User talk:BadCatMan

03:50: Tue 20 Dec 2011 17:52: Thu 22 Dec 2011

Unblocking
Hiya :) Sorry that you got caught by our abuse filters. Looks like you triggered two of them simultaneously, and they behaved properly. Since you've not edited with us much -- and since it's been a really long time since your last visit -- lemme try to explain what happened.

We prevent non-admin from using zebra-index, period. We had some problems with people doing nasty things to other people's user pages by zebra-indexing away certain things and creating bizarre messes that most users couldn't understand. As I recall -- though it's been a long time -- we also had a case of someone editing someone else's personal CSS file with heavy zebra-indexing, and thus creating a crazy mess that only the victim could see. So we put an end to zebra-indexing. Since the monobook.css you were attempting to create contained zebra-index statements, and you were trying to put them in the user namespace, it was disallowed. More than that, it's viewed as an active attempt to vandalise: the abuse filter blocked you.

Simultaneously, your CSS contained a number of all-caps statements, mostly in the remarks. This appears to be my code so, in a way, I guess I'm responsible for you getting stuck by a second Abuse Filter. We had a number of users who were going around to user's pages -- not just user talk pages, but user pages as well -- and creating a lot of angry statements in all caps. So we instituted a zero tolerance policy towards "shouting". And the general civility of our conversations rose.

So your solution here is just to scrub this CSS snippet for those two problems and you should be good to go. It's been a long time since I've looked at this old version of the Monobook.css code, so I'm not sure what the effect would be of removing the zebra-index statements. It's probably not going to be a heck of a lot, because I'm not sure I really understood zebra-indexing way back then. My guess would be that a lot of the zebra-index statements are unnecessary or ineffectual. Still, if you find a few that you can't live without, lemme know and I'll add the code for you. 03:21: Tue 01 Nov 2016

New unblocking
The way you chose to respond -- by editing the section called "Unblocking" on this page -- meant that you tripped the Abuse Filter again. See, when you edit that way, you're submitting the whole section again, and that section contains the word "zebra-index". So the Abuse Filter got you again. And it will probably get you yet again if you try to respond to this message, on this page, by simply adding more to this section.

In any case, this wiki recommends that you try to respond on the talk page of the person to whom you're trying to speak. We voted down the Message Wall system and prefer the original MediaWiki method of communicating with others. By putting messages on other people's user talk pages, you guarantee that they will be alerted to your incoming messages. A message here on your talk page will not alert your correspondent to a new message.

This account has been again unblocked.

I'm able to see the text of what you tried to communicate back on the 31st October, and while I appreciate that the things we block for are probably unique, they're not terribly onerous. The thing you mainly keep getting blocked for has barely been a problem for our users. It's been triggered only 7 times by people other than you since it was established in 2013.

Also, I suppose I should have clarified before that the anti-shouting filter doesn't block you. It just warns you not to do that. So we don't feel it's especially problematic to warn people not to type in all caps. (And, to answer another of your concerns, it's not gonna trip you up on common DW-related acronyms. Clearly, it won't ding you for TARDIS, so it couldn't hurt to type SIDRAT or UNIT, either. Where you ran into it was with remarks in CSS -- something the Abuse Filter simply couldn't be programmed to contemplate.)

Overall, it's fair to say that you're having one particular problem that our users simply never have. I and the rest of the admin staff want to help you. We think you'll find that it's relatively easy to avoid getting auto-blocked by the Abuse Filter if you simply stop publishing the word "zebra-index". 19:26: Mon 07 Nov 2016


 * Gotchu this time. Really, don't post "zebra-index" or reply to this section. 12:44, November 8, 2016 (UTC)