stupid question :
We have a contributor, who is degrading our content.
In particular, when he edits, some words disappear, or parts of words do.
A couple of examples : * http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Discussion_Utilisateur:Anthere&... *http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Discuter:Accueil&diff=prev&... *http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dieu&diff=prev&oldid=15664...
For those who do not know : "femmes" means "women".
Now... this guy argues that he is not responsible of the consequences of his edits, that either he has a virus, or that his browser (Firefox) is responsible of the word damaging and removal of all references to women.
Now...
What do you suggest ? In all good faith ? Seriously ?
Ant
(to quote Robert, this is no joke)
What do you suggest ? In all good faith ? Seriously ?
If this is a regular occurence with his edits, I do not see that it matters much whether he does it deliberately, does it out of stupidity, has a virus, or suffers from a browser bug (that nobody else with Firefox suffers from): It's his responsibility to make sure that his system is compatible with Wikipedia.
If he cannot do so, he should refrain from editing. If he will not do so voluntarily, his writing privileges should be removed.
What would be the alternative? Somebody (or several somebodies) would have to constantly clean up after him. If you find people for this diaper duty, fine, but I'd view that as a waste of editor resources that could otherwise be put to better use.
The openness of Wikipedia menas that every participant becomes responsible for the project's well-being. I do not see how people who do not want to shoulder their share of this responsibility can be reasonably accommodated in Wikipedia.
Hope this helps Jan
Anthere said:
stupid question :
We have a contributor, who is degrading our content.
In particular, when he edits, some words disappear, or parts of words do.
A couple of examples :
http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Discussion_Utilisateur:Anthere&... *http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Discuter:Accueil&diff=prev&... *http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dieu&diff=prev&oldid=15664...
For those who do not know : "femmes" means "women".
Now... this guy argues that he is not responsible of the consequences of his edits, that either he has a virus, or that his browser (Firefox) is responsible of the word damaging and removal of all references to women.
Now...
What do you suggest ? In all good faith ? Seriously ?
Ask him to submit a bug report--Hardware, OS, browser version, extensions and plugins in use, character set if known, keyboard settings in use. Ask him to check with a different browser (IE, Opera, whatever is available to him). Ask him to play around on the en or de sandboxes, as well as fr, to see if he can reproduce the problem on another MediaWiki. Ask him to report any other odd behavior he has noticed, particularly when editing forums or wikis using that browser. Has he had complaints from users of other web-hosted systems about his posts mangling quoted text, or whatever? Meanwhile remind him that he shouldn't continue to knowingly use software that may damage the wiki. What you do if he refuses is a matter for your local wiki policy.
Anthere wrote:
In particular, when he edits, some words disappear, or parts of words do.
A couple of examples : *http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Discussion_Utilisateur:Anthere&... *http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Discuter:Accueil&diff=prev&... *http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dieu&diff=prev&oldid=15664...
Now... this guy argues that he is not responsible of the consequences of his edits, that either he has a virus, or that his browser (Firefox) is responsible of the word damaging and removal of all references to women.
The removed portions in those pages are: pagan femmes d il do images q
It's possible that this person is behind some kind of censoring web proxy which is trimming out words it has listed as potentially "offensive" or "sexual" or perhaps even "un-Christian". I'm not sure what's wrong with "imagesq" though... ;)
The word 'femme' in English sometimes has connotations regarding homosexuality and gender identity and I can certainly imagine a hypersensitive prude filter removing it. (See the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femme )
For background on these censoring proxies and their problems, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorware
What do you suggest ? In all good faith ? Seriously ?
Such a filter might be installed by a workplace, library, or school and the person might not even be aware of it... but now that they are, it would be irresponsible for them to continue editing and corrupting our content without doing something about it. (ie, SHUTTING IT OFF or editing from someplace where the filter is not active.)
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
My, thanks for all these answers. I will paste the links on his talk page (and pray he understands english) and see what comes out of it.
That would be properly amazing.
Ant
Brion Vibber a écrit:
Anthere wrote:
In particular, when he edits, some words disappear, or parts of words do.
A couple of examples : *http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Discussion_Utilisateur:Anthere&... *http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Discuter:Accueil&diff=prev&... *http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dieu&diff=prev&oldid=15664...
Now... this guy argues that he is not responsible of the consequences of his edits, that either he has a virus, or that his browser (Firefox) is responsible of the word damaging and removal of all references to women.
The removed portions in those pages are: pagan femmes d il do images q
It's possible that this person is behind some kind of censoring web proxy which is trimming out words it has listed as potentially "offensive" or "sexual" or perhaps even "un-Christian". I'm not sure what's wrong with "imagesq" though... ;)
The word 'femme' in English sometimes has connotations regarding homosexuality and gender identity and I can certainly imagine a hypersensitive prude filter removing it. (See the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femme )
For background on these censoring proxies and their problems, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorware
What do you suggest ? In all good faith ? Seriously ?
Such a filter might be installed by a workplace, library, or school and the person might not even be aware of it... but now that they are, it would be irresponsible for them to continue editing and corrupting our content without doing something about it. (ie, SHUTTING IT OFF or editing from someplace where the filter is not active.)
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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