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::Wanting editors to stop calling other editors racist is rude and dismissive? --[[User:Tarage|Tarage]] ([[User talk:Tarage|talk]]) 20:21, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
::Wanting editors to stop calling other editors racist is rude and dismissive? --[[User:Tarage|Tarage]] ([[User talk:Tarage|talk]]) 20:21, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
:::Alleging editors weaponize accusations of racism to win arguments requires evidence. Responding to a request for that evidence, by the accused editor, with rude and dismissive language should result in sanctions, correct. Also, I realized I needed to clarify: my vote would be for an indefinite topic ban, since the responses here indicate more than just a cooldown period of a few months is needed. [[User:Grandpallama|Grandpallama]] ([[User talk:Grandpallama|talk]]) 20:23, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
:::Alleging editors weaponize accusations of racism to win arguments requires evidence. Responding to a request for that evidence, by the accused editor, with rude and dismissive language should result in sanctions, correct. Also, I realized I needed to clarify: my vote would be for an indefinite topic ban, since the responses here indicate more than just a cooldown period of a few months is needed. [[User:Grandpallama|Grandpallama]] ([[User talk:Grandpallama|talk]]) 20:23, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
::::Both editors were calling the other editor racist in the thread. Back to back. I don't need evidence when they are doing it right there. That is why I suggested sanctions. Because I wanted it to stop. If my suggesting sanctions is a problem I won't ever do it again. I was only trying to help. --[[User:Tarage|Tarage]] ([[User talk:Tarage|talk]]) 20:26, 30 November 2018 (UTC)


== Where to report IPs attempting to reset passwords? ==
== Where to report IPs attempting to reset passwords? ==

Revision as of 20:26, 30 November 2018

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      Other areas tracking old discussions

      Administrative discussions

      Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive366#IBAN_appeal

      (Initiated 27 days ago on 18 October 2024) This shouldn't have been archived by a bot without closure. Heartfox (talk) 02:55, 3 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      @Heartfox: The page is archived by lowercase sigmabot III (talk · contribs), which gets its configuration frum the {{User:MiszaBot/config}} at the top of Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard. Crucially, this has the parameter |algo=old(7d) which means that any thread with no comments for seven days is eligible for archiving. At the time that the IBAN appeal thread was archived, the time was 00:00, 2 November 2024 - seven days back from that is 00:00, 26 October 2024, and the most recent comment to the thread concerned was made at 22:50, 25 October 2024 (UTC). This was more than seven days earlier: the archiving was carried out correctly. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:16, 3 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      There was no need for this because archived threads can be closed too. It is not necessary for them to remain on noticeboard. Capitals00 (talk) 03:28, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Thanks for letting me know. It is back in the archive, and hopefully someone can close it there. Heartfox (talk) 05:23, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Is_WP:RECALL_a_policy?

      (Initiated 17 days ago on 28 October 2024) Discussion has slowed for the last week. I think the consensus is pretty clear, but I'm involved. – Joe (talk) 17:24, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Place new administrative discussions above this line using a level 3 heading

      Requests for comment

      Wikipedia talk:Notability (species)#Proposal to adopt this guideline

      (Initiated 96 days ago on 9 August 2024)

      Wikipedia talk:Notability (species)#Proposal to adopt this guideline is WP:PROPOSAL for a new WP:SNG. The discussion currently stands at 503 comments from 78 editors or 1.8 tomats of text, so please accept the hot beverage of your choice ☕️ and settle in to read for a while. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:22, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Talk:International Churches of Christ#RfC: Referring to International Churches of Christ (ICOC) as a cult in the lead

      (Initiated 56 days ago on 19 September 2024) Legobot removed the RFC template on 20/10/2024. Discussoin has slowed. Can we please have a independent close. TarnishedPathtalk 23:11, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

       Doing... I've read the whole discussion, but this one is complex enough that I need to digest it and reread it later now that I have a clear framing of all the issues in my mind. Ideally, I'll close this sometime this week. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 20:23, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Thanks. This issue has been going on in various discussions on the talk page for a while so there is no rush. TarnishedPathtalk 03:26, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 456#RfC: using photos of record labels from Discogs?

      (Initiated 47 days ago on 28 September 2024) Discussion has died down and last vote was over a week ago. CNC (talk) 17:31, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Archived. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. put'er there 20:53, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Wikipedia:Requests for comment/In the news criteria amendments

      (Initiated 37 days ago on 7 October 2024) Tough one, died down, will expire tomorrow. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:58, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Wikipedia talk:Administrator recall#RfC: Should we add text prescribing just signatures, no discussion?

      (Initiated 11 days ago on 3 November 2024) The amount of no !votes relative to yes !votes coupled with the several comments arguing it's premature suggests this should probably be SNOW closed. Sincerely, Dilettante 16:53, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Talk:Turkey#RfC_on_massacres_and_genocides_in_the_lead

      (Initiated 37 days ago on 8 October 2024) Expired tag, no new comments in more than a week. KhndzorUtogh (talk) 21:48, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Place new discussions concerning RfCs above this line using a level 3 heading

      Deletion discussions

      XFD backlog
      V Aug Sep Oct Nov Total
      CfD 0 0 0 3 3
      TfD 0 0 0 5 5
      MfD 0 0 2 5 7
      FfD 0 0 1 1 2
      RfD 0 0 13 27 40
      AfD 0 0 0 0 0

      Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 November 3#Category:Online-only games

      (Initiated 26 days ago on 19 October 2024) HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 03:27, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

       Done —Compassionate727 (T·C) 17:22, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Place new discussions concerning XfDs above this line using a level 3 heading

      Other types of closing requests

      Talk:Feminist art movement#proposing merge of Feminist art into Feminist art movement

      (Initiated 302 days ago on 16 January 2024) It would be helpful for an uninvolved editor to close this discussion on a merge from Feminist art to Feminist art movement; there have been no new comments in more than 2 months. Klbrain (talk) 13:52, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

       Doing... may take a crack at this close, if no one objects. Allan Nonymous (talk) 17:47, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Talk:List of pholidotans#Merge to Manidae

      (Initiated 14 days ago on 31 October 2024) Discussion only occurred on the day of proposal, and since then no further argument has been made. I don't think this discussion is going anywhere, so a close may be in order here. Wolverine X-eye (talk to me) 07:03, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      I'm reluctant to close this so soon. Merge proposals often drag on for months, and sometimes will receive comments from new participants only everything couple weeks. I think it's too early to say whether a consensus will emerge. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 14:52, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      @Compassionate727: OK, so what are you suggesting? Will the discussion remain open if no further comments are received in, say, two weeks? I also doubt that merge discussions take months to conclude. I think that such discussions should take no more than 20 days, unless it's of course, a very contentious topic, which is not the case here. Taken that you've shown interest in this request, you should be able to tell that no form of consensus has taken place, so I think you can let it sit for a while to see if additional comments come in before inevitably closing it. I mean, there is no use in continuing a discussion that hasn't progressed in weeks. Wolverine X-eye (talk to me) 15:52, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      @Wolverine X-eye, I don't think thats what they are saying. Like RfC's, any proposals should be opened for more than 7 days. This one has only been open for 4 days. This doesn't give enough time to get enough WP:CONSENSUS on the merge, even if everyone agreed to it. Cowboygilbert - (talk) ♥ 21:24, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      @Cowboygilbert: So what should I do now? Wait until the discussion is a week old? Wolverine X-eye (talk to me) 11:14, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      @Wolverine X-eye:, Yes. Cowboygilbert - (talk) ♥ 17:04, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      @Cowboygilbert: It's now 7 days... Wolverine X-eye (talk to me) 14:09, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      @Compassionate727: You still interested in closing this? Wolverine X-eye (talk to me) 04:04, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      This isn't a priority, given all the much older discussions here. I'll get to this eventually, or maybe someone else before me. In the meantime, please be patient. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 13:34, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Place new discussions concerning other types of closing requests above this line using a level 3 heading

      Pages recently put under extended-confirmed protection

      Report
      Pages recently put under extended confirmed protection (45 out of 8842 total) (Purge)
      Page Protected Expiry Type Summary Admin
      Matal (2018 film) 2024-11-14 20:25 indefinite create Restore salt Pppery
      Vettaiyan 2024-11-14 18:55 2025-08-19 20:25 edit,move Persistent disruptive editing: request at WP:RFPP Ymblanter
      Template:No significant coverage (sports) 2024-11-14 18:00 indefinite edit,move High-risk template or module: 2502 transclusions (more info) MusikBot II
      FRVR 2024-11-14 15:27 2024-12-14 15:27 edit,move Persistent sock puppetry Queen of Hearts
      Operation Cast Thy Bread 2024-11-14 14:35 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: WP:CT/A-I -- requested at WP:RFPP Favonian
      Y.Chroma 2024-11-14 12:52 indefinite create Repeatedly recreated Black Kite
      Yung Koebra 2024-11-14 11:11 indefinite create Repeatedly recreated DoubleGrazing
      Madurai–Mysore Wars 2024-11-14 08:54 2024-11-21 08:54 move Disruptive page moving Liz
      Module:Fiction redirect category handler/Franchise 2024-11-14 04:39 indefinite edit High-risk template or module Pppery
      Desert Doc 2024-11-14 02:41 indefinite create Sock target Pppery
      Indonesian Dutch 2024-11-13 22:05 2025-05-13 22:05 create Sock target Pppery
      User talk:217.178.141.183 2024-11-13 21:31 2024-12-13 21:31 create Repeatedly recreated 331dot
      User talk:211.53.87.201 2024-11-13 21:26 2024-11-17 21:26 create Repeatedly recreated Ivanvector
      User talk:221.150.224.254 2024-11-13 21:10 2024-12-13 21:10 create Repeatedly recreated Ivanvector
      User talk:213.87.102.204 2024-11-13 12:49 2024-12-13 12:49 create Repeatedly recreated 331dot
      User talk:112.169.222.27 2024-11-13 12:48 2024-12-13 12:48 create Repeatedly recreated 331dot
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      User talk:220.93.19.43 2024-11-13 12:40 2025-11-13 12:40 create Repeatedly recreated 331dot
      User talk:77.108.235.237 2024-11-13 12:36 2024-12-13 12:36 create Repeatedly recreated 331dot
      User talk:118.86.237.182 2024-11-13 12:34 2024-12-13 12:34 create Repeatedly recreated 331dot
      User talk:118.172.199.201 2024-11-13 11:57 2024-12-13 11:57 create Repeatedly recreated 331dot
      User talk:138.94.122.200 2024-11-13 11:57 2024-12-13 11:57 create 331dot
      User:Marine 69-71/Autographs 2024-11-13 06:21 indefinite edit,move Drop protection to ECP since full was never warranted (especially now that Marine 69-71 is no longer an admin) Pppery
      Portal:Current events/2024 November 10 2024-11-13 05:32 2024-12-13 05:32 edit,move Arbitration enforcement Cryptic
      Sevens football 2024-11-13 01:48 2025-11-13 01:48 move Move warring. Upgrading protection level after determining that AC sock had moved the article under sp-move protection. Robertsky
      User talk:117.53.223.10 2024-11-13 01:35 2025-02-13 01:35 create Repeatedly recreated Ivanvector
      Liam Parsons 2024-11-13 01:20 indefinite move Persistent sockpuppetry Ohnoitsjamie
      User talk:84.107.235.151 2024-11-12 22:09 2024-11-22 22:09 create Repeatedly recreated Ivanvector
      User talk:84.42.74.76 2024-11-12 21:58 2024-11-19 21:58 create Repeatedly recreated Ivanvector
      Territorial Center of Recruitment and Social Support 2024-11-12 20:49 indefinite edit,move Community sanctions enforcement: per RFPP and WP:RUSUKR Daniel Case
      Jeff Younger–Anne Georgulas custody battle 2024-11-12 20:19 indefinite edit,move Violations of the biographies of living persons policy: per RFPP and WP:GENSEX Daniel Case
      User talk:42.119.93.195 2024-11-12 10:32 2024-12-12 10:32 create Repeatedly recreated 331dot
      User talk:182.229.34.80 2024-11-12 09:47 2024-12-12 09:47 create Repeatedly recreated 331dot
      User talk:219.240.5.188 2024-11-12 09:32 2024-12-12 09:32 create Repeatedly recreated 331dot
      Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhu 2024-11-12 08:33 indefinite edit,move Restoring protection by Doug Weller: Community sanctions enforcement Protection Helper Bot
      Trick Weekes 2024-11-11 19:52 indefinite edit,move Violations of the biographies of living persons policy: per RFPP; will also log as CTOPS action Daniel Case
      Battle of Wadi Saluki 2024-11-11 11:03 indefinite edit,move Arbitration enforcement; requested at WP:RfPP Isabelle Belato
      User talk:91.210.238.104 2024-11-11 09:40 2024-12-11 09:40 create Repeatedly recreated 331dot
      Thori Si Wafa 2024-11-11 07:13 indefinite edit,move Restore salt Pppery
      Battle of Sumy 2024-11-11 06:58 indefinite edit,move Community sanctions enforcement: per RFPP and WP:RUSUKR Daniel Case
      Draft:Khashayar Farzam 2024-11-11 06:54 indefinite create Repeatedly recreated Daniel Case
      Battle of Makariv 2024-11-11 06:48 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: per RFPP and WP:RUSUKR Daniel Case
      Chopra (surname) 2024-11-11 06:17 indefinite edit,move Community sanctions enforcement: per RFPP and WP:GS/CASTE Daniel Case
      2024 drone attack on Benjamin Netanyahu's residence 2024-11-11 00:58 indefinite edit,move Dr vulpes

      Rogue civility sanctions in edit notices; non-admins adding AC/DS sanction templates to talk pages; permission needed to clean up this mess

      In this AN discussion last week we had unanimous consensus to vacate the "civility" sanction on all pages affected by {{American politics AE}}. I made the change to the template and relevant edit notices. I later came across {{Post-1932_American_politics_discretionary_sanctions_page_restrictions}} which is basically a sister template to "American politics AE" but without the civility sanction. Because the sanctions are now identical with only minor differences in the templates themselves, I've started replacing the "Post-1932..." templates with the "American poligics AE" template which has better documentation and a sub-template to use in edit notices. However when I started looking at the corresponding edit notices for the pages affected by the "Post-1932..." template I noticed that some of them made reference to the "civility" sanction. So there was a discrepancy between the talk page notice and the edit notice. I initially assumed the discrepancy was a result of widespread copy-pasting of the edit notice code without paying close attention to the sanctions on the page they were copied from, but the few that I spot checked showed that it was User:Coffee who added the civility restriction (presumably forgetting to update the corresponding template on the talk page). Would there be any objections to me removing these rogue civility sanctions from the edit notices as I find them? ~Awilley (talk) 20:33, 17 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Another problem I'm encountering is that there are a lot of talk pages with DS templates that don't have the required corresponding edit notices. Initially I thought this was because of sloppy admins forgetting to create the edit notices, but it has come to my attention that non-admins have been adding the templates to talkpages. Here are 5 examples of just one user creating talk pages with the DS templates, having copied them from other American Politics talk pages, and apparently thinking they were Wikiproject banners: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]. I haven't counted, but I would guess that there are about 50 pages that have the template on the talk page but no edit notice. The most straightforward way of correcting the problem would be to simply remove the sanctions templates from pages that don't have an edit notice, but doing that I risk reversing DS placed by an actual admin. That leaves us with the slow method of digging through the talkpage history with the wikiblame tool to track down who placed the notice, and cross-referencing with the last couple of years of AE logs (I don't trust that admins who forgot to create an edit notice always remembered to update the log). That's more work than I'm feeling like doing at the moment. May I just remove the talkpage templates from all the pages that don't have edit notices, and then make a note of those pages in the AE log? ~Awilley (talk) 00:20, 18 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • From my reading of the discussion, it seemed like everyone was pretty much on the same page—deprecating the 'civility restrictions' en masse was mostly viewed as an uncontentious procedural measure, due to the fact that the concept of civility restrictions is redundant, unused, unenforceable, and pointless; effectively, not even a real restriction. I don't think it would be contentious to remove the outstanding civility restrictions as you come across them. The articles with no edit notices are a bit more tricky. The edit notice requirement is fairly new, having only been added this year, so it's likely that you're seeing some older pages that have never been updated, some admin laziness, and some non-admin additions. All the older articles in the logs should probably be reviewed to make sure they have all been updated with the required editnotice, and anything not logged should have any DS notices removed, of course. However, the practical matter of actually making this happen would be so monumental that it's an unrealistic task. So, I would say that yes, your technique is likely the best we're going to get, but rather than removing them outright, leave them be but still make the list and post it in the log, and then we can check them against the log via Ctrl+F. Anything not in the log can be removed, anything in the log can be updated with an edit notice, but it would probably most efficient and easy doing it that way.  Swarm  talk  07:06, 18 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • I think an edit filter should be created to prevent non-admins from adding (or removing) {{American politics AE}} and similar templates, to prevent mistaken additions like that. Galobtter (pingó mió) 11:27, 18 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • I think this really needs to be stated more clearly, but from what I've been able to figure out, I think that the edit notices are for the pages that have DS restrictions imposed. Only admins can impose DS restrictions, and only admins are able to create edit notices. I haven't been able to find anything that states that only admins can place notices stating that an article is in an area subject to DS or that there are edit notices to go with those. Natureium (talk) 22:33, 18 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • OK, I was unaware that only admins could create edit notices (my only experience with them is the one on my user talk page), so if an edit notice is required, and only admins can create them, then only admins can place the DS notice on an article talk page. Still, in terms of what the policy actually says it looks like a gray area which should be tightened up with some explicit language. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:58, 18 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • On putting sanction templates on talk pages (what was happening here), I don't see that as very gray. It's like a non-admin putting "you have been blocked" templates on the page of a user who is not blocked. The case of non-admins putting informational templates about general topic areas being under general discretionary sanctions, I don't think that's against policy, but I don't know for sure. ~Awilley (talk) 02:39, 19 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • I'm pretty certain that anyone can put an informational template on an editor's user talk page, informing then that an article is under Discretionary Sanctions. The point of such an action is simply to notify the editor, which does not presume any wrongdoing on the editor's part (I believe the template even says that). Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:41, 19 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • No, I guess not. DS are a very necessary evil, but they're still basically a bureaucratic tool, which means that the ins and outs of them can be complex. The personal lesson I'm drawing from this is simply to stay away from posting informational DS notices on article talk pages even when it's indisputable that the article falls withing the penumbra of an existing DS, and go get someone of a higher pay grade to deal with it. In a way, that should be a relief for non-admins such as myself, since we don't have to shoulder the responsibility of taking that action. My experience is that the vast majority of active admins are reasonable folks who are likely to respond positively to such a request. Beyond My Ken (talk) 19:03, 19 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • (Just to be clear, DS are very necessary, not very evil.) Beyond My Ken (talk) 19:39, 19 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Beyond My Ken, Basically, the edit-notices are located at places whose roots are forbidden by the Title-Blacklist and anybody who does not have the tb-override flag, can't create such pages. Thus, post the recent grant of abilities to Page-Movers to over-ride Title-Blacklist (for completely different issues), currently any Template Editor or Page-Mover or Administrator can install edit-notices at any page.∯WBGconverse 13:52, 24 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      OK, here's a list of edit notices that don't currently exist for articles that have sanctions templates on the talk page.

      1. Template:Editnotices/Page/Andrew Napolitano
      2. Template:Editnotices/Page/Aziz v. Trump
      3. Template:Editnotices/Page/Blumenthal v. Trump
      4. Template:Editnotices/Page/Bob Menendez
      5. Template:Editnotices/Page/CNN v. Trump
      6. Template:Editnotices/Page/CREW v. Trump
      7. Template:Editnotices/Page/Cannabis policy of the Donald Trump administration
      8. Template:Editnotices/Page/Clinton Foundation–State Department controversy
      9. Template:Editnotices/Page/D.C. and Maryland v. Trump
      10. Template:Editnotices/Page/DREAM Act
      11. Template:Editnotices/Page/David Bowdich
      12. Template:Editnotices/Page/Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
      13. Template:Editnotices/Page/Dismissal of Sally Yates
      14. Template:Editnotices/Page/Doe v. Trump
      15. Template:Editnotices/Page/Donald Trump Jr.
      16. Template:Editnotices/Page/Donna Brazile
      17. Template:Editnotices/Page/Executive Order 13767
      18. Template:Editnotices/Page/Frank Gaffney
      19. Template:Editnotices/Page/Gary Johnson
      20. Template:Editnotices/Page/Gays for Trump
      21. Template:Editnotices/Page/Jill Stein
      22. Template:Editnotices/Page/Knight First Amendment Institute v. Trump
      23. Template:Editnotices/Page/LGBT protests against Donald Trump
      24. Template:Editnotices/Page/Legal challenges to the Trump travel ban
      25. Template:Editnotices/Page/List of Donald Trump presidential campaign endorsements, 2016
      26. Template:Editnotices/Page/List of Hillary Clinton presidential campaign endorsements, 2016
      27. Template:Editnotices/Page/List of Hillary Clinton presidential campaign non-political endorsements, 2016
      28. Template:Editnotices/Page/List of Hillary Clinton presidential campaign political endorsements, 2016
      29. Template:Editnotices/Page/List of Trump administration dismissals and resignations
      30. Template:Editnotices/Page/List of lawsuits involving Donald Trump
      31. Template:Editnotices/Page/List of people granted executive clemency by Donald Trump
      32. Template:Editnotices/Page/List of proclamations by Donald Trump
      33. Template:Editnotices/Page/Marijuana policy of the Donald Trump administration
      34. Template:Editnotices/Page/Open space accessibility in California
      35. Template:Editnotices/Page/Operation Faithful Patriot
      36. Template:Editnotices/Page/President Trump's immigration bans
      37. Template:Editnotices/Page/Reactions to Executive Order 13769
      38. Template:Editnotices/Page/Reactions to the Special Counsel investigation (2017–present)
      39. Template:Editnotices/Page/Republican Party presidential primaries, 2020
      40. Template:Editnotices/Page/Stone v. Trump
      41. Template:Editnotices/Page/Tim Canova
      42. Template:Editnotices/Page/Tootkaboni v. Trump
      43. Template:Editnotices/Page/Trump Tower meeting
      44. Template:Editnotices/Page/United States Ambassadors appointed by Donald Trump
      45. Template:Editnotices/Page/United States withdrawal from the Paris Agreement
      46. Template:Editnotices/Page/Vladimir Putin
      47. Template:Editnotices/Page/Voter suppression in the United States

      (pats self on back for getting lucky on ballpark estimation of 50) ~Awilley (talk) 15:00, 18 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      OK, I've been using the AWB list compare tool to compare the above list of articles to articles that are LINKED from the arbitration enforcement logs back to 2015. Of the 47 pages above, the articles of 44 of them are not linked in the log, and the 3 that are linked (Frank Gaffney, Jill Stein, Vladimir Putin) are links from individual editors being topic banned from the individual articles. Note that I'm only looking at links, not text, so if an admin made a log entry that said "Jill Stein placed under 1RR and Consensus Required" without linking Jill Stein I wouldn't see that. ~Awilley (talk) 15:41, 18 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      I've removed the AE templates from the talkpages associated with the nonexistent edit notices above. ~Awilley (talk) 19:17, 19 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Also here's a list of edit notice templates that were created but that didn't have entries that I could find in the AE log. Since these were all created by administrators I will create an entry in the log for the items in this list.

      1. Template:Editnotices/Page//r/The Donald Lord Roem (forgot to log)
      2. Template:Editnotices/Page/2016 Democratic National Committee email leak Coffee (forgot to log)
      3. Template:Editnotices/Page/2016 Democratic National Convention Zzyzx11 (forgot to log)
      4. Template:Editnotices/Page/Devin Nunes Coffee (forgot to log)
      5. Template:Editnotices/Page/Efforts to impeach Donald Trump El C (forgot to log)
      6. Template:Editnotices/Page/Environmental policy of the Donald Trump administration Coffee (forgot to log)
      7. Template:Editnotices/Page/Erik Prince Coffee (forgot to log)
      8. Template:Editnotices/Page/Executive Order 13768 Doug Weller (forgot to log)
      9. Template:Editnotices/Page/Jared KushnerAd Orientum (forgot to log)
      10. Template:Editnotices/Page/List of executive actions by Donald Trump Ad Orientum (forgot to log)
      11. Template:Editnotices/Page/Mike Pence Zzyzx11 (forgot to log)
      12. Template:Editnotices/Page/Results of the Democratic Party presidential primaries, 2016 Coffee (forgot to log)
      13. Template:Editnotices/Page/Results of the Republican Party presidential primaries, 2016 Zzyzx11 (forgot to log)
      14. Template:Editnotices/Page/Roger Stone Coffee (forgot to log)
      15. Template:Editnotices/Page/Stop Trump movement El C (forgot to log)

      ~Awilley (talk) 16:52, 18 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Some of these problems would go away if the AC/DS template had a signature field, so we would know from viewing the article talk page who placed the notice and the date when they did so. EdJohnston (talk) 22:32, 18 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      That's a good idea. I'm not sure how to force a signature on a template that is transcluded (as opposed to substituted) but I'll look into it. ~Awilley (talk) 19:17, 19 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      @Awilley and EdJohnston:, try substituting Template:ZHYXCBG onto any talk-page and check the result. (Input {{subst:ZHYXCBG}} ) It notes down the signature of the user, (who installs the template), within a comment (which is prepended/appended to the template-code) but the main notice is directly transcluded onto the t/p, as we do now:-)
      See this edit of mine, for an example.∯WBGconverse 12:58, 24 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Appeal my 1RR restriction

      About 2+1⁄2 years ago, following my successful appeal here against a community ban, I had three restrictions applied as conditions of the lifting of that ban: a topic ban from units of measurement, 1RR on the rest of Wikipedia and being limited to one account and prohibited from editing whilst logged-off. About 17 months ago I successfully appealed the general 1RR restriction and about 14 months ago successfully appealed to get my topic ban on measurement converted to a 1RR restriction.

      Today I am appealing to get that 14-month-old 1RR restriction lifted please. I have, to the best of my knowledge, never contravened that restriction - having made around 3000 edits in that time - generally turning to discussion rather than continually reverting. And to be honest, I plan to continue keeping reverts to the minimum and using the discussion route to improve articles - I have found discussion to be more productive, resulting in a more stable article than is achieved with continuous flip-flopping of content.

      The main reason for my appeal is to continue along the path back to full good standing within the community. Please give this appeal your full and careful consideration. Thanks. -- DeFacto (talk). 20:05, 20 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      @DeFacto: While in theory I would usually support such a request, please would you explain this sequence of edits from just a month ago and explain how they do not breach 1RR: [8], [9], [10]. Thanks. Fish+Karate 13:42, 22 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Also these two: [11], [12] Fish+Karate 13:44, 22 November 2018 (UTC) My error. Fish+Karate 14:35, 22 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Hi Fish and karate, my 1RR only applies to units of measurement related stuff, I am completely unrestricted (other than by the general 3RR, etc.) on the rest of Wikipedia. I hope that answers your concerns. -- DeFacto (talk). 14:21, 22 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Hi, it does, I realised this and just edit-conflicted with you trying to correct myself, apologies, I do see these sets of reversions aren't related to units of measurement. In that case I have no objection to lifting the restriction, with the usual caveat about backsliding into old habits will be viewed dimly. Fish+Karate 14:34, 22 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Editors copying and pasting barnstars intended for others onto their userpages

      Just curious as to whether there's any policy or guideline which addresses editors copying and pasting barnstars originally posted on other editors userpages onto their own userpages. This seems to be what DeanBWFofficial has done. While I understand that awarding yourself a barnstar might not be seen as inappropriate but not a policy/guideline violation, copying and pasting those posted by others on another editor's userpage (including signatures of other editors) onto your userpage seems like it might possibly be a problem per WP:CWW and WP:UP#NOT. DeanBWFofficial appears to be a new editor and I'm not trying to get them blocked, but maybe someone can advise them as to whether this kind of thing is allowed. -- Marchjuly (talk) 09:33, 22 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      I do not think we have any policy on this, and I do not think we might undertake any action. This is clearly a signal that the user is not yet fully ready to edit Wikipedia, and possibly that they confuse it with a social media site, and this means their contribution might need some inspection, but that's it.--Ymblanter (talk) 12:57, 22 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      FWIW, these appear to have been borrowed from The Banner's User talk:The Banner page; and now already removed/reverted by User:Abelmoschus Esculentus in Special:Diff/870093581. —Sladen (talk) 13:56, 22 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      These users should be too embarrassed to do this, but I don't think heavyhanded action is called for. But it might be construed a misuse of userspace. A gentle word would probably be best. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 14:02, 22 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Did I merit the "Barnstar of Telling the Obvious" for remarking that using the name "DeanBWFofficial" together with asserting I am also work for International Badminton World Federation as a editor team is not so obvious ? Pldx1 (talk) 14:19, 22 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Hello, I reverted some of his disruptive talk page edits which pasted the whole mainspace page verbatim, but I was reverted by Denisarona (talk · contribs) who seems to view my removals as vandalism. I did, however, repair the attribution that was lacking but necessary for the Wikipedia CC-BY-SA 3.0 licensing. I do not see the need to have the mainspace pages' content replicated on the talk page. 2600:8800:1880:188:5604:A6FF:FE38:4B26 (talk) 15:27, 22 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      This user's interest in Asian beauty pageants and page-moving them smells much like Wurtzbach (talk · contribs). 2600:8800:1880:188:5604:A6FF:FE38:4B26 (talk) 15:38, 22 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Blocked user Deanarthurl (talk · contribs) seems quite interested in someone named "David Lim" - coincidence? 2600:8800:1880:188:5604:A6FF:FE38:4B26 (talk) 16:06, 22 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Hmmm, I think I take this as flattery...
      But in the past there were several sockfarms editing articles about pageants. I think this is a reincarnation of one of the socks. (But I do not dig any deeper) The Banner talk 15:29, 22 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      I didn't consider that this might be a case of WP:SOCK, only that it seems inappropriate for this editor to copy and paste barnstars you have received from others onto their talkpage. A "gentle word" about this seems fine as some others have suggested. If, however, there are serious concerns of socking, then maybe a SPI would help clarify whether this is the case. -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:12, 23 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      I would agree pasting barnstars including the signature of another editor is inappropriate. It may lead others to believe that the person gave a barnstar to someone they didn't. Anyway I noticed Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Help:Reverting which reminded me of this thread. DeanBWFofficial and User:DPIDAMU have been blocked as socks. Nil Einne (talk) 08:59, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Religion in... statistics vandalism

      Just raising this here in case anyone recognises it as a returning vandal, and to ask for others to help keep an eye on things. On the 20th November I noticed 83.51.5.88 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) falsifying cited stats in "Religion in..." articles. Today I noticed an identical edit to one of the articles by 46.6.190.64 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log). IPs are both Spanish. DuncanHill (talk) 15:53, 22 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      This is continuing today, latest IP is 83.51.5.206 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) DuncanHill (talk) 18:22, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Also 85.192.74.246 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log). DuncanHill (talk) 18:26, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Blocked 83.51.5.206 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) for 31 hours. 85.192.74.246 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) hasn't edited for several hours, I do not see a block serving any purpose at this point. Vanamonde (talk) 18:36, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      A new editor, Scgonzalez (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has now started making similar edits. I have given them an initial warning, and shall advise them of this thread. DuncanHill (talk) 09:23, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      They are up to a Level 4 Warning now, and have made no attempt to respond to warnings. DuncanHill (talk) 17:17, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      History-merging :: help needed again

      Proposing a temporary measure to assist in protecting the Main Page

      As many Wikipedians have noticed, several accounts have recently been compromised. Three of these compromised accounts have been administrator accounts, and all three compromised admin accounts focused on vandalizing the Main Page, the public face of the project. The most recent compromised administrator account is that of a highly active administrator. I am part of the team investigating this series of events, along with stewards, other checkusers, and WMF Security and Trust & Safety staff. There are several actions taking place in the background, mainly for security and/or privacy requirements, that will not be discussed in this thread.

      One proposed temporary measure to mitigate the damage being caused by this vandal is to restrict editing of the Main Page to administrators who also hold Interface Administrator permissions. There is rarely a need to edit the Main Page itself — almost all of the work is done in the background using templates — so the impact of this temporary measure is minimal.

      As noted, this is intended to be a temporary measure that will give both the community and the investigating team some "breathing space" to focus on the vandal rather than the impact of the vandalism. It was suggested that we bring this change to the community for discussion prior to implementing it. Does anyone have any feedback on this proposal? Thanks for your participation. Risker (talk) 21:30, 24 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Is it technically possible? The Main Page itself may not need many edits but the templates transcluded on it which are cascade protected are a different matter. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 21:32, 24 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Yes. Adding a protection level is relatively trivial to do in the MediaWiki back-end. Just needs consensus. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 21:35, 24 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Yes. This can be done by private filter from what I’ve been told. TonyBallioni (talk) 21:36, 24 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Sorry, I wasn't clear: Is this possible without all the templates transcluded on it also becoming it-protected? Because that would be hefty collateral damage. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 21:51, 24 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      @Jo-Jo Eumerus: what @TonyBallioni: said been added. — xaosflux Talk 00:00, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Survey

      • Support. Regardless of what the best approach should be, there are times when one has to use whatever tool is at hand, and build better tools later. Perhaps we should start looking at a scheme of progressive protection where "anybody" can edit at the bottom of the pyramid, but increasing experience and trust are required to move up to vital or more developed pages.
      As a side note, I have long thought that "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" – which isn't even true – should be changed to "the collaborative free encyclopedia", emphasising working together. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:38, 24 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      I could be wrong, but I don't believe that the WMF uses that tag line anymore. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:03, 24 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Wrong! Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:38, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Support (x10,000). Porn on the main page by compromised accounts is a severe problem. We have active interface admins and as others have mentioned, the main page itself doesn't need editing frequently, so I think this would clearly do more good than it would harm. But is there a way to protect a page with cascading protection at a certain level, but then have a higher local protection level? If it isn't possible, then I definitely would not support intadmin-protecting all pages transcluded onto the main page.--SkyGazer 512 Oh no, what did I do this time? 22:41, 24 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        We've done that now, but it is more of a speed-bump than a road-block. — xaosflux Talk 23:13, 24 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Support I've been an admin for 11 years, and never needed to edit it (well, apart from this evening, and someone even beat me to that by fractions of a second, so thanks for that). Black Kite (talk) 23:50, 24 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Support temporarily as proposed for the Main Page. -- KTC (talk) 00:31, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Support as a temporary measure (but how would this work? A new form of protection, since this isn't in the MediaWiki namespace?) SemiHypercube ✎ 00:41, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        Also, I don't think using an edit filter will be completely effective, not saying the weakness per you-know-what, but one could figure out what it is. SemiHypercube ✎ 17:08, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Support The attacker is doing us a favor by highlighting the weaknesses. They will move on to the next weak link but protecting the main page is obviously required. Re "how would this work?": developers can do anything and they will quickly fix the problem. Johnuniq (talk) 01:35, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Support, since I just got back from dealing with this guy. GABgab 01:52, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Support - I wouldn't dare to touch it, anyway. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 01:55, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Support I wouldn't mind if this is a permanent change; the Main Page itself doesn't need editing very often. funplussmart (talk) 05:00, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Support  temporary measure. Orientls (talk) 05:00, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        Support, Sensible measure. –Ammarpad (talk) 05:53, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Oppose Upon further reflection, I understand this will not solve the problem without cascading and with cascading, it creates bigger problem. –Ammarpad (talk) 12:32, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Support as if I'm reading this right, only the actual Main Page will receive this additional protection, not T:DYK etc. I'd be willing to support this as a permanent change, too. Anarchyte (talk | work) 06:36, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Weak support I think Andrew's comment is being wrongly ignored as the discussion above seems to be the creation of a new level of page protection which I do not think should exist or be used on this project except for this specific instance. I do not think having or applying IAdmin protection to anything except javascript pages is something that I would ever want, and the only reason I would be in favor of this is because of the recent security concerns. I do not think we should ever have a protection level that restricts editing to 14 people. For comparison, twice as many people are in the staff group (a little over 30), allowing them to edit superprotected pages, than are IAdmins on enwiki. The admonition against WP:CREEP should be taken more seriously and the temporary nature of this use emphasized. Wugapodes [thɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 07:38, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        • My weak support has now become Oppose given a lot of the subsequent discussion. Jimbo's account has been compromised before, IAdmins can be compromised, and restricting editing to these few people, while more likely to prevent abuse, will make resolving any actual abuse more difficult. I'd rather greater risk but quicker response than less risk and slower response. I also think this whole thing has turned into a catch-22. I'm opposed to cascading protection for the Main Page, since it would turn IAdmin into something it was never supposed to be, but not cascade protecting the main page would result in the vandals moving on to the templates themselves. I really think this is just generally a bad idea the more I think about it. Wugapodes [thɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 01:05, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Comment I have been busy so I'm not up to play. I'm not opposed to the idea although I'm not sure this will help a great deal from what's been said. I appreciate per BEAN etc that maybe details can't be discussed for this very reason so maybe there can be no clarification. But I don't think what I'm saying here is likely to be reveal anything not already obvious to prying eyes. It sounds like the plan is to still allow admins to make changes to the templates without requiring an interface admin to approve them. In that case, it seems like the vandal will just move on to vandalising the templates. I mean they're probably already working out what to do. While I appreciate they have been directly editing the main page so far, they haven't had a reason not to. And while trying passwords from previous leaks (which I assume is probably what's happening) is not really that technically demanding if you only have a few to try, it seems unlikely to me anyone capable of this won't figure it out fairly fast. Again maybe no comment can be offered, but is it believed the templates can somehow be protected against this vandalism in ways the actually main page can't? Nil Einne (talk) 10:38, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Weak support only until a stronger solution is determined. The attacker (or an attacker, maybe not this one) has already demonstrated they can compromise 2FA-enabled accounts. Restricting access to intadmins reduces our security exposure, but will just focus the attacks on a different class of user. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 21:19, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        I don't know which accounts specifically. 2FA is a good solution but it's not perfect. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 21:34, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        Hi, none of the accounts compromised in this attack had 2FA. We currently believe all compromises in this attack were due to people using the same password on other websites which presumably got hacked. 2FA is of course not a magic bullet - it won't fix every security problem (e.g. If someone steals your computer well logged in, 2FA is not going to stop that. If you add malicious Javascript to your special:mypage/common.js, 2FA can't stop that) but 2FA would have stopped this attack if the admins in question had enabled it. I strongly encourage all admins to enable 2FA. BWolff (WMF) (talk) 22:49, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • No, come on. Really? I'd much rather have compromised admin accounts announcing themselves to us by editing the main page than do other things. As it is, I don't think this is worth anywhere near the community time or consternation we have all spent on this. Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 06:07, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        • ^^^This. Compromised admin accounts used to be immediately detectable to every other logged-in admin on the site back when they announced themselves by making "Main Page" go red on every page. Now that it isn't deleteable because of the same sort of technical measure being proposed here, they have to "settle" for goatseing it. Some improvement. The last thing we want to do is make them settle for one of the couple dozen ways you can cause real and/or irreversible harm with a sysop bit. —Cryptic 11:11, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Oppose int-admin cascading protection, but I do support a MediaWiki imposed int-admin protection to the Main Page itself, and perhaps a few others, as is the status-quo with filter 943. The filter was an emergency measure. Using interface admin isn't really the right way to go. I agree with others below that there shouldn't be non-technical people in the technical user group. We either need a new user group, or only int-admin protect the main page itself, and not the pages transcluded on it. Better yet, phab:T210192#4771932, phab:T150826 and phab:T150576. Sorry if I misled anyone — MusikAnimal talk 06:45, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Support until other security measures can be implemented or the vandalism subsides. GorillaWarfare (talk) 06:37, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Oppose in contrast to the discussion about removing the unblockself permission this would create a real problem if one of the accounts with interface-editor were to be compromised, it would leave us with little means to reverse their actions. For this to work it would also need to be cascading protection as otherwise something could just be added to a page transcluded to the main page, that severely restricts the number of people who can put anything on the main page. Fix that by adding more people to the usergroup and we're back where we started. We should be looking at a technical solution to solve the problem, maybe some sort of double confirmation by two admins to put things on the main page (similar to pending changes in a way, but without auto accept). Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 06:49, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        @Callanecc:. It seems to me you're opposing based on wrong assumption that: the protection must propagate (cascade) to all transcluded pages, DYK, ITN etc... thereby limiting placing items to only less than 10? techadmins. But from what I understand that's not what will happen. Only the "Mainpage" will be protected with this above-admin level, this will be done via MediaWiki backend and question of "how" is beyond the scope of this discussion. What's is just needed is the consensus. –Ammarpad (talk) 07:23, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        Thanks for asking Ammarpad, my point was that the only way for protection like this to be effective would be to protect transclusions at the same level. I'm opposed to protecting the transclusions so also to protecting the main page in this way. However, maybe something like pending changes for admins to edit the main page (or transcluded pages) where it required two admins to make a change (one to initiate and one to approve) would be a good solution. In the meantime the status quo should prevail so that we can more easily deal with any further compromised accounts. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 09:14, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        The notion of there being less ways to revert vandalism is one of the only reasons I'm partially reconsidering my support vote. However, I do think that if we have a mandatory 2FA enabled intadmin account hacked, we have more on our hands than just the main page being changed, and the person behind these attacks know this. Unless they just want to make a statement for publicity, they can do a lot worse (which is why intadmin exists in the first place). Anarchyte (talk | work) 10:58, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        Anarchyte, There are a number of ways a 2FA-secured account can become compromised - and while I won't list them all here, physical theft of device (most likely a phone or chromebook/laptop) would be the first one that would come to mind for me. SQLQuery me! 01:12, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        @SQL: I'm aware. I'm saying that given WMF Office has now forced all intadmins to enable 2FA, if they get hacked we have something bigger on our hands. An intadmin can do real damage and I'm sure that's what a hacker would do with one, unless they only want to change the main page for publicity. An admin account can do a lot but we can no longer truly break the site. Anarchyte (talk | work) 07:03, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • I'm not "opposing" but I would just like to ensure this is thought through fully before being implemented.
      1. If the protection cascades then we have an issue:
      a) The existing small number interface admins will be responsible for all DYK, OTD, POTD, FA, FL updates. this is clearly not going to work, so:
      b) We will have to make a bunch of new interface admins. Not a good idea, the whole idea of the role is to minimize the number of people with that kind of access.
      2. If the protection does not cascade then it's not actually going to prevent a compromised admin account from vandalizing the main page, without specifying details, and in fact might make it harder slower to track down and resolve the problem.
      I think rather than misuse the interface admin permission, which sounds like a neat idea in principle but a bad one when considering the detail, something else would need to be done. I am not in favour of uncoupling admin permissions, because we have a small pool of administrators anyway and adding further obstacles to admins who (for example) have never edited the main page but want to help when they see a backlog or an issue arise will silo things up even more and make things less flexible. I don't have the right solution, but I have concerns about the proposed one for the reasons above. Fish+Karate 09:56, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Support Non-essential admin area and page that generally requires minimal change. Restrict to those who actually need it. talk to !dave 14:48, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • I have the same problems that Fish and karate has. Everything on the Main Page – DYK, ITN, all of it – is cascaded. We're about to make a very small group of people responsible for carrying out all the updates to the Main Page, If those people are prepared to do that, including updating DYK however often it has to be updated, I'm fine with it. If not, we either have to make more intadmins, which kind of defeats the purpose of having intadmins in the first place, or find another solution. Katietalk 16:01, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Support - Per all supports and K6ka - FlightTime (open channel) 17:55, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Strong Oppose - For starters, this is not what the intadmin permission was intended for. And when one of those accounts becomes compromised (intadmin isn't a magic flag that makes your account unhackable), there will be even fewer around that can undo the damage. Additionally, Fish and karate makes a fantastic point about narrowing who can work on the main page. SQLQuery me! 18:08, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Oppose if we keep the cascading protection then you will need to be an interface admin to work on WP:DYK, WP:ITN/C, WP:ERRORS, etc. This massively restricts the pool of people who can work on those processes. The people who are interface admins were chosen for their technical skill at HTML/CSS/etc and don't necessarily have any interest in or ability to deal with those processes. We could appoint a load more interface admins to do this work, but that would rather defeat the point of the proposal. On the other hand if we turn cascading protection off then we make the whole of the main page much less secure, and even if we manage to manually protect everything transcluded on the main page I'm sure the attacker is capable of going after one of those pages instead. People I talk to about Wikipedia in real life usually have little or no idea that the main page even exists, I don't think it's a huge problem as advertised. Hut 8.5 18:34, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Support if temporary. Should be reverted to be only admin when the compromised accounts are taken care of. Kirbanzo (talk) 19:12, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Oppose This creates more problems than it solves. I think Callanecc is on the right track with a modified PC. Crazynas t 19:47, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Support but via the already made EF. Optionally support int-admin to MP by way of the same backed protection system that prevents move/delete. — xaosflux Talk 20:49, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        And if anyone wants to say but what about EFM issues - I think we should make EFM be along the same process as int-admin, including expiring it from admins that haven't actually used it in a while. — xaosflux Talk 20:52, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        Agree on both counts. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 22:57, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Support would support this as a permanent measure --Tom (LT) (talk) 23:30, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Oppose. Aside from the bits that I'm seeing below, about admins being able to edit the component content (or requiring interface-admin rights to edit pages like On This Day), remember that Jimbo's account was compromised two years ago and used to vandalise the Main Page. (Admin-only link, and someone appropriately uses rollback on that edit.) Even super-admin accounts with rights like interface admin or founder can be compromised, and when it requires super-admin rights to edit the Main Page, it will sometimes take a good deal longer to revert vandalism: it's easy to find an admin to revert vandalism to a protected page rather quickly, but finding an interface admin or a steward may take a good number of minutes. We mustn't pretend that interface admins, stewards, or founders are 100% immune from compromise, so we shouldn't imagine that restricting Main Page editing to them will prevent this kind of vandalism. Nyttend (talk) 00:54, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        @Nyttend: Though "super-admin" accounts like int-admin and founder are much less likely to be compromised, since int-admins are required by the WMF to use two-factor authentication, and Jimbo probably uses 2FA (does anyone know this for sure?) SemiHypercube ✎ 13:36, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Oppose. After reading this through, I'm unable to see a resolution to the cascading protection issue. I would support the main page being protected without cascading protection being applied, to slightly reduce the target for any potential vandals, but I doubt that would do much. I suspect the best option here would be to create a new user group and new protection level intended purely for the main page and its constituent elements. I would also support making 2FA mandatory for this group. Vanamonde (talk) 04:51, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Oppose, beyond the measures already taken. The cure is worse than the disease here; while I'd be willing to help out as an intadmin with maintaining the Main Page, there just aren't enough of us to go around, and increasing the numbers of intadmins to do off-mission stuff like this defeats the purpose of spinning intadmins off in the first place. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 13:43, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Oppose (go PC) - the cascading issue is too major. Int-admins are, by design, a tiny group (they didn't even let in 4 trusted technical non-admins). Without cascading we don't really do anything. With it we'd need far more to cover everything, including blocking certain areas that were the main reason some admins actually joined up. Additionally, it seems bold of us to add such a job to the int-admin remit without at least half of them saying yes (this is a secondary concern). Getting an admin-only Pending Changes approach seems much better. Obviously more than 1 admin can have their account compromised but it should significantly reduce the frequency of issues. Nosebagbear (talk) 16:01, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      A note - an alternate mooted strategy of main-page admins (functionally granted on request, though presumably after a delay to stop immediate requests than vandalism) would seem less preferable because of a patient vandal to abuse. That said, it would also be an alternate potential method. Nosebagbear (talk)
      • Oppose per Andrew D. Enterprisey (talk!) 20:23, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Oppose until someone comes up with a solution to the cascading problem and allow timely updates to ITN and DYK.-- Pawnkingthree (talk) 20:51, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Oppose - per my comments below - in essence, concerns about DYK and that the Main Page remains vulnerable thorough its various templates and that this is WP:CREEP. Best, Mifter (talk) 02:38, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Split vote. I was almost swayed by the original proposal but L235 convinced me otherwise. If an admin account is compromised, we want it to be obvious. I strongly oppose cascading IAdmin protection of Main Page itself cascading IAdmin protection on Main Page, because that's exactly the opposite of what IAdmin is for: protect interface, don't protect content. We've finally managed to move WP:Geonotice to a space where all sysops can update content and now we want to stop admins updating content? No. I would weakly support non-cascading IAdmin protection of Main Page, with cascading standard full-protection (argh, full protection is no longer the highest level of protection) for things that are directly transcluded onto Main Page, considering that the Main Page itself is basically an interface container rather than content. Deryck C. 18:13, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Oppose abuse of the IAdmin right. There are many other ways for compromised admin accounts to disrupt Wikipedia while creating a large impact other than vandalizing the main page, protecting the main page is only going to encourage hackers to move to other areas. I agree with SQL's concern as well. feminist (talk) 02:53, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      How temporary?

      There seems to be support for the measure above but several supports are predicated on it being temporary. Seems like it would be worthwhile to have some form of consensus of how long temporary is prior to any implementation. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 06:08, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      That's a pretty good question, Barkeep49. I think it can be said for certain that this change would be reverted as soon as it's fairly certain the vandalism issue has been resolved and the editing restriction is no longer needed. It's difficult to predict this; we've only been working on it for 72 hours, and it's a long weekend for US WMF staff (who have been very responsive), so the investigation is in its very early stages. Once we have more experienced eyes looking at things, including those who have the knowledge to suggest other options or methods for addressing the issues we're seeing, it's possible that a different/less intrusive option will be identified. It's also possible that after we've tried this for a few days, we find out that it's not really working. There's also the possibility that it becomes necessary to consider a permanent solution, either because no other less intrusive means has been identified to prevent this kind of vandalism, or because the efforts at vandalism haven't abated. Would it be reasonable to suggest that, if it still seems necessary to keep editing of the main page very restricted by 7 January 2019, it would be time to have a further community discussion about what options are available? These situations often take a few weeks to resolve, and there will be some extended holiday breaks in the next six weeks, so early January feels right. I'd be happy to hear other suggestions. Risker (talk) 07:45, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Yes, that sounds good. The problem with emergency/quick fixes to a crisis situation is not coming back to it once the urgency is gone. I think we have enough editors watching this to avoid that. And, incidentally, thanks for keeping us informed. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:39, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • 07/01/19 seems a reasonable time - so long as it is agreed that the consensus appearing for this is not a consensus for a permanent introduction - i.e. if the problem hasn't been resolved or an alternate solution proposed, a new RfC must be introduced in January to retain this mechanism Nosebagbear (talk) 19:29, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      While there is some support for having this as a permanent fix, I don't believe anyone would accept that without further discussion. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:15, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • People are identifying negatives, and there are things efforts are being put towards in the interim - like reducing the number of admin accounts that keep being compromised. Also you are making a functional assumption. Generally it is always better to trial something than require a majority to turn it off again. Nosebagbear (talk) 22:25, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      How long do we have to debate this before it's implemented?

      This has nearly unanimous support and it's only a temporary change. What are we waiting for? Natureium (talk) 19:27, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      First, it has to be open for at least 24h, and possibly, since now it is a weekend, possibly longer. Then it needs to be closed by an uninvolved administrator. Then some technical issues need to be implemented, for which a fabricator ticket should be opened.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:32, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Note: From the technical side - as an emergency measure I can implement it as soon as (if) you all agree that its the right thing to do (weekend or not). BWolff (WMF) (talk) 19:40, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Great, this is good to know.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:45, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      @BWolff (WMF): can you clarify whether, if this is implemented, admins will still be edit pages transcluded onto the main page? -- zzuuzz (talk) 19:47, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Answers to some questions and statuses that keep coming up:
        1. We have already done something about edits to the Main Page.
        2. If a new "higher" protection level is applied and cascading protection is enabled, then all of the cascaded items will be protected at the new level. Tested at testwiki:Main Page2 and its template testwiki:Template:MPtemp1 using the "centralnotice" protection level
      • — xaosflux Talk 20:18, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        Thanks. So we're either going to need a bunch of new interface admins or check in with the existing ones. This needs to be done before implementation. -- zzuuzz (talk) 20:28, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        @Zzuuzz: "A bunch of new interface admins" would be a step backwards in security. Would it be possible to create (yet) another protection level (call it "Main page protected"), and another user group ("Main page editors"), then quickly add the ITN/DYK/etc. regulars to that group? Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 20:33, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        Also pinging @Xaosflux and BWolff (WMF): Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 20:46, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        I don't disagree; I'd also point out that one of those admins in potential new user group was compromised 24 hours ago. I'd want to see 2FA compulsory for whatever is implemented, which I think needs a little more thought. -- zzuuzz (talk) 20:55, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        Yes, all these things are possible. We don't have automated ways to require 2FA for a specific group, but its definitely possible given a list of people in a group to manually check which have 2FA enabled. BWolff (WMF) (talk) 21:12, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Does anyone know if the MediaWiki software could be changed so two protection levels could be applied simultaneously? (int-admin, non-cascading protection for just the Main Page, with full cascading protection for protecting transcluded templates) We've never had to deal with anything similar, since cascading protection with anything lower than full-protection is impossible and we haven't had a protection level higher than full-protection. With one infamous exception. SemiHypercube ✎ 02:18, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • I fell that the language used here is too relaxed. A: If a new "higher" protection level is applied and cascading protection is enabled, then all of the cascaded items will be protected at the new level is only a definition of cascading. B: Tested at ... is only checking that cascading is correctly implemented. C: If this is implemented, will admins... is a question that should be answered by: the proposal is to enforce this and that, and the result for this_kind_of_people (should the proposal be applied) will be this and that while the result for that_kind_of_people will be this and that. A great advice about this kind of wording is RFC2119. Best regards. Pldx1 (talk) 10:56, 26 November 2018 (UTC)/ modified Pldx1 (talk) 11:00, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]


      • A note - while an early close probably would have been justified on, say, Sunday, there have been a fair number of recent opposes plus 3 conversions from support to oppose. I obviously have at least some bias (since almost all participants have cast a !vote I suppose that's fairly universal here) but would say it's worth leaving open at least another 48 hours to see if that's a sea change or a blip. Nosebagbear (talk) 16:19, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Post (initial) closure

      Clarification of the closure requested. I'm not seeing the mechanics of this finalized, especially in light of active discussions about them still taking place. — xaosflux Talk 03:29, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      This also seems a bit rushed. Regarding the 2FA notes for interface admins, WMF is going to deal with that for now under OFFICE rules. I'm also a bit concerned about greatly increasing the number of interface admins and forcing 2FA (via the OFFICE rule) on to people that want to maintain things like DYK and ITN can have negative impacts: (a) non-technical people with technical access (b) removal from editorial tasks for admins that can't or don't want 2FA at this time. — xaosflux Talk 03:35, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Closure review requested as this was a very early closure while discussion was still active. — xaosflux Talk 03:37, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Given the nature of the proposal concerning yet another security incident, third one in the last 60 days, and the near unanimous support after 24 hours of the proposal as worded, I felt it appropriate to expedite closing this proposal. If this is a mistaken thought, I will happily reverse the close.—CYBERPOWER (Around) 03:42, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        I think the early responses here are enough to give credibility to what is going on with filter 943, but that's it so far. For example, do we really need User:DYKUpdateBot and its operator to also become 2FA required int-admins right now, every contributor to Template:In the news, etc? — xaosflux Talk 03:46, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        Nevermind, I re-opened it again. If there is concern with this close, I'd rather just re-open it, as I'm headed to bed and don't want to leave it as is.—CYBERPOWER (Around) 03:48, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • I'm probably harping on the point by now, but if this proposal results in more intadmins, we're doing it wrong. Either the existing intadmins need to take up all the main page responsibilities, or we need a new "Main Page Editor" right. I suspect maybe 1/10th of admins will even express an interest in this, so even without any 2FA requirement, this will do away with 90% of the attack surface. We can talk about requiring 2FA later. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 04:10, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Again I don't disagree, though it still wouldn't have prevented the latest attacks and it would have prevented any admins fixing it in a hurry. Another alternative, which I'd prefer, is a bespoke software solution similar to how admins can't delete or move the main page, without all the cascading issues. -- zzuuzz (talk) 05:34, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Good point about the slower response, but I don't see evidence that Esanchez7587 or Garzo had ever edited anything MP-transcluded, so it would have prevented 2 of the 3 latest attacks. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 05:57, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      I've now had some coffeee and a chance to think this through a bit, and I can see how this could work without a software change. We already have a number of main pages lying around which cascade-protect the main page content. I don't properly know how the system works, so someone will need to confirm, and we'll probably want more. So then we basically remove the cascade from the main main page, and apply the new protection level to the main page only without cascade. This would leave the main page content editable by sysops, which doesn't really provide any benefit. So we once again return to the question of how to protect the main page content whilst keeping it updateable without making security actually worse. -- zzuuzz (talk) 10:18, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      I think at this point, the most likely feasible idea should be a new protection level roughly based on what Callanecc said above. All edits to Mainpage directly and templates it pulls from (ITN, DYK...) should be subjected to four eyes principle; that means they must be approved by another admin before going live. It will be very hard and unlikely for a vandal to get two different admin accounts solely to bypass this restriction. Its efficacy will be the same as if all admins enabled 2FA. And with this protection level, we can safely apply the cascading and simultaneously allow all admins to edit the Mainpage and its templates normally. And the vandal's edit... will surely be caught waiting to be "approved"–Ammarpad (talk) 13:27, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      You're basically describing a version of WP:pending changes. Is it feasible to implement an admin-only version of that? ‑‑ElHef (Meep?) 15:05, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Indeed I am. If you know the basic framework of PC2 you'll know this is feasible, though I don't know how simple or hard that implementing it will be. –Ammarpad (talk) 15:53, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Q: How many of the (currently 13) human interface administrators stand ready to take up the workload that will be created? –xenotalk 19:22, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        @Xeno: as an int-admin I think its safe to say most of us would have no issue dealing with formatting of the wikitext on Main page or certain included templates (via edit requests). I know I don't want to do things like manage the "content" (e.g. placing the Featured Article, updating DYK, updating ITN, etc). — xaosflux Talk 20:31, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        FWIW the current EF is already enforcing that. — xaosflux Talk 20:32, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        Xeno, I will answer any edit request that comes by.—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 20:58, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • @Cyberpower678: (and anyone else who believes IntAdmins will be able to handle all main page content): With respect, you're greatly underestimating the number of tweaks made to the main page every day. There have been 40 edits to the various main page sections in the last week alone: most of these are fixes or clarifications of some kind, that need to be made fairly quickly. Many of these are also not quick tweaks but require assessing consensus, at ERRORS or ITN/C or WT:DYK or elsewhere. I suspect that if the 13 IntAdmins are the only ones able to make these changes, we're going to have some trouble. Vanamonde (talk) 04:37, 27 November 2018 (UTC) Resigning to fix ping. Vanamonde (talk) 20:45, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • You would also need to grant additional permissions to the DYK update bot, as mentioned above, which might have some technical hurdles and also comes with the discussion of if we want to have a bot with interface access. Such a plan also would have to look at protecting the DYK queues which could be edited a minute before the bot switches DYK. In general with this proposal, I understand and agree with the goal of increasing security but highly doubt that this would a) remain temporary, and b) stop the issue without major collateral damage. We are a wiki, and with a project our size and the number of admins we have, there will always be an attack vector. I'm active in Main Page and DYK work when I am around, but fully acknowledge I come and go. There was a period for months when I promoted almost every queue to be sent off to the Main Page, and while I'd like to think my fellow DYK admins and editors find my, currently somewhat sporadic, work helpful, I doubt I would be granted a new "main page" right or interface editor with my current activity level. I am also concerned that the interface editor right seems to be being expanded beyond its original intent to a new class/level of administrator instead of just a technical safeguard. This is a game of whack-a-mole, as we lock down attack vectors, attackers will move further up the chain. The next logical steps for an attacker are the MediaWiki interface generally, scripts to mass perform an admin action, going after an interface administrator directly, etc. We need to win 100% of the time to prevent an attack, an attacker need only "win" once in unlimited attempts to get through. While we should absolutely reduce the attack surface, increase security, password requirements, etc., mathematically it is clear what happens in the long run. I am also concerned that if we concentrate major, time sensitive, responsibilities from our approximately 500 active admins (any one of whom can jump in) to a group of just over a dozen interface admins that things will be delayed, and we will almost certainly burn out users - not to mention potentially drive away trusted users who work in this area. Best, Mifter (talk) 02:38, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Cascading

      One of the three main oppose reasons is the cascading issue - I thought it worth splitting out the issue of discussing whether this Int-Protect would cause knock on protection to be implemented, if those qualified to discuss such could answer. Nosebagbear (talk) 20:24, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      I'm not exactly following your question @Nosebagbear:. In the current software if "cascading" protection is applied whatever level is applied also gets applied to everything transcluded. — xaosflux Talk 20:29, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      There is a query in the discussions above on whether all the constituent aspects of the Main Page (DYK etc) are going to have to have this int-protection (presumably enacted via cascade) for the main page to actually be safe. It is disputed, but I wouldn't say it is made precisely clear. Since the MP is primarily made up of a bunch of transclusions, presumably more than just the MP itself will need this protection level. Nosebagbear (talk) 20:37, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      This is answered in the section just above, and we have a choice: Without cascading protection, admins can still edit the content, so there aren't any real benefits to the new protection. Using cascading int-admin protection will greatly reduce the number of people able to edit ITN/DYK/OTD and other things which are regularly updated. Alongside this is a really bad idea - increase the number of int-admins. An alternative has been proposed which is to create a new user group, and a new cascading protection level, which only allows editing content displayed on the main page. No decisions have been made, and it's not always clear above exactly what people are agreeing to. The proposal itself contains this sentence, "almost all of the work is done in the background using templates — so the impact of this temporary measure is minimal", but with cascading protection that's simply not the case. -- zzuuzz (talk) 20:51, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Wow, clarification is needed. Adding lots more intadmins to handle all details of what is transcluded on the main page would be very dubious. Further, some templates/modules are used frequently and often appear somewhere on the main page, and people would need an intadmin to update them. Johnuniq (talk) 00:49, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Level 1 desysop of Killiondude

      Under the Level 1 desysopping procedures the administrator permissions of Killiondude (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) have been temporarily removed as a suspected compromised account.

      Supporting: DeltaQuad, Worm that Turned, BU Rob13.

      For the Arbitration Committee;

      -- Amanda (aka DQ) 20:33, 24 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Level 1 desysop of Killiondude

      For the arbitration committee, --Cameron11598 (Talk) 23:29, 24 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Return of tools

      The Arbitration Committee has verified Killiondude is back in control of their account via multiple methods. Therefore the committee reinstates their administrative userright, which was previously removed by motion. The committee also urges them to enable 2 factor authentication on their account.

      Supporting: KrakatoaKatie, Callanecc, Newyorkbrad, Premeditated Chaos, Worm That Turned, Opabinia Regalis, Mkdw, DeltaQuad.

      For the Arbitration Committee, -- Amanda (aka DQ) 22:51, 24 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Return of tools

      For the arbitration committee, --Cameron11598 (Talk) 23:29, 24 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Infobox and series on Donald Trump

      Hi, in light of the recent publicised vandalism on Donald Trump (The Verge, Independent), we decided to replace the primary target of the vandalism, the infobox, with a fully protected template. This means that once the temporary full protection on the main article ends business as usual can continue. However, given the discussion had a relatively low level of participation, Ymblanter suggested I make a thread here.

      Should we keep this template in the article (temporarily) or should we go back to having the infobox directly inside the article? Note that a compromised admin account could technically still vandalise the article, it would just mean they'd have to go through an extra step (that has significantly less watchers). @MelanieN, Enigmaman, Ymblanter, GreenC, Awilley, and DannyS712: Pinging those who were involved with the discussion at Talk:Donald Trump. Cheers, Anarchyte (talk | work) 09:13, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      @Anarchyte, MelanieN, Enigmaman, Ymblanter, GreenC, Awilley, and DannyS712: While I am in favour (obviously) of stopping the vandalism, wouldn't having it located on a page with a lot less watchers be even riskier? --TheSandDoctor Talk 09:55, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      In principle, it is correct that the template is watched by a far lower number of people, but as it is full protected, one needs another compromised admin account to vandalize it. So far all compromised admin accounts were discovered within minutes (though it still takes time to lock them). Page as it is now can be edited by extended confirmed users, and we have a plenty of extended confirmed accounts to compromise.--Ymblanter (talk) 10:06, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • This is fine as a temporary solution. The problem is that admin accounts have been compromised and the template will have far fewer watchers than the article. A solution that addresses the root cause is what we need long term. Compromised accounts have been editing the article and some related articles for more than two years. They are easily identified by their edit history. - MrX 🖋 14:17, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • I actually think this is a fine idea and could be maintained indefinitely. The entire infobox has been subject to lots of discussion and is now in a consensus-defined condition - so that virtually all changes to the infobox nowadays get reverted. In other words there is no problem with keeping the infobox in a permanently locked state. We would just have to make sure that lots of us put the infobox template on our watchlists. -- MelanieN (talk) 14:27, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      I think that would be inconsistent with policy. I would strongly object to any article content that can only be edited by admins. Also, nothing prevents a compromised account from removing the template from the article, and restoring a vandalized version of the infobox. Something needs to be done about the cause. In other words, the compromised accounts.- MrX 🖋 14:33, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • I support this idea for this article only for a period of time needed but not forever. It's not a grand sweeping slippery slope of top down control over Wikipedia content, but a pragmatic temporary solution for a single article under special circumstances. -- GreenC 15:42, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • I support this as a temporary measure, but in the long(er) term suggest using an edit filter, as discussed on the talk page. This would allow constructive extended-confirmed editors (hopefully like myself) to edit the rest of the infobox, series, etc without needing to submit a protected-edit request. --DannyS712 (talk) 02:53, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Aditya Birla Payments Bank Undisclosed paid edits

      This has been created through by an undisclosed paid editor on Upwork. Jon posted at https://www.upwork.com/job/Wikipedia-Content-Editor_~0167379bb6e4c6a4e9/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.188.64.111 (talk) 15:13, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      the things are wrong — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zhangliping (talk • contribs) 15:29, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Unknown issues with oversight

      I am able to see this message on main page history without even logging in. Is there some issue with the Oversight privileges? https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xM9FCmBMGwW3Wb4x0nSFI6OOHwOYZHYj/view?usp=drivesdk — Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.63.125.251 (talk) 15:39, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      No, just something weird with a template not substing properly. Primefac (talk) 16:23, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Additionally, those edits were not "oversighted" they were only "deleted", just seems like an odd template preview in mobile view. — xaosflux Talk 16:27, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Use of ticket system by site-banned user to get warning about abuse of email removed?

      [13]

      Courtesy pinging TheDragonFire (talk · contribs) although I must stress that this is not about them, as I suspect that there's a conflict of policy on this point, and at the very worst TDF made a good-faith mistake in carelessly not reading the messages they were blanking.

      Catflap08 (talk · contribs) last week sent me an email that would have been somewhat offensive if it didn't consist of laughably silly request that I not accuse him of being a Malaysian IP that harassed me a little before that (I had actually only mentioned him to say it clearly wasn't him or anyone who had interacted with me before 2018, as it they seemed completely unaware of my conflict with Catflap), and a year or so ago he sent me a much longer, more abusive email, which fact I was unwilling to disclose at that time. After the more recent incident, I requested he not send me any more emails or I would request his email access be revoked, and a week later the page was blanked. Curiously, he does not have talk page access disabled, so he is perfectly free to blank his page himself if he thinks policy allows him to do so, so using the ticket system is ... well, weird. It looks like he knows he's misbehaving and so wants to trick other people into covering his tracks for him.

      He's been evading his ban by editing while logged out, and his continued use of email clearly implies he does not intend to respect his SBAN, so I'm wondering what could be done about it at this point? Just remove talk and email access and leave a notice on the page asking other editors to be careful if they receive requests to "courtesy blank" the page?

      Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 15:42, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Users are entirely free to remove messages they receive on their talk pages, and it is very standard practice for OTRS to handle courtesy blanks of user talk pages to help users move on a little. If however, this user is continuing to cause disruption then by all means remove email access and SPI into oblivion. TheDragonFire (talk) 16:48, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      it is very standard practice for OTRS to handle courtesy blanks Okay, so that's the "conflict of policy" thing I mentioned above. Our policy on blocked editors is not that they are entirely free to remove messages they receive on their talk pages when those messages are appeal denials, and while that doesn't necessarily apply to non-admin, involved warnings about abuse of the email system, we must also bear in mind that Catflap is not just blocked, he is subject a site ban (those exact words were used) and so is no longer considered to be a member of the English Wikipedia community, so standard practice when it comes to editors editing their own user pages also doesn't necessarily still apply. And yeah, Catflap has most definitely been abusing his continued permission to use email, was probably abusing the ticket system given that he still has talk page access enabled, and has been actively evading his ban apparently whenever he feels the urge to do so, so ... yeah, I think email access, and probably also talk if he's gonna continue using the ticket system, also needs to be withdrawn in this case. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:42, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      The guideline only relates to what the editors themselves may do, not what we may do. In any case it's irrelevant here because Catflap08 did not have anything on their page which couldn't be removed (unless it was removed before). There's definitely nothing in the guidelines which apply to warnings about misuse of the email system whether from admins or anyone else. Those can be removed at any time, just as with any other warnings.

      Also I think it's clear from many previous discussions that our blanking policy still applies no matter whether editors are cbanned or whatever else. No matter how atrocious an editor's behaviour is, we do not punish them by leaving around unnecessary content. We only keep stuff we've determined we should keep for reasons of administrative efficiency, tracking misbehaviour etc.

      I don't see any evidence of abuse of the ticket system. The fact that talk page access remains doesn't mean they are forbidden from using the ticket system to ask for stuff to be removed from their talk page especially if they are unclear on what they may do. Anyone who has dealt with this before knows there's a lot of confusion about what editors may remove from their talk page and when, and your own comment seems to support this. In fact this case seems even more confusing since IIRC they are still ibanned from interacting with you and while it seems a moot point while they are cbanned, they could have had apprehension about removing content you posted.

      I do agree from your description they have misused email and there's already justification for removal and it definitely should be remove if it continues. While I'm not completely opposed to removal of talk page access especially since they have been socking plus misusing email so are unlikely to be able to file an appeal anytime soon, but there also doesn't seem to be any real reason to do so since it doesn't seem like they've misused access. I mean they didn't even blank like they were allowed to but instead asked for it via a ticket.

      Nil Einne (talk) 09:27, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      @Nil Einne: It's peripheral, but no, Catflap08 is not technically banned from interacting with me, except insofar as interacting with me on-wiki or by means of inappropriate use of the email function could be considered a violation of his site ban. And he knows this, because his last logged-in edit was to remove a message from me, specifically informing him of the discussion on this noticeboard to remove our IBAN. So good-faith apprehension about removing a message from me would not explain the use of OTRS. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 16:15, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      I would personally suggest that moving (calmly I might add) off-wiki after being sanctioned shows more restraint than most banned users have. Either way, if someone really wants to unblank their talk page then go right ahead, but I think it's needless grave dancing. King of Hearts or Oshwah, if you consider it prudent please flip Catflap08's TPA and email bits, and we can all have ourselves a beverage of our choice. Cheers. TheDragonFire (talk) 11:14, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      FWIW, I suggested talk access be removed not because I think Catflap08 has been abusing his talk page privileges (how could he, when he hasn't used them in 20 months?) but because he is already acting like it has been removed. I can take that or leave it. The email thing, though ... well, I received a forwarded email from User:Sturmgewehr88 back in April 2015 that was essentially a coy, passive-aggressive forerunner to what became Catflap's recurring "Hijiri 88 and Sturmgewehr 88 are both neo-Nazis" schtick (out of context, which is how it was originally received, we both agreed it looked like weird but benign tomfoolery, but given how he later harped on about our Nazi-like usernames in public it was clearly meant as a threat), the harassing message he sent me in July 2017, and the above-mentioned email from last week, combined with the fact that he was almost definitely using email to violate our IBAN by proxy back when it was still in place ... I can't honestly think of any reason why his email access would still be enabled. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 16:06, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      I'm happy to restore remove the user's talk page access if others believe it to be necessary - just let me know. :-) ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 23:43, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      @Oshwah: There seems to be a misunderstanding. Cetflap08 already has talk page access enabled, but used the OTRS system for some reason that is difficult to take in good faith due to his block evasion and abuse of the email service. I'm fine with him maintaining talk access as long as he's not abusing it -- and I recognize that acting like he already doesn't have it is not in itself an abuse -- but he probably should have email disabled. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:11, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Sorry, I used the wrong word in my response - fixed. I'll be more clear in my response here: If he's not abusing talk page access directly, then we should leave it alone. OTRS has the ability to handle issues of abuse if it's deemed to be necessary (like removing email access) - I'll leave that for them to do. If the community has any concerns or reasons why talk page access should be revoked, let me know. I apologize for my ambiguity earlier. :-) ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 00:16, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Hzh at Sci-Hub

      prior discussions

      The content dispute is about how to describe a) how Sci-Hub obtains credentials and b) how Sci-Hub uses credentials it obtains. (Briefly, Sci-Hub obtains (through various means) legitimate user names and passwords, and presents them to libraries, misrepresenting itself as the person to whom the credentials were granted, in order to get access to paywalled content, which it then stores on its servers).

      Per the stats above, this posting is about Hzh's behavior at Talk:Sci-Hub. It is not about the content dispute. They have

      • a) WP:BLUDGEONed the talk page (the 183 edits);
      • b) continually misrepresented what other editors are saying and what sources say (see two warnings above for examples; I can provide more -- this has been incredibly frustrating); and
      • c) has always said "not this" or "not that" and never helped propose comprehensive content summarizing what the sources actually say about how the site obtains credentials (e.g diff, diff; and
      • d) in their "not this" comments, consistently
        • (i) criticized the content of the sources (e.g here with opening ground-shifting snark and here, and here) and
        • (ii) demanded that content quotes the sources, instead of summarizing them (e.,g diff, diff) and
        • (iii) constantly ground-shifting, making it impossible to move forward and resolve issues (snark diff above, see also diff, diff (what does that comment even mean?), diff bringing up other issues about "dangers" which this RfC proposal was not addressing - ARGH).

      If you try to review the talk page, you will find that almost every section is derailed, mostly by Hzh. We have not made progress resolving the issues after more than a month. Their very first comment argued strenuously that there is some actual difference between "piracy" and illegal copyright infringement. That is pretty much how it has gone since then. Guy has said to them many times that WP is not a place to RGW or where we can act as though law is not what it is, first gently and then with increasing clarity. (this is what prompted Hzh's ANI filing). To show the depth of the RGW/IDHT here, in this diff they compared copyright law to laws making homosexuality illegal. That is about as close to the Godwin's law as one can get without going there.

      This has been the definition of tendentious behavior at a talk page, and is wasting everyone's time. I am not sure what the most appropriate solution is, but some kind of restriction seems appropriate, so that we can get work done. Jytdog (talk) 02:58, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      • This shit again? Remind me again why Hzh wasn't TBANned after the last ANI? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:43, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Reply I think it should be noted that this ANI came about after I requested opinions on RSN on a source given by Jytdog to support the content he added - [14]. He said I had misrepresented the source - Another misrepresentation, and made two demands to change. For the first demand, as I explained, it was his own confusion of "review process" with editorship (the two things are different for publication of research papers), but although many would consider the review process to be essential, it is not that an important point on the question of the validity of this particular source to waste time arguing over, I struck off the wording. However I refused to accede to his second demand, at which point he decided that I had been disruptive and that an ANI is necessary. Note also that the RSN came about only because I had questioned the source in a number of places (it was also questioned by another editor Smartse [15]), but Jytdog indicated that he would not reply to me on the source because I did not discuss it at the section he wanted it discussed - [16]. This I duly did, [17], but he chose not to reply, at which point I took the issue to the RSN [18].
      I'll address the issues involved as best as I can:
      • The questions I raised in the Sci-Hub talk page are related to the basic policies of WP:V and WP:NPOV. Allegations are stated as facts in the article, Where words like "allegedly" [19] or "publishers have alleged" [20] are found in the sources, they are ignored. I raised some of the issue at Talk:Sci-Hub#Problematic wordings.
      • If it is necessary to summarise the sources, then the sources actually need to say what the content says. Words in the sources like "allegedly" should not be ignored, and accusation should not be stated as fact. In the case of the "black market", the validity of the Scholarly Kitchen source is being examined in the RSN, and the only valid source given did not use the word "black market", and it also did not offer any evidence for the claim. Although it is asserted that the content is well-sourced, when examined closely, the sources are problematic, for example the SK article in the RSN.
      • I'm just one of a number of editors who objected to the way the word "illegal" is used (e.g. Kashmiri), and our objection had been accepted. A number of other editors also agree on NPOV, e.g. Elephanthunter on the use voice of Wikipedia [21], Guy Macon and others. The discussion on piracy is quite wide-ranging, and I would suggest that those who want to take a close look then should read the full discussion rather than address the specific here (although I won't mind discussing it here if others want to).
      • The RfC was due to the claim that proofs are unnecessary for the claims made by Guy in the article [22]. Since this is a violation of Wikipedia policies on WP:V, it made it hard to phrase it in a way that does not tell us what the answer must be.
      • As for the warnings, Jytdog issued a 3RR warning for the 2 reverts I made, but ignore the 2 reverts made by another who agreed with him [23][24]. He asked me to discuss when I was still discussing. He had actually decided to edit the article on the contested use of such words [25][26] just saying that he would not discuss further [27]. Other warnings appear to be his misunderstanding of what I wrote, and he appears to ignore my explanations. He warned about mispresentation (which appeared to his misundertandings), but misrepresented the source given (claiming that it better supported the content when that is not true) as well as what I did on the talk page e.g. You have never offered any content suggesting how to better summarize the sources, when I did in a few places, e.g. [28][29], one of which he even accepted [30].
      • I have no idea where the charge of ground-shifting comes from since they refer to different things, for example. one is about his use of a self-published attack site [31], another is about the validity of the source Scholarly Kitchen (a blog established by Society for Scholarly Publishing, therefore an organisation with a conflict of interest), while a third is a discussion on the word "fraudulent" that is not supported by the sources used, including the SK one, etc. I'm not aware that you need to discuss only one topic in different discussions. I'm not sure what issue Jytdog has with the others since it is quite clear what I wrote, for example, I stated my concerns, and that we can go back to it later. Everything may become clearer when other issues get addressed, and the RfC may become simpler. I simply don't see how I could be derailing anything. As Jytdog himself later objected to Elephanthunter's proposal, his objection should not be taken as derailing the discussion, nor indeed in other parts where Guy has agreed with my suggstions but Jytdog had objected [32]. This is just part and parcel of a discussion.
      It should be noted that many of the issues had been caused by edits by Jytdog. His behaviour has not been helpful in the discussing his edits, for example making trivial complaints about the word "darknet" I used, insisting that I used "black market" [33], then saying the two words have no important differences in meaning [34], then complained that I was too "literal" in demanding sources that support the wording [35] when the sources used don't mention "darknet" or "black market". The wording should be how he decides it to be, even when it is contested, for example the use of the word fraud and fraudulent I gave earlier - he stopped discussing [36] then made these edits [37][38].
      As for the edit counts, since I started commenting on this talk page, I have made 95 signed comments (9 more are duplication by Jytdog as he wanted to reorganised the comments), Guy made 91 (11 more are duplications by Jytdog in the reorganisation), Jytdog made 77 (these are rough counts, but the true number should not be far off). I have a higher edit count as I tend to copyedit and adjust before anyone else has replied, which is acceptable practice per WP:REDACT. If racking up edit counts because of copy-editing and adjustments before someone else has replied is not acceptable, then I apologise and will refrain from doing so again. The reason I did not make more edits to the article itself is because I thought they should be discussed properly first before they are added, and talk page is the place for discussion on contentious edits. Hzh (talk) 14:26, 26 November 2018 (UTC) (adjusted)Hzh (talk)[reply]
      To cut down on the number of edits due to copy editing and adjustments, try using 'Show preview' before you publish your changes. Preview can be used repeatedly until your edit looks the way you want it to. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 15:01, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      That is true, and I do use it, but I will use it more often. I guess I developed the habit to avoid edit conflict where a large edit sometimes becomes lost when saving, but I guess a wall of edits by one person can be off-putting to others, so I will try to cut it down next time. Hzh (talk) 15:20, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      What Hzh did there with "darknet" directly on point. They have been insisting on literal support for the negative ideas -- this has been a constant theme. So no, the exact word is not trivial to them at the talk page. So you see, they misrepresent things (now their own behavior) even here. Their post in general is full of distraction and ground-shifting. This is what we have been dealing with at the talk page. It is not about content. Jytdog (talk) 17:11, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Hzh's comment entirely exemplifies the problem. See, for example, the comment on the word "illegal". The article changed to "piracy" (a term Sci-Hub apparently embraces), but for weeks afterwards, Hzh challenged use of the word illegal even on Talk on the basis that taking credentials to which you have no right, using them to download copyright material, and offering that copyright material free to download, is somehow not "illegal" in some corner of the world he has yet to actually identify. He also relentlessly opposes the use of the term computer fraud to describe the use of other people's credentials to take material from publishers' servers, mainly because it contains the word "fraud" and in Hzh's mind Sci-Hub are brave mavericks, not crooks. The possibility that one can be both at the same time, as pretty much every single sources says Sci-Hub is, does not seem to be a valid argument to him. Guy (Help!) 17:59, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      It seems like you are arguing you should be able to use any word just because it is the talk page, whether it is correct or not. For example you insisted all over the talk page that copyright infringement is theft, just a few here - [39][40][41], when the US Supreme Court has already specifically ruled that this is not so in the Dowling v. United States (1985) case. Perhaps if you are more careful with your wordings, others wouldn't challenged you, or are you arguing that you shouldn't be challenged in your assertions and say anything you want in the talk page? Hzh (talk) 23:29, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      I believe we could have worked out this content dispute a long time ago, if it weren't for Hzh's behavior. Jytdog (talk) 17:42, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Thus far I have seen the issue only at Sci-Hub, though presumably we'd also have to include Alexandra Elbakyan. There's been none of the pointy removals of links to Elsevier or addition of other dubious "free" links that we saw with other users. Guy (Help!) 23:47, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • I don't remember how I originally found the article. I came back to it because Guy invited me to on my talk. I helped negotiate the "piracy compromise" IIRC. I tried to come back to it a couple times, but the discussion was so disjointed and exceedingly difficult to make sense of, it just crossed my eyes and I went on and did something else instead.
      Umm...Hzh is incessant at editing their own comments. So any raw edit count is pretty misleading as an argument for bludgeoning. From what I can tell, they've not been super congenial on the talk, but neither has everyone else. There's walls of text here and there for sure, but they don't all belong to Hzh, nor the longest of them as far as I can tell. There is likely a good argument to be had that, when using controversial terms, we need to stick closely to what the sources say. It is perfectly possible that Hzh is only slightly sympathetic and is being wrongly characterized as (to borrow a phrase) "a fanboy". Which that phrase is not terribly helpful even if true. I don't like the idea that if "I have friends and you don't, and you're civil, then you're sealioning". That's not always the case. I tend to agree that this is a content dispute and repeated efforts by the more noticeboard-savvy-side to file noticeboard complaints is probably less evidence of a problem, and more evidence that the more noticeboard-savvy-side has tried repeatedly to seek sanctions and has failed.
      I've worked with and disagreed with both Jyt and Guy. And I admit to just not caring enough about SciHub to invest that much personal time. But it's hard to see this as more than a content dispute. GMGtalk 00:31, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Topic ban appeal by Sbelknap

      Sbelknap is currently topic-banned "from all articles, pages, and discussions involving finasteride, dutasteride, or sexual health, broadly construed" (per AN discussion). The user approached me a day or so ago requesting to lift the ban. I observed he had been editing and commenting on topics related in my view to sexual health, and asked to confirm he was sure he wanted to appeal to this noticeboard, noting possible adverse outcomes. In response, he explained that in his view my description of a ban on "sexual health" was vague, and so he presumed the scope of the ban based on a perfectly relevant technical criterion (you can see this conversation on my talk page); in a nutshell he interpreted "sexual health" as "sexual dysfunction", and then made every effort to abide by that restriction. I believe this misunderstanding to be genuine and in good faith: Sbelknap is a medical practitioner who has published research in this area, while I spent much of the last decade working for a sexual health education advocacy organization in an administrative capacity; it's natural that our interpretations of the broadness of "sexual health" would not align perfectly. At any rate, no other editors have seen reason to object to Sbelknap's many content contributions in the interim, as far as I can tell, except for one incident which he himself noted (again, see my talk page). As such I believe that Sbelknap has abided by the restriction in good faith (in that he has not deliberately tried to game the restriction, for example), thus I am presenting this appeal to the community without prejudice. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 16:58, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      I have made every effort to comply with the topic ban. The topic ban did not provide much detail, so I interpreted it as covering topics related to the ICD-10 schema for sexual dysfunction. (Shortly after the topic ban, I suggested to Doc James that he add a meta-analysis to the testosterone article, but then learned that even posting a suggestion on a talk page on a banned topic might be considered a violation of the topic ban, so I haven't done that again.) I have made more than 1,000 edits since the topic ban; I believe nearly all of these would be considered constructive by any objective standard. I have also resurrected a redirected stub for the Dietary Guidelines for Americans wikipedia article - expanding this into a decent article, and engaged in productive collaboration with numerous editors on multiple topics. (For example, chlortalidone, Long-term effects of alcohol consumption, metformin, amoxicillin, chloramphenicol, Ford Taurus, moose, and others). The question you all are asked to answer is this: does six months of diligent effort as a wikipedia editor, with many productive contributions, constitute evidence of improvement as an editor? Sbelknap (talk) 21:38, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Weak oppose Well Sbelknap is getting better, they still regularly forget to sign their talk posts. And still provide undue weight to specific positions. So not ready yet for a very controversial topic area. Would recommend they try again in another six months. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:14, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Support per Serial Number 54129's reasoning. We actually need subject-matter professionals, working in the topics they know well. I think the opposers are asking to prove a negative. The editor hasn't been in "bullheaded editor claiming some special level of expertise as justification to push their own point of view" trouble since the T-ban (that I know of). Utter temperamental perfection isn't something we demand of people, and what is or isn't due weight in medicine is a hotly argued topic (see WT:MEDRS and its very long archives, and intense topic-by-topic debates about sourcing at topics like e-cigarettes, etc.). So there's not an objective, diffed fault I see here, but a subjective, loosey-goosey feeling, like not quite a full pound of flesh has been extracted yet. Finally, many first-time topic bans are only for 1-3 months; 6 months seems like a reasonable timespan to appeal one, by someone who's not some asshat here to convince the world that [insert religion here] is the one true way, or blithely running toward a site-ban due to aggressively promoting some company or product. PS: forgetting to sign posts, and other such trivia, has nothing to do with the matter.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:53, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • weak oppose Sbelknap believes very strongly in evidence-based medicine (EBM) (like a lot of members of WPMED) but (like a lot of members of WPMED) can take that too far into advocacy; overriding descriptions of medical practice and guideline recommendations with his best reading as an expert of the evidence. That tendency, along with their passion about the finasteride class of drugs, is what led to the TBAN. What I have been looking for is self-moderation of the EBM advocacy and self-awareness about it. There have been two incidents since the TBAN was put in place where this arose - on the alcohol stuff that led to the ANI (it wasn't horrible but very present) and recently at metformin (where it was very present; this has been managed without dramaboard). With that underlying issue not self-managed yet, unTBANing would put us in the nearly the same bucket we were in before at finasteride. So not yet. There has been improvement, but not yet. Jytdog (talk) 22:33, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Community Wishlist

      People watching this page might be interested in looking through the specific category at m:Community Wishlist Survey 2019/Admins and patrollers. At the moment, the most popular proposal that is specifically admin-related is m:Community Wishlist Survey 2019/Admins and patrollers/Create an integrated anti-spam/vandalism tool.

      For the newer folks: Voting is open for approximately another four days. The Community Wishlist uses straight approval voting (i.e., "oppose votes" are pointless). Vote for as many proposals as you want. The top 10 vote-getters will be addressed by the devs. There is a ===Discussion=== section on each proposal, and that's the best place to report any concerns or document particular use cases. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:47, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      @WhatamIdoing, to be more accurate "oppose votes aren't counted towards the total". They're not 'pointless', since opposing something with an explanation of why you think it's a bad idea can make other potential supporters reconsider, and also acts as a marker to the devs that "although this has made it into the top ten you should probably stop and consider whether we should really be doing this". (As you know, the wishlist survey is very much an advisory referendum rather than a binding vote; if the WMF are genuinely committed to implementing any proposal that made it into the top ten regardless of how bad an idea it is, give me half an hour on Reddit and I could assemble a binding consensus to replace the death star logo on every page with goatse.) ‑ Iridescent 23:12, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Sigh, is there any chance of old wishes becoming fulfilled? I wished back in 2016 that you would fix the "hiding" bug (link) (The phabr ticket is from 2007 (!))...but, frankly, it looks as if the task is just shuffled from one incompetent developer to another. Huldra (talk) 23:27, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Personally, I use old lists to see what would be nice to work on. The Community Tech team doesn't look at them, though, so wishes that aren't taken on by the team must be resubmitted each voting period until they are. Enterprisey (talk!) 00:34, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Iridescent, the oppose vote (the vote itself, rather than any comments that follow it) is pointless. Informative comments about why the proposal is a bad idea (or how it must not infringe upon a particular non-obvious process, etc.), however, can be extremely helpful.
      CommTech's promise is to "address" the top 10 vote-getters. Usually, if the "addressing" is going to involve words like "the PM says you'll implement that only over his dead body", then the proposal is removed before the voting stage. But in the general case, there is a gap between "addressing" and "implementing", and I hear (although I've not bothered to check) that one or two wishes most years end up not getting implemented (e.g., if the proposal is significantly more complicated than initially estimated).
      Huldra, maybe next year we should all band together and try to push that one to the top. I think these last couple of years have shown that the first-place position goes to the organized. As it stands now, I don't think that any admin-specific proposals are likely to win. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:46, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      WhatamIdoing, well that bug isn't really admin-specific, it is the reason I miss out major vandalism, as changes do not come up on my watch list if there has been a bot editing after the vandalism.(You can, eg first vandalise, then at the same time add a cn template....a bot will come along in minutes and add the date to the cn template, and presto: your vandalism does not come up on peoples watch lists...) And I am totally, utterly disgusted by the incompetence of the WMF developers, who haven't managed to fix this major bug in over a decade. To be blunt: I have given up asking for anything from the WMF developers. Huldra (talk) 22:26, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Revoking rights of the following users

      These users were indefinitely blocked as a compromised account, their rollback rights have to be removed. --B dash (talk) 01:28, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

        • Why? --Floquenbeam (talk) 01:29, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
          • Yeah, I was kind of wondering. Now, I get that rollback was abused by whoever compromised the account; however, the account is globally locked and can't to anything at all at this point. Since the original owner does not appear to have attached an email address, it is very unlikely the true owner would be able to regain access to the account, so the global lock is (in all likelihood) permanent. Removing the permission won't have an impact on the account. B dash, is there some other reason to do this? Maybe we're missing something. On the other hand, I have no opposition to stripping any compromised accounts down to "confirmed user". Risker (talk) 01:36, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      The accounts are globally locked, meaning that login and authentication abilities for them are completely cut off and across all WMF sites and projects... they're essentially completely dead accounts and 100% inaccessible and unusable by anyone. Hence, there's no need to remove the user permissions from these accounts (see this section of Wikipedia:User access levels for the typical norm regarding this situation). If a Steward decides that unlocking the accounts are appropriate, it's because they have checked, verified, and are satisfied that the rightful owners have regained access to them. ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 08:34, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Well technically, as the footnote you linked says, it's because we had an RfC about this, which confirmed that there's no reason to remove perms like this in situations like this. Stewards don't make enWiki policy. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 12:15, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Unblockself right removed on wikimedia wikis

      Per T150826, admins and crats can no longer unblock themselves, unless they placed the block initially. SQLQuery me! 02:42, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      @Swarm: It certainly makes a change from the self-same WMF devs generally ignoring and then taking months to implement community decisions :D ACPERM, anyone...? ——SerialNumber54129 08:42, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Minor correction. Years, not months. --Jayron32 17:27, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Counterexample:
      Community making a decision: Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/RfC: Wikimedia referrer policy
      Closing comments for above RfC: "From the below discussion, there seems to be a consensus for Question 5 (As far as possible/practical, should referrer information contain no information? (silent referrer))." and "The majority seem to favour prioritising user privacy over assisting external sites."
      WMF Ignoring the consensus of the community: Wikipedia talk:Village pump (policy)/RfC: Wikimedia referrer policy#Response to RFC.
      I'm just saying. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:30, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • On the whole, I'm mostly unconcerned about this. I voted the other way in the discussion, but I can also see where recent compromises to site security may have pushed the devs hand to move faster than the community would have otherwise. The self-block exemption removes most of my objections anyways (my only block was an accidental self-block that I reversed a few seconds later. It's not that hard to do when you have multiple tabs open and click the block button with the wrong tab open...), and it allows us to more quickly respond when another compromised admin account goes rogue. I'd rather it didn't have to come to this, but wishing we didn't live in a world where this was probably necessary doesn't bring that world into existence. --Jayron32 17:32, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Hopefully there is also a block rate limitation, so that out-of-control blockers can be limited in their damage. Perhaps one block per minute is acceptable. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:15, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      @Graeme Bartlett: Checkusers often block many accounts (easily 20+) in a single click from the CU interface.-- Jezebel's Ponyobons mots 22:27, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      In that case we may need a limit of say 100 per hour. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:24, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Or 10 admins per hour... :) --Floquenbeam (talk) 23:42, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      That would do! Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:08, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      This has been proposed in the phabricator ticket, i.e. introducing a rate limit on blocking only when blocking users who may block. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 03:02, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      It is technically possible to wipe out Wikipedia via a compromised account - until the Stewards nail them. A few years back this happened on a site I helped run - a retired admin who we forgot to desysop properly took exception to a post, deleted two admin accounts, wiped the discussion boards and Twitter feed, and blocked anyone from posting. Fortunately, I had root access to the server and backups :-) Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 13:34, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • This is basically exactly, to-the-letter the thought I posted here, so either the dev(s) who implemented this had the exact same thought or happened to read what I said. If it's the latter I apologize for sowing the seed, I obviously intended the proposal to be discussed first, even though the net result isn't necessarily something I disagree with. Ben · Salvidrim! ✉ 19:18, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Elisa Rolle's articles

      Hi all,

      I have had an off-wiki request from Elisa.rolle (talk · contribs), who was blocked indefinitely in August and does not want to return, saying she would like to delete all of the articles she has created. The motivation for this is several of her articles, such as Thomas Francis McCaffry have been nominated for AfD by Dlthewave, including claims of copyright violations by Justlettersandnumbers, and (without trying to prejudice the result) seem destined to be closed as "delete". She appears to have lost confidence in any of her work, and would rather put it on her own website where Wikipedia policies don't affect her. I'm not saying this is a good or a bad thing, just reporting what I think's going on.

      As a basic rule of thumb, Elisa's creations can be found at Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Elisa.rolle. I'm hesitant to go through the lot and delete them per G7 / G12 (if the latter applies) as I believe this would be controversial. So I'd like to ask the community what options we've got. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:32, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      I am afraid we need to open a CCI, which will probably take forever since this is I guess the most backlogged area of Wikipedia.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:38, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      A CCI has been open since March; I linked to it above. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:38, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      I see, indeed. Well, then we have to go through it and G7 delete what it could be deleted, and remove copyvio where it could be removed.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:54, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      (edit conflict) We could delete her articles, per WP:G7, If requested in good faith and provided that the only substantial content of the page was added by its author; but, with the amount of time that's passed, the latter seems unlikely. In fact, I might question whether even the former applies. ——SerialNumber54129 11:55, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      The specific request I got read as follows : "I do not want to save the articles, as you may have notice, I have copied all the articles about LGBT people on my own website, that yes, has already started to appear before Wikipedia in specific "queer" searches. Actually I would prefer for my article on Wikipedia to be ALL deleted, but I cannot do that." I would prefer to get a consensus that it's a legitimate good faith G7 request, and not simply a reaction against being indefinitely blocked. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:53, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Thanks for this; unfortunately, the request clearly fails the made in good faith requirement then. ——SerialNumber54129 12:10, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Well, it's either good faith to stop us spending time at AfD or CCI, or it's bad faith because she wants to delete her work in order to compete with Wikipedia. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 12:19, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      I've had some dealings with this editor, and my guess is that it's the latter. Beyond My Ken (talk) 12:40, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      I suspect that you're absolutely correct, BMK. ——SerialNumber54129 12:48, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      I don't see that sour grapes can really be regarded as a good-faith motive, but I suggest that this request should be accepted as if it were. The CCI backlog is almost 90000 articles and growing steadily, and this is an opportunity to reduce it slightly. Given the extent of the problems with this editor's work (see the CCI or, e.g., Caroline Elizabeth Newcomb, entirely copy-pasted from the two non-free cited sources), all content written by her will anyway have to be removed; in articles with no substantive contributions from other editors, deletion is the most effective way of doing that. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 12:50, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      • Oppose bulk deletion based on the request, on the face of it, absent any other reason for deletion. The editor released their contributions under CC BY-SA when she published them, and if she has now copied them to her own website then they are required for attribution. If they turn out to be copyright violations then nuke them, but it seems that requires investigation. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 14:47, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Support bulk deletion in spite of the bad-faith request. Commons has something called the precautionary principle, and something similar should start applying to mass copy-vio creators like this. Get rid of all of it, save a lot of hassle investigating, and what was truly notable and able to be sourced will eventually be re-created without the risk of a copyright-violating creator. Courcelles (talk) 14:52, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Courcelles, we do already have a principle similar to the Commons one which can be applied in CCI investigations: presumptive removal. However, a concise and clear-cut general policy similar to the Commons one would save untold hours in copyright investigation and clean-up, and I've long wished we had such a thing. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 15:39, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      The problem is that on Commons, it is easier to apply, since each photograph has only one uploader (if we do not count occasional derivatives). Therefore if copyvio is presumed, it gets deleted. Here, we have many authors, and it is uncommon to have a foundational copyvio or other serious problems in the article and still after many edits have a reasonable unproblematic page.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:35, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      I think this is one of those rare examples where WP:IAR applies. Regardless of if it's in bad faith, or process, this is a time where just dumping those articles is better for the project. — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite 18:01, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      We do have a policy: Wikipedia:Copyright violations#Addressing contributors - "If contributors have been shown to have a history of extensive copyright violation, it may be assumed that all of their major contributions are likely to be copyright violations, and they may be removed indiscriminately". Maybe it could do with some clarification as to how and when it could be used? I usually use this for copyvio sockpuppeteers. Support presumptive removal. MER-C 03:15, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Israel/Palestine Arbcom restrictions and the Balfour Declaration

      According to the huge edit notice that comes up on Balfour Declaration editors of the page "must be signed into an account and have at least 500 edits and 30 days tenure". So how come an IP just edited it? Is the restriction not enforced technically in any way? DuncanHill (talk) 12:04, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Balfour Declaration only had extended confirmed protection for the day it was the featured article (November 2, 2017). That edit notice is the standard WP:ARBPIA notice. No comment on why it doesn't have extended confirmed protection now. -Niceguyedc Go Huskies! 12:13, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      It has ECP now, indefinitely. Courcelles (talk) 14:40, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      @Courcelles: thanks for the protection, but please have in mind that according to the Arbcom decision all ARBPIA extended-confirmed protections must be logged here. I personally find this a pretty bad decision, which creates extra works for admins with no benefits, but, well, it exists and is compulsory for everybody.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:05, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Also pinging @Doug Weller:, also thanks for the recent extended confirmed protection.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:08, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Duplicate article cleanup request

      Last evening I tagged a revision of Webb's City and the Civil Rights Movement of St. Petersburg, Florida for deletion as a test page, but before it was deleted, the user overwrote it with an article that is essentially an overhaul of Webb's City. A hist-merge seems appropriate, but I'm not certain that their new version is ready for the mainspace yet. Requesting sysop evaluation and cleanup. Thanks! Home Lander (talk) 14:37, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Request to undraftify Draft:Martial law in Ukraine

      Hallo, This article was moved to draft at 16:11 today as "undersourced" by @Whispering: but I have now clarified its four "External links" as proper references to reliable sources. I think the article ought to be in mainspace now, before someone creates a duplicate article on the topic. I've asked the draftifier on his talk page to move the article back to mainspace, but I suspect that he can't do so any more than I can as the redirect from mainspace has been edited (with a CSD) so a non-admin can't make the move. He hasn't edited since 16:11 when he did this draftification, so may not be online anyway.

      Could an admin please move this article back from draft to mainspace? Thanks. PamD 17:00, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      PamD, I moved the redirect elsewhere to clear the way and accepted the draft. The leftover is nominated for deletion. Home Lander (talk) 17:07, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Let me just remark here that the article is clearly POV since it fails to mention the upcoming elections in Ukraine and blames Russia in Wikipedia's voice with the only two sources for that sentence being official Ukrainian documents (primary sources). Just a remark, it happens quite a lot.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:27, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Apologies, I got busy with work, good to see it all worked out though. Whispering(t) 17:52, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Permission error

      An editor at the Teahouse reported that there was a permission error on trying to create User talk:Pavan_Kumar H L, and this is indeed so, see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Pavan_Kumar_H_L&action=edit . Can an admin please sort it out? --David Biddulph (talk) 20:12, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Talk page created, so you can send a message; but the blacklist entry needs sorting as it will currently affect this user's whole user space. BethNaught (talk) 20:19, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Stephen Hillenburg page being attacked with penises

      Not sure where else to get a quick response... Anyone available to block User:Nighthawkzx, a spam-only account who will not stop adding penises to the Stephen Hillenburg article? Nohomersryan (talk) 20:35, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      I've added that image to the bad image list, and the account has been blocked by Widr. Looks like another compromised account. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 20:41, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Writ Keeper, this addition can be removed as the image has been deleted from Commons. Home Lander (talk) 00:11, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Now locked by Trijnstel. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 20:48, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      SPA activity at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cameron Hardy (singer)

      There appears to be some suspicious single-purpose account activity at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cameron Hardy (singer). TwoThree recently-registered accounts have just happened to stumble across the article very shortly after account creation, and one of them has commented at the AFD using a signature that is, to put it mildly, eerily similar to that of the the article's creator. I have to be AFK for a bit, but figured I'd mention it here for other admins in case anything potentially actionable happens in the interim. --Kinu t/c 21:48, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Encyclopedia Titanica

      moved to WP:RSN
      The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

      Is Encyclopedia Titanica a reliable source? It's used extensively in Titanic-related articles such as Passengers of the RMS Titanic, Margaret Brown and RMS Titanic. My concern is that the site is based on user-generated content [42][43] and their editorial/fact-checking policies are unclear. –dlthewave ☎ 03:35, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      I share your concerns but the proper venue for this discussion is the Reliable sources noticeboard. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 03:44, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      No, near-certainly. But, RSN is a better venue. ∯WBGconverse 03:46, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Sorry, I opened the wrong tab. Feel free to to delete this discussion. –dlthewave ☎ 03:51, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Level 1 desysop of Orangemike

      Under the Level 1 desysopping procedures the administrator permissions of Orangemike (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) have been temporarily removed as a suspected compromised account.

      Supporting: BU Rob13, Premeditated Chaos, Opabinia regalis, Mkdw

      For the Arbitration Committee;

      ~ Rob13Talk 04:37, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Level 1 desysop of Orangemike For the arbitration committee; --Cameron11598 (Talk) 04:58, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Manual of Style

      Thread not heading in a productive direction. --Rschen7754 06:04, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

      Someone just made a very strange grammatical choice at Record Producer. End communication. Hamster Sandwich (talk) 04:59, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      WP:SOFIXIT. Why do you need sysops? ∯WBGconverse 05:14, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Kindly... Do not presume to tell me what to do. Do sysops clean up, revert and generally put things right? well then... Hamster Sandwich (talk) 05:20, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Actually any good faith editor can clean up, revert and generally put things right. It does not have to be a sysop. MarnetteD|Talk 05:29, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Oh dear, I just saw this. @Bishonen and SlimVirgin: would one of you have a word with Hamster Sandwich, since he appears to respect you? I'm not getting through here (see the thread above, also). Vanamonde (talk) 05:35, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Hamster Sandwich to Leaky Caldron on Hamster Sandwich's talk page: "You sound like an out of touch authoritarian. With dissociative tendencies. Now, I've already decided never ever to run for Administrative duties again. If you want to lurk around my talk page, be prepared to get ya self BURNT. Or just go away. Latter suits me fine." This is after Hamster Sandwich asked for the return of "THE HAMMER" on WP:BN.
        Whoever Hamster Sandwich once was, this person is not one we need around here. They had 3000+ edits in 13 years, only a third of them to mainspace. They've made 50 edits this year, and the last time they edited before that was June 2016 (12 edits). [44] They're not going to edit articles, and they're not going to fix vandalism when they come across it. They're doing some kind of annoying WP:POINTy b.s. thing with these two reports. Why don't we fix it so they don't have to make any edits to Wikipedia whatsoever? We won't be missing much.
        End communication. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:50, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Post-close comment - Really, Rschen7754, you decided all on your own that the suggestion of an editor in good standing that an obviously problematic editor ought to be (at the very least) considered for sanctioning is nothing that the community should be allowed to comment on, because it was "not heading in a productive direction"? I have news for you, if Hamster Sandwich is a disruptive editor -- and every indication here is that he is -- then the community has every right to consider whether he should be sanctioned or not. Or did I miss something and you were appointed to be in charge of deciding who is properly sanctioned? Be wary of overstepping your administrative authority, it's not a blanket of immunity, you know. Beyond My Ken (talk) 08:32, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      I agree this was closed rather soon. I want to reply to Vanamonde's request to "have a word" with Hamster Sandwich. I won't be doing that. Hamster Sandwich is a former admin, who asked for the tools back at WP:BN. Being out of the loop, he thought it wouldn't be a big deal, and lightheartedly asked for "the hammer" (in scare quotes) back. Of course it isn't that easy, but he didn't know. The bureaucrats responded politely, explaining that it couldn't be done like that, and he thanked them and said he'd reapply through the normal channels. What Leaky caldron and Iridescent saw in that to make them go on the attack, I don't know. The reasonable thing AFAICS is to treat a returning long-gone editor like a newbie, and not bite. Only after several bites did HS answer back sharply, and I don't blame him. The thread is here. I think he may have missed that actually most people welcomed him back kindly, and some of them apologized for the rough reception he had had. See threads on Slim Virgin's page, on mine, and on HS's own, before he blanked it. And what do you, know, Leaky caldron turned up on HS page and insisted that he had meant every word so nobody had better apologize for him. The reason he gave for insisting was that HS had "turned up out of the blue" (where else would a returning user turn up from, FGS?) and mentioned "the hammer" (obviously jokingly, remember the scare quotes). Leaky Caldron's behavior has been consistently awful, and I'd much rather somebody had a sharp word with him. (It won't be me, though. I have too much experience of his manner to invite dialogue there.) (Moving the "archive bottom" to include later comments.) Bishonen | talk 10:43, 29 November 2018 (UTC).[reply]
      The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

      Refdesks and deny

      Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science is currently semi-protected. A clever template ({{pp}}) puts a look-at-me box at the top announcing that sock puppets have forced protection of the page until November 30, 2018 at 9:00 pm UTC. Doesn't that encourage the troll? Rather than WP:DENY, the banner announces the troll's success and gives them a handy time to mark on their calendar for when they should return. There must be a less exciting way to describe the situation. Why not remove the box and rely on the boring fact that non-autoconfirmed users will not see an edit link? People will be inconvenienced and some will be puzzled but with that reward there is no reason to expect the current situation to ever change. Regarding the protection, why not set it to infinite and have a convention among admins who patrol the area that someone will remove the protection at a suitable time—without making a public fuss? Johnuniq (talk) 08:39, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      I totally agree. Usually when I do small=yes the banner disappears, but it doesn't disappear in refdesk's case. Strange. Someone else can figure this out, but a larger banner to encourage ref desk troll to troll more is certainly unnecessary and counterproductive. Alex Shih (talk) 10:24, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      |small=yes was overridden from the master header of all refdesk subpages. –Ammarpad (talk) 10:50, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Good catch, thanks. Now can we have a consensus to un-override small=yes from all refdesk pages, and indefinitely semi refdesk pages for a while? It looks like the refdesk troll will be with us for another while so let's think long term. Alex Shih (talk) 12:02, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Agree with indef semi and agree the big banner congratulating the troll on getting what he wants is a bad idea. DuncanHill (talk) 12:11, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      I think the idea (in the past anyway) was that since the refdesks are places where new, often unregistered editors end up, it would be helpful for them to clearly see why they cannot edit. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 12:50, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      The it could just say vandalism, no need to mention sockpuppetry (which may well mean nothing to new users anyway). DuncanHill (talk) 12:53, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Of course, long-term (or indefinite) semi-protection of the Ref Desks means admitting that the Ref Desks have entirely given up on being anything except a hangout for the 'regulars'. I guess we're okay with that. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 13:59, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Or a few more admins could keep an eye on them and on RPP. Of course that's just pie in the sky thinking. But as long as it takes half an hour or morwe to get an admin response when the IP vandal is posting multiple times a minute (and reappearing immediately protection expires), and sinebot is preventing rollback, then long term semi is the least worst option. DuncanHill (talk) 14:06, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      I'm fairly sure it's trivial to disable sinebot if consensus is established on the talk page. Nil Einne (talk) 17:59, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Reducing the banner at refdesks is a bad idea for the reason already mentioned - the newbies who are the target audience of refdesks do not know about reduced banners. I would recommend using {{pp-semi}} rather than {{pp-vand}} or {{pp-sock}}.--Ymblanter (talk) 12:59, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      OK that sounds reasonable. DuncanHill (talk) 14:10, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Yeah I agree that we need the banner. Precisely which banner probably doesn't matter so much, although we have had people confused in the past about why the page was protected. I settled on pp-sock as the most informative banner which when no info was given on who the editor was probably didn't give them much recognition but am fine with a different banner. I suspect that the greatest recognition for the editor is the protection anyway, and these discussions like those on ANI or WT:RD second. Unfortunately their editing is bad enough I don't know what the alternative is. When we have these discussions, we could try not to get so angry at each other as happened here and at ANI as I suspect that is also giving this LTA far more than the banner ever is, but that's probably a forlorn hope.

      BTW, as for the time thing, while it's fine to consider different ways of protecting the desks and unprotecting them, in relation to the time shown on the banner, let's remember this editor is using lots of different proxies (I think taken from a random anonymous proxy list) using ROT13 and a large variety of other means to get around edit filters and to post several times a minute, sometimes for up to 30 minutes at a stretch. They've been bothering the RD in one way of the other since 2010 or earlier. The chance they haven't figured out how to read a protection log without relying on banners is close to zero. Their scripts may even do it automatically. In other words, deny recognition sure. Giving the info the editor doesn't already know, almost no chance of that. The time will benefit true newbies but it won't benefit this editor other than in such much whatever recognition/sick pleasure it may give them. (And yes unfortunately these comments probably help that, but as I said earlier I'm not sure what the alternative is.)

      Nil Einne (talk) 18:13, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      What's going on here?

      I'm not the only person who sees all of these completely benign edits oversighted, right? Is an admin/oversight account compromised or something?💵Money💵emoji💵💸 16:40, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      If there is a lot of time between when problematic material is added, and when it removed, then every version between those times has to be oversighted. The non-oversighted material is all still here on the page, you just can't see the incremental additions. --Floquenbeam (talk) 16:44, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      I've always found it weird that we do this. Redacting diffs which are still represented in the text must surely breach the requirement for attribution, which is a key part of the licensing terms. As tough as it is, I'd have thought a full revert to the last good version is a necessity in this situation. Not that I'm an expert or anything, so perhaps I'm wrong.  — Amakuru (talk) 16:57, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Content was reverted and oversighted after it had been sitting on the noticeboard for a good while. Reverting to the last good version would have rolled back 88 other edits. That's rather a lot of collateral damage. I guess Worm That Turned Could have rolled them back and then re-added them, but that's a bit bureaucratic, surely. Vanamonde (talk) 17:03, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      @Amakuru: Not really, no, because copyright law (and law in general) isn't that black and white. Generally speaking, CC licences say attribution "may be done in a manner reasonable to the means, medium, and context" which leaves a lot of room for interpretation, especially if keeping intermediate revisions may violate some other law. --Deskana (talk) 17:09, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      (edit conflict) From a copyright/attribution standpoint, the legal requirements are met by the existence of the names in the edit history which are still viewable by anyone (and the actual diffs are also viewable by individual oversighters who can specifically attribute content if called upon to do so). To use a real life example, if you go to any of the PediaPress books that reuse our content or make a book of an article yourself, what you will see is a simple list of every person who has edited the page. It will not list who added what. Doing this is sufficient for the terms of the license. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:10, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      FYI I started a discussion about a possible fix at Wikipedia talk:Oversight#Problems with the oversight tool. 28bytes (talk) 16:26, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Password attack

      Closing this again: there isn't much we can do here. People should remember to have a strong password that is unique to Wikipedia. Admins on any Wikimedia project can enable 2FA by default on all Wikimedia wikis and non-admins can request it at meta:Steward_requests/Global_permissions#Requests_for_other_global_permissions if they feel it appropriate for their situation. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:08, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

      Just an FYI at this stage, just received a "There have been multiple failed attempts to log in to your account from a new device" message from Wikipedia. DuncanHill (talk) 17:55, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      DuncanHill, if you haven't changed your password recently/if you've ever used your password on a different website, I would recommend changing it to a strong password. If you do that, you shouldn't have to worry much about a compromise at this time. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:57, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      (Undone close. –Davey2010Talk 18:32, 29 November 2018 (UTC))[reply]

      I'm not entirely happy with the close. This may be related to the long term abuse at the RefDesks, given the timing and my recent edit history. DuncanHill (talk) 18:14, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      I mean, maybe? Also might be related to the large number of compromised accounts we've seen recently. But it doesn't really matter if it is or isn't; there's not really anything we can do about it, so there's not much to do in this section but close it. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 18:18, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      DuncanHill, if you would like to enable 2FA as a non-admin, you can request a steward enable it at meta:Steward_requests/Global_permissions#Requests_for_other_global_permissions. The name of the permission is OATH tester. Regarding the ref desk troll, I'm not aware of them trying to compromise any accounts. As for the other account compromises, my advice above is true for everyone. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:21, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      (so many EC) I'm up to 54 attempts. There has been a recent spree targeting accounts including of admins which has affected the main page and elsewhere. I initially thought the login attempts were related to that but since you're also affected I suspect you may be right and this is related so said LTA. (Although it could still be something else e.g. large number of editors and coincidence or targeting recently active editors.) But at the same time there's not really much that can be done other than making sure you have a secure password. It may be useful to post on WTRD though and I'll do that. Nil Einne (talk) 18:22, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      My latest notification shows 1692 failed attempts in the last few minutes. And I'm up to about 30 notifications today. So yes if anyone's concerned request or enable 2FA. -- zzuuzz (talk) 18:25, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      ...and for the love of all the gods, take care of your scratch codes Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 18:27, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      I've undone the close as seems stupid to leave it be, That being said I don't really see what AN can do about it ..... the refdesks could all be related but on the otherhand it may not be, ANyway reopened. –Davey2010Talk 18:31, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      (ec)Thanks all, I was aware of the attacks on admins. I've had the occasional attempt over the years but never a spate like this. The timing, with the propose indef semi on the desks above, seemed suggestive to me. I do have a "number 1 fan" but his MO is to vandalise articles I've edited and post childish abuse, so I don't think it's him. Leaving the thread open gives us a chance of seeing if others are affected, and then perhaps to find a connexion. DuncanHill (talk) 18:36, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Yeah I'm not sure of the details but I think the non admin accounts have been used to vandalise Donald Trump's page and other high visibility pages which are currently extended confirmed protected. Because of the way Siri and some other external software display wikipedia content, it can affect things even when people aren't directly personally visiting wikipedia. Nil Einne (talk) 18:47, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • I just got that notice is as well. It's happened to me twice today, and has never happened before. I changed my password after the first attempt. It's pretty damn strong right now, and I'm also on 2FA. The first attack started about 2 hours ago, and lasted only 4-5 minutes. The second attack started 42 minutes ago, and is ongoing. As I am typing this, notices are refreshing every few seconds about the attack. Just FYI. --Jayron32 18:39, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Just had the RefDesk troll on my Talkpage. DuncanHill (talk) 18:43, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      He hit Nil immediately after you. I'm just waiting for my turn. --Jayron32 18:53, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      We had a similar attack earlier this year, on one day then I got several hundred attempts which completely flooded my notification list.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:57, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Grafana graphs for those interested. Set to last year for context. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 18:55, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      I complained about the RefDesk troll and am now getting password attacks as well. So I guess yes it is that person . Dmcq (talk) 18:57, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      I've had a bunch of attempts just now as well and I'd have to dig to find the last time I took an admin action at the refdesk or the Donald Trump article. Doesn't mean it isn't related to those but could mean something else is up. Ian.thomson (talk) 19:03, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      If it is the same it might be interesting to see what overlap you have with their interest. For instance I see you removed a bunch of changes by an ip recently to Special Counsel investigation (2017–present) but the ip is not on an open proxy list so that doesn't count. I'll have a quick look to see if I spot anything real. Dmcq (talk) 19:13, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      So from what everyone is saying, this appears unrelated to the recent compromises in my opinion since it is a different MO. It might be the ref desk troll, but I'm not sure on that point. The behavior here seems to indicate it, but we also had a mass brute force attack this summer that people thought for a second was related to an ongoing arb case, but was actually just a general brute force attempt on Wikipedia accounts. It can be scary, but having a strong password is the most important thing you can do here. If people want 2FA, they can request it on meta at the link I provided above. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:00, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      If it is the RefDesk troll they will very possibly continue doing this for weeks and they will mount attacks from different ips using open proxies. The open proxies I've seen them using are all on public lists so could be closed automatically. I put a note at User_talk:Slakr#Proxy_list_probably_being_used_by_a_troll about this. Dmcq (talk) 19:04, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

      Multiple attempts to log on to my account

      There have been over 400 attempts to log on to my Wikipedia account, and the number is growing as I speak.

      They aren't going to succeed -- my passphrase consists of 256 random characters generated from a hardware random number generator -- but I thought that somebody might want to track the IP address being used and see if they have an account. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:19, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Yup, see the section right above this one. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 19:20, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Just use "swordfish" as your password.[45] They will never guess that one. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:33, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      It took a lot of patience but I managed to type the entire script for that scene and gain access to Guy's account. Whether or not to include the knocks and count them individually or just as "[knocking]" threw me off. I'll set your password to the script of the 2001 movie "Swordfish". It's far more secure since no one will want to sit through it. Ian.thomson (talk) 19:47, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      I like that film. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:35, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Does 2412 attempts sound like a lot? And what happens if I'm logged in - will attempts always fail? Has anyone ever reported a successful break in? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:39, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Martinevans123 recently there have been a few admins (mostly inactive) whose accounts were hacked and I have a memory that the same occurred many years ago. There have been other editor accounts compromised over the years though I couldn't give you any names due to dusty memory banks. I've had over 400 attempts today as well so they must be using some kind of computer program to generate these passwords. Several of the names above have dealt with the ref desk troll over the years so that it is likely the same person - or a copycat at any rate. MarnetteD|Talk 19:48, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Nuts - messed up the ping so here it is again Martinevans123. MarnetteD|Talk 19:49, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      (edit conflict) How exactly does one see how many failed log in attempts there are? I've gotten several pings/emails but assume those represent multiple attempts. Ian.thomson (talk) 19:54, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Curiously the Alert messages seem to change. Now all my alert messages just say "There have been multiple failed attempts to log into your account with a new device." But while it was actually happening (and I had up to six alerts in the unread stack), the top alert told me a total number. I have now just checked my emails and I have 48 - all with the same generic message, with no number. Martinevans123 (talk) 20:04, 29 November 2018 (UTC) p.s. thanks very much for the info User:MarnetteD.[reply]
      You are welcomne M. I had the same experience with the alert ping. It first stated 408 attempts and then changed to the same multiple attempts message that I received as multiple emails. MarnetteD|Talk 20:10, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      [ec] Attempts will always fail unless they guess your password. If your password is listed on on our List of the most common passwords page, you have a problem. :) If you are following my advice at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Macon's Principle you have no problem at all.
      Realistically, they are most likely running a "most common passwords" list against a bunch of accounts, looking for the idiot who thought that "secret1" was a good idea.
      Here is one list of the 1000 most popular passwords: https://www.passwordrandom.com/most-popular-passwords
      -Guy Macon (talk) 20:10, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Thanks, Guy that is all very useful. But I meant, if they did "guess" and they broke in, would I expect to be told? Are multiple sessions from different machines even possible? I'd guess the first thing they would do would be to change the password on this account. Would I not know they had done this until the next time I tried to log in? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 20:28, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      I use multiple sessions all the time; I prefer editing text on the computer, and uploading photos from my phone. I'm logged into both simultaneously, and switching between them without logging out or back in. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 21:37, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      What's that laddie? You have a telephone that takes pictures??! What will they think of next! "dilly ding, dilly dong" 123 (talk) 21:43, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      @Martinevans123: Multiple sessions from different machines are possible. If they got into your account you'd find out from the compromised block notice. I strongly recommend establishing a committed ID using Template:Committed identity, in addition to whatever other precautions one would take. Ian.thomson (talk) 20:33, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Thanks Ian. Forgive me being "Lord Dense of Thickness" here, but how does that "compromised block notice" get triggered? I imagined it had to be requested or added manually (not that I can recall seeing one very often). Martinevans123 (talk) 10:08, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      @Martinevans123: It's one of the regular templates for block notices. Compromised accounts can really only belong to upstanding(-ish) users and are invariably used for uncharacteristic vandalism or the occasional POV-pushing edit war. If someone was going to compromise accounts whose talk pages were covered in uw4 warnings and only use them to engage in apparently good-faith WP:GNOME-ish behavior, they could avoid detection indefinitely. Ian.thomson (talk) 15:25, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Still struggling. That template is added by a person, who suspects a compromise, not by a machine which recognizes some kind of aberrant activity, yes? Martinevans123 (talk) 15:32, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      The blocks are carried out by an admin mostly based on behavioral evidence or possibly a CU. While the site knows if your account is being logged into from a new IP address, there is no automatic system to block such log ins (otherwise my account would have been constantly locked while I was using a VPN in China). Ian.thomson (talk) 15:44, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Thanks. My only point was that if there is no odd activity, the invader could wait for months, or even years, before they changed the password and wreaked whatever havoc they saw fit. Only then might the account holder notice and alert an Admin. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:49, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      That's usually what happens with the POV-pushers. The only thing to really be done is make sure you have a unique and strong password and a committed identity. Ian.thomson (talk) 15:59, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Strange, I haven't had one at all. ——SerialNumber54129 20:29, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Hm, I wonder what that means... - TNT 💖 20:35, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Thanks TNT, I'll re-phrase to—err—"for some time", then :D ——SerialNumber54129 21:08, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      If it helps Serial Number 54129 you're not the only one :(, Would be interesting to know why not everyone on the project is targeted .... –Davey2010Talk 20:37, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      @Boing! said Zebedee: Man, you got one of them computers from Wargames?! :) ——SerialNumber54129 21:06, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Well, ain't that swell, cousin Zebediah. Over here at Clampett Mansion, me and Elly May, we got enough trouble just gettin' one of them lazy lappy tops to work! Martinevans123 (talk) 21:31, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Yes I've had some thousands of attempts but they seem to have stopped. It is ridiculous that there seems to be no rate limiting on attempts. Some people will use stupid passwords, it isn't good enough to just say it's their own fault and not apply any brake on attempts. And is anyone told where the attempts come from so the ip can be blocked. And as far as the RefDesk is concerned are we going to block the open proxies in current lists of them on the web? A troll can just get a list of 17000 of them and set up a python job to troll Wikipedia and as far as I can see that is exactly what the RefDesk troll has done. Dmcq (talk) 23:33, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      If you don't mind me asking what is the refdesk troll even doing? It's bad enough to be revdel'd but I have no idea what they're actually attempting to do. --Tarage (talk) 01:48, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      There may be more than one refdesk troll but one of them keeps posting personal information about the family of someone who is recently deceased. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:59, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      (EC) There is IP based rate limiting. According to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive298#Please help- who tried to break into my account? and my own quick tests, it's 5 attempts every 5 minutes, and 150 attempts in 2 days. Before the hard limit, a soft limit where CAPTCHAs are required will kick in. However any competent attacker has access to a large number of such resources. Assuming it is the LTA, we already know this. Remember also that our blocks don't directly affect login attempts. Any limit needs to balance the issue of shared IPs and non-open proxies against the risks to users, especially in an IPv4 address exhaustion world where CG-NAT etc are common. I'm assuming the foundation have a sensible treatment of IPv6 probably treating /64 similar to the way of a single IPv4 otherwise any mildly competent attacker basically has unlimited attempts without even requiring CAPTCHAs for almost no effort. I don't believe there is any rate limiting for accounts. Adding such a limit will basically allow DOSing someone i.e. preventing them from ever signing into their account. BTW with reference to the above comments, assuming that the attacker doesn't immediately change your password and/or email or simply start abusing, you can get notification by email of successful login attempts from unrecognised devices. If the attacker has access to anything which will make their login attempt from a recognised device you probably have big problems so this will basically tell your if someone does successfully compromise your account. It's on by default AFAIK, but you can check your notification settings to make sure. Nil Einne (talk) 02:13, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      I've had yet another ten or twenty thousand attempts I think so that rate limiting isn't working. It may be the rate limiting is per ip and so it would be broken by using open proxies like the RefDesk troll does. Dmcq (talk) 11:19, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      I've been wondering whether to say this or it's alarmism or beans but I figure by now it's probably fine. One thing to remember is that if this is a dedicated attack on a select group of editors, this could involve more than simple generic guessing (including compromised passwords and variations) which I'm assuming is what most other attackers have been doing. The attacker could use info they've gathered from what you've posted here or what you've posted elsewhere if it's connectable to your account here. (E.g. Your real name.) They could also analyse any passwords connected to you that have have been compromised in one of the many leaks looking for any patterns etc which probably won't be automatically picked up by a script. So if your account password is somewhat secure but not extremely so to a dedicated attacker, you might want to consider carefully whether it's time to change it. This also applies to any password for the email address that's connected to your account if it's guessable (including publicly posted). While not very likely (since it's the sort of thing which may attract the attention of authorities and also more difficult to do while leaving no trace or who you are), there's also the mild risk they may try to use these and social engineering to compromise your email by resetting its password or whatever. Admins of course should consider this is always a risk. (It's always a risk to any editor if you're unlucky or piss off some idiot, in this case it may have already happened.) Nil Einne (talk) 02:33, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      So if anyone reading this uses the same password on Wikipedia and anywhere else, change your Wikipedia password to something unique now. --Guy Macon (talk) 05:09, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      True. But I've now had yet another 8000 attempts. They shouldn't be able to do that in the first place. It's no trouble to them at the moment but can cause trouble here. Dmcq (talk) 11:32, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      and now yet another 7000. That's not rate limited. Dmcq (talk) 11:35, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Yes, but anything that would stop that would allow the attacker to lock you out of your account. Think about it: If we set it up so your account would lock out people from attempting to log in after X failed attempts, they just need to hammer your account X times, and now they've prevented you from using it. It's like someone mailing you 500,000 letters per day, and you're asking "is there anyway I can fix my mailbox so they can't send these letters" No, there isn't. The ability of someone to execute attacks like this is limited only by their willingness and resources. All that you can do is have a good password so it won't be successful. --Jayron32 13:18, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Who said anything about locking out after N attempts? Just introduce gradual delays as the number of failures increases. Once it's up to 5 seconds or so, the attacker's ability to exhaustively search is crippled, and the real user is inconvenienced hardly at all. Or does this approach have a flaw I'm unaware of? —Steve Summit (talk) 15:06, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Another way of doing it would be to allow a user to tie their account to a limited number of IPs and/or devices? Has that ever been possible? Or is it not permitted for other reasons? Maybe it's just technically too difficult. But a truly secure password (and possibly also a committed ID) looks like the best and most flexible solution, I guess. Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:33, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      I’m currently under an active attack - at least 45 and counting by the dozens as of writing. — Matthew Wong (at PMA), 13:37, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      And now I’m up to 546 attempts now. Should I report this to PMA, where I’m editing from? — Matthew Wong (at PMA), 13:40, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Don't worry Matthew. Compared with Dmcq you seem to be getting off lightly. Just keep calm and follow official advice! Martinevans123 (talk) 13:42, 30 November 2018 (UTC) .....and make sure your password is a good one, of course.[reply]
      Still ongoing, up to 6446 attempts currently. — Matthew Wong (at PMA), 13:52, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      and now 10476 attempts and at least 200 identical emails. — Matthew Wong (at PMA), 13:57, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Wow, impressive. Getting into Dmcq territory now, I think. I'm intrigued to know what algorithm is being used. I wonder if the attempted passwords couldn't be made public somewhere. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:00, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      So now my second attack in 24 hours has just begun. Is this mere coincidence? Martinevans123 (talk) 14:04, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      I’ve turned off my notifications and emails for attempted failed logins as they were getting annoying - I’ve still got emails enabled for password resets and actual logins - so far haven’t gotten any of those. — Matthew Wong (at PMA), 14:07, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      I notice you reverted and blocked a reference desk ip just before the attempts on your password started. The rate of attack looks like just a single machine. I hate to think what would happen if there was a proper attack by a professional. Yes there are problems with rate-limiting but I'm sure other places have better mitigations - after all Amazon for instance would have much more to lose from having its passwords cracked. Dmcq (talk) 14:20, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      They requested another password and Wikipedia has set up a temporary password that they could attack as well. And it is ten alpha or digits, about 50 bits so I don't think they'll have much joy with that either. ;-) Dmcq (talk) 14:34, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      2FA update?

      Going with this, has there been any progress on opening up 2FA access to non-admins so that this becomes a bit more futile? I'd be definitely up to beta-test it as a non-admin (I've switched to 2FA/fingerprint verification with everything possible), but I haven't really seen an update lately to opening it up beyond admins and WMF officials. It may be time to roll it out to more users, especially those who are affected as non-admins (I have not thankfully; the worst I've gotten is the 'at least you tried, you forgot your password' email 'hacking'). I did see that I can request it above, but it should be opened up a bit more. Nate • (chatter) 04:25, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      @Mrschimpf: it is in constant discussion, see also meta:Meta:Requests for comment/Enable 2FA on meta for all users - largest challenges are that if you screw it up at all there is no official recovery method, so you lose your account forever. There are some unofficial methods, but they may not yet be able to scale to the masses. You can opt in if you want at meta:SRGP. — xaosflux Talk 04:30, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Thanks; just did so. Nate • (chatter) 04:31, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Doesn't WP:Committed identity work for people who have their password broken? Dmcq (talk) 18:09, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      It helps prove that the account is yours, but that doesn't change the fact that you can't actually log into it--that still requires dev intervention. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 18:10, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Anyway I think we should be doing whatever large companies like Amazon do for most of their customers. They don't do two factor. Dmcq (talk) 18:13, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Ban Appeal

      The chances of this topic ban being lifted are less than zero. When his block expires I'm sure eyes will be on his edits (nac) Legacypac (talk) 06:05, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

      Hello, I would like to voice my appeal for being un-banned from the topic of post 1932 politics. In the past few days, I have engaged in edit wars with one specific user, one who hides behind weak sources to peddle his politically biased edits. All edits made by this user are A). poorly written and B). in clear violation of WP:NPOV. I will take full responsibility for the steps I took to undo this users bad faith edits. I have no one but myself to blame for my actions. Still, my goal of making Wikipedia a better place and a neutral highway of information has remained steadfast, and bad faith editors responsible for bending Wikipedia to their will have no place here. I believe that I should be unbanned because I was only trying to do right, and that the editor on the other side of the edit war be looked into as well. It takes two to tango. KidAd (talk) 20:15, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      No (I'll go into more detail why I think "no" when you go into more detail about the circumstances around your topic ban; there is zero information included here). --Floquenbeam (talk) 20:20, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      @KidAd: I assume the "specific editor" who's edits you are disparaging above is Snooganssnoogans? If so, you need to notify them of this discussion.-- Jezebel's Ponyobons mots 20:31, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Tell me what I need to include, and I would be happy to include it. KidAd (talk) 20:23, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      For starters: who's the other editor? Who banned you? (Those ones are rhetorical, I know it's Snooganssnoogans and Bishonen, respectively). What article(s) were your banworthy edits to? What edits do you think were poor? What did you do wrong? How are you going to avoid doing it again in the future? We need specifics of your situation, and you're responsible for providing them, preferably in the form of diffs. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 20:29, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Yes, what Writ Keeper said. However, some free advice: I've looked at your recent contributions, and I would say the odds of a successful appeal of a topic ban on this topic are approximately 0.0001%. --Floquenbeam (talk) 20:38, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      KidAd, could you describe in your own words why you received the topic ban, and what might be done differently in future? —Sladen (talk) 20:25, 29 November 2018 (UTC) (Ideally with a couple of diffs).[reply]
      Thank you. I was banned for repeatedly attempting to revert content like this: [46] and [47] and [48]. As you can see from the diffs, I am not blanking information, I am attempting to revert it to a more neutral state. For example, the editor I found myself warring with has a habit of labeling claims "false." I attempted to explain [49] that labeling claims as true or false reveals bias towards the claims. Claims, inherently, are challenged and not treated the same as facts. KidAd (talk) 20:36, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Without even opening the links I'm just gonna have to say you're mistaken: we do label claims as false if reliable sources report that they are objectively false. We are not required to create artificial balance between truth and falsehood. Wikipedia is indeed biased toward reality, which some people do deny for political purposes (e.g. Climate change denial, Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories, and Alex Jones's entire career). Ian.thomson (talk) 20:43, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Then that seems like a glaring hole in policy. User:Snooganssnoogans takes this concept to the extreme, arbitrarily labeling politicians claims and views "false" or "incorrect." I don't care about the user's politics, but I do care about neutrality and bias. If I went on Donald Trump's page and began labeling all of his ideas and actions "correct" and "100% true" I would be kicked off this website so fast it would make my head spin. I would also like to point out that luckily, without my intervention, others are taking time to revert edits like these, because they are glaringly wrong, and I don't care which Wikipedia acronym finds fault in that. In the future, I will have to let other editors do the work for me, but users like Snoogans who only edit to make waves and create discourse (and are proud of it) should not be here. KidAd (talk) 20:50, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      KidAd, erm, which part of this directly addresses "could you describe in your own words why you received the topic ban, and what might be done differently in future?" —Sladen (talk) 20:53, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      (edit conflict) Regarding your Trump example, see Veracity of statements by Donald Trump. If the relevant sources demonstrate how a statement is false and label it as such, then we have to follow suit.
      Looking at the example you provided (which I would assume would be the most damning evidence you can find), the source cited is titled "Former Gov. Pat McCrory falsely says many college students are committing voter fraud." It goes on to say that "McCrory is wrong about this" and they provide proof of this from both the website of the North Carolina Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement and the elections board spokesman. @KidAd: Did you not read the source at all or did you decide that alternative facts were more appropriate? Either way, you're only making the ban appear more necessary.
      As you've not provided any indication that you have any plans to truly understand (much less seriously acknowledge) the necessity of your topic ban nor any desire to improve yourself to render the ban unnecessary, but instead are focused on the actions of others, I'm only becoming more and more tempted to WP:SNOW close this. Ian.thomson (talk) 21:02, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • (edit conflict) Oppose Well, let's cut to the chase. This is an appeal; I oppose it. The OP clearly has no real understanding of why they were blocked, and their continuing in the same vein here merely copperfastens that impression. Advice, KidAd: when one appeals a restriction of any kind, one is expected to first demonstrate understanding of why the ban was imposed. This means reflecting on one's own actions in the events that led up to it, not justifying yourself (mitigating the harm being done by a bad-faith editor) or blaming others (ot only does Snoogans write with a strong political bias, his writing is so glaringly incorrect). Pages to read further regarding that are at WP:IDHT and WP:IDLI. ——SerialNumber54129 21:04, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      (Furthermore) this attempted collusion (is it possible for something to be both canvassing andharassment?) smacks of something worse than what was responsible for the original topic ban; "The enemy of my enemy is my friend"...really?! ——SerialNumber54129 21:15, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • (edit conflict) Maybe I'm too slow for this place. KidAd appealed the ban to me on my page (or so I understood his posts), before coming here — I didn't know he was on his way here until Floq told me. I just typed up a reply of "no" for him, together with some detailed advice about what to do and what to avoid when he went on to either AN or AE: reading WP:NPA and WP:AGF and taking them to heart, talking about himself and how he intends to edit going forward, not talking about other people, etc. A little late to post it now, I guess. I'll give some basic info here instead: My warning to him can be read here, and my ban rationale here. Bishonen | talk 21:06, 29 November 2018 (UTC).[reply]
      • Oppose - The topic ban was well within discretionary norms. We don't need editors in American politics who appoint themselves arbiters of NPOV; who harass other editors even after being warned; and who refuse to use edit summaries.- MrX 🖋 21:22, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Question If the consensus ends up being "oppose," would that mean that the ban is now community-derived and not just DS-derived? Or would the consensus need to be "oppose and affirm ban"...? Not that I imagine Bishonen approving the ban or some other admin wheel-warring it, just curious. Ian.thomson (talk) 21:25, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • I would say no, this is just an appeal. If the community declines the appeal, then that is it. It's back to the status quo. ARBCOM gives two ways to appeal a DS ban and AN is one of them. It doesn't say that a decline of the appeal makes it a community ban. We shouldn't discourage well thought out appeals on the chance that a decline would make it a community sanction. Sir Joseph (talk) 21:32, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Thank you, Sir Joseph, you're right. It's an arbcom discretionary sanctions ban and logged as such, Ian. According to instructions here, those can be appealed at either AN, AE or ARCA, and so I told the user. He picked AN. If the appeal fails here, that won't make the ban itself morph into a community ban, as I understand it. As it's only for three months, I don't see much point in trying to make it a community ban with some "oppose and affirm ban" magic. It's fine as it is, surely. Bishonen | talk 21:44, 29 November 2018 (UTC).[reply]
      • "labeling claims as true or false reveals bias towards the claims"--that's like saying "spotting racism is racist". No. Drmies (talk) 21:58, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • oppose - based on their statements here and the diffs they provided, KidAd does not understand our mission to present content that summarizes accepted knowledge, nor how we do that - namely by summarizing RS per the P&G working in a community of editors. In particular they don't understand WP:NPOV policy in light of the mission. KidAd, you are at great risk for wider restrictions on your editing privileges. Please rethink your understanding of what we do here. Jytdog (talk) 22:23, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Extend ban duration to six months: Making a meritless and deficient appeal mere hours after its imposition, and without any attempt at understanding the nature of an appeal surely cannot be without consequences? Such willingness to waste editors' time here gives me little faith in KidAd's ability to edit collaboratively in that topic area in future. Pour encourager les autres. --RexxS (talk) 22:43, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Oppose - There's nothing in this appeal, or in this appeal discussion, to indicate that KidAd understands Wikipedia's policies and norms, and without understanding those, he's inevitably going to do the same kinds of thing again. Further, not to add to my possible reputation as a hanging judge, their misunderstanding is so universally applicable that their edits should be very closely watched with an eye to whether a site ban might be necessary. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:07, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • The editor KidAd has in the last 15 minutes blatantly and knowingly violated his topic ban by editing at the pages of Paul Ryan[50] and Pat McCrory[51]. The editor shows here[52] that he knows that the ban covers American politicians. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 00:41, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • I think it is hopeless. While they are apealing a ban, KidAd is still editing and reverting on post 1932 American politics. ~ GB fan 00:45, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Exactly what I was going to do, Tony, same length, same reasons, everything. @KidAd: I guess you didn't read WP:TBAN, as I urged you to do ? It's only ten lines long, and written in a helpful, pedagogical way. Do take this time during the block to read and digest it, it may be your last chance. Bishonen | talk 01:34, 30 November 2018 (UTC).[reply]
      • Oppose You were LITERALLY BANNED THE DAY YOU'RE ASKING FOR AN APPEAL. --Tarage (talk) 01:52, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Oppose and make it indefinite with appeal in no less than 6 months, dated from the initial levying of the ban. --Blackmane (talk) 01:54, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Comment Although I am not a admin, I suggest you wait thru your topic ban instead of doing the things you are currently doing. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Banning_policy#Topic_ban and the banning policy page itself, by going against your current sanctions admins have the right to block you from editing Wikipedia overall. ...……. In my opinion, KidAd should get a Wikipedia editing block instead of a topic ban as the topic ban is doing no affect on them in my opinion. Aceing_Winter_Snows_Harsh_Cold (talk) 02:28, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Comment does a discretionary sanctions appeal need to be kept open for 24 hours? Even if it does, I think we can forget about this until someone comes along to close in 24 hours. It started off with a poorly worded and thought out appeal, and progressed to ever more blatant violations of the topic ban while the appeal was ongoing until the editor was editing the articles which specifically call the person a "politician" and they didn't even bother to offer one of their "not politics but author" style rationales, resulting in the inevitable block. There's nothing more to say really. Nil Einne (talk) 03:15, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        I should clarify I'm not opposed to extending the ban, but I also feel this could be easily handled via the discretionary sanctions process so it isn't needed. By handled I don't necessarily mean an immediate extended ban. If the editor comes back and is able to survive against any future blocks for tban violations or other such problems, but then goes back to their problem editing after 3 months, I'm sure a new extended topic ban will come very fast. Nil Einne (talk) 03:41, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • I don't understand the milk of human kindness that seems to flow through the admins and editors commenting here. We have someone who is making blatantly partial edits, gets topic-banned, claims in an unban request that it was the other guy's fault, and edits in the forbidden area while this is going on. So that's either total flippancy or total incompetency--extend this topic ban, per [[User:|RexxS]]. Drmies (talk) 03:16, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Seconded. The best case he could argue for blaming the other guy was arguing that a source literally titled "Former Gov. Pat McCrory falsely says many college students are committing voter fraud," which goes on to say "McCrory is wrong about this," providing proof from both the website of the North Carolina Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement and the elections board spokesman -- should not be summarized with "McCrory falsely claimed that there were many North Carolina students who committed voter fraud during the 2016 election." This was part of a campaign to following and reverting an editor on a gross (and completely hypocritical) assumption of bad faith, continually censoring or whitewashing reliably sourced material (sometimes for questionable reasons).
      Immediately after the topic ban, they edited an article relating to and argued that the vice-president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute does not fall under the topic ban relating to politics. Ok, so maybe they really just don't get it. They then tried to recruit another editor to edit on their behalf, saying "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," demonstrating a total WP:BATTLEGROUND mentality. They were told that they are not supposed to make any edits relating to politics anywhere on the site, to which they responded by continuing their edit war I mentioned in the second sentence of this post, as well as continuing to stalk Snooganssnoogans into the Paul Ryan article.
      And at no point has he shown the capacity to even consider that maybe he is the one who fucked up here. Given his work in articles on minority educators, I can understand some leniency and openness toward him working in other parts of the project. But if his only edits were those relating to politics, it'd be an obvious indef block with the only possible appeal being to agree to a topic ban on politics. Ian.thomson (talk) 04:39, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Oppose lifting the topic ban, but I also oppose adding any further sanctions at this time. They now have a week to review the multiple messages left on their talk page — let's wait and see if that helps. Bradv🍁 03:23, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Agree. We have seen again and again some internet warrior getting really upset and making a lot of noise for a few days after being blocked or topic banned. Usually they calm down without any additional sanctions. --Guy Macon (talk) 04:09, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • @Guy Macon:But if he is just ignoring his topic ban, how does the extension of it going to stop him from continuing to avoid it? That is why I suggest in my comment that he should just get a Wikipedia editing block, for disruptive editing. Disruptive editing is a valid reason for edit blocks. Speaking in a sense that his efforts in evading his topic ban is disrupting the communities time in doing other tasks on Wikipedia. The fact that KidAd thinks that way according to his reply on his talk page just says that he might be trying all his might to get his POV only. KidAd is probably not the first user like this I think, there probably were more like him before on Wikipedia, that probably had no affect from topic bans. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Banning_policy#Topic_ban , the edits only get reverted. Thus he is able to do his edits, only the admins or other users get the trouble of having to undo those edits. Thus it seems that KidAd just does not care if his edits are being reverted, all he probably cares about is that his POV is on the text box and the Publish changes button is working. Putting a Wikipedia editing block on KidAd would prevent him from even editing those pages. Aceing_Winter_Snows_Harsh_Cold (talk) 05:41, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Or just indef <personal attack redacted> and be done with it. You know that's where we're going to end up. Nothing of value lost. --Tarage (talk) 05:45, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

      undo page move

      I had moved Dave Long (American football) to Dave Long (American football, born 1944) in order to make way for Dave Long (American football, born 1998), but I feel I should undo the page move and make the new page at David Long (American football). Can someone undo the page move for me.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 00:39, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      @TonyTheTiger: I think this is not the correct place for this. I think you should move this request to Wikipedia:Move review which would look to be the right place, for the request that you are making. Just make sure you follow all the instructions and rules on that page. I hope all the best with your contesting of that page move. Aceing_Winter_Snows_Harsh_Cold (talk) 04:05, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Aceing Winter Snows Harsh Cold this is not a contested move. I moved a page and less than an hour later I realized I had made a mistake. I am just trying to move it back to where it was previously stable for over 10 years. I'll put it up at WP:RM under uncontroversial technical requests.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 04:16, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      @TonyTheTiger:Just for my clarification, you were the one who performed the move, or was it someone else? If it was you then you could undo I think the way you did it before. But if it was someone else who did the move action it self, and you only requested it originally, then there must have been some sort of discussion over it. Any discussion over it then closed means that if you want to undo it, you have to contest against that discussion meaning Wikipedia:Move review. But, if you were the one doing the move action it self then I think you could do it at WP:RM. But, then again you can do the undo without asking if you originally did it without asking in the first place. Aceing_Winter_Snows_Harsh_Cold (talk) 04:30, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      I would not put pages for different people at David and Dave. I'd leave it the way it is. Legacypac (talk) 04:54, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Reason I will not donate

      Not an issue for admins. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 12:11, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

      The censorship on wikipedia is abhorrent. It seems to go against the very idea of free knowledge. How can we even call it that with such censorship? I cannot donate to a company with an agenda to show you only information they agree is suitable. This is disgusting. Make wiki free for all speech and I will fork over my donations. Otherwise change it to propagandepedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:80:8401:FE00:194:B010:A1B6:1118 (talk) 11:55, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Wikipedia users have nothing to do with the financial side of Wikipedia or the Foundation that operates it. Any donations you make(or decline to make) have no bearing on the content here. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not a forum for free speech. If you want to contribute to a project more in line with your world view, there are different projects out there, or you can start one. 331dot (talk) 11:59, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      IP 2601:80:8401:FE00:194:B010:A1B6:1118 Please read these 2 links below that tries to clear up your misconception.
      1. Wikipedia:Free speech
      2. Wikipedia:Wikipedia is a mainstream encyclopedia
      Hope that helps, regards --DBigXrayᗙ 12:03, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

      Fault on trying to move a page

      Thank you for reporting. You can follow up at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Internal_error and or at phab:T210739. — xaosflux Talk 15:35, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

      Tracked in Phabricator
      Task T210739
      The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

      IP trying to reset password

      @DuncanHill: Here is a good advice when editing a page, section, or a talk page. If the edit is a single paragraph addition like yours above, copy your portion of the edit before hitting the publish button. If an edit conflict occurs, paste your intended edit at the correct place. Attempting to retype your edit on a very active page will almost always lead to another edit conflict. Question, when you were editing did you edit by section, or by the entire page? Aceing_Winter_Snows_Harsh_Cold (talk) 14:47, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      This is fairly standard even on dull days, and (as long as your email is secure) you can safely ignore the reset requests. If the IP is already blocked you can usually double-ignore them. -- zzuuzz (talk) 14:53, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      (multiple ec) Thanks for the advice Aceing, which I started giving out several years ago following a problem at ANI or here. Zzuzz, it's happened to me maybe once or twice in all the time I've been on Wikipedia, so not fairly standard! DuncanHill (talk) 14:56, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      There are one or two serial crackers who are (I'm guessing) going through alphabetically; seems that Ms and Ds are the target for today. It's not unheard of; just make sure you have a good password (change it to a good one if necessary or if you feel like it) and carry on. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 14:59, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      It's the same person who has been doing the multiple log in attempts referred to above, and vandalising the RefDesks. That is why I wanted to put it there instead of in a separate thread. DuncanHill (talk) 15:04, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      @DuncanHill: Question. I looked at your user page and user page categories and see that you are not a Checkuser. My question, is how did you know it's the same exact person? Did you request a CU check, and that is how you found out? Aceing_Winter_Snows_Harsh_Cold (talk) 15:09, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      IPs are disclosed with password resets, and the IP's contribs kinds make it clear who's on the proxy, in addition to the behavioural coincidence. -- zzuuzz (talk) 15:14, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      1) No point pinging me, it gets lost in all the other notifications (see thread I referred to above) 2) Please stop editing your replies after posting them, it creates edit conflicts when I try to reply, 3) Strong behavioural evidence, including much that is no longer visible to you. See also the thread I referred to above. DuncanHill (talk) 15:15, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Tarage

      I'd hoped to avoid this, but I've been disturbed by the aggressive and confrontational approach of Tarage at the AN/ANI boards for some time now. The latest was here, where he called another editor a "little snot". The editor was being problematic, yes, but did not deserve such a personal attack - and the matter was already being dealt with in a reasonable manner without needing Tarage to wade in and add insult. I gave Tarage a warning (I know about DTTR, but he's getting exasperating), and User: Legacypac also asked him to tone down his comments, but his response was to insist that his "little snot" thing was not a PA and I was talking "Absolute nonsense". He removed my warning with the edit summary "No, seriously, have someone else do this next time. Like I asked. Multiple times." He hasn't asked me multiple times, but it's clear that my approaches are having no effect.

      Recently, Tarage had these ArbCom election comments removed and was asked to "Please keep comments constructive. Please keep in mind that editors are expected to conduct themselves according to in a decorum and with behavior expected by community standards."

      Prior to that, he removed comments from Winkelvi's talk page (see history) when Winkelvi was clearly a bit stressed, appearing to try to order him around, and even edit warred over it. I warned him at User talk:Tarage#User talk:Winkelvi (and I've only just today noticed his comment "Also I'd rather someone else handle this in the future. You've made it very clear you don't like me and are looking for a reason to block me so pardon me if I don't think you're the most impartial," which I think speaks of his response to critique of his aggressive approach - he can give it out, but he can't handle unfavourable feedback).

      Earlier episodes involve crassly insensitive speculation over the mental health of someone who was asking for help - see User talk:Tarage#Your recent comments (which was after I had tried to explain the issue at ANI and had got nowhere), where you can see he just doesn't get why we should not do that sort of thing (I'm not linking to the actual comments or the ANI discussion itself out of respect to the person in question, but if you follow the dates you can find them).

      I subsequently asked him to tone down his comments at ANI but got a negative response - see User talk:Tarage#Your conduct at WP:ANI. User:Alex Shih also judged some of Tarage's comments as inflammatory - and while User:MPants at work did opine that one specific issue was not inflammatory, he did suggest that Tarage "could have said that with a lot more tact" and that "You are quite confrontational at ANI, and while I don't think that's always a bad thing, it has the potential to inflame things".

      Generally, looking over Tarage's comments at AN and ANI, they are frequently the most aggressive and the most confrontational of anyone's, often tend to offer the least by way of constructive input, and he frequently just proposes the severest sanction of anyone - I won't diff every one that I think is too aggressive, but regulars at ANI will surely know what I mean.

      I also note that of Tarage's 3,849 total edits, 1,078 have been to ANI or AN. That's a full 28%, and way more than the 758 edits he's contributed to actual main space encyclopedia contributions. As a comparison, I think I'm a pretty frequent admin contributor to AN and ANI, but my "drama board" contribution amounts to a mere 4.7% of my edits.

      What do I want here? I'm really not sure. In short, I think Tarage has a chronic record of making what is an unpleasantly confrontational forum even more unpleasant and confrontational, and it's pretty much on a constant drive-by basis. If you all think I'm being oversensitive and it's fine to be this aggressive (and, for example, call people little snots) then I'll take that on board and will just try to ignore him. But I don't think I am being oversensitive, and I really do think Tarage needs to tone down his aggression - and I'd be happy with just a consensus here that he should do that. (See topic ban proposal below. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:54, 30 November 2018 (UTC)) Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:48, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      • This may not be a really useful comment, because I doubt there's a drama-free way to do anything about it, but it's on my mind so I'll make it anyway. I have recently been thinking more and more and more that there are roughly 1 dozen people (approx, I haven't counted, but in that range) that make AN/ANI much more dysfunctional, unpleasant, and actively harmful to the smooth operation of an encyclopedia-generating project. I'd like to see all of them topic banned from the two pages. Tarage is one of them. On the one hand, it seems odd, possibly unfair, to focus on just one of them, when there are arguably even less helpful ANI regulars than he is. On the other hand, perhaps we have to start somewhere? My problem isn't so much with an isolated "little snot" comment here and there (the person he was referring to was pretty much a little snot), but the relentless aggression and escalation that often does make things worse. I'm not looking to make AN or ANI a saccharin fairyland with rainbows and unicorns, but it needs to be a place where problems get solved. Right now, it's become "WP:AN/Votes for Punishment". Is the answer cutting one person out of the herd at at time? A dozen votes for banishment from AN/ANI? A (doomed) effort to come up with general rules of engagement? I honestly don't know. I do think something should be done. Not to prevent occasional "little snot" comments, but to make this a place where problems have a bigger chance of being solved, instead of blown up. --Floquenbeam (talk) 16:09, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        Absolutely, yes, it's not the one "little snot" comment, it is as you put it "the relentless aggression and escalation." Would getting rid of the aggressors one at a time help? Not sure, but that approach seems to be working at the Ref Desks. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:16, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
          • After many failed attempts to impose rules, finally the RefDesks got much better (not all better, but much better) after the banning of a particularly troublesome user. --JBL (talk) 16:26, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      The little snot comment was a PA and he should have been sanctioned for it, but (for example) the arbcom comments were not just him alone. I think (and have made this point more then once) that he is just a symptom of a general decline in "soft" civility (and may in fact merely be reacting and making a point about that) (such as in the arbcom comments, "if an Candidate can be rude why not me?").Slatersteven (talk) 16:19, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      • I have long felt that Tarage's conduct at ANI is gratuitously obnoxious. I would favor a topic ban banning them from ANI with the usual exceptions. Blocking Tarage is a less attractive option, particularly given that we are now having this discussion. As for Floquenbeam's comments, although I am sympathetic to addressing the larger picture, I don't think it's practical. If there are other editors he has in mind, we should address them one by one.--Bbb23 (talk) 16:30, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • There's one point I meant to make but forgot, and I've been reminded of it by Floquenbeam's comment about "relentless aggression and escalation." There might not be any individual contribution by Tarage that in itself would be enough for a sanction, and I think that might make it difficult to do anything about the problem. But his constant, relentless, low-to-mid-level aggression is, I think, very damaging to the functioning of the AN/ANI boards. And I think it needs to be stopped. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:38, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • @Boing! said Zebedee: There is an overall problem with the culture at admin noticeboards. They're full of trolling, incivility and harassment. But that's not unusual. The unusual part is that it's being sanctioned and encouraged by other editors and even administrators. That is a systematic problem.--v/r - TP 16:52, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      And that is what needs to be tackled, and I fail to see how targeting Tarage achieves this. Is he one of the users being supported by tame admins?Slatersteven (talk) 17:14, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      So, I'll have to disagree. We need to combat the culture AND deal with the worst offenders. This place needs to stop being treated as a game. These psuedonyms are real people and somewhere along the line we've forgotten that. And that needs to be fixed. Treating each other like we're real people is a culture issue and is on all of us. Being unnecessarily dickish is in the individuals, though.::v/r - TP 17:28, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      I would not support any sanction on this user. I think that somebody should ask him to restrict himself to one post per week on Dramah boards. I would be willing to bet a doggy biscuit that Tarage has no idea how obvious this behaviour is, and how it reflects badly on him. I write this because I understand T's motivation, and there but for the grace of wikispagmonster go I. -Roxy, the naughty dog. wooF 17:32, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      I agree with TP here. A culture is essentially the sum of its contributors, and targeting the individual contributors who damage the culture is a valid way of addressing it. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:40, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • I endorse Bbb23's observation as it matches mine. I've often noticed Tarage's unusual obnoxiousness in AN[I] discussions, in a sort of a "you probably shouldn't have said that" sort of way, but always when I'm distracted by whatever's actually going on in the thread. AN[I] are enough dramah without users being hostile for no reason. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 18:10, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      ::Question to Admins reading this: Have any of you actually asked Tarage about this behaviour, and made constructive comment? Are we going towards a Snow decision for a sanction, without anybody saying, "Please stop, old chap, thanks." -Roxy, the naughty dog. wooF 18:44, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Yes here is the most recent example [54] Legacypac (talk) 18:50, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Roxy, yes, I have provided links above and have described my attempts. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 19:01, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      So because I removed a message from Boing, who I have asked repeatedly not to constantly come and template me, they start an AN section on me? Is anyone else even remotely concerned by this? Am I not allowed to removed talk page messages anymore? "little snot" was my attempt to downplay my "hostile, agressive, or disparaging" behavior. I'm trying here. I think it's very disingenuous that Boing was the one to bring this. --Tarage (talk) 18:54, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Also what's being ignored here are the attempts I have made to council users who I felt are worth trying to save. There was even one who I tried to help who ended up being a sock! There's another who was adding poor english to numerous articles. Please see User:Bishonen's talk page to see my long conversation with them. That folks are voting to throw me out without even hearing my side of things, considering this was launched while I was asleep, seems very symptomatic of the very thing people are criticizing me for. --Tarage (talk) 19:02, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      How on earth am I supposed to have any idea when you're asleep? Discussions like this go on around the clock and allow for people in all time zones. I'll be off to sleep in a couple of hours myself, but I won't complain that others are not allowed to talk about me when I'm in dreamland. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 19:14, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Tarage&oldid=871392139 So this is what happens. I make comments here trying to defend myself and my behavior and asking questions, and not only does it result in comments here (Which is fine, because obviously I'm reading this page and understand people are going to reply), but ALSO a message on my talk page with roughly the same thing. Saying that I am unaware and that I am posting nonsense. I don't understand how I am supposed to defend myself against this. I find it... telling that the same people who are claiming that I am toxic and harsh are being so to me. Even though I've asked Boing to have someone else comment on my behavior because I perceive an unfair bias against be due to the many threats to take me to ANI they have levied against me on my talk page, they continue to be the one to do so. And then if I act frustrated at this, it escalates to AN. I don't think this is fair. --Tarage (talk) 20:10, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      People are being toxic and harsh to you because they have been forced to to resolve many months or years of your toxic negative behaviour.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 20:17, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Years? I never had a problem beyond this last year. Again, I find it bemusing that the very same behavior I am being criticized for is okay to do to me and not criticize it. I just have to be silent. --Tarage (talk) 20:20, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Propose topic ban

      In the light of early comments, I propose a topic ban on User:Tarage from the WP:AN and WP:ANI boards, with the exception that he can contribute to any discussion that involves him directly (and any other standard policy-based exception). The length of the ban and how soon it can be appealed I will leave to others to suggest. (I'm adding ths immediately before the topic ban support from User:SemiHypercube below, hope you don't mind, SemiHypercube) Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:50, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      (edit conflict)@Boing! said Zebedee: Don't mind at all, helps sort this discussion. SemiHypercube ✎ 16:53, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Weak support of topic ban from AN/ANI per WP:CIVILITY. Not sure if this needs to be temporary or indefinite, but one may be needed. SemiHypercube ✎ 16:42, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Support temporary TBAN of 1-3 months. There's definitely a problem here, and one that I don't see being solved without Tarage taking at least a month's vacation from these boards. If there's a different proposal that might do that, I'll reconsider. I don't think an indef tban of one editor will help matters. power~enwiki (π, ν) 17:01, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Support temporary TBAN of 3 months. The administrative noticeboards are important, and it's important to remove disruption that limits their effectiveness when people comment on contributors rather than content. A break from the dramah would do Tarage good. Sometimes it's good to get away from it for a while, and I think three months is a good refresher period. Jip Orlando (talk) 17:15, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Support Finally! Tarage always advocates for a site ban or whatever would be the harshest response and is very rude. If I see another knee-jerk "Boomerang!" on that board any time an editor posts about a problem, I'm gone as an IP editor. A totally negative presence and can even be demoralizing. Many of the regulars there are toxic, too. 204.130.226.100 (talk) 17:40, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Support after the nth aggressive comment was removed from a thread I closed I went to urge him to tone things down and found Boing had the same idea. He gave the wrong response! If this thread were about someone else Tarage likely would post an insult and propose an indef. A topic ban is a kind solution. Good for the soul to stay away from ANi anyway. I hope I'm not on the list of a dozen trouble makers :) Legacypac (talk) 18:03, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      It's the wrong response to remove things from your talk page? I was not aware I was not allowed to remove things from my talk page anymore. --Tarage (talk) 18:57, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Support Tarage's commentary on noticeboards often serves only to inflame already sensitive discussions where tempers can run high. I've openly expressed my antipathy towards his comments (i.e. in this discussion) and believe a topic ban would be beneficial to those who are reviewing cases on noticeboards with an eye to resolving the problems presented as opposed to ratcheting up the drama. There are a cadre of individuals who are far too preoccupied with the drama boards and feel that they need to pipe up with their opinion on the majority of discussions regardless of the soundness of their advice, but Tarage's participation often strays farther over the line of peanut gallery into outright disruption. -- Jezebel's Ponyobons mots 18:09, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        Gosh, yes, I'd forgotten about that one - crass insensitivity of an appalling nature. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 18:16, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Have I commented on anyone's mental health or physical health since then? I've been trying. Thanks for punishing me for trying. I knew I'd never get a fair shake from you. --Tarage (talk) 18:58, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Support indefinite topic ban with the usual exceptions, and excepting that they may appeal to this board when their attitude has improved. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 18:10, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Support 'Avoid AN/I' is good wiki-folk wisdom and with numbers and participation like this, mandating seems the way to go. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:23, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Support I've had a look through Tarage's recent edits to AN/ANI, or which there are an awful lot, and most of them have a tone which is overly hostile, aggressive, or disparaging. This isn't a great response to being questioned on the "indef the little snot" comment either. There are plenty of other places to contribute here. Hut 8.5 18:50, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      I honestly don't understand this. Am I or am I not allowed to remove messages from my talk page? Do you realize that I was unfairly BLOCKED the last time I removed one? And who unblocked me because they saw that it was nonsense? Boing. If there is a specific rule somewhere that says users aren't allowed to remove ANYTHING an admin posts, PLEASE show it to me, because I am honestly not aware of it. --Tarage (talk) 19:00, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Oh come on Tarage, this is *not* about you removing stuff from your talk page! Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 19:06, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Given the clueless responses, this restriction needs to be permanent. Legacypac (talk) 19:12, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      This is what I'm talking about. I'm not being afforded any good faith here. I said "I honestly don't understand this" and I mean it, and what I get back is statements that I'm clueless and should be restricted even more. I am, again, honestly asking the following: What is and is not okay for removing talk page messages? Am I allowed to comment about how I am upset about something in the edit comment? Do I need to be silent? Is there a page where I can find out what is and isn't allowed? Please, someone tell me in a way that isn't mocking me. --Tarage (talk) 20:05, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      I'm not the one from whom you might be asking for help, but I hope you will let me try to explain. The problem really is not your removal of my comments from your talk page or your edit summary. You were perfectly entitled to do both. But what that meant to me was that you were rejecting my personal overtures and that I had no alternative but to ask the community here at AN to look at the issues I wished to raise - you can't really demand that I don't raise them with you personally, but also don't raise the with anyone else at any other forum. The problem, which I have tried to raise with you several times but have been met with intransigence, is that your contributions at ANI have been overly aggressive for a long period. It seems that everyone who has commented so far agrees with that assessment, so you really have no grounds for thinking that it's just a personal issue of mine. And so far, you have said nothing to address my complaints of your chronic aggressive approach at ANI. Does that help explain what it is you don't understand? Anyway, I'm off to sleep shortly, so it's goodnight from me for now. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 20:19, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      So I'm not allowed to "reject your personal overtures" because I feel you might be biased? I'm not allowed to ask that someone else interact with me? --Tarage (talk) 20:23, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Again, this is the problem. I ask that you not interact with me, or go through someone else, and you flat out ignore that. Every single time. You have no respect for me or my wishes. Even here, when I clearly say "I don't want to interact with you", you are the first to reply. I have no ability to reject talking to you. --Tarage (talk) 20:25, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Support Floq's right, removing a few people from these noticeboards would not hurt them terribly and should certainly help discussions here. I'm afraid Tarage is one of those. Tarage, there's a lot of useful stuff to do outside of AN/I. Doug Weller talk 19:10, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Support It is very harmful to the project if an editor is continually seeking the harshest punishment or restriction for others whilst themselves are engaging in bad potentially sanctionable behaviour. I think a long break from this topic area will also be of benefit to Tarage.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 19:16, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Strong support I'm glad to see this discussion started, as I've been bothered by Tarage's behavior for a long time. His behavior at the noticeboard feels like that of a Buford Pusser wannabe, in which he shows up and immediately adopts a confrontational stance with users in which he is laying down the law. The vast majority of his comments at ANI can be boiled down to either some sort of version of "you must stop this now or be blocked" or "this whole conversation is stupid," both of which almost always inevitably escalate tensions and frequently redirect the conversation away from figuring out what the source of the dispute is to trading blows or voting on the ban that Tarage generally proposes right away. His participation in this thread is a great example of this behavior, and I was especially appalled at the fact that he leveled a fairly serious claim of an editor using racism accusations in order to win content disputes, and then explicitly refused [55] (with some additional rude dismissiveness thrown in for good measure when he re-edited his own comment) the user's astonished request that Tarage provide diffs to back up that claim. ANI is not a showdown where you draw a line in the sand and see who blinks first, and unnecessary aggression isn't needed at a place where tensions are usually already running high to start with. Grandpallama (talk) 20:07, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Wanting editors to stop calling other editors racist is rude and dismissive? --Tarage (talk) 20:21, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Alleging editors weaponize accusations of racism to win arguments requires evidence. Responding to a request for that evidence, by the accused editor, with rude and dismissive language should result in sanctions, correct. Also, I realized I needed to clarify: my vote would be for an indefinite topic ban, since the responses here indicate more than just a cooldown period of a few months is needed. Grandpallama (talk) 20:23, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Both editors were calling the other editor racist in the thread. Back to back. I don't need evidence when they are doing it right there. That is why I suggested sanctions. Because I wanted it to stop. If my suggesting sanctions is a problem I won't ever do it again. I was only trying to help. --Tarage (talk) 20:26, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      Where to report IPs attempting to reset passwords?

      Where is the best place to report IPs attempting to reset passwords, so that they can be blocked? If they have no edit history then AIV seems inappropriate. One can message individual admins, but that is dependent on the chosen ones being available at the time. Thanks, DuncanHill (talk) 16:53, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      I think only a global block will prevent an IP (even if locally blocked) from trying to reset an account's password. Can someone confirm or correct that assumption? 28bytes (talk) 17:35, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Blocking an IP will not stop them from attempting to reset passwords, as far as I know. Maybe a steward could help you out? Stewards can be contacted through meta: meta:Stewards' noticeboard is for general questions of the Stewards, and meta:Steward requests for specific requests. --Jayron32 19:07, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      List of Israeli settlements

      The page List of Israeli settlements was recently created. Can an admin do the WP:ARBPIA paperwork? ECP is probably necessary, as well as endorsing the talk-page Discretionary Sanctions notice. power~enwiki (π, ν) 20:14, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      I extended-confirmed protected and logged the protection at the Arbitration enforcement page.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:24, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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