User talk:SomeHuman

Notes on List of rides page

Moved to the page's Discussion page, as the discussion is in particular relevant for that single page and may concern its other editors and readers as well.
SomeHuman 2009-01-04 07:35 / 08:09 (GMT)

Brussels

Thanks for your concern about the Brussels pages. It's late, so I'm finding it difficult to work through all that you've written.<br?> I guess this entry should really be moved to Talk:Brussels when you've read it, and the weird redirect issue has been sorted out!
Nsayers 22:30, 2 March 2010 (UTC) Main part of above comment moved to the Brussels' discussion page — SomeHuman 2010-03-02 23:43

Multilingual solutions

Hi SomeHuman. I'd like to work out a good way to handle the obvious need for multiple languages on the WNBR wiki. At the moment, the following solutions are being used, with the assumption that the main language is English:

• Write the whole page in the non-English language (eg: Saint Petersburg) – drawback: no other language option/s
• Add my 'Babelfish translation link' template to such pages – drawback: hacky, computer-generated translation not very good
• Write the same page with multiple languages (eg: Brussels) – drawback: messy, cluttered pages with too much text for single-language readers
• Write separate, translated page/s tagged with the language code (eg: Cardiff/Cy:Caerdydd) – drawback: finicky titling, not properly semantic within the wiki structure, difficult to maintain translations.

I've looked, briefly, at the following solution, which looks good:

• http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Multilang

Got any thoughts on this? I'm tempted to install this extension and run with it. The current approaches we're using (and that you've recently applied to, eg, Paris and Lille) aren't really sustainable.

--Nsayers 23:50, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

The principle is quite sound, Nick. There are however, at first sight, three catches:

• In January, my Template_talk:Stub#Multilingual version comment already mentioned that we do not seem to have decision making facilities on this wiki. That template's source contains inline-commented pseudo-code for the decision-making. The Mediawiki solution that you propose does basically what I explained. But it uses the language argument with the corresponding text, for several languages in a page, and lets user settings instead of a language argument decide what to show - a very interesting approach that might allow maintaining bi- and multilingual pages. For a template like 'Stub' with predefined text in a sufficient number of languages, no argument would be needed to show only one language. The Wikimedia solution must prerequisite (at least) basic programming facilities to allow its decision-making.
• One has no overview: To practically maintain pages in several languages, one must be able to see the different language versions at the same time. At least in theory, that problem could be solved by a user setting override that would tell the Wikimedia style template (as well as my style templates for specific purposes) to show all availabe languages instead of one. This might be extremely easy, or more tricky - I did not yet study the Wikimedia solution's source code.
• The Wikimedia solution shows it is a beta version, and it was last updated in 2006... I would think that if it had worked as intended, it would no longer be a beta. And neither its author nor anyone else seems interested or able to attend to whatever the problem(s) might be. It might be just a minor glitch that has little relevance on our simple wiki, but more serious consequences on larger scale complex wikis (e.g. incompatibility with other, often intricate, templates, or with other solutions for similar problems that are in use).

Anyway, this wiki desparately needs a decision-making facility. Your 'Next ride' template for instance, needs to become multilingual to avoid page-by-page simulations of its output. One might have a single multilingual template for the 'standard' titles, which would appear to an editor like {{Title|Links|fr,en}} to show "Liens / Links", or elsewhere {{Title|History|nl}} to show "Historiek", on the pages.

In case user setting would become determining (with or without the Mediawiki solution code), if showing a single language suffices, even simpler {{Title|Links}} and {{Title|History}} would produce the titles in the reader's language, even if the rest of the page would be in another language (including with Wikimedia solution wherever the reader's language is unavailable). I assume people can accept that 'anomaly' pretty well.

SomeHuman 2010-03-08 06:32-07:04

Site migration

Hi SomeHuman. I'm addressing this to you because you seem to be the only person updating regularly at present.

I've been asked by Conrad, who provides hosting for the websites, including the wiki, to help him move to a different host. Conrad's circumstances have changed and he's trying to cut costs.

I already made one attempt to migrate, closing updates to the wiki, and migrating the data. You probably noticed. But we hit a snag and I had to postpone and reopen the wiki.

Problems have been resolved and I think we have good probability of success at a second attempt. I'd like to do it as soon as possible. It will mean the wiki is closed for updates for a period; hopefully less than 24 hours, but possibly longer.

Just telling you for awareness. It would be good to get an acknowledgement that you are ok with this, but I will go ahead in the next couple of days and apologise for any inconvenience.

Best wishes Rob --Robjordan (talk) 05:53, 22 April 2020 (PDT)

Thanks Rob, with a reply and request on your talk page. —SomeHuman (talk) 02:41, 24 April 2020 (PDT)

Extension and admin

Hi, sorry it's taken me a long time to action this. Migration worked ok second time around, though we had some hours of downtime. I have enabled the ParserFuncions extension and made to and admin. Hope all is ok. Let me know if there are problems. --Robjordan (talk) 14:29, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Fine news, and all seems to be going very well. Really appreciating this. Still quite a bit of things to do ...
SomeHuman (talk) 14:55, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Infinite block

After having been doing exactly what had been announced on:

1. the discussion page of the template Google translation link, and after having pointed to this on the discussion page of the at the time [only] regularly active administrator, and allowing time for his reading, I started deploying that multilingual translation support.
2. the discussion page of the 'sysop' who had been transferring the wiki to another server (see here above), at my asking for administrator rights. At this, I informed the 'sysop' of my unfortunate experience ten years earlier with the 'bureaucrat' who used to run the wiki (but apparently had been limiting his edits to a few English ride locations for the last 8 years). The aforementioned still active administrator (from the Netherlands), also with the higher 'bureaucrat' rights, had commented my request on that discussion page before I was indeed granted the extra rights. At this grant, the 'sysop' commented: "Requested admin privileges as he is doing wide-ranging template changes."

After another month of (still unfinished) wide-ranging work in order to bring the wiki in line with its fundamental structural concept and declared purpose, without any warning whatsoever and without even ever having modified any one of my edits, the aforementioned English 'bureaucrat' Nsayers blocked me infinitely,

  Start of block: 2020-06-02T23:41:59
  Expiration of block: infinite
  Intended blockee: SomeHuman

with only false accusations even stating that I had acted without consultation! I can't edit any normal page, not even my own presentation. He simply sabotaged the WNBR wiki because no-one will continue to bring the not yet modified parts in line with the large parts I already had taken care off, nor undo the latter (which surely would be a real shame anyway): Thus many confusing inconsistencies, anomalies and contradictory aspects that would have taken me relatively little more finalization work to fix, are doomed to be permanent.

Meanwhile, the 'sysop' emailed me: "In particular, [Nsayers] was aggravated by the way you updated the Brighton ride that he organises with an incorrect Covid status. I trust Nick's judgement in this matter." So far, Nsayers did not modify my very correct edit on the Brighton & Hove page, thus must have meant its line in the List of rides. All I ever did there, was modifying the colour of the word 'postponed' and (as at the time already by Nsayers explicitly confirmed on the B & H page) relating the postponement to the pandemic. I also had put 'TBC' out of the struck-through date:

• Brighton & Hove: 14 Jun 2020 TBC Postponed [before Nsayers mentioned a 'plan' on the B & H page and still so when SomeHuman first edited the List of rides since 2017!]
• Brighton & Hove: TBC 14 Jun 2020◄POSTPONED Corona [After SomeHuman's edits until he was blocked, it since the here above never having shown any other info]

Changing this 'TBC' into the most appropriate term 'TBA' might have been best but it was impossible to misinterpret the information: One had to wait for a new ride date or other info there, anyway. Immediately after taking away my administrator rights at which it is absolutely impossible to overlook the sysop's grant comment, and minutes later nevertheless blocking me with "Nuisance edits: Over-complicating the wiki (esp templates), giving misleading information about Covid cancellations (UK rides), making fundamental wide-ranging changes without consultation.", Nsayers put extra information on that List of rides' B & H line: a date at which one may expect to become informed of one or other 'plan' (instead of replacing 'TBC' with 'Plan to be announced 14 Jun 2020' also destroying the until then for the entire list consistent pandemic indication):

• Brighton & Hove: Covid-19 postponement plan to be announced 14 Jun 2020 [right after having blocked SomeHuman; Nsayers' edit comment politely included: "(f’ed up by SomeHuman)"]

He had put that in the B & H page long ago and had simply neglected to also put it on the List of rides. Neither the supervising Dutch bureaucrat then, nor I when I saw it on the B & H page much later on, had found it proper to 'correct' Nsayers, after all he once had pointed out that details about cancellations and so on belong in the ride location pages. But the afterwards so-called "misleading information" (not at all, merely incomplete for a detail), had been the sole choice of Nsayers himself. He couldn't wait to indefinitely block me for his own neglect two months earlier.

No-one ever severely acting impulsively without checking the ostensible facts, or deliberately falsely accusing of not having consulted properly, or punishing for doing precisely what had been the very reason for having been granted extra rights, or out of the blue sky severely acting without any warning or other indication of scepticism, or such action with poor consequences for the thereby left-behind wiki state, is worthy of or can be trusted with 'bureaucrat' authority — as was implied in my further above linked discussion page request for administrator rights that predicted Nsayers' abominable abuse of power.

I had learned ten years ago, the style of discussion by Nsayers: Anything complicated by him was evident even if just about every editor had proven incapable to understand and apply whatever Nsayers might have intended, with a wide-spread range of numerous inconsistencies and blunt errors as result; and anything else, especially for accessibility by speakers of a native language other than English, was over-complicating, cluttering and confounding. His nicely suggested 'solution' higher on this talk page was in fact a smart attempt to keep me busy out of the way until I would give up, but failed. Nsayers knows my argumentations to be sound, so he vindictively blocks me without private or public discussion and concerts with individual administrators whom he knows he can manipulate or bully. Any reasonable person must see that before banning a conscientious, careful and capable editor, one should first ask to limit edits within certain boundaries. Not having done so and having left the wiki doomed in a random state, is ruthlessly tyrannical, dishonouring the wiki, and not helpful for the WNBR.

As I was the only active editor of the 'Brussels' pages, the block also comes to excluding Belgium and such merely 18 days before its still announced (at present already lapsed) ride date and thus while an urgent corona postponement update had to be expected. It was in fact by failing to be able to save an update, that I discovered my being blocked. Apparently, now Amsterdam is the only non English speaking ride location that is still being properly maintained on what was supposed to be a World Naked Bike Ride wiki.

I do not intend to discuss the matter here: far too late for that.
SomeHuman (talk) 17:07, 21 June 2020 (UTC)