Jimbo has made it clear that my presence in Wikipedia is not wanted. I will therefore remove myself from the project. Now I'll just have to find some other way to spend my time.
Goodbye.
RickK
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--- Rick giantsrick13@yahoo.com wrote:
Jimbo has made it clear that my presence in Wikipedia is not wanted. I will therefore remove myself from the project. Now I'll just have to find some other way to spend my time.
Rick - where did you get this idea from? Please don't go - we need more people in the trenches. You are a bit abrasive sometimes and I'm pretty sure you don't like me (not that that is a requirement for anything), but I think the good you do far outweighs any bad.
If you must take a Wikiholiday, then please make the best of it and hurry back.
:)
-- mav
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Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Rick giantsrick13@yahoo.com wrote:
Jimbo has made it clear that my presence in Wikipedia is not wanted. I will therefore remove myself from the project. Now I'll just have to find some other way to spend my time.
Rick - where did you get this idea from? Please don't go - we need more people in the trenches. You are a bit abrasive sometimes and I'm pretty sure you don't like me (not that that is a requirement for anything), but I think the good you do far outweighs any bad.
Rick and I have straightened this out I think.
Basically what happened was that in a talk I used Rick as an example to illustrate the diversity of our community and governance. Rick understood my remarks as criticism, when they were meant as praise.
The fault is entirely mine, and I have apologized to Rick so much for my poor wording that I think he'll throw up if I do it again here on the mailing list.
But he thanked me for my apology. He need not feel anything bad about this in the future, he was totally in the right to be mad at me, and I'm very grateful that he gave me the opportunity to set things right.
The summary is this: I talked about a classic movie cliche: the cop who people would like to see fired but no one can fire him because he's just *too damned good*. I said that Rick is like an action hero to me.
I meant this as praise, but it was clumsy.
I did not use his name, and I was speaking before a small audience. This is no excuse though, because it was transparently obvious to people in the community *and* of course (duh!) it spread all over the internet fairly quickly.
I get more complaints from lunatics and trolls about Rick than anyone else. This is no surprise. He protects us from idiocy the depths of which we can barely conceive.
The whole misunderstanding was my fault, and again I think Rick for being so gracious about the whole thing.
--Jimbo
Rick wrote:
Jimbo has made it clear that my presence in Wikipedia is not wanted. [...]
How cool it must to get such a ringing endorsement of ones controversial editing style from the founder of the project. How typical of Rick, bless 'im, to interpret it in such a peculiarly negative way.
For what its worth, I believe the action-hero analogy is wrong, and too kind to Rick.
See for example the thread just up the page from this one called "Blocked ISP Proxy". The action hero equivalent of blocking a proxy to ban one vandal is blowing up a bus full of innocents just to get to the one bad guy. Hardly something Keanu or Bruce would ever do?
Pete
Pete/Pcb21 wrote:
See for example the thread just up the page from this one called "Blocked ISP Proxy". The action hero equivalent of blocking a proxy to ban one vandal is blowing up a bus full of innocents just to get to the one bad guy. Hardly something Keanu or Bruce would ever do?
Rick did not know it was a proxy (how could he have?) and has apologized. What exactly is your problem?
Pete/Pcb21 said:
Nicholas Knight wrote:
Rick did not know it was a proxy (how could he have?) [..]
So you are saying blocking an IP about which you know nothing is _not_ a problem?
If we're talking about Rick K I presume it's the NTL proxy that Rick K blocked the other day, and I emailed here asking if it could be unblocked. The IP number looked new to me--I'm a NTL user and it was not a proxy number I recognised from previous IP blockings. The user page has been edited since then to place a proxy message.
Pete/Pcb21 wrote:
Nicholas Knight wrote:
Rick did not know it was a proxy (how could he have?) [..]
So you are saying blocking an IP about which you know nothing is _not_ a problem?
Nowhere, NOWHERE did I come CLOSE to implying there was no problem, only that Rick can't be blamed for taking perfectly reasonable action.
IPs are summarily blocked for vandalism _all the time_. Occasionally a legitimate proxy gets caught in the mix. When it happens, it gets corrected and the IP is added to a list of known proxies in the hopes that the situation is avoided in the future. This is not at all unusual, and Rick is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the first admin to block a previously unknown legitimate proxy through which vandalism was being performed.
If you've got some magic way to detect legitimate proxies so admins don't accidentally block their IPs, we'd all love to hear it. Attacking Rick for doing the best he could in a bad situation is NOT a solution.
and has apologized. What exactly is your problem?
Nicholas Knight wrote:
Pete/Pcb21 wrote:
Nicholas Knight wrote:
Rick did not know it was a proxy (how could he have?) [..]
So you are saying blocking an IP about which you know nothing is _not_ a problem?
Nowhere, NOWHERE did I come CLOSE to implying there was no problem, only that Rick can't be blamed for taking perfectly reasonable action.
IPs are summarily blocked for vandalism _all the time_. Occasionally a legitimate proxy gets caught in the mix. When it happens, it gets corrected and the IP is added to a list of known proxies in the hopes that the situation is avoided in the future. This is not at all unusual, and Rick is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the first admin to block a previously unknown legitimate proxy through which vandalism was being performed.
If you've got some magic way to detect legitimate proxies so admins don't accidentally block their IPs, we'd all love to hear it. Attacking Rick for doing the best he could in a bad situation is NOT a solution.
All that aside, I think the most relevant and important part of the objection to making Rick a target is the following:
and has apologized.
He realized his mistake, admitted it, and corrected it. I don't understand why he would continue to be taken to task for it.
-- Chad