User talk:Rick Block

If you're here to respond to a comment I posted on your talk page, feel free to reply on your talk page (so the question and answer are together). I ALWAYS watch talk pages I've posted comments to for a while. If you leave me a message, I'll respond here unless you ask me not to.

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Indexing CFDs

I was replacing one of the templates in Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Archive debates and I noticed that the CFD archive indices stop after February 2018. Is there a reason the archives stopped being created? Primefac (talk) 20:51, 2 January 2019 (UTC) (please ping on reply)

@Primefac: This is on my list to look at - I noticed a week or so ago. The way it's supposed to work is the bot waits until all the open discussions for the month are closed (one way or another), and then creates the monthly index. Without looking at it, my guess is something changed that is making the bot think there are still open discussions. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:55, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

@Primefac: I think it's fixed and have added indices for the missing months (there's still an unclosed request from November, so the indices stop with October). -- Rick Block (talk) 18:13, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

ArbCom 2019 special circular

Administrators must secure their accounts The Arbitration Committee may require a new RfA if your account is compromised. Use strong, unique passwords for your Wikipedia account and associated email Change your password now if your Wikipedia account password or email password is reused on another website, exposed, or weak Enable two-factor authentication now for improved security

View additional information

Why have I received this message? All administrators are receiving it. What prompted you to send this message? Recently, several Wikipedia admin accounts were compromised. The admin accounts were desysopped on an emergency basis. In the past, the Committee often resysopped admin accounts as a matter of course once the admin was back in control of their account. The committee has updated its guidelines. Admins may now be required to undergo a fresh Request for Adminship (RfA) after losing control of their account. What do I need to do? Only to follow the instructions in this message. Check that your password is unique (not reused across sites). Check that your password is strong (not simple or guessable). Enable Two-factor authentication (2FA), if you can, to create a second hurdle for attackers. How can I find out more about two-factor authentication (2FA)? You can find out more about 2FA at m:2FA.

This message was sent to all administrators following a recent motion. Thank you for your attention. For the Arbitration Committee, Cameron11598 02:19, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

Administrator account security (Correction to Arbcom 2019 special circular)

ArbCom would like to apologise and correct our previous mass message in light of the response from the community.

Since November 2018, six administrator accounts have been compromised and temporarily desysopped. In an effort to help improve account security, our intention was to remind administrators of existing policies on account security — that they are required to "have strong passwords and follow appropriate personal security practices." We have updated our procedures to ensure that we enforce these policies more strictly in the future. The policies themselves have not changed. In particular, two-factor authentication remains an optional means of adding extra security to your account. The choice not to enable 2FA will not be considered when deciding to restore sysop privileges to administrator accounts that were compromised.

We are sorry for the wording of our previous message, which did not accurately convey this, and deeply regret the tone in which it was delivered.

For the Arbitration Committee, -Cameron11598 21:04, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of File:Montyflip.png

The file File:Montyflip.png has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

unused, low-res, no obvious use

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated files}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the file's talk page.

Please consider addressing the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated files}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and files for discussion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion.

This bot DID NOT nominate any file(s) for deletion; please refer to the page history of each individual file for details. Thanks, FastilyBot (talk) 01:02, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

2019 US Banknote Contest

	US Banknote Contest
	November-December 2019
There are an estimated 30,000 different varieties of United States banknotes, yet only a fraction of these are represented on Wikimedia Commons in the form of 2D scans. Additionally, Colonial America, the Confederate States, the Republic of Texas, multiple states and territories, communities, and private companies have issued banknotes that are in the public domain today but are absent from Commons. In the months of November and December, WikiProject Numismatics will be running a cross-wiki upload-a-thon, the 2019 US Banknote Contest. The goal of the contest is to increase the number of US banknote images available to content creators on all Wikimedia projects. Participants will claim points for uploading and importing 2D scans of US banknotes, and at the end of the contest all will receive awards. Whether you want to claim the Gold Wiki or you just want to have fun, all are invited to participate. If you do not want to receive invitations to future US Banknote Contests, follow the instructions here

Sent by ZLEA at 23:30, 19 October 2019 (UTC) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk)

ArbCom 2019 election voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2019 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 on Monday, 2 December 2019. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate in the 2019 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:03, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Username changed

Hey, I brought this up at the talk page for Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations as well. But, could you update the list so my old username, User:Dan56, is changed to my new name? isento (talk) 17:46, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Looks like you figured out how to do this yourself :) Rick Block (talk) 21:58, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

Rick Bot

Hi. Rick Bot seems to have missed me off as the nominator of Siege of Lilybaeum (250–241 BC) at Wikipedia:Featured articles promoted in 2020 (June) and I am wary of inserting anything manually for fear of breaking something. Gog the Mild (talk) 21:13, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Precious

Eight years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:08, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Featured topic promotion lists

Hi, I just came across Wikipedia:Featured topics promoted in 2020 and noticed that your bot strikes through all the nominations after a while, for example to indicate that Wikipedia:Featured topics/Operas by Claudio Monteverdi was demoted 9 minutes after it was promoted. Something seems to be wrong with Rick Bot's "autoupdate" function. If this is difficult to fix, I guess just turning off the strikethrough (and not mentioning it in the header) would make these pages less confusing. —Kusma (t·c) 20:44, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

I'll take a look at it this weekend. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:33, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

@Kusma: I believe I've fixed it. The layout of WP:FT apparently changed some time ago and the bot has not been able to determine the list of FTs. This also affects WP:WBFTN. Thanks for letting me know about this. If you notice any further issues, please let me know. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:20, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

Looks much better, thank you for fixing this! —Kusma (t·c) 16:51, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

"Wikipedia:WPCG" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Wikipedia:WPCG. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 August 30#Wikipedia:WPCG until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:36, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

ArbCom 2020 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2020 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 7 December 2020. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate in the 2020 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:15, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

A brownie for you!

Editcountitis is my favorite essay of all time. Thank you for creating it all those years ago! Clamless (talk) 19:49, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

You're welcome! -- Rick Block (talk) 00:32, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Precious

Nine years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:28, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Bot question

Hello, Rick,

I was looking over Wikipedia:List of administrator hopefuls the other day and noticed that there were quite a few editors listed on it who were blocked as sockpuppets or had been indefinitely blocked, some of them over a decade ago. So, I removed their names and the ones who had a "I want to be an admin someday" userbox, well, I removed it from their user page. None of these editors will be returning. Unfortunately, when RickBot updated the page, it removed the editors who had had the userboxes removed but it re-added all of the names that I had manually removed from the page. This is puzzling to me because I thought editors could add their names to the list (because they didn't have the admin userboxes) so it seems like it should be possible to remove them, too.

I know that this page probably gets very few views, but is there any way that manual changes won't be undone by RickBot? I just took the accounts off again but I don't want to do this regularly. Thanks for any help you can offer. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 04:16, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

The bot cues off the contents of category:Wikipedia_administrator_hopefuls which is populated by the userboxes, so to remove someone the userbox has to be removed. Note that the userbox can be on a subpage. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:26, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Several bugs in CfD indexing I found

1. Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Archive debates/2020 September index, Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Archive debates/2020 November index, Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Archive debates/2020 December index, and Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Archive debates/2021 February index were never created.
2. The bot gets confused by the markup in bibliomaniac15's signature, causing things to render with stray apostrophes and in italic instead of the intended bold.
3. The bot occasionally seems to conflate two discussions into one entry. For example, see the entry for Category:Activists from Dedham, Massachusetts at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Archive debates/2020 April index, which has become merged with a separate discussion for Category:Activists from Toronto. The "Category" link goes to the first category, the "Discussion_log" link goes to the discussion for the second category, and the "Decision" link concatenates the closing statements of both together.
4. Several historical indexes were created too soon, and are therefore missing some discussions. For example, Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Archive debates/2019 October index was created on the first of the month and doesn't include any discussions closed after the first of the month.

* Pppery * _{it has begun...} 15:17, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

@Pppery: Thanks! I'll look into these, maybe this weekend. Franky, I've never been sure anyone ever uses these indices.-- Rick Block (talk) 15:05, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

@Pppery: I made an update to the bot source which seems to have fixed 2 and 3, and have manually updated the indices from January 2020 through April 2021 (and Oct 2019). At this point I'm not sure why it misses some months and runs early. I'll look at it some more tomorrow. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:04, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

I think I may have a clue as to the issue here. A couple of weeks ago, I was going over some old CfD logs for the last few months, and went to one of my sandboxes to transclude a bunch of CfD logpages. But for some reason I was unable to save the page! I don't recall the exact error message, but I believe it was a blacklisted link. (And all I was trying to do was transclude the log pages, so it's confusing that this would even be picked up by a filter). Anyway, I don't remember exactly which page it was, but I believe it was from one of the months your bot is currently having trouble with. If I were you, what I'd try is having it dump its rendered page to a text file, and then create the page manually (I believe sysops bypass the filter, or at least have an option to click through it). jp×g 05:04, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Active admins

Hi, Rick Bot seems to have removed a number of seemingly active admins in the u-z username category... Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 22:02, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

• Is the bot down? The last update was 29 September. ☆ Bri (talk) 22:23, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes, the bot is down. I have a certificate issue of some kind I haven't been able to resolve yet. Seems to be related to this, but as far as I can tell I don't have the expired certificate. -- Rick Block (talk) 22:48, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Places in Bedfordshire/script

Template:Places in Bedfordshire/script has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Tom (LT) (talk) 03:14, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

WP:WBFAN

Hi - I don't know if you are aware, but Rick Bot has not been updating Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations for promoted and demoted featured articles since the end of September. Also Wikipedia:Featured articles promoted in 2021 has been updated manually since then. RetiredDuke (talk) 14:14, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I know. I have certificate issues I'm working through. Shouldn't be too much longer. -- Rick Block (talk) 20:44, 29 October 2021 (UTC)