Still Here

As somebody took the time to write a nice email asking me to keep writing UESP Watch, let's see about a quick post to prove I'm still here. Obviously, with Skyrim lurking around the corner there's probably going to be a lot more activity on the site, and that means there should be more work for me too. For now, let's take a look at an old post from this site. In fact, look at the comments.

It seems somebody called Yvonne Lucidia, who doesn't seem to have any observable sense of humour, created a petition with the aim of shutting this blog down. In fact she's so determined that she joined that petition site purely with this aim in mind, to judge from her registration date. This was on the 15th of July 2010. Well we've had 15 months since then so let's see how close she is to her goal of collecting 5000 signatures. How many has she got?

6.

Six.

That must be a little disappointing. Go on - sign up. It'll keep Yvonne happy.

Rpeh for Admin - for real!

I can only assume there is a spy in UESP Watch Towers, because it's the only way Krusty could have timed his nomination of rpeh for Admin precisely after I went away for a week.

Of course we don't need to do any diffs for this story because it's obvious that there will be loads of editors supporting the nomination but that Rawtwat the Vicious and Elliot the Obnoxiously Thick will oppose it, right? Eh? What's that? Really? Seriously?!?! Okay, let's do this properly then.

Things started off as predicted, with Alpha Kenny Buddy, Pwnageincarnate, Legoless and Corevette789 all voting "Yay" before rpeh had even posted his responses. Next came Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, then rpeh added a whole extra load of crap, then comes the first opposition: Wrye.

It's been so long since Wrye has shown his face that I couldn't remember much about him, except that he was a bit of a pompous twat at times. I had a murky memory of him even managing to annoy the usually unflappable Timenn, and eventually found the debate here. The next memory refresher was to look at his edit distribution, which made my eyebrows go up along way.  40% of his edits are about promoting his modding projects in the Tes3Mod and Tes4Mod namespaces. Another 14% has him arguing in UESPWiki space, 17% in User space, and after that, there's almost nothing. Now I see why rpeh wanted regular admin votes - this guy is treating the wiki like his own private website.

Anyway. After nice, subtle dig from rpeh, we have several increasingly desperate attempts from Wrye to justify his vote interspersed with several people telling him he's a moron. Eventually we come to our second Oppose vote, and it's from Whining Little Bitch fully living up to his name, in a post demolished by rpeh a little later.

The next odd vote is from DKong27, who I had firmly in the "Support" camp, but who voted "Neutral", making the accurate point that rpeh does tend to make enemies, but it's this vote that really made me swear in disbelief. Elliot voted to support rpeh's RfA. Let me repeat that: Elliot voted to support rpeh's RfA. In a well-written and thoughtful post, Elliot takes a brief look at their history, moves on, and expresses some hopes and thoughts for the future. I might have to change his name if he keeps making posts like this one.

With the vote currently at 17-2, and a full week already gone, it's only a matter of time before UESP has a new admin. True, Daveh might decide not to listen to the community's suggestion, but since we know he's already given rpeh server access, I can't see that being a problem.

Let's hope he has learned from the mistakes of the past and is not doomed to repeat them.

Maybe this time

It's been a whole month since Elliot the Obnoxiously Thick's block ran out. I didn't want to post the day after it happened in case it had simply slipped his memory, but after a month it might be that he really has "moved on".

Herschel blocked him for six months starting on Sep 1 last year, and that block ran out on March 1 this year. One month and one day later and still nothing from EtOT.

I know that several sad people commenting on this blog are going to do the usual ritual of telling me not to bother any more, to which I'll say only this... it's been two months since my last post because there's been no drama, no trouble, no acts of viciousness... it's been quiet. The way a wiki should be.

What's changed since I set up this blog? No more Rawtwat the Vicious. No more ^CEshe^V. No more Queen of Trolls. No more EtOT. Their feet no longer press on the brake pedal of good relations. The Great Deceiver has returned, but it seems he is willing to accept a subordinate role as sergeant to Krusty's general.

I'm going to keep watching. In fact, I've started editing again. Let's hope things remain quiet for now.

One and the Same

I'm sure you all thought I wasn't going to bother with this any more but a couple of emails have reached UESP Watch Central and I thought I should respond.

Two emails pointed out that Elliot the Obnoxiously Thick is unblocked once again. This seems to be true. His last block expired at the start of March 2011, so it seems he is now free to post his particular brand of idiocy once more.

One email had something more interesting, however. A page called "#uespwiki @ chatspike by roddie" suggests that EtOT made his last edit there 215 days ago and that Rawtwat the Vicious last vomited up his half baked opinions 217 days ago. My correspondent suggests that these dates are too close together to be more than a coincidence.

If Elliot = Ratwar, a great many things would be explained, like how RtV stopped editing just as EtOT came along, but it seems too convenient to be true. Surely the two biggest anchors holding back UESP can't have been the same person? Can they?

Rpeh for Admin?

Wow, I didn't see this one coming! A user by the name of Shianni asked TGD if he'd be interested in becoming an admin. The reply was a little evasive, and seems to be a way of making sure he has enough support before committing himself, but it appears that we may be seeing a second RfA from rpeh sometime soon.

It's worth taking a look back at his previous RfA. To be fair, he did most of the things he said he would, and continues to do them. "Beyond that I intend to keep doing what I've been doing; edits, patrolling, answering questions and uploading unfeasibly large numbers of images" - done. "This may be a touch pessimistic but I think the biggest challenge will be keeping the site active with the enthusiastic community we currently have" - accurate, and I think it's fair to say that rpeh has done his fair share of keeping good editors with cookies, compliments and help. "[T]his may be an opportunity to look at making large-scale improvements in the site; enhancing the navigation and adopting a more consistent look, perhaps through increased use of templates" - also done. Only Nephele and RobinHood70 can say they've done as much template work as rpeh.

It will be interesting to see how this develops. A proper RfA might bring Nephele and Ratwar back out of the woodwork to vote "Oppose", and one or two others might vote the same way because of what happened in August 2009. If I had to call it now, I would say that there will be a majority in favour by about 7-5, which might not be enough to declare consensus. If people don't come back only to vote no, the majority would be larger.

Rpeh... the vicious?

It's true that The Great Deceiver has a habit of being a bit of a dick, but in the absence of anything else worth reporting, let's look at a couple of his latest talk page comments.

I had to flick back through a few pages for this, but it seems this edit was the one that raised TGD's hackles. I can't see why... it added something new to a page that didn't have much info. TGD's response was "learn what phonetic means", which it has to be said is a fair comment. Undoing the text was a bit stupid, though, since it served to show the link between the runes of the Dragon Language and the Latin letters. If you wanted to delete anything, it would have made more sense to delete the translation then link to the Dragon Language page for it.

The discussion moved to TGD's talk page, where Debatra made the point that it might be useful to include the trans-literation as well as the translation (Debatra didn't use the long words - that is just me proving my superiority). The Albino Idiot added its view, before the expected put-down from TGD, reply from Debatra, and final response from TGD.

There's nothing particularly notable about this except that TGD got so defensive. What's the big deal? Surely it makes sense to include the interim form as well as the translation? Why get so upset?

UESAFP?

The Unofficial Elder Scrolls and Fallout Pages? That's what Pengepi would rename UESP to if he had his way. I mentioned this briefly in my last post, but I think it's worth devoting a little time to this since it's such a monumentally stupid idea.

UESP isn't about Bethesda. It's about the Elder Scrolls. I'd have thought the site's name was a bit of a hint on this. Daveh was asked about the possibility of setting up a Fallout 3 wiki over 2 years ago and said no. Note one key phrase in his reply - that if he ever set one up "it would be completely seperate from this ES wiki".

We're only in January but I think Pengepi is an early leader in the race for "most stupid post of 2011". (Now there's an idea!)

Krusty... the Vicious?

I hope this is a one off problem, but it seems UESP's newest admin, Herschel Shmoikel Pinchas Yerucham Krustofski, has picked up something of the Rawtwat.

It started when the user "Lucil Hellsing", who joined in October 2010, annoyed some people, then disappeared again after 7 November, popped back up again. In response to a particularly idiotic suggestion from Pengepi that UESP should cover Fallout 3, Lucil popped in to tell him off, then kept on and on about it in a series of several posts too boring to link to.

Serial irritant Rigas Papadopoulos was involved too, and there was a huge argument ranging over the talk pages of all three users that's almost impossible to track.

The result was that Krusty blocked Lucil (and must have come damn close to blocking Rigas too). All fine so far, but then he went and posted this. That is far too close for comfort to the smug sort of messages Rawtwat the Vicious used to post when he was at his most revolting.

Lucil had made one or two useful contributions during her brief return. For instance she spotted that there were mistakes on a Tamriel Rebuilt page. I don't play that mod so I can't judge myself, but since The Great Deceiver reinstated her edits along with some other stuff, it seems as if she was right. (Incidentally, if that poem is representative of the standard of writing in Tamriel Rebuilt I'm quite glad I've never downloaded it).

My point in straying off topic is that there was no need for such a sarcastic post-block comment. All I can say is that I hope this was an aberration on Krusty's part and not the start of a descent into Rawtwatism.