User talk:Elrond-halfelven

From The Heretic Knowledge Vault

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Contents 1 Re: Thank-You note 2 Spambot problems 3 Policy page 4 Nanoa 5 Spambots

Re: Thank-You note

That was SL's idea, and a good one. (I've modified it slightly.) Anyway, we who spend lots of time messing with the wiki very much appreciate your help, and an entertaining opportunity to provide more, and more interesting, help is in the offing that I can't yet say much about. Will let you know when it pops up; you'll like it, I'm pretty sure of that. -- Graybeard 08:40, 4 June 2007 (CDT)

Spambot problems

As announced on the Forum, today we were targeted by a particularly nasty and persistent set of spambots. Most contributors to the wiki have been blocked, but for the time being, a kluge has been arranged that allows you individually to continue editing, not least so you can help deal with additional spam problems as they arise. That involves at least temporarily making you a "sysop" with the ability to delete pages, etc. I don't know whether that will be a lasting thing, and for the time being, I would recommend you not do too much with the extra buttons that a sysop has (I presume you've seen those), since we haven't cleared with Impy the idea of making you a sysop permanently. However, we could use the help. Please drop me a message on my talk page if you want to consider sysopping on a more permanent basis. -- Graybeard 15:12, 10 June 2007 (CDT)

Policy page

I've started a The Heretic Knowledge Vault:Policy page to help set up access/block/protection guidelines. These will become useful when the software gets upgraded to allow new security measures, and I think they should be informative even now. Please read and comment on the talk page (and change as applicable, since you have sysop access and can make changes to the content page itself, which is currently protected). -- Graybeard 10:34, 16 June 2007 (CDT)

There's an update to this in the works, involving new usernames. Please drop by the talk page and comment. -- Graybeard 22:16, 5 November 2007 (CST)

Nanoa

Thanks for getting that started, the help is appreciated! Two minor things for future reference:

1. It's more or less conventional not to update the "appears in" box until the end of a chapter. No real reason why it can't be updated earlier, it just would get seriously tedious to do it more often.
2. When entering appearances (but NOT the first appearance, nor the "mentioned in" box), omit the year. Here there is an actual reason, rather than just convention: appearances tend to build up quickly, and with the year included, there's only room for one per line, while if it's omitted, you can fit three on a line. The summary boxes for the main characters are already far longer than the content on the page; if the years of the appearances were included, those boxes would become positively humongous.

Anyway, thanks much. Meanwhile, the battle against the spambots seems to have been won for now ... but the war goes on. -- Graybeard 08:15, 22 June 2007 (CDT)

Just to update this (and btw, thanks for the latest spambot block): I don't know whether we're at an end of the chapter or not, but either way, it's probably time to start updating the various appearances/mentions to reflect Chapter 28, because a lot of characters have been on stage or at least mentioned. I've started the process; wanna help? -- Graybeard 17:52, 21 July 2007 (CDT)

Spambots

Thanks, what you did was exactly correct. However, I'm puzzled (and dismayed) that it was necessary. I know that we don't have every last spambot blocked, but I thought that Slamlander had blocked all the ones starting with J, and I all the ones starting with Y. So these two shouldn't have been able to do that. Either we screwed up (always possible when doing a repetitive task like that) or these are new -- but it shouldn't be possible to create new users right now. I'll make some inquiries.

We really need to get the wiki software upgraded to a more recent version. Some of these holes have been fixed, and the more modern versions also allow us to create blacklists for content that can be used to block the spamsites that these clowns point to. However, we've had it made very clear to us that no software upgrades are coming if there's any chance that they clobber the on-line store; Poe and Hilary rely on the store for a living, and that (rightly) supersedes the war on the spambots. Anyway... -- Graybeard 09:15, 29 June 2007 (CDT)