Unblock request (User:Spinosaurus)

Tiermann wrote:

The comment by George above makes me wonder if we should in fact change the name of the taxonomy section. Instead of By Taxonomy maybe it should be By Animal as the broadest generic name for the area. It might help avoid people getting the idea that the classification scheme must fit a particular profile, when in fact it is of our own devising.

I agree with George, we could use "by species" instead of "by Taxonomy".

Even "By Species" may not be accurate. Many figures only have a genus, such as many Mesozoic dinosaurs and lovebirds. And until Kikimalou and I put the unidentified coelacanths in West Indian Ocean coelacanth, they were just on the coelacanth page, which contradicted itself about which clade it was - Order Coelacanthiformes/Actinistia or Genus Latimeria. I guess it was both. And it still is. Please correct it.

I suggest "By Classification". Classification of organisms isn't necessarily phylogenetic/taxonomic, I remember learning that animals could be classified into vertebrates (monophyletic) and invertebrates (paraphyletic). I also learned that animals could be classified into warm-blooded (polyphyletic) and cold-blooded (polyphyletic because of the cold-blooded mammal, the naked mole rat). There are also mesotherms and heterotherms, but I only learned about those much later.

Tiermann wrote:

There is no such thing as grandfathering in something when a new rule comes out.

Yes there is. Grandfathering exists for a reason. Most countries' laws state that you cannot be charged with a crime if it wasn't a crime at the time. I know that wiki rules aren't laws, but you can't block someone who didn't break any rules. Unless they're a vandal, since there is an implicit rule against vandalism on all wikis. There is a very good reason why the new rules about who is allowed to start editing the wiki shouldn't apply to me. Because you created my account before you made those rules. I know that you don't really trust me, but I have already promised not to make the same kinds of edits that were criticised/reverted without approval from other people. And when you create rules, I promise to follow them. Are you worried that I will break the rules? Well, if I do, you can block me. I would consider that to be a legitimate reason for blocking, breaking rules that actually exist. It is not OK to block me for breaking non-existent rules or for not meeting the new criteria for new editors, which didn't exist when you created my account.

I think that synapsids, reptiles and amphibians probably should be included on the Sarcopterygii page. But also on the top-level page (which I think should be called "Life" rather than its current 51-character title which I couldn't be bothered to type here). Including it on the latter doesn't mean it can't also be included on the former. Birds are included on both the reptile and theropod pages.

Including tetrapods on the Sarcopterygii page would increase the number of groups from 7 to 10, but that's fine. I'm sure that there are lots of groups with more than 10 subgroups. And Fish could be moved to Vertebrate. Everyone knows what vertebrates are, so that should be fine.

I have changed my mind about having tetrapods on the top-level page. I now think that it is a way to increase accesibility/convenience without compromising taxonomic accuracy. Even though a strict taxonomic scheme wouldn't include a group in two places unless it was a hybrid, it's not technically innaccurate. Synapsids/reptiles/amphibians are life, and they are also lobe-finned vertebrates.

I still don't agree with Ediacaran Biota, though. Its sole advantage is that it saves space on the top-level page. Instead of polyphyletic non-taxon Ediacaran Biota, please use clade Spiralia. You know how 5 phyla used to be in a group called Other Phyla, but I put them on the Animal page? Well, it turns out that all of them, except for penis worms, belong to the clade Spiralia, like molluscs. It would actually save more space. If I had realised that before, maybe we wouldn't have had the argument about Ediacaran Biota, since you would have agreed with me that it shouldn't be used.

You can revert my edit to Other Phyla, replace penis worms with molluscs, change the description/classification to make it Spiralia and move it to Spiralia.

Bonjour,

Cet échange est très intéressant. De mon point de vue, Spinosaure, vous êtes quelqu'un de très pointilleux et pétri de bonnes intentions. Vous semblez avoir de réelles compétences en matière de zoologie mais vous avez manqué d'un peu de patience.

En effet, vous vous êtes autorisé des changements à priori de grande ampleur concernant une organisation pensée par un groupe de personnes, sans demander l'aval de ces dernières.
C'est un manque de respect car vous vous êtes approprié le travail et les compétences d'un groupe social à leur insu. Vous méritez logiquement la peine qu'on vous a infligé, c'est à dire l'interdiction d'exercer.

C'est dommage, car si vous aviez proposé ces changements à la communauté avant de les réaliser vous-même, vous auriez probablement pu, avec de la patience, obtenir leur approbation. Vous avez oublié de passer par une étape de relation de confiance, et ça va être difficile de revenir en arrière maintenant.

Vous devez peut-être vous remettre en question sur les raisons sociales qui vous ont valu votre exclusion si vous voulez espérer être débloqué un jour. Vous faites peut-être partie de ces gens qui ont du mal avec les relations humaines, ces relations qui semblent parfois manquer de logique en apparence. Mais toute action est fondée sur une logique propre. A vous de la comprendre. Elle n'est peut-être pas scientifique, mais plutôt communautaire.

Bien à vous.

Aurélien G

Why is everyone ignoring my promises? I am sorry that I made major changes without asking anyone about it. I promise to do my best to avoid doing that kind of thing in the future. Please move on and unblock me. All of my edits were in good faith. You keep saying that I caused damage, disruption, confusion. But I did not mean to! Why do you say I have good intentions when you treat me like a vandal? Make up your mind. I'm starting to think that maybe you do consider me to be a vandal. But you are just saying that you don't to be polite. Because if you really thought I was a good-faith editor, you would unblock me if you could and say I should be unblocked if you couldn't.

George wrote:

you state it shouldn't be biased to toys collectors are interested in, when that's it's entire reason to exist - is starting to look like some sort of takeover bid or coup

But TAW tries to be as comprehensive as possible. Not letting people edit just because they aren't collectors seems like it would hinder comprehensivity. Non-collectors tend to have fewer figures to add than collectors, but they often still have some. Why not let them add those figures? Why must TAW be hostile to non-collectors? And why do there have to be such stringent requirements for joining the wiki, like being on the forum for several months? This wiki is the opposite of the English Wikipedia because:
* It tries to be comprehensive. Wikipedia is not. It has notability criteria. If something isn't well known enough, it isn't allowed on Wikipedia. But TAW accepts all toy animals.
* It has very few editors, and they mostly know each other really well. The English Wikipedia is the wiki with the most editors. Most are complete strangers to one another. In fact, most edits are made without logging in, which TAW doesn't allow.
* It has stringent conditions for new editors trying to join the wiki. You must have an account, in fact you cannot create one yourself, you need an admin to create an acccount for you. And now you need to be active on the forum for several months. Wikipedia lets you edit without logging and lets you create an account unless you are using an open proxy/Tor/blocked IP address.

This seems pretty ironic. If a wiki is trying to be comprehensive and doesn't have many editors, shouldn't it try to recruit more, not use extreme gatekeeping? I have never seen a wiki that gatekeeped as much as TAW. The runner-up is Scratch Wiki, which requires your Scratch account to be at least two months old. It also has other criteria, but I won't go into them here. I don't know how long you require new users to be active on the forums for, but since Tim said that he wouldn't consider unblocking me until 1st March 2023, if he's going to treat new users like that too, it seems that he expects activity for around 4 and a half months.

No need to be so strict with the gatekeeping. The vast majority of wikis don't gatekeep nearly as much, and it works. With such extreme gatekeeping, I think that a lot of users will just get bored and give up. I'm not sure why Scratch Wiki uses extreme gatekeeping either. I reckon it's something to do with being directed at children.

Once again, you miss the entire point.

How can we trust affirmations of a person who unwittingly damaged and created years of work?

TAW is not necessarily for anyone anywhere, it has been a pet project of collectors for collector use. That being said, it is accessible to anyone and I suspect it helps people in lots of ways, such as ebay sellers ID their products. But again, by taking a non-collector/non-accessibility approach as you continue to insist on, actually harms the utility of it for the wikis consistent users COLLECTORS as well as its casual users, the non-collectors. The wiki is not hostile to non-collectors, the issue here was your approach to come in and muddle everything on the wiki from its core organization which then creates a cascade of fallout containment problems for us "amateurs" as you put it. Again, your continued behavior and the spirit of your messages continues to convince me, someone who has no power over your editing ban btw, that you continue to refuse to collaborate with us and prefer to tell us what to do and make demands. Tim literally just explained that he does NOT require forum membership to be an editor for several reasons, but YOUR ACTIONS AND BEHAVIOR have netted yourself a consequent action to mitigate what you have done (this is a situational probation given recent events, there's been no precedent for it until now. Also, predictability implies that your current forum behavior wouldn't change your editing behavior). Our few editors is because A) not all collectors have such high computer literacy or comfort, B) because we are all real people who have busy lives with family or work and not much time to devote to such a monumental task, and C) its voluntary. We aren't recruiting people. It's volunteer work. From my view the wiki is not comprehensive, nor is it trying to be. Do you see cartoon-esque collectible series like Puppy In My Pocket there? Do you see any figures from Little People? Do you see Hood Hounds? What about higher end replicas like Necca? Nintendo? No. The project is simply trying to create a usable resource for members and laypeople worldwide. NOT a catalogue of every species on earth (regardless of it has been made into toy form or not. We can leave that task of speciation to Wikipedia). Once again, you continue to behave harshly and critically towards us when you have disregarded the effect of your own actions and continue to spam this topic. Tim has made his decision as the leader of the project, the moderators here have attempted to moderate the situation, and you still sit there unflinching. You are a non-collector whom has no interest in the wiki for the purpose it was created to fill and you deliberately cracked the foundation of it with disregard to its implications and creators. Then you went on to argue about it here in a public setting. From where I sit, what you did was essentially vandalism.

P.S. You should give politeness a try sometime. Perhaps it would have gotten you further in this discussion.

Saarlooswolfhound wrote:

From where I sit, what you did was essentially vandalism.

I am not trying to make the wiki less accessible. Unlike everyone else, I think that accessibility is compatible with taxonomic accuracy. Because I believe in people. I really think that most English speakers can navigate an accurate taxonomic scheme when given adequate English descriptions of all clades. One who couldn't probably wouldn't be able to easily navigate a classification scheme designed for convenience rather than accuracy either. I don't believe in dumbing things down. Scratch Jr is a really dumbed-down programming tool. Dumbing it down is supposed to make it easier for kids to use, but it actually does the exact opposite.

Many people seem to think that TAW needs to have a fish group to be accessible. I respectfully disagree. Since a fish is any vertebrate that isn't a tetrapod, one can easily use a vertebrate group instead of fish. The only differences between a fish group and a vertebrate group is labelling and the inclusion of tetrapods in the latter. And as I said, I think that synapsids, reptiles and amphibians should also be listed under life.

You may disagree, but it doesn't mean that you should call me a vandal. Please be more polite than that. This is genuinely how I think. I am telling the truth. I really think that people are not so dumb as to require a non-cladistic classification system. Even children.

Saarlooswolfhound wrote:

But again, by taking a non-collector/non-accessibility approach as you continue to insist on, actually harms the utility of it for the wikis consistent users COLLECTORS as well as its casual users, the non-collectors.

While I personally feel that taxonomic accuracy is compatible with accessibility, it seems to be the consensus that it is not. So I will accept that.

Kikimalou wrote:

If you ever want to be able to edit on TAW, you'll have to show us what collector you are. One of the rules you just unwittingly imposed on us is that we need to know who the people who want to edit TAW are and also that this work is only allowed to collectors.

Sarlooswolfhound wrote:

The wiki is not hostile to non-collectors

@Saarlooswolfhound, please pay more attention.

Tiermann wrote:

In the past I have been reluctant to make membership in STS forum a requirement since not everyone enjoys forum interaction and I didn't want to exclude anyone who is involved in other venues. This experience however has made it clear to me we need to be more diligent about requests to be editors so we have a better idea who people are and what interests they have before allowing access. All of this discussion could have happened prior to any changes having been made. Spinosaurus' unhappiness about the ban could also have been avoided had I been more diligent. We should seriously consider adding criteria and timeframe to editor requirements and making that explicit on the wiki.

Saarlooswolfhound wrote:

Tim literally just explained that he does NOT require forum membership to be an editor for several reasons, but YOUR ACTIONS AND BEHAVIOR have netted yourself a consequent action to mitigate what you have done (this is a situational probation given recent events, there's been no precedent for it until now.

It kind of seems like Tim is considering changing the criteria for joining TAW. Possibly including forum membership, and not just for me.

Spinosaurus wrote:

You keep saying that I caused damage, disruption, confusion. But I did not mean to! Why do you say I have good intentions when you treat me like a vandal? Make up your mind. I'm starting to think that maybe you do consider me to be a vandal. But you are just saying that you don't to be polite. Because if you really thought I was a good-faith editor, you would unblock me if you could and say I should be unblocked if you couldn't.

I won't respond anymore because this topic isn't going anywhere but cycling over. Once again, the forum and wiki are places for collector's interests, not strictly collectors alone. Again you refrain from attempting to understand or accomodate for language barriers and context. If Tim changes criteria it would be because of THIS precendent. My question for you (rhetorical) is if you aren't a collector and have no interest in animal models... why are you meddling in websites that have no common interest for you? Seems to me your skill level and general disdainful attitude would be more appropriately used elsewhere.

Saarlooswolfhound wrote:

Also, predictability implies that your current forum behavior wouldn't change your editing behavior

No. I promise to change. I will make an effort to collaborate more. You need to understand that I didn't know what was acceptable back then. There were literally no rules. Like I said, it never occurred to me that anyone would complain about the page moves. I was just following a guideline created by @Roger. When @Tiermann emailed me saying that people were complaining about my taxonomic changes, I was so confused. He didn't say which changes. He didn't say which people. He was asking me to join an unfamiliar website. Wouldn't that make you nervous? To be told that unspecified people were complaining about your unspecified good-faith edits and asked to join an unfamiliar website.

And I don't understand the need for Wikipedia descriptions to be simplified. What's wrong with red links, references and italic genera/species? I tried to make references work. But I couldn't. But I think I would be able to do it if you update TAW to the latest version of MediaWiki. I have noticed that it seems to be a very old MediaWiki. Which makes sense, because TAW is very old and you don't know very much about how wikis work. So I'm guessing you never updated it.

Note that even though I don't see a problem with red links, other people do, so I'll avoid adding them unless I am immediately going to create that page.

Saarlooswolfhound wrote:

Spinosaurus wrote:

You keep saying that I caused damage, disruption, confusion. But I did not mean to! Why do you say I have good intentions when you treat me like a vandal? Make up your mind. I'm starting to think that maybe you do consider me to be a vandal. But you are just saying that you don't to be polite. Because if you really thought I was a good-faith editor, you would unblock me if you could and say I should be unblocked if you couldn't.

I won't respond anymore because this topic isn't going anywhere but cycling over. Once again, the forum and wiki are places for collector's interests, not strictly collectors alone. Again you refrain from attempting to understand or accommodate for language barriers and context. If Tim changes criteria it would be because of THIS precendent. My question for you (rhetorical) is if you aren't a collector and have no interest in animal models... why are you meddling in websites that have no common interest for you? Seems to me your skill level and general disdainful attitude would be more appropriately used elsewhere.

I can understand if you thought I was being rude. I was nervous about that comment. I was wondering if it may be considered to be rude. In retrospect, maybe I shouldn't have accused people of lying that they thought I was a good-faith editor. But I was pretty angry about being blocked. None of the other things I was saying were convincing anyone that I shouldn't be blocked. And blocking me was way ruder. It makes me feel like no one believes me about my edits being in good faith. The fact that I am still blocked really makes me feel like the community thinks that I am a vandal. If people really think that I am a good-faith editor, I don't understand why they think that I would still make the same kinds of supposedly disruptive edits if unblocked, when I have repeatedly promised not too.

I don't think I can stress this enough, I will not reinstate my reverted taxonomic changes without the approval of other people! Why does everyone seem to think I will? You need to understand that unblocking me will not result in Ediacaran Biota or fish being removed again. Unless that is what other people want.

Could someone please make a list of principles I broke? I will not break them again if I know which principles I broke. And I really need you to add rules to TAW. Otherwise, how can I know what is acceptable? Like I said, without rules, the admins have no right to block any good faith editor. Why do I have to keep on repeating myself?

@Tiermann You cannot wait until March 1 to consider unblocking me. You need to unblock me now, for three reasons:

* I am a good-faith editor
* I never broke any rules. While people may have disagreed with some of my edits, without rules, those disagreements were just disagreements. You cannot block people over disagreements that do not break any rules. Without rules, you can't even judge who's in the wrong, or even if anyone is in the wrong at all. Why did you judge me to be the one in the wrong? Was it because I disagreed with you, an admin? Since when is merely disagreeing with an admin a blockable offense?
* I already have a TAW account. This making people wait for months business can only legitimately apply to people who don't have a TAW account but want one. Existing users, like me, cannot be blocked and similarly made to wait. They must be grandfathered in. It's only fair. And only 4 users have ever been blocked on TAW. The other 3 were all blocked in 2012. That implies that you are grandfathering in other users, but not me. Which doesn't seem like the most reasonable thing in the world, to say the least.

What you should have done is created rules, brought them to my attention and asked me to follow them. I would have happily complied, even if it meant that TAW wouldn't have accurate taxonomy.

Saarlooswolfhound wrote:

...My question for you (rhetorical) is if you aren't a collector and have no interest in animal models... why are you meddling in websites that have no common interest for you? Seems to me your skill level and general disdainful attitude would be more appropriately used elsewhere.

Paige used probably too diplomatic language but her question is the key question from the beginning. I admire your patience. As more as I read this thread I believe it is the right time to lock this one...

I don't understand why people assume that being a non-collector means that I can't possibly have any interest whatsoever in toy animals. It's not black and white. "Collector" and "completely uninterested in toy animals" are two extremes. Most people are somewhere in between. Most people who buy toy animals are not collectors. While I don't have a hobby in collecting toy animals, I do have a hobby in learning about animals, which makes me somewhat interested in toy animals. Why would I join this wiki if I had zero interests in toy animals? And I have some toy animals. I joined the wiki to add them, not to fix the taxonomy.

jarda wrote:

Saarlooswolfhound wrote:

...My question for you (rhetorical) is if you aren't a collector and have no interest in animal models... why are you meddling in websites that have no common interest for you? Seems to me your skill level and general disdainful attitude would be more appropriately used elsewhere.

Paige used probably too diplomatic language but her question is the key question from the beginning. I admire your patience. As more as I read this thread I believe it is the right time to lock this one...

Jaromir, I don't lock this topic for now because I don't want that Spinosaurus pollute other topics like he began to do on Correction for TAW topic.

As fortunately I don't allow myself to fire an intruder on my own, I'm waiting for another admin's response to decide on the future of Spinosaurus on STS.

jarda wrote:

As more as I read this thread I believe it is the right time to lock this one... Palmface

Please don't lock the thread yet, I still have so many questions. Why must I wait until 1 March to be unblocked, when there is no grounds for blocking me since there were no rules when I made my edits? And I have shown a desire to change my behaviour, so why haven't I been unblocked already? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to disrupt the wiki. I meant well.

Kikimalou wrote:

jarda wrote:

Saarlooswolfhound wrote:

...My question for you (rhetorical) is if you aren't a collector and have no interest in animal models... why are you meddling in websites that have no common interest for you? Seems to me your skill level and general disdainful attitude would be more appropriately used elsewhere.

Paige used probably too diplomatic language but her question is the key question from the beginning. I admire your patience. As more as I read this thread I believe it is the right time to lock this one...

Jaromir, I don't lock this topic for now because I don't want that Spinosaurus pollute other topics like he began to do on Correction for TAW topic.

As fortunately I don't allow myself to fire an intruder on my own, I'm waiting for another admin's response to decide on the future of Spinosaurus on STS.

I am not an intruder. I did not pollute that topic. I mean well. I am a good-faith editor. I didn't mean to do any harm. I'm sorry for making changes without consensus and for wasting your time. I don't expect to be forgiven, and I don't expected to be trusted yet, either. But I do expect to be unblocked ASAP. And I do expect to be treated with kindness. And I do expect people to assume good faith. I do expect to be regarded as a good-faith editor.

I also understand that I have responsiblities too. I will try to avoid making disruptive changes. I will collaborate with other editors. And I will make sure to follow the rules.

I expect to only be blocked again if I actually break rules or vandalise the wiki.

This is a forum for people who have the hobby of collecting animal figures.

TAI allows us to have great information on animals, brands, materials, years of manufacture, series, etc.

The work has been enormous and all ideas have always been treated with respect.

We have more than 52,000 topics without problems and only now we see some

inadequate reviews.

let's continue in harmony .