This is a thread for people who will not be or have not been on the site for a while, whether due to real life or to resist an internet addiction, the latter of which is encouraged within reason. Also, talk about the benefits/whatever of taking a day or a weekend off, or things to do when not online. TV Tropes ruining your life is nothing to be proud of.
Generally, expect the following from this thread:
- People announcing their departure or return.
- Moderators announcing a significant forum ban — not trolls or vandals, but someone people will notice and miss.
- Inquiries about an absent troper.
- Responses to inquiries about an absent troper.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Feb 10th 2023 at 3:48:36 AM
Ahr river
That really sucks. I mean, I get them being saddened by content cutting. I don't like it either. But there is no reason to do that. It just means you can't help the process anymore...
edited 13th Jun '12 12:12:37 PM by MrAHR
Read my stories!
Odd, I'm getting nothing on Morganite's edit history
. Maybe banned users' history now gets wiped?
Ninja'd by two posts.
Spider copying? What's that?
edited 13th Jun '12 12:12:25 PM by FinalStarman
I'm not crazy, I just don't give a darn!
Ravenous Sophovore
Using a bot to copy the wiki. This disrupts our service and uses up bandwidth (which we pay for), making it a bannable offense.
Waiting on a TRS slot? Finishing off one of these cleaning efforts will usually open one up.
Huh. I did see that Brent Laabs' thread got locked… (It was a redundant thread, after all.)
I'm not crazy, I just don't give a darn!
TV Tropes' Sonic Wiki Curator
Hmm. So, hypothetically speaking, if I just archived a few tropes pages by manually copying and pasting source text, I'd be alright?
I don't mean bad stuff either. Just like if I don't have internet and want to read something to pass the time.
edited 13th Jun '12 12:16:03 PM by DarkConfidant
Ravenous Sophovore
Yes. A bot can access far, far more pages per minute than a mere human.
Copying the wiki isn't a problem - it's under the Creative Commons license, after all.
Waiting on a TRS slot? Finishing off one of these cleaning efforts will usually open one up.
I'm an Irene!
I liked the first two in general. Somewhat good to work with.
But yeah, just... what the hell..
Quest 64 thread
Space Wizard
Okay, I don't want to stir up something here, but how was that spider a problem bandwidth-wise compared to a normal user?
Programming and surgery have a lot of things in common: Don't start removing colons until you know what you're doing.
Well, in either case, it's nice to have official statements as to why these people were banned.
Lost in Space
The wiki has finite resources in terms of bandwidth and processing. We'd rather those be used by people to read and edit our articles, not batch copy them offsite. It does have a noticeable effect on site performance, especially when it's done without any kind of throttling — it could even be considered a denial of service.
Eddie can and has made available canned backups of the site for people to use, when requested properly. The requests we're talking about here are not being made in good faith; they arise from a disagreement over our content policy. We are not interested in supporting such requests and will not tolerate the use of wiki resources for them.
Edit: One other thing. These users had made requests for backups which were denied on the above basis. They then resorted to batch copying the wiki, and we have evidence of this and of their identities. That is why we banned them.
edited 13th Jun '12 12:25:56 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Ahr river
Ah, that clears up that. I was actually wondering about that whole "back up" thing. Thanks, Fighteer 
edited 13th Jun '12 12:21:48 PM by MrAHR
Read my stories!
@Fighteer: Eeeeeeeh, not sure if releasing that info was smart, honestly.
"I don't know how I do it. I'm like the Mr. Bean of sex." -Drunkscriblerian
Lost in Space
There was no way to keep it from getting out. Cat, bag, etc. I figured I'd release the official version.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
I'm an Irene!
Agreeing with Fighteer here.
It's better to just say it than to have tons of wondering and theories, especially when they go out of hand and cause drama.
Quest 64 thread
@Fighteer: I was talking about the "openly admitting our site is vulnerable to DoS attacks" bit, not the "This is why they got banned" bit.
edited 13th Jun '12 12:38:34 PM by DrunkGirlfriend
"I don't know how I do it. I'm like the Mr. Bean of sex." -Drunkscriblerian
I for one would like to see these official statements about bans to become the norm, not the exception.
I think that the contrary position leads to a lot of baseless speculation, worry, and paranoia. From the other side of the mod screen, I think it's much better for the community if official information about bannings would be released sooner rather than later when dealing with noteworthy individuals on the site.
Princess Ymir's knightess
Ewww, hentai. The bans are well-deserved. 
What site isn't vulnerable?
Fresh-eyed movie blog
Just awesome like that
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Well, more like publically stating an easily exploitable method to do so.
Lost in Space
It's hardly secret knowledge. Anyone seriously interested in DDOS'ing us can figure out how to do it without our help. However, we do have defenses against it if needed, just as any other site would. It doesn't need to be discussed here.
edited 13th Jun '12 1:10:40 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Fair enough.
"I don't know how I do it. I'm like the Mr. Bean of sex." -Drunkscriblerian
Lost in Space
Oh, and we are still working on that ban announcements thread idea, just FYI.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
In the interim, would it be too much trouble to post official statements about recent bans here?
JHM is correct. Apparently in protest against our content cutting policy, they decided to spider copy the wiki.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"