Talk:Roger Needham

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RMN did a lot more than is recorded here so far... come on, Computer Lab people, please fill this in.

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[edit] Vandalism

User:67.159.26.65 is in danger of violating 3R rule with the following edits: [1] [2]

Please do not continue to vandalize this entry, as you run the risk of having your IP blocked for edits, and your Usage History indicates that perhaps you are not the only Wikipedia user that has this IP. --Rosicrucian 03:57, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, that's three reverts... --Rosicrucian 04:53, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] semiprotection?

If the anon who keeps vandalizing this article is hopping IPs now, perhaps the best thing to do is to semiprotect the article. If any of the regular editors of this page would like me to do that, just drop me a note on my talk page. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 20:23, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm not a regular editor on this page (largely because other than vandalism it stays pretty stable) but I'd agree with what you've proposed.--Rosicrucian 23:49, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
I agree, it should be protected, for at least a few months. Markus Kuhn 17:05, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
A few months sounds too long, but a few weeks at least. — TheKMantalk 17:30, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Right, that's enough of a consensus for me. The page is semiprotected; assuming that this defeats the vandal, someone can drop me a line in a few weeks to remind me to remove it, 'cause I'll probably forget. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 17:48, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Two days. That's all it took after it getting unprotected before he vandalized it again in the exact same manner. Guy's persistent, I'll give him that.--Rosicrucian 22:53, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Considering the now quite long history of vandalism by a single id-hopping individual, I propose that it this article should remain semiprotected until at least the end of 2006. Consensus? Markus Kuhn 17:24, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

I would say give it at least a month of semiprotection, then perhaps a week of close watching to see if this guy returns. The original semiprotect was only for around ten days, which is perhaps why it was so ineffective.--Rosicrucian 17:27, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
And if we could get the semiprotection back up as soon as possible? We got his vandalism account banned, but he's just back to using anonymous IPS.--Rosicrucian 14:02, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Persistent vandalism

OK. Dear IP-hopping vandalizer, it seems, sadly, that keeping semi-protection in place for only a few weeks did not discourage you from coming back quickly to add your incivility to the article. I would welcome if, instead, you elaborated here on the talk page in more detail (and perhaps even with a more civilized use of words) on the reasons for your anger about this article or person, rather than wasting our time with adding rather inappropriate remarks again and again, only to have us remove it soon afterwards. Having known Prof. Needham personally since 1996, I find the words you used so far most inaccurate, and would be curious to hear what drives you to add them. Markus Kuhn 12:29, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

It appears now he's created a user account expressly for the purpose of vandalizing this article. He just did it under User:TsingTao, though I've already reverted it.--Rosicrucian 13:56, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 3RR

I've reported our vandal for his four reverts made in the past 24 hours. Hopefully the admins will consider his history of vandalism of this article and respond appropriately.--Rosicrucian 15:03, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

User:TsingTao permabanned as a vandal-only account, now he's using User:Chinese Tea. Seeing if I can just report the new one without having to wait for 3RR.--Rosicrucian 20:33, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
I think that under the circumstances we can permaban User:Chinese Tea as a sockpuppet of the already-banned vandal. At least, I've done so — if anyone disagrees, contact me and we'll talk.
However, it seems that this vandal is exceptionally persistent. I'm open to suggestions about what we should do: we could fully protect the article (which isn't edited very actively other than reverting this vandal's work), but that's an extreme measure and if we can find any other solution it would be better. Furthermore, I have another concern about fully protecting the page which I won't mention for fear of spilling the WP:BEANS. Any other ideas? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 06:41, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't think we gave Semiprotection much of a chance last time. As I commented above, we only did it for about ten days, and haven't yet tried it for a full month. So that's my view.--Rosicrucian 00:25, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
I've semiprotected the article again, and notified Voice of All (who removed the semiprotection before). —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 06:03, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
...and he seems to have ignored our request to leave it semiprotected for a month. Is this user a bot? I see him unprotecting a lot of pages, and he doesn't seem to respond to input regarding it.--Rosicrucian 16:00, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, the vandal returned (unsurprisingly). I've reinstalled the semiprotection, and left another note on Voice of All's talk page. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 23:46, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
No, I'm not a bot :). Though this is , which reverted[3] the last two vandalisms. I usually unprotect 20-40+ pages at a time because admins tend to forget protection, so its hard to always know the recurrance factor without a protection summary that says "don't unprotect for a while" (the summaries are auto-listed by VoABot to WP:PP, which is where I unprotect from). I'll try to remember this one, like other pages that have recurring vandals, but its not always easy without a suggestive WP:PP comment when there are so many pages to deal with.Voice-of-All 23:54, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for replying, VoA. I've put "leave protected for at least a month" in the summary at WP:PP this time, for belt-and-braces protection. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 23:58, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. Those work quite well. Since VoABot lists pages right from the log, in the future, just use that as a protection summary, and you won't have to manually add it to WP:PP.Voice-of-All 00:01, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
Ah. Will do. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 00:03, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
Ah good. Figured there was some sort of automation involved, and this is good to know. Thanks for clearing that up!--Rosicrucian 03:12, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sockpuppet list

For convenience, I figured we might as well keep this updated here as a means of documenting it. Add to this as needed--Rosicrucian 14:37, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

He sure is perisistent. D'you suppose he'll stop when every item on the Chinese restaurant's menu has a blocked account? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 19:32, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
I added the template to the latest sock. I'm surprised he's keeping it up this much. His vandal pattern has gotten so recognizable that we barely need to actively patrol this article, as he's reverted by bots.--Rosicrucian 23:55, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
Updated TsingTao with the puppeteer template, and put sock templates on all the known socks. All known socks are now part of Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of TsingTao.--Rosicrucian 00:12, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Full protection?

Since I last reinstated the semiprotection on July 23, our friend has vandalized the article 14 times, using 6 sockpuppet accounts. Is it OK to keep going with the regular reversions, or should we consider full protection? It's not as if the article is being actively edited otherwise... —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 16:03, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I really don't know what would be involved with seeking full protection. Is there anything special we'd have to do to make a case for that?--Rosicrucian 04:15, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
Not really — as an admin, I can do it based on my own judgment, but it is considered an extreme measure and I've never done it before. (Most vandals are deterred by semiprotection, unlike our friend with the Chinese menu fixation.) The details are at Wikipedia:Protection policy if you want to see for yourself. I think we can justify a protection of at least a few months, based on the vandal's persistence and the temporary protection criterion "Protecting a page or image that has been a recent target of persistent vandalism or persistent edits by a banned user." I just didn't want to jump into full protection without some discussion. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 05:53, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
Considering he's going through the effort to come up with a new sock almost every day, it could be merited.--Rosicrucian 15:03, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

The page is now fully protected. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 17:41, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Has there been any request for checkuser? Phr (talk) 04:26, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

I didn't think of that, because it's so obviously the same individual. I suppose it might be helpful to find the IP he's creating the socks from and block that (with the "prevent new accounts" option) — but the vandal is so determined, I suspect blocking that IP wouldn't stop him completely. (Before he started creating accounts, he hopped between several IPs, all of which are now blocked.) I'm not sure whether finding the IP for these socks is worthwhile or not. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 05:51, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
I was thinking in terms of matching up these socks with a real user who does other edits.
I got to this page from looking up a Needham quotation for another context, but it's apropos here too: "Many of our attitudes today derive from computers with many uses and many users. Going all the way back to early time-sharing systems we systems people regarded the users, and any code they wrote, as the mortal enemies of us and of each other. We were like the police force in a violent slum." (Needham, "The hardware environment", IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy" 1999, p. 236). That his wiki page is under attack at the very moment that I find that quote just strikes me as black humor. Phr (talk) 06:07, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
The quotation is indeed apposite. As for checkuser, I don't know whether a request to connect the vandal to an (unknown) user would be granted or not. WP:RCU frequently turns down requests with the reason "Checkuser is not for fishing." I don't know whether that would apply in this case. I suppose that there's no harm in asking — but they'd have to get around to it in 24 hours, because the checkuser data is kept on the servers for only one week, and the last sock edited 6 days ago. If you want to put the request in, Phr, you can — I really should get to sleep (it's 2:34 a.m. where I am). Personally, I'm hoping that if the page is fully protected for a few months the vandal will just forget about his little crusade and get on with his life. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 06:36, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, judging by the latest probable sock, he's aging the socks during the full-protect periods.--Rosicrucian 19:21, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Needham-Schroeder -> Needham-Schroeder protocol

please change the link Needham-Schroeder -> Needham-Schroeder protocol.

Velle 13:52, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

I made it a piped link to Needham-Schroeder security protocol, because I'm not sure that Needham-Schroeder protocol provides enough context. I do think the former wording was awkward. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 17:08, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Back to semiprotection, apparently

Since the full protect's off, I'll be back on edit patrol.--Rosicrucian 15:26, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

And he's back, but so obvious that the bots are spotting him immediately. Oh well, it was such a nice two months.--Rosicrucian 14:13, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
An enterprising admin managed to purge every last vandal edit, retroactively. Rather clever.--Rosicrucian 15:03, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

The protection has been lifted. Bets on how long it takes before our vandal returns? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 20:49, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Four days. Let's see if semiprotection works this time. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 23:03, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
He's using a aged sock. Can someone clean the history again? Kavadi carrier 14:58, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
I was hoping that we might be able to get an IP block, but apparently he's on a shared IP. The process of selective deletion is very complex, a bit too much so for a Bear of Very Little Brain like me; I think VoA did it last time, possibly with the aid of a bot. I'll ask if he can do it again. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 02:27, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Back to full protection... —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 22:59, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Infobox

This article needs an infobox. When I add one to this section I will make an {{editprotected}} request. Kavadi carrier 04:01, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Please add this infobox and remove the existing [[Image:Roger Needham.jpg]]

(P.S. remove the infobox totally from this page when you add it to the article - it contains a fair use image, which cannot be displayed on talk pages):

Copied to article. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 04:33, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
Given the different image size the infobox uses, I've resampled a fresh copy of the image from the original photo, and it looks quite a bit better now.--Rosicrucian 07:45, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Links

I note that the external link to the San Francisco Chronicle obituary is broken. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 86.136.26.20 (talk • contribs) 23:01, December 12, 2006 (UTC)

Well spotted. I couldn't find the obit in their archives, so I've removed the link; we've already got other obituaries linked in that section, so it's no great loss. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 23:12, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery

Could some kind administrator please add the category Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery? Perhaps also note in the article text that he was a fellow of the ACM from 1994. Janm67 14:16, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Done. —Centrx→talk • 18:47, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Persondata and infobox DOB

Please add the following Persondata just before the categories:

<!-- Metadata: see [[Wikipedia:Persondata]] -->
{{Persondata
|NAME=Needham, Roger
|ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
|SHORT DESCRIPTION=[[computer science|Computer scientist]]
|DATE OF BIRTH=[[February 9]] [[1935]]
|PLACE OF BIRTH=
|DATE OF DEATH=[[March 1]] [[2003]]
|PLACE OF DEATH=[[Willingham, Cambridgeshire|Willingham]], [[Cambridgeshire]]
}}

Also fix the infobox's birth_date from September 2 to February 9. Thanks! Resurgent insurgent 06:08, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Done. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 06:18, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
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