User talk:Error

He is editing as Willie16. DCEbot 21:15, 29 Nov 2005 (EST)

He's not doing anything wrong. I don't see why we need to ban a guy for such superficial reasons. He's trying to contribute, and we need all of the contributers that we can get. Really, banning a guy because he didn't use preview is pretty ridiculous. --MateoP 22:01, 29 Nov 2005 (EST)

The problem wasn't that he was trying to contribute, it was that he was failing miserably to contribute anything of actual value to the wiki. Every page he added had to be gone over and generally completely redone by someone else (once or twice me, more often IndieRockLance) after the fact because he couldn't grasp the use of basic templates and his writing tended to look like a retarded monkey had banged away at a keyboard for half an hour. That wasn't even what got him banned, what finally got him banned was that he continually used various system pages (i.e. pages like "The TV IV Wiki/Search help" or whatever) as sandboxes (instead of just, you know, using the sandbox) and, after the fifth or sixth warning to knock it the hell off, he was temporarily banned. Eventually, the fact that he never seemed to pick up on the fact that he had been tempbanned for a reason and should probably stop doing what he'd been banned for, plus the fact that he wasn't actually accomplishing anything other than making extra work for the admins, added up and he was finally long-term banned. If you don't like it, tough noogies.

That said, this go-around he seems to have figured out at least the "minor edit" checkbox so his edit-spam can be filtered out and how to use the sandbox, so as far as I'm concerned he can stay until/unless he does something else banworthy.--Hawkman 22:57, 29 Nov 2005 (EST)

This is a wiki. By definition all contributions are good contributions. The point of a wiki is supposed to be that you contribute what you want. If he didn't follow templates, so what. As long as he wasn't overwriting existing pages it doesn't hurt anything. When someone else wants to come in and clean up the page and insert the template they can. That's how wikis work; you contribute what you want. Using other pages as sandboxes is a real concern, but since you mentioned that after a non-offense it makes me think that it wasn't such a big deal.

As for the "tough noogies" comment, that's complete uncalled for disrespect, and counter to the open-debate spirit of the wiki format. I am appalled that an sysop would pull rank to try and squash criticism, on a talk page no-less. That would never happen on wikipedia, the person who did so would be removed. --MateoP 23:11, 29 Nov 2005 (EST)

No, by definition all contributions are not good contributions. There are good contributions (contributions that bring something to the table) and bad contributions ("contributions" that have to be gone back over and completely rewritten by other people after the fact because they're not really anything that would actually qualify as a contribution). If you want a happy-go-lucky circlejerk, feel free to hit up Wikipedia.--Hawkman 23:40, 29 Nov 2005 (EST)

Willie9's Contributions. Look at that link and the "contributions" he made to the wiki. Not only were those articles not articles at all, but most of the information was either incorrect, unformatted, outright stolen from other sources and generally did not follow the Wiki guidelines. It wasn't until I personally spent hours fixing the articles that they became something resembling skeletal articles. Let's say you're in charge of an art gallery, and someone comes in and scribbles on the walls with crayons every day. Sure, they're water soluable, but eventually you're going to get frustrated and kick him out.

Willie9 was warned several times. He circumvented the ban by making a new screen name (not willie16, but a different one), he did not learn to abide by the rules of the Wiki, nor did he abide by the requests of the sysops. His banning was for the good of the Wiki because of his inability to correctly use it. I'm sorry if you disagree, but this decision was discussed by the sysops and enacted after we decided unanimously what to do, it wasn't some rogue sysop banning him, he brought it on himself. End of discussion. --IndieRockLance 00:06, 30 Nov 2005 (EST)

Could you point out some particularly offensive articles, but from the list of his contributions the ones i have looked at aren't that bad. "incorrect" information is only bad if it is purposefully incorrect. If he just accidentally wrote something that's incorrect it's just unfortunate. That's the point of peer review. Likewise "unformatted" articles do no harm whatsoever. If a person doesn't know how to format or just doesn't want to it does absolutely no harm. You are not responsible for formatting every article on the wiki. If an article is unformatted, let someone who's interested in the show come around and fix it when they want to. This uber-obsession with consistent formatting is pointless. Of course they should be formatted a certain way eventually but it doesn't really matter if brand new articles look exactly like all the others. They can be changed. Again, that's the point of wikis. Here are a couple of examples of typical pages I have found: http://tviv.org/w/index.php?title=W.I.T.C.H.&oldid=20885 . In that page you came in and "cleaned up." Would you consider that a violation of some kind? Why? He even put in a table. Sure it didn't contain any information about the show, but so what. It got rid of a red link and started a page that could be expanded by people who are interested in the show. You act as though if people do not make perfect pages that they are putting a burden on you to fix them. If that's what you want to do its your perogative but that's not your job. Edit the shows you like. That's the point of a wiki! here's another: http://tviv.org/w/index.php?title=Disney_Channel&oldid=14797 . Again, I'm baffled. If you banned him for overwriting existing pages or using pages for a sandbox that are not intended for that, that I understand. yet you seem to be stressing that he didn't make complete pages or that he overused the Save Page button. Again, please point out specific harm in this. I'm baffled. --MateoP 00:42, 30 Nov 2005 (EST)

Hi, Willie9 made ten edits to The TV IV:Protected page within 12 minutes and six to The The TV IV:Searching within 15 minutes, overwriting the system pages completely forcing them to be reverted. He's also made thirty-three edits to The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh in a timespan of less than an hour. None of these thirty-three edits was a minor edit, so it cluttered up the Recent Changes page that day, as opposed to had they been easily hidable minor edits. He made these thirty-three edits after his twenty-edits of That's So Raven. Which was preceded by 12 edits for Phil of the Future. We made several comments in his talk page encouraging him to use the minor edit button and slow down with the pacing simply because we had to be able to keep up with the Recent Changes page.

Please explain why you "had to be able to keep up with the Recent Changes page," thanks. --MateoP 20:01, 30 Nov 2005 (EST)

Hey man, give a look at Help:Contents and try to conform your edits with the house style. 
Good effort so far though. Just tighten it up a little. --Fezz(Ryvius) 00:26, 14 Sep 2005 (EDT)

Please use the preview button to proof your edits instead of making a lot of changes in a short 
period of time. Also, if you're just fixing little things like formating, use the minor edit mark.
Also, don't save an article unless you actually make a change to it. --CygnusTM 08:30, 30 Sep 2005 (EDT)

I relize you want to contribute, but can you please slow down your pace. Focus on well written 
content instead of making dozens of minor changes to pages that already have structure. If you
have read this, please reply to me by adding a note on User talk:waffle iron. Please do this before
any more edits. 

We've made considerable efforts to try to talk to him, but not once did he ever reply to any of our comments. He's also gone and deleted shows at random and placed them back, and deleted them, and then placed them back in the Cartoon Network page. Editing the system pages and overwriting valid, competent information is why he was primarily banned, but the sloppy editing, harsh pace, and overall inability to communicate with us were catalysts for his banning, and were not why he was ultimately banned. It'd be inconceivable to even think about banning someone just on those facts alone, but it really was a huge combination of things that led to a unanimous sysop decision. If he were willing to communicate with us, or anyone really, on his rationale for why he edited the system pages and overwrote information, then we would have been more than willing to open up a line of communication for him to help steer him in the right direction. Instead, he chose to ignore us, and he ramped up his level of editing. Please understand that none of the sysops here are out to get anyone, and we just want to mean well for the entire community and the future of the Wiki. No sysop feels entitled that they have a superiority right to anything, and Hawkman/IndieRockLance edited his pages not because they felt like they had an obligation to, but because they cared about the future of the Wiki. The purpose of the Wiki is to edit pages you want to edit, but without a highly established userbase, we have to keep the quality of the articles right now relatively high just to ensure that more people are drawn to the Wiki and will be more encouraged to participate. It's even more important that he was primarily editing cartoon showpages, when our server statistics show that cartoon showpages make up a large amount of Google hits directing here. --Wizardryo|✎ 01:44, 30 Nov 2005 (EST)

Not sure why the others didn't stress this from the beginning. If you were to list the importance of each "offense" trivial things like not using minor edit or preview or in the words of some of your other sysops "not being good information," should account for about 0.000001% of the decision, as they are completely harmless and unimportant. The other things, like deleting pages or overwriting good information is a valid reason for the ban, but the other sysops placed very little emphasis on these things in their replies. Thanks for clearing it up. --MateoP 20:01, 30 Nov 2005 (EST)