User talk:Jon

Want to leave me a message? Just click edit, and type it in below. At the end of your message, please include the following text as your "signature": --~~~~. It will automatically get converted to your signature, including your name and the date. That's two dashes, followed by four tilde characters. Thanks! --Jon 17:33, 10 July 2009 (MDT)

Recent "new" page

A page Spark advance was recently added. This is a cut and paste of a widely circulated 'article' that is all over the 'net. As it stands now this page does not have a category specified, so is in limbo. Any suggestions as to what to do w/it?--Cobalt327 18:25, 22 June 2012 (MDT)

I'm leaving it w/o a category. This can be changed if anyone wants.--Cobalt327 05:49, 25 June 2012 (MDT)

My view is that we should delete these. We don't allow copypasta, unless we can prove that its copyright status is such that we can reproduce it here, or unless the copied text is so small (de minimis) that it doesn't matter.--Jon 11:10, 25 June 2012 (MDT)

I'll go ahead and delete it.--Cobalt327 13:25, 25 June 2012 (MDT)

Blocking of IPs

You may have noticed a large number of recently blocked IPs. I'm sure you are aware that if the Recent changes are viewed using the enhanced recent changes (in 'my preferences'/Recent changes), the list of blocked IPs is compacted into an expandable tab so it doesn't take up a large amount of space. These IPs were found on various article's discussion pages (mainly, some have also been found in the history of the actual article page). The IPs belonged to spammers that had their content removed, but the IPs were not blocked by a previous admin. In some cases this resulted in numerous reposted spam. Because these occurred some time ago, this may be closing the stable door after the horse has bolted, but my thoughts were if I'm there anyway I would block them. Is this unnecessary?--Cobalt327 22:49, 30 June 2012 (MDT)

I wasn't even aware of that option! Maybe it was added with the software upgrade. Agreed on blocking those IPs.--Jon 23:57, 30 June 2012 (MDT)

Kinda off topic, but I remember asking some time ago about having an expanded view of the Recent changes; I couldn't get the page to respond to changing the options at the top of the page. I found that by going to 'my preferences'/Watchlist I could select 7 days/1000 changes.--Cobalt327 18:58, 1 July 2012 (MDT)

Interesting, thanks. I need to review all of the preferences.--Jon 12:40, 2 July 2012 (MDT)

'Purpose-built fixture for engine stand'

The text and related images have been deleted and Neighbor's user accounts blocked at the request of Neighbors. The text and images were originally located on the Transmission holding fixtures page and had been removed from there and placed on the discussion page of that article until clarification was presented.

Discussions preceding these actions are here.--Cobalt327 05:15, 5 September 2012 (MDT)

That's fine. IANAL, but Neighbors's portrayal of copyright law may be incomplete. The wiki is clear, via the text beneath the posting box: "If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then do not submit it here.You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource. Do not submit copyrighted work without permission!". AFAIK, copyright law has limited recognition of "gimme-backsies". Once you release something into the public domain, or the Creative Commons license that we use, (as long as you are legally entitled to license it accordingly in the first place!), it's very difficult to retract (though not technically impossible, see Golan v. Holder). Not really an issue in this case, but, in the future, if you come across a user who is demanding a significant deletion, you likely don't need to comply, especially as their contributions may be intermingled with the contributions of other editors, and too difficult to disentangle. In some situations, you may encounter users who, simply out of spite, demand that all of their contributions be deleted. Per their use of the wiki, they will most likely have previously abandoned the right to make that demand.--Jon 21:59, 17 September 2012 (MDT)

Thanks for the clarification, Jon. I felt in this particular case that the content that was requested to be removed could be deleted w/o causing any problems w/the continuity of the article as a whole, since it had already been removed from the article itself. That's mainly why I made the decision to delete as requested. For the record, rest assured had this issue been any more involved I would have asked for your advice and guidance in handling it.--Cobalt327 07:38, 18 September 2012 (MDT)

Wiki bugs

Helena has called for any bugs on the Hotrodders forum to be posted so they can be addressed, and so far I have avoided asking much about the CC wiki's problems/fixes. I was wondering at what point should I ask about the wiki, or are you (hopefully) handling this personally?--Cobalt327 07:38, 18 September 2012 (MDT)

Helena has been provided with a list of the Hotrodders.com bugs, and a link to the list of wiki bugs. I think we should get the HR bugs handled first, and then try to prioritize the wiki bugs.--Jon 20:04, 18 September 2012 (MDT)

Agreed.

Spam filter is giving me a rash, again. Moved text to Wiki updates.--Cobalt327 21:29, 25 January 2013 (MST)

Email notifications of changes

If you have chosen to receive them, are you getting email notification when a page on your watchlist or your user talk page is changed? I have selected these options on my Preferences page but I'm not getting any emails. So I'm wondering if this is something on my end, or what.--Cobalt327 09:21, 19 September 2012 (MDT)

Same problem here. I've added this to Wiki updates.--Jon 13:01, 19 September 2012 (MDT)

Recent influx of new "members"

Since 11-17-12 there has been a relatively large number of new user accounts created. Googling the various screen names shows many to be randomly joining many different forums. Maybe spambots? If so maybe a character recognition prompt at sign up would help. But in any event, just wanted to let you know that this was happening for whatever reason.

Thanks, I'll look into this. Agreed, probably spambots.--Jon 18:22, 29 November 2012 (MST)

Disgruntled street beast owner

Jon, I'll let you deal w/this however you see fit: http://www.crankshaftcoalition.com/wiki/index.php?title=User:41willys&rcid=32499--Cobalt327 20:50, 25 January 2013 (MST)

Saw that. Didn't want to even touch it.--Jon 18:39, 26 January 2013 (MST)

Seemingly unable to block user

The user here has been blocked by both user name AND various addresses but continues to come back seemingly at will to spam. What can be done that I'm not doing to get rid of this user?--Cobalt327 14:32, 16 February 2013 (MST)

Very strange. I'll look into this. --Jon 17:04, 16 February 2013 (MST)

I think I'm seeing what's happening. It looks like Showbizg was effectively blocked. But other spammers are coming back solely to edit Showbizg's user page. Is that correct? If so, one option might be to just blank that user page, and then protect it.--Jon 02:30, 17 February 2013 (MST)

Thanks, I'll give it a try.--Cobalt327 11:00, 17 February 2013 (MST)

Just had another revision (or whatever) of this user page. The protection log is: http://www.crankshaftcoalition.com/wiki/index.php?title=User:Showbizg&action=protect

I have again protected the page (second time). Other details can be seen on the Recent changes page.--Cobalt327 11:11, 1 March 2013 (MST)

Third time. It seems protecting the page (at least how I'm doing it) has no effect.--Cobalt327 15:28, 5 March 2013 (MST)

OK, thanks, I just re-created the page, and re-protected it. Let's see if that does it.--Jon 18:01, 5 March 2013 (MST)

Edits loading quicker

Seems we're back to the way it was before edits became so painfully slow to load. I've made note of this on the Wiki updates page.--Cobalt327 06:40, 8 April 2013 (MDT)

OK, thanks, I'll look into this.--Jon 12:59, 8 April 2013 (MDT)

Huge increase in new user spam

I was concerned this might happen. Fortunately they seem to have one common IP address...--Cobalt327 19:43, 19 April 2013 (MDT)

Spam continuing. Not from just one or two IPs anymore, they're now coming from many IPs. Blocking the user names and all the IPs is becoming a bit of a problem.--Cobalt327 16:56, 28 April 2013 (MDT).