Questionable Shark Works

If you spot problematic or curious alterations done by SharkBot, please point them out here for peer review.

Before: OOP let's you create any relational language you like, and use it natively in your language; it can be translated to Sql under the hood and on the fly. Why wait for something better when you can have it now?

After: OOP lets you create any relational language you like, and use it natively in your language, it can be translated to Sql under the hood and on the fly. Why wait for something better when you can have it now?

Before: Doesn't look more tedious to me; looks quite simple, and far safer than appending strings since an OOP version would likely build a syntax tree from it that can be cleanly turned into paramaterized sql automatically.

After: Doesn't look more tedious to me, looks quite simple, and far safer than appending strings since an OOP version would likely build a syntax tree from it than can be cleanly turned into paramaterized sql automatically.

Comment: They seems better with the semi-colon in my opinion. Agreed. Also, if anything needed correction, it should have been "lets" not "let's".

This page was originally headed 'If you spot problematic or curious alterations done by "grammar shark", please point them out here for peer review.' It's not clear whether that was intended to refer to GrammarVandal or SharkBot.

If it's the former, there's no point in addressing any edit hints to GrammarVandal. SharkBot will delete his edits.
If it's the latter, there's no point in addressing any edit hints to SharkBot. It is unable to distinguish whether a semi-colon is more or less appropriate than a comma. SharkBot merely identifies GrammarVandal edits and reverts them, regardless of content.

Reporting false positives is encouraged, but for obvious reasons please email these to me, DaveVoorhis, along with the IP address(es) you've used to edit, via the email address on my HomePage. -- DaveVoorhis

I am soooo confused....

Er... About what? -- DV

I have a feeling that SharkBot may incite people to start rewriting bits of pages when it reverts their minor edits. It's a bit of human nature I've seen before: when a piece of forum software rejected posts that had a high mispelling-to-overall-length ratio, people started padding forum posts with unneeded sentences "to get around the spellchecker". Also, it discourages dyslexics from contributing (since needed corrections are opposed).

While that's possible, I would hope folks would not pad their edits in an attempt to circumvent the SharkBot.

First, it won't work.
Second, SharkBot maintains a whitelist of IP addresses associated with legitimate edits. I've already been adding IP addresses to it as folks contribute content or do obviously non-GrammarVandal gnoming. You can email me (see above) to have your IP address(es) manually added.
Third, SharkBot is intended to enforce a HardBan, not prevent legitimate gnoming, including spelling corrections. Corrections of dyslexic spelling are less likely to trigger the SharkBot than GrammarVandal's specific modus operandi, anyway. If done from a whitelisted IP, automated reversions will not occur - as long as the editor does not have his or her UserName spoofed by GrammarVandal. As noted on the SharkBot page, UserName cookies are prone to spoofing by GrammarVandal. GrammarVandal uses UserName spoofing to combine his edit with a legitimate edit. Thus far, I have found no reliable deterministic way to distinguish this from an edit that is wholly GrammarVandal's, so SharkBot responds in a predictable manner.
Fourth, I closely monitor my pet shark for misbehaviour. Corrections to SharkBot will be made as expeditiously as possible.
Fifth, over time SharkBot's ability to discriminate GrammarVandal from legitimate edits will improve. While I obviously can't guarantee 100% reliability, the number of false positives should decline. Indeed, the most recent example involving IanOsgood was my mistake, not SharkBot's. SharkBot flagged his edits as suspicious, but not to be automatically reverted. I was overzealous and approved the reversion.
Sixth, unless GrammarVandal is pathologically masochistic, he should soon realise editing here is futile and move to where he will be appreciated. (I recommend WikiPedia.) When that happens, Shark will be manually shut down, not to be re-started until humans have verified that GrammarVandal (or some equivalent) has returned.

-- DaveVoorhis

No, what's going to happen is that eventually the shark or something like it will piss off someone who is a) pathological and b) competent and they will write a distributed attack upon the wiki which will destroy it. Avoiding this kind of robotic escalation was the main point behind SoftSecurity. The shark bites off this leg of WikiNature. That the shark has the unintended effect of automatically maintaining spelling and grammar errors is an additional sad irony. -- AndyPierce

ImminentDeathOfWikiPredicted!

That Shark maintains spelling errors is unfortunate, but arguably preferrable to issuing HardBans that have no teeth, and tacitly approving the participation of the GrammarVandal who refuses to cooperate, employs UnethicalEditing including spoofing UserNames, rudely badgered an individual until he left and then obstructed his attempts to withdraw gracefully. That is when a leg of WikiNature was bitten off, and clearly the individual in question must be barred or it will probably happen again.

The spelling mistakes will eventually be fixed by me or someone else.

As for the the risk of distributed attack, I doubt SharkBot makes it any worse. A pathological individual could as easily get pissed off by anything - an edit he or she doesn't like, the choice of font, phases of the moon, etc. From a technical point of view, such an attack is so trivial (simply scan http://c2.com/wiki/history to obtain all the page names, then issue deletes from a large set of open Web proxies) that I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet. I assume Ward maintains backups. Of course, it would be equally easy to restore Wiki using exactly the same method.

Now then... The following came from one of GrammarVandal's favourite open proxy IP addies:

The people who get motivated to do what you said
- 1) do not need to be more pathological than the people who support SharkBot, the ZeroTolerance gang. SharkBot is reversing edits in lots of pages that has not have activities for many weeks, and not even authored by few people that they have put on HardBan.
- 2) do not need to be competent either as it is very cheap to finance such an attack, enough to drive away long term contributors like TomStambaugh.

Re: (1) -- Except in the case of IanOsgood and one or two others (I've forgotten who) that have been corrected and/or unblocked, SharkBot has only reverted:

(a) Edits from GrammarVandal, or someone whose behaviour is so much like his as to be indistinguishable from him;
(b) Additions by the banned DavidLiu, or someone whose writing and subject matter is so much like his as to be indistinguishable from him;
(c) One edit from the banned RichardKulisz.

In all cases, if there's a legitimate false positive, the individuals in question can email me and I will whitelist their IP addresses.

Re: (2) -- That doesn't make sense.

-- DaveVoorhis

I discovered that the following was chopped out of VisualBasicForApplications for some reason:

"Writing is on the Wall in regards to the future of VBA. In August this year, Microsoft announced they would be dropping VBA in the next version of MicrosoftOffice for the Mac. Lots of protests then but things quieted down, probably accepting the futility of it all."

SharkBot indicates a high probability that it was written by DavidLiu, who is HardBanned. -- DaveVoorhis

What about a suggestion that such be quarantined or marked rather than outright deleted. If questionable authors stick to the topic and are reasonable, then maybe it can be reviewed and kept.

It would be a strange interpretation of "HardBan" that permits continued participation, even if quarantined or marked. -- DaveVoorhis

Indeed the point of a HardBan is to ostracize specific authors due to past disruptive behavior. To achieve this end, the community policy is one of ZeroTolerance: reject all attempts by the banned authors to contribute, regardless of the value (or lack thereof) of the contribution.

The reverted contributions appear to even be deleted from the page's history directory, as I discovered while looking for a copy of my shark-bitten contributions after Anon impersonated my UserName; to me this seems to go beyond ZeroTolerance and smacks of NineteenEightyFour. For that matter, I'm not sure what the policy is if a non-HardBanned author decides to integrate such rejected material unattributed in a later edit though - does it invite further vigorous application of the BanHammer?? -- JeffreyHantin

Deletion of entries from the page history directory appears to be a function of WardsWiki. SharkBot uses the same mechanisms available to a human editor, and has no special access to the page history or anything else. As for a non-HardBanned author integrating rejected material, that's fine, as long as it isn't identical to the original, i.e., merely a page restoration or copy-'n'-paste. That would obviously trigger the SharkBot. -- DaveVoorhis

The Bot repeatedly deletes a valid contribution by ScottNeumann from IllusionOfIndividuality.

Are you sure? It appears ScottNeumann's contribution is retained but contains interjections by another author. -- DaveVoorhis

Quite sure. Your reference is to a different contribution.

Problem: page A is merged into page B, A is deleted, then Sharkbot reverts B. Result: contents of A is lost. This happened recently to SaraLee's page.

shark.armchair.? is sharkbot, right? I count 30 deletes of the same page this morning, no trace in QuickChanges or RecentChanges now. (I presume it won an edit war by deleting before 10-hour timeout). People have been complaining about it. It is simply not fair for SharkBot to delete criticisms of itself. Please stop it from doing so so there can be meaningful dialog about it.

The 30 deletes of "people" who have been complaining about it are actually a single individual, the infamous Robert Abitbol who is subject to a HardBan. Google for "Robert Abitbol" to see the history on this. His contributions will continue to be deleted. -- DaveVoorhis

[Abitbol text removed -- EarleMartin]

[(db) Another questionable Shark work right above. I cut the whole edit into SharkBot and it apparently came back on this page after a Bot restoration. The Bot apparently restored the version before last instead of the last. This might be a recurrent problem that should be fixed]

Why is sharkbot deleting the images I added to ShrdluProgram?

Fixed. -- DaveVoorhis

Thanks!

Please restore my changes to OneLaptopPerChild - the link to OlpcWiki and the update on the OLPC's price.

Done. -- DaveVoorhis

Thanks, but the link to OlpcWiki is still missing.

Done. -- DV

The Shark has now removed my mention of TheLittleSchemer from ThereMustBeWhatKindOfFood.

Feel free to put it back. The C2 page history for that page has been purged, so I don't have a record of where your entry was located. -- DV

Something has happened to ConceptsOutOfContext. I have been fixing backlinks to change FallaciousArguments to FallaciousArgument and I had done that one before today's index run and now it has reverted. -- JohnFletcher

Fixed. -- DV

Could you ask the shark to stop reverting me, please? Thanks. -- EarleMartin

Fixed. -- DV

So much for the accuracy of the bot! If Dave waits to be asked, he's clearly not monitoring what it does.

Sigh... this is clearly the case, so it causes lots of the current problems with certain pages... If, he would simply correct those pages, most of the activity on those pages would stop. Guess he likes it this way...

Actually, I check almost every edit, so I have no idea what you're referring to. If there's a problem, a clear description of it would be far more helpful than childish whinging like "guess he likes it this way..." Now, really... Do you genuinely believe that? As for the activity on "those" pages, it will cease the moment GrammarVandal goes away. -- DaveVoorhis

OK, then use the following versions of these pages, and a lot of the crap will stop on at least these:

 http://c2.com/wiki/history/WikiCase/342
 http://c2.com/wiki/history/RitalinDrug/133

I have revised these. -- DV

 Keep the current version of AdderallDrug as follows:
 ...Snip...

There's no point in doing so. I told the SharkBot to leave the page alone some weeks ago, shortly after I noticed a WikiGnome replaced the page with ProductBeginningWithAy?. AdderallDrug (and PositiveProofJesusDidNotExist? on TheAdjunct) are being hit by the spammers' new favourite trick: WikiSpamBots designed to keep one Wiki page visible on RecentChanges and filled with spam at all times. -- DV

Thanks, and thanks for the info, now we will see if it helps a little.

SharkBot is still reverting me. I refer you to HasSudokantBeenWithdrawn.

SharkBot has just reverted the year end modification to RecentVisitors!! Problem now resolved, though it did revert it twice.

CategoryWiki