Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive3

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Contents: February 1, 2005 - March 31, 2005

Contents 1 Tasks 1.1 Template:In the news/Candidate 1.2 Wikipedia:Cleaning department 1.3 Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Old is groaning 1.4 Wikipedia:Changing username 1.5 Wikipedia:Copyright problems 1.6 Requested Moves (WP:RM) 2 General 2.1 Page-move rollback 2.2 Votes for deletion 2.3 Goatse poll on whether to include goatse image 2.4 Images of topless women 2.5 Board format 2.6 Front page security hole? 2.7 Spam script vandalism 2.8 What does a block look like? 2.9 Transclusion 2.10 Wikipedia:Votes for deletion and speedy deletions 2.11 Nofollow vote 2.12 Moving tags to talk pages? 2.13 Self Nomination 2.14 Policies 2.15 Protection of Highly Visible Pages 2.16 Sockpuppet checks 2.17 Wikipedia:VfD votes in the Template namespace 2.18 Preventing page-move vandalism 2.19 Spellbot 2.20 Wikipedia:Guide to Votes for Deletion 2.21 Wikipedia:Confirm queried sources 2.22 Block revision errors unprotection?! 2.23 Talk:Randi_Rhodes#Survey: A request for attention 2.24 Trying to move aside image to allow commons image to show through 2.25 3RR is out of hand 2.26 Page move bugs 2.26.1 More page move bugs 2.26.2 Another history missing 2.27 Talk:Gdansk/Vote 2.28 Block wars 2.29 Slightly more complex blocking would be more fair 2.30 Sourcewatch/Disinfopedia 2.31 Wikipedia:Introduction 2.32 Accidental picture deletion 2.33 Some food for thought WRT offensive usernames 2.34 Cut and paste move repair holding pen 2.35 Template:deletebecauseoncommons 2.36 Wikipedia:Requests for de-adminship 2.37 Wikipedia:Blocking policy#Anonymous and open proxies 2.38 History of the Umbrella and copyright issues 2.39 Admin log 2.40 Speedy deletions of "already in Wiktionary" articles 2.41 TBSDY 2.42 Comment on categorization 2.43 Query about blocked users 2.44 wikipedia:Arbitration policy/Proposed amendment revote 2.45 Wikipedia talk:Requests for de-adminship 2.46 Revert bug? 2.47 Rollback failed 2.48 Unblocking IP after user is blocked... a problem 2.49 real vs. simple vs. complex reverts? 2.50 Request to edit 2 MediaWiki messages 2.51 Impersonation in other Wikipedias 2.52 Block conflict question

[edit] Tasks

[edit] Template:In the news/Candidate

To allow Template:In the news to continue to be updated by non-admins without making the main page vulnerable to vandalism, I've added Template:In the news/Candidate, to which I've also added the current top news story (as measured by Google News). Could some admins please add this page to their watchlist, and for that matter, update Template:In the news with the story I've added? Thanks. --dreish~talk 19:52, 2005 Feb 5 (UTC)

Added to Wikipedia:Cleaning department. Noel (talk) 16:04, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Cleaning department

This seems to have falled into desuetude; I organized it a bit and added a whole bunch of things (CfD, TfD, etc) to bring it somewhat up-to-date. I then went through this page (and the archives), and added all the things listed here. (I was tempted to copy signups from here to that page, but I thought I'd better let people sign up on their own steam! :-) Anyway, if people could go look at it, and i) add things I missed, and ii) sign up for things (especially if you are already doing them, so we know what's covered, and what's not), that woule be great. Thanks! Noel (talk) 22:27, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Old is groaning

Hey all.. there is a huge backlog on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Old (currently, there are 10 days worth of VFD discussions waiting to be implemented). It would be really great if some more administrators could clear a few of the cases off there. It's easy, have a read of Wikipedia:Deletion process if you haven't done this for a while (or ever!), and have a crack. If you're concerned about making a judgement call on a controversial article, don't worry—there are plenty of totally uncontroversial ones on there. —Stormie 09:47, Feb 9, 2005 (UTC)

Working on it. Mgm|^(talk) 14:07, Feb 9, 2005 (UTC)

We're groaning again!!! S.O.S. Help! -- AllyUnion (talk) 09:52, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Is there any grunt work that a non-administrator would be able to do, like moving pages? I'd like to help, but I obviously wouldn't be able to delete anything. From a quick glance of Wikipedia:Deletion process#Votes for Deletion page, I could probably help out with steps 5 and 6, but I don't know if such limited activity would actually be useful for you guys. --Deathphoenix 22:31, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Absolutely it would be useful! Keeps are slower to close than deletes (and merges take even longer), and there's a pretty good percentage of them. dbenbenn | talk 00:26, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Added this to the list at Wikipedia:Cleaning department. Noel (talk) 15:23, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Changing username

Wikipedia:Changing username has a backlog dating back to September 2004. It seems Kate Turner was the only person working on the page, and she has apparently left the project. Jordi·✆ 12:47, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

She's still with us, just doing only real developer-type stuff; working on code, etc. Noel (talk) 17:23, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

IIRC, this needs developer access, no? Is there a Wikipedia:Developers' noticeboard? :-) Noel (talk) 13:13, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Yes, it needs developer access. But developers are also sysops, right? Jordi·✆ 13:39, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

But the average admin is not a developer. -- Cyrius|✎ 04:34, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Any reason we couldn't get (even temporary) developer access for some trusted, interested, and mildly technically inclined admin to deal with this? -- Jmabel | Talk 21:06, Feb 13, 2005 (UTC)

If a developer is dealing with Wikipedia:Changing username, they might also look at the backlog on Wikipedia:Changing attribution for an edit. -- ALoan (Talk) 14:59, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Added to Wikipedia:Cleaning department. Noel (talk) 15:00, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Copyright problems

• Infrogmation and rbrwr appear to have their hands full, and there's a massive backlog building up at Wikipedia:Copyright problems, dating from January 23 onwards by the looks of things. Uncle G 01:20, 2005 Feb 19 (UTC)

Red Alert! The backlog for Wikipedia:Copyright problems is now at 56 sections, stretching as far back as November 21, 2004!!! Assistance would be very much appreciated. -- AllyUnion (talk) 09:55, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• I went over there trying to help but I see that many of the unhandled items are ones where there seems to be some dispute over whether it is a copyvio. I could not find any clear instructions as to what exactly it is and is not appropriate to delete as copyvio. Perhaps the lack of clear instructions to administrators as to what, exactly, are the tasks to be done to clean this up is a large part of the problem. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:14, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I would help, but I don't really know what steps I should follow. Perhaps someone should write detailed instructions or a manual of some sort. BrokenSegue 20:34, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Admins not familiar with details can start helping out with the easy ones-- say any listings 10 days or older by an established user (anyone you recognize as probably not a troll). If there has been no challenge to the allegation of copyright violation either below the listing or on the article talk page, and the article has a copyright violation notice, you can go ahead and delete the article. To help further, you then can remove the listings for deleted pages from the WP:CP page. Such fairly straightforward cases make up a large part of the backlog, and if they are being taken care of, those more experienced can devote more time to the more complex ones. Thanks, -- Infrogmation 20:55, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Looking good, thanks folks! -- Infrogmation 15:39, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Requested Moves (WP:RM)

I know there is an endless list of tasks for the admins to do but I'd just like to make note that WP:RM is starting to build up a bit of a backlog. I usually do the moves but can't right now because the servers are running too slowly for me. Would be good if anyone could take a look and do a couple. Cheers, violet/riga (t) 16:18, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] General

[edit] Page-move rollback

(User:Mac Mini on Wheels stuff archived to the incident archive; leaving general discussion here.)

[T]here were some issues regarding deletion of an article after somebody else had moved it to the proper location - seems to me that a page-move rollback feature is becoming more and more necessary. — Dan | Talk 00:00, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Yep, especially since it's obvious that this guy isn't going to go away. RickK 01:07, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

How about giving page move rights only to users with a minimum number of edits, e.g. 50 or 100 edits? That would take care of most of the page move vandalism, while it would be only a minor inconvenience to new valid users. -- Chris 73 Talk 01:20, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

A very good idea. I doubt beginners would use this function much (especially to a *good* effect). I didn't try it after several month of Wiki. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 10:59, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I concur. I always found page move to be a solidly scary thing. Hell, I can clean up my own messes now and I'm still slightly afraid of page moves. :) Snowspinner 16:53, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

That feature is already implemented in the MediaWiki software, since we had a similar vandal about a year ago. The limit was however reset to 0 later. I guess only someone with developer access can change that number. andy 16:59, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I can't find any reference to that setting in mediawiki, care to give me a pointer? --fvw* 18:37, 2005 Feb 3 (UTC)

As close as I can tell, on very cursory inspection, this went away in 1.4. In 1.3.9, See wfSpecialMovepage() in includes/SpecialMovepage.php and User::isNewbie() in includes/User.php. —Korath (Talk) 19:25, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

Ooh, that's convoluted. It depends on wgOnlySysopMayMove which is a config setting that isn't defined or referenced elsewhere and which doesn't do what it claims to do. It in fact prevents "newbies" from moving pages, where newbies are defined as the newest (from account creation time) 1% of users. Not quite as good as by-edits as anyone can just register a new account without using it, which is entirely unnoticable and have it mature until they can vandalise with it. Still, it would be an improvement. --fvw* 01:49, 2005 Feb 4 (UTC)

Couldn't someone write a bot that would do 50 (or 100) random edits, and then start doing moves? Jayjg ^(talk) 17:22, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but it might give us a chance to notice him while he's still running up edits. Rd232 suggested limiting page moves to one per minute over on WP:VIP, which deserves thought, but if I were running a vandalbot, this would just get me to register a new user name with each edit to get around it. Maybe if it were IP based? Or a combination of a delay and a minimum number of edits? —Korath (Talk) 17:52, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

There are situations where a rate limit on page moves would be very inconvienient. For example, I recently came across the "Lists of Frigates" section of Frigate, which had links to about a dozen mis-named list articles, and redlinks to another mis-named 30. If I'd come across it much later, a rate limit would mean that getting the lists to the correct titles would have taken an hour or more. --Carnildo 18:04, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

We could of course combine the solutions and limit the number of edits until someone racks up 200 edits. --fvw* 18:37, 2005 Feb 3 (UTC)

Also, simple editing vandalism can be easily rolled back en masse by any admin. Page moves cannot currently be rolled back, making them much more difficult to fix. — Dan | Talk 20:08, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The feature is already there and just set to 0? Cool, then there is no need for implementation, just to turn it on. While a bot could rack up 100 edits, it would be a bit of work, and make page move vandalism more difficult. Also, depending on the bot, vandalism could be spotted before the page move vandalism. I think page move vandalism looses its fun if the vandal has to spend 30 minutes beforehand to rack up 100 edits. Valid page moves can always be requested on the village pump, and since there are thousands of users with more than 100 edits, this should not really be a big burden for the 300 admins. I would start a proposal to turn this on, but I have to go now. -- Chris 73 Talk 23:59, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

Or they could request moves at Requested moves. :) BrokenSegue 01:10, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The problem with this is that new people might think that there is no other way to move pages except through copy and paste. Then we'll have a mess of duplicated pages and lost histories. Dori | Talk 01:45, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)

Don't they think that allready? We could just leave the move button at the top for new users and have it refer to request for moves (or some page explaining the situation) instead of the move page. BrokenSegue 02:03, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Actually, I think the discussion is starting to move in the wrong direction - the proposed solutions involving limiting numbers of moves are becoming more and more convoluted and difficult to implement. In my opinion, the only reason page move vandalism is the problem it is is because there is no easy way to revert it - nobody is bothering to write a vandal script that replaces article text with FUCKYOU because they know that that sort of vandalism can be reverted within seconds, but everyone familiar with the system here knows that page moves cause lots of hard work. I'd wager a guess that a rollback function for moves would make the bot attacks pretty much disappear (and the ones that still happened wouldn't be much of a problem anymore). -- Ferkelparade π 20:18, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Votes for deletion

In regards to including the VFD discussion on the article's talk page, what do you do? Do you use the transinclude of the VFD archived debate, or do you actually copy the entire text of the debate into the discussion page? -- AllyUnion (talk) 17:10, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I use the link to the discussion rather than copying the entire debate onto the talk page. Joyous 18:47, Feb 5, 2005 (UTC)

I put a link only on the Talk page. A discussion of pros and cons is at Wikipedia talk:Deletion process#VfD process when article is kept. Rossami (talk) 01:11, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Goatse poll on whether to include goatse image

I don't know if this is the right place to announce this, but it's probably something admins should be aware of in any case.

There is now a new poll at Talk:Goatse.cx over whether or how to include the "goatse" image at that page. This was precipitated by User:SPUI's action in uploading the image and adding it inline to Goatse.cx. I reverted the page and speedied the image, but he reuploaded it (but has not re-added it to Goatse.cx. We have discussed at our talk pages and I proposed the poll, which I hope will resolve the issue.

The poll is similar in nature to the Talk:Autofellatio poll.

See the discussion at Talk:Autofellatio#Keep_image_inline (under Postdlf's comment), which seems to have prompted User:SPUI's action. I will leave another message at User_talk:SPUI to invite him to post here if he wishes. -- Curps 03:27, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I have commented at Talk:goatse.cx; I can't think of anything to specifically say here. --SPUI (talk) 03:32, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Images of topless women

While all of the raging is gong on over autofellatio and goatse, this one seems to have slipped in : Image:Akira fubuki 09.jpeg. The diaper pics have been proposed for deletion, what should we do with this? RickK 06:27, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)

I'll vote for its deletion if it's article gets deleted, but otherwise a topless picture seems par for the course for a porn actress. --fvw* 06:34, 2005 Feb 7 (UTC)

Given the uploader's recent history, the {{CopyrightedFreeUse}} tag is dubious. —Korath (Talk) 06:54, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)

Hmm yes, good point. Just put it up on copyvio, which avoids the whole can-we-have-topless-pictures-for-articles-about-people debate, at least for the time being. --fvw* 07:06, 2005 Feb 7 (UTC)

That didn't work out for cantus. It is unlikely to work for youGeni 08:41, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well, as such pictures go, this is a fairly tame one. But the issue of such pictures (unless it is a copyvio, of course) is probably not an issue for admins only, but rather one for the community as a whole. Noel (talk) 12:52, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

agree, move to Village Pump. What matters is not toplessness but encyclopedicity. If the image itself is encyclopedic, (e.g. a famous painting), toplessness is fine. If the person depicted is encyclopedic, a 'topped' image is preferable. dab (ᛏ) 14:28, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well, for her, you might have trouble finding one! :-) Noel (talk) 14:41, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

not necessarily :oP check out the decently dressed, work-safe Image:Sylvia Saint 001.jpg! dab (ᛏ) 17:37, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Board format

There has been some discussion of whether people like seeing the /Incidents sub-page transcluded here; please comment at WT:AN#3 Incidents? if you have an opinion on this. Thanks! Noel (talk) 16:06, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Front page security hole?

(Copied from Wikipedia_talk:Protected_page -- AllyUnion (talk) 18:16, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC))

I'm not sure if this is a security problem or not. Yesterday, the Image:Humpback anglerfish.png was featured in the Template:Did you know on the Main Page. A local page was created, with some of the copyright info, but the image is actually on the Commons. The local page was eventually protected, but the page on the Commons never was.

Is this a security hole? I assume creating a local page, and protecting it, is sufficient to prevent someone from uploading a local image and thus overriding the version on the Commons (which was my initial concern). But it also looks like a persistent vandal could have just uploaded a new image over the one on the Commons, with the same effect. Would loading a local copy of the image, protecting it here, and then deleting the local copy when the image leaves the Main Page be sufficient?

Since I'm unregistered I have no practical experience with uploading images; I may be mistaken. But given the recent template vandalism and the current lockdown of the Main Page, if it is a problem a solution should be disseminated, at least to the handful of people involved with updating the templates and protecting the images on the front page. In keeping with the security thought obscurity precept, I deliberately didn't ask while it was still in the template; and I posted the question here, rather than on a more high profile page like Main Page talk, or the admin's noticeboard.

68.81.231.127 15:51, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

A good point. Should be looked into. -- AllyUnion (talk) 18:16, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The only solution I can think of is to coordinate Main Page images with Commons administrators. I think asking Commons administrators to protect some images for a day or two is not an unreasonable request, given that en is the largest Wikimedia project. We'll have more Commons images in the future as more images are uploaded there instead of to en. --Slowking Man 02:26, Feb 9, 2005 (UTC)

Wouldn't it work to simply upload the image here with the same name as on the Commons? Then we'd be using the local version, which could be protected. dbenbenn | talk 00:24, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The commons image overwrites any local version, supposely. -- AllyUnion (talk) 14:33, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

According to Meta:Help:Images and other uploaded files#File name, it's actually the other way around... so uploading a local copy should work. 68.81.231.127 23:58, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It just got more pressing. See the current DYK image. 68.81.231.127 00:55, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Yes, it's quite the other way round: local images override Commons images. However, if one creates an Image: page for an image that exists only on Commons (pasting the content from the Commons page is good enough) and then protects that page, it can't be uploaded over locally. This seems the best fix to me, and it's what I've done for Image:Coccorella atrata.png, which I presume you were referring to. — Dan | Talk 01:21, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Can't it still be uploaded over, at the Commons? 68.81.231.127 04:17, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I believe they can be, yes. But there are a number of Commons administrators who are also active en: users, including Dan. As Slowking Man says, if there are enough active Commons admins it shouldn't be too hard to co-ordinate temporary protections; perhaps there could be a "Commons:Requests for image protection", although I have no idea if such a page is even necessary. More pragmatically, there could be a note on Template talk:Did you know#The Rules (under Images) to instruct users to do exactly as Dan did; crosspost the Commons image description over to Wikipedia so it can be protected. There could also be a suggestion to contact a Commons admin to protect it. I somewhat regret indirectly causing this trouble, but I suppose it had to be dealt with eventually. -- Hadal 04:53, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The Commons is a great resource; don't feel guilty for using it. :) But there seems to be a shortage of people updating the templates already, so coordination sounds like putting a task that's already in too few hands into even fewer. The advantage of uploading a local copy and protecting it is that anyone who can update the template can do it. 68.81.231.127 22:39, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Spam script vandalism

We really need a solution for this. One thing Fvw was working on before his abrupt wikiholiday was blocking a very large number of open proxies, but he had to undo that because the Mediawiki software couldn't handle such a large list. He proposed a fix to the source code and asked for it to be incorporated into an update. What's the status of this? Can it be implemented?

The bots are now infesting some of the articles linked from PHP, including DBM, Cybercash, CCVS, etc. The PHP article is once again protected and will probably have to stay that way until a solution is found. -- Curps 20:31, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] What does a block look like?

Does anybody know the answer to this: What does an IP that is blocked actually see? That is, do they realize they have been deliberately blocked for a reason, or do they just get a 404? - DavidWBrooks 17:14, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

You could always pick a controversial article, put in a silly edit and revert it four times to find out! :)) jguk 17:35, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Blockedtext Goplat 17:45, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks (rollback) Thanks (rollback) Thanks (rollback) Thanks (rollback) - DavidWBrooks 18:23, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Wanna find out? silsor 18:28, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

I just checked the block and saw several people test blocks on themselves. Wasn't there a policy against that, or was it my imagination? Mgm|^(talk) 19:41, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

Probably your imagination, that's the best way for sysops to test block messages and effects before they use them. silsor 19:46, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

Right, long-term self-blocking is generally not permitted, but testing seems perfectly OK to me (since it really doesn't hurt anything, does it?) — Dan | Talk 19:57, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Transclusion

I have terminated the transclsion of the /Incidents subpage - it was making life much harder for the archiving. Anyone doesn't like it, feel free to change it back - and take over doing the archiving. Noel (talk) 01:40, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Votes for deletion and speedy deletions

Recently, there has been several listings, although infrequent, of things that meet the speedy deletion criteria. I would like to ask all Administrators to immediately close any VfD debate, using {{subst:vfd top}} '''speedy delete''' --~~~~ and {{subst:vfd bottom}}, if you see it meets any of the speedy criteria and have already deleted the page. -- AllyUnion (talk) 14:39, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Nofollow vote

The "nofollow" vote is now underway at Wikipedia:Nofollow/Vote -- Curps 02:17, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Moving tags to talk pages?

Some here might be interested in Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Moving tags to talk pages?; if something doesn't get resolved soon I'm going to take it to RFC (or whatever the next step is). --SPUI (talk) 04:59, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I have created Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Maveric149. I apologize if this is not the right place to take this, but no one has mentioned another way. --SPUI (talk) 20:56, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Now at Wikipedia talk:Template messages#Moving templates to talk pages for continued discussion. It would be appreciated if someone helps to structure the debate. --SPUI (talk) 21:58, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Self Nomination

I would like to humbly self nominate myself for an award regarding the work accomplished on Awards and decorations of the United States military. I have previously recieved the Barnstar for work on the Schutzstaffel article. Is there another decoration that may perhaps be bestowed for work on the awards article? Thank you! -Husnock 05:47, 12 Feb 2005

[edit] Policies

I am placing three policies under vote... to made official policy. The three policies are:

• Wikipedia:Non-admin protection
• Wikipedia:Assume good faith
• Wikipedia:Deletion of useless stub templates and stub categories

Cast your vote at:

• Wikipedia:Non-admin protection/Vote
• Wikipedia:Assume good faith/Vote
• Wikipedia:Deletion of useless stub templates and stub categories/Vote

-- AllyUnion (talk) 09:17, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Protection of Highly Visible Pages

What is the policy of the protection of highly visible pages? -- AllyUnion (talk) 00:38, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• Help:Contents was unprotected, due to a request by Netoholic. But there is proof of vandalism... It was unprotected, leaving the question of the protection of Wikipedia:Community Portal should or should not be protected. Thus, the question really is, should high visibility pages, especially that are linked to the left, be left protected? -- AllyUnion (talk) 00:53, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Please go read the Wikipedia:protection policy and then ask this again. Recently, a number of admins have taken to locking down dozens of minor pages such that non-admins are severly restricted from contributing. Information must now be "approved" through admins before it is updated on even these minor pages. Hell, what if I wanted to change the picture on Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/February 25 - where am I supposed to request this and why must I take any special steps. This is very un-wiki. -- Netoholic @ 02:19, 2005 Feb 15 (UTC)

Indeed, it's overkill to have Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/February 25 protected 11 days early. That's probably something to bring up at Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries. I'd say protecting 24 hours in advance should be more than sufficient. dbenbenn | talk 02:45, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Recently, a number of admins have taken to locking down dozens of minor pages such that non-admins are severly restricted from contributing.

What pages are you referring to, Netoholic? I know the templates to the main page are being protected, but they are far from minor, they're highly visible. Mgm|^(talk) 11:57, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)

You know, I wish I could tell you exactly which ones. Unfortunately, the admins doing the protection aren't even bothering to document them all on Wikipedia:Protected page. For sure, protection of the Selected Anniversaries pages is damn silly. -- Netoholic @ 15:57, 2005 Feb 15 (UTC)

I think Help:Contents was one of them... He might count Wikipedia:Community portal as another. And such. -- AllyUnion (talk) 14:07, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Once all the Selected Anniversary templates are complete, I see no reason why they shouldn't all be protected - they do not need to be updated very often. — Dan | Talk 12:54, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

How short-sighted. -- Netoholic @ 15:57, 2005 Feb 15 (UTC)

I agree with Netoholic (although not necessarily with his choice of words :). There are lots of pages that don't need to be updated very often, but we still don't keep them protected. Protected pages scare off good edits. Are you absolutely sure the selected anniversaries don't have any typos or mistakes? You'll never find out if they're protected.

If we can come up with a workable way to protect tomorrow's selected anniversary, that would be ideal. dbenbenn | talk 16:19, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

If there are typos, they have talk pages on which these can be flagged. There has been too much nonsense on the Main page recently, and if protecting these pages also protects the integrity of our shop window, all well and good, say I. Filiocht 16:34, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)

I also agree with Netoholic on this one (although not with quite the same tone.) Pages should be protected only when really necessary. Selected anniversaries, and similar pages, only need to be protected when they're actually displaying on the main page. Isomorphic 16:59, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'll chime in and say that I hope Rdsmith4's and Filiocht's opinions above are the exception among Wikipedia admins. You should be going out of your way looking for reasons to keep pages unprotected, not to keep them protected. Taco Deposit | Talk-o to Taco 22:34, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)

I actually have this situation now. I want to add something to a future selected anniversaries, and it's extremely frustrating not to be able to do it, and not to get a response to my message asking how to do it. – flamurai (t) 15:25, Feb 16, 2005 (UTC)

I admit a total lack of familiarity with how the selected anniversary stuff works (technically), but why can't whoever's in charge of the main page, etc simply check the next day's anniversary thing some hours before it goes live, to make sure it hasn't been vandalized, and then lock it? Yes, it's a bit more work, but surely less so than having to keep an eye on talk: pages for updates they have to add. Noel (talk) 15:54, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Because there's no one who's "in charge" of the main page. The selected anniversaries are all already written, and the change happens automatically at midnight UTC. I've been doing exactly what you describe for about a week, but it's hard to be that reliable and it gets old quick. A bot to do it would be nicer. dbenbenn | talk 04:56, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I would have assumed that the real time-sink is making sure that the page hasn't been vandalized before it was protected (whether by a bot, or manually). That step clearly has to be done by a human, and could be done at the time that it is protected, so I'm not sure that a bot would really help that much. Noel (talk) 15:10, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sockpuppet checks

Which developers are available these days to do sockpuppet checks? There is a certain user who has a very long history of deceptive sockpuppetry, and I believe he is at it again. I was hoping this would go away if ignored long enough, but I think it may have to go to the Arbitration committee if the sockpuppet results are positive. Isomorphic 21:52, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:VfD votes in the Template namespace

I have run into this massive list of VfD votes in the Template namespace, listed at Wikipedia:VfD votes in the Template namespace. I am curious if everything thing here can be moved to the subpages for VfD, as I don't know what was the decision regarding to move these pages or not. -- AllyUnion (talk) 04:25, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

FWIW, I agree they ought to be moved out. I don't know why they are done this way, perhaps Netoholic can shed light on the thinking of why they were left in the Template: space. (And we could delete all those redirects from Mediawiki:, too...) Noel (talk) 13:34, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Moving them under VfD causes a problem in those cases where the subpage already exists. Also, we don't know how complete the current list Netoholic compiled is. I suggest someone runs a SQL query to determine completeness before we decide whether to move them or not. I agree that the redirects from MediaWiki: should be deleted, they are nothing but cruft. jni 09:01, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

If you want to be sure of completeness you can just use Special:Allpages. Goplat 18:50, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The list was created to have a way of finding those votes. Oftentimes, a long-deleted page will be re-created, and someone will think "wasn't that a VFD?". They check for a sub-page, but find nothing. Moving these out of the template namespace (and deleting all the leftover redirects in MediaWiki namespace as well) is a great idea. It is a huge project though, which is why I made the page in the first place. I was hoping that I'd be able to get started on it, but my admin nom failed at the time, so I guess it's up to you all. -- Netoholic @ 18:28, 2005 Mar 4 (UTC)

Deleting all these Mediawiki redirects without a bot is going to be basically infeasible - there are scads of them. Noel (talk) 14:12, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

There were also a small number of Mediawiki talk: redirects associated with VfD- votes; I've dealt with them (but there are still tons of redirs there associated with templates, sigh). Noel (talk) 18:33, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Preventing page-move vandalism

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Requested moves/Min edit count, so the commenst are in one place. Thanks -- Chris 73 Talk 00:40, Feb 20, 2005 (UTC)

Please vote for the bug / feature request / correct this vandalism here: http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1546 -- AllyUnion (talk) 12:59, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

According to Brion in #mediawiki, this feature is now enabled on en. — Dan | Talk 12:50, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

(This was posted to WP:AN/I - the feature referred to is the one where the newest 1% of users are not allowed to do page moves. Noel (talk) 14:39, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC) )

"the newest 1%"? Isn't this like asking for subscription-bots? dab (ᛏ) 14:56, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

In the abscence of a page-move rollback feature (the bugzilla post is still marked as new), its the best we've got. Thryduulf 22:07, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I just had my first case of a user who did a cut-n-paste move because they couldn't do a normal move. A definite downside for this solution; everyone might want to keep an eye out for similar "moves". Noel (talk) 21:20, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

On the possible plus side, a new user calling themselves User:Willy Wonka sans Wheels (hmm) contributed a serious stub article, thus far their only edit. -- Infrogmation 19:26, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Shouldn't that user be blocked? It's obvious that it's Willy. BrokenSegue 21:41, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Spellbot

(moved from my User talk space.)

I was thinking of creating a spellcheck bot that would highlight what it thinks are misspelled words using the GNU aspell. It would check US standardized spelling and international. Once it finds the spelling errors, it would quote passage of text (only enough that someone could find it), underline what words it thinks its misspelled, and post its errors on the discussion page. What do you think? -- AllyUnion (talk) 05:33, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I think I detest spamming multiple users' pages with the same message instead of placing it in a shared forum like Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard. I think that mediawiki already has half a mechanism for spell checking, which unfortunately, appears to be currently half disabled. Here's how I use it on my own wiki:

1. I wrote a bot that downloads a list of pages and feeds them to the unix spell program, which generates a list of potentially mispelled words.
2. I then pre-edit that list, removing word fragments and things that are obviously (to me) not mispellings.
3. I then add this list to the equivalent of Wikipedia:List_of_common_misspellings
4. Then I use a browser such as w3m with editor set to ispell, or similarly firefox with mozex extension and go to the spelling maintenance page which appears to be currenly disabled, but you could just as well pick one of the mispelled words and feed it to the search engine. I notice on the word list page they've already linked them that way, so this is easy.
5. Then you invoke the editor (set to ispell or aspell or whatever) and manually decide on the spelling changes and save!

To summarize, I think your idea would be klunky and slow. Using a real spell checker integrated into a web browser I think works much better, the hard part is then just finding pages with lots of mispellings to make it worth it. (Perhaps a bot to generate a sorted list?) Of course, your suggestion would work great for any questionable cases that might actually need discussion. --ssd 13:43, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Neutrality^talk 16:50, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)

My apologize goes to ssd for spamming his user page, even though it was only three users. I have moved it here for more people to comment. I am looking, essentially, what the best way to implement a spellbot, and at least change the 100% known misspellings. -- AllyUnion (talk) 22:28, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'm very, very sceptical of having a bot to do this. I know how much nonsense I get out of spellcheckers at work - and these are spellcheckers produced by companies that have far more resources than an individual Wikipedian, jguk 09:17, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

That's why both AllyUnion and I suggested procecures where the bot would only look for potential mispellings. Where we differ is in how it notifies us changes are needed. I suggest making a list of pages with lots of mispelinlgs, and using standard software such as ispell or aspell to manualyl view teh changes. Ideally, this would be done with some kind of dictionary containnig both american and british spelinlgs, etc. Alternately, the potential mispellings could be listed on the talk page for the article for manual fixing. In neither case would the bot actually respell anything. I hope we've all seen the jokes about what hapepns when you try that. --ssd 13:37, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Guide to Votes for Deletion

A new guide for VFD is being written. I highly recommend that all administrators review this guide -- AllyUnion (talk) 21:53, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Confirm queried sources

I've made a new proposed policy. Not sure if I'm going about it the right way. Anyway, it's Wikipedia:Confirm queried sources. I recommend all admins view this as if it gets approved it's going to make admining and content disputes a lot more easy to resolve. - Ta bu shi da yu 02:14, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Block revision errors unprotection?!

Due to the deletion "bug", two pages have been requested to be unprotected in RFPP so they may be changed. It was at the request of the developers that any page that needs to be deleted be protected. Additionally, someone created a template, Template:Pending deletion, to keep track of these articles. What would be the correct process? Allow the article to be changed? Relist the article through VfD? -- AllyUnion (talk) 03:20, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• The two articles in question are Gibbs and Chrono Crusade which both had gone through the VFD process. -- AllyUnion (talk) 03:38, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Does "changed" mean someone wants to write a different article with that name? In that case, I think I'd move the old article to a different name, delete the resulting redirect, and let them start their new page from scratch. Of course, if they just want to edit the "deleted" article, the answer should be no. Basically, what I'm saying is "act as if the page really was deleted". (time passes...) In fact, I went ahead and did that. dbenbenn | talk 05:15, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

They actually want to create redirects for both articles. -- AllyUnion (talk) 12:25, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Talk:Randi_Rhodes#Survey: A request for attention

A couple of days ago, I posted a survey here to try to head off an edit war, and dutifully listed it on Wikipedia:Current surveys. So far, it hasn't gotten any votes. If anybody has a minute, would you please drop by and lend us a hand? Many thinks in advance. – ClockworkSoul 21:27, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• Nevermind - I think this may have been resolved... – ClockworkSoul 02:44, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Trying to move aside image to allow commons image to show through

Wikipedia:Requested moves reads:

Requested moves is not the proper place to request renaming images or categories.

OK, so where is the right place to request renaming of images? I'd like to move Image:Hedgehog.jpg aside (to Image:Hedgehog.777life.jpg) to allow commons:Image:Hedgehog.jpg to display, but I can't (and it would leave behind a redirect anyway). The local version has worse (but not actually unacceptable) copyright status, but is still a worthwhile picture.

I also can't find the right place to ask. --Andrew 09:30, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

OK, it appears the solution is to upload a new picture then delete the old one. I'll go ask on Wikipedia:Images for deletion. --Andrew 01:34, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)

Hi, sorry I didn't see this before. Yes, AFAIK images cannot be moved, not even by admins; see this bug report. (Although there is a "Move this page" button displayed when you go to one - probably ought to mention that in that bug report.) So what you did (re-upload, and delete the old one) is the only way to move an image. Can someone who is more familiar with images confirm this? Noel (talk) 14:08, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 3RR is out of hand

From the talk page - Ta bu shi da yu 00:50, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Sinne I haven't followed this closely, I don't know exactly how the 3RR went from being a half-baked concept to a means of blocking valued users, as seen in the recent hostilities involving 172, Snowspinner, Ed Poor and others.

I think 3RR and blocking are only appropriate where there is a fast-moving revert war, and a brief block provides a cooling-off period. Even so, I would rather see the article protected for a short period and the combatants shunted to the talk pages.

But 3RR in our contentious articles has a serious darkside, especially with this "within 24 hours" nonsense. There are articles in which both sides, acting in good faith, have an honest disagreement over a particular historical issue. Suppose an article is stable for some period of days, and then one person changes a section to give a different perspective, and lets suppose this perspective, honestly held, is POV where the previous wording was a better, more neutral presentation.

OK, I revert, then the writer reverts. After I've reverted the third time, the writer reverts a third time. Result: the new version stands. If I revert again, I'm blocked. This is not right in the circumstances nor is it good for the encyclopedia. I additionally view blocking responsible users in such circumstances as puerile. A better solution would be a lock on the article for a limited time and going to article talk.

I know I haven't followed the discussion on an editorial board for Wikipedia, but I think this is the best and ultimate solution. Used sparingly a handful of articles should be under the jurisdiction of such a board in which portions of articles are forbidden to regular editing once they have been ruled on. If someone edits that portion and anyone objects to the edit the edit reverts, the discussion goes immediately to talk and if agreement can't be reached, the editorial board rules bindingly. Under those circumstances, someone who persists can be blocked.

How to choose such a board? I would think a base requirement is that such members be active writers and editors, not "janitors". I would have some kind of base voting criterion more than the simple "logged-in user" of adminship. I would also want to see some kind of balance on such a board between more liberal/conservative/centrist editors, americentric/eurocentenic, etc., or a board could be a political "Ministry of Truth".

As to the 172 et. al. dispute, I'm not judging who was right in the article in question. I haven't seen it. Often I agree with 172's perpsectives, often I don't, but I believe his convictions are honestly held. I think a 3RR was the wrong remedy. In fact, in most cases I think 3RR blocks are the wrong remedy. -- Cecropia | explains it all ® 21:03, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The problem with your senario is that you are thinking in a simular way to an edit warrior. In your senario you are in a very solid starting postion since your version really is NPOV. If it is on a major article you don't need to worry someone else will come along soon. If it is in a more minor article just request help from outside (an RFC if all else fails). One on one slugfests are always a bad move. You suggest shorter blocks. This means whoever breaks the rules wins the edit war since they revert 4 times get their version and a block of a few hours. Moving on the community has decided that responciple users don't break the three revert rule. Page protection is bad since it goes against the principles of the wiki has the eternal arguments about the wrong version (remember page protection can be abused) and risks spreading the argument to other articles. If you want to take the heat of an edit war then I suggest first trying the "everyone's gotta sleep sometime" method of conflict resolution (my personal favorite). I should be noted that a board that covers a limited number of articles isn't going to have much effect on the 3RR since the range af articles people feel the need to edit war over appears to be huge.Geni 21:54, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

OK, I revert, then the writer reverts. After I've reverted the third time, the writer reverts a third time. Yes. You shouldn't have got into that situation in the first place. It appears to me that the WP:3RR is operating as intended. You'll just have to learn to either discuss controversial things or be more creative with your edits--search for a compromise that states both positions adequately, instead of reverting. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 22:11, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC) See revised response below --Tony Sidaway|Talk 16:23, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sounds to me like it's working great. What I don't understand is why, now that we've installed our shiny new cliff, people like to dance so close to the edge. silsor 00:53, Mar 2, 2005 (UTC)

The 3RR works great. It allows people to cool off when getting in to revert wars, and it sends an unambigious message that certain editing practices are not acceptable. The current "you're blocked for violating the 3RR" policy also makes life a lot easier for the arbitrators. If a given version of a page is truly better, some other editor will make the same or a similar change. Samboy 01:48, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Indeed - either take the point in dispute to talk when you revert the first time, or when you see your revert reverted (whether or not you revert the revert of your revert). Reverting more than once without going to talk is asking for trouble. -- ALoan (Talk) 11:31, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

3RR gets you blocked for how long? One day. This means that even if you trick people into violating it (as seems to become a sport among edit warriors), you only own the field for a day, i.e. you don't win the edit war, it's merely slowed down. And that's the purpose of the rule, to slow down the wars, not to end them. We'll always have childish people on WP, why, an unknown percentage of them are children, so we'll always be dealing with childish disputes. What we are aiming at is making life difficult for those with childish approaches, while making life easier for people with a more mature approach and good sense of compromise. We may need other rules, but the 3RR is doing what it's supposed to be doing. dab (ᛏ) 12:12, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I think that over time, people would learn that there are other ways to reach an agreed-upon version of an article instead of edit warring. Like, for example, discussing the matter or voting on the article's talk page once you reach two reverts. --Deathphoenix 16:39, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Cecropia writes: OK, I revert, then the writer reverts. After I've reverted the third time...

I think the problem here is that you're actually contemplating, as a matter of course, that you would get into an edit war. You should be discussing this on the talk page, not doing ping-pong reverts between you and another user. As WP:3RR says, "If the edit really needs reverting that much, somebody else will probably do it—and that will serve the vital purpose of showing that the community at large is in agreement over which of two competing versions is correct."

WP:3RR is performing a very useful function even if it only forces revert warriors to recognise that the community regards their behavior as pathological. Indeed arbcom has clarified the original wording somewhat in recent cases, saying:

The three-revert rule is not an entitlement, but an "electric fence". The 3RR is intended as a means to stop edit wars. It does not grant users an inalienable right to three reverts every 24 hours or endorse reverts as an editing technique. Persistent reversion remains strongly discouraged and is unlikely to constitute working properly with others.

This is now part of WP:3RR and one that is being used daily in arbcom cases, and will continue to be used on a daily basis by administrators. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 15:55, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Page move bugs

Somehow, Mikkalai's move of List of English words of Russian origin to Words of Russian derivation caused all of the editing history to be lost except for the most recent edit, mine. Contrary to what the history now says, I am not the sole contributor to that article. Is there any way to fix this? Uncle G 12:41, 2005 Mar 2 (UTC)

• Try asking a developer, this is their area and not admin stuff. I guess they should be able to restore the history from a backup copy of the database if neccesary. Thue | talk 13:34, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • I'll look for a Wikipedia:Developers' noticeboard ... Uncle G 13:49, 2005 Mar 2 (UTC)
    • That would be http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/ . Thue | talk 19:58, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• What happened is the page was first moved to Words of Russian origin, and then moved again to Words of Russian derivation, but the history stayed at Words of Russian origin, where it was inaccessable because there was no page with that name. I moved the page back to Words of Russian origin to pick up the lost history, and it worked! Goplat 15:59, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] More page move bugs

Numanuma moved to Numa Numa with loss of history. Also, what links to Numa Numa looks weird now. Mikkalai 01:00, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hm, looks fine to me. Also, it is at Numa numa now. When I fixed a copy/paste move yesterday, I noticed that page histories do not seem to update immediately after a move. (When I deleted a page, moved the original there, and then checked the history, I got shown the history of the deleted page.) It only updated to the history of the moved page when I switched from "last 50" to "last 100" changes. Can it be that this whole business with histories being left behind is just a caching issue? Lupo 07:39, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Several times, doing a history merge, I have noticed a wierd bug, which may be related. I delete X-new, move X-old to X-new, and then undelete X-new, and the undelete succeeds. But then the history doesn't show the X-old versions, just the X-new ones! Waiting (I tried up to half an hour on one article), and/or flushing the cache with "&action=flush" doesn't help. However, make a gratuitous edit, and all of a sudden the old versions appear! (I guess I really ought to file a bug report about this, too busy, though...) Noel (talk) 15:33, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yes, this does seem to be some sort of "cached copy of the history not getting updated properly". I have now seen the same sort of behaviour Lupo mentioned - when the history after a restore isn't what you expect, select one of the other history lengths, and it shows up correct. Making a gratuitous edit brings the history back correctly too. Sounds like it's correct in the master database, but history copies cached in various places aren't getting updated correctly. Doing any one of a number of things causes the caches copies of the history to be flushed, and the master (which is correct) to be looked at. Will definitely have to file a bug report on this (if someone else hasn't done so already). Noel (talk) 02:31, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Oh wierd - this bug is provoked not just by undeletes, but in other circumstances too. Check out this version of the history, and compare it with this version. Notice the two missing versions in there? All I did was a save (albeit while the system was loaded). Wierd.... Noel (talk) 20:41, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Actually, I seem to have editing this page since then, so the wierdness is no longer visible. But at one point the "normal" history link was missing the two most recent non-current versons (i.e. the two ones before the then-current version). Noel (talk) 20:42, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Another history missing

Okay, so I'm a new admin as of late yesterday. I got a request from a user I've worked with to undo a page move for W.A.C. Bennett. The page was moved to a longer, less common name (William Andrew Cecil Bennett), and the user could not move it back because the shorter name had two items in the edit history. After a little bit of looking around for policies/procedures, it seemed to me that the resolution would be to do a delete on the requested destination and then move from the longer name to the shorter name. The delete worked without incident, but then I guess I tried to do the move a little too soon because I got the usual conflict message. After a few seconds, I was able to do the move, but the edit history doesn't seem to be there from the page's longer name. The longer name's history only shows my move. Did I miss a step? AdThanksVance. slambo 16:45, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)

So either someone fixed the history or it was just a server cache that needed purging, but the history appears to be in the correct place now. slambo 18:57, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Talk:Gdansk/Vote

Whoever organised this did a sloppy job. They're purporting to make policy, in particular item 10 mandates a new definition of simple vandalism, but they're using a 50% bar (ie if a proposal gets more than half of all votes it becomes policy as far as the poll organiser is concerned). The upshot seems to be that there may now be a faction that will be inclined to treat whatever they regard as the "wrong" spelling of a certain city name as simple vandalism, thus exempt from WP:3RR.

I could be playing "chicken licken" on this, I freely admit, but it worries me a bit. What's so wrong with misspelling a city name anyway? --Tony Sidaway|Talk 00:27, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

In retrospect I would have changed the wording of the vote #10. My goal was to have reverts that comply with community consensus excempted from the 3RR, and only persistent reverts against community consensus despite multiple warnings may require further action. My goal was not to label this vandalism, as was also expressed by many voters. I am currently working on the voting results, which will reflect this view. Please hold while i count -- Chris 73 Talk 00:51, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

Results are on Talk:Gdansk/Vote (counted everything twice, hope there are no mistakes). The last vote was adjusted slightly, see Talk:Gdansk/Vote#Results on VOTE: Enforcement. Overall 44 voters agreed with the vote, and 28 opposed. Quite a number of voters on both sides opposed the label vandalism, which I should have worded differently at the beginning of the vote (Hindsight: 20/20, i guess ;). Many of the opposing voters also stated that they would have agreed to a 3RR exemption. The results are trying to incorporate these views. Comments are very welcome. Since I protected the vote page to avoid accidential voting after the vote ended, comments may be added on Talk:Gdansk/Vote/discussion. -- Chris 73 Talk 01:22, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Block wars

(Saw this on WP:AN/3RR, though it was worth moving here as a separate thread. Noel (talk) 15:39, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC))

In general, administrators should not second-guess the application by other administrators of rules such as the 3RR. Even if one administrator would have been more lenient than another has been, he should refrain from stepping in and altering the penalty imposed by the administrator who made the decision concerning what penalty to apply -- for example, by shortening a block or lifting it entirely. Otherwise, people will play the administrators off against each other, like kids with parents. No administrator wants to be in the position of being thought of as the one who will "fix tickets" handed out by the others: an administrator who gains a reputation for "fixing tickets" will pretty soon find himself plagued with requests to do so, and will be accused of playing favorites when he fixes some tickets and not others. Other administrators will be reluctant to impose penalties, which involves some conflict and stress, if they know their penalties will be altered or cancelled by other administrators who are more friendly towards the offenders. The whole system will be perceived by non-administrators as corrupt, with penalties determined by "who you know" rather than objective factors. If an administrator imposes a penalty, other administrators should alter that penalty only if it is incorrect under the policies and rules that have been established. --BM 00:20, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I am not arguing that administrators should "close ranks" and not reverse an erroneous decision by a colleague. That would be as bad as "second-guessing" a colleague. I am saying that if an administrator assumes responsibility for a case and imposes a penalty, the only person who should soften or alter that penalty is the administrator who imposed it, UNLESS the penalty oversteps or misinterprets the rules. No administrator should end a block or shorten it (or extend it for that matter) simply because he would have imposed a lighter or heavier penalty than the person who actually determined the penalty. Administrators should respect each other's decisions, and if they can't, then one of the administrators involved is not suited to be an administrator. --BM 00:45, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I support this whole heartedly. I'd like to suggest that no admin unilaterally undo the block/etc of another admin; before that could ever be done, it should be discussed here, and only if there is noticeable support for so doing (i.e. less than rough consensus, but enough to show that there is real doubt that the correct action was taken) for undoing an enforcement action should it be undone.

There's just too much potential for disagreement, e.g. about what constitutes an "edit" as opposed to what constitutes a "revert" (particularly for complex reverts). For the more borderline cases, that is just something that's inherently going to produce lack of agreement (when you pick two admins at random), since we'll never be able to completely codify it. Even worse, for almost any action, you can probably find one admin somewhere who disagrees with it. Hence my suggestion that nobody should unilaterally undertake to undo someone's enforcement action.

I think this suggestion has it about right - if something is excessive, or has widespread doubts as to its appropriateness, it can get fixed fairly easily. But we avoid "block wars". There's just too much "block warring" going on, and it's a lot more unseemly than edit warring. Noel (talk) 15:46, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The rules are pretty simple on block wars. If a block is disputed then the block doesn't hold. Recently there has only been one block war and that was due to an admin dissregarding the rules and unblocking themselves. Blocking users is not something to be encouraged. Admins do not own blocks any more than people own articles. Personaly I trust my fellow admins to do the right thing. If they decide I have made a mistake then I trust them to make the right descission. If If see an admin repeatedly taking what I view as the wrong descision I will draw this to wider attention. moving on their is the issue of sleep. Everyone has time away from wikipedia. What if the person wants to appeal about the block while you are asleep or at work (or in my case uni)? They are going to have to apeal to someone else.

In short from my point of view it boils down to three issues. First blocks are unilateral therefore unblocking should be. The second is the matter of trust. Currently there is only one admin who I would not trust to make the correct descission in undoing my blocks. Third who cares? One off unlbocks don;t matter much. If a negative pattern starts to appear it becomes the time to take actionGeni 16:32, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Slightly more complex blocking would be more fair

I have only recently become more involved in writing about my local area in Wikipedia. I'm by no means a Wikipedia pro like Admins, but I hope to learn and be there eventually. I have found learning some aspects of Wikipedia to be very difficult. I was crushed today to learn that my IP had been blocked from making changes to articles I have created. This is because I am using as AOL IP and another AOL-user did something to cause an admin to block the IP. So, I decided to create a username, hoping it would allow me to go ahead and edit these articles I wrote. No such luck. Therefore, I would like to suggest that the blocking mechanism be improved, so that if an IP is blocked but someone is using a username, they should not be blocked, especially if the IP is shared for a large group of users. Also, the admin who blocked me doesn't have an e-mail, so I wasn't even able to ask for help in determing why I was blocked. If someone is going to be blocking people, shouldn't they have to have some lines of communication available? I am a new user, so I certainly haven't seen every nook and cranny of Wikipedia, so maybe I'm just ignorant and missing something. If I didn't love reading/editing Wikipedia so much, this experience might have turned me off for good. As it is, I'll probably just try again tomorrow and hope my IP isn't blocked. Thanks for your consideration. -- AboutWestTulsa 17:11, 4 Mar 2005

We know about this problem it has been a standing request to the developers for ages to produces the fix you have suggested so far we haven't found anyone to code it.Geni 18:10, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It's not our fault AOL is the only ISP that uses rotating proxy servers. Block one AOL user, block thousands. There really isn't much that can be done; one idea has been to prevent anon blocks from affecting logged-in AOL users. I'd suggest switching to another ISP. --Slowking Man 21:19, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

NTL does it as well (you don't notice so mush since the ip stays fixed for each session). I suspect that in time most of the big ISP will follow aol on this one. Geni 22:28, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Should we put NTL's address ranges on the Block IP page alongside AOL? I blocked what I thought was a garden-variety dialup IP address and got a very angry response. I hope the developers will have decoupled username blocking and anon IP blocking before too many other ISPs go this route. -- Curps 23:00, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Probably we have been haveing problems with NTL blocks recently.Geni 23:22, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sourcewatch/Disinfopedia

Is there a policy about how to handle articles cut and pasted from this site? (such as Custer battles) Gamaliel 18:05, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Not that I know of. And if this article is an example of their work, we need one. There might be a kernel of a wikiNews article here but it's well short of the NPOV and fully verified encyclopedia article we want. I have tagged the article with {{disputed}} which should provide some warning until a trusted Wikipedian can scrub the article properly. Other thoughts? Rossami (talk) 19:10, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Also, in general, when taking material from any other source, even a public domain source, the references section should be explicit about where the material came from. This is not a legal matter, just one of simple intellectual honesty. See Wikipedia:Cite sources. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:25, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

There's a Template:Disinfopedia. Their articles will not necessarily comply with our policies, but the content can be used as a starting point if you comply with the GNU Free Documentation License, since SourceWatch is also licensed under the GFDL. --Michael Snow 05:08, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure that template applies. The example above used content from SourceWatch, not content from the Wikipeida article about SourceWatch. (An older version of the template would have applied however. Is there a reason it was changed?) Rossami (talk) 00:34, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The template isn't talking about the Wikipedia article. It just has a wikilink to SourceWatch, and it uses the PAGENAME variable for the external link to the relevant SourceWatch article. dbenbenn | talk 01:46, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Introduction

This page, linked to at the very top of the Main Page, is getting an incredible amount of vandalism. Occassionally someone reverts something but this just leaves a previously vandalised version. I wasn't able to find a definitive unvandalised version to revert to, and even if I had it would probably have been defaced very quickly. This really ought to be protected—it's surely one of our highest-visibility pages. — Trilobite (Talk) 12:50, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

No, no, no. Did you read that page? Apparently, it is meant to be some kind of Sandbox. Now whether it makes sense to have so many sandboxes around is another issue... Lupo 13:00, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Personally I think having several sandboxes is no bad thing. If a newbie doesn't find one, he'll find another one. The important thing is to encorage newbie editors. I've never look at the introduction page, but having seen it I love it. I think it's great that people are using it. Theresa Knott (ask the rotten) 13:10, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

(First bit directed at Lupo) Yes I did read the page. Please don't assume every lowly Wikipedian who comes to humbly petition the administrators' noticeboard is an idiot. The point is that it's supposed to be a bit of introductory text to inform people about Wikipedia. Encouraging its use as a sandbox is not the best idea, particularly when we have a perfectly good sandbox already. People continually deleting the template is all very well in the sandbox, but if we have graffiti of the "fcwrpm,tw59tcpotep0 JOHN IS GAY!!!!11" kind all the time instead of what is meant to be an introduction, this doesn't look too good. Why not just put a link on the intro page directing people to the sandbox where they can edit to their hearts' content? — Trilobite (Talk) 13:24, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Welcoming committee is the place to bring up ideas on changing the introductory pages. --iMb~Mw 13:48, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I love this page - it is a well done section. Although, I would support protecting the templates that are used in Introduction 1, Introduction 2 and Introduction 3, all that is needed on Introduction X is a little vigilence.

The rest of the vandalism and honest edits can be deleted - of course I have to edit manually since I don't have the handy dandy revert tool - so it is easy for me to click edit and just leave in (or paste in) the first two lines. Trödel|talk 15:36, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for keeping an eye on that. If you're going to do so regularly, you might want to sign up for it at Wikipedia:Cleaning department (and of course delete yourself if you stop :-) so we know someone is dealing with it. Noel (talk) 19:33, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Accidental picture deletion

I hope I'm posting this in the right place – feel free to move it if not. The picture Image:Autofellatio.jpg was deleted by User:Ahoerstemeier accidentally, since it was apparently a part of a vandalism campaign. (From the block log: 06:23, 8 Mar 2005 Ahoerstemeier deleted Image:Autofellatio.jpg). For those of you who don't know, Image:Autofellatio.jpg was listed on IfD a while ago and kept, although it was linked from autofellatio following a number of polls and voluminous discussion. Ahoerstemeier said on his talk page that "I don't have that image so I cannot reupload it, nor do I think such a porn image belongs here." I'm not familiar with the admin deletion function, so I don't know, but is there any way to get the picture back? Thanks, TIMBO (T A L K) 05:32, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Admins cannot undelete images. I think developers may be able to access itin the database, but I think your best bet is to check Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks if they still have it. -- Chris 73 Talk 05:43, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)

Great idea. It's back. TIMBO (T A L K) 06:27, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Some food for thought WRT offensive usernames

We have a user going by the name of Earl Turner, making some racist edits. Just so everyone knows, Earl Turner is the protogonist of the Turner Diaries, a piece of white supremacist hate-lit. I'm curious if you guys think that our offensive user name blocking policy covers this. THe name itself is subtle enough that only a tiny, tiny fraction of people would know enough to recognize it for what it is. (I play quiz bowl and have read the beginning of the book, so it rung a bell with me). →Raul654 09:09, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)

I'd agree that name + edits makes this offensive. Filiocht 09:19, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. When we start defining some "politically suggestive" usernames as unacceptable, we open up a whole new arena for trolling and wasteful debating about degrees of offensiveness about political POVs. I would be very narrow about excluding this category-- maybe would only exclude something as offensively extreme as user:killthe___s on the basis of name alone. A name like adolph or osama is just a name, not a demon to be summoned by using it. It actually serves as a potential warning to pay attention to the edits. Don't you think there might be an advantage if our POV warriors were required to wear identifying t-shirts, so to speak, until they broke enough rules? alteripse 12:01, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree with alteripse that the username by itself is no reason to get seriously upset; if we decide to judge a name as (comparatively) harmless as that as inappropriate, we are indeed moving on a slippery slope and inviting lots of future controversy about what names might be offensive to someone. The user's edits, however, clearly indicate racist tendencies, so he might be worth keeping an eye on regardless of his name -- Ferkelparade π 13:09, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Note that I said I found the combination of racist edits with this particular user name offensive. Similarly User:Adolph might be fine as a name, but if that user starts deleting sections on the holocaust from articles, then I no longer consider it acceptable. All these things must be judged in a context. Filiocht 13:41, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)

Having had another look at his edit history, it's pretty clear he's a POV pusher without any intentions of working constructively and his misleading edit summaries border on vandalism, but I still think that if any action is taken against him, it should not be based on our "inappropriate usernames" policy. In the context of his edits, of course his username is not innocent, but the context of his edits gives us enough reason to warn (and, if he persists, eventually block) him without invoking that policy -- Ferkelparade π 15:16, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

In cases where a username is offensive only within the context of its editing behavior, the behavior is probably inappropriate enough that we can address it without worrying about the user name. (Hypothetical User:Adolph would be warned and possibly blocked for vandalism even if his username were something different.) -Aranel ("Sarah") 15:20, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

agree with Aranel. it the recognition value of the name is practically zero, it is not offensive in the sense that people will be outraged by the username alone. It would be poorly invested time to do detective work on every pov-pusher's username that might conceiveably be a subculture reference to something offensive. These people will get themselves blocked over their edits anyway, and then just pick another username (signing up is cheap...) dab (ᛏ) 10:43, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I blocked Earl Turner for lying on edit summaries, vandalism, and making racist comments in his edits. RickK 20:07, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Cut and paste move repair holding pen

There is currently a problem with deleting older articles, which sometimes makes it impossible to fix cut and paste moves.

I have created Wikipedia:Cut and paste move repair holding pen as a place to hold articles waiting for this problem to be fixed (so their histories can be merged). (I debated created a category for them as well, but decided not too - there no good reason I can think of for gunking up their histories.)

I have linked to it from Wikipedia:How to fix cut and paste moves; if there's anyplace else it should be linked from, please do so.

If you run across more of these situations, please add them to the list there. Thanks! Noel (talk) 15:25, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

There's another list of pending history merges at Wikipedia:Requested moves#History mergers. You might want to merge the two lists and update the instructions at the top of WP:RM accordingly. Gdr 18:18, 2005 Apr 6 (UTC)

Oooh, thanks for the tip. Will do. Noel (talk) 16:54, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This apparently got done while I was off sick with the flu (just catching up on stuff now).

It's worth noting that to some degree, the holding pen has been replaced with use of Template:Pending merge, which adds things to Category:Pending merge: you're supposed to move the page needing to be merged to {Foo}/history, and add the template to the top of that. Noel (talk) 15:30, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

Is there a place for non-admins to report cut and paste moves so that histories can be merged? I'm assuming that the Wikipedia:Cut and paste move repair holding pen is just for moves where the block compression bug is an issue. The recent move of Stain (biology) to Staining (biology) is what brought this to my attention, but it might be a good idea to provide general instructions for non-admins on Wikipedia:How to fix cut and paste moves and/or Wikipedia:Requested moves. --TenOfAllTrades | Talk 20:23, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No, as far as I can see there isn't; we ought to have a place (and it ought to be mentioned on the two pages you list). One suggestion is a new Wikipedia:Requests for history merge page; another suggestion is to divide Wikipedia:Cut and paste move repair holding pen into two sections: one for these requests from non-admin editors, and one for the those cases which can't be done because of the block-compress problem, and don't otherwise fit into the {{Pending merge}} system. Noel (talk) 15:30, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

I've drafted a new version of Wikipedia:Cut and paste move repair holding pen that incorporates the second section; it's in my sandbox. Thoughts? --TenOfAllTrades (talk/contrib) 16:29, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

That looks good. I'd consider chaning the title of the first section to Cut and paste moves needing repair or simply remove the word "Admin" - you explain at the top that it needs admin privs, and the current title feels unnecessarily wordy to me. Thryduulf 17:07, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Template:deletebecauseoncommons

(and its short form {{dbc}})

This had a vote of 2 delete to 1 keep until the other day, when I told User:Knowledge Seeker about the template (since he was moving his images to commons, as I was when I created it), and he agreed that it was useful and voted keep. Even the original 2 to 1 is not the normal 70%, but this brought it to 2 to 2. Knowledge Seeker's vote was removed with no explanation. The template still exists, and has the {{tfd}} notice up top. Anyone know what's going on here? --SPUI (talk) 12:27, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

There seems to be a certain amount of mild confusion at WP:TfD over what the right procedure is, with a new user trying to help and not getting it quite right. Furthermore, this particular template seems to have fallen into a crack in the procedute - I'd have said that with that few votes, and some dissent against ditching it, it might have been best to let well enough alone. Noel (talk) 20:13, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Requests for de-adminship

I'd like to ask for any feedback on the process I've outlined on this page. I understand that this is a controversial issue, but I also see that we have no consensus-based way of removing sysop status. Indeed, it seems that the only method that has been done in the past is via the dispute resolution process. Certainly, gaining adminship should be "no big deal", and removing it should be, but it should not be impossible.

I am concerned that as certain admins come to understand that there is no easy way of removing their access, those which have a disposition toward conflict and policy violation do not have a "compensating control". The process I've outlined mirrors very closely the process for gaining adminship, requiring a consensus for support of the request. I've also proposed a petition system (requiring at least ten signers) to prevent gross abuse of the de-adminship process. I welcome comments and suggestions on the talk page. -- Netoholic @ 19:07, 2005 Mar 14 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Blocking policy#Anonymous and open proxies

I was contacted by User:Natalinasmpf after blocking the ip proxy User:169.244.70.148; they use this IP proxy to make valid edits. According to the blocking policy, is this IP covered in the class of IPs that should be banned? I'm not familiar with the technology myself, so I'm posting the issue here. As for the anonymous edits made at that IP, they are nothing but vandalism. --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 20:54, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

I have unblocked this user. Since this is an IP address shared by many people, vandalism is inevitable. But we do have at least one legitimate user who also uses this IP address. If you do block this IP, please make your block no longer than necessary. Blocking for an entire month is too long. I would say a few hours should be the maximum, for sustained vandalism. Rhobite 08:45, Mar 17, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] History of the Umbrella and copyright issues

I'm a little concerned about the edits by User:Pwqn. He pastes paragraphs and paragraphs from Project Gutenberg texts directly into Wikipedia. After someone complained, he at least started formatting and linking the articles in properly. While I understand that the Gutenberg license allows for the full copying and pasting of source text, I know that it has strange restrictions on the free modification of that text. Also, the text he pastes in is often in archaic grammar: [1], [2], and often breaks other formatting. The user does not respond to talk page requests which makes it difficult to ascertain his intent. --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 20:54, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

The PG restrictions on editing are: If it contains the Project Gutenberg header, the body of the text must not have been changed from the version released by PG. If the body of the text is edited, the edited version must not have the PG header. --Carnildo 22:08, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yeah... In this case the user is pasting the text unedited, without the PG header. Also, shouldn't we at least require that they cite the book that the passage came from in the "References" section? Even so, I'm not so much worried with the legal status. I'm more worried because I don't find these edits to the wikipedia to be particularly useful. For the most part they're just an unlinked mess, usually written in somewhat archaic grammar and with strange formatting conventions. Some of his edits contain very unencyclopedic passages on topics only peripherally related to the topic he's editing. I'm not sure if anything has to be done at this point, but it maybe useful to keep an eye on him. --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 22:42, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

People often confuse copyright concerns and plagiarism concerns. If you paste someone else's work into an article - even if it's public domain - you must cite the work. And unless it's written in concise, explanatory paragraphs it's probably not suitable for Wikipedia. I'll try to keep an eye on this user's edits. Rhobite 23:02, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Admin log

Apparently the decision of a bureaucrat to promote me to admin on 48/12/1 has aroused a little controversy Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship#Tony_Sidaway_RFA. I think it's in the spirit of a Wiki to keep activities open, so I have decided to keep an account of all administrative activity I carry out, in wikified form. Comments on individual items are invited--it's a list so you can just add a comment as a bullet point to the item you're commenting on. Anything major should of course be taken to this noticeboard or WP:AN/I or WP:AN/3RR. The log is User:Tony Sidaway/Admin log --Tony Sidaway|Talk 14:34, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

There's always the Wikipedia log page for you, which shows all blocks, protects and deletes you do. Noel (talk) 14:17, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

My page is basically just a wikified version of that--so that I and others can add comments. It will also survive a software upgrade--the last one we had, in late December, seems to have trashed the logs. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 11:56, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The software upgrade didn't trash the logs; it created them. Before, the logs were automatically-edited wiki pages (Wikipedia:Deletion log, Wikipedia:Block log, etc.) and all the old history is still available there. The combined log is a feature of MW 1.4. — Dan | Talk 14:09, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Excellent. I need some of that information badly for my history of clitoris in the Dr Zen arbcom case. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 14:50, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Speedy deletions of "already in Wiktionary" articles

In a laudable effort to clean up Category:Copy to Wiktionary, a number of articles have been marked with the speedy deletion tags. However, some of these articles have long since expanded beyond dictionary entries (e.g. realm, a type 1 disambiguation article currently listed in CAT:CSD for being "in Wiktionary") and in others the transwikification process simply wasn't done properly, and speedily deleting the article will render the edit history (required for transwikification) inaccessible. I urge any administrators on speedy deletion patrol to be cautious about deleting these articles, and to hold off deleting them until things are sorted out at Category talk:Move to Wiktionary. Uncle G 19:01, 2005 Mar 15 (UTC)

[edit] TBSDY

How on God's shiny earth is it possible that a fantastic admin like Ta bu shi da yu should have left Wikipedia? I think an analysis of the circumstances of his departure would be the least we could do. JFW | T@lk 06:18, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

From User:Ta bu shi da yu and User talk:Ta bu shi da yu, and comments in other places, it seems he has decided to go cold turkey from Wikipedia to concentrate on some more important things in Real Life™ - I hope it is just an extended WikiBreak, something that most of us need from time to time. -- ALoan (Talk) 11:47, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

He said something to that effect. I'm still concerned that particular trollish characters have made TBSDY walk out. I also hope this is a Wikibreak. We need him too much. JFW | T@lk 07:25, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Don't stress. Noone forced me out. I need to deal with Real Life some more... as you can see I'm still a little addicted and am my Own Worst Enemy. See Insanity. Besides, you guys will do OK without me! I have a great deal of confidence that you'll be fair and reasonable to everyone, and countermand a decision (with politeness, of course) when you see someone make a bad judgement call. - Ta bu shi da yu 08:16, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

We'll still miss you. But we may put the User:Ta_bu_shi_da_yu/WWTBSDYD template to good use now :) (maybe move it to Template: namespace?) dab (ᛏ) 13:54, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Comment on categorization

Your feedback is requested on a bold proposal to make categorization more stable and consistent, at Wikipedia:Categorization policy. Specifically, the idea is to disallow normal users from adding or renaming categories, and instead work from a 'request new category' page to ensure all categories are consistent in name and organization. Radiant_* 13:40, Mar 17, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Query about blocked users

Do they see the "you have new messages" notice?Geni 10:32, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Would you like someone to block you so you can find out? :-) (Momentarily, of course! :-) Noel (talk) 14:27, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yes, blocked users see the notice. -- Grunt   ҈  15:32, 2005 Mar 20 (UTC)

[edit] wikipedia:Arbitration policy/Proposed amendment revote

For those of you who haven't seen this yet, I direct your attention to Wikipedia:Arbitration policy/Proposed amendment revote (and also wikipedia:Arbitration policy/Proposals) and remind you to put your voice in there so we can get the whole amendment thing over with. -- Grunt   ҈  15:33, 2005 Mar 20 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia talk:Requests for de-adminship

Please weigh in on your opinions regarding this proposed procedure for de-Adminning. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 17:16, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Revert bug?

I noticed lately that when I try to revert back more than one edit (say, when two acts of vandalism occur back to back), that my automated revert will only go back back one revision (example here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stony_Brook_University&action=history. On 00:33 21 Mar 2005 I tried to revert to the last edit by 68.195.88.148, and failed). Has anybody seen this, or am I out of my mind? – ClockworkSoul 05:37, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I don't understand. Do you think the rollback button has AI? How would it know you wanted to rollback to 68.195.88.148 and not to 205.188.116.70? silsor 05:41, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I should clarify. Not by the rollback button. It was so that when I would compare two revisions, I would click the rollback link and the later revision would be reverted to the earlier revision. This no longer seems to be so. Rather, it will revert the earliest revision that is not by me. Sorry about the confusion. – ClockworkSoul 05:53, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The rollback link removes all changes by the last person to edit the page. silsor 06:09, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)

I've tried to do that before; it forces you to do a manual rv on that kind of vandalism. It'd be a great feature to have (I think), why make a request in [bugzilla.wikipedia.org bugzilla]? -Frazzydee|✍ 01:57, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Oops, meant http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org, it can be so picky sometimes :P -Frazzydee|✍ 23:05, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Rollback failed

While trying to roll back several edits made by a vandal, I ran into this situation:

Rollback failed

There seems to be a problem with your login session; this action has been canceled as a precaution against session hijacking. Please hit "back" and reload the page you came from, then try again.

Any idea why this is happening? RickK 07:48, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

You're not using AOL, are you? --Carnildo 08:56, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Um, yeah, I am.  :) RickK 21:26, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

That could explain it, then. AOL's system of using random transparent proxies in a very large IP space for all connections to the Internet breaks most anti-session-hijacking measures, in a way unfavorable to honest users. --Carnildo 21:57, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I get this too, from time to time, and I'm on cable. I assumed that it was a database burp, like the others that I regularly get during high-traffic periods. – ClockworkSoul 23:58, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I get these occasionally too, and I also use cable. Tuf-Kat 05:06, Mar 27, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Unblocking IP after user is blocked... a problem

Hello. User:Gumba gumba was blocked indefinitely, as "all edits vandalism". He had been blocked earlier for 24 hours and came right back. However, he seems to be using a shared IP, so the username should be blocked, but not the underlying IP.

According to Wikipedia:Blocking policy, the thing to do is wait for an "autoblocked because you share an IP" notice to appear at Special:Ipblocklist and then unblock that. However, I've done that half a dozen times now (see Special:Log/block, and new autoblock notices keep appearing. Does this work as advertised?

Can someone look into this? Unfortunately I have to step away from the computer soon. -- Curps 22:29, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I thought IP autoblocks expired after 24 hours anyway, even if the user account was blocked indefinitely? Lupo 22:40, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Apparently this user is using a shared proxy IP. Waiting 24 hours is really not an option. User:Tony Sidaway and I unblocked about ten IP autoblocks over nearly 45 minutes, but they just kept coming, and finally had to unblock User:Gumba gumba. Imagine that, an unblockable non-anonymous vandal. The software leaves much to be desired. -- Curps 23:01, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

His IP gets auto-blocked for 24 hours every time he logs in, so blocking him and then unblocking the auto-block works, unless he keeps trying to edit under User:Gumba gumba, as each time he does that the IP gets auto-blocked again. --Weyes 23:12, 2005 Mar 24 (UTC)

So a vandal user on an ISP that uses shared proxy IPs can carry out a denial of service attack against fellow Wikipedia users on that same ISP, just by repeatedly trying to edit under their own username? That's insane. Why can't we just block a username without blocking an IP, and why wasn't that a feature from DAY ONE? -- Curps 23:46, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It was there at day one, but at a certain point auto-blocking was introduced, and getting that up and running was deemed more important than making it optional. Ask for someone to hack up a fix at wikitech-l, and in the meantime advise those who are affected to disable the proxy in their browser settings, or, if it's a transparent proxy and cannot be disabled, to use one of the many available public proxies. --Weyes 00:34, 2005 Mar 25 (UTC)

The problem would disappear as soon as Bug 550 would find a developer to implement. andy 15:11, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] real vs. simple vs. complex reverts?

I find myself puzzled by an apparent lack on consistency on what is considered a "revert" according to policy pages and what is considered a "revert" here. Comments here such as "If you want to present evidence for a 3RR you should give the diffs which show that the violating user has not actually added anything in", "Two real reverts, one complex revert", "the 3rd suggested revert is just about "complex" enough to get away with it" -- perhaps I'm not seeing something, but I thought Wikipedia:Revert was fairly clear on what constitutes a revert. Neither that page nor Wikipedia:Three-revert rule contain any reference that I can find to a distinction between simple/real/complex edits for purposes of the three-revert rule. I'm a little confused therefore that some administrators are apparently regarding "adding anything in" as a way to accomplish three reverts without being blocked for it; if anything, making an exception for "complex" reverts seems even more damaging, since it would encourage bad actors to make "red herring" changes of no actual value. -- Antaeus Feldspar 19:02, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ok welcome to the fun world of the 3RR. It seems simple. This is the problem it is very easy to game. So we come to the issue about what to do about people gaming the rule. The current consensus amounst admins is to treat cases where the person has been gameing the rule to avoid triggering it. So how do we decide if someone is gameing the rule? My personal standards is that it must be clear and for preference the user has a history of this type of activity. The term complex revert refers to a revert that is aimed at gameing the system. Repeated false 3RR claims is a bad idea since it doesn't look good if an RFC is field about youGeni 00:55, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

"Complex reverts" happen when an editor doesn't simply revert to a previous version, but also makes a number of simultaneous other changes in order to restore his preferred version, while claiming that it is not a revert. As has been pointed out by a number of admins, had the editor simply reverted, then added the other changes, it would have clearly been a revert, but the additional changes mask this. "Red herring" changes are an example of another way people attempt to get around the 3RR. Complex reverts are treated as any other revert, though the ingenuity of editors in gaming the system means it's not always completely clear when someone is doing this. Jayjg ^(talk) 02:03, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well, the problem I'm having, then, is that you say complex reverts are treated as any other revert, while some of the administrator comments that I quoted above seem to be treating them differently. What does "If you want to present evidence for a 3RR you should give the diffs which show that the violating user has not actually added anything in" mean, if not "show the diffs for a simple revert, not a complex one"? -- Antaeus Feldspar 02:26, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

they are only treated the same if the user is gameing the system. There is some inconstancy on how this is decided. Personaly I need to see clear patterns before deciding that they are (ie I need to see more than one set of activities that suggest they are gameing the system)Geni 00:20, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It seems to me that user TDC is a serial gamer, and he freely acknowledges it. After I listed him here last night, he wrote under the listing: Nice way to try and trap me with a lefty pile on, too bad I am too smart for your tomfoolery.TDC 21:45, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC) and on my talk page, under the heading "3RR": Awww, someone failed to entrap me. Nice try and what'n, but try harder next time, I am ,after all, a fucking pro at this by now. Ciao. TDC 21:50, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC). After a fifth revert, it was obvious, at least to Geni, what he was up to, and he was given another 24-hour block, the fourth by my count in a month. For the most part, I don't feel he acts in good faith, since he doesn't really engage other users on article Talk pages while reverting. Is there anything we can do about this kind of behaviour? -- Viajero 10:37, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

In fact after the fith "revert" he had made four straight reverts. If people keep breaking the rule it is a matter for arbcomGeni 12:06, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well, I will file a complaint if given a little encouragement. I just don't want to go through the trouble of gathering diffs etc and then be told I need to file a RfC or something first. -- Viajero 01:06, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It's really a pity, because TDC knows quite a bit, and has a lot to contribute, but he seems more interested in slanting articles toward a particular POV than in building good articles, and he uses process entirely as a weapon rather than as a matter of facilitation. I have literally never seen him make an edit that wasn't POV-pushing, and I intersect with him on at least a dozen articles, probably two dozen. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:38, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)

It's not just POV in his case, but factual accuracy. If you look at Talk:Paul Robeson, he has repeatedly attempted to insert the same paragraph, citing different sources each time. When someone looks up one of his references, it has little or nothing to do with the issue at hand, so he picks another reference and pushes the same material. I'm not sure he isn't simply making things up entirely. An RfC, at the very least, seems in order. Gamaliel 06:12, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

And he seems to be using User:Dagen as a sockpuppet. Gamaliel 06:26, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Request to edit 2 MediaWiki messages

Over at MediaWiki talk:Missingarticle and MediaWiki talk:Dberrortext (pending for any kind of response for over 3 months). BTW should this page be added as an option for editing protected pages at Wikipedia:Requests for sysop attention? Thanks! -- Paddu 16:31, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC) (Not an admin)

Just wanted to update that only a spelling error got fixed thanks to User:Frazzydee. But I also wanted the messages to ask bugs to be filed on Bugzilla instead of contacting sysops about bugs. This wasn't done & I got no response why it shouldn't be done. Probably there should be a link to Wikipedia:Bug reports in both the messages (& probably others). Thanks! -- Paddu 20:40, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC) (Not an admin)

If there is general consensus (and silence==consent) that this is a good idea, I will add the Bugzilla link for Paddu. Noel (talk) 14:51, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Impersonation in other Wikipedias

I've noticed a couple examples of accounts being created in other-language Wikipedias with the same name as an editor here. The accounts are then used for various sorts of vandalism. It really doesn't do any harm here, and I'm not certain that anything can be done about it, but I thought I'd just mention it. — Knowledge Seeker দ 08:14, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• The only way this is going to be solved is for a universal login to take effect. Mgm|^(talk) 18:44, Mar 27, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, that's what I figured. Either that or preemptively registering your name in other Wikipedias. — Knowledge Seeker দ 02:07, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Block conflict question

Pardon my ignorance; I am a relatively new administrator and a couple times another administrator and I blocked the same person without realizing the other had already blocked him. How long will the block last? I can't find this anywhere although I thought I saw something about shorter blocks, but it was on a talk page somewhere. One of us blocked for 24 hours, the other one indefinitely. Any information would be appreciated. Thanks! — Knowledge Seeker দ 02:07, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The newer block replaces the old one. So whatever block length you put down is the block length that will be used. I had the same question a couple of weeks ago. BrokenSegue 02:55, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC) Apparently someone told me the wrong information. BrokenSegue 05:47, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I have a related question. When dealing with a user account set up to vandalize (and which has made no or virtually no regular edits), what is the usual period to block for? Wikipedia:Dealing with vandalism says up to one month for static IP addresses. Does that also refer to user accounts, or can these be blocked indefinitely? SlimVirgin 02:27, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

From Wikipedia:Blocking policy: "Sysops may also block new user accounts that make lots of disruptive edits, for any length of time or permanently, at their discretion. Sockpuppets that were created to violate Wikipedia policy should be blocked permanently." Jayjg ^(talk) 03:09, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, Jay. SlimVirgin 03:12, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

According to User:Tim Starling in #mediawiki, and as confirmed by a bit of testing I did (as you may have noticed in the block log), the shortest block is the one which takes effect, and not the oldest or newest. — Dan | Talk 05:49, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Blocking myself was something I hadn't considered trying; nice idea. Thanks, Dan. So then my next question is: suppose an administrator blocks someone indefinitely, and I then block the same person for 24 hours (SlimVirgin and I blocked the same person during the same minute). I check the log and see that she was first—how do we restore the indefinite block? Do I unblock the user and then reblock indefinitely? — Knowledge Seeker দ 06:03, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Yes, you do. Don't forget to mention the reblock in the reason field. This is exactly why I check the block log before blocking someone. - Mgm|^(talk) 09:39, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

Here's a feature idea: first, put a "Block" tab near the "Delete" tab (in the default layout) for admins viewing User pages. Second, when you click the tab, you automatically see that user's complete block history. Good idea? dbenbenn | talk 00:05, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Korath implemented this idea at User:Korath/blockip.js, which needs to go in your monobook.js. dbenbenn | talk 19:08, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Excellent! Wow, this is exactly what I needed. Thanks for pointing it out! — Knowledge Seeker দ 07:19, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)