote: > I'm in favor. Does not facilitate, etc. OTOH, I am ill, and I tend to

be

> less tolerant when I don't feel well, so that may be affecting my

attitude.

Lets just politely ask them to stop, and it they do, we leave it alone. If they persist, then we'll figure out the next step

My pipe dream is to tie it into a status system - for every 1,000 edits in article space, you get to add one userbox. Or one could get a little nasty, and publish ratios of user page editing vs article space editing, give out a "Most Useless Wikipedian" award to the person at the top of the list. :-) ... maybe ... Stan

I like that idea. We can also give "most bureaucratic Wikipedian" award based on ratio of Wikipedia space to article space editing. Anyway, gotta run - I need to pick out the 16 userboxes I need to bring my user page up to standard :)

Reply

Steve Bennett

8 Mar 8 Mar

12:18 a.m.

On 3/8/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs(a)earthlink.net> wrote:

Or one could get a little nasty, and publish ratios of user page editing vs article space editing, give out a "Most Useless Wikipedian" award to the person at the top of the list.

Yeah, but not every article-space edit is good, and not every user-space edit is bad. Lately I've been making a lot of edits to my user page, but that's because I use it to keep track of articles I've created and photos I've uploaded. (Yes, most people would use a watchlist for that...;)) Steve

Reply

Stan Shebs

12:33 a.m.

Steve Bennett wrote:

On 3/8/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs(a)earthlink.net> wrote:

Or one could get a little nasty, and publish ratios of user page editing vs article space editing, give out a "Most Useless Wikipedian" award to the person at the top of the list.

Yeah, but not every article-space edit is good, and not every user-space edit is bad. Lately I've been making a lot of edits to my user page, but that's because I use it to keep track of articles I've created and photos I've uploaded. (Yes, most people would use a watchlist for that...;))

Some of the userbox habitues have ratios of 50x(!) or more edits to user pages vs article space edits. It's kind of disconcerting to select just the main space in user contributions, and find the long contribution list drop to just a couple dozen edits *total*. This was one of the dismaying realizations back in the first round of userbox wars, that there was a subculture for whom having the WP login was an end in itself. We've ended up tolerating it as not being worth the trouble of trying to discourage officially. Stan

Reply

Mark Wagner

12:43 a.m.

On 3/7/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Oh god. Userboxes were bad enough. What on earth is this new "sign my autograph page" trend? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/ANNAfoxlover I got a request from a different user. Rather than [[WP:BITE]] their head off, I thought I'd vent here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Smartie960/Autographs

We've got articles covering this: [[Autograph]], [[Celebrity worship]], [[MySpace]]. -- Mark [[User:Carnildo]]

Reply

Angela

1:14 a.m.

On 3/7/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Oh god. Userboxes were bad enough. What on earth is this new "sign my autograph page" trend? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/ANNAfoxlover

May I offer a solution? http://guestbook.wikia.com/ - a wiki purely for signing autograph pages. And perhaps the first wiki inspired by a post on wikien-l. :) Angela -- ********** Sign my autograph book! http://guestbook.wikia.com/wiki/User:Angela/Guestbook **********

Reply

Oldak Quill

3:01 p.m.

On 08/03/07, Angela <beesley(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 3/7/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Oh god. Userboxes were bad enough. What on earth is this new "sign my autograph page" trend? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/ANNAfoxlover

May I offer a solution? http://guestbook.wikia.com/ - a wiki purely for signing autograph pages. And perhaps the first wiki inspired by a post on wikien-l. :)

I don't mind trends like this because they help to build the community. Why would it be sensible to move it off Wikipedia and outside the community? -- Oldak Quill (oldakquill(a)gmail.com)

Reply

Steve Bennett

9 Mar 9 Mar

12:18 a.m.

On 3/9/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill(a)gmail.com> wrote:

I don't mind trends like this because they help to build the community. Why would it be sensible to move it off Wikipedia and outside the community?

I think it's a question of balance. Users who spend 95% of their time at Wikipedia building the encyclopaedia, and 5% engaging in a bit of silliness are of course fine. But users who spend 95% of their time building their user page, chit chatting with others and collecting autographs - those we can live without. And if those users start interfering with the "good" users, something has to be done. Anyway, hopefully the autograph page trend will die off quickly. Steve

Reply

Steve Bennett

8 Mar 8 Mar

6:05 a.m.

On 3/8/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/ANNAfoxlover

To continue the story, ANNAfoxlover apologises for spamming. Alphachimp removes the spam from all the affected users. Affected users thank Alphachimp, and award him (her/ it?) a barnstar. And then: -- After the above comment I thought I'd let you know (if you didn't already... ) that others (such as myself) do not believe it was a good idea what you did. Sure deleting spam from articles and even article talk pages as well is a good thing, but it is my belief that you should let the user decide what do with stuff that is on the user's talk page. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Alphachimp *sigh* Steve

Reply

Alphachimp (Wikipedia)

7:30 a.m.

It :). Responses like that are typical. I used to get complaints from users when my bot migrated their userboxes per WP:GUS. Why they'd be upset at me for fixing a broken template, I'll never know. I guess I'll just handle it politely. :/ alphachimp On 3/8/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 3/8/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/ANNAfoxlover

To continue the story, ANNAfoxlover apologises for spamming. Alphachimp removes the spam from all the affected users. Affected users thank Alphachimp, and award him (her/ it?) a barnstar. And then: -- After the above comment I thought I'd let you know (if you didn't already... ) that others (such as myself) do not believe it was a good idea what you did. Sure deleting spam from articles and even article talk pages as well is a good thing, but it is my belief that you should let the user decide what do with stuff that is on the user's talk page. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Alphachimp *sigh* Steve _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

Reply

6279

days inactive

6281

days old

wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org

Manage subscription

32 comments

16 participants

tags (0)

participants (16)

Alphachimp (Wikipedia)
Angela
Aude
David Gerard
geni
Guettarda
Ken Arromdee
Mark Wagner
Mets501
Oldak Quill
Oskar Sigvardsson
Puppy
Robth
Stan Shebs
Steve Bennett
Will