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Trump columns

Hello! The breaking columns on the Trump endorsement article is probably from a 300 edit run of removals that one editor did. I'm inclined to roll back to before their edits, as I checked six of them and five had to be restored as they were true. However it would be way better if a sysop did the rollback. (!).ThatMontrealIP (talk) 07:08, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

ThatMontrealIP, I am looking at it, and it is badly broken. What is the revid I have to revert to? Dirk Beetstra T C 07:14, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
Beetstra, It would be this version, but it is 300 or so edits back. All the intermediate edits were done by one user who misinterpreted the BLP policy or removing controversial material. It seems they did not check for other available sourcing before removing hundreds of entries. I have checked seven so far, and six did endorse Trump, so I think it's best to roll back. But you have a lot more experience and will know better. ThatMontrealIP (talk) 07:20, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
ThatMontrealIP, I have reverted this. There are some additions which have now been erased, can you check which ones there were good? Dirk Beetstra T C 07:28, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
Thanks very much. It's late here but I'll have a look tomorrow.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 07:33, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
I checked and restored the few additions I had made; the only other additions were by AnomieBot, who probably won't be offended. Thanks again. ThatMontrealIP (talk) 07:53, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

There are still many names in the article which did not endorse Trump. Some have a source from after 2016 and others don’t have an explicit endorsement. I am done editing the article, since many hours of my work were reverted, but I would recommend some editors look at some of the names. 6/7 is not a good enough number. While I’m sure I made some mistakes, I did make part of the article better. Please continue to help edit this article. Lima Bean Farmer (talk) 06:45, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Lima Bean Farmer, you made 245 (!!!) edits removing them, and there were many identified by user:ThatMontrealIP that were wrong. Some of them were wrongly interpreted by you ("Steve Pearce will back Donald Trump if the New York businessman wins the Republican nomination." is not presumtive, that is a clear endorsement, to give one). Others that you removed are now a 404, like e.g. https://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/politics/jacksonvilles-newspaper-endorses-donald-trump-for-president/348222980, but you did not search whether it is true or not. There is https://www.firstcoastnews.com/article/news/politics/jacksonvilles-daily-newspaper-to-endorse-trump/77-348222980 that is clearly the same article exactly stating what it should be. In this diff you removed 'http://scholarsandwritersforamerica.org/' with 'this link again? really?' (which basically will have been in likely 136 of your edits). That http://scholarsandwritersforamerica.org/ is now a non-existent blog shows that you have not tried to see whether these 136 were actually true - see https://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/donald-trump-scholars-writers-endorsement-228987 and https://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-authors-for-trump-20161108-story.html. And with that, 138 of your 245 edits were plainly wrong. Up till now, I have only found https://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=List_of_Donald_Trump_2016_presidential_campaign_endorsements&diff=next&oldid=963950036 .. where I was unable to find another source (but I did not spend a lot of time on it, nor did I check if there was a viable archive that shows that at the time of writing this was indeed correctly stated in the link - it suggests there is some video where he declares himself pro-Trump?).
Moreover, you broke the page somewhere halfway through (it was already broken at your 177th removal here, I did not check further back).
With so many mistakes over so many individual removals I had no choice but to revert all of it. I am not going to individually check 245 edits and revert all that were wrong, with likely several of them impossible to plainly 'undo'.
So, I am sorry to say, I do not think you made part of the article better, you made it overall much worse with removal of a large number of correct entries. Dirk Beetstra T C 07:50, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
(talk page watcher) @Lima Bean Farmer: here's one of many Internet Archive caches of the Scholars & writers blog. Backed by the CNN article, this is clearly an accurate source. Adding the six I found to the 138 S&W removals, that makes 144/245, or 58% that were inaccurate. I hope you can see how that low accuracy in your edits was a problem that had to be corrected. ThatMontrealIP (talk) 08:22, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
The link above actually shows the article. The link on the 2016 page just directs to a welcome page from 2018, not even a link to an endorsement Lima Bean Farmer (talk) 19:00, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
@Lima Bean Farmer: exactly. You needed to look for a copy of the source before removing it 138 times. We try to not go around blindly removing material that is true. Think about it.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 19:04, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

I have another question at the Tea House. Please don’t delete it. So, should that source be changed as opposed to being deleted? Lima Bean Farmer (talk) 20:04, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Lima Bean Farmer, you should assess whether the source said what was claimed it said at the time of use. Preferably an archive link should be added, and sometimes you need to change a link as documents move. Sometimes there are additional sources available that you can add as well. If none of that works, then you could first remove the source and add a ‘citation needed’ tag (in case of a removed reference better with a talkpage post). And if that does not resolve it after a reasonable time the claim could be removed. (and there are exceptions to this procedure, but this is the general way). Dirk Beetstra T C 05:05, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Thank you fir your help and time! Lima Bean Farmer (talk) 06:08, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

AWB auditing

Per User_talk:BrownHairedGirl#Automatic_category_adding, are you going to go thru these edits more or was that just a one-off? I'm concerned about many of these slipping thru the cracks and I can't do all of the review myself. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 12:50, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

Koavf, not really planning to, it is just too much. But she should be more careful with this from now on. Dirk Beetstra T C 13:30, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
Beetstra, Thanks. Agreed, of course. I'll keep on looking at them. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:22, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

Trusted on IRC

HI, Could you please add me as trusted user for LinkWatchers and COIBot on IRC. My nick is ZI_Jony and cloak is wikipedia/ZI-Jony. Warm Regards, ZI Jony (Talk) 13:40, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

ZI Jony, I've commanded LiWa3 accordingly, and did this on COIBot. It should work now. Dirk Beetstra T C 14:08, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
Beetstra, Thanks, It's worked. Warm Regards, ZI Jony (Talk) 14:22, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Spammer TPA

I saw that yesterday you blocked Azmalk9 for spam. Post-block, that user posted more spam to their user talk page. I've cleaned up the spam, but it might be worth revoking their talk page access. Aspening (talk) 02:26, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Aspening, talkpage access revoked. And I checked whether I already blacklisted the link they spammed, I did. Dirk Beetstra T C 02:32, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
Thanks! Aspening (talk) 02:39, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
Aspening, no, thank you! Dirk Beetstra T C 03:08, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2020).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

  • Following the banning of an editor by the WMF last year, the Arbitration Committee resolved to hold an RfC regarding on-wiki harassment. The RfC has been posted at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Anti-harassment RfC and is open to comments from the community.
  • The Medicine case was closed, with a remedy authorizing standard discretionary sanctions for all discussions about pharmaceutical drug prices and pricing and for edits adding, changing, or removing pharmaceutical drug prices or pricing from articles.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:25, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

About Southeast Asian anime licensee Muse Communication

Hello Beetstra,

I am 2001:44C8:4566:92DD:1:0:A46:13BD as you've seen on various anime/manga articles.

Muse Communication Co, Ltd. (also known as Muse Asia) is actually a legit company.

Muse Asia is a branch of Taiwan's Muse Communications Co., Ltd. for anime distribution in Southeast Asian territories. They license titles to streaming services such as Netflix, TV networks like Animax Asia and Aniplus Asia, as well as local TV stations.

They also have their own YouTube channel that simulcasts anime for Southeast Asian countries called "Muse Asia".

Their official website is the one I cited in articles.

They're a reputable corporation in the Southeast Asian industry, how unreliable can they be?

Thank you, I wish my edits will not be reverted. It might be necessary for me to make an article for the company with enough citations and information if my edits keep getting reverted. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ChickyBros (talk • contribs) 08:45, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

@ChickyBros: I have no doubt, but your additions and re-additions without discussion are not the way forward. As it was going, you added primary sourced information (and not independently sourced information). Any company can say everything about themselves.
Do you have any relation to the company? --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:51, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

No, I do not have any relation to the company. So it seems like the information cannot be added then since there are barely any news articles on anime releases in Southeast Asia. Thank you for clarification. ChickyBros (talk) 08:54, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Infobox image placement

Hello Beetstra!

Thanks for your suggestion about infobox image placement. However, do you care to explain further what you meant? I didnt quite understand very well what i should do. Should I remove images placed inside infoboxes and place them outside the infoboxes where the body of the article is? I thought in articles having infoboxes, images are usually placed inside infoboxes rather than outside them.

Please i need proper clarification to ascertain what right step to take. Dolphyb (talk) 11:58, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Dolphyb, heh, I am now trying to find the diff back. I noticed your edits and checked one, where I saw that you put a file just above the infobox. Now I can't find it back, and I only see you adding images in infoboxes, as it should be.
Ah .. found it. Your very first edit: diff (but I think I saw more). Guess you changed since. Dirk Beetstra T C 12:20, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
Thanks! properly understood now. Dolphyb (talk) 12:25, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Please Help SocialNews.XYZ

Hello Beetstra,

My Name is Gop Adusumilli the editor of SocialNews.XYZ. I see that our news website is added to the blacklist. Please let us know what we should do to get off the blacklist.

We may have without any bad intentions added fist look posters to some movies. We promise not to do that again. Please Help. Thank You in Advance.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Agk4444 (talk • contribs)

@Agk4444: thank you for your question. This has likely nothing to do with your site specifically - we have blacklisted ALL of .xyz as we were having too many problems generally with .xyz domains (e.g. we had a massive subset of subscription drug spam, and whole sets of porn-related spam). Good domains are liberally whitelisted, provided they do have a reasonable use on Wikipedia. Please add your request at WT:SWL. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:01, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
Beetstra, actually, this website is specifically blacklisted: see Special:Permalink/947960377#socialnews.xyz. GeneralNotability (talk) 13:23, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
GeneralNotability, thanks, I did not see that yet ... We’ll assess at WL or BL then. Report should be refreshed then so we see full history. Dirk Beetstra T C 15:28, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
Ah, diff. Dirk Beetstra T C 15:30, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
By the way, did you previously declare your connection with this site? That is required per m:Terms of use. And you should then also very strictly adhere to our conflict of interest guideline. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:15, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Canyoning

Hello Beetstra,

I've reviewed your comments over the recent additions to the canyoning page edits and agree that some of the additions seem to be too commercially-oriented; despite, some of it are facts and some of the links & references point to authority websites on the subject. Can this in any shape or form be reviewed and discussed to be included in the edits?

Thank you, Gus.schiavon (talk) 05:52, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Gus.schiavon, thank you for responding. I see that there are some genuine additions in the edits (although also in there, you are editing in contrary to our policies, like e.g. changing the flavour of English used in the document), most of it is linking/referencing to blogs and websites primarily aimed at offering courses. Those are not generally deemed reliable sources. Dirk Beetstra T C 06:15, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Hello Beetstra, Regarding the valid additions in the edits, when would we be able to see these active? For example, the addition of references regarding the canyon ratings systems and sites that are authorities on the field (even if a blog), could be revised to be included or not? Also, factual evidence regarding new organizations being established albeit without an external link seem to be warranted for. Thanks for your review. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gus.schiavon (talk • contribs) 07:55, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Gus.schiavon, all have been reverted. I would strongly suggest you to review our policies and guidelines properly. You can re-do some of the edits but taking those policies and guidelines into account (e.g., do not change flavours of English, use the best sources available, and take care with your conflict of interest). Thanks. Dirk Beetstra T C 08:19, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

COIBot report

Hi, do you know why COIBot hasn't created a report for this domain? I've tried several times but it's not worked for some reason. The spamming has escalated recently and I'm trying to get the whole picture. Thanks! Nardog (talk) 11:12, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Nardog, no, I don't. Only the last one is still in my logs, and was executed. It may be that the size of the report in the memory of the bot is too big, and the bot crashes on it.
I have just sent it to the bot, lets see. Dirk Beetstra T C 12:20, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
Nardog, quick scanning looks like it is spammed .. Dirk Beetstra T C 12:22, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
Thank you. I see the report has been created, with so much data that it exceeds the template include size. Nardog (talk) 13:52, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
Nardog, I saw it. I guess the size was the problem before (I ran the saver manually, so it did not fill the memory yet). Dirk Beetstra T C 14:30, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Infodrips

Hi @Beetstra , It's founding editor from infodrips.com, I have editted my userpage on which I have tried to add my own site in user info but it was not done, Because, As I saw that you have listed this site as spam. Would you please tell me more about it. Thanks Aaqib Ahmad (talk) 06:46, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Aaqibacs1, thank you for your response. This was added to articles by IPs, and then reverted by editors. Some of those edits were then re-done by other IPs who, likely, did not get the first warning. In the end, we have 16 additions from 14 different IPs. As these links were clearly unwanted (all were removed), warnings were 'ignored' (or likely never arrived at the person who added the links in the first place), and links were added despite in-page warnings not to do so, the only solution is prevent addition. It was therefore blacklisted, as clearly we could not get the message through that the links were not wanted.
Just to note, you have not tried to add infodrips.com to your userpage. You did however try to add the same link as two of the 14 IPs tried to add to another page. Since you have not clearly indicated your involvement with this site that you were trying to add, please read WP:COI and m:Terms of use (the latter you were violating).
(Note, if you want to discuss the merit of this link specifically, I prefer that you open a discussion on the blacklist talkpage:  Defer to Local blacklist). Thanks. Dirk Beetstra T C 15:20, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Thank you too for the response, I appreciate your analysis about it, And obviously it was me that tried to add it, But not in the manners as you getting. I was not aware by the terms of use and started editing without registering myself. But, later studied the things and edited many articles on the basis of terms and use. You can also analyse my contributions, It will be more helpful for me to understand. So, I apologise my unaware editings, and with future responsibilities hereby requesting to whitelist the site (Because,I think site itself doesn't not violating the wikipedia terms, it was just the way of editing that violated or 'ignored' the warnings because I used IP's not were registered so didn't get any notification like now I'm getting in my notification bell). Hope that you will consider it. Thanks Aaqib Ahmad (talk) 21:36, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Aaqibacs1, I understand, and I hope you understand that that was the only way to protect Wikipedia. The terms are clearly mentioned close to the edit box, and you likely had to fill a captcha. You should have understood.
As I said, I will leave that to a discussion on the blacklist and likely an independent admin. You’ll likely need independent support though. Maybe pass by a WikiProject or WP:RSN first. Dirk Beetstra T C 11:13, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Alright, As an administrative post at infodrips, I also understand and respect the protective measures for the project against spammers, to follow the protective measures want to discuss it more. If you don't mind I need to ask you something before starting discussion on Local blacklist. Aaqib Ahmad (talk) 12:08, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Aaqibacs1, sure, you can ask. Dirk Beetstra T C 13:03, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, Is it mandatory to create a section at blacklist discussion by me?, Can you do this for me to create a section there. Because, I exactly don't know what point to be started. Hope you understand. Aaqib Ahmad Talk 14:02, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Aaqibacs1, no, that would make it sound like I did not agree with my own blacklisting, and it would look even worse on you as site owner. Still, it would be better to find support elsewhere first. Dirk Beetstra T C 20:22, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Right, Thanks. Aaqib Ahmad Talk 00:53, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2020).

Administrator changes

added Red Phoenix
readded Euryalus • SQL
removed Jujutacular • Monty845 • Rettetast • Madchester

Oversight changes

readded GB fan
removed Keegan • Opabinia regalis • Premeditated Chaos

Guideline and policy news

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:20, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Please am sorry if I spammed Wiki, Kindly remove this URL as spam

Hello user Beetstra, I am really new on Wikipedia and I am still learning how to grow Wikipedia as an encyclopedia, so I made series of edits recently and one of the link is recorded as spam, this is the link below; 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spam/Local/9jadailyfeeds.com.ng

Pls kindly revert it! I won't spam anymore, thanks...have any reply, pls chat on my talk page... Daniel vic (talk) 08:48, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Daniel vic, there is no need to remove it, no-one has acted on it, and since you are clearly reacting now there is no reason for action either. I will close it accordingly. It’s just a report, nothing more, nothing less. I made my mistakes when I started, and even while I was an admin. No need to worry about it. Dirk Beetstra T C 19:59, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Okay! Thanks...I will become better sir! Daniel vic (talk) 04:06, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

COIBot/LiWa3 - list all users who added a certain URL

Hey Beetstra, I was wondering if there's a way to get all users who added a particular URL (not the whole domain, just the specific URL). There's an SPI going on which has identified a particular URL as characteristic of a very large xwiki spam ring, but the domain in question is used in too many places for a useful COIBot report (mdpi.com, an open-access journal website of some sort, there will be plenty of legit/unrelated additions). I used "whoadded mdpi.com /2078-2489/11/5/263/htm" on IRC and it says there are 560 (!) users who have added that URL, but it only gives us the top 10. Is there a way to generate a COIBot report just for a specific URL instead of the whole domain? Alternatively, are you able to just pull the results of that query and either post them on the SPI or email them to me and Mz7? GeneralNotability (talk) 20:33, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

GeneralNotability, I can pull the query, that will be the easiest. I’ll try hat tomorrow. Dirk Beetstra T C 22:23, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
@GeneralNotability and Mz7: I created the dumps. tTis is a bit broader dump than what you were asking for, it contains all mdpi.com links with '2078' and '2489' in them, and a dump for the specific url (adding the search term '263'). Hope this helps. --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:13, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
reping: @GeneralNotability and Mz7:. --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:13, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
Could you add www.mdpi.com/2073-431X/8/3/60/htm to that? It's an earlier paper by the same authors see e.g. [1]. This is so widespread and over such a long time period that I think we need to add them to the blacklist, but should we wait until they are all removed? SmartSE (talk) 08:35, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
@Smartse, GeneralNotability, and Mz7: I will do Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam/LinkReports/mdpi.com#specific_dump 2 in a bit.
If any of you has toolforge access (and hence, sql access), can I have your SQL usernames, I can try to grant you SELECT rights on the db (and hope you all don't want to do a SELECT on youtube.com ...). --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:04, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
@JzG: ^^. --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:36, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
Beetstra, no toolforge here Guy (help! - typo?) 09:43, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
Working on getting access now. GeneralNotability (talk) 13:54, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
Got access - assuming I'm looking at the right thing ($HOME/replica.my.cnf), my SQL username is u25662. GeneralNotability (talk) 15:48, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
GeneralNotability, yep, that is it. I’ll try to give you access and some explanation tomorrow. Dirk Beetstra T C 17:18, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
GeneralNotability, you have access now to the table 'linkwatcher_linklog' on database 's51230__linkwatcher' (note that in the database there are two underscores). 'describe linkwatcher_linklog;' will give you a table description. Please be careful with the queries .. "select * from linkwatcher_linklog where domain like 'com.youtube.%';" will take days and likely both COIBot and LiWa3 will be affected. Dirk Beetstra T C 06:54, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

linklog queries

GeneralNotability I don't have access to IRC at the moment (and my weekend starts). Anyway: the table 'linkwatcher_linklog':

  • ID = just an ID
  • timestamp = unix format timestamp for the time of the edit (taken from the diff)
  • edit_id = (I forgot - I think I used this as a flag once)
  • lang = language of wiki
  • pagename = name of page
  • namespace = namespace (main, draft, user, and template)
  • diff = cleaned up diff-url, or the logitem url for spamblacklisthits
  • revid = the revid number
  • oldid = the oldid number
  • wikidomain = type of wiki (wikipedia, wikiversity ...)
  • user = name of editor / IP
  • fullurl = the complete link that was added
  • domain = encoded domain of the fullurl: The domain is reversed: 'example.com' becomes 'com.example.' (with an extra dot at the end). That makes searching much faster, especially on subdomains ('com.blogspot.'; otherwise your query will be domain LIKE '%.blogspot.com' to get all blogspots, which is slower than domain LIKE 'com.blogspot.%'). If you want to know who added 'blogspot.com' you have to search for domain = 'com.blogspot.' (again, with the trailing dot, domain = 'com.blogspot' will not give any results).  m:User:LiWa3 is stripping 'www.' and 'www3.' from the front of each domain, so both 'example.com' and 'www.example.com' are stored as 'com.example.'. Note that the whole path is stripped as well, this is just domainname and TLD, so I can count domain = 'com.mdpi.' quite fast).
  • resolved = IP of domain (some are static enough to be useful as a search term), and some IPs of domains are close to IPs of IP-users.
  • ip = whether the editor is an IP or a named user; that was originally only IPv4, and I turned it on for IPv6 way later than IPv6 was implemented.
  • date = date of diff (used for some search functions).
  • time = time of diff

Just to note, your primary search fields will likely be the username, the pagename and the domain.

Choose the queries wisely: SELECT diff,user FROM linkwatcher_linklog WHERE domain LIKE 'com.mdpi.%' AND fullurl LIKE '%2078%' AND fullurl LIKE '%2489%'; (0.25 sec, going through 11277 records out of almost a billion records) will be orders of magnitude faster than 'SELECT diff,user FROM linkwatcher_linklog WHERE fullurl LIKE '%mdpi.com%' AND fullurl LIKE '%2078%' AND fullurl LIKE '%2489%'; (I haven't tried). Username, domain, pagename, revid, oldid, wikidomain, language all have indexes on them, as long as you have the beginning correct (hence the 'com.example') these should be fast. Avoid those with big numbers (I've never even attempted to see who spammed a certain video on youtube with domain like 'com.youtube' AND fullurl LIKE '%<videocode>%, I am afraid that that will take ages).

Have fun. --Dirk Beetstra T C 15:47, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Beetstra, thanks, this is really helpful - will try not to break anything. GeneralNotability (talk) 19:51, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Manually archiving blacklist talkpage

Hello Beetstra, I just did a quick test to manually archive 1 old case. Seems to work just fine - should we archive the other old stuff manually aswell, or do you see any technical reason not to? It might be easier than a lengthy research why the talkpage archiving is hanging yet again (I suspect something in your huge copypaste from 7 July is bothering the archive bot). Just wanted to double-check with you before further cleanup, please feel free to revert my test archiving if it causes technical problems. GermanJoe (talk) 11:49, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

GermanJoe, just do it. But I would prefer to the bot to start working again. Dirk Beetstra T C 11:59, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
OK, will do when I got a bit of time. My hope is that the bot will work again, once most of the old issues (and whatever is irritating the bot within them) are archived. GermanJoe (talk) 14:11, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

COIBot bad page creation

COIBot recently created WikiProject Spam/LinkReports/onlinetutorials.tech in article space, rather than project space. power~enwiki (π, ν) 20:58, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Power~enwiki, thanks for reporting. Every once in a while it misfires. I don’t understand why it sometimes misses the namespace. I’ve moved/merged it. Dirk Beetstra T C 21:11, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Dirk, can you please add a check that it can't create pages in the main namespace. Over the last few days, we have all of these (and there may have been others which have since been moved, I can't check this):

I haven't moved them so you can check them, but these all should be moved out of the mainspace, and no new ones created of course. Fram (talk) 12:51, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

Fram, crap. I have partially blocked the bot for now until I have time to program a check (or figure out why it does this so suddenly). I deleted the pages, too lazy for a history merge. Thanks for the report. Dirk Beetstra T C 13:45, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Precious
Six years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:22, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

Gerda Arendt, thanks!! Dirk Beetstra T C 07:01, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

COIBot/Poke?

Hey there, B, twice I've dropped pokes here and here for COIBot to look at these links, and both times the bot hates me, and there are no reports. What am I doing wrong? Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 04:41, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Cyphoidbomb, I’ll check logs on Sunday, my later Poke worked .. Dirk Beetstra T C 11:25, 14 August 2020 (UTC)
Did it work? I don't see anything at Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam/LinkReports/onlykollywood.com. I suspect there has been an uptick in the submission of this source. If I recall correctly, someone was coming by and using this site prolifically as a reference. Where it may have only been in an article once, this person would add 20+ "references", for instance [For instance here and their sneaky no-ping revert here. So I'm obviously worried about it getting out of hand, but I'm sure we can wait a few days. So far it's present about 400+ times in articles. Regards, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 15:50, 14 August 2020 (UTC)
Cyphoidbomb, I think it is the page-title blacklist (or whatever you call it), the page exists on meta but COIBot repeatedly fails to create it here (and there is no log). I copied from meta, now you will see the update here. Dirk Beetstra T C 19:20, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Infodrips

Hi, beetstra, We were discussed about infodrips.com to whitelist, finally you suggested to create a discussion on WP:RSN or WP:SPB , So, would you please help me by referring someone from wikipedia that can create a responsible discussion for me? Hope you understand, Thanks Aaqib Ahmad Talk 07:12, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Aaqibacs1, thank you for your question. I actually also suggested to find a suitable wikiproject to see if there are people that are interested in the information you have to offer. Whether at WP:RSN or at WT:SBL you will likely not get anything due to your conflict of interest, even if there is merit for use. Dirk Beetstra T C 07:54, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

It was my first experience about editing, therefore, am hoping to be considered the COI, also described the reason that why the warnings ignored. well, thanks for the answer. Aaqib Ahmad Talk 09:24, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Aaqibacs1, I am sorry, but there is not a lot I can do. I don't know the website, I really think that you need support of independent (and probably established) editors. Dirk Beetstra T C 11:11, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Aaqib Ahmad Talk 12:14, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Please explain: [2] : given internet archives exist for at least one of the changed links and black point out the location of the blacklist (me being stupid). Thankyou. 19:12, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

@Djm-leighpark: the link is blacklisted, either here or on meta. Because it is blacklisted the archiving bot can't add that link to the archive, see https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Special:Log?type=spamblacklist&user=&page=Talk%3AJasmine+Directory%2FArchive+1&wpdate=&tagfilter=&wpfilters%5B%5D=newusers. This has nothing to do with internet archives like the wayback or similar. --Dirk Beetstra T C 02:19, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
Thanks .. I missed on \bthelondoneconomic\.com\b on [3] the first time. Seems only to be in place since 15 June 2020. ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Djm-leighpark (talk • contribs) 02:53, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
I noticed it was yourself who added them here: [4] thoug its been a bit difficult to track as not in the edit summary but there's supposed to be something on talk. I may try to find that. Djm-leighpark (talk) 02:56, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
Given this is stupid o'clock for me and I am well capable of making stupid mistakes I would expect a search for thelondoneconomic at [5] to find something. Failing that I'd expect to see it on [Talk:Spam blacklist/Archives/2020-02] or maybe [Talk:Spam blacklist/Archives/2020-03] or [Talk:Spam blacklist/Archives/2020-01]. But I am seeing nothing. Are you able to explain this further? (NB: I did some significant work on The London Economic article page a while back but have no association with the site, but it perhaps explains why it caught my eye). Thankyou. Djm-leighpark (talk) 03:27, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
@Djm-leighpark: Discussion is here. unsure why it is not in the archives. I will try to solve that later. --Dirk Beetstra T C 04:55, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
@Beetstra (1) I'm quite concerned why that is not in the archives (and thanks for intending to look at this) and (2) perhaps more concerned of the allegations made in the discussion in the example given. It doesn't mean the stories I'm seeing now are what were being seen then but if that author of The London Economic (TLE) is fake or is being faked that is a serious allegation. Can you please investigate further and confirm your support for this blacklisting on the basis of the request. I also realise from template Template:LinkSummary other TLE articles have been called into question. One by a Guest Contributor is certainly of dubious standard and concern. Please appreciate I am unfamiliar of the ways of Project Spam and of intrepeting stuff in that context. As it happens (and perhaps unfortunetely in the context of starting this conversation here as it was triggered by your edit to the TLE talk page, I am also at currently at ANI for concerns of faking citations (In this case from offline books) and also in a discussion on the Daily Mail. My projection for the day is quite busy albeit disjointed and subject to variation and while I may contribute to WP I may not be able to in depth look at this. Thankyou. Djm-leighpark (talk) 06:38, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
Djm-leighpark, I have solved the archiving problem, the archiving bot removed the discussions here, but they never arrived in the archive.
I am pinging Billinghurst, Praxidicae and 1997kB here, though I think it is better that we get a re-discussion on a noticeboard (likely as a removal request on m:Talk:Spam_blacklist). I do recall that there was something wrong there when I pulled the trigger on the blacklisting, and with these 3 editors in the request I do believe that there is a strong case behind the request. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:06, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
I do note that the picture of Peter Wakefield is still the picture of Alec Ross (author). --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:16, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
The London Economic no longer exists, it did for a short time and now it was sniped by the same black hat SEO firm that operates several hundred other sites that were sniped (ie. The Frisky, foreignpolicyi.org, etc...) Praxidicae (talk) 12:34, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
Also I can't find my edit on Wikipedia about it but this was also included in a package deal (that also listed all these other fake sites/sniped sites) a few months ago for guest posting. As an example, see this, though it isn't the one I am referring to. Praxidicae (talk) 12:39, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
@Praxidicae In simple terms I see current stories from The London Economic. e.g. the story here seems currrent for today: www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/boris-johnson-branded-a-joke-and-a-hypocrite-as-nhs-workers-protest-outside-downing-street/27/08/ (I'm not concerned about the quality of otherwise rubbishness of the story ... just that it indicates it exists at least as a brand). Now it may be its been "sniped", certainly there were claims of a take over. The alleged main person has a Wikipedia account that may been around for some time (follow my recent contributions). I will say at the moment I am not happy but I am also willing to be open that I am in midst of fakeness where little is as it seems. Djm-leighpark (talk) 13:07, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
There are no "simple terms" here. What is it exactly, that you want me to do about it? Praxidicae (talk) 13:10, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

@Praxidicae: I need to get to a better device and in a different environment where I have less distractions and look at things more precisely; but I think the concern point is guest articles on thelondoneconomic, as opposed to "regular" staff articles. Thankyou. Djm-leighpark (talk) 13:46, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

@Praxidicae .. I will apologise for not reading your post completely ... I said I ought to not get involved in any depth earlier this afternoon and then I did, focusing on your assertion: "The London Economic no longer exists" which seems not true in every sense of the word .... though it may be perhaps the TLE of 2020 has more compromised integrity compared to the TLE of say 2017 (and I am mulling that point). The peopleperhour link you give is interesting, my first impression was to dismiss as a scam ... my second impression is more open. I remain concerned about the precise nature of the manner and scrutiny of [6] given the emotive language used, example given, and possible allegations about the fake nature of the TLE journalist; which at least first glance may be a possible issue. The claim the two stories are the same (from e.g. a common press release) seems false at initial glance due to a completely different shape and date. I'd fancy a deep scrutiny on this case but I have ongoing RL issues today and have already verbosely gone on too much and my mind is also elsewhere so I am probably rambling while I'm trying to fit this together. Thankyou. Djm-leighpark (talk) 22:12, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
perhaps if you would make a coherent statement ever, people would listen to you. Do not ping me again. Praxidicae (talk) 23:06, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

Djm-leighpark, please bring this to an appropriate forum if you wish to remove this, but IMHO this is rightfully blacklisted so you will need to bring a coherent and strong argument there. --Dirk Beetstra T C 02:51, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

@Beetstra: Thankyou. Considering options. Djm-leighpark (talk) 04:51, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

Please, solely for my education, would you please explain why the URI scheme https:// that you removed as shown by this diff was blocking archiving? Thank you. NedFausa (talk) 06:07, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

NedFausa, not the scheme, the link newshelp.in is blacklisted and no new links to that website can be added. That link was still in an (old) discussion on that talkpage. Now the archiving bots are taking that section, and trying to post it elsewhere (in the archive) before blanking it on the talkpage. That first action does not work, as that would then add the link to the archive and hence the bot is not archiving that page (as the bot takes a lot of sections in one go, it does not archive anything because of one link). The solution to allow archiving is to 'break' the link so it is not an external link anymore and that is not blocked by the spam blacklist.
As it is a link in a talkpage, clickability is not a must, so I remove the https://. I could also have nowikied the whole link, or have broken the domainname, I just have to make sure that it is not a proper link anymore. Dirk Beetstra T C 07:12, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for the explanation! And thanks for breaking the link. As a result, Lowercase sigmabot III archived 14 discussions (-71,154‎ bytes). That helps because the discussions were long and the page was hard to navigate. NedFausa (talk) 15:43, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

Protection of Time series database

As someone who's been heavily WP:INVOLVED in discussing inclusion criteria on the article and have edited Draft:TimescaleDB to add maintenance tags, you shouldn't have fully protected the article on TSDBs for 6 months. Consider filing a request at WP:RFPP in the future and not taking administrator actions w/r/t to the article as well. I agree with you on the specific example that was being added but right now you're using administrator privileges to benefit yourself in a content dispute. Chess (talk) (please use {{ping|Chess}} on reply) 02:59, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Chess, no, I am protecting the article in the same way as before, Continuous additions of unverifiable material or spam. I have not edited content. Dirk Beetstra T C 03:11, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

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Discussion at Talk:Time series database § RfC on inclusion criteria

 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Time series database § RfC on inclusion criteria. I've started a formal RfC to try to resolve the dispute on what time series databases should be included in the article on them. As someone who's commented in discussions related to this in the past I'm notifying you as a courtesy. Chess (talk) (please use {{ping|Chess}} on reply) 22:09, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Chess, forgot to thank you: thank you! I have brought my point forward, consistent with my administrative actions on that page. Dirk Beetstra T C 10:22, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:42, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

vpnoverview on spam blacklist

Hallo Dirk,

Zojuist een melding gekregen dat mijn wikipedia-account (DXMLJanssen) genoemd wordt bij deze specifieke blacklist: https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist . Ik ben initiatiefnemer bij vpnoverview.com, en zal mogelijk een keer vpnoverview.com als bron aangehaald hebben op wikipedia waar dat relevant en passend was (er staat namelijk goede informatieve content op de site). Die enkele verwijzing van mij lijkt het probleem ook niet te zijn. Als ik het goed interpreteer is het probleem dat er meerdere accounts een enkele edit op wikipedia hebben gedaan en daarbij hebben verwezen naar vpnoverview.com, en vervolgens niet hebben gereageerd op talk page warnings? Ik heb zelf een dergelijke warning helaas nooit gehad (waarschijnlijk omdat mijn account legitiem is), maar als ik op de hoogte was gesteld dan had ik het in ieder geval kunnen onderzoeken.

Ik weet niet wie er achter dergelijke accounts schuilgaat helaas, maar ik ga kijken of ik daar achter kan komen. Als dit een mislukte poging tot promotie blijkt van een externe partij dan zal ik dit een halt toeroepen want ik wil niet dat anderen mijn website een slechte naam bezorgen en de website op een blacklist doen belanden. Dat doet geen recht aan het werk wat er in de website gaat zitten. Ik snap dat er veel gespammed wordt op Wikipedia en het spijt me dat iemand dit ook namens vpnoverview.com doet.

Ik respecteer jullie werk en snap dat jullie spam moeten bestrijden, maar is er een mogelijkheid om vpnoverview.com van desbetreffende blacklist af te krijgen?

Met vriendelijke groet, David Janssen— Preceding unsigned comment added by DXMLJanssen (talk • contribs)

@DXMLJanssen: your edit was not here on en I see (it was on de: https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Virtual_Private_Network&diff=prev&oldid=167422298). One of the other editors is blocked for paid editing, and most of the rest of the accounts has done one single edit to add the link. As this link has been spammed, and will have no use besides its own subject page (if notable) I think that it will not be removed from the blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 16:57, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

Hello Mr Coi bot

I wanna ask you a question about a spam report created about two months ago, with a my short resume on Wikipedia, I have been editing and improving my edits too.... Learning from admins and pro editors but I am not really clear with spam reports, so there is a top music website in my country which I sometimes get songs from cuz its like the easiest place to download sharp sharp.... Though there are other ones I visit too when this one misbehaves and day yesterday when I was about sourcing for a particular information on Google to use, in 2nd-3rd page I saw their search engine results it had coi bot report on it, I clicked on it and found the two users that did it, so here is my question now, first does the owner of the website know a spam report has been created for his site? If yes how would he get it deleted since maybe he is not a Wikipedian because it baffles me to see a too site having a local spam report, but I also saw closed too, so for the fact it appears on their search engine, I feel it might look unprofessional of their part Also, plz I wanna know more about things like blacklists, etc I wanna know much about them so I will be guided too.... Though I have read Wikipedia guidelines, still want to be informed on more things to widen my scope... Thanks hope to get a welcoming reply Dremo24 (talk) 22:37, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

Dremo24, the spam report is just a report of link additions, without judgement (it is just stored within the spam project). Some of the reports are actual spam, some of the reports are just 'usage' reports, some are just reports of good links that got caught in statistics. Many are plainly ignored. We generally do not delete them. Dirk Beetstra T C 05:34, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Hi Beetstra, on WP:SBL, WP:RSPAM, and similar pages, I've noticed that COIBot reports aren't being generated for IP, user, and link summary templates when these template shortcuts are used: {{IPSummary}}, {{UserSummary}}, and {{LinkSummary}}. The templates must be invoked with their original names (with the space in between, i.e. {{IP summary}}, {{User summary}}, and {{Link summary}}) for COIBot to notice them. Could COIBot's behavior be adjusted to detect redirects to these templates as well? — Newslinger talk 08:26, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Newslinger, no, that should all work, it has the correct regexes in place to detect them. I do notice indeed that sometimes it fails to pick 'm up, maybe the bot has connection problems on the wikimedia IRC feed. I'll put it on the list of things to do. Dirk Beetstra T C 08:46, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
Thanks, Beetstra. Perhaps I only noticed it when I didn't use the space. — Newslinger talk 08:51, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

HubPages.com niche domains

So, as you suggested I reported all of them to the spam page. But another editor commented if I plan on removing them all, or white list the good ones already cited. Personally, I feel if HubPages.com is blacklisted, then vanity domains they use should be considered as if they were subdomain. Any input? Graywalls (talk) 23:23, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Graywalls, depends a bit on the ratio good/bad. How much 'good' is there still left for each? Blacklisting can be done before all bad links have been removed (though it is better that they go first, it can become annoying if to-be-removed links linger on relatively high-traffic/vandalism pages). I'll have a look, but I don't have time to fully investigate. Dirk Beetstra T C 05:14, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
On the nomination for addition, I've left a pretty good length explanation in response to user JzG. Graywalls (talk) 05:16, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
Graywalls, I now saw it was JzG. What I would do now is mark for each how many there are left in content namespaces. I saw some which are down to one. Dirk Beetstra T C 05:21, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
I left a fairly lengthy response in that list I nominated. I've also personally cleaned out a good number of them...check my edit history and edit summary which I've included diffs in some of them. That might give you some idea. Like MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist this? Graywalls (talk) 05:24, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
Resolved

COI bot poke

I have been doing a lot of blog, and monetized link cleanups. GeneralNotability said there is a COI bot poke function but I'd have to get granted access from you to use it. What's the requirements to request access? Thank you. Graywalls (talk) 01:23, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

@Graywalls: Requirements ... not being a spammer suffices. See User:COIBot/Poke (both here and on meta) for use. --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:18, 24 October 2020 (UTC)
@Beetstra:, question. Special:Diff/985241395. 9 hours later, the COI bot link still shows red. I'm not sure if it didn't get processed because I submitted it incorrectly or if it's within the normal processing delay. Did I submit it correctly? Graywalls (talk) 05:43, 25 October 2020 (UTC)
Graywalls, should have worked. I really need to work on COIBot’s wiki-monitoring, I think the parts that read on-wiki diffs are missing diffs. Dirk Beetstra T C 04:29, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Spy Kids/Machete problem.

Hello? I think your XLinkBot is broken. It keeps thinking the link I keep adding in is illegitimate. Understandable I guess.

But it really is by Robert Rodriguez. He even put up a picture of himself on Twitter with a sign saying "Hi Reddit. It's Robert Rodriguez. Ask me anything..." It was the same time El Rey launched. Tell me how this is fake. I know you don't think Reddit and Twitter are illegitimate, but please, just look. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BhRHOF3CYAA1BDp?format=jpg

Plus, so many creators have Twitter pages. What makes him any different? If it has a blue tick, it's legitimate. 58.84.201.53 (talk) 06:39, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

It also got independently reverted, see diff. That means that it needs to be discussed first before putting it back in the article, as I said before. Dirk Beetstra T C 06:47, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:51, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

FYI - cloud VPS cleanup

wikitech:News/Cloud_VPS_2020_Purge#linkwatcher - saw this in a wikitech email, wanted to let you know in case you hadn't seen it already. GeneralNotability (talk) 15:43, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

GeneralNotability, Nope, did not see that yet, thank you. Will try to do today ASAP. Dirk Beetstra T C 05:40, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Belated response

Whoops! I didn't to respond to your comment on the spam WikiProject back in September. But, just to respond now, I don't think I'm active enough in that area to justify me having that edit right. Again, sorry that this took me so long! TheAwesomeHwyh 13:41, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

TheAwesomeHwyh, no worries, thanks for the reply! Dirk Beetstra T C 13:53, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

ehsaashealthservice

Hi Beetstra; regarding MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist#ehsaashealthservice.com I'd already added this; I created an entry on the blacklist talk page for documentation purposes. Sorry if that wasn't more clear. OhNoitsJamie Talk 15:45, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Ohnoitsjamie, my mistake, I’ll revert tomorrow. Dirk Beetstra T C 18:29, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
Ohnoitsjamie, done. Dirk Beetstra T C 05:39, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

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National Hand Touch Football League

Thank you for editing National Hand Touch Football League I just wanted a article it is a League in Upstate New York of Touch Football American Demons24 (talk) 17:43, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Demons24, you are welcome. Dirk Beetstra T C 05:36, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

National Hand Touch Football League

The National Hand Touch Football League, currently a semi professional touch football league consists of four teams started in 2001 began with four teams, currently National Hand Touch Football League teams are New York Stars, Orlando Pirates, Philadelphia Lions, & the Watertown Vikings. Sense 2001 it’s been gaining national recognition in recent years.

TeamsEdit Edit

Albuquerque Demons folded Canton Maroons folded New York Stars 2001-current Orlando Pirates folded Philadelphia Lions 2019-current Sacramento Gold moved to New York and became the New York Stars St. Lawrence Kings 2021-current expansion team Syracuse Wildcats folded Watertown Vikings folded List of ChampionshipsEdit Edit

2001: Syracuse Wildcats 2002: Oklahoma Demons 2003: Syracuse Wildcats (2) 2004: Watertown Vikings 2005-2018: No League play 2019: Philadelphia Lions 2020: Albany Enforcers 2021: New York Stars ReferencesEdit Edit

^ External linksEdit Edit

[1] [2] [1][2][1]

^ "www.Hand Football.net". www.Hand Football.net. Retrieved 2020-11-26. Is this and ok edit I have been working hard on it? Demons24 (talk) 11:20, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Demons24, please see Draft:National Hand Touch Football League (which contains more than your version User:Demons24/sandbox2), that is under review and you will have to wait until that review is done. Dirk Beetstra T C 11:44, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

I think the review are done with I don’t see any article under review Demons24 (talk) 11:47, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Demons24, the draft is under review. Dirk Beetstra T C 11:58, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Ok Demons24 (talk) 12:04, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Filter 643

Please see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring#User:StoyanStoyanov80 reported by User:Forbidden History (Result: No violation). The person named in this AN3 report has been triggering 643 which I think was designed by you to catch certain sock edits. Let me know if you think these edits cause any concern. Thanks, EdJohnston (talk) 17:38, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

EdJohnston, thanks for the heads up. They are unrelated (seen they hit the filter so much I’ll have a look into the part that makes them look positive). Dirk Beetstra T C 04:12, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
That's good, because I couldn't tell what was going on! I guess filters tend to become very ad hoc (and thus not understandable by the layman). EdJohnston (talk) 04:19, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
EdJohnston, it has been designed to catch some common actions by the sock. I do see a lot of false positives, but the downside is that if I tighten it I do not see the socks anymore (until now the majority of the confirmed socks turn out positive). Dirk Beetstra T C 05:58, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
For me, I think it is 'if all of it applies, it is the sock I am looking for', but if someone triggers one specific point n times then they will trigger the filter as well. I think the way I would like to work it would be to have 5 filters for the 5 different patterns, and a 6th filter that collects editors who triggered at least 3 out of those 5 patterns. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:04, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Requests for Chemistry peer review

A tag has been placed on Category:Requests for Chemistry peer review requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the category has been empty for seven days or more and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Liz Read! Talk! 16:35, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:07, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Youtube Link - Faradair BEHA page

Hello,

As a new user that is trying to get my head around the enormous swathe of rules surrounding what can be posted, I was surprised to see one of your bots revert an entire updated edit, where factually incorrect data had been replaced with current data with sources cited? The out of date Youtube video, was replaced with a current Youtube video directly relating to the move cited in the article/page and it comes from the company's own Youtube channel specifically talking about the relocation, not sure how that could be on a Spam blacklist?

It may be an error on your Bot's part? But the link posted is a Youtube video link that is not spam and certainly relevant to the page, from the channel where the previous link had come from. If you can explain further or simply whitelist that link/channel I would greatly appreciate it. Many thanks - Faradair2014 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Faradair2014 (talk • contribs) 18:24, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Faradair2014, thank you for your remark. No, that is not an error as there are many reasons to avoid youtube links. However, there are cases that are false positives on additions. You can revert that per the bot's message
That being said, I notice that your username contains 'Faradair', and you are editing "Faradair Aerospace BEHA". Do you have a conflict of interest? Please do note that if that is the case, you may be in violation of m:Terms of use, can you please take the necessary action if you are involved with Faradair Aerospace? Dirk Beetstra T C 05:32, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Estelle Sartini

Hi, you deleted Estelle Sartini as a G5 (banned user) in 2019. I have created a new article for Estelle Sartini, but would you be able to email me a copy of the deleted article, so that I can see if it contains any information/sources that I can re-add to the article? Joseph2302 (talk) 18:33, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Joseph2302, you've got mail. Dirk Beetstra T C 05:44, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
Thanks, I've added the sourced information from there. Joseph2302 (talk) 09:32, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Edits to Jim McGovern (American politician)

Hello Beetstra, again I'd like to say I'm sorry for adding that to Jim McGovern (American politician), I saw the message you left me and some of the edits I've done in the past, some we're edits I didn't actually do because I have a shared IP address. - E.M.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.96.255.162 (talk • contribs)

We are fully aware that some IPs are shared, and often we leave a message to that extend with the message. Don't worry about that. Be aware though that shared IPs may end up blocked due to the actions of others, though, so maybe you want to make an acocunt? --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:49, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

Maybe I will make one. I don't know. - E.M — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.96.255.162 (talk) 23:06, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:09, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Hi, you might have corrected this by now, but I just noticed this error from Sept 2020. The namespace does not need repeating in the page name. [7] – Fayenatic London 13:54, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Fayenatic london, no, it has been hacked in the templates that display (though there may be still problems there). The problem is in the database where I stored them wrongly. I think that has now been solved (they do get stored properly since some time) but the old records remain (and it is 9 years worth of link additions that is in there, so quite a task to have a SQL statement clear it up). I will consider to write a hack in COIBot that solves the issue for the old records. Thanks for the heads up! Dirk Beetstra T C 06:06, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Hi Beetsra. Would you mind taking a look at List of Mercedes-Benz trucks? Lots of embedded external links in that article, and many seem as if they could be converted to inline citations. The article has been tagged with {{refimprove}} since 2018 and part of the reason for that might be due to the embedded links. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:06, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Marchjuly, I would indeed convert them into regular references, and I presume that some of the items should actually be bluelinks (e.g. the article mentions the OM 602 engine for some 1995 series, for which we have Mercedes-Benz OM602 engine, and e.g. Mercedes-Benz Atego and Mercedes-Benz Axor are wikilinked outside the table in the 2000s-section, but could easily move into the table), or even just redlinks with a prospect of having an article (I am sure that the Mercedes-Benz L1 or Mercedes-Benz L-series is notable by itself as being the first). Dirk Beetstra T C 06:03, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
Thank you for taking a look at this. I’ll begin an attempt to cleanup the article as soon as I can, but it’s probably going to need to be done in stages.
Would you also mind taking a look at List of Church of Scotland parishes? It seems that someone over the years has basically added links to all or most of these churches websites; the links are formatted as embedded citations, but I don’t think they have much value as citations. The intent seems to me to have been to create a kind of online directory for website links for convenience purposes than to add links as citations. I guess list articles like this always have sort of a directory type of feel to the them, but I’m bit wary of list articles which attempt to add links for each entry’s website, either as a “links” column in tables, or as embedded links or embedded citations. — Marchjuly (talk) 20:18, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
@Marchjuly: Meh, that one is not too bad, maybe the external link can move to the end of the list. I do have more of a problem with the content of the list, though. The overall list is not referenced very well it seems and I am surprised how many unlinked churches there are. I have the feeling that churches/parishes are intrinsically notable (almost like schools). Those whole lists should be wikilinked, and independently referenced (there must be 'official' lists of churches in an area, or every red-linked item should be at least independently referenced (I hate the 'it exists, so it should be mentioned in this list' argument, and hence we have "Criteria for inclusion should factor in encyclopedic and topical relevance, not just verifiable existence" at WP:LSC). If most are bluelinked though, the external links to the item should go, they are on the individual articles - we are, indeed, not the yellow pages. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:51, 2 February 2021 (UTC)
Thank you for taking a look at this. While I agree that there might be other problems with this particular article besides the external links, I'm not sure that 800+ embedded external links in any article is really a good thing; moreover, the list continues to be expanded daily and it's possible more links are going to be added. -- Marchjuly (talk) 12:01, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

MfD nomination of Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemicals/Verified

Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemicals/Verified, a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemicals/Verified and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemicals/Verified during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. Izno (talk) 21:41, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2021).

Administrator changes

added TJMSmith
removed Boing! said Zebedee • Hiberniantears • Lear's Fool • Only • WGFinley

Interface administrator changes

added AmandaNP

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • When blocking an IPv6 address with Twinkle, there is now a checkbox with the option to just block the /64 range. When doing so, you can still leave a block template on the initial, single IP address' talkpage.
  • When protecting a page with Twinkle, you can now add a note if doing so was in response to a request at WP:RfPP, and even link to the specific revision.
  • There have been a number of reported issues with Pending Changes. Most problems setting protection appear to have been resolved (phab:T273317) but other issues with autoaccepting edits persist (phab:T275322).

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:13, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Unique Ingredient Identifiers

You worked with Tyler Peryea about a decade ago to set up use of FDA UNIIs in Wikipedia. I wanted to reconnect and to ask a technical question. How do I get an infobox to resize to accommodate more data?

Thanks,

Frank Thank you. user:Fswitzer4 (talk)

@Fswitzer4: Hi. I am not completely sure what you mean here, do you want to add another identifier? --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:26, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

I am trying to added CAS2, CAS3, UNII2, UNII3 infoboxes and the box doesn't expand to show them. Fswitzer4 (talk) 13:57, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

This is for combination drug pages. In many cases, the component drugs are salts so I want to clarify the identifiers with names as well.Fswitzer4 (talk) 13:41, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Fswitzer4, I think the parameters are named differently, see Template:Chembox_Identifiers#Usage (you may need 'CASNo_1'). I am not sure whether UNII2 exists (there is UNII1). Dirk Beetstra T C 13:45, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
Fswitzer4, but you are talking about the drugbox (my mistake) .. not sure about the parameters there. Best to ask on the talkpage of Template:Infobox drug. Dirk Beetstra T C 13:49, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Happy First Edit Day!

Happy First Edit Day!

Have a very happy first edit anniversary!

From the Birthday Committee, Mr. Heart (talk) 05:43, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

HeartatSchool, thanks! Dirk Beetstra T C 08:49, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Happy First Edit Day!

Happy First Edit Day!

Have a very happy first edit anniversary!

From the Birthday Committee, CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 18:56, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

CAPTAIN RAJU, thanks! Dirk Beetstra T C 19:36, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2021).

Administrator changes

removed Alexandria • Happyme22 • RexxS

Guideline and policy news

  • Following a request for comment, F7 (invalid fair-use claim) subcriterion a has been deprecated; it covered immediate deletion of non-free media with invalid fair-use tags.
  • Following a request for comment, page movers were granted the delete-redirect userright, which allows moving a page over a single-revision redirect, regardless of that redirect's target.

Technical news

  • When you move a page that many editors have on their watchlist the history can be split and it might also not be possible to move it again for a while. This is because of a job queue problem. (T278350)
  • Code to support some very old web browsers is being removed. This could cause issues in those browsers. (T277803)

Arbitration

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:20, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Noticeboard notice

A discussion regarding your bot account is currently open at Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard#Clearing_bot_watchlists. Please see and respond to the discussion there. If you do not respond, developer action may be taken without your cooperation. — xaosflux Talk 14:58, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

@Beetstra: I see you have edited MediaWiki:Abusefilter-warning-proxy-link, most recently in this edit in October 2020 to add a note about EBSCOhost Connection. Unfortunately, very soon after you added that notice, EBSCO shut down EBSCOhost Connection. Try following any link to it, and you'll see the link no longer works. I reported this at Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2020 November 8 § Broken EBSCOhost Connection links, and a bot was run to deal with some of the dead links as reported at Wikipedia:Link rot/URL change requests/Archives/2020/November § EBSCOhost Connection. Could you revert your edit in October 2020 so that people are no longer instructed to link to the dead EBSCOhost Connection service? Thanks! Biogeographist (talk) 02:33, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Biogeographist, I’ve undone my addition. Dirk Beetstra T C 04:18, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Kindly stop your extortion of COIBOT

Dear Mr. Beetstra,

Do you have a private email ID (or some other form of direct communication) where we can confidentially discuss exactly how your COIBOT is being used and manipulated by gang(s) of professional wikipedia paid consultants/editors to extort/ransom money from innocent victims who have absolutely no connection with Wikipedia. Also the steps you can take to undo the damage.

For your reference the complaint ticket lodged with WMF legal department by my associate concerning your COIBOT is 25800 of 6 April 2021. It is still unreplied by them.

NB: We have no difficulty in discussing the matter publicly, but it appears that this WMF project has some self written rules prohibiting discussion of legal matters.

Regards

"Secret" — Preceding unsigned comment added by Escrte (talk • contribs) 07:56, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

Escrte, I will await an email from WMF regarding that. Dirk Beetstra T C 08:26, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
Beetstra 2 weeks have passed with no reply from WMF and 2 reminders by my associate. Since 2 very prominent Wikipedians (who are independent PR consultants) who gamed your COIBOT are making the ransom demands to the victim it is no wonder that WMF is slow to act. Now since ultimately you are responsible for the operation of your bot, which as per our in-depth analysis, lacks even basic safeguards, I am left with no civilised option except to contact you on your talk page to request that you get corrected the specific actions of your COIBOT which have caused serious harm to the concerned female victim. I urge you to expeditiously and dicreetly get in touch with the WMF concerning the ticket number I shared and get the matter discreetly resolved internally within wikipedia communities consistent with WMF's Terms of Use so as to improve the encyclopedia. Escrte (talk) 08:46, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
@Escrte: If you think there are users broaching the wmf:Terms of use then following up with WMF with your evidence is best. If you believe that there are users broaching English Wikipedia's rules of contribution, then please follow the processes at WP:Spam. COIBot just runs reports, nothing more, nothing less, it takes zero actions. — billinghurst sDrewth 07:43, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
@Billinghurst: Thanks for the courtesy of your reply. Obviously due to the Streisand Effect of Wikipedia's internet dominance on search engines I cannot disclose the affected pages publicly. A detailed complaint and also repeated reminders have been sent to WMF's legal email ID. The domain registrar of WIKIPEDIA.ORG, ie Mark Monitor, has also forwarded our multiple domain name abuse complaints of the Terms of Use and ICANN RAA contraventions to WMF, but there is no action and no reply from WMF Legal to any of these communications. In the meantime the lady victim is getting IRC messages claiming to be associates of the Wikipedia IRM office of William Butler demanding unaffordable (to her) sums of money to get her entries deleted from Wikipedia. The root cause of all this is Mr. Beestra's COIBOT and he should take responsibility for its operations since the lady victim's website is a reputed internet authority in its industry and shows prominently in local google searches for the niche article topic. The anonymous internet IP user who used her website URL to reference a specific Wikipedia article on that niche topic was clearly acting in good faith. Self evidently the COIBOT cannot distinguish between good actors and bad actors. We look forward to your suggestion how we can get those pages deleted from Wikipedia, short of taking WP:BOLD actions leading to inevitable consequences since also the procedures of WP:Spam are for identifying and removing refspam ie. the exact opposite of what the victim desires. Escrte (talk) 05:14, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
@Escrte: If you believe that a page is out of scope for Wikipedia, then please follow the Wikipedia:Request for deletion (RFD) process to put the page before the community for discussion. Otherwise, you have my reply and my direction on how to act to progress your issue.

Bringing your issue here in this form and fashion is inappropriate, per Wikipedia:No legal threats and you should desist. This contributor is not responsible for your actions or inactions, the actions or inactions of any person, the actions or inactions of Wikimedia, or your wishes to contact and discuss the matter with Wikimedia and has no ability to have them respond or direct them on how or when to act. So please follow the direction on how to contact Wikimedia Foundation if that is what you wish to do. If you continue to act in this threatening manner and with egregious language, here or at at an RFD, then I or others will stop assuming good faith and look to other actions available to the community. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:32, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

@Billinghurst:We have already requested WMF legal (reference given previously) for an OFFICE ACTION to entirely wipe those records. Because they are not replying, we are turning to the admins / bureaucrats of this wiki for a "non-legal" alternative. Escrte (talk) 06:10, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
@Escrte:, I am sorry, you have a wrong impression of what a COIBot report actually is. The COIBot reports are just what they are: reports. Removing the reports does not remove the original diffs that were being reported. COIBot reports present evidence of actions taken by Wikipedia editors, they are not evidence. Deleting a picture of a broken glass from your phone does not magically make the fact that the glass broke disappear. The root cause is, bluntly, that an "anonymous internet IP user ... used her website URL to reference a specific Wikipedia article on that niche topic was clearly acting in good faith", not that COIBot reported it. In the end, if what you say is the case, then the exact same extortion can be performed by just using the diffs to the edits from the IP, the actual evidence of the edits.
Whatever you do now will result in a Streisand Effect, it will be noticed that reports will be deleted as those deletions are also public. Even if you email the involved reports in private, I will have to publicly delete the reports (which I am willing to do, and which I have done before, but it does not change the fact that the information that is represented in the reports will be clearly visible on-wiki anyway). Then the reports will have a deleted history which is visible to admins, and everybody can see that the reports once existed.
Your only way is through WMF legal who could, possibly, wipe material server wide (both the reports and the real evidence. I doubt that it will be done, but that you will have to discuss with WMF legal). There is nothing I, or any other admin on-wiki, can do here. Dirk Beetstra T C 06:41, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2021).

Administrator changes

removed Enchanter • Carlossuarez46

Interface administrator changes

removed Ragesoss

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • The user group oversight will be renamed to suppress. This is for technical reasons. You can comment at T112147 if you have objections.

Arbitration

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:51, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

COIBot report

How long does the COIBot take to generate a report? I requested a report for karnatakatourism.org at COIBot/Poke here, and it's been five hours and it still hasn't been generated. This MER-C X-wiki report shows that this domain has been used many times across at least six Wikis, and those are just the occurrences that have not been reverted. The COIBot report should reveal a lot more. —Bruce1eetalk 12:16, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

Bruce1ee, it can take quite long if there are a lot of other reports waiting (these reports do not have priority, so they go to the end of the queue). To get an idea whether there is actually a queue you can see the edit summaries on the COIBot edits on the '/LinkReports' (like this edit), the numbers show what is in the queue.
Sometimes COIBot seems to fail to see the edit to the poke-pages, and last week due to the move to libera I have been restarting the bot over-and-over, and it had some downtime due to the freenode server change. It can be that COIBot was not there when the report was requested.
My suggestion is to just request it again quite some hours later, and if it is more than 2 times you requested it and it still did not work, that maybe it will not work at all (there are some reports that it just cannot save because of spam blacklist issues or title blacklist issues, or the report is too big to parse and the report-parser dies in the process due to memory issues). If you have access to IRC (libera), you can find the bot in #wikimedia-external-links and some other channels, and ask it there to give you data ('whoadded karnatakatourism.org' etc.). Dirk Beetstra T C 07:57, 30 May 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for the info. I requested the report again here, but now, after almost seven hours, it still hasn't been generated. I suspect it may be that the report is too big. If you look at MER-C's X-wiki report you'll see that this domain has been used many times across at least six Wikis, and those are just the occurrences that have not been reverted. —Bruce1eetalk 15:17, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

@Bruce1ee: I am running some commands:

Beetstra> whoadded karnatakatourism.org
<COIBot> 114 records; Top 10 editors who have added karnatakatourism.org: Adityaglobals (43), Karnataka Tourism (11), Siddhartha Ghai (3), Crashed greek (3), இள ஹரிஹரன் (3), BrownHairedGirl (3), VASANTH S.N. (2), అహ్మద్ నిసార్ (2), Vishwanatha H S (2), GreenC bot (2).
Beetstra> whereadded karnatakatourism.org
<COIBot> 114 records; Top 10 wikis where karnatakatourism.org has been added: w:en (80), w:kn (5), w:ta (5), w:hi (4), w:bn (2), w:te (1), el.wikivoyage (1), w:gu (1), w:pl (1), w:zh (1).

It does not seem too much, I have tried again to put it in the queue. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:33, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Just to be sure, there is a database dump here: m:user talk:COIBot/LinkReports/karnatakatourism.org. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:09, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, that db dump helps. But there are a couple of diffs I don't understand, for example this diff does not add the domain to the article. Also, are all those diffs spam? This one is, but what about this one? —Bruce1eetalk 07:01, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
Bruce1ee, hmm, that diff is strange, probably a hiccup with the bot (we had problems with backlogs and loading some time ago).
In principle, the bots store ALL link additions in the database, and both the COIBot reports as these database dumps are just dumps of all recorded additions. The database is almost 10 years old I think, but there are gaps, and sometimes there are sets of diffs wrongly parsed. The real evidence are the actual diffs, most reports do need a bit of scrutiny in evaluation of individual diffs (especially if there are established editors seemingly adding the spam link - they may be vandalism reverts or genuine uses). And sometimes there are more diffs than what is in the database.
How we respond is basically weighing good vs. bad additions. If there is no good use, we may blacklist. If there is some good use but uncontrollable spamming we may still blacklist, or try XLinkBot first. Sometimes we just have to go the long way and block all accounts that spam, because there is too much good use. Dirk Beetstra T C 08:06, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Happy Adminship Anniversary!

Happy Adminship Anniversary!

Have a very happy adminship anniversary on your special day!

Best wishes, CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 11:13, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

CAPTAIN RAJU, Thanks. Any news on the retirement plan (if it does not include free beer I will keep the bit)? Dirk Beetstra T C 13:19, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2021).

Administrator changes

added Ashleyyoursmile • Less Unless
removed Husond • MattWade • MJCdetroit • Carioca • Vague Rant • Kingboyk • Thunderboltz • Gwen Gale • AniMate • SlimVirgin (deceased)

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • Wikimedia previously used the IRC network Freenode. However, due to changes over who controlled the network with reports of a forceful takeover by several ex-staff members, the Wikimedia IRC Group Contacts decided to move to the new Libera Chat network. It has been reported that Wikimedia related channels on Freenode have been forcibly taken over if they pointed members to Libera. There is a migration guide and Wikimedia discussions about this.

Arbitration

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:45, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

Contact

Hi, can you please contact me urgently on email. I want to contact with a wikipedia administrator but the emails are not showing in the toolbox Alimsadozai69 (talk) 04:39, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Alimsadozai69, Special:EmailUser/Beetstra? It is in the toolbox (one of the boxes at the top left). Dirk Beetstra T C 05:13, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

The toolbox isnt showing. It says tools and it shows user contribuitions logs etc but not contact with email. And I am using the link you sent but it says this user has chosen to not receive emails. Can you send me a message at my mail. This is my email: alimsadozai69@hotmail.com Alimsadozai69 (talk) 05:22, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

@Alimsadozai69: I don't have that setting, I receive regularly emails through that function. If it does not work it is something with your account. Dirk Beetstra T C 05:38, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Help on a page

Hello Good day! It’s about the page Draft: Unlimited L.A the subject is highly notable in Nigeria as a music video director, he has won couple of prestigious awards and nominations in the Nigerian music video space, he’s also one of the top 10 best Nigeria music director of all time, you can make research or consult admin from Nigeria to make valid decisions Deplug1 (talk) 18:20, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Deplug1, just submit it for review and someone will take care of it. Dirk Beetstra T C 04:27, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2021).

Guideline and policy news

  • Consensus has been reached to delete all books in the book namespace. There was rough consensus that the deleted books should still be available on request at WP:REFUND even after the namespace is removed.
  • An RfC is open to discuss the next steps following a trial which automatically applied pending changes to TFAs.

Technical news

  • IP addresses of unregistered users are to be hidden from everyone. There is a rough draft of how IP addresses may be shown to users who need to see them. This currently details allowing administrators, checkusers, stewards and those with a new usergroup to view the full IP address of unregistered users. Editors with at least 500 edits and an account over a year old will be able to see all but the end of the IP address in the proposal. The ability to see the IP addresses hidden behind the mask would be dependent on agreeing to not share the parts of the IP address they can see with those who do not have access to the same information. Accessing part of or the full IP address of a masked editor would also be logged. Comments on the draft are being welcomed at the talk page.

Arbitration

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:26, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Don't just undo edits

Don't just undo edits without reading Wikipedia policy. You deleted Twitter link from Kang'ata's page yet it is consistent with what Wikipedia's policy. First ensure that you are conversant with the policy. My edit was within the confines of Wikipedia's policy. Enlighten yourself with the link below. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Twitter Qweshypedia (talk) 02:37, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

"Only include links to social media if the subject is particularly known for using that social medium... ". The Twitter account is verified. What's the problem? Qweshypedia (talk) 02:41, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Qweshypedia, no, see WP:ELMINOFFICIAL. Only one. I will revert it again. Dirk Beetstra T C 04:41, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
What is written on Template:Twitter is not a proper reflection of what is written in the policies and guidelines, nor does it reflect the many discussions on WT:EL/WP:ELN/WT:ELPEREN. We link to only one official website of a subject (original bolding), and there are very, very few exceptions to that rule. --Dirk Beetstra T C 04:52, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

You win. Thanks. Qweshypedia (talk) 11:26, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Checking in on how to comply with guidelines so that we can include TimescaleDB as a time series database

Hello Beetstra

I can see that there has been some to-and-fro around including TimescaleDB on the time series database wiki and can understand that you will want better, external citations. However, on the assumption I can provide an appropriate citation, is there something else I should know about what you would need about Timescale before requesting a new edit, please? Thanks!

Lorilanc (talk) 14:14, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

@Lorilanc: since the last RfC we need an independent article for TimeScaleDB. You can make a draft at Draft:TimescaleDB and submit it through AfC. Dirk Beetstra T C 15:35, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Fab, I'll do some research and find the most appropriate source. Thanks so much for your prompt reply, appreciated.

Lorilanc (talk) 13:46, 18 July 2021 (UTC) Hello again Beetstra I tried in Teahouse but didn't get a response, I suspect they think I should ask you but I didn't want to trouble you again.

Edit: Teahouse has explained what I need to do. Thank you so much, and I am sorry that in the past there have been so many unacceptable edits, though I haven't been personally responsible for those.

@Beetstra:Many thanks for your help, I have now submitted Draft:TimescaleDB to AfC and hopefully this will provide sufficient information.

Administrators' newsletter – July 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2021).

Guideline and policy news

  • An RfC is open to add a delay of one week from nomination to deletion for G13 speedy deletions.

Technical news

  • Last week all wikis were very slow or not accessible for 30 minutes. This was due to server lag caused by regenerating dynamic lists on the Russian Wikinews after a large bulk import. (T287380)

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:17, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Clarification around notability re TimescaleDB

Hello Beetstra thank you again for the comment on the TimescaleDB submission. Regarding notability, I was hoping the combination of TimescaleDB being referenced and used by Cray alongside the founder's Wikipedia bio would render TimescaleDB noteworthy when viewed alongside other open source databases that are listed. What would you look for to meet this criteria? I omitted a number of academic references for brevity and it's very possible that one of these would, in fact, be the missing piece of the puzzle.

It's confusing for a new person to Wikipedia editing because the YugabyteDB page (for example) is full of primary references but is still published. I say this not to draw attention to Yugabyte as such but to try to understand the difference between one and another page.

My other observation is that TimescaleDB is mentioned in both of the articles that are used as references for InfluxDB on the Time Series Database page. So again I am trying to understand where TimescaleDB falls short compared to very similar open source projects.

Thank you for helping me to understand! Lorilanc (talk) 16:50, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Lorilanc, if you now would have pointed to InfluxDB and could have argued that your page is the same … but you chose YugabyteDB, quite bad comparison material indeed. See WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS. (I nominated that page for deletion, see Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/YugabyteDB).
A subject needs to show notability. See WP:Notability. TimeScaleDB is now under the radar because of the constant pushing without anyone being able to show notability. Yes, other articles escape that sometimes, but eventually they too face risk of deletion (and the YuribyteDB does have an independent review, so that article is, marginally, better). Dirk Beetstra T C 21:05, 11 August 2021 (UTC)
Beetstra Thank you for your explanation. May I check with you in this case, and again only for clarification, not in any way in protest...

If I am able to provide appropriate notability would the page be considered? I only want to save us both pain. :) For example, in this paper https://arxiv.org/pdf/1901.08304.pdf there is no mention of any ofT the text you would find on the TimescaleDB site. Would this infer notability in the context of Time Series Databases? Alternatively, even if it's level of notability does not meet your requirements for its own page, does that reference at least provide evidence to merit TimescaleDB being included in the list of TSDBs in the higher level page Time series database? Thank you again for your consideration Lorilanc (talk) 21:49, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Lorilanc, you really don’t understand the concept of notability? And is having TimeScaleDB in that list your only goal, like the spammers before you? Wikipedia is not the place to promote your business, it is not the place to right great wrongs. What is it with TimeScaleDB that it HAS to be in that list. That list seems to be the only goal on that page. I am tempted to rip it out completely as not encyclopedic and call it a day. Dirk Beetstra T C 04:58, 12 August 2021 (UTC)
I just realize that you are related to the subject, and that you likely were the person that has been the reason that that page has been protected for so long over the last years. I am tempted to just bluntly start blocking anyone who attempts to add TimeScaleDB without an initial show of notability per WP:NOTHERE. Please stop your spamming. Dirk Beetstra T C 05:07, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Thank you, understood. I'm genuinely not that person. I appreciate your time, and have requested speedy deletion of my draft page. All the best. Lorilanc (talk) 07:51, 12 August 2021 (UTC) https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Wikipedia:Etiquette

Precious anniversary

Precious
Seven years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:19, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

@Gerda Arendt: thanks. Wow, 7 years! Dirk Beetstra T C 06:44, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Denton Independent School District, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Catherine Bell.

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Quick question on LinkWatchers

From what I've seen in #wikipedia-en-spam connect, the LinkWatcher bots output stuff in two formats. The first is what appears to be documented here, where there are four numbers following a report of an added link. It seems there's a second, more common format that is also sent for link reports, and I'm curious as to the specifics of what it means and when it's used. It looks like this: 

LiWa3_2: [[en:Page name]] https://wiki.riteme.site/?diff=revid [[en:User:Username]] URL (2512, 1331)

The first bit I think is fairly clear, but I'm really not sure what those last two numbers are of—or why they are sometimes replaced with an "NC" for one of the numbers. Hopefully you can help clarify this. Perryprog (talk) 20:32, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

@Perryprog: Hi, thanks for watching the watchers. The two numbers are the first two numbers. If they are too high (I think the threshold is set to 2500, it must be in m:user:LiWa3/Settings) doing the cross-section count in SQL becomes slower, and anyway that number is then rather useless (if an editor added 2500 links already, and/or there are already 2500 additions of that link, then knowing that an editor added 200 of them still means that 2300 were added by others). Typically you would want to evaluate these editors and domains (with more than 2500 additions) and consider whitelist/not-count them.
'NC' stands for 'Not Counted'. LiWa3 has three 'whitelists'. Two are proper whitelists: for users (if username is whitelisted they are not reported), and for links (regex based, if link is matching the regex it is not reported). For neither the bot does statistics (keeping the load on the database low). However, there are links that you do not want to whitelist, like e.g. youtube - for people watching the feed you may want to see them and possibly look at them. However, counting youtube.com is a large strain on the database (hundreds of thousands of records) and that will take a bit of time. Also, that number is totally useless. Therefore there is a 'not count' list (not regex, but domain based). Domains on that list will not show statistics but will be reported. Typically you will then see '(####, NC)'.
For whitelisting domains, use 'clear <domain>' - both COIBot and LiWa3_# will respond to that (if you get an error, ask Billinghurst to add you, I am not a lot on IRC at the moment). Soon after the bots refresh reading their whitelists (takes quite some time) they will disappear from the feed. If the rule is more complex, use 'link wl add <regex>', that will whitelist the regex on LiWa3 only. If you want to keep monitoring a domain but counting is useless, use 'do not count <domain>' (works on domain only). --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:12, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
Ah, thank you—this is extraordinarily helpful. I've been passively watching the LiWa3 bots on IRC for some time, but there were always some questions on workflow related things that I've had on acting them for some time—this answers most of those. I think what remains is just on some of the less-documented COIBot commands, as I'm mainly curious just to what purpose they serve, as I haven't ever seen them in use.
  • What's the relation of the monitor list to the black, white, and redlists?
  • What do the COIBot versions of the white and blacklist do? Specially, I'm not sure I understand what's meant by "connects the text string to the username" for the "bl add username string" command.
  • What do the prepare [xwiki|swmt|xlinkbot] commands do?
  • How do "report link", "report local", and "report xwiki" differ in functionality? (Specifically, when should I use which for when I want a report made?)
Hopefully that isn't too much of a question dump, but hopefully you can understand that I just want to make sure I can use the most out of this amazing tool you've made as possible. Once I have these clarified, I can probably look into doing a bit of work on cleaning up the documentation on these as well—I imagine there are some portions that might be out of date or in need of further detail. Perryprog (talk) 17:24, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
@Perryprog: You're welcome. I will try to add to this.
  • The black, white and redlist are all LiWa3 only. The blacklisted links go to XLinkBot (on the wiki where it is activated, currently only on en.wikipedia). COIBot has it's own monitor list, which is partially compiled from mentions of the link on blacklists, WT:WPSPAM and similar pages.
  • COIBot's white and blacklist can respectively unlink or link users to subject. Most clear for blacklisting: I can link an IP to the name of the company the IP belongs to, in which case COIBot will report a match when the IP is editing the company's wikipedia page or the IP is adding the company's domain. Whitelist works the opposite, remove user 'Apple' (referencing the fruit) from COI-alerts where the user edits Apple (the company), Apple pie ...
  • the prepare commands are not used anymore I think - need to see the code again.
  • 'report link' gives a LinkReport only. 'report local' gives a LinkReport + a local report, 'report xwiki' gives a LinkReport + an xwiki report. The latter reports (local and xwiki) can be used by the admin-scripts on en.wikipedia and meta for blacklisting/revertlisting.
I hope this helps. Dirk Beetstra T C 10:53, 22 August 2021 (UTC)
Awesome—thank you once again, and it certainly does help. Perryprog (talk) 19:42, 22 August 2021 (UTC)
@Perryprog: I had a look in the code regarding the prepare commands. When you type 'report xwiki <domain>' it will write a report with all users it finds. 'report xwiki <domain>' however takes more parameters, it can take a list of users. So if you want it to report e.g. only the IPs out of a list of users, you normally would do a 'whoadded <domain>', get the list of users (say, <user1> through <user5>), and then 'report xwiki <domain> <user1> <user2>' to get a report on domain for only those two users (maybe the other 3 are regulars). You can also do 'prepare xwiki <domain>', it will report back to you with 'report xwiki <domain> <user1> <user2> <user3> <user4> <user5>', you copy-paste, remove 3, 4 and 5, and issue the command. Dirk Beetstra T C 17:08, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
Another thing! I've just noticed something new in the LinkWatchers format, and I don't recall ever seeing it before. It looks like this, in the same position as the normal link counts: (2596, 660, NES). It seems it's happening quite a lot, and considering I don't remember seeing it before, I'm not sure if something blew up. Perryprog (talk) 18:13, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
@Perryprog: yep, forgot that. 'NES' stands for 'no extended stats'. Sometimes a lot of edits happen in a short time, and the LiWa3 develops a backlog (a large number of edits or link additions in resp. the edit or link queue). When that is significant the bot tries to speed up by lowering the amount of work that it does, which means that it drops doing statistics. When it catches up again it will start doing the stats automatically. There is also 'MSO' for 'mainspace stats only', but it looks like the settings are less stringent than for NES, so it will not do that currently.
When the queue is then still growing it will hit a second threshold value and then it dumps its queue into a backlog file (which clears the queue completely, and hence the bot will do full statistics again). That often happens a couple of times in a row due to a super-high speed bot or editor editing (flooding) somewhere (they allow that on WikiData rather easy). In those cases often thousands and thousands of lines will be in the backlog files (it splits it in files of 250 lines IIRC). When there is no queue left over it loads those files one by one and parses them (so sometimes you see really old edits appearing in the feed). Note that this also can happen if there are network problems, the bot waits for slow answers and then cannot keep up with the Wikipedia edits.
The commands '!info' (instructs XLinkBot, LiWa3 and COIBot to tell some run-statistics), '!waiting' (instructs LiWa3 and COIBot to report on queues) are useful there. Note: LiWa3 has several queues per type: 3 queues for edits and 2 for links. Not sure how they are divided anymore, but it is a bit by importance (mainspace more important than non-mainspace, some wikis less important than those that have XLinkBot, etc.). Dirk Beetstra T C 05:29, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
I have updated the documentation (but it may need some c/e for clarity - I'm not sure if other people understand it properly. Dirk Beetstra T C 11:59, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2021).

Administrator changes

readded Jake Wartenberg
removed Emperor • Viridian Bovary
renamed Ashleyyoursmile → Viridian Bovary

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • The Score extension has been re-enabled on public wikis. It has been updated, but has been placed in safe mode to address unresolved security issues. Further information on the security issues can be found on the mediawiki page.

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:44, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Minor quibble

About [8]. The (sort of) page-standard would have been WP:RSPREDDIT. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 12:58, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

@Gråbergs Gråa Sång: missed the P (it makes some funny combinations here and there: rSPAMazon ...). Yay, I created two pages today! --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:37, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

themarque.com

Hello Beetstra, would it be possible to get COIBot to generate a report on themarque.com? I'm looking for more accounts like Salbull88 and Rosiezed which may be more recent, and to determine the scope of the problem. My attempts to generate on from WT:WPSPAM and User:COIBot/Poke have so far been unsuccessful. Thanks, Pahunkat (talk) 08:15, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

@Pahunkat: There appears to be something in some reports that stops COIBot from saving them. I have 4 other (2 link and 2 user reports) that have the same problem. I need to have COIBot fail with more reasonable errors in some form to know what is the issue. I will try to poke them again and see if I can resolve the issue. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:47, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
Thanks Beetstra, I'll hold off taking any action for now. Pahunkat (talk) 16:37, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – October 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2021).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

  • A motion has standardised the 500/30 (extended confirmed) restrictions placed by the Arbitration Committee. The standardised restriction is now listed in the Arbitration Committee's procedures.
  • Following the closure of the Iranian politics case, standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to, post-1978 Iranian politics, broadly construed.
  • The Arbitration Committee encourages uninvolved administrators to use the discretionary sanctions procedure in topic areas where it is authorised to facilitate consensus in RfCs. This includes, but is not limited to, enforcing sectioned comments, word/diff limits and moratoriums on a particular topic from being brought in an RfC for up to a year.

Miscellaneous

  • Editors have approved expanding the trial of Growth Features from 2% of new accounts to 25%, and the share of newcomers getting mentorship from 2% to 5%. Experienced editors are invited to add themselves to the mentor list.
  • The community consultation phase of the 2021 CheckUser and Oversight appointments process is open for editors to provide comments and ask questions to candidates.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:03, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited List of IIM Bangalore alumni, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Rahul Singh.

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help me to remove from blacklist

can you help me in removing the link from the spam blacklist (https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist) here is the name: corpseed — Preceding unsigned comment added by Henrycruise01 (talk • contribs) 07:25, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

@Henrycruise01: Please make your request in the proposed removals section on MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist following the instructions as written at the top of that page. --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:44, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

External links of MC Alger Page

Beetstra/Archive 21 on Instagram & Beetstra/Archive 21 on Twitter are the official instagram an twitter of MC Alger. Don't remove them again— Preceding unsigned comment added by Hako33 (talk • contribs)

@Hako33: I do not dispute that. Can you please read WP:ELMINOFFICIAL. Moreover, you are now edit warring. Please do not revert again. --Dirk Beetstra T C 16:59, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

COIBot issues?

CC Billinghurst—looks like COIBot is repeatedly failing to log in (or being repeatedly logged out) according to its logs in #wikimedia-external-links connect. (Maybe related to phab:T292777? Apparently that was causing a pseudo-logout for some people.) Perryprog (talk) 22:32, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

cycled coibot and linkwatchers and seems to be fine. I will watch as I am i and out today. Was running some syslogs and every time that I ran one, then liwa3_1 would die, and then return soon after. <shrug> — billinghurst sDrewth 02:11, 8 October 2021 (UTC)
It happend to me as well yesterday, got logged out a couple of times. Will quickly check today. Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra T C 04:51, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Monday Sunday Adiaha

I think that you used the wrong terminology in closing and deleting that draft. It doesn't appear that you used any of the criteria for speedy deletion. Wasn't that really an early delete, using, as you said, the snow clause? I am satisfied with the result, but am concerned that sloppy use of terminology may encourage a few enthusiastic middle-experience editors to do Speedy Keeps that are BADNAC. This is not a big thing. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:40, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

@Robert McClenon: yes, 7 or 8 delete !votes in no time, I used the snow clause. Oh, maybe I ticked a wrong box? Dirk Beetstra T C 17:42, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Thank you

Thanks, Beetstra, for pinging me so I could read how broad of scope the problem of usurping web domains has gone. It's interesting that several people have brought up this issue around about the same time. I am so glad to see that there are some techies on the case trying to automate a solution, because doing it by hand was going to be tedious and neverendingly incomplete. If I had any skills in that department, I would help. Sadly, I must watch from the sidelines as the real Wikipedia technos take over the problem. Glad you're on the case. Platonk (talk) 05:30, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

@Platonk: You're welcome. I still have to think about pro's and cons. -- Dirk Beetstra T C 05:58, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Squaretalk

Dear Beetstra, I am the CEO and co-founder of the company Squaretalk. We are a VOIP company since 2010. VOIP features and services is our essence for almost 12 years now. Some of the companies in this list https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/List_of_VoIP_companies#References are either very small or very big companies.

My publishing on Wiki is neither for advertising nor for promotional purposes, but to publish our company details keeping this list up to date. And since it is the first time i am publishing on Wiki, please let me know how to insert our company details or update it back. There are hundreds of notable VOIP companies in the world, even mobile GSM companies worldwide are today using VoIP technologies to enable calls. so I don't believe that putting an embargo and restricting the update of this list is correct for Wikipedia. Please see this website for reference https://www.voipreview.org/voip-service-provider-list.

Furthermore, none of the companies that I can see listed have a presence in Sofia Bulgaria, so I believe that this is also another very good reason why Squaretalk should be listed.

Thank you for your feedback

Elie — Preceding unsigned comment added by Elie Rubin (talk • contribs) 13:01, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

@Elie Rubin: those are not reasons for inclusion, the other companies have own articles, yours does not (yet). And whatever your intention, you have a conflict of interest. Please read first m:Terms of use and our conflict of interest guideline. Please follow these guidelines (that is, basically, stay on talkpages for subjects you are related to and let others decide whether they should include it or not). Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:38, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
Thank you for your answer, duly appreciated.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Elie Rubin (talk • contribs)
@Elie Rubin: You're welcome. --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:09, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2021).

Guideline and policy news

  • Phase 2 of the 2021 RfA review has commenced which will discuss potential solutions to address the 8 issues found in Phase 1. Proposed solutions that achieve consensus will be implemented and you may propose solutions till 07 November 2021.

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:43, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

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COIBot missing reports

Evening Beetstra, COIBot's been a bit unreliable the past couple days. I've been working on investigating a large network of problematic "news" sources (see [9] for some reporting on the network in question) but it's behaving oddly. It didn't pick up the mass of LinkSummary templates I added to the Poke page until Perryprog did some magic on IRC that forced it to rescan the Poke list. I've manually requested a handful as well (for example Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spam/LinkReports/bioprepwatch.com, requested a couple days ago) but it hasn't generated a report on any of them and they're not showing up in the !backlog report. Any idea what might be going on? GeneralNotability (talk) 02:57, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Specifically, I used repoke enpoke, since according to the messages #wikipedia-en-spam, edits that very much had {{LinkSummary}}'s were being ignored on account of having "no added poke templates". This gave ≈ 100 reports of backlog which it's worked through I think fully at this point. Perryprog (talk) 03:01, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
@GeneralNotability and Perryprog: yes, I am aware of the problem. I am afraid that this partially has to do with what happened with LiWa3 a couple of years ago: there are SO many incoming edits that the main bot (which temporarily stores the data) starts choking on it. It maintains a long queue of edits to be parsed and if you are unlucky it just crashes because its assigned memory stuffs up. If there are then still poking edits in the queue they do not get parsed and 'ignored'. Second part is that the part of the bot that is reading the diffs (DiffReader) itself may have the problem that it gets flooded and disconnects and reconnects, or even that it crashes and restarts (both of which again results in possibly missing poking diffs). A third problem is that on the larger number of links the part of the bot that does the report generation (LinkSaver) crashes on memory problems (or it crashes the whole bot, possibly in combination with the part of the memory filled through backlogging of the diffs in the main bot), and then there are the failed saves (page creation errors due to title blacklist or due to spam blacklist - User:Billinghurst blocks whole sets of IPs which sometimes make the bot fail saving them).
I have to test the 'no added poke templates' .. that may be due to the last 'feature' I implemented in m:User:COIBot/Wishlist#done #9 (strange, it does seem to poke some of them ..?).
Time allowing this afternoon I will try to solve some of these errors, I'd like the bot at least to throw decent errors (m:User:COIBot/Wishlist#requests #25) and see if I can solve #18 by applying the same trick as what I did with LiWa3 (though that is a major change in both the core of the bot, the DiffReaders and the Parsers ...). --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:38, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
Another chance next week, I was rudely disconnected from internet because of a (scheduled) power outage.... --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:14, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
All right, thanks, just wanted to make sure you're aware. Really appreciate the time you're putting into this. GeneralNotability (talk) 23:45, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
@GeneralNotability and Perryprog: I missed a reason why COIBot misses diffs ... the devs have decided to change how diffs are given which broke my extraction regex. Solved now I hope, feel free to test. --Dirk Beetstra T C 14:20, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
Hihi - if I'm reading the above correctly, is LiWa3 parsing each new edit to see if external links are added...? page-links-change has been implemented in EventStreams for a while now (see https://stream.wikimedia.org/?spec, endpoint /v2/stream/mediawiki.page-links-change), even if it is really really poorly documented.
I've been writing a new link tracking thing in Python, and getting a stream of new mainspace link changes is as "simple" as:
stream = EventStreams(
    streams=[
        'page-links-change'
    ]
)
stream.register_filter(
    database='enwiki',
    page_namespace=0
)
Could this be helpful to replace/augment LiWa3? ~TheresNoTime (to explain!) 18:39, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
@TheresNoTime: I was somewhat aware of it. It would be very helpful that I do not have to parse myself (well, LiWa3), but that it is being done by MediaWiki itself. If that then could also be combined with a proper searchable database for 'who added what' (set up with some extra parameters for speed, e.g. 'is the editor an IP or a named editor') then that would replace a good part of the bots. LiWa3 would then just do statistics of typical spammer behaviour; some things can be found through statistics and have a high incidence of being spam - links that have never been added to Wikipedia and now suddenly has one single 'new' editor that adds it to multiple pages is often spam. The COIBot reports could then also be more minimal, the whole section on link additions by editors could simply be replaced with a search link, and our XWiki/Local reports would not need to be refreshed anymore (we would still use them to use as 'evidence' display and portal to the blacklisting script).
Note, LiWa3 and COIBot are in Perl, but the principles are likely the same. My point of action would probably be to first just replace the DiffParsers to read the streams instead (store data and do statistics still in the same way). Then move the statistics away from my own database, and implement the on-wiki searching. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:58, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

XLinkBot/Blacklist question

Hope you don't mind a question here with regards to XLinkBot and/or the spam blacklist. Recently there seems to have been a large number of scraper sites popping up that seem to mine data from the Deaths in 2021 (recent deaths) page, which I have recently raised on the talk page. Just wondering if you might have any advice as to a potential automated solution that could be worked out to catch some of these from being added as sources? Connormah (talk) 19:04, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

@Connormah: hi. This looks like blacklist material, though if it is not spammed we will probably need some community discussion (WP:RSN) before we blacklist. XLinkBot has a lower bar but quickly too soft. Can you give me a list of domainnames, I will run reports on them tomorrow so we can decide a best solution. Dirk Beetstra T C 01:21, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
Thanks! Below are the few that I have noticed most frequently (and that Rusted AutoParts has listed on the talk page above).
In theory these shouldn't be too much of a problem if the death is sourced reliably on the RD page, but I have seen people try to use these as refs in articles from time to time. There have also a few times which the source on the RD page is sketchy and the bots (or whatever those sites run on) pick the death up, thus generating pages, which then get used here. Connormah (talk) 06:36, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
@Connormah: I have asked COIBot to regenerate reports on the additions of these (Wikilink 'COIBot' in the templates - I hope the bot listens carefully today). I do not notice obvious spam campaigns on the ones which have reports already (there are a couple already bluelinked, which appear to have been requested on meta). I do notice that this is used everywhere (that is, on many wikis). @Billinghurst: (who I expect to have summoned the xwiki reports), can we make a case to get this blacklisted globally (it seems mainly on the basis of reliability). Dirk Beetstra T C 06:53, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
Kicked the xwiki reports. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:59, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
fataldeaths, deaddeaths??? What other sort of death is there? Block them just for being stupid!!! — billinghurst sDrewth 11:04, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
@Billinghurst: globally? -- Dirk Beetstra T C 11:12, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
Reminds me of Ninja Eliminator II "I will kill you to the death, until you die!" (some other episodes at I III and IV) —PaleoNeonate – 02:17, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
Billinghurst The Curse of Fatal Death, perhaps? GeneralNotability (talk) 02:51, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
And Bloodbath at the House of Death, Murder by Death —PaleoNeonate – 14:29, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

Your edit filter (#643)

Hi, my understanding is that Special:AbuseFilter/643 is meant to catch edits by socks of Slowking4. Unfortunately, I see so many false positives of accounts that are obviously not Slowking4 and make plowing through a user's edit filter log more difficult. Here is an example. Anything you can do to make the filter more focussed? Thanks.--Bbb23 (talk) 15:10, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

@Bbb23: I have been tempted for a couple of weeks now to turn it off. The socks I want to catch have a rather low hitrate on this filter (the last handful were all just by seeing edits). We could turn it off now, and maybe later I will have a look if I can reinstate it in a new way.
It is strange though, SO many accounts doing 'signature edits' in short succession .. still looks strange to me. Dirk Beetstra T C 10:35, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

notice the noticeboard notice

Hi Beetstra, please see Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard#XLinkBot_has_forked_an_article!_😲 regarding edits made by your bot. Thank you, — xaosflux Talk 19:12, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2021).

Administrator changes

removed A Train • Berean Hunter • Epbr123 • GermanJoe • Sanchom • Mysid

Technical news

  • Unregistered editors using the mobile website are now able to receive notices to indicate they have talk page messages. The notice looks similar to what is already present on desktop, and will be displayed on when viewing any page except mainspace and when editing any page. (T284642)
  • The limit on the number of emails a user can send per day has been made global instead of per-wiki to help prevent abuse. (T293866)

Arbitration


Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:24, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Administrators will no longer be autopatrolled

A recently closed Request for Comment (RFC) reached consensus to remove Autopatrolled from the administrator user group. You may, similarly as with Edit Filter Manager, choose to self-assign this permission to yourself. This will be implemented the week of December 13th, but if you wish to self-assign you may do so now. To find out when the change has gone live or if you have any questions please visit the Administrator's Noticeboard. 20:05, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

BIMP-EAGA page

Hi Beetstra,

Obviously, I'm new to Wiki so I made mistakes updating and correcting the BIMP-EAGA page. I just wanted to make sure that the info on the page is accurate and relevant. I don't know who put back the logo on the page. Apologies if it was not you but grateful for your help in getting in touch with whoever put it back. Or if you could help me permanently deleting it, that would be a big help. BIMP-EAGA does not have a logo. The logo with a boat was used for an event. This is a politically sensitive issue. After more than 2 decades, they still cannot agree on the logo. So please help me remove it.

If you look at the official website and the BIMP-EAGA page on ADB.org, you will see that it does not have a logo. https://www.bimp-eaga.asia https://www.adb.org/what-we-do/themes/regional-cooperation/overview/bimp-eaga

Thanks!

Best, BIMPeditor — Preceding unsigned comment added by BIMPeditor (talk • contribs) 05:31, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

BIMPeditor, I was not the one to return the logo. Seen your, likely, conflict of interest, I would suggest to discuss this on the talkpage. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:54, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply! Since I have conflict of interest, I will not contribute to this page anymore. But if you could let me know who put back the logo, I will request this person to remove it because it is incorrect. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BIMPeditor (talk • contribs) 06:06, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Help with Music Templates

For a long time, I have been trying to fix music genre templates by putting in all genres that belong there (and keeping out the ones that do not) and then putting the templates in the articles that they link to, but users like FlightTime, Ojorojo, and Binksternet keep messing with my edits. Could you tell them to stop? And if they continue, could you ban them all? 47.36.25.163 (talk) 21:51, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

It looks like several editors have asked you to provide proper reliable sources for your changes. I think you should really read through the list of policies and guidelines here on Wikipedia, and understand what they mean for your edits. If 3 people are discussing your edits, then maybe it is time to try to understand what they want to say. Dirk Beetstra T C 05:17, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Template:Chembox Identifiers/Benzene

Template:Chembox Identifiers/Benzene, you created, is nominated for speedy deletion (through its talkpage). You may consider saving its content moving/copying into, for example, userspace. -DePiep (talk) 09:51, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the deleting administrator, or if you have already done so, you can place a request here.

@DePiep: thanks for notifying, completely forgot about this test. I've executed the speedy. --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:04, 12 December 2021 (UTC)
No big deal, stumbled on it in the unused-templates list. Worth protecting though ;-) -DePiep (talk) 11:53, 12 December 2021 (UTC)
Probably the db-g6 template was transcluded into this doc? Didn't check for that. ÕK now thx. -DePiep (talk) 12:22, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Thank you!

Hello, Bistra.

Thank you for sending me a message, I appreciate it.

I know, that advertising is not allowed in Wikipedia (Wikipedia is sure not for advertising).

My edit of the page, which you are talking about, was because I just did not understand, why my previous edit was reverted. As you know, I'm novice in Wikipedia and that's why I still didn't know, how to read a history page properly.

After that I understood the reason - a link to video, that I put to "External links" section, was on YouTube, and this is bad (I'm not sure, why this is bad, because there are many other links to YouTube videos in Wikipedia, but ok, I accept, that my link was bad). I changed a link to another page and now it is ok. After that I removed (reverted) my edit on that talk page.

(I just wanted to explain, what's happened, so you could understand it correctly).

Thank you for you message again :)

Romankost (talk) 10:18, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

@Romankost: Thank you for your response. It is clear that you do not understand yet what we mean however: "I can make also videos for the rest game of this section, if it's necessary." (see [10]) shows that you just make custom videos of the subject. The problem is not that the videos are on Youtube, the problem is that you are just here to add links to your own videos. Please read through the documentation left on your talkpage. -- Dirk Beetstra T C 13:05, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Hello again, Bistra! Thank you for your time. I'm sorry to disturbing you again, English is not my native language and even though I understand simple sentences, It's hard for me to understand long articles like the Wikipedia documentation. Please, tell me, did I understand correctly, that it is wrong to post links to MY OWN videos, right? But I believe that it could be useful to have links to these videos in articles about specific Go games. Did I understand correctly, that in this case I should propose to other Wikipedia participants to add these links and if they agree to me, THEY (not me) will add these links, right? Thank you for your patience. P.S. I'm not a bad guy, really, just need some help :) Romankost (talk) 13:39, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

You got it all correct. Dirk Beetstra T C 17:00, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Another bit of COIBot weirdness

Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spam/LinkReports/theohiostar.com - it somehow picked up the Internet Archive as an associated domain and dumps a ton of Google Analytics templates on the page, it happened in a couple of reports I ran today. Not a high-priority issue, just wanted to make sure you knew. GeneralNotability (talk) 21:10, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

@GeneralNotability: yes, bug in older LiWa3 caused improper parsing. I’ve wiped the archive.org webbugs to clear the system. May need another fix though. Dirk Beetstra T C 12:34, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Sol_Press

The same ip (https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Special:Contributions/2600:8800:7000:33:1A31:BFFF:FEDE:24AD) is doing the same thing again. Also I think that Reddit site needs to be blacklisted so that ip cannot add it back ever again Chip3004 (talk) 06:18, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@Chip3004: I intentionally protected for 2 days, hoping that would get the message through. Now that it did not, I protected for 3 months. Will not hesitate in March to extend it. Dirk Beetstra T C 12:36, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

callme2580.com

I come to you because you're the expert in the field of blacklisting. A persistent spammer (see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Lovelessgirl35/Archive) has been adding links to callme2580.com. Normally I wouldn't care too much, as such things usually get picked up anyway. But, some time ago, I added a bookmark for myself to see if there were any links to this site being added to the project. I hadn't looked at it in a while, and did so today. I came a cross a new addition that was made six days ago [11]. Nobody else picked up on it, and it was the only edit ever made by the account. I've blocked the account as a suspected sockpuppet. But, I'm wondering...with nine socks all attempting to force this spam onto Wikipedia over the last month, is it time to add this site to the blacklist? --Hammersoft (talk) 13:27, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

@Hammersoft: it appears you have enough reason to report this. You can report it on WT:WPSPAM if it is merely concerns ('reporting it for the record'), or on WT:SBL if you think that this likely is something that needs to be blacklisted. On SBL you will get a clear-cut answer regarding blacklisting, on WPSPAM it may just be a report that will archive at some points (but sometimes we do blacklist sites that are reported on WPSPAM without 'going through start and collecting 20.000 Wikidollars'). If you are sure of your case, you can also just add it yourself and log it properly; or you leave it and you have a good way of finding your socks.
(to get a better view, you can post the domain in the {{LinkSummary}} template on user:COIBot/Poke, in that case the report under '... Reports: ... - COIBot - ...' will be refreshed (if the bot is so inclined), and it should show all link additions of this site, including a list of 'users' - every time you request it (poke the bot), it will refresh and you will see if there are new additions. If all additions are by socks, then the SBL is the way to go. Note that the COIBot records also contain blacklist hits on the domains, so you can still use it to catch socks afterwards). --Dirk Beetstra T C 14:13, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Lionjek.com

hello friend, I want to make request please remove my website from spam list of Wikipedia. I have no option. I am making quality content on my website lionjek and I will never create any type of spams. There is any way through which I can remove my website from spam list like donation or any other method. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anshulv993 (talk • contribs) 14:20, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

@Anshulv993: this is not blacklisted on en.wikipedia, it is blacklisted globally. It hence needs to be de-listed globally. However, you already tried that, and that was declined.
You got a warning on the 4th of October regarding 'spam' on wikipedia: User_talk:Lionjekofficial. You decided to ignore that, you took your efforts pushing the link 'globally' until December 5 (see e.g. https://guc.toolforge.org/?by=date&user=2409%3A4063%3A4C07%3ADFC4%3AB1B1%3AB98A%3AE563%3A24B1). What did you expect, that no further attempts would be made to stop this behaviour? --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:38, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

I think we had not seen your warning that's why we continued adding website links on wikipedia. I want only one chance and we will never create any type of spam links on wikipedia. I hope you will help me and you will remove my website from spam List. Give me a last chance please. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anshulv993 (talk • contribs) 15:27, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

XLinkBot (Discogs 1)

Hey, your bot to clean up references is bad. It deletes the reference you don't like for whatever reason and the useful content that was added with the citation. Please leave the useful content alone and delete the citation only if you wish to be difficult. 172.92.177.175 (talk) 10:57, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Please do not use discogs as a reference. If the bot deletes the reference but leave the unreferenced information then what? It is just as bad as using a useless reference, so the information has to go with the reference. I hope this explains. Dirk Beetstra T C 19:05, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Merchandise giveaway nomination

A t-shirt!
A token of thanks
Hi Beetstra! I've nominated you (along with all other active admins) to receive a solstice season gift from the WMF. Talk page stalkers are invited to comment at the nomination. Enjoy! Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} talk ~~~~~
A snowflake!

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:50, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

@Sdkb: Thank you! I look forward to the results of the nomination discussion. Happy new year! --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:16, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Gofundme

Hi Beetstra you were the one who added GoFundMe on Spam blacklist. I would like to post on Village Pump a notice that there is a campaign to help a prolific Wikipedian. See also User_talk:Jmabel#Gofundme. Would you consider temporarily removing GFM from the list so I can post the notice maybe also there is no reason anymore to list GFM as spam, but that's up to you to decide of course, Thank you and Happy New Year, --A.Savin (talk) 17:59, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

@A.Savin: GoFundMe is not spam, GoFundMe is 'spammed', in direct violation of WP:SOAPBOX. People will, and have, actively write on Wikipedia 'Donate [here] to support X' (and similar for petitions). And there is simply no reason ever to link to a GFM page (especially not when it is an open GFM) - if the fact is of sufficient merit it is described in independent sources, and otherwise no-one cares.
That being said, we can specifically allow GFMs through whitelisting ( Defer to Whitelist), which we would do for GFMs which are notable in itself (so have an own Wiki page); GFMs which are closed, have proper independent sourcing and have extra information which is of interest to Wikipedia and is not covered by the independent sources (quotes e.g.); or GFMs for special situations like you. Please request it at the whitelist page (the instructions are at the top). Dirk Beetstra T C 06:22, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Getting CheMoBot to validate a chembox, i.e., borax

Hello! I'm not familiar with scripting/coding and was not sure how to get the chembox validated by the bot? How long does it take the bot to respond - not sure if thats the right word - after a change has been made to a chembox? Thank you! --Persona.californica (talk) 04:49, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

@Persona.californica: Sorry, CheMoBot is offline. It kept on crashing and I did not revive it. Now with WikiData the system should be completely overhauled (it could even become a 3-point comparison) which is too much. - Dirk Beetstra T C 06:14, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for responding and your work is appreciated even the attempts that don’t work out! Persona.californica (talk) 08:04, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2021).

Guideline and policy news

  • Following consensus at the 2021 RfA review, the autopatrolled user right has been removed from the administrators user group; admins can grant themselves the autopatrolled permission if they wish to remain autopatrolled.

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

  • The functionaries email list (functionaries-en@lists.wikimedia.org) will no longer accept incoming emails apart from those sent by list members and WMF staff. Private concerns, apart from those requiring oversight, should be directly sent to the Arbitration Committee.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:24, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

How we will see unregistered users

Hi!

You get this message because you are an admin on a Wikimedia wiki.

When someone edits a Wikimedia wiki without being logged in today, we show their IP address. As you may already know, we will not be able to do this in the future. This is a decision by the Wikimedia Foundation Legal department, because norms and regulations for privacy online have changed.

Instead of the IP we will show a masked identity. You as an admin will still be able to access the IP. There will also be a new user right for those who need to see the full IPs of unregistered users to fight vandalism, harassment and spam without being admins. Patrollers will also see part of the IP even without this user right. We are also working on better tools to help.

If you have not seen it before, you can read more on Meta. If you want to make sure you don’t miss technical changes on the Wikimedia wikis, you can subscribe to the weekly technical newsletter.

We have two suggested ways this identity could work. We would appreciate your feedback on which way you think would work best for you and your wiki, now and in the future. You can let us know on the talk page. You can write in your language. The suggestions were posted in October and we will decide after 17 January.

Thank you. /Johan (WMF)

18:13, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

List of universities in Indonesia

Hi Beetstra. Would you mind assessing the EL usage in List of universities in Indonesia? It seems excesive to me and possible a problem, but I'd like another opinion. -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:02, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

@Marchjuly: nah, I think that list is basically fine - it is what we discussed earlier at WP:ELN (user:WhatamIdoing was involved there as well, pinging for a third opinion), see Wikipedia:External_links#Links_in_lists. The article could however use some further cleanup:
  • some of the external links are references, which is confusing. Some of the external links are 'www.example.org', others are '[12]'
  • I think ALL names of the universities should be wikilinks. It should show which are still redlinks and the prime go-to would be the internal link.
The list overall looks rather complete and consistent. Focus is on the name, and the external link is in one of the last columns, no spamming. There are (apparently) still a lot of entries in the list that do not have a corresponding article, and for those the external link is hence a good 'reference' for existence. If the article has practically all entries bluelinked I could see the point of killing the external link column altogether as it is then superfluous to the 'official website' on the article itself. Dirk Beetstra T C 06:40, 4 January 2022 (UTC)
I also think that's fine.
I understand that after years of telling people that they can't have links to almost anything, it sometimes feels weird to say that more than a hundred links in one page is okay, but this really is okay. This is the kind of use that ELLIST expects (look at the gray table, not the colorful one). I have so far not seen an example of this type of list that correctly includes an external link [vs. an inline citation with non-standard formatting] to anything other than an official website, although that's technically not a requirement. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:02, 4 January 2022 (UTC)
Thank you both for your input. -- Marchjuly (talk) 04:17, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Filter 911

Hi, Beetstra. I was wondering if you had any thoughts about my comments here regarding filter 911? It looks to me like perhaps it should be switched to log-only. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she/they) 01:14, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

@Tamzin: disabled and deleted. Thanks for the pointer to the discussion. Dirk Beetstra T C 18:26, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

AfD mixup

I'm sorry for the mixup. Hope I fixed it all right here. (BTW, your deletion was intended I understand). -DePiep (talk) 16:40, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

@DePiep: indeed, thanks for acknowledging. Yes, the deletion of my comment was intentional, I already tried to step away from this, and your deletion rationale makes clear why I did and should. Sorry that we can’t make clear to you where we come from. Dirk Beetstra T C 17:01, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
@DePiep: I am changing my mind, I will comment on the AfD. Dirk Beetstra T C 17:48, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
@DePiep: I intend to undo your actions to butadiene as well, it is the same principle as with caffeine. --Dirk Beetstra T C 20:34, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
I note, once more, that your edits and behaviour may be considered disruptive to the AfD discussion you actively and knowingly interfere with. I don't think the AfD would be helped by more POINTy-like issues, so please take care. -DePiep (talk) 12:46, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
@DePiep: I have NOT commented on the AfD for the Caffeine data page regarding the Butadiene data page. I however do see from other discussions and the AfD for the caffeine data page that these are absolutely not uncontroversial deletions, and hence that speedy does not apply. YOU found it necessary to link them together in one deletion discussion. Dirk Beetstra T C 18:25, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
I also read what you wrote above here. Decided not to add every diff. Anyway, issue is moot. -DePiep (talk) 18:28, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
@DePiep: please stop, take a step back and see what is happening, and please stop taking this personally. I understand where you want to go, but in that you ignore and bluntly go against earlier consensus. I suggested early on to first establish consensus (I even mentioned RfC) to see where to go with the data pages. You can see from what user:Boghog is telling about the history regarding Caffeine, and from what user:DMacks and I are suggesting that we may want to go another way. Lets discuss that first with the pages we have instead of bulldozing them all away. Dirk Beetstra T C 18:55, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
All fine, and moot in details, while I am free to pushback against BF accusations. "you made a mistake" would have done. -DePiep (talk) 19:01, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
I am sorry that I came over like patronizing earlier, but I was genuinely annoyed at your deletion of good data that is relevant for the subject where my first Google search showed that that data was correct and could easily be sourced. Then I see you starting to merge it for another page into the main article where the main reason we have datapages is because we did not want the data in the main page in the first place (see explicit examples for Caffeine).
I appreciate and thank you for your enthusiasm in trying to solve this and other longstanding issues, and I again apologize for my remarks here and there, but please allow for more discussion and clear listing of pros and cons before implementing solutions before just implementing something (where possibly you build up resistance against said implementation). Dirk Beetstra T C 19:34, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Stolen IP?

I am the only person who uses this laptop & have never edited any articles. Please advise. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.86.55.92 (talk) 09:59, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

@75.86.55.92: your internet service provider is giving out the IPs, and it appears that the IP is randomly assigned whenever someone is connecting through the internet service provider. Thanks for the comment, we may need to control our actions. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:08, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Blacklist handler logging

Hi Dirk, looks like the blacklist handler (which I love, by the way) is logging new entries to /log/2022, while manual entries for January are being logged here. Are we missing a redirect somewhere? OhNoitsJamie Talk 15:19, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

@Ohnoitsjamie: they were logged in the wrong place, I have moved them. Dirk Beetstra T C 04:02, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Jo Clifford

Hi! I am a user from ruwiki, and I have seen an English article Jo Clifford a couple of months ago and would like to expand it from ru:Евангелие от Иисусы, царицы небесной, a Russian article about the most known work by Jo Clifford. But the article is deleted now! Could you explain to me how it works, can I somehow request the deleted text to use it to rewrite the article on Jo Clifford? Wikisaurus (talk) 20:50, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

@Wikisaurus: it was deleted since it was a creation by a sockpuppet (who also has a tendency to use 'bad' translations and badly attributed copy/pastes). I would suggest to write it from scratch. Dirk Beetstra T C 05:25, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Possibility of using Mediawiki:Robots.txt

Hi Beetstra, I was looking at transclusions of {{NOINDEX}} and noticed that it seems COIBot adds it to every report it generates. Am I correct in thinking that:

If so could you consider maybe using Mediawiki:Robots.txt instead? Right now COIBot kind of clogs up every search for transclusions. Thanks in advance, -- Asartea Talk | Contribs 11:41, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

@Asartea: I have never considered that, thanks for the remark. Yes, that should work as well, but it would not easily resolve as there are now thousands and thousands of reports with the tag (bot request, AWB run?). Dirk Beetstra T C 12:44, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
I have an req for AWB open; considering its purely COIBot I think someone should be in the clear to just blanket remove them if it gets added and you sign off on it. -- Asartea Talk | Contribs 13:42, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
@Asartea: I’d first have to check, and then make sure the bot does not add them back. And I’d then like something else done as well at the same time on a certain set of them. Dirk Beetstra T C 18:44, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

XLinkBot down?

Seems like XLinkBot got logged out since a bit ago, it might need a prod. CC Versageek. Perryprog (talk) 00:44, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

@Perryprog: yes, it was logged out for some reason, and I had difficulties logging it back in. Logging in seems now to have worked, lets see if it starts editing again. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:24, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

XLinkBot (Discogs 2)

Hey, your bot to clean up references is bad. It deletes the reference you don't like for whatever reason and the useful content that was added with the citation. Please leave the useful content alone and delete the citation only if you wish to be difficult. 172.92.177.175 (talk) 10:57, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Please do not use discogs as a reference. If the bot deletes the reference but leave the unreferenced information then what? It is just as bad as using a useless reference, so the information has to go with the reference. I hope this explains. Dirk Beetstra T C 19:05, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

"then what?" -- Then the article is left with more information! Not every single fact in an encyclopedia has a reference. Having a bad reference is better than no fact and no reference. Having a fact is better than no fact just because you dislike the reference. Anyway, you can clearly see the name "A. L. Ray" on the sticker visible in the discogs link. If you have a non-discogs source then please add it, or please stop reverting the facts. I can't believe you and your bot are hiding the truth about a vinyl single from 35 years ago. 172.92.177.175 (talk) 11:43, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

@172.92.177.175: then what? Find a better reference. No, having an unreferenced 'fact' is bad because questionable information that is not referenced should be removed. It is not my task to solve someone elses crappy edits. Dirk Beetstra T C 12:46, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

BOT--Reverting reference to revision 1062423972

Hello, I would like to ask you about the reason of canceled corrections I made on 26.1. in the article The Fold. Informations and corretcions I put there were verified. Some facts (history of the band) were errors before. Please consider new corrections reliable and true. Could you please explain or help to solve this situation? Best regards Rejly 320. 193.104.252.146 (talk) 09:47, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

You mean this edit by XLinkBot? Please see WP:RSP entry regarding discogs. Dirk Beetstra T C 11:49, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Removed Patents of inventors

Hi Dirk, Using this page as a reference, I had added a list of a few of the patents of inventors. The links I had added, I found as a quick and easy way to understand what the patent is all about, the problem it is solving, and the solution it provides. As the page is using Google patent links, the reader has to read through the complete text in order to make sense of what the patent is about. Following the links I had used, if still the reader wants to read the complete patent, it includes the links for both the patent office and google patents right at the top. I hope I'm able to clearly explain the reason for my edits. -- 101.0.54.16 (talk) 06:19, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

@101.0.54.16: And how is that linkfarm relevant to understanding the subject? Please review our external links guideline and in there WP:ELLIST. Thanks. Dirk Beetstra T C 09:28, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
@Beetstra: It is relevant in understanding the patents the inventor in the subject had worked in. As a patent in itself is a combination of thousands of words. Reading and understanding it may prove very difficult for a casual user. I myself found it easier to look through and understand what the patent is all about. So, thought that it'll help people like me. This page also lists the patents of the inventor but each of them takes the user to Google patents. The problem again is too many words to read and takes too long to make sense of all of it. I hope I'm able to answer your question. 101.0.54.16 (talk) 11:11, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
@101.0.54.16: People are not patenting themselves. People are patenting other stuff. Really, reading a patent, and that is especially true for patents, does not help you understand the person who invented something. Listing what they invented is more than enough (and even that is sometimes overkill). What you are now adding is a document that the inventor prepared, converted into a legalized language, which is then re-interpreted by someone else. Dirk Beetstra T C 13:05, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
@Beetstra: As I mentioned earlier as well. I use https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Elisha_Gray as a reference. This page also contains a list of inventions by the person in the subject. I completely understand your point of view. If possible, can you help me understand as to why this page can list the inventions(patents) and others cannot? 101.0.54.16 (talk) 07:37, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
@101.0.54.16: see WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS. Also that list is not acceptable. Dirk Beetstra T C 08:07, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2022).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • The user group oversight will be renamed suppress in around 3 weeks. This will not affect the name shown to users and is simply a change in the technical name of the user group. The change is being made for technical reasons. You can comment in Phabricator if you have objections.
  • The Reply Tool feature, which is a part of Discussion Tools, will be opt-out for everyone logged in or logged out starting 7 February 2022. Editors wishing to comment on this can do so in the relevant Village Pump discussion.

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:01, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Is this link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrAy2Ilr3Sk) to be useful as public domain YouTube source? --2001:4452:465:9200:B453:68BD:6D28:AD7C (talk) 02:01, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

I would not know. Please discuss on the talkpage of the subject where you want to use it and your best judgement. I presume you are here after an XLinkBot revert, note that the bot errs there on the safe side. Dirk Beetstra T C 05:10, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
That article is going the wrong way. Please adhere to WP:ELLIST! --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:12, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
@Beetstra: This YouTube video was uploaded by Public.Resource.Org it has a Creative Commons license and also released into public domain by the U.S. government. Recently, I removed this dead link from deleted video from YouTube due to a termination. --2001:4452:465:9200:B453:68BD:6D28:AD7C (talk) 10:34, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
Yes, but that it is fine to link to does not mean that we HAVE to. I told you above the other reasons we sometimes chose not to link externally. Dirk Beetstra T C 11:21, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Proposal for removing a website from blacklist

I'm DrSatyendra21, I've talked about a website thearticle.online , that this website is should be removed from Wikipedia blacklist and till now there is no action taken. If someone is here to help me then reply me so I can talk further. I'm waiting for it. DrSatyendra21 (talk) 17:23, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

@Hammersoft: Let's leave one, I love to have tracks of these discussions
@DrSatyendra21: As has been told to you: follow this link and read that page from the top, and then do what it says: MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 19:21, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
(talk page watcher) FWIW, as you can see from my talkpage interaction with DrSatyendra21, it's pretty clear to me that they're either the same person who was spamming that link on Recent Deaths BDPs in December, or working in league with them. Given that the tempblocks given to those IPs were "indefs in spirit" (that is to say, would have been indefinite if made against an account), and given that blocks apply to the person rather than to the account/IP, and given that meatpuppets indiscernible from sockpuppets can be treated as sockpuppets, in my opinion it would be reasonable to indef them as a sock. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she/they) 19:26, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
@Tamzin: yeah, I already saw that discussion some time ago. I hope he can come with a decent request before indeed some gets enough, or files an SPI on them. Seen the style I doubt blocking will help, this will just go on with more socks, which then means a deeper and deeper grave for the website (and that is why I like to have these discussions kept as a track). DrSatyendra21: do as you are told and read what you are asked to do, going on like this will only result in noone listening. Dirk Beetstra T C 19:38, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Raised the issue of the spamblack list at RSN

For obvious reasons. Doug Weller talk 13:55, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

@Doug Weller: I did not want to cross-post it, but there are some obvious places where there may be interest. Thanks. Dirk Beetstra T C 14:41, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

YGM

Received and replied. Best, --Blablubbs (talk) 17:27, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Your Articles for deletion/Zabbix

Hello and thank you for your effort! As you might be surprised to hear is that I don't plan to criticize you here but want to ask you about your motivation instead. As you can see on my edits and profile page you can consider me an expert on this field while being neutral. I see that you get a lot of opposition for requesting the RfD. And I understand that ruffled some feathers coming from different directions. The motivation of my questions is that I'm new to wikipedia and try to understand how things are happening around here. I would like to ask you:

  1. How did you find that topic? Was it in some queue? Is it of personal interest?
  2. Since you triggered the RfD it is clear that you want the article in it's current state removed. Do you consider Wikipedia a better place without it?
  3. What do you think about an immediate (better) rebuild of an article about Zabbix after it's deletion given people are willing to do it? Or do you think a cooldown phase makes more sense?
  4. You said by yourself that you put quite some effort already into this article (wading through the edit history). Do you consider the effort you put in worth it for the possible result? GavriilaDmitriev (talk) 02:45, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
@GavriilaDmitriev: Thank you for your remark. I'll answer your questions in order:
  1. I follow quite some pages which have in the past had problems with spam. That sometimes leads you to other pages. In this case I encountered Zabbix, which read as just a promotional piece after which I looked further.
  2. No and yes. The article may be suitable for inclusion if there are suitable references, but the current promotional text has to be removed. I do think that the state the article was in to be rather unsalvegable.
  3. A total overhaul may be possible, but seen the history I think that a clean start is a better option. You see the defense that is coming up, and the nature of the edits since my AfD (I haven't evaluated yours, so exclude those) just made it worse.
  4. Lets put it this way: I do recognize that sometimes you have to just throw stuff away and start over. Repairing your car over and over to keep it on the road may be fun, but at some point it is better to just scrap it and buy a new(er) one. For Zabbix I have considered to revert it to the first revision and let it re-evolve from there as well, but did not expect that would get anywhere. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:15, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
Thank you for your kind and detailed reply. I have read it right after you wrote this but I wanted to take the time now to thank you for the processing of this article because it's a good piece to learn from it. GavriilaDmitriev (talk) 09:51, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

7 days

You are supposed to know about "This category may be deleted if it has remained empty for at least seven days". -DePiep (talk) 11:03, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

@DePiep: thanks for the heads up .. so much for 'speedy' deletion then. I have undeleted the cat. Dirk Beetstra T C 12:21, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
Today I made some very semi-bold edits in that area. I/we have to be careful for opposition or alternative flow ideas. DePiep (talk) 16:25, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
@DePiep: how do we know that it is empty for 7 days though? Maybe one ugly wikignome silently adds articles at midnight and removes them at 3am … o_O … Dirk Beetstra T C 17:43, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
Ouch! Lucky, I am not an admin so I don't have to think about that :-) Could be July before it's done ... (If you're serious re my 'opposition' note: I meant to say that my edits & moves & approaches might be considered incorrect &tc, so my plan might have to be partly reversed or something. I took care to keep that option open). -DePiep (talk) 19:04, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
@DePiep: I saw it as an attempt to centralize the work. I think that there should be a move to a wider discussion then, what does the community think about datapages in the first place. Dirk Beetstra T C 03:42, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
A Misunderstanding here? My concern was/is: if someone else objected to my new setup (of 28 Feb: my concluding obdervations, the move into a new subpage, the follow up ie reopening talks possible, ...), that setup could have to be changed. Because I can only propose a route, not enforce. Part of this, namely the option to oppose/contest/revert my proposal-as-edited, should be left open. Nicely, {{db-c1}} includes this delay time (delay hard-to-reverse edits such as deletion). Of course, the 7-day rule also helps against late popping-up category members, good too. So I relied on that, and was surprised by the early deletion. Also: the wait is good practice anyway, no harm done. -DePiep (talk) 06:39, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2022).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:46, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist

It turns out that requests are archived, regardless of whether they are responded to or not. My last request got archived that way without getting responded to. If you or the other whitelist admins got time, please review my latest request which is different from my previous one before it gets archived. Kailash29792 (talk) 11:01, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

@Kailash29792: Yes, I know, I'm sorry. It sometimes looks like I am the only one who is active there, and I am currently rather busy and do not have time to fully investigate all the additions. Dirk Beetstra T C 06:31, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Hello

just wanna say hello— Preceding unsigned comment added by Edward MMMDCXIII (talk • contribs)

Hi! --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:34, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Whitelist

filmcompanion(dot)in/reviews/bollywood-review/the-kashmir-files-movie-review-a-defensive-and-dishonest-dive-into-the-past/ - Need to use in an article on the relevant film. TrangaBellam (talk) 20:48, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

@TrangaBellam: I know, I am sorry, I need time to review such requests which I do not have at the moment. There are also requests where I do not feel overly qualified to judge appropriately. Dirk Beetstra T C 06:16, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
The site was blacklisted due to seeding spam; otherwise, it is a RS and the whitelist already features three exclusions (all reviews). The author of this part. review (Rahul Desai) is a RT-approved film-critic. TrangaBellam (talk) 07:27, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
I am in not favour of whitelisting an spammer site. It is harmful
Dsnb07 (talk) 18:43, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

First edit day

{{u|Sdkb}} talk 05:55, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:01, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

User:COIBot/Poke

Hi Beetstra, I've used User:COIBot/Poke multiple times in the last couple of months to identify linkspam and seo sockpuppets, but sometimes it doesn't seem to work. For example todays „/hotmail-login“ linkspam [13] involved three domains, but after I poked the bot [14] only two link reports got updated, there is still no link report for the third one. Should I just try to poke the bot again if the bot doesn't react? -- Johannnes89 (talk) 20:38, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

@Johannnes89 yes, you can try again. I noticed the same problem on other pages, I will tey to have a look one of these days. Dirk Beetstra T C 04:12, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
Thanks! Will these reports be updated automatically or is a new poke needed from time to time if I suspect linkspam to continue? Johannnes89 (talk) 08:38, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
@Johannnes89 you need to re-poke to check. Dirk Beetstra T C 16:23, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2022).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • Access to Special:RevisionDelete has been expanded to include users who have the deletelogentry and deletedhistory rights. This means that those in the Researcher user group and Checkusers who are not administrators can now access Special:RevisionDelete. The users able to view the special page after this change are the 3 users in the Researcher group, as there are currently no checkusers who are not already administrators. (T301928)
  • When viewing deleted revisions or diffs on Special:Undelete a back link to the undelete page for the associated page is now present. (T284114)

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:12, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

New administrator activity requirement

The administrator policy has been updated with new activity requirements following a successful Request for Comment.

Beginning January 1, 2023, administrators who meet one or both of the following criteria may be desysopped for inactivity if they have:

  1. Made neither edits nor administrative actions for at least a 12-month period OR
  2. Made fewer than 100 edits over a 60-month period

Administrators at risk for being desysopped under these criteria will continue to be notified ahead of time. Thank you for your continued work.

22:52, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2022).

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Arbitration

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:33, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2022).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • Administrators using the mobile web interface can now access Special:Block directly from user pages. (T307341)
  • The IP Info feature has been deployed to all wikis as a Beta Feature. Any autoconfirmed user may enable the feature using the "IP info" checkbox under Preferences → Beta features. Autoconfirmed users will be able to access basic information about an IP address that includes the country and connection method. Those with advanced privileges (admin, bureaucrat, checkuser) will have access to extra information that includes the Internet Service Provider and more specific location.

Arbitration

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:55, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

You've got mail

Hello, Beetstra. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template. — TNT (talk • she/her) 10:26, 3 June 2022 (UTC)
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