See you in the Spring

Fun times on UESP last night. In the middle of another boring argument between The Great Deceiver and Whining Little Bitch, who should appear but Elliot the Obnoxiously Thick!

Despite having claimed to be "done" with the site, EtOT popped up to deliver what he evidently thought were a few well chosen words about TGD, in a post so transparently trollworthy that not one, not two, not three, but four different editors removed it. EtOT's edit warring led to WLB warning him, which of course, EtOT removed. WLB reinstated the warning with section protection, so EtOT did some whining of his own and had the gall to warn TGD for edit warring, twice - a warning removed first by TGD himself, then by Corevette789. At this point, Herschel stepped in and blocked EtOT for six - count them! - six months, with an email and talk page ban to go with it.

The message should be clear to you, EtOT (and I know you still read this): you are not wanted on UESP. In one evening, you managed to piss off SerCenKing, TheAlbinoOrc, Arch Mage Matt, Rpeh, RobinHood70, Corevette789 and Krusty. FiveFour patrollers and an admin. That's pretty good going even for you.

See you in March. I'm sure everybody on UESP will have a happy Christmas / Hanukkah / whatever knowing you won't be anywhere near the site.

Another Month for EtOT

Elliot the Obnoxiously Thick has been blocked for another month.

Things started a couple of days ago when Lucius Tarquinius Superbus posted an email he received from EtOT. In typical EtOT style, he instructed LTS "Do not involve yourself in matters that concern me you little prick." Since EtOT was banned for being a dick to other users, LTS asked for a new, month long block.

New editor Corvus supported a ban extension then Corevette789 decided to remain neutral. That's a bit of a surprise given EtOT's previous behavior towards Corevette, but we'll let it pass.

The Queen of Trolls obliges with the block, and then TheAlbinoOrc provides further evidence in case anybody thought it was unfair.

It's much less interesting on the site without EtOT, but nobody can deny that things are much nicer now he's not there. With no EtOT and no Rawtwat the Vicious, UESP is once again a nice place to be. I might have to start editing again.

One Last Piece of Idiocy?

I'm away for a few weeks and there's a piece of stupidity from Elliot the Obnoxiously Thick! Who could possibly have predicted such a thing?

The trigger seems to have been some incident in IRC between EtOT and rpeh. At first, EtOT reports it as an "Abuse of power", but after a couple of replies from The Great Deceiver, he decides it was worth an indefinite block.

Now normally, I'd say that TGD's reply is unhelpful, but since it's EtOT we're talking about here, there isn't really any better response. EtOT could just as easily stand for Elliot the Obnoxious Troll, but I would rather emphasise his stupidity.

Unfortunately, TGD didn't follow his own advice. After EtOT changes the title, TGD "reverts trolling", which EtOT undoes while accusing TGD of almost violating 3RR (the Wikipedia rule that says you can't make more than 3 reverts to a page within 24 hours). TGD points out that EtOT is talking out of his arse and EtOT admits the mistake, but doesn't apologise of course.

At this point, Southern Belle steps in. She politely tells EtOT to stop being a trolling bastard and wags a finger at TGD, presumably because she had to find some way of balancing her reply. More whining ensues from EtOT before SB tells him straight: he was trolling in IRC. EtOT then reminds us all why he gets the "Obnoxious" part of his name.

We then get Herschel's first major contribution as an admin. He agrees with SB and also tells EtOT that he's a troll. EtOT bids the site goodbye again before Lucius Tarquinius Superbus adds a typically magnificent reply. NOTE: current number of edits made by EtOT after leaving: 7.

Timenn (and I need a new name - he has not been around enough lately to justify the LGA tag) wraps the discussion up by giving EtOT what must surely be his last unofficial warning.

Hopefully this goodbye will be more permanent than his previous dozen or so. It is now clear that everyone is sick and tired of Elliot. The scariest thing about him is that he shows exactly the same behaviour on UESP and WP and still doesn't understand it when people tell him off. You have to wonder if he is like this in Real Life.

What's so Difficult About Images?

For something so unimportant, the images on UESP cause one hell of a lot of controversy. The latest revolves around this image that Timenn uploaded back in 2007.

As part of the current drive to get square images on all NPC pages, Gemellus' page had a tag that said "This article could benefit from an image that is square, showing more of the NPC". New user Walbert decided to help by uploading the tall image shown here and changing the page to use the new image. Unsurprisingly, Southern Belle reverts it with the reason "not square". Not discouraged, Walbert tries again and uploads the tiny square image and changes the page again. SB still doesn't like it as it "shows less of NPC, not more". You can't really fault her logic here.

Unfortunately, Walbert isn't happy and takes it to her talk page. SB replies politely, Walbert replies again, totally missing the point, then Herschel and Lucius pop in with fairly helpful comments too. Walbert finally gets it and uploads a reasonable version before making one last whine: "I'm honestly left wondering how a generally helpful resource like UESP can be so unhelpful to those who wish to contribute".

Now I love to criticise UESP when I can, but in this case I can't. The tag was perfectly clear about what was wanted and three people made helpful comments to expand. If you're not bright enough to read then don't take it out on other people.

It's About Time

Finally, the patience of other users has been exhausted by Elliot the Obnoxiously Thick's behaviour.

It began with Lucius Tarquinius Superbus who in a brief (sarcasm) post outlined most of the case against him. Southern Belle follows up and suggests allowing EtOT to resign first (what's the point? Resign or be demoted anyway isn't much of a choice). Serial annoyance MEG pops up again with a confused series of posts and agrees, then Elliot's Bitch The Editor With an Out of Date Name demonstrates that he needs a new nickname.

So far, EtOT is only facing calls for his patroller rights to be stripped. Nobody has yet responded to Timenn's call for comments on the mutual block-fest from Saturday. Nothing yet from The Great Deceiver either. Presumably his response is going to be several megabytes long and will crash the server when he posts it. I can't believe he's going to remain silent on this one.

SerCenKing's Images - The Return!

Back in November I commented that SerCenKing's images were not up to scratch, in a post that seems to have been largely responsible for getting rpeh back on the site. SerCenKing had uploaded images like this, this, this, this and this (look down at the bottom of each page to see his version then compare it to the previous one). The Great Deceiver took exception to his images (and they mostly were his images) being overwritten and reverted many - though not all - of the changes. That was his first edit in two months (under his own name at any rate).

Today, somebody called Saya created a brand new account purely to attack more of SerCenKing's images. This time, the difference is that several people (including The Great Deceiver) defended the images, and Lucius Tarquinius Superbus responded to the initial insult in typically regal style.

I'm sure somebody will accuse me of being the one who made all the reverts: it wasn't. For the record, I think LTS's image have improved out of all recognition (although he still uploads the occasional real piece of shit). Certainly, I think the batch that were reverted were all good. Some were better than others, but all were better than what went before.

Lucius Tarquinius Superbus Kicks Ass!

I'm on a nickname roll. Lucius Tarquinius Superbus is SerCenKing's new name. He's Italian and has "king" in his name, so Google it and bow down before my vast knowledge of history.

ModderElGrande has been blocked before, and Rawtwat started a typically vicious, if somewhat half-hearted attempt to have him perma-banned. The rest of the community rolled their eyes and sighed collectively at yet another piece of Rawtwat vindictiveness so nothing happened.

Lately, MEG has been complaining about the images used on body mod articles. Most other people have said that they don't see a problem, and MEG suddenly claims that this means everybody is "ganging up" on him. Rpeh gently (for once) points out that this isn't true, then Itachi replies and MEG repeats the claim.

At this point, up steps LTS, bestriding the page like a colossus, and makes a post totally out of character. I'm not complaining - it's a quite brilliant post and led directly to his new name. Well done LTS!

Who is That Masked Man?

It seems that the same high-quality comments that get made here by anonymous posters are now being made on UESP. The Great Deceiver's talk page got this today, pretty obviously from the same guy who trolled the same page a month ago. Being an expert on sock-puppetry, TGD quickly spotted the subtle ploy, which provoked a response even more obviously false than TGD pretending he's not Calliope.

In fairly short order, the anon got a warning from SerCenKing, which provoked a shocked response. The LGA stepped in with a "final warning", which led to a terse reply. Then serial depressive HMS Victory Itachi stepped in with a typically helpful comment and the anon came back with a series of replies that I can't be bothered to link because they're utterly tedious - except for this classic bit of self-justification from TGD. Eventually, LGA gets fed up and gives the inevitable block.

There are two questions: just who is this anon (and no, it's not me - I can spell for a start)? He claims to be a patroller but that's pretty obvious rubbish. The IP resolves to BT - an ISP that serves about half of the UK so there's not much help there. Question two: this is obviously not over yet since the anon will get a new IP before long. Will there be an episode three?

SerCenKing's Images

SerCenKing seems like a nice enough guy. He's done some good stuff on the site, and knows what he's doing when it comes to reverting / correcting content.

But he sucks at making images.

Take a look at the latest batch he has uploaded. Now look at the images he replaced. First off, he uses the comment "Better resolution image" a lot, which is misleading as most of his images are smaller than the existing ones. If he means that the aspect ratio is better, then he should say so. Second, if it's just the aspect ratio that needs fixing, why not download the existing image, crop it, then re-upload? Because thirdly, the images he has uploaded are uniformly dark and look rubbish.

Others have commented on this in the past (and I can't be bothered to go back that far to find the posts) but he doesn't seem to learn. SerCenKing, stick to the text.

The Sound of Silence

Come on people! Why so quiet?

Three whole days and nobody's done anything. Sure there was a stupid section-protection from Elliot the Thick who evidently can't understand the concept of dynamic IP addresses and we've had the usual Welcome Spam from ^CEshe^V but beyond that, almost nothing.

Timenn, the Last Good Administrator, chipped in earlier with a slew of good edits (although WTF was this one about? The edit summary of "Why do you disagree?" doesn't seem to make sense) but otherwise it's been too quiet. Come on people! Surely it's time for EtT to fuck up another template?

That's two more nicknames decided: LGA for Timenn and ^CEshe^V for Eshe (since 95% of her edits involve copy/paste or existing templates). My lucky off-the-cuff name for Rpeh - The Great Deceiver - strikes me as pure brilliance so I'm sticking with that. For Nephele I'm going for The Pious, since she always had a More Wiki Than Thou attitude that couldn't have been more annoying if she stood next to you and sang off-key Bee Gees songs into your ear while you read her self-absorbed, overlong posts. She's been quiet recently though. Since she's so obviously after a place on the MediaWiki development team, there may be scope for a more appropriate name there.

That leaves just G(?:uild)?K(?:night)? in the admins (Wrye, if he deserves a mention at all, will get "Monkey Man"). I'm not sure what do with GK so suggestions are welcome. Nothing too insulting because if it wasn't for Timenn, she'd probably get the LGA nick.

After that there are the quartet of new(ish) patrollers: Krusty, SerCenKing, WGB and Dlarsh. All four seem pretty decent so far, although you have to worry about Krusty's OCD. Suggestions welcome there too.

RTFA

Nephele's never-ending Oblivion Places Redesign Project keeps bringing out the morons who can't read - sometimes among people who should know better.

Here's a typical post from somebody who can be excused (an anon in this case). Instead of reading the project guidelines, Krusty, who can be expected to know better these days, "confirms" the post. SerCenKing, who can also be expected to know better, chimes in and then Wolok gro-Barok, who can ALSO be expected to know better, almost gets the point... but not quite.

At the moment we're left with SerCenKing doing all the necessary research except for reading the necessary page (I know I've linked to it twice but this seems to be necessary).

What's worrying here is that all three of the editors I've named are Patrollers. That's why I harped on about expecting them to know better. I mean, have these people never heard about the OPRP? Sure Nephele began it in 1734 and then did f**k all about it except delete other people's contributions but the banners for the damn thing still infest almost every place page so you would expect a patroller to have at least looked at the damn thing.

Further proof, if it was required, that UESP is going down the tubes.