User:Buster7/BLOCKED 2024

August 2024

Your account has been blocked indefinitely because it is suspected that it has been compromised. If your account is globally locked, contact cawikimedia.org for assistance. Otherwise, if you are able to confirm that you are the user who created this account, please read the guide to appealing blocks (specifically this section), then add this below the block notice on your talk page: {{unblock|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}}. Just Step Sideways ^{from this world ..... today} 22:18, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

Buster7/BLOCKED 2024

Hello, Buster7, what is going on with these User pages like User:Buster7\sandbox/Kamala? You've been here a long, long time, you know better than to write pointed, political rants on this platform. This is suprising and the conclusion folks have come to is that your account is compromised. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 04:57, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

Liz OMG! OMG! These are not My rants. As the link reflects, They are from an attack article I came across (surprisingly written by a woman). I'm saving them and future stuff for a possible article on the level of vitriol toward Kamala because she dares to upset the OLD White Man apple cart. My viewpoint is the exact opposite. I welcome the dawning of a New Age in Political Leadership. I donate to her. I will work for her. She will save America. In fifteen years I have never been blocked. My history as an editor should (and as a person should) speak volumes and be clear signs that I could NEVER hold these sordid views about anyone, let alone the Next President of the United States. I suppose this means I will not be able to Award this weeks Editor of the Week as I have done for over 550 weeks. I have a squeaky clean record. I deserve better treatment. Buster Seven Talk (UTC) 12:07, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

Fix ping to Liz SerialNumber54129 12:38, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

• Just to put the speculation to bed, CU data shows no indication that this account is compromised. The explanation above is understandable. But I'm a bit concerned that the unblock request doesn't seem to acknowledge that posting blatant BLP violations (and copyright violations) in userspace was a poor idea. Spicy (talk) 13:21, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

  I agree that he could have clarified that point a bit. I have to assume that he was just shocked that he got indeffed for being compromised when he wasn't. He made a mistake, as we all do, and clearly he doesn't go around posting BLP violations. Quite the contrary, he is a calm and reasonable editor. Sad to see his fine record sullied, but that's how it goes sometimes. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 15:40, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

• Why don't you keep that material off wiki, Buster? Bishonen | tålk 14:46, 10 August 2024 (UTC).
• Buster is a longstanding good-faith editor. Someone should have talked to him before assuming he was compromised. I agree that he exercised poor judgment, however. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 15:30, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

• Oh, thank goodness. Buster7, you seem to have been off-line when this was all happening, and of course most of us couldn't see the stuff because it had been deleted. Gave me quite a turn to think your account might have been compromised. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:36, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

• Glad to see this thing worked itself out. When I saw this last night, I was like WTF!?! I can only imagine what a shock it was to you, Buster. I'm just glad to see you're back. If it helps, no one that knows you would ever dream that you'd create an attack page. Not even those who simply crossed your path for a moment could even entertain such a thought. You're one of the nicest, most conscientious people I've ever met, so my first thought was also, "No. It's not him. Some vandal must've have cracked his password or something." Of course, by then the page had been deleted, so I have no idea what it said, but I hope there's some comfort in knowing that no one, not even the blocking admin, believed that you would create an attack page. We all know far better than that. I'm just glad to see you back, and hope you'll be around for many more years to come. Zaereth (talk) 04:56, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

• Dropping in to say I'm also glad this was resolved! I was worried when I saw the whole ordeal, it's good to see it was just a simple misunderstanding and hopefully something everyone can laugh about in the future. In the meantime, I brought cookies! Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:51, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

About clearing sandboxes

I'm thinking of just clearing out all the drawers and throwing away ALL my notes that are buried in the sandboxes.

Yeah I think that might be good. If your notes are on any sandbox, they still risk running counter to WP:Copyright or a bunch of related policies that still affect Userspace. You don't need Word to keep them, even Notepad will do, it's usually much lesser frills. Or saving a bunch of links on the sandboxes (links should usually not cause those problems, my own sandbox is filled with them). But both will generally be simpler than risk content being as is in userspace.

Let me know if you need help finding all the subpages that might need clearing out this way. Soni (talk) 04:13, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the offer Soni. I will probably take you up on it sometime next week unless some body finds some TopSecretDocument and I get blocked again. Maybe Monday. I have so many sandboxes that I forget where stuff is. One is called Gleanings that I love. Im sure there are some other "safe" ones that have value. Most can hit the dumpster. It might take a while to sift thru the Chaff. Buster Seven Talk (UTC) 06:41, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

There's a way to find all subpages of any given page. I never remember the special page myself though, so usually just find it via "My Contributions" - "Subpages" (in one of the navigation boxes).

So we can use Special:PrefixIndex/User:Buster7 as a quick-list of anything in your userspace, and clean up from there. Soni (talk) 07:21, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

That's a helpful link. Buster has a lot of content in his sandbox but there's nothing wrong with that. If anyone has a problem with any particular sandbox item perhaps they can post it here? Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 13:59, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

I think it would be kinder to let Buster go through his planned cleanup first. isaacl (talk) 14:19, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Sure, he can thin it out and then, if anyone objects to any content, they can post here. I've looked through a few of them and they seem totally innocuous. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 14:29, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks guys. Your suggestions and support bring a smile. I'm slowly wending my way through the past. Lots of Geological Gems...mine and many other friends along the way. Like I said, to me the sandboxes were just "drawers" to park stuff into. The last drawer I made the other day, the one that got me blocked, was just a "save" of a terribly obnoxious hatefilled attack article against Kamala. I started to make a paper list of the words used to attack but the list was literally too long. So...what to do?...What I have done for many years...put it into a sandbox. Who knew there was a sheriff in the vicinity? Just kidding (kind of). I have contacted the administrator and made Peace. As any good sheriff he was just doing his job. Busy! Busy! TA! Buster Seven Talk (UTC) 16:08, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Cleanup doesn't mean moving copyright violations from one title to another

• Advice from FRAM:

Please, when you go through your sandboxes, first check for copyright violations and BLP violations, before bothering with other things. I noticed this change, and one preliminary note is that all your sandboxes should be at User:Buster7, not at user:Buster or any other username. This sandbox specifically is partially an unattributed copy of Wikipedia articles, and partly a pure copyright violation from [1], the source you acknowledge at the top. Copying chunks of text from copyrighted sources is not allowed anywhere in Wikipedia, there is no exception for sandboxes, and adding the source doesn't make it acceptable. Even removing the problematic text now isn't enough, all old revisions then need to be revision-deleted anyway. The easiest solution is to copy whatever you need offline, tag the pages with {{Db-g7}}, and if necessary recreate the page without any text taken from other articles or sites and without possible BLP violations (I don't think there were any in this specific page, just a general note). Fram (talk) 08:25, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

UGH!! I'm too old to worry about this shit and any article that I once planned to create. I'll just get rid of most of them and start over. As they say , "The best laid plans of mice and men". Buster Seven Talk (UTC) 08:49, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

@Fram: Is this right??? [2] Buster Seven Talk (UTC) 09:00, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

After you changed the B to a b it was indeed right. Thank you! Fram (talk) 09:10, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

But please don't use it for articles where others have edited as well[3]. Perhaps you followed a redirect from your userspace and didn't notice this? Fram (talk) 09:13, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

So' While i a doing this I need to "view History" each time? I'M 78. theres alot I dont notice!Buster Seven Talk (UTC) 09:19, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

No, just check that you are still in your user space and not in the main space. You tried to delete an actual article, not a sandbox! Fram (talk) 09:43, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

You presumably wanted to open this and ended up at the article without noticing this. Fram (talk) 09:44, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

@Buster7 If you'd like, I can go through all the pages in your sandbox and make a table out of them. Might help you clearly tell what is what, and tag multiple of them at once Soni (talk) 22:23, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

If you think that will help, OK. Based on the above , I am checking the history of each sandbox for the presence of any possible other editor. Earlier today I had one where {{Ping|SusunW]] added one item. I let her know I was deleting the potential article. Buster Seven Talk (UTC) 23:42, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Now I remember. I stopped awarding Eddys aka Editor of the Week awards for 10 weeks in the summer of 2019 in support of you in some kind of kerfuffle you were having with administrators. How did that turn out for you. Were you blocked? Buster Seven Talk (UTC) 11:52, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, I didn't remember! The issue I had was with the WMF, the end result was that their ban was lifted as unwarranted, but I was no longer an admin. Fram (talk) 13:42, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Copy and pasted here from my 15 year WikiFriend @Zaereth:'s talk page

As I see it, you were blocked only because people care about you, not because of anything you did wrong. When an account gets hacked it can be impossible to get it back in your control. Hackers will change your password and then start doing all kinds of nasty things with your account, and you'd have a hell of a time trying to prove you are the rightful "owner" of that account. When I first saw it was a block for a compromised account, I was truly fearful that's exactly what would happen to you, and you'd end up having to start all over as a new account. But I truly believe the block itself was meant to protect you, not to harm. So yes, in that sense, badge of honor. People care about you. As someone on your talk page suggested, Microsoft Notepad is an easy way to keep this stuff without putting it online, that is, if you have a computer using Windows. Look in the menu under "Windows accessories" and you'll find it. Then you can simply copy/paste anything from your sandboxes and save it on your own computer. I'm no computer genius myself (don't even own a smartphone), but I had to learn some things for my job, and that one is pretty simple to use and comes free with Windows. Just in case you don't want to completely get rid of all those gems you may find. Zaereth (talk) 22:12, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Morning renumerations--8/14/2024

As I am going through this processing of ridding my watchlist and sandboxes of stuff that may, in the future, put me on the hot seat again, I am realizing that I have been 'mining for ideas and plans and projects' for 15 years. I actually found hundreds of past issues of the Signpost...like magazines that arrive every month and then go in a pile with all the other unread magazines. A lot of great stuff but what can I do with it all. I could spend quality time sifting through it all, looking for gold, but most of it is just glitter. It looked savable at the time but that time has passed. I need to invest what ever is left in stuff that matters...my family, my art, my friends and Wikipedia. We have started to have grandkids come for dinner...I have 14. Two or three at a time. A good mix is attempted...that is cousins rather than siblings. We tell each other the stories of our lives. They get a deeper idea of who we are, and we see into their lives a little deeper. They had no idea of my 15 year commitment to WikiPedia. I have to bite my tongue when they sometimes scorn WP as error filled and unreliable. I try to point out what a volatile thing any article is. Any one can come along and harm it...but there are legions of editors ready willing and able to step in and protect our precious product...factual information. If someone reads the article in that few minutes window between attack and protection...well, then they will be critical of WP. Anyway, I drift into thinking about the wonder that they ALL are. 10 College grads, the rest still in pursuit or in high school. So..I will get back to searching thru the drawers of my WikiLife but I'm sure I am throwing away good stuff. O well! I'll just have to start a new collection" TA! Buster Seven Talk (UTC) 12:20, 14 August 2024 (UTC)