User article (stubs)

[Retro]

Quag3756 is a forum member whose only activities as of yet were to create an empty stub of this article and to create a forum entry pointing to this Wiki article. Should this nonensical waste of everybody's time continue, Moderator will be displeased and take appropriate action. Moderator currently is just mildly annoyed.

I think that's overreacting a bit. As far as I am aware, the simple action of just clicking on one's name in the wiki "talk" page automatically creates the article.. not much one can do about this. Personally I think it's funny that people get "caught" that way looking themselves up :)

I mean, feel free to disable that feature, but I'd hope you are not contemplating sanctioning the users..

[Retro]

Hmm it's interesting.. I think it used to be that if you clicked the "Discussion" link in the wiki it automatically created a forum post - but it seems that is not the case any more. However, clicking a user's "Talk" link still creates the forum thread (as you can see by me creating one for myself by accident). Maybe this could be reversed (ie "Discussion" still creating a forum thread while "Talk" does not)?

[Tacbat]

Or change the icon to this:

http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x217/Andi_VYB/bored/bigredbutton.jpg

[Volcano]

Well, that brings up an interesting topic. If someone wants to create a user page about themselves, then by all means do so, but don't create it as "yourname". Instead it is supposed to be "User:<yourname>".

[Ssnake]

Maybe it was an overreaction, but I wonder what the gains are should this community become self-referential. Somehow I think that we're better off not starting Wiki entries about ourselves. Everybody can add stuff there - good and bad - which potentially opens yet another battleground for harrassing entries in those (hopefully rare) cases where people just don't get along with each other.
I'd hate to see the need for moderators to patrol not only the forum boards but also Wiki pages.

[Volcano]

Yes I agree, this is all assuming that everyone in this community is mature and not "full retards" (to quote a movie). Sometimes that does not seem to be the case though. But it is relatively easy to just totally block someone from editing the SBwiki if it gets out of hand (this is actually stated in the rules for the use of the SBwiki).

But if everyone does it properly, the wiki has built in support for user pages, and this is why I say they must be created as "user:YOURNAME". In this way, signatures for people who contribute articles links to user pages and the user named pages do not clutter up the index as if they are legitimate articles. If someone wants to put a little text in about their selves so that they can be better known in the community, then there is no harm. Maybe someone wants to type a list of all the mods and scenarios they have created for the community? Or type a list of the campaigns that they have created for TGIF. Maybe a brief note of military service, maybe a note on how they picked their username. Who knows. The intent of the SBwiki is not just to incorporate the SB manual info, but also to be a source for everything SB related, including the history of the community. The possibilities are unlimited. Just create a page, you can even click "watch" to tag the page so that you know if anyone ever comes along to make malicious changes.

Anyway, I created such a page for me a long time ago to demonstrate what is possible. Certainly any abuse of that feature will not be tolerated -- it will result in permanent ban of wiki editing. By "abuse" it is pretty obvious, anyone with common sense knows what is right and what is wrong, but stuff like typing shit in there about other users or editing other user pages to say stuff like they are "ghey".

Well, I wasn't planning on it but I guess this is officially a warning notice that I will go through and delete all user pages that are not setup properly under the page name format of "user:YOURNAME".

[Sean]

I disabled the button in question a few weeks ago. Its just a case of people hitting buttons to see what they do and then not being able to clean up after themselves.

A warning was posted when it opened about what would happen if the wiki was abused and so far there have been no problems with it.

[tarball]

Don't forget that Wikis are self-correcting entities where, nearly always, the upstanding contributors outweight and correct the outliers. I'd think it would be best if we let the magic of the wiki work out these poisons.

[Ssnake]

I'm cool with it now ... but I disagree that Wikis are near-automatically self-correcting just because the vast majority consists of reasonable people with common sense and decency. You just need one really determined bonehead to make life hell for anyone who cares about the bullshit, e.g. Sparky and his crusade to have the M113 renamed (http://www.google.com/search?q=sparky+M113) (don't click that link unless you are prepared for the madness).

Full retard? Yes.
More manic energy than anyone else? Sadly, Yes as well.

[Homer]

Sparky attempted to join our forum not that long ago. After a short debate, it was decided that his entertainment value was not worth the accompanying headaches.