A Year Too Late

If I really cared any more I could get depressed at the poor standard of admin on UESP these days. A good example is this post from TheRealLurlock expressing concern at the block settings he's been using on IPs. In a nutshell, Lurlock tells us that he doesn't know what he's doing and it's taken him months to say anything. Yeah, that's the kind of admin a site needs.

There's a reply from Lonely and Desperate saying the same thing, although the diff for that one is lost thanks to Daveh being incompetent. Lastly we have Whining Little Bitch doing his usual trick of replacing actual thought by copying stuff from Wikipedia. He suggests limiting the length of blocks to a year or less.

I thought this sounded a bit familiar and remembered this discussion started by rpeh on 1 May 2011. It seems I've got a better memory than Lonely and Desperate because he took part in the discussion but obviously doesn't remember anything. Rpeh's reason for starting the discussion was exactly what it's taken the other dullards 15 months to realise: that just because someone vandalises a page from a given IP address, it isn't always going to belong to a vandal.

The original proposals didn't go anywhere because LaD is an idiot and some other user I'd forgotten was also an idiot, and has done the square root of fuck all in recent times. While rpeh's suggestion to unblock every single indefinitely blocked IP address was a stupid suggestion that would have led to days of pure spam, the basic idea of not perma-blocking any IPs in the future was a good one. It's a shame it took so long for the others to get there.

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.

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.

Still not Interested?

Question for the day: In the light of Herschel's admin nomination, is the Masked Template Guru regretting his decision to deny wanting to be an admin? Surely he would have been first choice without that post and without his Joram excursion?

Wow - that second link is to my second ever post. How time flies!

Can't he just go Away?

Given that Rawtwat the Vicious has buggered off, as have ^CEshe^V and Anarchasshole, and given that other users who used to feature in my posts have proved useful rather than irritating (where is The Great Deceiver at the moment though?), I may as well rename this blog "Elliot the Obnoxiously Thick Watch" and have done with it.

Do you remember this thread about a possible change to the Journal Entries template? No? Well the basic idea is to have one table for quests with multiple sections. The Masked Template Guru made the original suggestion and TGD agreed only for EtOT to slip into Doctor No mode.

There the matter rested until MTG went ahead and made the change. Then the fun begins.

EtOT posts on MTG's talk page moaning about lack of consensus (the irony is almost flattening given that it comes from somebody who doesn't believe in consensus) and saying that he has half a mind. Oh, sorry - "I have half a mind to revert every single edit."

MTG disagrees and points out that "If you'd like to revert them all, that's your right, but I rather suspect it would be seen as malicious and earn you disciplinary action. That's not up to me, though."

EtOT's next post is a mass of crap even by his standards:

"2-1 is not consensus, especially when the main opposition is by the person who structured and implemented it. I find this extremely disrespectful and insulting. Perhaps you should get 'disciplinary action"

First, it was rpeh who wrote the template and the whole thing was his idea. Second, it's neither disrespectful nor insulting. Third, there's no reason for MTG to be disciplined.

Elliot should know about WP:POINT though, which would apply to his own suggestion.

Elliot - and I know you still read this - fuck off. You're not helping anything and you're doing nothing to stop people from regarding you as a moron.

Wow. Who Saw THAT Coming?

The Great Deceiver nominated himself for patroller again last night, which I don't think anybody was expecting. Predictably, Elliot the Obnoxiously Vicious had to vote no, hilariously claiming that patrollership is his gift to offer.

So far, yes votes from Corevette789, Atreus, and the Masked Template Guru.

Is this the first step in a return to sysop status for TGD?

Reasons to be Cheerful

In all the excitement about Elliot the Obnoxiously Thick finally disappearing, I almost missed this edit from the Masked Template Guru (new name for RobinHood70).

His edit summary was "Just spoke with both, neither are planning to return", and the "both" to whom he refers are Rawtwat the Vicious and ^CEshe^V. It looks like March 2010 is going to be a good month for getting rid of the chaff from UESP.

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.

The Unmasked Man

So it turns out that Joram was RobinHood70 all along. He "retired" back in mid December citing "recent events" and is now talking about "drama" being responsible.

At the time, RobinHood was working on his project to kill the Lore Dictionary articles, which he did, but what other drama was there? The big debate over Elliot the Thick's Editor Id template was going on (and somebody should really delete Template talk:NPC Editor ID - it's still there long after the template was deleted), but it looks to me like this discussion on the Admin Noticeboard was a bigger factor. Basically, EtT and RH seem to have had a falling out over the job queue. Both those discussions involved EtT, so is his continuing absence the reason for RH's return?

Is there more than that? Let me know, people.

So Farewell, Then, Robin Hood

Elliot's Bitch has decided to throw in the towel. What will Elliot do next time he needs defending, I wonder?

To be honest, he won't be missed very much. He did a small about of fact checking but mainly spent his time adding badly thought out opinions to talk pages and absolutely not wanting to be an administrator.

I don't wish him harm so I hope he recovers from his illness. I'm sure there are more productive ways for him to spend his time if he does.

Elliot Annoys User: Film at 11

Let's see... the day has a "y" in its name so Elliot the Thick has been annoying people again. Today's victim is yet another anon, in this case, 68.215.87.128. The complaint is that EtT removed some stuff from the god awful 100% completion page. There have been a rash of IP edits on that page lately, so it's tricky to tell exactly which one the anon is complaining about.I'm guessing, though, that this one was by the same anon. I can't explain exactly why I think that...

Elliot, as usual, can't resist a rude reply, but then Elliot's Bitch pops up on schedule with a typically pointless post. Strange how often this happens. Evidently E's B feels a desperate need to protect EtT for some reason.

The funniest thing about this set of posts is from the anon, though. "I'm over 40 and a master of all aspects of pc use". Yeah. Except your grammar checker.

It's Rawtwat's Big Chance

I'm not going to link every diff, but this debate would seem to be Rawtwat the Vicious's last chance before he loses all credibility.

Rawtwat is demanding the right to insult, block and generally smear anybody he wants. Everybody else that has commented so far is trying to find polite ways to tell him he's being an idiot. He has even gone so far that ^CEshe^V, Elliot and Elliot's Bitch have told him he's being too vicious.

The Last Good Admin has had some reasonable things to say, things that RtV called "discouraging" although that should be expected given what a vicious idiot Rawtwat has become lately. Nothing yet from GK the Silent or Nephele the Pious, but that's par for the course.

It looks like this will be a case where a blocked user takes on an administrator... and wins. Rawtwat has lost a huge amount of his remaining credibility and The Great Deceiver must be feeling slightly smug given the number of people that have supported him (even Elliot's Bitch has had nice things to say for once, although his new user idea was the single most st00p1d thing suggested in UESP's history).

A Diamond and Three Bits of Glass

Why is it that the best stuff seems to happen when I'm not around?

Anyway. To prove that I'm not just negative, today's post will be saying nice things about ^CEshe^V. Of course, there will still be the usual bile about the three morons of the apocalypse, Elliot the Thick, Rawtwat the Vicious and Elliot's Bitch.

As I pointed out earlier, EtT broke several pages when he (for no reason at all) added categories to the sub-templates used by the Chart template. EtT evidently reads the site (one word at a time, carefully sounding out each letter as it appears, no doubt) because he finally decided to do something about it. Undo his changes? Err... no. Fix his changes so the spacing worked? Err... no. He changed each affected page instead (that's not all of them but I can't be bothered doing the lot).

There's a fairly obvious problem with this approach. As the Chart Template says, it was copied from Wikipedia and differs from WP's version in two specific ways. Now there's a third, undocumented difference that will, I guarantee it, come back to annoy people later on.

What happens next? An anon pops up on Elliot's talkpage namechecking this blog (thanks! - how about a link next time?) and suggesting, perfectly reasonably, that EtT fix the problem rather than papering over the cracks. In typical EtT style, he simply deletes the post, with the rather odd edit summary "I have already told you once, please leave it alone". Where did he tell anybody about this? Who knows.

After that it's a pretty standard edit war. The anon reverts, saying "You haven't "told" me anything. Please can you tell me why you are not fixing the template?" and then adds a followup pointing out that not fixing the underlying problem could damage things. EtT deletes both comments ("it's nice to see you really like playing this game" - an ironic edit summary for the site's biggest edit-warrer) and back comes the anon ("Failure to debate shows a failure of intellect. Please respond constructively").

At this point, Elliot's Bitch RobinHood70 steps in and removes the comments ("rv trolling"). How many times do I have to tell you, EB, that politely pointing out a problem and asking a question is not trolling. EB defines trolling as "anything I don't like", which illustrates why he isn't suitable as a patroller. The anon reverts ("Please learn to distinguish between trolling and people TRYING to be HELPFUL") and tries to explain further what the problem is, while also posting on EB's page asking what he thinks he's doing. Now we get TWO edit wars!

EB reverts both posts, yet again moaning about TOR users. Anon comes back on both ("FIX THE PROBLEM! Don't BURY it!" and "Answer, please"). EB reverts one, EtT reverts on EB's page ("you are way out of line") and we have a series of other reverts with helpful edit comments from EtT like "adorable", "sigh" and "eventually you will comprehend it" and foot-stamping from the anon ("you broke the pages - please explain why. Stop deleting this.")

Finally, ^CEshe^V steps in. She tells the anon, EtT and EB to grow up and stop warring. The anon agrees and requests an answer once more... to the sound of silence. Later on, Rawtwat the Vicious steps in and blocks all the IPs used by the anon. So much for debate.

Eshe stopped the edit war and did so by telling all the participants off, which is the fair and proper thing to do. She also scolded EtT for the sarcastic edit summaries. Marks to Eshe for that one.

Notice, though, that nobody has fixed the actual problem or bothered to respond to the anon. That's one of the problems with UESP these days - the staff are almost all convinced of their infallibility. The template is broken. If one type of valid wiki syntax works with a template and another breaks it, it's a problem with the template. It needs fixing.

Wow. Long post. Before anybody wittily posts that I need to get a life, I should point out that I've been away for three days doing just that or I'd have posted this earlier.

Elliot pwned yet again

Another post about Elliot the Thick. I know there are a lot, but he really is such a walking disaster area when it comes to wikis that he's bound to get a lot of attention.

The latest incident started when new user BrastaSeptim (no user or talk page so I'm linking to the contribs) created a new fanfic called the "Jewel of Selvir" in the Oblivion namespace. Fanfiction is almost all so unutterably tedious that I haven't read it but a central part of the story is that Tiber Septim (the emperor - not me) had a second child, Brasta. The user, displaying the sort of intelligence level displayed by 99% of UESP users, created a Lore page for this new child and decided to add the information to Tiber Septim's Lore page and add his fanfic to the list of books.

Pretty stupid so far, but largely excusable as new users are often unaware of How Things Work. Luckily, real stupid is close at hand. In comes Elliot the Thick. He prods the two new pages as "nonsense" and then reverts the edits to the Lore pages with the same edit summary. At this point, up pops an anon and leaves an absolutely beautiful post on EtT's talk page. In fact, I'm going to quote it here because it's so good:

Please do not call edits such as this and this nonsense. They might be fan-fiction and therefore incorrectly placed, but they are '''not''' nonsense and you are violating the good faith policy by calling them such. The correct response would be to move the fiction pages to the a subpage of the user's space and leave a ''polite'' message on their talk page. If you require any further help with good patroller practice, I suggest you read the relevant policy pages. Kind regards.

Now first off, that wasn't me. Trolling UESP and then writing about the responses would be like shooting fish in a barrel. This blog is about the idiocy of the patrollers and admins that they come up with all by themselves.

Next, notice the tone of that post. It's perfectly polite, well-phrased and utterly accurate. EtT was totally wrong to act in the way he did. So do we think EtT will post an apology and move the pages? Not on your life. In typical EtT, bury the past, fingers in ears style, he simply deletes the post.

Meanwhile, a new account called MistakeFixer has been created (presumably by the anon). It proceeds to move the pages into the correct places, propose the resulting redirects for deletion, remove the incorrect prod from the moved article and reinstate the post on EtT's talk page with the summary "you were wrong. At least have the guts to reply".

Elliot the Thick responds in typical fashion, removing the post again and saying "I have every right to remove comments on my talk page, stop harassing" - despite having just harassed a new user by proposing their posts for deletion. MistakeFixer re-adds it, with the (inaccurate) comment "not here you don't" and finally EtT's bitch RobinHood70 removes it for good.

MistakeFixer then posts a perfectly polite and reasonable complaint about EtT's behaviour on the admin noticeboard that basically says EtT doesn't know what he's doing and should be removed. No argument from me on that score. The response? Rawtwat the Vicious warns MistakeFixer and reverts his complaint with no feedback anywhere. And they wonder why I call him vicious?

This series of events goes to prove what I've been saying all along. Elliot the Thick is incompetent and needs to be removed as a patroller. Rawtwat the Vicious is out of control and also needs to be removed. And RobinHood70 is desperate, desperate, to be an admin.

Irony Toned Down

After I pointed out the irony of RobinHood70 warning a user for editing somebody else's user page after he'd just done the same, Eshe and Elliot the Thick both tell him to stop being vicious. Our green-stockinged hero hilariously claims that the edit summaries were proof that the page blanking was deliberate, and it is left to EtT to point out that such summaries are automatically-generated.

Now recall that RobinHood70 has been editing since 30 May 2006 and has been a patroller since 28 April 2008. So you'd expect him to be Recent Changes-savvy enough to have spotted the auto summaries before now? Apparently not.

Tail between his legs, RH tones down the warning.

Remember that this is the man who definitely doesn't want to be an admin right now. With all the policy violations recently, that's probably just as well.

Irony Alert!

Just a couple of days after removing content from a user page, RobinHood70 has the chutzpah to warn another user for... removing content from a user page.

Mr Pot, meet Mr Kettle.

Robin Hood 2

Well that didn't take long!

First, the Hood's paranoia shows on his talk page then he takes it to the Administrator Noticeboard again, where first one, then two users tell him to leave it alone, followed up by more bleatings from RH that serve only to indicate how stupid he is.

Getting fed up with his previous Noticeboard post being ignored, RH then sticks his tongue firmly up Nephele in an attempt to get her to listen to him.

RobinHood - people are going to tell you when you're breaking policy whether you want them too or not. The best solution is not to do it.

UPDATE! First Timenn then Eshe say that they would also prefer to obey policy rather than just unilaterally delete stuff they don't like from user's pages. Of course that means that the green-tighted one needs another couple of whines over the admin noticeboard. Perhaps now everybody has told him they think he's wrong, he'll STFU.

Robin Hood! Steals from the Anons!

Robin Hood! Robin Hood! Riding Through the Glen!
Robin Hood! Robin Hood! With his band of men!

Well the first entry of our dramatis personae turns out to be a non-admin, which I certainly hadn't expected when I created the blog. Instead, we have RobinHood70 - a patroller who definitely does not want to be an admin.

Unfortunately, his quest to definitely not be an admin seems to keep hitting speedbumps courtesy of various anon editors who point out that he violates policy when it suits him. For instance, he deletes a recent talk page comment on the grounds that it's old and wrong. An anon points out that talk pages should be left alone. RH disagrees because it's "old, anonymous and also wrong", so the anon replies that it's less than a month old and that, again, talk page posts shouldn't be deleted. The anon also points out on RobinHood70's talk page that those criteria could be used to delete 90% of the site's talk pages.

RobinHood70 = pwn3d

Of course, he doesn't like that so adds a petty post to the Administrator's Noticeboard saying that people who don't agree with him should be banned as trolls.

Nobody agrees... or even replies.

Well... you'd have thought he would have learned a lesson. But.... no. Now RH turns his fire on the old message on Dagoth Ur, Mad God's user page, and requests comments on his user page. Another IP duly reverts the change and spanks him for making it.

Will RobinHood70 learn that he doesn't have free range over other user's pages, or article talk pages? Stay tuned!