User:Ottawahitech/idle talk

Today I was surprised to see black as the top-viewed article on WQ in 2020. The link leads one to the colour black, hardly a topic that would suggest such a large readership. Further investigation led me to Black (disambiguation) which at the bottom has a link to Black people. It was no surprise to see that the wikiquoter who contributed all of the material to Black (disambiguation) was, a user who stopped contributing at WQ on Ottawahitech (talk) 14:25, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

Simple musings 2021-11-09
earlier today I was looking for some covid-info on simple-wiki, a wmf-wiki that was my home for a while after I was unexpectedly blocked/banned form en-wiki in 2017 (I think?). Anyway, as is usually the case for me when I go searching for a partcular pieceof info, I somehow get distracted into something totally different.

Well, today was not different. I found something that at that moment was more fascinating than the covid-stuff I was looking for. I am not even sure how I got there, I think I was looking at some simple-wiki help stuff, thinking that it looks much better than it did when I was there, and checking contribution histories etc led me to the topic of today. I checked simple's water cooler/village pump, which of course is named something different at simple, and bingo right at the top i saw it:

A discussion about a blocked/banned simple-editor who was blocked from editing simple ten years ago, who is apparently asking to be unblocked/unbanned. As is common n wiki-land, the banned-user themselves (he/she) did not post to this discussion at the VP, but instead has been brought to the attention of the community by a third-party. At this point I did not yet read the circumstances that led to the blocking/banning. But this is the first discussion I have ever seen in wikiland asking to have a ten-year old block/ban lifted. I did recognize the b-user's id though, from my old days at en-wiki. And I aLso recognized many of the participants, although one who opposed lifting the ban whom I did not recognize, I later discovered had edited another small-wiki with the b-user.

Anyway it was interesting to see who voted for and against and especially their rational. Now I have to go back and check things like who started this simple VP-discussion (and why), is the discussion closed yet, etc. Ottawahitech (talk)
 * Same thing happened today: I went into simple once more to try and refresh my memory about this discussion on Simple-talk (yes that is Simple's village pump), and, lo and behold, after some trouble navigating the site which looks totally different than the way I remembered it, and not being able to Switch to old look (not wanting to change my skin ,which I believe I have already explained somewhere or another), I finally located the drinking pump. Anyway to make a long story short, I never got past the most recent postings, but on the plus-side, I think I have found a great new stats resource for WQ with the help of one of our very own dual-admins. Ottawahitech (talk) 21:43, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

login and then another ..and another
The system I use for editing wmf-sites gets hung up several times each day when I use it. When I log back in, I have to log-in separately to each wmf-site I edit. This is a royal pita and a royal time waster. ARRRGGGGHHHH


 * I came here today to post about this very topic, and found out how useful it is to keep this kind of a page in my user space. I cannot believe I have been experiencing this major annoyance when contributing to wmf-sites since November of last year! and while I am on the topic of ARRRGGGGHHHH-topics I just want to remind myself that I posted recently to the WQ-VP about another major-annoyance and was really pleased to see that:
 * I received a reply from a WQ-admin
 * The problem [which I explained] to the best of my ability was FIXED
 * not only that, but the underlying problem that caused it (filter I think?) went away, at least for me, not clear if for other WQ-users as well. Ottawahitech (talk) 15:41, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

OH yes on another topic:

WQ is great - no one polices what you write in your user space
This is very beneficial for me, since I got into trouble at Meta because of text I tried to maintain in my user space. Ottawahitech (talk) 15:41, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Not so great this morning! I came here all fired up with a great story in my head about my own Wiki-travels in my enwp-afterlife, but it looks like it is not going to happen because someone had removed my ability to use the Reply-to/Add topic from this page, sigh...


 * One thing the software-designers/programmers/developers/coders of this wmf-behemoth have not figured out yet is that you cannot play alpha games on a working project. O well, kids will be kids and I will never be able to tell my story (to myself :) [note to self - unsigned]
 * The Add topic is still missing (I don't have the time to add a new section on Kunkel v. Continental Casualty Co., sigh... Ottawahitech (talk) 17:52, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Women
I think I see a trend where many (most) pages about women are created by IPs