Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard

Welcome — post issues of interest to administrators.

For urgent incidents and chronic, intractable behavioral problems, use Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. If you are new, try the Wikipedia:Teahouse instead. Do not report breaches of personal information on this highly visible page – instead use Wikipedia:Requests for oversight. For administrative backlogs add {{Admin backlog}} to the backlogged page; post here only if urgent. Do not post requests for page protection, deletion requests, or block requests here. Just want an admin? Contact a recently active admin directly. If opening a close appeal, use {{RfC closure review}} When you start a discussion about an editor, you must leave a notice on their talk page. Pinging is not enough. You may use {{subst:AN-notice}} ~~~~ to do so. Sections inactive for over seven days are archived by Lowercase sigmabot III.(archives, search) Start a new discussion

Tasks

The following backlogs require the attention of one or more editors.
Transwiki to Wikibooks and Wiktionary

Requested moves, Vandalism in progress, AfD cleanup, Copyright Problems and Requests for page protection

Moved conversations

A lot of conversations where moved during the purge. Please list their new homes here. Please keep this list as short as possible: most recent at top, and after a few days, remove their listings so that this section does not become burdensome. Try shooting for a magic number of eight.

Remember! Shoot misplaced topics on sight: or at least, move them to the proper page.

• Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive13#Willy on Wheels legal action? → Wikipedia talk:Vandalism in progress/Willy on Wheels#Willy on Wheels legal action? — Ambush Commander^(Talk) 00:17, September 7, 2005 (UTC)

Announcements

Sometimes there are conversations that admins should take a look here. Then, make an announcement here. No more than eight announcements here at a time, most recent up top. please don't reply to announcements. If your announcement makes nine, delete the oldest one, but be courteous (don't delete one that was just created an hour ago, maybe you should wait a little bit). Remember, there's always user talk pages.

Template:

* '''[[Link to Subject Page]]''' - Short Summary (not more than a paragraph) ~~~~

• Special:Log/newusers - See also Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Newuserlog. Originally posted by cesarb 22:34, 7 September 2005 (UTC) moved by — Ambush Commander^(Talk) 23:23, September 7, 2005 (UTC)

General

Blocked proxy?

Someone's in #wikipedia right now saying that the University of Houston was blocked:

• 17:30, 11 August 2005, David Gerard blocked 129.7.35.0/24 (infinite) (contribs) ({{Blocked proxy}})
• 17:05, 24 June 2005, Fuzheado blocked 129.7.35.176 (infinite) (contribs) (open proxy)

He says he emailed wikien-l several days ago but got no response. Anything? --SPUI (talk) 16:29, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

The 129.7.35.176 address appears to have been involved in the KaintheScion/ElKabong/Enviroknot thing. It is definitively from the Univ. Houston [1], but that does not nessesarily mean that it isn't an open proxy. Can someone expert in the matter check into it? Func( t, c, @, ) 17:47, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

I portscanned it, found nothing and unblocked it. -- Tim Starling 01:58, September 7, 2005 (UTC)

XFF headers? (restored)

OK, why did every single discussion that was still ongoing get purged? I asked a question last night about what are XFF headers, and how do we use them to deal with NTL vandals. Zoe 05:48, September 7, 2005 (UTC)

Just read the history or the archive; the explanation's still there. — Knowledge Seeker দ 05:57, September 7, 2005 (UTC)

I tried reading the history, and my browser kept timing out. And how is one supposed to know the name of an archive, if they're not listed somewhere? Zoe 06:40, September 7, 2005 (UTC)

box top right

I'm restoring the previous XFF conversation, sorry 'bout that. If no one objects, I'll archive this conversation.

To all administrators and vandal-hunters, regarding NTL Vandals

Recently, I submitted an email to the abuse center at NTL concerning User:MARMOT, which you may find at User:Linuxbeak/Admin_stuff/MARMOT. Through some detective work, I discovered that MARMOT was the user behind the User:Love Virus vandalbot attacks, which this log verified. I communicated with him over IRC, and he made it clear that he has every intention to continue the vandalbot attacks.

This is important. If there are any incidents of vandalism by an NTL proxy, please do more than just block the IP for 15 minutes. There is a link on the talk page of known NTL proxies that point to the Abuse Reporting center ran by NTL. PLEASE use it! Perhaps if NTL gets the message that some of their users are launching attacks on us, they'll actually *do* something about it. Linuxbeak | Talk | Desk 18:42, August 31, 2005 (UTC)

I have been doing this for a while, but haven't gotten a response. Though if they suddenly get a hundred emails about the same IP address, one would assume they'd respond. Bratsche^{talk 5 pillars} 23:02, August 31, 2005 (UTC)

But you'd need to give them more info than just the IP. They need to know the exact times so thay can work out who is the vandal - there are a lot of good NTL users on any proxy - myself being one of them Theresa Knott (a tenth stroke) 23:09, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Yeah. I've been blocked at least three times for 24 hours because of another (more than one?) n:tl user's vandalism [altho twice I got it rescinded]. And my IP address reads differently for every site that shows a record of an IP on my part, so I doubt the IP alone will do anything at all. - SoM 23:18, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Ah, but we don't just have the proxy address, NTL clients get their own publicly-routable IP too, and we have marmot's own IP as well. As it would appear this is a farely static IP, even vague time indications are good enough. Nice job LB! --fvw* 00:36, September 1, 2005 (UTC)

I have a feeling they will simply ignore e-mails from people who aren't their own customers.

There's something I've been trying with the 63.19.128.0/17 vandal:

03:55, 30 August 2005 Curps blocked "User:63.19.128.0/17" with an expiry time of 48 hours ([2] + many more. Sorry if this is not you. Abuse contact @ your ISP to report IPs/timestamps: e-mail, +1-800-900-0241)

In other words, use arin.net (or ripe.net) to find out the ISP and the ISP's abuse contact info (e-mail and phone), and craft a block summary that includes that information along with a slice of page history that shows the vandal's actions (with IPs and timestamps).

It's a bit tricky because the message can't be too long; any longer than the above and it just gets truncated.

The idea is to enlist the ISP's own users (any innocent victims of the block) to report the vandal, and hopefully the ISP's tech support will be much more responsive when it's their own customers who are contacting them rather than a bunch of outsiders who are often in a different country. -- Curps 01:32, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

After the MARMOT incident I created a brief list of major ISPs together with links to their AUP/TOS and contact information. Please visit WP:FOAD and expand it as necessary. --MarkSweep✍ 04:36, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

We now accept XFF headers from NTL proxies, so NTL users will appear to be editing from their own IP address. [3] -- Tim Starling 06:02, September 6, 2005 (UTC)

What are XFF headers? And what do we do about it if we see vandals from these accounts? Are they blockable now? Zoe 06:17, September 6, 2005 (UTC)

X-Forwarded-For is an HTTP request header. It's not an official standard, hence the X, but it's a defacto standard introduced by squid if I'm not mistaken. It works like this: a client connects to a proxy server, requesting a document from some other server. The proxy server puts the IP of the client into an X-Forwarded-For header and sends it to the content server along with the request. Thus, the content server sees that the request is coming from the proxy, but by checking the XFF header, it can determine the IP address of the client behind the proxy.

If the client sends an XFF header to the proxy, the proxy will append the IP address to the end, separated by a comma, so proxy "chains" are supported. In fact, a typical request from an NTL client will go via 3 proxies: one in the UK, one in Amsterdam and one in Florida. The apache server in Florida looks back along the XFF chain, and stops when it sees an address it doesn't trust -- if we accepted XFF headers from anyone, people would be able to forge their IP address.

The end effect of all this is that NTL users, and users from other similarly cooperating ISPs, will appear to be editing Wikipedia from their real IP address, not from a proxy. So you can block their username or IP address without worrying about blocking other people. It's as if the proxy wasn't there. The same cannot be said for AOL, which has a policy of not sending out identifying information. They don't send XFF headers, and their proxies aren't specific to the geographical location of the client. -- Tim Starling 15:32, September 6, 2005 (UTC)

Does this mean the NTL section on Special:Blockip can be commented out? --cesarb 16:37, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

No, it means it can be deleted. Commenting out is for wimps ;) -- Tim Starling 17:46, September 6, 2005 (UTC)

This is definitely good news. This, frankly, will make our lives a hell of a lot easier, and we'll be able to keep people like MARMOT away. Good hunting!! 131.128.81.189 18:41, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

WOOHOO, and a standing ovation to Tim and anyone else that helped get this done. <timid>But is it reliable?</timid> - Taxman ^Talk 22:01, September 8, 2005 (UTC)

Ntl are probablly large enough to be trustworthy but it would be nice to have finer grained control such that an isps proxy could only spoof ips of that isps users. Plugwash 22:10, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Nice work! <sarcasm> I can't believe AOL are so unhelpful, its just so unlike them </sarcasm>. Just think guys when ipv6 is standard, we never need worry about this at all! Martin - The non-blue non-moose 22:17, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Most isps that do forced proxying still give the users real ips for other services so they aren't doing this for ip space reasons. The main motivation for forced proxying afaict is to save bandwidth. Plugwash 22:31, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

User:Ta bu shi da yu

User:Ta bu shi da yu has deleted his User and Talk pages. Is it appropriate for an admin (or any editor for that matter) to delete their Talk pages? Zoe 07:33, September 7, 2005 (UTC)

That makes no sense. - 203.134.166.99 07:53, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

His deletion message seems to indicate his intention to leave Wikipedia which I for one find very sad. Dragons flight 07:48, September 7, 2005 (UTC)

When RickK left he deleted his talk page, but someone the restored the history; the same sould probably happen here- retore the history, but leave it blank.--nixie 07:51, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Done. --MarkSweep✍ 08:57, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

My feeling is that he should be allowed to delete his user page, but not his talk page (although he can archive or blank it, of course). Everyking 08:01, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

it appears he usr talk page has been undeleted.Geni

deleting your userpage as you walk a way is a gesture of frustration. it doesn't do any harm, it is quickly undeleted, and, being gone, the user can hardly edit-war about it. I still hope tbsdy is just on a wikibreak, of course. losing good editors over infobox-disputes is sad. remember that content is more important than layout, everybody! dab (ᛏ) 10:06, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Where do I go to donate to the "bring back tabushidayu" fund? This comes as horrendous news. :-( Tomer ^TALK 11:27, September 7, 2005 (UTC)

Terrible... another missing wikipedian. — Ambush Commander^(Talk) 23:28, September 7, 2005 (UTC)

Does someone want to reign in User:Gmaxwell? He just compared User:RickK to Adolph Hitler: see his talk page where he wrote:

"As far as RickK- some people also regret the passing of Adolph Hitler... So, it is no shock that RickK is missed."

Charming I'm sure, but also against WP:NPA. - Ta bu shi da yu 03:49, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

How do you propose that we reign him in? Everyking 04:22, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Be creative. Is he going to have his personal attacks stopped, or are we now ignoring WP:NPA? - Ta bu shi da yu 04:30, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

But I don't think there's any policy for action against personal attacks except that they can be removed. In any case, Rick isn't an active contributor so the point kinda seems moot, if he's not around to be insulted by it. Everyking 04:46, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

And if you read the discussion you can see that I am criticizing TaBu's actions, not TaBu personally... Well at least, thats my attempt. I don't know TaBu personally, so I'm not really qualified to say what kind of person he is with any accuracy. As far as RickK, my reply might have been somewhat shocking, but I was countering someone's point that RickK couldn't have been a harm to Wikipedia, not claiming RickK drove a nation to genocide. Thats not a personal attack, RickK here or not. --Gmaxwell 05:03, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

If you cannot see how comparing an editor to Hitler is not a personal attack, there is not much more I can say. I will let the rest of the admins who read this decide whether it was personal or not. - Ta bu shi da yu 06:12, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

It's a terrible comparison; for what it's worth, I am insulted for him, and I'm sure TBSDY and others are, too. El_C 06:50, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Indeed. At this point, an RfC for Gmaxwell would be appropriate. Thoughts? P.S. One need only look at the record net support votes for TBSDY's RfA to see who is in the majority here (the record has since been broken, but it's still impressive). ;) HKT ^talk 07:00, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree that Gmaxwell's comment about RickK was totally out of order. However I don't really think an RFC is appropriate for one comment, and if TBSDY has left then their dispute has already been solved - in the worst possible way of course :( -- the wub "?/!" 09:39, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Just a note so those who don't care to read the background are not misinformed: There was no dispute between TaBu and I. In fact, I was on my way to his talk page to pass him my moral support for his difficulties in the GNAA FAC ... only to discover that he had again 'left' Wikipedia many hours before, deleting his pages and creating the same sort of noise he has in previous times he has left us... After finding that he was already getting messages begging him to return, I wrote a harsh criticism on his repeated cycles of dramatic departure and return which I believe to be nothing more than a disgraceful attempt to get others to shower him with compliments. My only interaction with TaBu was months ago, and again recently, but only after he had already left. So any claim that I somehow caused him to leave should be considered dubious and weighed against the edit history. I have invited anyone interested in my comments to come discuss the matter on my talk page, and I would not discourage an RFC if someone feels like calling one, although I do believe it would be an additional waste of time for all involved. --Gmaxwell 16:41, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Oh sorry, I've misjudged things. From your comments on TBSDY's talk I assumed you had argued over something with him in the past. Guess I forgot to assume good faith. But I wasn't implying that it was you that caused him to leave, I saw he was having other conflicts recently. Anyway, though I disagree with your comments about TBSDY leaving I understand what you're saying and you have a right to say it. the wub "?/!" 19:57, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

• I feel an RfC against Gmaxwell would be inappropriate. He wrote an unneccessarily harsh response to my comment, and I responded with more venom than I needed to. I found the comparison to Hitler as distasteful lapse of judgement, but let's not start an unneccessary RfC. Incidentally, is TBSDY really gone? He seems to be following this closely. --Scimitar ^parley 17:11, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
• I withdraw my suggestion. The unsavory comment about RickK, and Gmaxwell's comments here, had led me to jump to conclusions about a trend of poor conduct. The incidents in question, while unjustified, appear isolated enough to not merit an RfC. In any event, the possibility of less-than-admirable goals in stating one's intent to quit editing doesn't justify making insulting comments that assume those goals to be true. That said, I suspected a pattern of poor conduct by Gmaxwell when I suggested an RfC. That assumption was unverified and inappropriate, and I apologize. HKT ^talk 01:58, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Unprocessed vfd

Going through the category 'articles on VfD' for unlisted nominations I found Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/When Good Robots Go Bad. It has been listed since July 20th but has somehow escaped closure. Perhaps some admin could process this. --Doc (?) 14:59, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

The nomination was never completed ({{vfd}} header added and the sub-page was created, but the nomination was never listed at WP:VFD). I have completed the nomination so that the 5 day clock may begin. --Allen3 ^talk 15:10, September 7, 2005 (UTC)

Fine, but actually, if that had been the case I'd have listed it myself (doesn't take an admin). But actually it was listed in July see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2005 July 20. No problems with the re-listing however. --Doc (?) 15:20, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Interesting, the July 20 log does not show up on Special:Whatlinkshere/When_Good_Robots_Go_Bad. The probable reason it was not initially closed was that it was nominated by an anon who did not even sign the nomination. The first comment after the nomination was on Aug 27th, with the first signed vote on Aug 29th. Beyond this your guess is as good as mine. --Allen3 ^talk 16:42, September 7, 2005 (UTC)

Hum, dunno, yet Special:Whatlinkshere/Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/When_Good_Robots_Go_Bad does show it. Strange. --Doc (?) 17:10, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

It only shows up on the latter because the vfd looked like this until August 27, and the last edit to Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/2005 July 20 was well before that. (The morale? Check more carefully for blanked or malformed vfds before closing out a log day.) —Cryptic (talk) 18:09, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

New users log

Take a look: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Newuserlog. --cesarb 22:34, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

I think Special:Log/newusers is an excellent idea, but could we take it out of Recent changes? Zoe 23:22, September 7, 2005 (UTC)

I don't see what's wrong with putting it there. All you have to do is make an option that allows for it to not be in there. By the way, # (User creation log); 19:22 . . Dysphenctional (Talk) (newusers: Created the user "Dysphenctional" (Talk; Contributions)) is a bit wordy, don't you think? — Ambush Commander^(Talk) 23:25, September 7, 2005 (UTC)

I would prefer it on recent changes, just in case a long term vandal shows up, so you can block right away. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 01:40, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

I love it! Thank you devs. And I think having it on recent changes is a good idea; swat the baddies as they go by. (I suppose it could be visible to admins only, or toggled on/off; many options possible) Antandrus (talk) 01:47, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

That's awesome, but can we get block links right there too? Is that possible? - Taxman ^Talk 21:27, September 8, 2005 (UTC)

Username Question

Is my username okay? Just wanted to check here first. Anal Retentive 17:07, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, I don't see a problem with it but you might like to keep out of Ed Poor's way if he's feeling preemptive. --Ngb ^?!? 17:19, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Shouldn't it have a hyphen? (badda-boom) - DavidWBrooks 17:52, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. I desperately hope, though, that you'll do some small edit at Constipation, just to get the name in the history. Joyous (talk) 23:11, September 8, 2005 (UTC)

Fix link on August anniversaries page

On the protected page Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/August, under August 11, the "Persian" link needs to be fixed, as it currently points to a disambig.

The current text is

[[Persia]]n

The correct text is

[[Persian Empire|Persian]]

Note that the link is already correct on Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/August 11, as well as Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/All. (By the way, I find it strange that these are apparently not done via transclusion.)

— Nowhither 23:30, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

It's done. Thanks. — Nowhither 00:10, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Ill-formed Counter-Strike article move

A user has changed the Counter-Strike article into a disambig page, without any sort of consensus decision. The user did not use the move tool, and just copy pasted text over, leading to an incorrect page history and the detachment of the talk pages. Please see Talk:Counter-Strike and read up on my message there. If an admin could do the clearing up, I would be grateful. - Hahnchen 23:43, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

no need for any cleanup in this situation a simple revert and creation of a redirect (as have already been done) are sufficiant. history merges are only needed if the results of an action like that are allowed to persist for a long time and pick up nontrivial edits in the meantime. If consensus is reached for a move then Counter-Strike (computer game) can be deleted to make way for the move. Plugwash 00:25, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for clarification. I had thought that the admin may have to do the history thing, but it got cleaned up good. Thanks, oh omnipresent ones. - Hahnchen 01:04, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

The MilkMan situation

See also: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive13#Willy has now got Milk

The MilkMan promises to be nice. He claims that he is not Willy after all, and that he has seen the error of his ways. So I unblocked his last account MilkMan New And Improved (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (which didn't turn out to be uncontroversial, as might be expected), and hope that assuming good faith works. However, obviously we should keep an eye on him. If he vandalizes again, feel free to come down upon him like a ton of bricks, but that would probably only mean hunting his socks again, and I hope that everyone agrees we have better things to do. We can avoid that if he really wants to be a good editor. -- grm_wnr Esc 01:57, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Update: He has now chosen a less controversial name for himself, Milky Way (talk · contribs). Of course above caveats still apply. -- grm_wnr Esc 02:03, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Leave me alone.

I am currently editing anonymously from User:203.134.166.99. This is not terribly anonymous anymore, but I wish to drop beneath the radar and quietly go about editing tedious articles like MDAC (so sue me, I use the technology at work and a comprehensive article will assist me, any other person who needs to know about it and helps Wikipedia). It appears that I am being targetted by anonymous vandals: they identified me on the page and when I reverted it was redirected to User:Ta bu shi da yu. That's not on: this is not my IP address and may (and I emphasise may) be used by others. I've been forced to protect the page. - Ta bu shi da yu 07:38, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Page-move horror

I've just moved Palestinian terrorism to Palestinian terrorism and militancy. The move seemed to go OK, and as usual I started on double redirects — but there seemed to be a lot of duplicates. When I checked, I found that that Palestinian terrorism redirects to Palestinian terrorism and militancy OK, but Palestinian terrorism and militancy redirects to itself. The article has disappeared completely. What's happened, and how do I correct it? --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:20, 9 September 2005 (UTC)