Yes, I am Willy on Wheels.
Specifically, I am one of six people who have chronically trolled numerous wikis, notably the English version of Wikipedia. Recently, Wikipedia saved me from failing a research project horribly, and thus, I have decided to repent for my past colourful actions.
This whole mess started as a prank in an IRC channel. One of our members loaded Wikipedia pages in Firefox tabs, and performed a mass-move vandalism. Normally, this wouldn't be funny, but we had just returned from the pub and were thorougly sloshed by then.
After we saw the reactions that people made, the vandalism became a bad habit. We would vandalize, or attempt to vandalize pages just to get a frantic reaction from Wikipedians. Eventually, one of our group developed a tool written in PERL script to automate the creation of usernames and page vandalism. Eventually, we started hunting for proxies to continue the vandalism.
I'm done for good, and will never again vandalize Wikipedia. After it proved so useful to me, I realized what our vandalism was taking away from others. If someone had vandalized the pages I needed, I would have likely failed out of university. I hope to eventually contribute to this shared knowledge for the benefit of more than just my warped humour.
I don't expect most of you to believe me, but at least I can rest easy knowing that I've moved beyond this childish behavior.
--Alec
For the sake of non-repudiation: 126f060696ce9f41757052316647c3c7
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Sounds fine to me, your not the first reformed vandal I've come across who ended up won over by the content. Just 1 question tho, was that you who vandalised the nazipedia, or was that another wikipedian pretending to be you? Just curious,
Jack (Sam Spade)
On 10/30/05, Willy on Wheels willyonwheels@hotmail.com wrote:
Yes, I am Willy on Wheels.
Specifically, I am one of six people who have chronically trolled numerous wikis, notably the English version of Wikipedia. Recently, Wikipedia saved me from failing a research project horribly, and thus, I have decided to repent for my past colourful actions.
This whole mess started as a prank in an IRC channel. One of our members loaded Wikipedia pages in Firefox tabs, and performed a mass-move vandalism. Normally, this wouldn't be funny, but we had just returned from the pub and were thorougly sloshed by then.
After we saw the reactions that people made, the vandalism became a bad habit. We would vandalize, or attempt to vandalize pages just to get a frantic reaction from Wikipedians. Eventually, one of our group developed a tool written in PERL script to automate the creation of usernames and page vandalism. Eventually, we started hunting for proxies to continue the vandalism.
I'm done for good, and will never again vandalize Wikipedia. After it proved so useful to me, I realized what our vandalism was taking away from others. If someone had vandalized the pages I needed, I would have likely failed out of university. I hope to eventually contribute to this shared knowledge for the benefit of more than just my warped humour.
I don't expect most of you to believe me, but at least I can rest easy knowing that I've moved beyond this childish behavior.
--Alec
For the sake of non-repudiation: 126f060696ce9f41757052316647c3c7
De todo para la Mujer Latina http://latino.msn.com/mujer/
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Why don't you set yourself up an account (a procedure you're familiar with) and actually improve an article? Possibly you ow it to the people who's time you wasted.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Willy on Wheels" willyonwheels@hotmail.com To: wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Sent: Sunday, October 30, 2005 4:06 AM Subject: [WikiEN-l] Clearing my Conscience
Yes, I am Willy on Wheels.
Specifically, I am one of six people who have chronically trolled numerous wikis, notably the English version of Wikipedia. Recently, Wikipedia saved me from failing a research project horribly, and thus, I have decided to repent for my past colourful actions.
This whole mess started as a prank in an IRC channel. One of our members loaded Wikipedia pages in Firefox tabs, and performed a mass-move vandalism. Normally, this wouldn't be funny, but we had just returned from the pub and were thorougly sloshed by then.
After we saw the reactions that people made, the vandalism became a bad habit. We would vandalize, or attempt to vandalize pages just to get a frantic reaction from Wikipedians. Eventually, one of our group developed a tool written in PERL script to automate the creation of usernames and page vandalism. Eventually, we started hunting for proxies to continue the vandalism.
I'm done for good, and will never again vandalize Wikipedia. After it proved so useful to me, I realized what our vandalism was taking away from others. If someone had vandalized the pages I needed, I would have likely failed out of university. I hope to eventually contribute to this shared knowledge for the benefit of more than just my warped humour.
I don't expect most of you to believe me, but at least I can rest easy knowing that I've moved beyond this childish behavior.
--Alec
For the sake of non-repudiation: 126f060696ce9f41757052316647c3c7
De todo para la Mujer Latina http://latino.msn.com/mujer/
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Willy on Wheels wrote:
Yes, I am Willy on Wheels.
I'm glad to see you're changing your wheels! Er... your ways!
The first time I saw your username I thought it was a nice one; I wheely wheely liked it. Shame you used it to vandalise, giving it a bad reputation.
After it proved so useful to me, I realized what our vandalism was taking away from others. If someone had vandalized the pages I needed, I would have likely failed out of university.
You do realise though that you haven't done any permanent damage, right? Don't beat yourself up over it. Just don't do it again, and everything will be fine.
Timwi
Would you want to use a new name or edit as Willy on Wheels?
Fred
On Oct 31, 2005, at 9:03 AM, Timwi wrote:
Willy on Wheels wrote:
Yes, I am Willy on Wheels.
I'm glad to see you're changing your wheels! Er... your ways!
The first time I saw your username I thought it was a nice one; I wheely wheely liked it. Shame you used it to vandalise, giving it a bad reputation.
After it proved so useful to me, I realized what our vandalism was taking away from others. If someone had vandalized the pages I needed, I would have likely failed out of university.
You do realise though that you haven't done any permanent damage, right? Don't beat yourself up over it. Just don't do it again, and everything will be fine.
Timwi
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Fred Bauder wrote:
Would you want to use a new name or edit as Willy on Wheels?
Hard to say; I wouldn't have got myself such a reputation in the first place. I call myself Timwi pretty much everywhere, so I have a strong incentive not to give the name a bad reputation anywhere. (Which, unfortunately, doesn't seem to stop me from doing it anyway, but at least I'm not a vandal. :-) )
Timwi
Well Willy, it is good to see that you have some balls.
What? I mean not everyone would have the balls to apologise.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Willy on Wheels" willyonwheels@hotmail.com To: wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Sent: Sunday, October 30, 2005 4:06 AM Subject: [WikiEN-l] Clearing my Conscience
Yes, I am Willy on Wheels.
Specifically, I am one of six people who have chronically trolled numerous wikis, notably the English version of Wikipedia. Recently, Wikipedia saved me from failing a research project horribly, and thus, I have decided to repent for my past colourful actions.
This whole mess started as a prank in an IRC channel. One of our members loaded Wikipedia pages in Firefox tabs, and performed a mass-move vandalism. Normally, this wouldn't be funny, but we had just returned from the pub and were thorougly sloshed by then.
After we saw the reactions that people made, the vandalism became a bad habit. We would vandalize, or attempt to vandalize pages just to get a frantic reaction from Wikipedians. Eventually, one of our group developed a tool written in PERL script to automate the creation of usernames and page vandalism. Eventually, we started hunting for proxies to continue the vandalism.
I'm done for good, and will never again vandalize Wikipedia. After it proved so useful to me, I realized what our vandalism was taking away from others. If someone had vandalized the pages I needed, I would have likely failed out of university. I hope to eventually contribute to this shared knowledge for the benefit of more than just my warped humour.
I don't expect most of you to believe me, but at least I can rest easy knowing that I've moved beyond this childish behavior.
--Alec
For the sake of non-repudiation: 126f060696ce9f41757052316647c3c7
De todo para la Mujer Latina http://latino.msn.com/mujer/
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Yes, I am indeed still sceptical, but go forth and improve articles and I'd be glad to be proven wrong.
--Mgm
Wikipedia clearly has a problem with copyright images, but the way some users are dealing with this has infuriated many people. Part of the problem is that the details of what is now needed to define fair use has now been changed and more categorisation is required. Thousands of perfectly valid images were uploaded before this change. Users put in the information they thought were required at the time. Now they discover that they are in effect being accused of not giving enough information and the images are being deleted, without checking if the people who uploaded them can supply more information or a clearer categorisation as NOW required.
One user seems to be intent on pissing off most of Wikipedia with his approach. Furious users have left messages on his talk page saying such things as
- We have gone through a long process to get a formula for these photos which clears them for use and which has been approved by Mr Wales. I suggest you visit Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board and raise any concerns you have before taking action which will make a lot of people angry.
- your unilateral action is making a lot of people very angry
- If you look at his "contributions" you'll see he's been doing this to a lot of templates lately where it's quite clear (IMO) fair-use allows the images to be used. And yes, it's very unilateral: as far as I can tell he's acting nearly independently, and reverts edits back without any (or very little) discussion or consensus.
Another user deleted something from the Commons that had been wrongly moved to there by someone, when all that needed to be done was for the image to be moved from the commons back to where it came from. His delete screwed up 17 pages where that (very useful) image had been used. I had to delete the now empty image space from all 17 pages, then spend weeks chasing back the original image from the organisation that had supplied it first time around. But when asked him politely why he didn't check before unilaterally deleting he sent a snotty rude reply, and proceeded to delete a host of other perfectly valid images, screwing up more pages.
If people don't know what they are doing they shouldn't be doing it. And if they aren't legally trained they should take more care rather than dreaming up their own idiocyncratic frequently ridiculous interpretations of the law. Unless someone tells them to (i) be a bit more careful, and (ii) check with the original downloader before dumping images, Wikipedia is going to both lose a lot of perfectly valid images just in need for more information and find itself with a lot of pissed off users whose work is being destroyed by people who seem in a lot of cases not to know what they are doing and are making a complete mess of articles which for no good reason end up stripped of their images.
Thom
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On 31/10/05, Tom Cadden thomcadden@yahoo.ie wrote:
- If you look at his "contributions" you'll see he's
been doing this to a lot of templates lately where it's quite clear (IMO) fair-use allows the images to be used.
For what it's worth:
"[Fair use] material should *only* be used in the article namespace. They should *never* be used on templates (including stub templates and navigation boxes) or on user pages."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fair_use#Policy
-- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
Firstly, I am aware of that. However the user in question never bothered to inform people, causing a lot of anger. Secondly, legal advice I have says that it wrong. A template image unrelated to an article is definitely illegal. However a template in effect bridging articles operates under a different legal framework and a relevant image in a template in an article space, where it does nothing more than visually facilitate a link and carries no claim of ownership or implicit meaning other than that facilitatory link, is covered by fair use according to a senior lawyer I know.
The relevant note on fair use on Wikipedia fails to distinguish between relevant visual usage and presumptuous ownership. The former is why fairuse is OK in articles. In a visually based links-run encyclopædia, templates follow the same role as links in articles and the use of graphics and image to enable that link is not as suggested in the quote below. --- Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 31/10/05, Tom Cadden thomcadden@yahoo.ie wrote:
- If you look at his "contributions" you'll see
he's
been doing this to a lot of templates lately where it's quite clear (IMO) fair-use allows the images
to
be used.
For what it's worth:
"[Fair use] material should *only* be used in the article namespace. They should *never* be used on templates (including stub templates and navigation boxes) or on user pages."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fair_use#Policy
--
- Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
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[My apologies to Tom; I initially sent this as a private email rather than to the list, so he gets two copies. Damn gmail and its reply function.]
On 01/11/05, Tom Cadden thomcadden@yahoo.ie wrote:
Firstly, I am aware of that. However the user in question never bothered to inform people, causing a lot of anger.
Interestingly, I just realised that I read the discussions immediately preceding the decision to go and get rid of these; someone ran a very interesting database query to find the most overused Fair Use images. Rather helpful, and certainly interesting; [[Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Fair use]] down at the bottom. (The bulk of of the most egregious cases have been dealt with.)
In many ways, clearing fair use material from templates is routine maintenance; policy says those images should not be there, so the images are removed from there. No permanent harm is done - the images are not deleted, so the matter can be disputed and rectified if there's an error. It's not particularly negotiable, your legal advice aside - we don't do things against policy simply because we're allowed to by the law.
Secondly, legal advice I have says that it wrong. A template image unrelated to an article is definitely illegal. However a template in effect bridging articles operates under a different legal framework and a relevant image in a template in an article space, where it does nothing more than visually facilitate a link and carries no claim of ownership or implicit meaning other than that facilitatory link, is covered by fair use according to a senior lawyer I know.
I am delighted to read that the lurkers support you in email.
However, if you think we should act contrary to policy, _changing the policy_ rather than asserting it's overly zealous may be the better way of going about it.
Alternately, perhaps looking on Commons for an almost-as-good free image may be advisable? We do seem to have quite the collection of pretty pictures of crowns there, one of which may be suitable. I notice that one of the templates named as disputed on AN/I has had this done...
-- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
On 10/31/05, Tom Cadden thomcadden@yahoo.ie wrote:
And yes, it's very unilateral: as far as I can tell he's acting nearly independently, and reverts edits back without any (or very little) discussion or consensus.
Compliance with copyright policy is not subject to consensus.
Kelly
Politeness is. Informing people why he is doing things is elementary politeness. Checking facts rather than blanket unexplained deletions is elementary. And evidence that he actually knows what he is doing is a help.
His actions show rudeness, contempt for others, and a dodgy understanding of the law he is 'enforcing'. --- Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/31/05, Tom Cadden thomcadden@yahoo.ie wrote:
And yes, it's very unilateral: as far as I can tell he's acting nearly independently, and
reverts
edits back without any (or very little) discussion
or
consensus.
Compliance with copyright policy is not subject to consensus.
Kelly _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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On 01/11/05, Tom Cadden thomcadden@yahoo.ie wrote:
Politeness is. Informing people why he is doing things is elementary politeness. Checking facts rather than blanket unexplained deletions is elementary.
[...]
I had written something here about these virtues being exhibited in the case of the four templates I know of; I found it hard to manage it without it reading like a personal attack. This may say something.
And evidence that he actually knows what he is doing is a help. His actions show rudeness, contempt for others, and a dodgy understanding of the law he is 'enforcing'.
He is enforcing _Wikipedia policy_, not the US copyright laws. I accept that copyright law is difficult to understand, but the fair use policy really is not in this context.
"[Fair use] material should *only* be used in the article namespace. They should *never* be used on templates (including stub templates and navigation boxes) or on user pages."
It's what it says. The vagaries of fair use *law* regarding templates do not enter into the vagaries of fair use *policy* regarding templates.
-- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
On 11/1/05, Tom Cadden thomcadden@yahoo.ie wrote:
Politeness is. Informing people why he is doing things is elementary politeness. Checking facts rather than blanket unexplained deletions is elementary. And evidence that he actually knows what he is doing is a help.
Have you any idea of the scale of the problem?
His actions show rudeness, contempt for others, and a dodgy understanding of the law he is 'enforcing'.
Complaint levels appear to be well bellow one percent. Since we are dealing with what should be a one off operation I think that can be tollerated.
-- geni
On 10/31/05, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
However, if you think we should act contrary to policy, _changing the policy_ rather than asserting it's overly zealous may be the better way of going about it.
Exactly. Rather than getting mad at people for enforcing a fairly clear policy, discuss it on the policy page.
On 10/31/05, Tom Cadden thomcadden@yahoo.ie wrote:
Politeness is. Informing people why he is doing things is elementary politeness. Checking facts rather than blanket unexplained deletions is elementary. And evidence that he actually knows what he is doing is a help.
"Informing people" -- ahead of time or afterwards? We can't inform every interested party before we enforce a policy (whether you disagree with it or not is unimportant in this instance). First off, we don't know necessarily know who those people are. Second, they aren't necessarily the people whose authority matters in respect to policy or legal issues. Third, interested parties will notice changes made and will, ideally, inquire as to why they are being made. Nothing is permanent here, so no real harm is done.
FF
On 31 Oct 2005, at 23:58, Tom Cadden wrote:
Wikipedia clearly has a problem with copyright images, but the way some users are dealing with this has infuriated many people. Part of the problem is that the details of what is now needed to define fair use has now been changed and more categorisation is required. Thousands of perfectly valid images were uploaded before this change. Users put in the information they thought were required at the time. Now they discover that they are in effect being accused of not giving enough information and the images are being deleted, without checking if the people who uploaded them can supply more information or a clearer categorisation as NOW required.
Since then the deletion policy generally requires users to be notified (in many cases at least).
One user seems to be intent on pissing off most of Wikipedia with his approach. Furious users have left messages on his talk page saying such things as
- We have gone through a long process to get a formula
for these photos which clears them for use and which has been approved by Mr Wales. I suggest you visit Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board and raise any concerns you have before taking action which will make a lot of people angry.
The "agreed" formula is permission, non commercial, which only applies to images uploaded before May, not anything since then.
- your unilateral action is making a lot of people
very angry
- If you look at his "contributions" you'll see he's
been doing this to a lot of templates lately where it's quite clear (IMO) fair-use allows the images to be used. And yes, it's very unilateral: as far as I can tell he's acting nearly independently, and reverts edits back without any (or very little) discussion or consensus.
No it is not clear. Fair use outside article space is very dubious, and it is agreed policy that they wont be used in templates.
If people don't know what they are doing they shouldn't be doing it. And if they aren't legally trained they should take more care rather than dreaming up their own idiocyncratic frequently ridiculous interpretations of the law. Unless someone tells them to (i) be a bit more careful, and (ii) check with the original downloader before dumping images, Wikipedia is going to both lose a lot of perfectly valid images just in need for more information and find itself with a lot of pissed off users whose work is being destroyed by people who seem in a lot of cases not to know what they are doing and are making a complete mess of articles which for no good reason end up stripped of their images.
Wikipedia unfortunately has tens of thousands of non free images, which we tolerate rather more than we should. The fair use categories are alas dumping grounds for copyright violations.
Justinc
--- Justin Cormack justin@specialbusservice.com wrote:
Wikipedia unfortunately has tens of thousands of non free images, which we tolerate rather more than we should. The fair use categories are alas dumping grounds for copyright violations.
Yes it is. But having the ability to check before deleting is elementary logic. His behaviour is such that he is also almost certainly deleting perfectly valid images, all because he couldn't be bothered to do some careful checking before deleting. The people who have complained about his behaviour aren't vandals sneaking in copyrighted images, but people who have a history of being careful to follow the rules as they existed at the time. If he simply checked with people he could establish whether the images are clear copyright violations or simply miscategorised images. He however has a history on this issue of ignoring everyone else, not bothering to check, and just making blanket deletions. That is not the way to work with people.
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