Template talk:Test4-n

message: ===Automatic page===
One of the problems with Level-4 warnings, is that if not acted on when the vandal continues, the threat in it loses all credibility. If a warning states that the next time you vandalize, you will be blocked — well, the next time you vandalize, you should be blocked.
Now the actual blocking can only be done by an admin. So when I find one of these, all I can do is manually call whatever offender I bump into, to the attention of someone, usually the person who put the warning up, hoping someone will do what I cannot.
A far better system would be automatically to cause the Test4-n template to insert Level‑4 people or articles (the editors would be better, but the articles would work as well) in a Category that could then be swept by whoever is inclined to do so, just like the Stub template, etc.
I don't understand how the Stub template mechanism works, so am experimenting by porting the syntax from the Stub template, then attaching Test4-n to some tiny and presumably unfrequented articles and seeing what happens, etc. I'll revert these tests on the article pages, of course. Please bear with me for an hour or two; afterwards, no problem reverting unsuccessful attempts of mine; if successful, though, I'll probably stick up for them, and I hope others will, too. Bill 23:17, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That isn't necessary. If a user continues to vandalise after being warned a few times, you can report him for admin intervention at Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism or on the IRC Freenode channel #wikipedia-en-vandalism. // Pathoschild 23:21, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've reverted your additions; the problem with your idea is that level 4 vandalism warnings are substed on a talk page and remain there for several months before being removed. Warnings are not removed after admin intervention. Placing it even for a single hour would add dozens of user pages to the category, which would have to be manually edited to remove the by-then-redlinked tag. // Pathoschild 23:30, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Hey, gimme a chance guys, can't even get this up for the number of edit conflicts! Not strictly necessary, no; but then neither is Wikipedia itself. It's darn convenient, though. I did figure it out, and since it seems to be working, I won't be the one reverting it. What I've just done is made it completely automatic, and thus free of personal bias: every person with a Level-4 warning is automatically put into the Category, and — as soon as we create the Category page — it will be available for checking by whoever is inclined. I suspect there are hundreds, probably thousands, of people who are being overlooked and who are currently thumbing their noses at the system. For each case to have to be individually reported is a huge waste of time and energy, and leads to uneven results. Bill 23:31, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

text: There is less time and energy involved in the current system. A user posts on the admin intervention page, an admin tabs the vandal's contributions and talk page, and applies a block. Under a category system, there would be no way for an admin to watchlist for new vandals, and it would become necessary to manually edit every instance of test-4 to remove the category tag when done. If you look into the history of the admin intervention page, you'll see that vandals are dealt with almost immediately. // Pathoschild 23:45, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Vandals are not in fact dealt with almost instantaneously. I find many, many pages where someone bleats that "(text of Test4)" and there's been quite a bit of vandalism since, and nothing done. Worse, the next editor of the User Talk page finds nothing better to do than put a Test‑n and start over again! Bill 23:57, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Admin intervention almost instantaneously follows the report, not final warnings like test4. Although I commend you for trying to find a more efficient system, this template is very heavily used and substed; even in the small period of time before I reverted, your version found its way to several talk pages. I would suggest that you experiment with a sandbox or lesser-used template, or discuss at the village pump. // Pathoschild 00:04, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: In the pages I track (I admittedly tend to steer clear of "big" articles like Jesus in favor of small articles like Cannaiola), I see far more un-followed-up Level‑4's than otherwise. I'm dropping the idea. Too much energy spent on it as is. At some point someone will find a system to take care of the vandalism problem; the simplest is to require traceable registration for editing. Bill 01:08, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Discussion

message: One of the problems with Level-4 warnings, is that if not acted on when the vandal continues, the threat in it loses all credibility. If a warning states that the next time you vandalize, you will be blocked — well, the next time you vandalize, you should be blocked.
Now the actual blocking can only be done by an admin. So when I find one of these, all I can do is manually call whatever offender I bump into, to the attention of someone, usually the person who put the warning up, hoping someone will do what I cannot.
A far better system would be automatically to cause the Test4-n template to insert Level‑4 people or articles (the editors would be better, but the articles would work as well) in a Category that could then be swept by whoever is inclined to do so, just like the Stub template, etc.
I don't understand how the Stub template mechanism works, so am experimenting by porting the syntax from the Stub template, then attaching Test4-n to some tiny and presumably unfrequented articles and seeing what happens, etc. I'll revert these tests on the article pages, of course. Please bear with me for an hour or two; afterwards, no problem reverting unsuccessful attempts of mine; if successful, though, I'll probably stick up for them, and I hope others will, too. Bill 23:17, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That isn't necessary. If a user continues to vandalise after being warned a few times, you can report him for admin intervention at Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism or on the IRC Freenode channel #wikipedia-en-vandalism. // Pathoschild 23:21, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've reverted your additions; the problem with your idea is that level 4 vandalism warnings are substed on a talk page and remain there for several months before being removed. Warnings are not removed after admin intervention. Placing it even for a single hour would add dozens of user pages to the category, which would have to be manually edited to remove the by-then-redlinked tag. // Pathoschild 23:30, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Hey, gimme a chance guys, can't even get this up for the number of edit conflicts! Not strictly necessary, no; but then neither is Wikipedia itself. It's darn convenient, though. I did figure it out, and since it seems to be working, I won't be the one reverting it. What I've just done is made it completely automatic, and thus free of personal bias: every person with a Level-4 warning is automatically put into the Category, and — as soon as we create the Category page — it will be available for checking by whoever is inclined. I suspect there are hundreds, probably thousands, of people who are being overlooked and who are currently thumbing their noses at the system. For each case to have to be individually reported is a huge waste of time and energy, and leads to uneven results. Bill 23:31, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

text: There is less time and energy involved in the current system. A user posts on the admin intervention page, an admin tabs the vandal's contributions and talk page, and applies a block. Under a category system, there would be no way for an admin to watchlist for new vandals, and it would become necessary to manually edit every instance of test-4 to remove the category tag when done. If you look into the history of the admin intervention page, you'll see that vandals are dealt with almost immediately. // Pathoschild 23:45, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Vandals are not in fact dealt with almost instantaneously. I find many, many pages where someone bleats that "(text of Test4)" and there's been quite a bit of vandalism since, and nothing done. Worse, the next editor of the User Talk page finds nothing better to do than put a Test‑n and start over again! Bill 23:57, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Admin intervention almost instantaneously follows the report, not final warnings like test4. Although I commend you for trying to find a more efficient system, this template is very heavily used and substed; even in the small period of time before I reverted, your version found its way to several talk pages. I would suggest that you experiment with a sandbox or lesser-used template, or discuss at the village pump. // Pathoschild 00:04, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: In the pages I track (I admittedly tend to steer clear of "big" articles like Jesus in favor of small articles like Cannaiola), I see far more un-followed-up Level‑4's than otherwise. I'm dropping the idea. Too much energy spent on it as is. At some point someone will find a system to take care of the vandalism problem; the simplest is to require traceable registration for editing. Bill 01:08, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Automatic page

message: To speed the blocks on these people, how about adding these links for admins to work off of? They would have to go at the bottom of the template. xaosflux Talk/CVU
Admin: block | [ unblock] / Info: contribs | ki&machread=0 kate's tool | [ page moves] | [ block log] | [ block list]
:Personally I oppose that; Having the single  (from which this list is taken) with those links is less of a strain on the servers, is standardised in appearance and location, and is placed on first warning instead of last. See 204.113.91.19's talk page for an example of its use. On IRC you cite the potential confusion on the part of user's on whose page this would be placed. I think its position before the dated headers helps allay any such problems, although it could be reduced in size to lower visual impact. Feel free to make any suggestions about the template at the WikiProject on User Warnings' talk page. // Pathoschild 08:25, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: As i was only suggesting adding this to test4-n, which should always being being subst'd anyway, how would this signifigantly affect server performance? xaosflux Talk/CVU 08:46, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The links work by parsing the  variable seven times, once for every link. This is true even if the template is subst'd, unless you subst each occurance of that variable afterwards. With a single standardised template, there are seven per page and this has very little effect on server performance. However, if these links are repeated several times throughout the text, the amount of server resources needed to parse the page scales accordingly. // Pathoschild 09:07, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Don't we have the same problem of multiple parsings if the s/wnote template is used currently?  As for repeating several times throughout the text, do you mean if they have multiple level 4 test warnings, because except for a few isp proxy addresses (a few aol) this would have to be a pretty rare occurance. xaosflux Talk/CVU 17:19, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Alternatley would jsut the Admin:block link be helpful, as often after placing a test4 on a persistant vandal I'm usually off to AIV with them anyway. xaosflux Talk/CVU 17:23, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  New Text 

message: I added this template (although I forgot to subst it) to a user's talk page and the text that came up was that the user had been blocked for 24 hours. The article in question was not refered to in the text either, which is why I had used the -n version. --Mal 19:29, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Has this been changed? 

message: I've been changing inclusions of Stop hand.png to point to Stop hand.svg but couldn't do that here because the template is protected. – ∅ (∅), 17:53, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: svg

message: The line break change introduced on September 8, 2006 by Rossami is causing a problem with formatting of consecutive substituted test4-n templates.  See for example, User talk:213.232.79.149.  "This is your last warning" is appearing attached to the signature of the previous template instead of on its own line for some reason.  Also, I find the line break to be somewhat extraneous as it leaves the first sentence dangling in mid-air and the following line (including most signatures) is long enough for most browser windows as to require wrapping only a few characters, breaking the signature poorly.  I understand from the edit summary that it was added for some sort of icon wrapping, but there must be a better way.  A suggestion might be to box test4/test4-n since it gives it a greater finality and helps prevent some of these formatting issues.  ju66l3r 14:48, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Line Break Change