Wikisource:Administrators' noticeboard/Archives/2019

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Request for unprotection of Is There a Santa Claus?

This section was archived on a request by: Xover (talk) 08:45, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

Please unprotect Is There a Santa Claus?, a versions page. This page had been a text page before it was moved at 01:43, 13 June 2011 to Is There a Santa Claus? (New York Sun), which has been protected for integrity since 09:30, 23 March 2007. ‎Is There a Santa Claus? should be unprotected since it has been changed to versions page. --Neo-Jay (talk) 03:19, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

Agree with this logic, so Done. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 06:33, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
Thank you! --Neo-Jay (talk) 08:29, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

Disruptive SPA

Hey could someone please block Bill Dance 22 without TPA, he's the w:en:WP:LTA/DENVER perp. --IanDBeacon (talk) 20:56, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

@IanDBeacon: user is now globally locked. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 21:34, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Xover (talk) 04:41, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Sock-puppet

The user Zesharn Mahmood [who has been disruptively editing] is most likely a sockpuppet of the globally blocked accountZeshan Mahmood known for disruptive pro-Pakistan editing. Please see if this can dealt with. You might also want to look at the Commons SPA case. Gotitbro (talk) 07:36, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

The edits were all appropriately dealt with at the time. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 04:10, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Xover (talk) 04:41, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Deletion / block request

If an admin could delete (and protect) my user talk page and block the IP who created it (Special:Contributions/2605:3E80:D00:10:0:0:0:E), it'd be appreciated. I don't edit here, so if you can make it so my user pages can only be edited by confirmed users, that would be best. Only (talk) 12:32, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

The protection request is somewhat unorthodox, but in the circumstances, Done. I'll leave the blocking question for someone more familiar with IPv6 ranges. BethNaught (talk) 13:55, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
@Bethnaught: thanks for the deletion/protection. I get random "enemies" who leave these harassing comments at my user talk pages throughout the Wikimedia projects on projects I never edit, so it's better if they're protected so those users can't create those pages. Only (talk) 14:44, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Xover (talk) 04:39, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

User:Abuse filter user page de-redlinked

Prompted by the discussion at User talk:Mpaa#Question about User:Abuse filter I've gone ahead and created it based on the equivalent Wikidata page. Background on the account (which may have slipped under the radar for many) can be found in Tech News: 2019-02. --Xover (talk) 18:42, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: Xover (talk) 04:40, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

LTA

Pages: WP:AN, Rfpp, AIV
WP:LTA: Special:Contributions/92.40.249.0/24

@Tegel: just blocked the LTA for this. The user also created some weird pages that seem to mirror random internal Wikipedia discussions. Some of those project discussions are ongoing, so I don't know if we should notify them there. Either way, the pages should eventually be deleted after review. –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 21:29, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Speedy deleted all three as out of scope for us. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 22:40, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Xover (talk) 04:39, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

This isn't page blanking

Tracked in PhabricatorTask T219514Resolved

Does anyone know why this edit was incorrectly flagged as "page blanking"? --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:41, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

I'd like to try and answer that, but I do not have the current user rights to view private filters (nor probably should I). @Billinghurst: could you take a look at Special:AbuseFilter/9, please? –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 22:18, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
Only "abuse filter editors" can view this; i.e. about four active editors. Hesperian 00:09, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
I am aware of this, and that's why I pinged Billinghurst. My suspicion is that this issue may have occurred on another wiki as well as ours, and he would be the one best suited for that I'd reckon.
If there was an edit filter helper right like on some other wikis, I'd probably would be interested in having it. That's not the case, and I don't feel I am established enough to even consider requesting the abuse filter right. Small note: I'm pretty sure admins can view as well. At least they can on enwiki. Every project is different, so idk... –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 00:24, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
Admins can self-include themselves in the group "abuse filter editor". — Hrishikes (talk) 02:43, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
Okay, so I wasn't totally off base then. –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 02:56, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
The edit filter, for some reason, is calculating old and new page size as 0 for all edits. The abuse filter does not tag edits by editors with sufficiently many edits; if it did, the abuse filter would be tagging every single edit on this site :S —Beleg Tâl (talk) 14:37, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
Edit: not all edits. Not sure why, but some diffs show old_wikitext and new_wikitext as blank, which would explain the calculation of new_size = 0 and the subsequent flagging as page blanking. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 14:56, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
Current hypothesis: issue affects all edits in Page namespace. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 14:59, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
Anyway, I've posted at phab:T219514 —Beleg Tâl (talk) 15:15, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
And they've fixed it! ProofreadPage extension was using an old method of passing text, which was no longer supported by AbuseFilter; ProofreadPage has been updated and there should be no more false positives. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 20:30, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Xover (talk) 04:38, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Confession time - I made a mistake...

For reference, I managed to blank something by mistake when (unexpectedly) logged out:- https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Index:Records_of_Woman.pdf&oldid=9186723

I noticed immediately and repaired the mistake, but still noting it here for transparency reasons. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 11:23, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: Xover (talk) 04:37, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

American Seashells

Could you, please, undelete:

and possibly other related pages in main & author ns which I cannot see.

The File:American Seashells (1954).djvu was restored on Commons. Its deletion was incorrect (DR nomination based on false rationale; deleting admin did not verify that). Ankry (talk) 07:10, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Done. Yann: thanks!--Zyephyrus (talk) 13:34, 18 April 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Xover (talk) 04:37, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Moving Pictures in Rhyme

I am writing to apologize for the massive moves I am going to perform. I have transcluded the work Pictures in Rhyme as the contributor who proofread most of the work did not know how to do it. However, I was mislead by the red link at the Index page and by the name of the djvu file and named the work and all its subpages "Pictures In Rhyme" instead of the correct "Pictures in Rhyme". Now I am going to move all of them which means that quite a lot of unnecessary redirects will be tagged to delete. I do apologize for the inconvenience. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 22:05, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: Xover (talk) 06:23, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

The Law of Liberty

An anonymous IP user keeps replacing the transcribed text at The Law of Liberty with images of the pages. Can someone semi-protect the page? Kaldari (talk) 22:56, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Done Although if scans are available, it would be good to migrate to transcription. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:28, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Xover (talk) 04:36, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Treaty of Paris (1812)

A user uploaded English treaty text to Multilingual Wikisource, but it seems to belong here. Can an admin import the text with history? Ankry (talk) 22:46, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

The text is already here, Treaty of Paris (1814). Despite the year in the title, they appear to be identical. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 15:37, 22 May 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Xover (talk) 04:36, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Dog and Rapper Vandal

Reporting [offensive username redacted --Xover (talk) 04:35, 25 June 2019 (UTC)] as a harassment only account and as a sock of the Dog and Rapper Vandal. Please run a sleeper check too. --IanDBeacon (talk) 15:11, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

There are (and have been) no edits here from that user. CheckUser functions for enWS are run by the Stewards. Presumably they are already involved. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 02:34, 24 May 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Xover (talk) 04:35, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Protect userpage?

This user has not made a logged-in edit since 2016, and the user page is getting IP edits recently. I'd suggest protecting the user page (unless the user expresses a different preference) -Pete (talk) 21:52, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

  • The instances of vandalism seem to be rather isolated. BD2412 T 23:23, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
    • Sure -- my concern is, I'm not sure whether any admins (or anybody at all) is watching that page, and I'd rather not be responsible for tracking it. I can keep an eye on it but it's likely I'll miss something. I don't know what the standard practices are here, but to me it seems like a good practice to default to protecting a user page if there's any reason to do so at all, in the absence of an objection from the user. -Pete (talk) 23:26, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
It's now on my watchlist. I do sometimes protect userpages, but I prefer to wait for multiple instances. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 03:58, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
Thanks Beeswaxcandle (talk • contribs) Just logging here that the same vandalism was repeated today. -Pete (talk) 19:41, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
Reverted page to last stable version and protected it. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 19:48, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I've also put the page on my watchlist. And as the page now requires autoconfirmed to edit the IP vandalism should drop off. So I'm marking this section as resolved: do please feel free to remove the template if you believe there is more to discuss or the section should not be archived yet! --Xover (talk) 06:27, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Xover (talk) 06:27, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Request for autopatrol

Hi. I'd like to request autopatroled rights. I focus on US Supreme Court cases, and their opinions are all public domain. I understand the strict rules about copyright and believe that I can be trusted with this right. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 09:25, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

@DannyS712: Autopatrol implemented Ineuw (talk) 22:40, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Xover (talk) 04:31, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

crosswiki vandalism

Please delete User talk:WikiBayer and User talk:Rodhullandemu and protect for a long time See enwikinews commons, Wikiversity, Wikispecies and other projects.(SWMT)---WikiBayer (talk) 23:39, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

@WikiBayer: I see Prosfilaes has already taken care of your request—both talk pages are semi-protected and the offending account indeffed—so I'm marking this section as resolved. Note that RH&E's talkpage has legitimate content in the edit history so that's not been deleted, but the offensive edits have been revdel'ed. --Xover (talk) 04:30, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Indeffed user has made two unblock requests since. I have declined them both and have placed an indefinite protection on their talk page. If the block length is modified, please feel free to unprotect without checking with me first. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 07:10, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Xover (talk) 04:30, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Okay this is the second time I've had to revert vandalism on a user talk page...

https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Bbb23&action=history

Can an admin please apply revdel (or even oversight) some disturbing vandalism which isn't work safe? On some other sites I've been active this type of vandalism is grounds for an extended block. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 23:06, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Same type of vandalism as in the history here - https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:INeedSupport&action=history from a simmilar IP address, so I am wondering if it might be the same entity responsible... Not sure if a range block is appropriate yet.ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 23:10, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
There are a string of xwiki LTAs who seek to cause displeasure wherever they can do so. Generally flowing on from the WPs, so we simply shut it down and protect the pages. If they are sneaking past autoconfirmed protection, I will bring in some filters, or write some at Meta that more generally apply. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:48, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: — billinghurst sDrewth 21:29, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Block request 2.84.9.177

There have been multiple vandalizing edits from this IP address to National Geographic , even after being warned repetedly to stop. Quanstizium (talk) 06:02, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

No action made. There are no edits here from that IP address. Nor have there been recent edits to National Geographic. The only edits from the requester are this request. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 08:23, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: — billinghurst sDrewth 21:17, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Seeking a second opinon.

Special:Contributions/BigChungusBig

I'm getting a NOTHERE vibe but would appreciated a second opinon. I will attempt to revert some of the their efforts. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 15:14, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

I don't know what NOTHERE means but I've blocked the user for vandalism. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 15:29, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
It's a enwp-ism. --Xover (talk) 15:50, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: — billinghurst sDrewth 21:17, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Disruption by User:EncycloPetey

The following discussion is closed:

The issue under discussion appears to be resolved. --Xover (talk) 16:37, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

In attempting to create a more robust template for transcription projects, User:EncycloPetey engaged in a speedy deletion of that template while I found myself still editing the documentation. In motion to engage in dispute resolution, on the users talk page, they refused to explain their rational for the speedy deletion. I managed to recover the source for the template, I explicitly learned much wikimark to create, requiring significant effort. To preserve the source, I created a page in my account's user namespace. User:EncycloPetey in complete ignorance of the fact doing so would render the source unrecoverable for me, deleted that page with the edit summary stating I needed to login. User:EncycloPetey recently engaged in similarly behavior towards a very prolific Wikidata and Wikisource contributor User:RaboKarbakian refusing to justify reversions of that user's edits, which they seem to have had no significant prior contact with according to their Special:Contributions pages.

2605:A000:1238:A03F:F4E7:1B24:D13C:D526 18:12, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

I explained the reason for deletion and quickly summarized Wikisource practice when it comes to duplicating templates. I advised our IP to begin a discussion in the Scriptorium if he felt that {{small scan link}} needed a revision. Our IP has failed to start such a discussion in the Scriptorium, and has not made a formal undelete request either. You can read the lengthy replies from our IP on my talk page, from which he jumped to a complaint here. --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:18, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
I'm incline to agree with IP user here.
  • It is entirely reasonable to create a template first and start the discussion afterwards. I did that with {{biblecontents2}}, and others have done the same with other templates. It is also entirely reasonable to create a similar-but-not-identical template to fulfil a specific purpose. If IP user had been damaging {{small scan link}}, or had begun to deprecate it without a discussion, action could have been taken for vandalism, but this was not the case here.
  • Since {{project}} was clearly intended to improve upon {{small scan link}}, the "redundant" rationale for speedy deletion was not entirely appropriate; it would have been better to object to the template creation on Template talk:Project, and give IP user a chance to justify themselves, before speedy deleting it.
  • I also think the deletion of the pages in userspace was unwarranted. The pages did not fall under the speedy deletion guidelines, they were not spam/vandalism, there was no objection from User:Eaterjolly regarding the creation of the pages, and you have no evidence that IP user is not User:Eaterjolly.
All of which is to say, please don't delete stuff without a discussion unless it is clear violation of policy, which this was not. Editors will learn if you educate them; they will flee if you stomp on them. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 21:09, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
So, our IP is a vandal? [1] --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:23, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
That looks like good faith editing to me. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 23:08, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
It doesn't to me. I had already began my conversation with our IP, and advised him that changes to well-established and widely-used templates ought to be discussed first. After I advised him so, then he proceeded to edit the template. Our IP has self-identified the reason that he is here, and not logging in to his account, is that he faces a block on another wiki for disruptive editing. His previous controversial editing here has been self-described as done "to see if anyone would notice". Our IP has already broken good faith on more than one occasion. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:15, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
In that case I think you were right to revert the changes to {{Ext scan link}}. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 16:29, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
At least on the userspace pages, they should only be created by the user in question. The IP is not User:Eaterjolly; by not logging in, they have chosen a cloak of anonymity and don't get the right to claim the advantages of being a logged-in user.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:13, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
I'm a little iffy on the purpose of this new template, but I'm leaning towards agreeing with EncycloPetey on this one. The user should have started a discussion on Scriptorium's "Help" subpage for how to use the existing template to support whatever their particular use case was. If that discussion resulted in a consensus that a new template was needed, then the effort could be made. I'm a little on the fence as to whether a speedy deletion was appropriate in this case; if this was a regular, registered user I would suggest moving the template to their namespace. But if the user refuses to log in, I don't believe it's appropriate (or even possible?) to make it a userspace page -- which leaves deletion as the only option.
Furthermore, given that the commentary within the {{project}} template clearly indicates it is "intended to deprecate small scan link", then whatever it was that it was trying to accomplish should have been done in the original template if and only if the community decided it was necessary. ({{project}} is also a terribly ambiguous name. {{transcription project}} is already an alias for {{small scan link}}. This is also not relevant to the larger discussion; just pointing out that the choice of template name is unfortunate.)
Sometimes users from other wikis who come here don't realize that we have to temper Wikipedia's "Be Bold" mantras/policies based on the fact that the community of active users here is much smaller, so we have many fewer people available to maintain these templates. I don't believe it's appropriate to infer any sort of ill will from the actions of this IP for this reason in this situation. That being said, is it possible to restrict page creation in the Template namespace to autoconfirmed users? If it is, this might be something we should consider doing, if only because of this reason (not for any reasons of "censorship" or whatever.) --Mukkakukaku (talk) 02:32, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
It would have been preferable for IP user to start a discussion first, but they were not obliged to do so. As you know, we do not have a policy that requires discussion before creating a template. We do however have a policy that requires discussion before deleting a template unless it falls under a speedy deletion category. You'll note that the template was deleted as being G4 Redundant, not for being Created Without Discussion, or Intended To Supersede, or Using an Unfortunate Name. All of that is irrelevant.—It seems to me that the clear indication that the template was "intended to deprecate" is also a clear indication that the template is not Redundant. That very comment removed the criterion for speedy deletion and therefore is the biggest reason why the template should not have been deleted without a discussion.—Again, I am only commenting with what is required and allowed within our policies. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 16:27, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
A template that is explicitly intended to fill the same niche as an existing template is, by definition, redundant: "superfluous, exceeding what is necessary". Redundancy is a speedy deletion criterion. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:28, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

I am IP. I merely don't want to lose my source code. How do I request undelete?

About wikipedia, I did not even edit outside discussion spaces as IP.

Please don't drag my account into that messy conflict.

I appealed the action I consider violating wikipedia:WP:OUTRAGE.

Eaterjolly (talk) 19:48, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

This isn't Wikipedia. Wikipedia rules and policies apply only at Wikipedia. They do not apply anywhere else.
You have the source code already, as you said above: "I managed to recover the source for the template."
You have put yourself in this position, not anyone else. You have come here accusing members of the community of being lazy, ignorant, half-competent, self-entitled, disruptive, despicable, of making character judgements, bullshit, and more. All within the past week. This says more about your reasons for being here than anything else. You have only yourself to blame. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:03, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
Only recovered that as a copy and paste into my namespace. Eaterjolly (talk) 20:14, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey:

You don't appear lazy.

You appear insanely dedicated.

If you had moved the template to my IP's namespace, I couldn't have even argued with you about that.

Eaterjolly (talk) 21:33, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm not the community member you accused of being lazy. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:46, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
@Eaterjolly: I have pasted the contents of the deleted template on your User talk page. That is a non-controversial location for it. Please do not attempt to recreate the deleted template without a discussion with the community first. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 22:30, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: --Xover (talk) 16:37, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Requesting Autopatroller User Rights

The following discussion is closed:

Withdrawn by requester. --Xover (talk) 16:39, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Per Help:Patrolling#Autopatrolled, I am requesting Requesting Autopatroller User Rights. I understand Wikisource Policies well enough to warrant this, I feel. Ping me with any questions, please. ―Matthew J. Long -Talk-☖ 20:07, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

You've hardly edited here for the past year. And the fact that you just used HotCat to add a red-linked category to this thread suggests that you don't understand Wikisource structure very well. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:10, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
Fair enough. Withdrawn. ―Matthew J. Long -Talk-☖ 20:11, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
I will say, that I was planning on creating a category for discussion threads similar to Wikipedia:Category:Wikipedia noticeboards until I just realized there are not enough pages to properly populate it. We might need something beyond Wikisource:Index/Community, I personally feel. ―Matthew J. Long -Talk-☖ 20:14, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: --Xover (talk) 16:39, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

(Survey / Spam-Whitelist) Community guidelines for my master thesis

The following discussion is closed:

The requested whitelist appears to have been added. --Xover (talk) 16:43, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Hello Wikisource-Admins,
my name is Robert Wintermeyer and I am studying at the university of Cologne. Currently I'm conducting surveys in various social media platforms as part of my master's thesis. The focus is on the community guidelines of the respective social platform and the acceptance by its users. In order to conduct my research I would need a Spam-whitelist for google forms. Moreover, I would like to know if it would be possible to conduct my research in wikisource either by approaching Wikisource-Editors or posting something on specific discussion pages. Other Wikis are already included in the research (Wikihow, Wikipedia DE/EN).

The URL for the Spam-Whitelist request would be either https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd0qBte9yGJnrI1r1SAEAEq5JAtGffGjnmGPzDpEUc6c6Bx4g/viewform?usp=sf_link or the shortened version https://goo.gl/forms/FZOgw0P9YTlnzWTl1.


Thank you very much!

Kind regards,

Robert Wintermeyer--Rwinterm (talk) 11:14, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Wikisource is not a social media platform. We are an on-line library. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:54, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
Wikisource fits just like Wikipedia which is an online encyclopedia to the definition of social media that I use for my master thesis. It's about the collaborative character. As far as I'm concerned wikisource is a collaborative online library with user generated content which is also in the definition you referred me to ("Wikis are examples of collaborative content creation.")--Rwinterm (talk) 19:25, 8 February 2019 (UTC)
No, the content here is not user generated. Although Wikipedia users create original content, the content on Wikisource was previously published elsewhere. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:36, 8 February 2019 (UTC)
Okay, but the users gather the content that was previously published elsewhere if I'm not mistaken. Well I don't want to argue, it's sad if I'm not allowed to include Wikisource in my research but I also don't want to disturb anyone with my research--Rwinterm (talk) 19:37, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Done No need to wikilaw argue the definition of an SMP where the user is making a civil request for a whitelist. @Rwinterm: I would ask that it only to be used in user talk: ns and in WS:S. Thanks. — billinghurst sDrewth 21:23, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: --Xover (talk) 16:43, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Proofreadpage index template

The following discussion is closed:

Bug filed in Phabricator (unlikely to be fixed any time soon). --Xover (talk) 16:52, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Tracked in PhabricatorTask T219015

I appreciate it if you could replace {{DEFAULTSORT:{{{Key|{{PAGENAME}}}}}}} in MediaWiki:Proofreadpage index template with {{DEFAULTSORT:{{#if:{{{Key|}}}|{{{Key}}}|{{PAGENAME}}}}}}, because it does not seem to work. Thank you in advance for your cooperation. --CES1596 (talk) 12:17, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

@CES1596: what is not working, that this fix is to accomplish? —Beleg Tâl (talk) 22:34, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
@Beleg Tâl: I temporally replaced the value of "sort key" of Index:Nihongi by Aston.djvu "Nihongi" by "Aston", but it still is listed in Category:Index_Not-Proofread&from=N. --CES1596 (talk) 23:23, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
Why would we want a work titled Nihongi to sort under "A"? --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:33, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
@EncycloPetey: Although this example may not be appropriate, it shows that we cannot use sort key even when it is necessary. I found the problem in Japanese version, where some files are named in Japanese. --CES1596 (talk) 01:39, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
@EncycloPetey: We can find more examples in Category:Index_Not-Proofread&from=0, Category:Index_Proofread&from=0, and Category:Index_Validated&from=0, such as Index:1909historyofdec04gibbuoft.djvu, Index:(1848) Observations on Church and State- JF Ferrier.pdf, Index:1947SydneyHailstorm.djvu, Index:20100803-wiki-LetterToLarson.pdf, Index:124-2009 Brunetti Obit.djvu, and Index:161006-Eatt-Text of Royal Warrant Merchant Navy Medal for Meritorious Service.pdf. --CES1596 (talk) 12:19, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
I've made the change; it doesn't seem to work either. You can use an individual Index's page info page to see the sort info, e.g. [2] —Beleg Tâl (talk) 12:59, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
I tried changing the content model. The sort key works when the content model is wikitext, but not when the content model is book index. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 13:12, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
@Beleg Tâl: Thank you for your cooperation. I inserted "{{DEFAULTSORT:Catholic Prayer Book, The}}" to "Table on Contents" of Index:The Catholic prayer book.djvu, as we do in Japanese version. It seems to work. Does the location of the sort key in MediaWiki:Proofreadpage index template affect the result? --CES1596 (talk) 15:32, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
@Beleg Tâl: If so, {{#if:{{{Remarks|}}}|<td style="padding:0 0.25em 0 0.25em; vertical-align:top; width:30%;">{{{Remarks}}}|<td style="display:none; padding:0; vertical-align:top;">}}{{DEFAULTSORT:{{#if:{{{Key|}}}|{{{Key}}}|{{PAGENAME}}}}}}</td> may work. --CES1596 (talk) 14:07, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
We confirmed that it does not work in Japanese version. --CES1596 (talk) 14:05, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
@CES1596: I believe it is a problem with the Book Index content model, and I would suggest reaching out to the devs via Phabricator for resolution. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 15:20, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
@Beleg Tâl: Thank you for your trouble. --CES1596 (talk) 16:16, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: --Xover (talk) 16:52, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Oversight

The following discussion is closed:

Absent followup I presume the issue is resolved. --Xover (talk) 16:55, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

When did WS admins lose oversight rights? Do we have any local editors with oversight rights? --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:31, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

I am not in the oversight group, but I can still delete revisions. Is it possible you are unable to do so because of a browser issue? —Beleg Tâl (talk) 22:26, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
I cannot hide/delete revisions. I have tried using two different browsers on two different computers running two different OS. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:25, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
We have never had oversight rights, as it takes two for checking of people's actions. We did have users with checkuser rights. The qualification for both is a high hurdle with a community of our size. We can get OS done by asking stewards to do that for us using m:Special:Contact/Stewards. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:12, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
Hmm. But RevDel and Oversight ("suppression") are separate functions as I recall. Admins should be able to hide revisions (and summaries, and usernames) so they show up as hidden in the revision history, but Oversighters have the ability to completely delete a revision. Or something like that. I'd have to look it up to get the details right. In any case, my understanding was that in normal admin type situations, admins should have the necessary tools and it's only in truly egregious situations (illegal material, personal information leaks, etc.) the rights restricted to Oversighters are required. --Xover (talk) 11:31, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
Is this considered resolved? — billinghurst sDrewth 21:26, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: --Xover (talk) 16:55, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

CommonsDelinker Edit Filter

The following discussion is closed:

No consensus to remove the filter. --Xover (talk) 17:00, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Is Special:AbuseFilter/17 really necessary when there is always Special:Contributions/CommonsDelinker? I fail to see the purpose of tagging every edit by this one bot. It's 2am here for me right now, so it's likely I have no clue what I am talking about. –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 06:13, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

I don't know much about that, but I can say that the edit tags in watchlists and page histories make it easier for me to quickly identify them, and is beneficial to me. There may be other benefits that other editors use as well.—Also, I think we tag all the bots, so this one is par for the course —Beleg Tâl (talk) 12:10, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
I guess it's just a bother for me because it fills up Special:AbuseLog which I semi-regularly monitor alongside Special:RecentChanges. Speaking of which... –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 21:29, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
@Beleg Tâl: I just was looking at Special:Tags, and we apparently only tag CommonsDelinker. No other bot has such a tag. This includes Wikisource-bot, TarmstroBot, and SDrewthbot -- each of which have more edits than any other user on this site (source). –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 15:34, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
 Comment the filter was created as Commons had a habit of deleting our images and our books, and we had no easy means to identify such deletions. While badgering at Commons has lessened the faux deletion rate, it still occurs. I would suggest keeping it as it is a push notification rather than a pull notification where hardly anyone goes. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:08, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: --Xover (talk) 17:00, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Requesting the activation of the OCR daemon

The following discussion is closed:

The immediate issue was resolved. Future iissues with Phe's tools should probably be reported at Github until Phe becomes more active on Wikisource again. --Xover (talk) 17:10, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Tracked in PhabricatorTask T223012Declined

The title says it all. If there is additional information on how to manage this activation by myself, please advise.— Ineuw talk 22:15, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

Not sure what you're seeking. The OCR button in the Proofreading still works. I just tried it. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:26, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for the quick reply. I have the OCR button on my toolbar and use it often to replace damaged scans. But some times in a 24hr span, I get the message "ws_ocr_daemon robot is not running. Please try again later." (http://tools.wmflabs.org/phetools/ocr.php.) — Ineuw talk 22:31, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
Its working now. Looking at its log, it seems that it was busy with previous requests from other users. Then, the message is misleading.— Ineuw talk 04:09, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
Maybe a Phabricator bug should be filed to improve the error message? I've been confused by messages like this before, though I'm not sure if it's the identical situation. But improving error messages is worth doing. I could file it if you like. -Pete (talk) 21:58, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
@Peteforsyth: With my blessings. Please file it and send me the link so that I can learn from it. My bug reporting skills at wmf are usually deficient. :-) — Ineuw talk 01:20, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
Here you go @Ineuw: bug report. Not sure how much good it will do, but it can't hurt! Also, it looks like this is Phe (talk • contribs)'s tool...have they been notified yet? -Pete (talk) 19:14, 11 May 2019 (UTC)
@Peteforsyth: Much thanks for the help. I know that it is Phe's tool, and I have to ask him if it's is possible to place this script and "Clean Up OCR" in my user space. — Ineuw talk 21:52, 11 May 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: --Xover (talk) 17:10, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Global bans

The following discussion is closed.

The editor in the above discussion seems to be embroiled in a cross-wiki skirmish with some other users. From my perspective, all I can see is good faith edits being repeatedly reverted by non-admin users who claim that there is some sort of global ban that empowers them to do so. What is the expectation for how we handle these? Normally I would consider the bulk deletion of good-faith comments and the repeated edit warring to be vandalism, and I would block Antandrus and DannyS712 accordingly. I see no indication that this link implies that the user being reverted is subject to a global ban. The users reverting the content are neither admins nor stewards and so do not appear to fall under our checkuser policy. To sum up: I would appreciate it if someone could link me to policy or discussion that shows that this edit warring is proper behaviour and not deserving of blocking all around. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 11:53, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

@Beleg Tâl: Information is a bit opaque in this case, but this looks to be w:Wikipedia:Long term abuse/George Reeves Person, who has a decade+-long beef with Antandrus (who is an admin on enwp; one of the original admins too, as I recall) who has been one of the admins that have handled the cases (Jimbo Wales was involved in the early days too). GRP is globally banned under the then handle "Projects" by WMF Trust & Safety, which is what the diff link in the edit summary here refers to. The ban is due to long-term persistent abusive behaviour, attempted outing, and serious legal and physical threats.
It's a bit hard to see all the relevant information here without access to the history on enwp, but there are clear signs of unclean hands even just here: clearly abusing multiple accounts and editing under an IP (you can see them all in the revision history of that talk page), threats of various kinds, and accusations against anyone that disagrees with them (see the attacks on Petey's talk page, your page, and against Antandrus, and the thread above). I would say this is a case of block on sight, by reference to a WMF Office action (global ban from all WMF wikis), and do not engage in discussions with the user (it only escalates the conflict and tends to make them fixate, see for example Antandrus). --Xover (talk) 12:28, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
My 20c is to revert global ban conversations raised here, they belong at meta. There is no value discussing them here at all. I would also tell Antandrus and DannyS712 to leave off, we can manage our own affairs. We have a patrolling regimen and can manage. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:32, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
I think we can redirect to meta without reverting, provided the conversation is civil. Reversions just make people angry. I appreciate your advice. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 13:10, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
I'd just like to note that I am a contributor here too, and have done more than just reverts - I'm sure wikisource can "manage [its] own affairs", but I believe I fall into that scope. --DannyS712 (talk) 17:20, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
@DannyS712: Thank you for your contributions here, I really appreciate your work here. Just be aware that removing user comments from talk pages, and engaging in reversion wars, can put you afoul of the WS:Blocking policy. Better to post here first so that we know not to lump you in with the vandals by mistake. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 12:13, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
@Xover: yes, it is clear that the other editor(s) are not innocent here. However, without involving a checkuser, I would be very hesitant to block an account "on sight" unless the user in question is violating the blocking policy, or without clear evidence that it is a sockpuppet of a user who has violated the blocking policy. Furthermore, I think it is completely inappropriate to cite a global ban when blocking a user account, unless a checkuser has confirmed that the editor is in fact a sockpuppet of User:Projects or another globally banned user. In this case I would definitely block any individual user accounts that issued threats (I believe these have been blocked already) and would leave the sockpuppetry to the stewards (which I think EncycloPetey was working on?). I was more concerned about how to respond to the behaviour of the legitimate users in this disagreement. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 13:08, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
There are actually two banned editors here -- the "George Reeves Person", who lives in Chicago, and has been harassing, threatening, and outing us for about 13 years now. Some of us have tried to remove his clutter wherever he puts it -- if you want me to stop I'll remove Wikisource from my search script. A word of warning about this guy: he will fixate on you. He will email you, at first pleading for help in his imaginary war against stewards, admins, and whatever, and then that will turn to threats. Do not let him get any personally identifying information about you, for he will craft that into hate pages with accusations of criminal behavior. If he gets your IP he will forge damaging emails to *himself* with your IP in the header, pass those on to your ISP, and get you kicked. He's good at it. GRP spent almost three years in jail for this behavior, and since he got out he's been doing it again.
The second editor is Wikinger, who copycats GRP all the time. Antandrus (talk) 14:24, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
I doubt that I need the concepts of vandals, LTAs, global bans, nor these particular users explained to me.

I also know that we don't feed trolls, and that local management of these matters are more appropriate, rather than vigilante, or Don Quixote-type charges. Every time that you are running around labelling and taking the fight to a user, is every time that LTA is getting their jollies for having you on the run, a puppet on their string. Every time you use their name, and pin a badge to them, you are feeding the troll. Don't feed the trolls. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:41, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

@Beleg Tâl: On the standard of evidence to apply, sure, there's clearly room for reasonable people to disagree. I don't see why we would not generally take an enwp admin who stops by helping deal with "spillover" at their word, but if you feel (for example) that we should reinvestigate all such cases from scratch before acting then that's certainly a valid position. But in this case the person in question (not the account, the person) is banned by WMF Office from editing any WMF wiki, ever, under any circumstance. This strictly speaking overrides our local block policy, and in particular the part where we choose to keep constructive contributions even by locally banned users.
Under these circumstances I feel it would be very unfair to single out anyone just trying in good faith to help enforce this ban; both for a productive member of our community here on WS (like Danny), and for an admin on one of our sister projects who is trying to help out with a particularly difficult case across projects in our wider movement community (i.e. Antandrus).
If we feel their involvement is not the optimum way to handle the specific situation, then the appropriate response is a note on their talk page politely asking them to butt out. But in general we should be very grateful for every volunteer that tries to help out with such issues, and even more so for those willing and aware enough to help out across projects. I am surprised and somewhat dismayed to observe that the level of hostility for those (movement) community members that have tried to help out here is greater than for the person acting in bad faith that they have tried to help out with. Regardless of whether one disagrees about the best way to handle the situation, that seems rather backwards to me. --Xover (talk) 09:38, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
@Xover: The strict enforcement of global bans WMF-placed by is a responsibility of WMF, not anyone else. If community members think that there is a breach of a ban order, then it should be reported to WMF via m:Talk:Office actions for their investigation and resolution. Admins here may locally enforce any block, there is no requirement for an admin to undertake any blocking action, nor to enforce the will of WMF. This has zero impact on our local blocking policy. We pick our battles, and we don't let people bring their crusades here, especially not from enWP. I suggest follow the basic rules of manage disruptive editing in this scenario, and that applies to all parties. Better to be professional, than to think that any of us are superheroes.

All that said, we should not be rehashing global ban conversations, they have been had and should be accepted as a WMF requirement, or as the consensus of the broader community. If someone wants to rehash it, take it to meta! — billinghurst sDrewth 12:33, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

@Xover: If I started reverting non-controversial edits on Wikipedia, I would fully expect Antandrus or another WP admin to block me without discussion. Reversion warring is explicitly against the blocking policy and we all block disruptive editors without further discussion - or further checking to see if they might be admins on another wiki. I will remind you that the only indication that the problem user was the same as a WMF-banned person, is the say-so of Antandrus, a user with no checkuser rights here. It is not my intention to be hostile. It is only my intention to understand how we are expected to respond, when editors start enforcing rulings that Wikisource admins like myself are unaware of and unable to corroborate. (Also, the behaviour here looked like they were nuking a newbie, which is a common and reprehensible practice that really pisses me off, which may have affected my tone - I apologize for that) —Beleg Tâl (talk) 12:38, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Out of scope and copyvio related to the Hong Kong situation

Over the last few days, a user has created:

By my estimation these are all out of scope and copyright violations (2019 works without a compatible license). They also appear to be being added across several language wikisources (@Billinghurst, @Jusjih: your take?). The editor in question gives every appearance of acting in good faith.

I would appreciate it if someone more experienced could take a look at the issue. --Xover (talk) 12:52, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

I would concur that those modern anonymous works are not clearly in the public domain with a license that would allow us to reproduce. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:33, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
I have posted on the uploader's talk page. We should give them a few days to comply, then delete if they are not fixed. @Jusjih: do you want to follow up on their contributions to zhWS? —Beleg Tâl (talk) 15:11, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
Obvious copyvio, unless explicitly released to public domain, we're not to keep those. Viztor (talk) 14:49, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

These works have now been deleted. The category could be deleted too I guess, though there is stuff that could reasonably be placed in it (such as the extradition bill itself). —Beleg Tâl (talk) 12:20, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: —Beleg Tâl (talk) 12:20, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Transwiki Import request

Per this post and this Wikipedia deletion debate. Admins over there would like to transwiki Full translation of the Behistun Inscription over here (likely to Translation:Behistun_Inscription). –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 20:09, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

This is a published translation (in 1907, see footnote [1]), so it would not go into the Translation namespace. However, we would need a copy stripped of all the added images and commentary. A second (annotated) copy containing reference images and wikilinks could be hosted once a stripped down copy of the original was in place. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:58, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
@EncycloPetey: {{Done}} No wait, I forgot the Wiki-links. –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 22:31, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
Now it's Done –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 22:43, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

 comment about import I am a little surprised to see the work here in the current form, as that is an excerpt of what was published, and out of context of its publication. It isn't our task to rescue enWP's out of scope works just because. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:01, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

I acted on my understanding of the above discussion that suggested the issue was simply one of annotated—unannotated, and since an unannotated version was provided the annotated one could be hosted here. If there are further issues with it then my importing of it should not be taken as any particular stance or argument on the issue. Or put another way, I've mainly acted as a technical helper because EncycloPetey indicated they were unable to perform the technical task. (I also see I was mistaken in thinking annotated works should go in the Translation: namespace. I've either misunderstood something somewhere, or my understanding was based on out of date information). --Xover (talk) 11:24, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
@Xover: Translation namespace is for works that were translated from other languages by Wikisource editors, and for nothing else —Beleg Tâl (talk) 12:57, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
@Xover: That's pretty much my fault because I was the one who suggested it be moved there because I didn't know it was based on a published work. –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 19:48, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
@Billinghurst: Normally I would agree with regard to extracts of works. In this case, however, the parent work puts the translation text interlinear with the original, which is written in a script that almost no one here would be able to code and prepare. As such, the translation seemed to have merit, especially since a heavily annotated version had been prepared to assist readers. Under other circumstances, an extract from a publication would simply be subsumed into a transcription, and effecting a text rescue would not be of significant value. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:15, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
@EncycloPetey: The approach taken by Beleg Tâl is more in line with what I would have expected. I simply said I was surprised that it was there in the form that arrived. It is a published work, publicly available and among zillions of published works that we don't have. There was no need to rush, nor ultimately to rescue when it was outside of our scope.

At enWP we had the opportunity to explain about their halved-chewed discards, and we could have educated and informed about editions, and provenance of our works. For this work, like any other work, if someone wishes to work on it great, and there may have been some volunteers at enWP who were going to take interest. Dunno.

P.S. If it came across as laying fault, then my apologies, that was not my intent. My intent was we rushed, rather than took the step back and considered our scope, and alignment with our scope.— billinghurst sDrewth 02:15, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

I didn't take your comment as implying any fault. After all, I'm the one who tracked down a scan of the source at IA and linked to it, establishing a toehold for what Beleg Tâl has now done. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:24, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

Index:The sculptures and inscription of Darius the Great on the Rock of Behistûn in Persia.djvu is now live. Differences in the translation were made by Wikipedia editors and will need to be reverted. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 13:01, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

And I have moved the two pages to their appropriate locations.
—Beleg Tâl (talk) 13:11, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
@Beleg Tâl: So how should I go about transcluding this? Should we include the non-latin characters in the annotated version? I would suspect not, right? –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 19:48, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
@MJL: I have already started a discussion on the subject, at Index talk:The sculptures and inscription of Darius the Great on the Rock of Behistûn in Persia.djvu —Beleg Tâl (talk) 20:08, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: — billinghurst sDrewth 23:18, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Vandalism by PigsontheWing

Repeated reversions at Author:Frederick W. Lanchester both of cleanup and of linking to better scan. Metadata should be housed at Wikidata; not on Author pages. Better quality scans, such as those from the University of California are preferred over Google Scans Looking for advice from other admins given recent history. --EncycloPetey (talk) 14:05, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

"from other admins" oh, damn! CYGNIS INSIGNIS 19:24, 9 June 2019 (UTC)
This is too much drama for me, I don't think it matters if the publisher is listed on the author page, or what scan we link to, none of this is against policy, ext scan links are just a convenience anyway, if you want a better scan then you have to upload and proofread one, otherwise there are more important things to do around here, I would just move on if it were me —Beleg Tâl (talk) 02:01, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey: The description as vandalism seems unjustified. You removed content that others think desirable. Do you have any further comment? CYGNIS INSIGNIS 18:29, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

WS:VANDAL defines as a "deliberate attempt to reduce the quality of the library". If the revert had happened just once, it might be understandable as an oversight, but repeatedly replacing a link to a high-quality scan with a link to a low-quality scan reduces the quality of Wikisource. Editors who begin transcription projects preferentially upload the linked scan rather than checking for better scans. Thus, replacing scan links with links to poor-quality scans will reduce the quality of the library, and the description as vandalism is justified. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:57, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
Not what happened, Andy restored the better link after reverting your removal of the other information, in a single edit that clearly shows it was recognised as an improvement. What that user did was not vandalism. CYGNIS INSIGNIS 07:14, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: — billinghurst sDrewth 23:18, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Deletion request

Please, delete Index:Bohemian section at the Austrian exhibition, 1906.pdf. It was replaced by Index:Guide to the Bohemian section and to the Kingdom of Bohemia - 1906.djvu, which is a better copy of the same edition. Thank you very much. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 10:23, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Index:Poet Lore, volume 31, 1920.pdf can be also deleted, having been replaced by Index:Poet Lore, volume 31, 1920.djvu. Thank you. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 20:42, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Done — billinghurst sDrewth 06:54, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: — billinghurst sDrewth 23:18, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Renaming account with lost password?

I've run into a slightly thorny problem and could use some assistance.

A user has registered an account here, and made several contributions with it, but has subsequently lost access to the account. The account does not have email enabled, and the user has not succeeded in regaining access to it through password reset etc.

Now a different (new) account is claiming to be the person who registered the original account and wishes to have it deleted because the username is the same as that person's real name (they did not understand that their username would be public). Their behaviour is entirely consistent with this, and there is no apparent reason to distrust their story, but neither are there any easy ways to actually verify their identity as the account owner.

If the issue here was just getting access to their old account the standard answer would be "Make a new account". But here the concern is personal information that needs to be hidden.

Do we have any good mechanism to handle this situation? Could we have them email proof of real life identity to OTRS and take a name match to the account name as sufficient verification to have the old account renamed? Are there any magical backdoor mechanisms for resetting the password for an account without email, and, if so, what verification is needed for that?

They assert that their current IP address is the same as it was when they created the original account. Would it be permissible for the Checkusers to check this claim in these circumstances, and would we consider this sufficient evidence on its own to justify a global account rename?

Actually, since we're in effect talking about a global account rename either way here, do I need to ask the Stewards on Meta directly what options we have and what verification would be required?

Any advice would be much appreciated! --Xover (talk) 16:08, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

I think w:WP:RENAME gives an outline of what can be done here —Beleg Tâl (talk) 21:13, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
Just push them to the stewards, don't wear the grief.

If there is personal information available bar the name (names are not unique, and they can be faked) then we just delete the private information. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:53, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: In this instance it seems the original account was created to contribute material related to local history, such that now if you google their hometown and real name you'll hit their Wikisource user talk page (and another user's talk page where they also posted). Their original contributions were all deleted as out of scope, and they were rather confused by how Wikisource works, so you can imagine that their talk page isn't exactly a glossy social media profile (nothing spectacular, just not something you want as the first google hit about yourself). I imagine we might be able to alleviate the worst of their concerns by deleting their old user talk page and redacting their name from the other user's talk page, since that would hide it from google. And nothing of any great import would be hidden, but we would be revdel'ing what could potentially be someone else's contribs without actual evidence. Would this be a reasonable course of action here?
If we're to hand the username issue off to the Stewards, what is the proper process and venue for it? Should I post a request on the user's behalf on m:USURP? Request a Steward on IRC? Won't they just bounce it back to WS to resolve?
I feel pretty bad for this user as they were clearly trying to contribute in good faith in an area they cared deeply about, and then ran head first into the brick wall that is all the weird wiki-specific stuff that is completely outside the context that most people are prepared to handle. To the degree we can help them clean up the resulting mess without compromising policy I would very much like us to do so. --Xover (talk) 08:54, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
We manage local issues/edits, we cannot manage global accounts that is stewards (well the limited amount that accounts be managed, and they cannot reset or re-align accounts). I have no issue with our revdel'ing user talk pages. The user should contact stewards either via m:Stewards' noticeboard (public) or via their email address stewards at wikimedia.org (privately). — billinghurst sDrewth 09:06, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
Hmm. Ok. Then I am going to use my own judgement in hiding information here, and then refer the user to the Stewards if they want to pursue the username issue. Based on my assessment so far the local actions will amount to simply deleting two user talk pages for accounts that I believe to be previous accounts created by this user, and possibly revdel'ing one old edit to WS:S/Help. All edits to the affected pages are related to the user's now-deleted contributions and are by the user themselves or admins trying to assist the user. I considered also blocking the two old accounts (leaving talk page access open) as presumed abandoned, but have for now decided that that would have little benefit and has some potential for negative effects (I mention this in order to invite feedback if anybody would judge that issue differently). --Xover (talk) 09:40, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: — billinghurst sDrewth 23:18, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

IP range threats

Cross-wiki drama imported by IP using a range of addresses and making threats. e.g. this edit. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:04, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

If you can point out explicit examples of behaviour on English Wikisource that warrants administrative action, then we can take action accordingly. Otherwise, saying things like "encyclopetey u will pay for this" will just get yourself banned, your edits reverted, and your legitimate grievances ignored. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 19:54, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: — billinghurst sDrewth 23:18, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Upgrading our abuse filters to allow blocking

Tracked in PhabricatorTask T231750

The following discussion is closed:

consensus is to add blocking to the available toolkits for abuse filters;  Comment will get overall abuse rights modernised to standard WMF settings

One of the standard abilities for abuse filters in mediawiki is to allow blocking of accounts or IP addresses (Block the user and/or IP address from editing) based on criteria in a filter. It has not been something that we have typically needed over the years as we haven't had persistent vandalism or spam. Things seem to have changed, and I think that it is probably time for us to move to having blocking functionality available. [technical detail https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=abusefilter.php and setting $wgAbuseFilterActions['block'] = true;]

To have this change made at enWS, we would need to demonstrate a consensus of the community, and lodge a phabricator site request. Accordingly I propose:

  • English Wikisource moves to have enabled the ability to block through its abuse filters.

— billinghurst sDrewth 04:44, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

  •  Support Sam Wilson 05:08, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
  •  Support Beeswaxcandle (talk) 05:31, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
  •  Support --Zyephyrus (talk) 12:45, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
  •  Support Mpaa (talk) 19:20, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
  •  Support Non admin note of support ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 07:35, 23 August 2019 (UTC)
  •  Comment I am… ambivalent.
    What criteria would we block on that are not better handled by the global abuse filter? I haven't noticed any spam or vandalism that seems unique to enWS; and the most common spam seems to have no obvious machine-detectable characteristics in common.
    We also currently allow non-admins to edit the filters: do they get to set the action to block too?
    And would it be only for spam and vandalism, or would it be acceptable to use abuse filters to auto-block also other undesirable behaviours (presumably only those covered by the blocking policy, but…)? We have some spectacular recent examples of that which it would be very convenient to simply delegate to auto-blocks, but those would also be really hard to safely detect with a filter. For example, how would we make sure reports of such behaviour are not caught up with the actual behaviour itself?
    How do we review such blocks to make sure we catch any unintended side-effects? Or even deliberate abuse of them?
    Note that I am not necessarily opposed to enabling this, but I see a lot of potential for misuse and collateral damage that is not addressed sufficiently for my peace of mind. --Xover (talk) 09:03, 23 August 2019 (UTC)
     reply Abuse filter blocks are not new, and have been successfully used at multiple sites, and I am unaware of any abuse of filters, let alone for blocking. We have had them on at meta for +++ years. The community to be setting rules for their use is pretty easy, and the provision of blocks should always be as a last resort. "Hasten slowly" is a pretty good approach for any abuse filter, only slowly increase their consequences and only where necessary, and test test test.

    Review? Like any other filters. 1) special:abuselog and 2) special:log/block through we would specifically look at those by user:Abuse filter special:log/block/Abuse filter. Global abuse filters do not block, it is a steward self-imposed rule; part of the purpose is to manage those spambots that morph their editing and later spam. And to note that I wrote the global spam filters that catch spambots, and a swag of those that continue to do so m:Special:AbuseFilter. — billinghurst sDrewth 07:05, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

    • We allow non-admins to edit the filters? That seems like it would be open to abuse from inexperienced or malicious users. I support restricting access to the filter regardless of this discussion. Also I think that conforming to the block policy goes without saying. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 13:01, 23 August 2019 (UTC)
      • We only allow non-admins to edit the filters if an admin has granted them that right. It has to be turned on explicitly (and can be revoked through the same mechanism). At present there are only 9 users with the right. Of those 6 are admins. The other 3 users have not edited here for some time. I believe that this is restrictive enough. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 18:59, 23 August 2019 (UTC)
        Note. I have just removed two set of abusefilter rights from retired administrators. The remaining non-admin rights user is vastly trusted user who is also a WMF employee, and has rights as they are the best at filters. I would also suggest that we ask the bureaucrats to review whether those rights are retained when they remove admin rights. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:36, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
Question. Is there any particular reason why we don't allow non-admins access to the abusefilter-log-detail right? I feel like that is something we could easily bundle with the Abuse filter editors userright (or even Autoconfirmed/Confirmed users). I generally do most of my anti-vandalism patrolling on enwiki using Special:AbuseLog, but I can't link to reports without that permission. It seems awfully silly that I can view most of them through meta (even while logged out), but I can't see/reference the details for the unique enwikisource ones. –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 17:27, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
I am unable to say why those rights were not assigned here when they were rolled out over the years. Best I can assume is that as we were non-standard that we were skipped, and not even asked. I will attempt to get that standarised in my phabricator request. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:27, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: — billinghurst sDrewth 23:18, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Request for deletion

Delete Index:Bohemian Review, 1917–Czechoslovak Review, May 1919.djvu, please. There are some pages missing and it is going to be replaced by individual volumes, such as Index:The Bohemian Review, vol1, 1917.djvu. Thank you. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 22:06, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Done Will let you have managed at Commons. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:25, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
Thank you very much. I think I will keep the file at Commons, as it has some other advantages, like coloured title pages, so it can be useful to have there both. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 06:27, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: DannyS712 (talk) 07:05, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Special:Contributions/159.146.14.0/24

Please remove talk page access. Thank you :) 大诺史 (talk) 16:20, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

@大诺史: Done, and thanks. --Xover (talk) 16:29, 12 October 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: DannyS712 (talk) 07:05, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Plan to change default block periods

I am suggesting, and if there are no complaints, to change the default duration for blocks in the dropdown list—Mediawiki:ipb-default-expiry and Mediawiki:ipb-default-expiry-ip. My thoughts on duration will be "infinite" for account names (the first), and to "1 day" for IP addresses (the second), both currently empty aka "other time". This will mean that when admins follow a block link they will get the respective defaults set in the dropdown list.

This change has no impact on the ability for administrators to choose which ever time they wish to block, it is just the default presentation. I have selected these durations based on an analysis of special:log/block and my experience with blocking spambots, which are be default our biggest client.

The only risk within that is that if someone goes to a nude form special:block and puts in an IP address, the default "infinite" will be there. The monitoring for this is via blocklist, and I think that the risk is minimal and easily monitored and fixed. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:57, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

  •  Support Note that the risk, such as it is, is that admins will start taking the default block lengths as suggested block lengths and start issuing blocks that are too long or too short. I don't believe this is very likely, and I think there are much better ways to handle that if it should occur, so I think changing the defaults as you propose is a very good idea. Less clicking for routine tasks is always good, and at least in my experience 99.9% of the use for blocks here are the robotic link spammers that should just be indeffed (there's no human involved, and the accounts do nothing but spam external links, so there's no reason to leave them sleeper accounts to reuse later). --Xover (talk) 08:06, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

Done there being neither strident nor immediate objection. If it is problematic, then we can blank or delete the configurations. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:25, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: — billinghurst sDrewth 00:25, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Obligations / expectations of administrators

In light of recents matters where it might have helped if there were clear community guidelines on what our expectations of administrators are, I have rewritten Wikisource:Adminship#Obligations of administrators to express my own view of the matter.[3] This is of course merely a conversation starter. Please feel free to revert, edit, but most importantly, discuss. Hesperian 00:52, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

@Hesperian: The way your additions are worded put them in conflict with some established policies, such as the Wikisource:Blocking policy, specifically regarding unblocking. Your added text would change policy so that if any established user challenges a block, then the blocked account must be unblocked and cannot be blocked until a community discussion is held to obtain consensus, even in cases where the blocking admin has additional (even sensitive) information. It also strains against the blocking policy's guidelines for controversial blocks.
I would disagree with a single opposition constituting a failure of consensus and the need to obtain consensus. Two established editors, perhaps, but not just one. We have a number of policies and decisions established by consensus for which there are lone voices of dissent. And as we have no ground rules rule for deciding "consensus" in a discussion, where typically there are often only two or three voices doing the discussing, I can see a path down which every decision could be challenged, rendering sysops impotent. Look through most deletion discussions, where the rules are well defined: yet deletion discussions have few participants, and can drag on for months without reaching any clear decision.
I would recommend starting a discussion to gather input and iron out the phraseology before adding the text, particularly as there has not been strong support of your view expressed in any of the discussion thus far. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:08, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
I've made a few alterations to try to account for the fact that policies are the result of community consensus, and that some actions follow discussion. I'm still not sure about "Administrators should not use their rights in disputed matters in which they are involved" because "involved" could mean almost anything. On Wikipedia, the very fact that an administrator has stepped in means they are "involved", so the limitation becomes self-referential. On Wikisource, it is also much rarer to find any situation where active admins are not "involved" because we are a much smaller community than Wikipedias. Any active admin is going to be "involved" in most situations. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:48, 31 May 2019 (UTC)


Petey, I don't see a substantive conflict with the blocking policy. Let us say that an established editor engages in disruptive behaviour, and that an administrator blocks them in accordance with the blocking policy. Your concern is that the established editor who has been blocked would immediately object to the block, and that the blocker would be obliged immediately to unblock. I can appreciate your concern that this would render the blocking policy toothless. However, my response is that blocking an established editor is always a highly contentious action, even when in accordance with policy; and that the blocker, upon applying the block, ought immediately to advise the community what they had done and why. Having done so, it would very soon become clear whether the block had broad community support or not. If the block turns out to be contentious, then yes, the block should be lifted. If the blocking admin is so silly as to block an established editor and not immediately lay their rationale before the community, then yes, the block should be lifted as soon as the established editor objects.

The over-riding principle is that the administrator uses their tools to enact the will of the community, rather than their own will. If they act unilaterally and fail to check that the will of the community is what they think it is, they may find they have to undo what they've done.

What I want to move us away from is the situation where administrators take unilateral actions that turn out to be contentious, then argue down the community until we all get sick of the drama and move on, until the next contentious unilateral use of the tools.

Hesperian 03:08, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

The way your additions were originally worded, any objection by any established editor would overturn any sysop action, even if there is clear policy (established by consensus) or even if there had just been a discussion which had reached consensus. Even if there was clear policy, established by consensus. This isn't about "will", it's about the fact that policies and discussions can exist where there has been consensus reached. If any objection by anyone can overturn policy and consensus discussions, then consensus is meaningless. If someone has an objection to policy or a closed discussion, then that person should initiate a discussion to reverse previous decision or to change policy. It should not be within the power of any individual to override policies and community decisions. --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:18, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
Well, I disagree with your changes, which pretty much give administrators a free pass if their actions are in accordance with their reading of policy. I would say that 99% of disputes over administrative actions are essentially disputes over whether policy applies / has been properly interpreted / has been properly applied. How are these disputes resolved?: by testing community consensus. How do you know that your application of policy may not be quite in accordance with community consensus? — the first sign is that an established editor objects to what you have done.
It is the will of the community that rules. Policy merely provides excellent guidance in figuring out what the will of the community is.
Hesperian 03:20, 31 May 2019 (UTC)


I appreciate we're editing forward on this, instead of reverting each other, despite coming from quite different viewpoints. I have made further edits that hopefully encompass both our perspectives. Hesperian 03:35, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

@Hesperian: Just to be the obligatory pedantic contrarian that rains on everyone's parade: I don't appreciate it… in that you are having the discussion in a public facing page that carries authority similar to policy. Such pages should be stable (barring trivial changes) until a consensus is established for change. And it doesn't help that the discussion isn't neutral: it is triggered by a specific issue that is the subject of controversy, and as such all observers will be coloured by that context. In other words, the discussion should be had here and Wikisource:Adminship#Obligations of administrators changed only when consensus for that change is reached. In fact, I feel so strongly about that that were I not a relative newbie both to WS and the bit I would have been inclined to revert the page to the status quo pending a consensus forming here.
And I think that issue is somewhat symptomatic of the underlying problem: enWS has a bit of an aversion to what is perceived as "bureaucracy" (process and policy), wanting instead to deal with stuff ad hoc, leading to conflicting guidance, guidance that is a moving target, and subjective judgement on what the policy is, how it is to be interpreted, and "everyone just knows" issues. It also leaves us vulnerable to transient outrage, enthusiasm, or personal antipathy or affinity deciding the outcome of an issue. Not even Solomon would be able to legislate wisely from a single controversial issue, and a wise judgement on that single issue is impossible if there is no existing legislation to cover it. Nemo censetur ignorare legem obligates the legislature more than it does those subject to the legislation.
I also have some thoughts on the substance of this discussion, but those had better be allowed to mature a bit before chiming in. --Xover (talk) 08:38, 1 June 2019 (UTC)
I don't care for the way this is framed. There is recognition of the overarching concerns, but failure to see these actions facilitating discussion and any solutions. CYGNIS INSIGNIS 10:12, 1 June 2019 (UTC)
@Cygnis insignis: I apologise, but I'm afraid I don't understand what it is you are objecting to. Perhaps if you could be a bit more specific I might be able to amend it to remove the grounds for the objection? --Xover (talk) 13:01, 1 June 2019 (UTC)
Because it suggests that this is a reaction to a single incident, and that the discussion is not neutral. Even Solomon … just say what you think it should allow you to do. The purpose of sysops at wikipedia, in stark contrast to what was historically a borstel here, is to facilitate the creation of content only. Contribute some solutions, the insinuations are how every other attempt has been stifled. That is how I read the comment, what is "not appreciated" by you for some reason. CYGNIS INSIGNIS 13:39, 1 June 2019 (UTC)
@Cygnis insignis: Hmm. I seem to have failed to communicate my intent clearly. My apologies. I am all for the discussion taking place above, and for making the obligations and expectations of administrators clear, detailed, and as aligned with community consensus as humanly possible. What I objected to was doing that by making edits directly in the published page instead of copying the text here and making drafts for comments and discussion. I also don't think it is a good idea to rush to make such changes directly from a contentious issue, not because the discussion here is necessarily non-neutral, but because we will all weigh the immediate issue too heavily at the expense of wider and more general concerns (i.e. we will tend to address the last problem we had, not the next one). That wasn't an argument against having the discussion already started, but rather an argument that for the future we should try to make policy and guidance before we end up in the contentious situations, and by doing so preferably avoid getting into those situations in the first place. That is, my entire comment was about the meta-issue of how to do/don't go about it. The specifics of what is being discussed is something I will need to mull over a little more before I have anything sensible to contribute. Was that any clearer? Did it remove some or even all of your objections? --Xover (talk) 15:27, 1 June 2019 (UTC)
Pretty much, thanks for the response. If you are not informed in the usual way, I was a sysop here and there is a tale in that. I love wikisource, and think I helped others who were interested in its objectives, my passion for that is turned to heart-break and have come to some conclusions after many years of careful consideration. Outlining my last attempt to discuss matters might illuminate where I am coming from, or the first, or any in between. There is some pretty iffy activity in the history of this site, don't expect to hear much about that. CYGNIS INSIGNIS 15:47, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

Xover, I believe I understand our culture and can correctly express consensus on this matter with minimal discussion beforehand, which is why I edited boldly. I accept that I may be mistaken, which is why I invited others to revert if they disagree. There has been no revert; only constructive editing towards consensus. That part of this process has succeeded; it has yielded all of the value that has come from this; the value of this discussion is tending towards zero.

You're an established member of our editing community and entitled to revert (whether or not I invited you to do so) but I confess I'll be pissed off if you revert constructive edits just because you don't like the process.

Hesperian 01:30, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

@Hesperian: I won't belabour the point since this digression was about a meta-issue. I also adduce that there are obviously some changes that are so trivial or uncontroversial that even in policy and policy guidance pages they should just be boldly made, and that you are certainly far better qualified than myself to judge when that applies.
However, I'll point out that in the above discussion you argue (I think) that admins should be so sensitive to community opinion that all admin actions should be immediately self-reversed if anyone objects, but here when it comes to changing community-wide guidance for admins you feel comfortable changing it unilaterally and suggest further tweaking instead of reverting. To me these stances are incongruous and, in fact, my immediate thought is that they should be the other way around: more weight should be given to seeking and assessing community consensus before changing policy and guidance than what is needed a priori for individual admin actions: if the policy and guidance is good, most admin actions will be good, and individual mistakes can be handled (overturned) after the fact. Or put another way, admins have been vetted through nomination and confirmation—and are subject to votes of confidence—and their individual actions must be presumed to have been in accordance with policy until a consensus determines that they have made a mistake. But a change to policy or guidance cannot be presumed to have consensus until such is sought and assessed: regardless of how trusted and qualified the proposer is.
Such policy and guidance is what guides all admin actions and the community's expectation of admins; it would be illogical to be less thorough in assessing consensus for this than for a single individual admin action.
But this is all a general point and on a meta-issue. None of it should be taken as applying to any of the substance of the above discussion (it is only about the process). --Xover (talk) 07:22, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

Some thoughts from Xover

Ok, I'm not sure I've fully grasped all the factors playing in here, nor sufficiently pondered the implications. But here are some initial thoughts, deliberately as comments here rather than edits to the page for several reasons (only partly related to the process digression above).

  • The term "involved" must be better defined. For example, an admin acting in their administrative capacity does not become involved by those actions. If I patrol recent changes, see someone editing against policy, attempt to guide that editor but is ignored or rebuffed, and then take some admin action like locking a page or blocking the editor, then that does not constitute being involved. The prior actions were all in my capacity as an admin, I was just using softer and non-technical means then the tools that require the +sysop bit. The actions may still turn out to be incorrect for some other reason, but they would not be a violation of the "involved" principle. Absent a definition then the view I saw expressed recently that by stepping in as an admin I ipso facto become involved will obtain, and there will be a disincentive to admins trying softer means first if discussing can be argued to be grounds for considering them involved (safer to jump straight to using the tools that are unequivocally admin actions).
  • The bullet point list seems to be doing multiple things: it is listing criteria for using the tools, and establishing primacy of sources of authority for their use, and regulating oversight and recourse for their use. I think that is probably too much work for one short list, without overloading it with subsections and modifiers. Perhaps it would be better to boil it down to something like "All use of tools must be founded in policy or by (consensus) instruction from the community" but that some policy provides room for application of discretion. I have difficulty seeing the specifically admin issue that it would make sense to seek a priori consensus for: all such are really community issues that only incidentally bear on admins in some way (i.e. if the community decides to ban someone or permanently lock a page or class of pages, then that isn't an admin issue except that you need an admin to implement the decision). An admin initiating such a discussion isn't really acting as an admin but as a community member, and for some such cases the output is new policy (all template: pages should be protected, say) that will guide admins. And I'm not sure we want the "is otherwise confident that there is community consensus" point. Isn't the goal to reduce unilateral decisions from admins?
  • I'm not sure I agree with the presumption of lack of authority for admin actions inherent in requiring admin actions to be preemptively reversed on objection rather than retroactively on consensus. For admins to be effective there must be some presumption that they have acted correctly until the community has reached a consensus otherwise. The current text presumes all admin actions are incorrect until confirmed by the community. This assumes all actors are acting constructively and in good faith (most blocked editors here do not fall into those categories), and that human beings will not have human failings (frustration and outrage can blind all of us in the short term) when a specific contentious issue is "hot". Policy is (ideally) made when all heads are cool, and an admin acting in accordance with that policy is acting correctly and on established community consensus even if someone disagrees with that policy once an individual application of it has come up. The focus then should be on judging community consensus for changing the policy, not on castigating the admin that acted on the policy the community had given him.
  • I think it needs to be made clear that admins have been vetted through nomination, periodic confirmation, and are subject to strictures and oversight in excess of the regular editor, and as such are presumed to have some measure of extra trust. A failed vote of confidence or a failed reconfirmation is an expression that that trust has been lost, which in turn implies that that trust existed in the first place. This bears on the previous point: there needs to be a presumption that they act in accordance with policy until the community decides otherwise. All the admin actions relevant in this context are inherently controversial (otherwise the tools wouldn't have been needed), so if the bar is that low then we might as well say that all admin actions should go to the community first.

Don't get me wrong, I don't disagree with the goals of the changes made so far (provided I understand them correctly); but I think there some issues with the text as it stands that will have unintended consequences. --Xover (talk) 10:02, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

Reverted to stable version

Since my edits have been objected to[4], I have reverted back to the stable version. In my opinion all of the feedback provided so far could have been dealt with by collaboratively editing forward. I consider the objections that have led me to revert the text are pure process wonkery. An opportunity has been lost, and my appetite to participate further is zero. Hesperian 00:00, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

Hmm. That is indeed a little… well, what enwp would call POINTy. Petey is entirely correct: your proposed text does open all admins up to such gaming of their every action. I suggest you try to take the frustration you (I'm assuming) feel and try to view it as "This is what Petey is worried about will happen" rather than as a cause for despair about effecting desirable changes. Their concerns are valid, so lets try to figure out how to best balance all concerns.
I have objected to the process and not the substance of the changes; and I would more characterise my comments on that as arguments in favour of a particular form of process more than an objection, per se, to the current process. If the current process (collaboratively editing the live document) is the only palatable way to progress this discussion I am entirely willing to withdraw my objection, such as it was, to facilitate progress, and to rather reserve it for some future opportunity to get up on my soapbox elsewhere.
My only comments on the actual substance of the changes is in the #Some thoughts from Xover section above, and they are there instead of edits to the live page because 1) they are insufficiently formed to be reasonable to attempt to edit in, and 2) I am sufficiently uncertain that they make sense that I feel they need honing in discussion and vetting by the community first. And, they are relative to the edited text before your revert. --Xover (talk) 05:09, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
That you have been impugning, not assuming, and I see these replies as redundant at best. I honestly thought Petey was joking with his test comment in his trolling reply elsewhere, because any "established editor" could have made a change or reverted at this page. And isn't that the substance of actual disputes involving tools, when used carelessly or with outright vindictiveness. CYGNIS INSIGNIS 06:15, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
@Hesperian, @Cygnis insignis: I started to write a reply here, but have deleted it. Let me instead check: is my input in this discussion unwelcome? I don't mean unwelcome in general or anything like that; but do you feel my contributions to this particular discussion have been unconstructive, derailing, tedious, merely stating the obvious, repeating myself, failing to understand context, or similar? I intend no accusation by that question: I just don't sense anyone engaging with what I write except in ways that signal disapproval or frustration. Since I offer my participation because I imagine it to have some value, I would refrain if that were not the case. --Xover (talk) 08:39, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
For myself, I prefer a solution. Clarity, brevity, edit the page or propose changes. What seems to be happening is bogging this down with blather, assertion and process and keeping the fairly simple clarification to admin actions from being enacted. Why do you think it would be any different to wikipedia, that being an admin imbues one some overriding authority, if they screw some lesser user around that is their business. You have been as rude af in your assumptions and aspersions, also discouraging to any solution. CYGNIS INSIGNIS 09:15, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
Wikipedia is a mess; we should not be using them as a model or standard. We can be better. --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:16, 5 June 2019 (UTC)
Wikipedia has its issues arising in part from the sheer size and scope of the project, and the vast potential for bias and abuse to enter into the system. I think we can be better than that here, given the rather clear boundaries of this project. BD2412 T 03:19, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
@BD2412: would you be willing to revert to the use of "straight" (un-differentiated) quotation marks, if two "established users" or indeed established with 'additional access' were in dispute about which should be used? CYGNIS INSIGNIS 16:08, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
Haven't I been using straight quotation marks, generally? I don't think I have a preference, although I can see an argument for using curly apostrophes to avoid conflicting with the straight apostrophes we use for formatting, and could see an argument from there to use a style of quotation marks that matches those apostrophes. BD2412 T 16:16, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
I honestly don't know and that is why I chose the example. I should have made this clear but the query is and is not hypothetical, Everyone has an opinion on their own use, if they are an admin are they more correct. EP thinks that italic serif font should be imposed, or at least he doesn't mind that is packaged into the display preference he applies (layout 2), but only on the works he is doing afaik. If someone else decides to impose that layout on other documents, based on the fact that an admin has used it extensively, should they be able to do that without objection? My contention is that the past practices and assumptions of what one can do when they are granted additional tools has created a situation that is not conducive to collaboration and will attract an undesirable and unproductive amount of disruption by assertions and counter assertions. If you see where I am going with this, and it is not much to do with the conduct of EP or yourself. CYGNIS INSIGNIS 19:20, 9 June 2019 (UTC)
I don't understand your comment concerning: "EP thinks that italic font should be imposed". Where did that come from? I have never pushed for "italic font", and Layout 2 has nothing to do with italics. I also can't see how the issue might pertain to the current discussion. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:01, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
I meant a serif font, and fixed that. The discussion is, in part, how "we can be better". It was not an 'issue', it is an example for anyone to demonstrate how a very probable situation could be resolved. My recollection is that you prefer that layout, so make it the default display, the inclusion of a serif font is incidental. In a hypothetical situation User X thinks that other documents should be displayed in serifs, arguing they must emulate the printed page, that it is already widely used and is [obviously] an improvement. The point is how this becomes resolved, not the myriad of possibilities where users will disagree, I know well how it plays out in practice. This is not about any particular situation, if it were I would be discussing the use of differentiated (curly) quotation marks as an example of a little things continuing to create discord. What is the current discussion in your view? CYGNIS INSIGNIS 05:30, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

{{section resolved|1=— [[user:billinghurst|billinghurst]] ''<span style="font-size:smaller">[[user talk:billinghurst|sDrewth]]</span>'' 23:18, 27 September 2019 (UTC)}}

While I sympathise with the desire to close a somewhat ignoble chapter, the wording of {{section resolved}} implies a resolution has been achieved—where in this instance the warring parties have simply exhausted their ammunition with no apparent achievement of (or even attempt to acquire) any kind of consensus.
If I am I wrong please insert some kind of evidence (a pointer to external discussion is entirely acceptable) that usable lessons have been learned. 114.78.66.82
There is no proposal, there is comment, and the comment has come to a conclusion, so what more is expected. In lieu of a proposal, it would seem that there is resolution. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:54, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
@Billinghurst: O.K. It would appear we are operating under a misunderstanding: your definition of resolution is closer to how I would use the term exhaustion. I have no objections to closing this discussion whatsoever. However it would have been nice to have been able to point to lessons learned, or a pre-existing unchallenged policy—neither of which are particularly obvious to me in this instance. Go ahead and close it anyway. I reluctantly withdraw the objection. 114.78.66.82 05:23, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
Resolved for the purposes of archiving. I have amended the template's text. I would suggest that having a conversation on the talk page would be the appropriate way to progress with a notification here of that further discussion. I added a note to this conversation on that talk page. — billinghurst sDrewth 08:51, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by — billinghurst sDrewth 10:51, 29 September 2019 (UTC) nil all draw, bruises sustained, participants returned to status quo.

Vandal

The following discussion is closed:

resolved

I dunno where else to post this but can someone please block this user while we wait for a glock? It's an xwiki LTA. Praxidicae (talk) 19:57, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Done, thanks for posting it here —Beleg Tâl (talk) 20:08, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Here's another needing a block: user:188.58.114.23 -Pete (talk) 23:51, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

^^^ There's some urgency to this one, they seem to be proceeding at breakneck speed. -Pete (talk) 00:08, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

OK. Same person has used addresses in these ranges so far: 159.146 (global range block to 13/9); 188.58 (three local blocks for up to 72 hours); and 5.24 (local range block for 24 hours with a narrower range on global). Total edits across the past 24 hours are well in excess of 500. Based in Turkey. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 04:40, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Xover (talk) 08:43, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

Nuke

The following discussion is closed:

resolved

Can someone please take a look at all of the pages created by 159.146.10.24? Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 17:10, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

(non admin view) It seems to a 'purely vandalism' IP. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 17:35, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
Done, thanks for your vigilance —Beleg Tâl (talk) 17:40, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
Could an oversight/revdel of the edits they made in other namspaces also be done? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 17:42, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
(non admin view) They've moved Special:Contributions/159.146.14.28. but continuing the same pattern. Is this linked to the LTA above? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 17:50, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
Blocked and nuked. Probably same individual. If they keep hopping IPs we should start considering a /16 anon-only rangeblock until they get bored. --Xover (talk) 18:32, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

 Comment Can someone please kick phab:T231750 and ask them to implement the damn abusefilter request, it would make this sort of abuse readily stoppable and quickly. I don't have my phab login with me, and I am less than polite about their thinking that I/we need to jump through hoops for a reasonable request, so my manners have been waning. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:51, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

It has been kicked, and the ability to block via abusefilter is now available. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 20:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Xover (talk) 08:43, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

another vandal

The following discussion is closed:

resolved

See Page talk:United States Statutes at Large Volume 26.djvu/356 and many others. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 18:25, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

@Jan.Kamenicek: Done Blocked and nuked. Probably same individual as the thread above. --Xover (talk) 18:30, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

And another one Special:Contributions/159.146.14.209 , Range Block time? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 18:49, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

And can someone also do something about the talk pages for these vandals? and revoke talk page access for these IP's?

ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 19:58, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

And they hop again , this time to Special:Contributions/159.146.18.177 (sigh) :( , I am wondering if it's vandal script.. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 20:13, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
Now Special:Contributions/159.146.45.195 - I think a range block is needed, with a suitably worded block notice ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 20:20, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
A different ISP?, but the same pattern. Special:Contributions/37.154.188.45 ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 20:27, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
Special:Contributions/37.154.210.247 . ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 20:34, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
Special:Contributions/37.154.224.65, We might need another range block? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 20:42, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
Special:Contributions/37.154.238.216 ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 20:47, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

Arbitary break

Special:Contributions/176.227.13.132 Is WMF T&S or Legal aware? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 20:56, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
The Stewards seem to be dealing with it. The current wave of petty vandalism doesn't rise to T&S/Legal levels of intervention. It's mainly just annoying. --Xover (talk) 21:05, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
Special:Contributions/5.24.77.219 - As I said is WMF Legal aware? This is getting silly. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 21:06, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
Special:Contributions/178.240.201.205 ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 21:13, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
@Billinghurst, @Beleg Tâl: as other admins who have edited in the last hour while this was happening. Seems like numerous /16 rangeblocks will be necessary. Mahir256 (talk) 21:26, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
Special:Contributions/178.240.238.128 ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 21:51, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
Special:Contributions/188.58.117.135 Is there a way to block an entire provider? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 21:58, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Xover (talk) 08:44, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

Rangeblock for multiple large ranges (/22, /17, /18, /19) placed

The following discussion is closed:

resolved

To slow down the individual IP-hopping around in the above two threads, I have placed a 24-hour rangeblock on 159.146.16.0/22 (that's every IP address from 159.146.16.0 to 159.146.19.255). The range belongs to TurkNet Iletisim Hizmetleri A.S (a Turkish ISP), and will affect all their customers in this range. They also own an adjacent range that was used in this latest episode (see thread above), so if they start up again from that range we can add a block for 159.146.8.0/22. The route for this ISP is 159.146.0.0/17 but blocking a /17 is essentially the nuclear option so let's try to avoid that if at all possible. --Xover (talk) 20:32, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

Heh. Nevermind. The Stewards on meta are less gunshy than I and have placed a week-long global rangeblock for that /17. That ought to take care of it. --Xover (talk) 20:35, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
Thanks. I have added a couple of other blocks (all in Special:log/block). I have also kicked the global filter that is in place to disallow the edits (special:abuselog).
The user has been blocked for two weeks over at en.wikiquote so now he has moved here inserting text on different pages. Would you also consider blocking 176.227.0.0/18, 178.240.192.0/18, 5.24.64.0/19, 159.146.0.0/17, 37.154.0.0/16 and 188.58.64.0/18 for two weeks? -- Tegel (talk) 22:02, 23 September 2019 (UTC)
@Tegel: I am more tempted to implement a filter that disallows, and temporarily blocks the editing IP address for the known vandalism. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:38, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
In fact as a temporary relieving measure special:abusefilter/38 implemented (local import of m:special:abusefilter/219). tegel I think that for very specific abuse defence that we should be looking to update the global policy around global filters being able to temporarily block, though to have it as a minimal amount of time to allow local communities to deploy their defences. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:45, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
@Tegel: Think that there is probably scope for use of "ccnorm" in the filter. As messaged to you, I will have a play later. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:53, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Xover (talk) 08:46, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

IP posting gibberish...

The following discussion is closed:

resolved

I'd like a second view from an administrator:- Special:Contributions/37.154.215.21 ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 17:36, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

The user has been globally blocked.--Prosfilaes (talk) 18:06, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
So can an admin now handle the junk page creations? https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&offset=&limit=500&target=37.154.215.21&namespace=&tagfilter=&newOnly=1&start=&end= and oversight/revdel other edits to apply DENY, thanks..ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 18:26, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Xover (talk) 08:47, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

WS:AIV request

The following discussion is closed:

resolved

159.146.14.217 - Manually reported.

Mass creation of talk pages, with near identical pattern to an existing known LTA. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 20:48, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Now spamming 'junk' on their user talk page, please consider revoking talk page access. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 20:59, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

159.146.14.154 - Manually reported.
Mass creation of talk pages, with near identical pattern to an existing known LTA.ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 21:01, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Fixed, and some blocks in place. Thanks, and thanks for your clean up. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:40, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Xover (talk) 08:47, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

Temporary partial block on user:2405:9800:BC11:BD0D:F85D:7D62:6A92:28C9 and 180.183.40.75

The following discussion is closed:

resolved

Due to the user recreating deleted works under discussion at WS:CV, I have placed a partial block in place to restrict this user from editing in the main namespace. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:09, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

and I have just done the same to user:180.183.40.75 for the same reason. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:11, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Xover (talk) 08:47, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

Copy and paste vandal returned

The following discussion is closed:

resolved

Hi to all. Our copy and paste vandal is back, and we will simply need to be quick to shut down the Turkish IPs that are abusing. Not to be concerned about going to heavy for short periods of time. — billinghurst sDrewth 21:49, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

  •  Comment @Beeswaxcandle: special:abusefilter/39 and I have put some explanatory notes, and it is not not content-related. Whilst the blocks are in place it will only impact the single namespace. If they return at the expiry of the blocks, or if we remove the blocks, then we can see how the remainder work, I have batch tested, and tested against those flagged against the global filter. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:35, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Turkish IP addresses used for vandalism

Blocking these IP ranges for an extended period of time

We will need to be watching for valid editing requests on user talk pages, and manage the invalid editing. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:23, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: Xover (talk) 08:48, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

Author:Sukavich Rangsitpol

The following discussion is closed:

Resolved. There were no objections to the page protection put in place and which prompted this thread.

I have just indef protected this author page and the corresponding Talk page from editing by anonymous editors. Both pages have been the target of multiple attempts to circumvent the copyvio decision made at WS:CV#Thailand PD Exempt and speeches. Billinghurst has attempted to explain multiple times to the various IP addresses being used that this behaviour is unacceptable. I have elected to go to the next stage. If another Admin feels I have been too hasty and would prefer to have another attempt at behaviour modification, I am happy for them to overturn the protection (or change its timeframe). Beeswaxcandle (talk) 09:58, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

No issue from me, the list has been built. When they continue, I am just going to start further restricting their access. There are only so many times they should need to be told. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:06, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
{{support}}, and thanks. I would have proposed this course of action had you not stepped in. If the problem escalates we might even consider proposing that all new texts for this author be pre-vetted by the community prior to creation. Most of their works are clearly not PD, but there are a few who could plausibly be so depending on exactly where you draw the line on EdictGov-type exemptions (see the one I recently felt should probably be undeleted). But the biggest problem there is that the information about the source of the text is completely missing or too poor to make good assessments. If we temporarily reverse the default (permitted unless some problem is identified) for texts by this author we can make those who wish to promote Rangsitpol's works do the legwork on finding the missing information to determine whether it is PD or not. As it's not an available approach under existing policy, something like that would presumably need to be put to the community for an ad hoc vote. --Xover (talk) 13:48, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
Seeing the commentary and activity from other registered users, I am guessing that this is not a localised issue. The simple means to host these works is to get OTRS permission from the author for a creative commons license to be applied. At this point, the situation has been so problematic, that we set the bar for what we know is clearly okay. We don't need the grief. — billinghurst sDrewth 21:09, 6 October 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Xover (talk) 08:49, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

Oh, did we celebrate 1 000 000 proofread pages?

The following discussion is closed:

Congrats on the milestone! :-)

I see that we are well past 1M (absolute) proofread pages /snapshot, currently at about 1.066M (P+V). Anyone know when we did page 1M, and/or what was the page? Hopefully it wasn't something boring. smiley — billinghurst sDrewth 05:16, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Announced on WS:S on 12 May with this diff. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 06:18, 3 November 2019 (UTC)
Something missing here, but I don't understand where the difference comes from. It shows now: "Proofread‎ (656,880 P)". Sorry, I forgot to add the Validated‎ pages (411,059 P)! Result: 1,067,939. Congrats :-) --Zyephyrus (talk) 16:49, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Xover (talk) 08:50, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

IP contributions in Polish(?)

The following discussion is closed:

Resolved.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/178.243.53.18

-Pete (talk) 22:26, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

Spammer blocked, deleted and reverted. Defer to others re talk page access. BethNaught (talk) 22:49, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
@BethNaught: It is our Turkish IP range, copy and paste vandalism. [5]. I have updated Special:AbuseFilter/39 to include parts of that range. Feel free to block their talk page access, and to delete the crap. Nothing useful will come from this dropkick. With this case, also feel free to block a range automatically be it an /18 or a /17. Ping me here and I will look to the abuse filter. — billinghurst sDrewth 09:54, 5 November 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Xover (talk) 08:52, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

IP vandal

The following discussion is closed:

resolved

Some nasty diffs on user talk pages from ip 97.118.121.56. See here, here, and here. Thanks, EggOfReason (talk) 16:45, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

@EggOfReason: Thanks. Blocked for a day. --Xover (talk) 16:57, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Xover (talk) 08:55, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

Abuse Filter problem

The following discussion is closed:

resolved

Established user Levana Taylor was blocked at 17:17 NZDT for "disruptive edits in user talk ns and other places". On inspection of their edits for the previous hour, they are all fixing typos in the Page: namespace, so I unblocked at 17:50. I'm not sure what the offending edit was, but suspect some tweaking may be needed. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 04:55, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

If it means anything, page 678 of the volume Levana was editing contained a (placeholder for an) image, and the Turk (the vastly disparate IP ranges were all Turkish) for whom the specific abuse filter was created mass added an image to various pages. If we assume that Levana was going through the pages of that volume in order, perhaps it was the commented out line on the aforementioned page 678 that tripped the filter? Mahir256 (talk) 05:53, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
@Beeswaxcandle: unfortunately, the filter is private, but if you could send me the filter content and the abuse log details & examine I can try to debug it (I'm familiar with the extension from other wikis and have contributed a bit to the development of the extension). Let me know if I can help --DannyS712 (talk) 05:54, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
It was an unfortunate rule in filter 37 that triggered off one of the otherwise perfectly-normal-for-literature phrases in Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/679. I've removed the offending rule. @Levana Taylor: My sincerest apologies for the inconvenience! @Billinghurst: diff Stuff on talk pages vs. in mainspace take on vastly different connotations. I think we probably need to just live with letting that one through.
BTW, shouldn't we give Danny the permissions to at least view private abuse filters? And I would frankly be perfectly comfortable giving them editing rights too, if possibly accompanied with an admonition to not use it lightly. Very few of our filters actually take actions like blocking users (which is a separate permission in any case) or disallow edits: most of them just tag various stuff we want to track. Having another technical contributor to help out there can only be for the good of the project! --Xover (talk) 09:01, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
@Xover: looking at the user groups on this wiki:
  • Abuse filter editors - modify, modify restricted (blocking)
  • Admins - modify restricted (does nothing without modify, should probably be removed; restricted is only checked on save, edit is checked at the start)
Basically, there is one group that can see and edit private filters, and thats it. --DannyS712 (talk) 09:06, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
  •  Comment The title of the filter should have been evident that this was a false positive. In this sort of case with a new filter please just disable the filter and we can fix it later without it having further impact. In this case I fu'd the parentheses and it collected what it should have purposefully excluded. I have refactored and changed some of the exclusions based on above comments. Thanks for the offer, however, I am quite capable of debugging my stuff, and fellow admins should just feel comfortable disabling such filters as required, just like we block uncooperative bots. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:24, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Xover (talk) 08:57, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

Move some pages?

The following discussion is closed:

resolved

Could an admin please move the transcribed pages at Index:Olympia Brown - Democratic Ideals - A Memorial Sketch of Clara B. Colby.pdf to the DJVU file of the same work, here: Index:Democratic Ideals (Olympia Brown).djvu -Pete (talk) 01:30, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Some of the pages can be moved, but some can't because a corresponding page already exists in the new location. It looks as though only four or five need to be moved. Why not just copy-paste them, as you seem to be the only contributor? --EncycloPetey (talk) 05:33, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
The three empty pages at the end are the only ones that overlap. I can do that if it's too much of a hassle. Seems easier to just do it as a group move, but if no admin wants to do that I'm fine with doing it manually. -Pete (talk) 05:42, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
Please look again, the seven pages at the front of the work overlap, as do the three at the end, leaving just six pages to move. A group move of pages requires someone with a bot, and clear instructions about which pages are to be moved and which are not. When some of the pages need to be moved, but most do not, it does become an issue, because then the admin has to stop and check each pair of pages to determine which ones must actually be moved. --EncycloPetey (talk) 05:46, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
Ah, I see -- @Koavf: has begun creating pages since I put the request in, so now there really are very few to move -- and I see how it would be a more difficult request to parse. I am fine withdrawing the request, but for what it's worth -- I wasn't imagining anything requiring a bot. I was intending that an admin would create a dummy Page:Olympia Brown - Democratic Ideals - A Memorial Sketch of Clara B. Colby.pdf and then move it (clicking the checkbox to move all subpages), and then delete the dummy "root" page. But never mind now, I'll just copy over the handful of remaining page. Thanks, and sorry for the confusion. -Pete (talk) 06:31, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Done

This section was archived on a request by: Xover (talk) 08:59, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

Sockpuppets of User:Lupste

The following discussion is closed:

Issue resolved, closing to enable archiving.

User:Lupste has been globally locked. Suspected sockpuppets of this account that have since appeared on Wikisource:

--EncycloPetey (talk) 20:15, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Xover (talk) 09:53, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Request for an interface admin to edit MediaWiki:Gadget-ocr.js

The following discussion is closed:

Requested change no longer relevant.

Hi!

Since hOCR is currently buggy, please see mul:Wikisource:Scriptorium#Request_for_an_interface_admin_to_edit_MediaWiki:OCR.js : you can edit your local gadget to use fallback OCR as default one, just commenting the if condition in hocr_callback() function. —Pols12 (talk) 12:58, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: Xover (talk) 12:08, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Title blacklist updated to prevent invisible characters in page names

The following discussion is closed:

There is now a blacklist for page names with characters from outside the Basic Multilingual Plane, primarily to prevent the creation of page names containing invisible characters and other such hard to detect problems. Questions were raised regarding the scope of the blacklist rules, especially what goes beyond those few invisible characters. There is no strong consensus to block such characters in page names, and exceptions should be made as needed. If the blacklisting causes a significant number of instances where exceptions must be made the blacklist rules should be removed and rethought.

Based on this discussion I have added rules to the title blacklist to prevent the creation of pages with invisible Unicode characters in the name. Users hitting this rule should see the custom error message at MediaWiki:titleblacklist-invisible-characters-edit. --Xover (talk) 09:05, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Should the “Emojis, etc. Very few characters outside the Basic Multilingual Plane are useful in titles” section be there? First, it’s clear that MediaWiki:titleblacklist-invisible-characters-edit is not an helpful message in that case. Secondly, there seems like some quite useful characters there; the Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols is basically just so we can include mathematical titles in a plain text format. As for the rest of them, if we allow Chinese, we should allow all of Chinese; if we do enough academic work, we’re going to have Hieroglyphics and ancient Chinese in article titles.--Prosfilaes (talk) 11:26, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
@Prosfilaes: In page names? Where we recently had community consensus to not even permit curly quotes (as part of the discussion to permit them in page content) because that’d be too fiddly? In any case, both the error message and the rules can be tweaked if needed. The current rules are an attempt to prevent stuff like WORD JOINER and friends that are invisible and cause issues for people trying to work with such pages. I (currently) have no particularly strong opinions on the issue above a vague inclination towards limiting page names to roughly ASCII (on enWS, of course, other language projects have different needs). --Xover (talk) 11:52, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
What’s magical about page names? Page names need to match the names of the works they contain. Curly quotes are a special case; note that there was no restriction on character in pages, except for curly quotes. If an article title is "Čapek’s works in English” or “Injections from 𝕎 to 𝕁", then why should the page name be any different?--Prosfilaes (talk) 13:55, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
Page names have technical and practical concerns (peoples' ability to enter them, display, them, search for them, etc.) that means we should constrain them in some fashions; and at the same time we already do stuff like drop “The” from page titles to facilitate automatic sorting (which I actually disagree with, but that’s neither here nor there). The characters we disallow in the current rules are also exceedingly rare in practice, and the blacklist can be overridden by any admin at need, so I don’t think it is a problem we should expend too much effort on until and unless we start seeing actual cases where it causes problems.
Č (U+010D: LATIN SMALL LETTER C WITH CARON), is in the Latin Extended-A block which is a part of the Basic Multilingual Plane which the current ruleset lets through. 𝕎 (U+1D54E: MATHEMATICAL DOUBLE-STRUCK CAPITAL W) and 𝕁 (U+1D541: … J) are part of the Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols block of the Supplementary Multilingual Plane (most common mathematical symbols are in the BMP; these are essentially font variations: bold, italic, fractur, etc.) that contains all the exotic and ancient stuff (Linear B, Coptic, Hieroglyphs, etc.) plus a good chunk of Emoji, so they would be disallowed by the current rules but we can whitelist ranges if we discover that we need them.
That all being said, I am by no means married to the current rules so whatever is the consensus is is fine by me; and I would, of course, be happy to help implement whatever that consensus is if needed. Most of the examples you mention above (the extended maths stuff, hieroglyphics, etc.) are contained in distinct blocks (Emoji aren’t, and I believe Chinese is also split up in inconvenient ways when you want to handle everything, but most of the rest) that should be relatively straightforward to whitelist. --Xover (talk) 13:32, 6 December 2019 (UTC)
I agree that "it is {not} a problem we should expend too much effort on until and unless we start seeing actual cases where it causes problems." I think that we should remove the restriction; it is easy to deal with a few poorly named or spammish pages on patrol, and bad to frustrate innocent users with a misleading and likely irrelevant error message.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:16, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Is there more to do here? — billinghurst sDrewth 05:47, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: Xover (talk) 06:22, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Judicious cleaning required from Special:UnusedFiles

I was just poking my head into Special:UnusedFiles. There are a significant number of images that utilise {{raw page scan}} that should be checked and if truly unused, we can delete as the file has been transwiki'd to Commons. And I note that always physically check their usage as I have previously seen that the NOT USED assessment is not always accurate.

Checking and deleting process:

  • Use the Page:… link
  • At Page:… check that there is a Commons loaded image in place (and no use of template:raw image)
  • grab the new filename
  • click back to the local image, delete the image, noting "File transwiki'd" and paste in the new filename (preferred not mandatory)

If admins could do 10 to 20 a session, we should get through them in a month or so. — billinghurst sDrewth 09:26, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

 Comment TIP: when doing the image check you can even take the time to validate proofread page with the image (very often sittin gin proofread status). — billinghurst sDrewth 09:31, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
@Billinghurst: Considering the list is maxed out at 5k, so there's no telling how many more of them there are (we have over 20k files tagged as raw page scans, possibly more that are untagged), it's highly unlikely we'll get through that in a month. But it's certainly something we need to start chipping away at.
And we should possibly even start considering more drastic measures, like periodically bot-deleting anything in Category:Raw page scans for missing images that isn't used anywhere (including inbound links). The manual processing is tedious and time-consuming, and provides very little additional value compared to an automated approach (linking to the replacement image in the deletion log, mostly, and that has marginal value at best). We'd need to check closely whether the category contains files that could be caught as false positives in such a run, but barring such pitfalls automation may be both the best option and the only realistic way to ever clear out this backlog (we have plenty of other image-related backlogs where human attention is necessary).
Oh, PS, DannyS712 has a neat user script at User:DannyS712/Change status.js that makes cases such as this a lot quicker. I'm not sure they consider it ready for prime-time (I don't think it's been advertised anywhere), so caveat emptor, but I've been using it a good bit today and seen no problems. To use, add importScript('User:DannyS712/Change status.js'); to your common.js. --Xover (talk) 20:18, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
If you want to use the script, it adds a link to the function (next to the "move" function) that will, if the page is "not proofread" or "problematic", mark it as "proofread". If it is already "proofread", and the user can mark it as validated, it marks it as validated instead. Let me know if there are any questions. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 20:34, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
@Billinghurst: I agree with @Xover: that this kind of tasks should be automated.Mpaa (talk) 21:29, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
 Comment At this point I would think that the task is to start to chip away. I don't see that there is urgency in cleaning this space, so as long as we start. So what if it takes three months, heck I have works that I dip in and out of for years. As I said I have seen multiple issues of the tool being wrong in the past, if we can demonstrate that this is no longer the issue, then maybe we can look to bot removal. I though the admin review, and process of validating was beneficial.

P.S. Those quiescent admins, and those who find it hard to identify tasks to undertake are given a gift here! — billinghurst sDrewth 22:50, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Having done about a hundred of these by hand… I'd say the realistic best case sustained rate here is something like 5 admins doing 5 files per day for 5 days a week. That's an aggregate rate of about 500 per month. If the number is 5k that means 10 months to get through it. If the number is 20k that's 40 months, or just shy of 3.5 years. I don't have sufficient data for an accurate estimate of net time, but assuming a range of 30-60 seconds per file, at 5k files that's an aggregate ~40–80 net admin-hours expended. At 20k files that's ~160–320 net admin hours. Assuming an 8 hour work day, that's one dedicated admin working flat out only on this for between one week (5k/30s) and 2 months (20k/60s). With no lunch break, by the way. That's a pretty high cost.
On the upside we have tagging the logs for deleted files with a link to the replacement images. But that only matters if you're actually looking at the deleted file, and for these raw page scans that is essentially never going to happen. Having a human in the loop also helps guard against Mediawiki bugs in categorising etc., but while, yes, that does happen, it's been years since I've run into that kind of bug anywhere that would matter here. What usually happens is that counts and references fail to update properly when pages are deleted, so you get categories saying they have members, but in reality the relevant items have already been deleted; and these eventually get cleared out by periodic maintenance tasks.
In other words, doing this manually is expensive and with a significant opportunity cost, and without a concomitant value. Automating it obviously carries risks (automatically deleting up to 5-20k files should never be done lightly). But with appropriate checks—for example, all files listed on Special:UnusedFiles who are also in category Raw page scans and who have no incoming links in WhatLinksHere—manual spot checks, and going in batches… the risk should be eminently manageable. --Xover (talk) 09:16, 16 November 2019 (UTC)
I can work out shortly a script that can scan category Raw page scans and checks for the conditions for deletion (and in case deletes). If you are OK to test small batches, let me know.Mpaa (talk) 14:52, 16 November 2019 (UTC)
@Mpaa: Can you have it run up a list of files and dump it in a sandbox somewhere so we can spot check the logic? Maybe a hundred or so files that the script thinks should be deleted, and, if relevant, the ones it thinks shouldn't be. Better to find any holes in the logic before we start deleting stuff. --Xover (talk) 15:10, 16 November 2019 (UTC)
Here: res sandbox.Mpaa (talk) 16:36, 16 November 2019 (UTC)
@Mpaa: Excellent! I've spot-checked pages from most of the works represented in that list and found none incorrect. I'd have no objection to running that (in batches so it can be checked; there're bound to be some pathological edge-case out there somewhere). --Xover (talk) 17:12, 16 November 2019 (UTC)
@Xover: I have done a small test batch of 45 pages as Mpaa.Mpaa (talk) 18:29, 17 November 2019 (UTC)
@Mpaa: Ok, I've spot-checked 2–3 files from each work in those 45, and find no real problems. The only issue I see is that the deletion log for File:A book of the west; being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall.djvu-453.png links to c:File:A book of the west; being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall.djvu instead of c:File:A Book of the West - ALMS HOUSES, S GERMANS.png; and ditto for File:A book of the west; being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall.djvu-223.png that points to c:File:A book of the west; being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall.djvu instead of c:File:A Book of the West - LAKEHEAD, KISTVAEN.png. --Xover (talk) 21:28, 17 November 2019 (UTC)
@Xover: Thanks, I fixed it, I ran another ~40 pages.Mpaa (talk) 18:33, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
I'm wondering if we can set up a scrolling gallery that does nothing but compare our page image side-by-side with the comparable Commons file. An editor could scroll through and eyeball any differences fairly quickly. BD2412 T 22:52, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

┌───────────────────────────────────────┘
 Poking at this again…

I found no problems with Mpaa's test bot run, and we still have potentially ~20k files sitting there that it would be a waste of admin resources to process manually. Can we pull the trigger on a mass delete of these? If not, what are the concerns? --Xover (talk) 08:26, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

I ran about 15 pages to check that everything is still OK. Mpaa (talk) 21:47, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
Watch out for files unacceptable on Commons, especially if still copyright-restricted at home.--Jusjih (talk) 05:16, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
The images from The Coronado expedition, 1540-1542, uploaded by Hesperian in 2013 already exist on the commons and are linked to Index:The Coronado expedition, 1540-1542.djvu— Ineuw (talk) 01:29, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: — billinghurst sDrewth 01:36, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
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