Welcome to Wikipedia

[Jim]

Meanwhile, at the encyclopedia anyone can edit...

An IPv6 user makes a couple of test edits - inserting LOL into an article - the kind of thing many people might do to see if it works. Sure, not very helpful yet, but an opportunity to "encourage them to become a positive editor", you'd think, when all and sundry are bemoaning the decline in editor numbers, and how welcoming they should all be.

Well, you might think that...

Watch, instead, how the gang of knowledgeable, tech-savvy, welcoming geniuses deal with this:

"Vandal Spam Account" thread at ANI, containing

UserD:6700:25D:8426:ACCE:405B:6A9E looks like nothing but trouble. The name alone implies its a computer generated string and not a legitimate user attempting to join the community. Three edits so far, at best sandbox tests and at worst warming up for vandalism. I would recommend deleting the account if possible. -OberRanks (talk) 15:21, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

and other gems. I'm particularly fond of "warming up for vandalism". That warms the cockles of the old AGF.

and
User talkD:6700:25D:8426:ACCE:405B:6A9E including

This account appears to be a computer generated string and not a legitimate user account. A notice was posted for investigation. -OberRanks (talk) 15:22, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

End result, despite someone actually, finally, placing some kind of "welcome" template, albeit one with an inbuilt bollocking, nobody actually has the balls, sense or humanity to pop round there and say, "shit, mate, sorry about all this crap on your page - someone thought your IP address was an autogenerated botlike user name - we should know better than that, but I guess not everyone recognises IPv6 numbers yet - they are fairly new. Anyway, let me show you a sandbox where you can experiment, and let me know if I can help at all." That would even have been quicker. Sure, the guy might never do anything productive, so it might be a wasted message - but less effort than the time already incompetently wasted in potentially just confusing and pissing people off.

Awesome... And this kind of shit happens all the time.

[EricBarbour]

And this is why IPv6 will probably fail--not because of technical issues, but because of the inherent ignorance of net dweebs.

OberRanks (T-C-L) is a classic Wikiproject Military History member, a manchild with a testosterone imbalance of one kind or another. He loves Star Trek and the Nazis, probably because they have cool uniforms.

[Jim]

Well, we shouldn't worry, Eric, because the mess of templates and erroneous garbage that is now that IPs talk page must, in fact, be the optimal end solution...

for, behold:

RESOLVED
Seems like this is sorted out--S Philbrick(Talk) 22:34, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

[The Joy]

And this is why IPv6 will probably fail--not because of technical issues, but because of the inherent ignorance of net dweebs.

OberRanks (T-C-L) is a classic Wikiproject Military History member, a manchild with a testosterone imbalance of one kind or another. He loves Star Trek and the Nazis, probably because they have cool uniforms.

That's ol' Husnock (T-C-L), FWIW. Fun times.

[MilesMoney]

And this is why IPv6 will probably fail--not because of technical issues, but because of the inherent ignorance of net dweebs.

OberRanks (T-C-L) is a classic Wikiproject Military History member, a manchild with a testosterone imbalance of one kind or another. He loves Star Trek and the Nazis, probably because they have cool uniforms.

And he's aggressively ignorant. Can he run for ArbCom? He'd fit right in.

There are a lot of Nazi and Trekkie types floating around. TParis is another military editor, and he's named after a character from one of the many Star Trek offshoots. Haymaker admitted to collecting Nazi memorabilia (not that he's sympathetic to them or anything).

[TungstenCarbide]

... FWIW. Fun times.

[Jim]

And this is why IPv6 will probably fail--not because of technical issues, but because of the inherent ignorance of net dweebs.

OberRanks (T-C-L) is a classic Wikiproject Military History member, a manchild with a testosterone imbalance of one kind or another. He loves Star Trek and the Nazis, probably because they have cool uniforms.

That's ol' Husnock (T-C-L), FWIW. Fun times.

"Death Threat Accusation" at ANI and Requests for arbitration/Husnock which that led me to are pure
As a bonus includes splendid histrionics from Morwen (T-C-L) too, who I seem to recall from her recent, well, splendid histrionics really, over "Private Chelsea."

I'd never come across this guy OberRanks before - "foot in mouth disease" appears not to be a new thing with him, then. I think Eric had it with "dweeb".

[Lukeno94]

The first time I saw an IPV6 address I was a little confused - I was very familiar with what IPV4s looked like, but it isn't really fair to criticize someone just because they don't immediately recognize an IPV6 address (and this has been an issue several times on Wikipedia). That said, if someone is confused by a "username", they should also take the time to actually look at what it means.

I often send welcome templates to new editors who pop up on my watchlist, and it's good to see some of those editors be a genuinely productive presence. Of course, it also feels like a waste of time when the person you welcomed is almost immediately blocked as a sock, but there we go.

EDIT: Beeblebrox did the decent thing and posted a decent apology notice to the IP.

[Jim]

but it isn't really fair to criticize someone just because they don't immediately recognize an IPV6 address

Perhaps not.
Fairer to do so, do you think, if they then, without understanding, go on to say:

looks like nothing but trouble
...
not a legitimate user attempting to join the community
...
warming up for vandalism
...
recommend deleting the account if possible

based on ignorance and these 3 contributions - twice adding LOL, once self reverting but removing a word? "Nothing but trouble"? - yup-siree, a clear and present imminent danger to the whole wiki exposed right there... Even if it's "sneaky" vandalism it doesn't even reach pathetic.

EDIT: why do I keep thinking "Durova" when I re-read these comments?

I should also note, there is a note on the IP talk page he posted to, in a box at the bottom, reading:
"This is the discussion page for an IP user, identified by the user's numerical IP address. Some IP addresses change periodically, and may be shared by several users."
I can forgive them for not reading that, however, since InfoBox overload at WP leads to people becoming blind to them to the extent the eye skips right over them.

What I have a problem with is the instant assumption of some machiavellian scheme, the rush to post something of so little consequence at ANI, the officious hyperbole in the language used, and the total lack of any sort of human thought. Other than that, it's fine I guess, if you don't care about people wandering around spraying nonsense like this, and you don't think that leads to a poisonous, unwelcoming environment.

You see someone drop 2 sweet wrappers in a nice park, one of which they pick up themselves, while sneakily signing their name on a bench in pencil. You can "tut" at them. You can say "Hey, please don't do that." You can say nothing and pick it up yourself, wiping off the pencil mark. You can ignore it and walk on by. I'd suggest that filing an officious written report at your local Police station asking for the culprit to be prevented from using the park, and suggesting this could be a warm up for greater criminal activities, could be viewed as something of an overreaction at this point. I don't think that's mitigated much, if at all, if the guy happened to be wearing a T-shirt with a logo on it you've never seen before, and don't understand. Perspective.

EDIT: Beeblebrox did the decent thing and posted a decent apology notice to the IP.

... Hi Beebs, well done...

[thekohser]

And this is why IPv6 will probably fail

That's not going to happen, Eric. The globe is literally going to run out of old-school IP numbers, so it's IPv6, or something even more advanced, or Internet oblivion.

[Jim]

And this is why IPv6 will probably fail

That's not going to happen, Eric. The globe is literally going to run out of old-school IP numbers, so it's IPv6, or something even more advanced, or Internet oblivion.

Yeah, that's basically true - although the 2 systems can, and probably will, co-exist for a very long time, because many people won't want to upgrade, and some equipment can't (hardware limitations or expensive firmare upgrades) - so that will carry on in use behind ipv4-ipv6 translating/masquerading mechanisms. That's my, admittedly limited, understanding of it, anyway.

[Hex]

And this is why IPv6 will probably fail

That's not going to happen, Eric. The globe is literally going to run out of old-school IP numbers, so it's IPv6, or something even more advanced, or Internet oblivion.

Seriously. Must... not... mock...

[Jim]

Seriously. Must... not... mock...

Nah - go on...
I'd like to see it explained by someone in layman's terms, and I've seen you do that exceptionally well in the past for other "techie" stuff. Not joking (mocking is only optional, if that helps ).

[thekohser]

And this is why IPv6 will probably fail

That's not going to happen, Eric. The globe is literally going to run out of old-school IP numbers, so it's IPv6, or something even more advanced, or Internet oblivion.

Seriously. Must... not... mock...

Yes, please go on. I'm not sure if you're talking about mocking Eric, or mocking me (and my admittedly joking "oblivion" comment) -- or maybe both of us -- but I would like to be better educated on this subject if I haven't already got the gist.

[Lukeno94]

Jim, the first line of my comment was a reply to Eric rather than you, I probably should've made that clear. I am most definitely not condoning the actions of OberRanks here, as they were well out of line.

[Jim]

Jim, the first line of my comment was a reply to Eric rather than you, I probably should've made that clear. I am most definitely not condoning the actions of OberRanks here, as they were well out of line.

Ok - fair enough - you lost me a bit because Eric didn't seem to criticise OberRanks for lack of IP savvy, just other stuff - maybe it was "net dweebs" in general you were defending for not recognising ipv6, and I misunderstood, thinking you were defending the actions I criticised in the OP - but no matter, I enjoyed writing the park bench analogy anyway, even if I needn't have aimed it at you, for which I apologise, in that case.

[Kelly Martin]

I predicted some years ago that IPv6 would confuse Wikipedians and create all sorts of problems for them. I'm surprised it took this long.

Oh, and Eric, IPv6 is definitely not going to fail. IPv4 is hanging on in the US because the major ISPs have large blocks of sequestered IPv4 blocks that are semi-dark (for example, a lot of the IP space allocated to UUNet/Worldcom is presently dark), which makes the space exhaustion problem look more severe than it is. But in Europe and in Asia, there really is a space exhaustion issue (both RIPE and APNIC are out of allocatable blocks), and those markets (which are expanding much faster than the North American market) IPv6 is How It Is Done. Furthermore, nearly all large organizations either have already or are in the process of transitioning to IPv6 internally as there are several significant benefits for doing so.

There's also the fact that the incumbent ISPs and ICPs have an interest in the resource being scarce because scarcity makes it valuable and thus expensive, and the incumbents (especially those hanging on to dark netblocks) want to exploit this economic rent for as long as possible. Equipment vendors obviously want IPv6 "as soon as possible" so they can sell new equipment. Eventually ARIN is going to be pressured to rescind some of the dark allocations.

I've had a 6-over-4 tunnel (from Hurricane Electric) for about three years now. The percentage of websites that I use that are 6-ready has been steadily increasing.

[Hex]

Yes, please go on. I'm not sure if you're talking about mocking Eric, or mocking me (and my admittedly joking "oblivion" comment) -- or maybe both of us -- but I would like to be better educated on this subject if I haven't already got the gist.

Not you at all. Eric's comment... let's just say that it doesn't reflect an accurate understanding of anything to do with IPv6.

I'm not particularly knowledgeable about networking, but the primary reason is as you put it - IPv4 address exhaustion (T-H-L). The protocol itself has also been designed to offer a number of other improvements - see IPv6#Comparison with IPv4 (T-H-L). Preparing everything for adoption is a massive challenge, but the end result will be an internet truly suitable for the 21st century.

[Jim]

As Kelly points out, and I understand from other reading, some authorities have already "run out" of address space, and are only getting by via "cheating", recycling etc.
IPv6 will happen - it's just the path that is somewhat unclear. As usual, cost will be king.

[Kelly Martin]

One of the interesting tidbits is that the widespread migration to cloud services is actually reducing pressure on IPv4 addresses, because there are now fewer businesses that are demanding a multihomed solution for their own datacenter (which for technical reasons requires a Class C netblock as a minimum, due to a limitation imposed to keep the global routing table at a reasonable size). So an organization that would previously demand an entire Class C netblock for two or three public addresses now only needs two or three public addresses within Amazon's "elastic IP" cloud, effectively releasing almost an entire Class C block (256 addresses) to the pool.

That said, the global routing table continues to grow (it's hanging just under 500,000 entries at the moment, up from 300,000 in 2010 and 100,000 in 2002), but not so fast that improvements in routing technology can keep up (just barely). But this has contributed to the cost of making routers for the core of the Internet, which have to be able to deal with routing millions or even billions of packets per second, with each packet consulted against a routing table with half a million entries. The IPv6 global routing table only has about 16,000 routes.

[enwikibadscience]

Meanwhile, at the encyclopedia anyone can edit...

An IPv6 user makes a couple of test edits - inserting LOL into an article - the kind of thing many people might do to see if it works. Sure, not very helpful yet, but an opportunity to "encourage them to become a positive editor", you'd think, when all and sundry are bemoaning the decline in editor numbers, and how welcoming they should all be.

Well, you might think that...

Watch, instead, how the gang of knowledgeable, tech-savvy, welcoming geniuses deal with this:

"Vandal Spam Account" thread at ANI, containing

UserD:6700:25D:8426:ACCE:405B:6A9E looks like nothing but trouble. The name alone implies its a computer generated string and not a legitimate user attempting to join the community. Three edits so far, at best sandbox tests and at worst warming up for vandalism. I would recommend deleting the account if possible. -OberRanks (talk) 15:21, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

and other gems. I'm particularly fond of "warming up for vandalism". That warms the cockles of the old AGF.

and
User talkD:6700:25D:8426:ACCE:405B:6A9E including

This account appears to be a computer generated string and not a legitimate user account. A notice was posted for investigation. -OberRanks (talk) 15:22, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

End result, despite someone actually, finally, placing some kind of "welcome" template, albeit one with an inbuilt bollocking, nobody actually has the balls, sense or humanity to pop round there and say, "shit, mate, sorry about all this crap on your page - someone thought your IP address was an autogenerated botlike user name - we should know better than that, but I guess not everyone recognises IPv6 numbers yet - they are fairly new. Anyway, let me show you a sandbox where you can experiment, and let me know if I can help at all." That would even have been quicker. Sure, the guy might never do anything productive, so it might be a wasted message - but less effort than the time already incompetently wasted in potentially just confusing and pissing people off.

Awesome... And this kind of shit happens all the time.

Well, he's a Virgo, what did you expect?

[Jim]

Well, he's a Virgo, what did you expect?

I expect nothing from Virgos. Twice as much from Gemini. Cancerians I would prefer to have nothing to do with. I like Sagittarians though, they rock.

What are we talking about, by the way? You lost me, but I might not be paying attention...

[Notvelty]

Well, he's a Virgo, what did you expect?

I expect nothing from Virgos. Twice as much from Gemini. Cancerians I would prefer to have nothing to do with. I like Sagittarians though, they rock.

What are we talking about, by the way? You lost me, but I might not be paying attention...

Misogynist.

[Jim]

Misogynist.

[EricBarbour]

Oh, and Eric, IPv6 is definitely not going to fail. IPv4 is hanging on in the US because the major ISPs have large blocks of sequestered IPv4 blocks that are semi-dark (for example, a lot of the IP space allocated to UUNet/Worldcom is presently dark), which makes the space exhaustion problem look more severe than it is. But in Europe and in Asia, there really is a space exhaustion issue (both RIPE and APNIC are out of allocatable blocks), and those markets (which are expanding much faster than the North American market) IPv6 is How It Is Done. Furthermore, nearly all large organizations either have already or are in the process of transitioning to IPv6 internally as there are several significant benefits for doing so.

You're not telling me anything I didn't know already. The point I was trying to make was: the Internet has millions of users who are not ready for it. Most of them won't ever have to deal with IP addresses directly, some of them (like Wikipedia gamesters) will. And that will be a failure -- a human one, not a technical one.

Go and ask some random Wikipedia administrators what IPv6 is, and what the addresses look like. I bet a number of them won't know.

"Death Threat Accusation" at ANI and Requests for arbitration/Husnock which that led me to are pure

Ah, yes, I had forgotten about that incident. Morwen (T-C-L) wrote the original AGF policy page, was notorious for fighting with people on IRC, and has made similar "death threat" accusations against other editors. TG, as I seem to recall. Last year, she got into the Manning naming battle, helped David Gerard with moving the article to "Chelsea Manning" (she was described as an "inactive admin"), and since November has basically given up on Wikipedia. (Don't bother looking at her contributions, large chunks are missing.) She created thousands of articles (mostly still stubs) about UK political and geographical divisions, so they "love" her. And disregard her battles over Star Trek and Doctor Who content.

[Notvelty]

Misogynist.

Well, that settles it, then. Out of principle, I shall steadfastly refuse to go to the polling booth and graffiti the ballot paper. That'll show'em.

But seriously, why not just give all the votes to the furries? One man, one vole.

[Jim]

EDIT: Beeblebrox did the decent thing and posted a decent apology notice to the IP.

Beeblebrox (hi Beebs... ) also posted to OberRanks talk page, I notice, with one of those "ever so cute" trout things:

{{trout}}
For your labeling an IP address that had made three edits a "vandal spam account." No spam, no account, probably just a user seeing if they could really edit WP, certainly not anything that needed a thread at ANI. Please be more careful in the future. Thanks. Beeblebrox (talk) 04:31, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Appalled at the realisation that he had made such a visible error, and eager to put things right quickly, OberRanks springs into action to rectify the situation: abracadabra - fixed...
"Dead issue" -

[Zoloft]

The fish, as they say, rots from the head down.