Tuesday, December 4, 2007

That's Right, You're an Asshole, You're an Asshole

To the asshole trolls who keep deleting the job wiki, here's a really simple thought: If you don't like the wiki, don't fucking look at it. If for some fucking reason you think I shouldn't be able to look at the wiki, and so your problems can't be solved simply by you not looking at it--well, then fuck the fuck off.

Fucktards.

23 comments:

Anonymous said...

Tell 'em.

Anonymous said...

This person is deleting the job search wikis for lots of subjects (not just philosophy) over there. Strange.

Anonymous said...

So how does one go about restoring the wiki in all its glory? It has happened to our subject and the cut and paste method is awful. Can some clever soul tell me how to restore using the last good version? And hurry, people are going nuts!

Anonymous said...

"So how does one go about restoring the wiki in all its glory?"

It's so simple it's funny. Click on a past revision before the vandalism (under history), and click on edit. Copy and past the code back in to a new revision.

Anonymous said...

We're just cutting and pasting from the last good version -- why is it awful? It works fine for us, though obviously it's a pain.

You'd think we could have edits from a particular IP banned (though maybe not for a free service).

Anonymous said...

They should just have a bunch of reviewers that have the approve deletions by a vote or something. I know it's a 'wiki' anymore, but that way you don't get rid of good information.

Hallelujah free speech.

Anonymous said...

Figured it out. But thanks.

The cut and paste method is awful because it kept the line numbers but not the formatting. We had worked hard with indents, etc. - so it was especially annoying to have those disappear. But all is well now, until the bandit strikes again.

Banning the IP won't work because we can't even tell who is doing it, if they click the minor revisions. Then it looks like the sucker who attempts the next revision is the vandal. It is all very frustrating. Any way to password protect these sort of things?

Anyway, thanks for your help, and best of luck with your own job hunts and wiki guarding!

Anonymous said...

i just restored the wiki, following anon 8:30's directions. if we all work on restoring it, hopefully the asshole(s) will quit deleting it.

Anonymous said...

So do the fuckwads who keep deleting the various wikis eventually move on? How long do we have to keep restoring the damn thing?

Anonymous said...

Has anyone else noticed that west coast/mountain region depts are underrepresented in this first batch of scheduled interviews.

Anonymous said...

wiki's gone again.

Anonymous said...

FWIW

71.244.215.187

http://ip-lookup.net/index.php

there is number with Verizon in VA where the IP address locates the person where one can call to complain.

Anonymous said...

Verizon is based in Virginia. The vandal lives in Chicago and uses Verizon esl. You can do a traceroute and find the location of the ip address. In any case, Verizon won't do anything, nor should they.

We can't block the ip address, because wikihost is complete crap. There are tons of bugs and few features. Also the vandal is on dsl and his ip has changed in the last two weeks, and is likely to change again. . . . . We could lock down edits to registered users (that is, we could if wikihost login worked properly), but no one wants to have to register to update.

We should just keep cleaning up after the vandal for now.

Make sure to post the change log entry from the vandalized revision (noting the ip address) in your comments when you cleanup.

Anonymous said...

It looks like the vandal is probably in Serena, Il.

If they are a student then they are probably at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign which is near there, I think. I'm not too familiar with the area.

Is it one of these people?

http://www.phil.uiuc.edu/graduate/students.htm

I doubt it.

Since they have been vandalizing other academic pages, they might not be a philosophy student, or they might just be covering their tracks. Unless they do something illegal or come out and tell us their name, we'll never know.

This visual trace route page is ok:

http://whatismyipaddress.com/staticpages/index.php/tools-visual-traceroute-results

Anonymous said...

One lovely feature of wikihost is that it uses pessimistic locking rather an optimistic locking. That is, they lock the page during edits, rather than trying to detect out of date edits. The assume that there will be a conflicting simultaneous change rather than hope for the best. Optimistic locking solutions can be irritating in high traffic situations (sorry, page has been updated underneath you) but this is not generally the case with a wiki. And even if it is, you can provide diffs that help you figure out if there are indeed conflicts. Most version control systems work this way and it's not so hard to get right. However, wikihost is crap. Their software is complete shit. And it's slow.

The beauty of the lazy, pessimistic strategy that wikihost adopted is that it allows any vandal to hold the lock for 15 minutes before it is automatically freed. Scramble the page, submit, then hit edit. presto: No one can correct the page for 15 minutes. The vandal has figured this out. Right now I'm waiting to fix the page. . . . . . maybe someone else will fix it first. . . .

Anonymous said...

This tends to be the most reliable IP lookup:

http://www.arin.net/whois/

I would forward all information possible (including all activity of removing other parts of the wiki) to abuse@verizon.net. This must be a violation of Verizon's acceptable use policy. Even if the IP address changes, Verizon can track who is using it at those particular times of activity, which are logged on the wiki. (I think the logged times are GMT + 1; is that Germany?)

[http://wikihost.org/wikis/academe/programm/gebo.prg?name=gebo:activity]:

2007-12-05 02:47 71.244.215.187 comparative_literature removed
2007-12-05 02:38 71.244.215.187 philosophy removed
2007-12-05 02:37 71.244.215.187 economics removed
2007-12-05 02:36 71.244.215.187 chemistry removed
2007-12-05 02:35 71.244.215.187 anthropology removed
2007-12-05 02:33 71.244.215.187 classics removed
2007-12-05 02:30 71.244.215.187 sociology removed
2007-12-05 02:28 71.244.215.187 psychology removed
2007-12-04 09:58 71.244.215.187 theology removed
2007-12-04 09:56 71.244.215.187 sociology removed
2007-12-04 09:50 71.244.215.187 psychology removed
2007-12-04 03:38 71.244.215.187 chemistry removed
2007-12-03 20:59 70.106.219.147 biology removed
2007-12-03 20:16 70.106.219.147 anthropology removed

Anonymous said...

Do you really think that Verizon should censure this user? What for? Annoying wiki users doesn't cut it.

Anonymous said...

sure why not

I dont give a crap. I am stressed out, annoyed and irritated.

I am happy to have a more productive use of my time then empty freefloating anxiety.

My more productive use would be to be as vindictive as possible.

No I don't list ethics as an AOS

just an AOC ;)

Anonymous said...

I agree. I just don't want Verizon to be able to spoil my revenge. I wasn't suggesting that the vandal doesn't deserve to be tortured, just that Verizon shouldn't be be the one to meeter out the punishment. I don't want Verizon to have the authority to punish for these types of insults, but I do think they should be punished. This stuff has to stay personal. Ha!

Anonymous said...

QFT

nothing wrong with eudaimonism especially when my happiness would be greatly improved by tar, feathering, and then reenacting the wonderful opening scene from Discipline and Punish.


oh, is anyone else thinking about law school and wondering how it can be possible to justify that to a spouse? Especially after said spouse suffered through the finishing process, and having promised that spouse "of course I am employable. My department has 00001% placement rate and I will be the one to up that to .00002%"

Anonymous said...

"Do you really think that Verizon should censure this user? What for? Annoying wiki users doesn't cut it."

Yup, I do. I'd be happy to see the person be inconvenienced as much as possible, or at least until he gets his Wii for Christmas.

Anonymous said...

How would you determine the identity of the person without Verizon? Even the FBI and other law enforcement agencies often rely on internet providers to track down people by IP address. Or do you have some special powers? Most IP tracers are accurate only within a few miles. I suppose if I don't get any interviews, I could go door to door. But I don't know if I can justify the airfare.

Anonymous said...

Is their a way to move the wiki or the equivalent to a blog where one would have more control over the vandals?