Re: wiki "abuse"

From: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
Date: Aug 9, 2010, 17:16 UTC
Message-ID: <AANLkTi=9=kybNQ=TqqpdEF5xSUpyG5YfKbrJqyKmx_QQ@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.1.00.1008091820320.8314@intel-tinevez-2-302>

On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 16:21, Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:

Show 12 quoted lines

> Hi,
>
> On Mon, 9 Aug 2010, Tay Ray Chuan wrote:
>
>> > On Sat, Aug 7, 2010 at 12:56, Amir E. Aharoni
>> > <amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
>> >> I have accounts on dozens of wikis and i am an admin on a few of them.
>> >> I opened an account on https://git.wiki.kernel.org/ , created a user
>> >> page and put there a link to my blog.
>
> It is funny. I still find this very inappropriate. Nobody else did it, yet
> you feel fit to just force your ways onto the Git wiki.

Why do you think noone else did it? There are several user pages:

    https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php?title=Special:AllPages&namespace=2

and the deletion log suggests that other users are having their user pages deleted, including Jakub Narebski (a list regular):

    https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Special:Log/delete

> I would have welcomed edits that add to the value of the Git wiki as an
> information source about Git. Not as an information source about you.
>
> Whatever.

It's not like he had much of a chance to do so, being banned within a day.

I don't know what exactly went down here (the pages have been deleted, and I'm not a sysop on the wiki). But from the discussion in this thread User:Dscho seems to be an out of control admin. A user:

    1. Created an account & Added a user page
    2. Had the user page deleted as "link spam" (I'll grant him that,
       it's somewhat spammy behavior with no other contributions.
    3. Was banned when asking the admin on the admin's user page what
       was wrong, the admin subsequently deleting his user talk page.

#3 could easily have been handled by explaining that the git wiki doesn't use user pages like other wikis, and that adding one with a link to your blog looks spamming, not by banning the user right away.

And as an aside, it's relatively easy to configure MediaWiki not to use user pages (or at least, not to make them visible anywhere).

If the admins at the Git wiki really don't want user pages there doing that would reduce a lot of friction in the future.

Users create these pages out of habit when using MediaWiki because the software and most MediaWiki installations encourage it.