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Current issues

Adding useless revisions to pages to make them undeletable

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

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This thread was started as a discussion to the problem of making pages undeletable by adding useless revisions and quickly morphed into another 'ZOMG Betacommandbot is rouge' thread, going as far as to make the asinine claim of a faceless, inhuman bot being capable of stalking and harrassment, doing what it is supposed to do. If there is a problem, report complaints of the bot to Betacommand, don't rush to WP:AN, WP:AN is not a complaints department. If there is a legitimate problem, and Betacommand has not addressed the issue, feel free to start a new thread. — Save_Us † 01:43, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

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Just FYI: [1]. And I'm sure Tim's not the only one. --bainer (talk) 03:14, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Fully support Tim's comment. The history of the Main Page is a joke. - auburnpilot talk 03:16, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

While I'm sure this was done with good intentions... boy, this strikes me as spectacularly bad judgement. It also highlights a function that could be used in ways less benevolent. This ignores the fact that the Main page appears to have been deleted once *(Per CSD G6!) in the process, albiet briefly. I'm a new admin, so maybe there's conversation on this topic I've missed... But, I have to agree with Tim's comments. UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 03:24, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Tim has already blocked BetacommandBot for one week, due to "abuse of system resources". [2] - auburnpilot talk 03:31, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Ok, so how did BCB, a non-admin bot, edit a protected page. I'm seeing some odd things going on in the page history with restoring deleted edits, etc. And shouldn't something like this get approved somewhere before its done? Isn't this the purpose of WP:BAG? I know there is a technical switch that would make the main page undeletable by anyone including the devs, which isn't flicked since we don't want to do anything that can never be undone. So this is basically doing that (aking it undeletable) the way I see it, which is somewhat against consensus IMHO MBisanz ^talk 03:37, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

The edits were made in userspace and the page was moved by an administrator into the mainspace. Nakon 03:37, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Was this discussed anywhere beforehand? --Rory096 03:50, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Nope, no approval and no consensus that this was need - a well deserved week long block. The main page history is destroyed now. Ryan Postlethwaite 03:54, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Isn't there some way to selectivly delete prior revisions like oversight but not as extreme). If it cant be automated, maybe hand-deleting (oy!) will be required. Worst case, there might be a consensus to oversight the interjected edits (yea I know its against policy, but I'm not seeing the harm). MBisanz ^talk 04:03, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Oversight works on a single revision at a time; good luck finding an oversighter that's willing to go through 5,000 revisions by hand. ;-) Kirill 04:09, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

According to BCBs history, it made about 1100 of the edits to that page, still it would be an unfair burden on an uninvolved oversighter to have to do that. MBisanz ^talk 04:21, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I believe the whole point is that nobody other than the devs can delete pages with over 5000 edits. They'd have to be the ones to remove all of the bot edits, if I'm remembering correctly. - auburnpilot talk 04:05, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't see how Betacommandbot's block is any more "well deserved" than a block of the administrators who collaborated on this venture would be. All the bot did was make a bunch of null edits to a user subpage. Mike R (talk) 04:06, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Frankly, I'd have blocked the users involved as well; the administrators, in particular, are expected to consider the consequences before they do something of this sort. Kirill 04:16, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

The admins involved obviously screwed up, but remember blocks are preventive, not punitive. --Rory096 05:09, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

It was obviously discussed somewhere beforehand. My guess is IRC. Mike R (talk) 04:09, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I think the reason the bot was blocked and the admins weren't is that 1. Tim was afraid of the bot doing this to many other pages and had to act quickly. 2. Bots go through a special process to get the BOT flag and that process allows harsher action when they mess up, Admins, generally have the grace of an RfC/AN/Arbcom discussion. MBisanz ^talk 04:15, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I do think blocking Betacommandbot is justified, since as far as I know, it isn't approved for this (though maybe I'm wrong, given the massive list. At any rate, it seems like it should definitely have been discussed first (on wiki), and was probably a bad idea. Apparently, East718 was the one to do the move, and it was done in his userspace. It might also make sense to block him and Betacommand. Superm401 - Talk 04:20, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

{unindent) Tim Starling has proposed here [3] that East 718 be de-sysoped for his behavior in this matter. What forum should this request be discussed in? MBisanz ^talk 04:47, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Not sure what the proper venue would be, but I'd assume ArbCom. Thankfully one of the devs has removed the bot's junk edits from the Main Page history.[4] - auburnpilot talk 04:55, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

This is kind of silly anyway. Why do we restrict administrator tools like delete and protect to administrators? Because we trust them to know what they're doing. We restricted deletions to pages with less than 5000 revisions because it's not obvious that it's going to break the site. This is something completely different — an administrator clicked a button that said "Delete the main page". An administrator should not click such a button unless they actually wish to delete the main page. Testing is for test-wikis — this is not the sort of thing you mess about with on the main page of the 8th most used website in the world! Applying restrictions like this is not needed if we have an appropriate mechanism for distinguishing prospective administrators who know what they are doing with those who don't — or a culture of caution with regards to administrative functions. As for the use of the bot, we have a bot approvals group for a reason. I am aware that Betacommand is on it, and should know better than this. — Werdna talk 05:00, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

What need has there ever been to delete the main page? Or move it? Why are the tabs even there? The delete tab is currently hidden, but why not just remove the options altogether? Lara❤Love 05:31, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

bugzilla:9625 seems to indicate it won't ever happen. MBisanz ^talk 05:38, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I think the main concern here is not with the end result (making the main page undeletable) but rather the means to get there (the apparent unilateral and unsupported move by two editors to dump 1200 junk edits into the main page) which represented an unintended exploit of a recently hacked-in safety feature and is rather an object lesson in how to use said safety feature to be disruptive. The two editors in question were NOT trying to be disruptive per se, but now it is plainly clear that one could use their means to be disruptive. I am not sure that the recommended blockings and/or desysoppings are justified or not, but this does seem like the wrong way to go about doing things. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 05:40, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I think it is actually good that there is something highly visible for compromised admin accounts to delete or vandalize. A bit of good old delete-the-main-page-for-lulz will send people searching for stewards pretty fast. The latest case was desysopped in three minutes... – Sadalmelik (talk) 06:22, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Bugzilla doesn't appear to have reached any sort of consensus. In fact, the page reads like more people agree that there's no need to have the option to delete the main page. Certain pages just don't need the option. Considering the delete and move tabs serve no useful purpose on these pages, and having them leaves the risk of abuse and server lockdown, why not just remove the option? Having the main page to the (currently) 9th most viewed website in the world be down for a few minutes is bad times when it's pointless and avoidable. Lara❤Love 06:49, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Note that Bugzilla is not consensus-based. Brion Vibber, the lead developer and Wikimedia CTO, resolved the bug as "won't fix" and then marked it closed. But that bug was filed as a request to have the feature exist and be enabled by default in the core software. A Wikimedia-specific hack (as Tim has now implemented) is a different question. I still don't think it's a good idea, for the reason I gave on the bug. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 14:55, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Vital tasks

I seem to remember that BCB does some tasks like RFC bot's job, CfD (I don't know what that is), Spamreports, Image moving, and image renaming. What is our contingency plan for it being unable to do those tasks for a week? Yes, I know it does non-free image and orphan image work, but I'm not considering that vital given the existing huge backlogs at those areas. MBisanz ^talk 04:13, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't know that we have a contingency plan for such things. The bot system is like the wild west. Everyone runs their own code and there is very little redundancy. I have supported for a long time the division of Betacommandbot's tasks into separate usernames instead of a single username - BetacommandBot 1, BetacommandBot 2, etc. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:23, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I have no idea how complex these tasks are, but the RFC one in particular seems pressing as part of the WP:DR process. How hard would it be for an uninvolved bot operator to code up a quick and dirty substitute? Or is there a by-hand process that explains how to replace the bot with actual editors. MBisanz ^talk 04:27, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

The RFC bot has somewhat complex behavior. I estimate that someone with a lot of experience with bot programming should be able to code a replacement in a day of dedicated work with no interruptions. But it would be better if the code was publicly available (I don't know whether it is). Even then, it might take a few hours for a new operator to get the code running on their machine. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:34, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Nope, BCB is (as of a discussion in 2007 [5]) proprietary code. MBisanz ^talk 04:36, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually, RFC bot is/was operated by Messedrocker. BCbot seems to handle this task now, though. – Sadalmelik (talk) 04:52, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Hell, just unblock the bot. That script isn't running anymore and Betacommand presumably knows not to run it again, so there's no reason to keep it blocked. --Rory096 05:12, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Well Tim is a developer and I think is an employee of the foundation under Wikipedia:OFFICE#Who_does_office_actions so that might be a consideration in unblocking. MBisanz ^talk 05:17, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Firstly, this is not an "office action". Do as you see fit. Rory096 says "Betacommand presumably knows not to run it again, so there's no reason to keep it blocked". I don't believe Betacommand has learnt any lessons for this, he's a stubborn kind of guy. He certainly didn't make any apologies when I was talking to him about it on IRC. If he does it again, I'll block him again. I've written the script to clean up his mess now, so it won't be so much trouble for me the second time. -- Tim Starling (talk) 05:42, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

In that case, we should make sure we get a promise out of him not to do it again (as he seems to have given below), and then consider actions to make sure anything like this doesn't happen again- not only exploiting some fix for some problem in an way that wasn't intended by those who implemented the fix, but also any unapproved, undiscussed bot functions, and to consider splitting BetacommandBot's functions so any one of the functions can be blocked without causing all the others to stop working. --Rory096 18:25, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Rory096,Ive been working on seperating the accounts, its just not that simple. And Ive been pushed for other requests, see commons:User:BetacommandBot, for the recent image re-naming. As Ive said before this was a single request, and with no future plans on repeating. β^_command 18:34, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Here's some back story behind RFC bot. I came up with the idea; Betacommand wrote it for me. It exists under the MIT license at this location. It is supposed to run on my toolserver account, but it takes up too much memory as the result of being somewhat broken. Therefore, it goes down once it reaches the toolserver's threshold of 1GB of RAM, and it is killed off by memory management software. While Betacommand is fixing it, he is using his account (that or the bot's) to continue operations; this is not unheard of, as Betacommand's account and his bot are used as testing vectors for new versions of the software.

The issue behind the bot is that objects in memory are forming too quickly without being given enough time to die off. I am going to slow the refresh rate from 5 minutes to 60 minutes to see if that will allow it to be ran on the toolserver without complication. MessedRocker (talk) (write these articles) 05:41, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

While I know BCB doesn't like to spread his code around, but honestly, I feel like more bots should take up some of his tasks either in case he doesn't wish to run it or a situation like this happens again. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 06:55, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Note from developer

Tim Starling has sent an email to the wikitech-l list in which he strongly criticizes the practice of adding meaningless revisions to a page. At the very least, everyone should take away the message "don't do that". — Carl (CBM · talk) 05:15, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I thought it was a good idea at the time ... BCBot hadn't quite added enough revisions to make the page undeletable. I have therefore given myself a suitable punishment. I now understand the slippery slope issue this could cause. Graham87 08:26, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Ah... what? That's not the point I can't understand that matters. The point I can't understand that matters is why there is so much inertia. Could this not have been discussed publicly, on-wiki? Some lessons need to be drawn from this. And Tim noting that Betacommand seems unwilling or unable to do this, well, that does not inspire confidence. El_C 08:55, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

The Main Page cannot be deleted or moved on any Wikimedia wiki now. Graham87 10:06, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I think it can still be moved. WODUP 10:16, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

It can't. I just tried on testwiki:Main Page. When you submit the form, you get a big red "You are not allowed to execute the action you have requested." WODUP 11:07, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Why not let admins delete the main page? It is a canary in a coal mine, if an account is compromised or has gone berserk then they often delete the main page and lose their admin bit within 10 minutes. This is a good thing, it keeps the damage to a minimum. _(1 == 2)^Until 17:42, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

There are other pages they can delete inappropriately. MessedRocker (talk) (write these articles) 23:47, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Messiness of bot records and COI

Just a note on an issue that's relevant to this case: For the past several days, I've been working on the records over at Wikipedia:Bots/Status. A brief look at through records yields the fact that they're in horrible condition, both inaccurate and out-of-date. There's also the outdated page, Wikipedia:Registered bots. And both of these records don't likely match up with the list of users with a bot flag.

This makes it practically impossible for admins to keep track of bot abuse.

Overall, there appears to be a COI with WP:BOT:

• The bot approvals group are required to be bot owners or programmers themselves, so naturally, they tend to be liberal about handing out bot privileges and may turn a blind eye to this sort of thing, or defend it (that's a speculation -- not an assumption -- of bad faith). Though they take into account the community's commentary, they still have a leading role.
• The bot approvals' group primarily maintains the bot records. Well, again, why should they care about maintaining good records? If they don't, then it's a lot easier to get away with this kind of thing.

I suspect that cleaning up the records and a thorough review of all users flagged or listed as bots would yield the fact that there's more bot abuse going on than people are aware of. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 11:21, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't want to sound like a beancounter, but maybe we could audit the active bots on the project. There should be a list of everyone with a bot flag somewhere, as well as the list of registered bots. We sent a talk page comment to every operator and bot on both lists: "Hey, we're updating records, please update the status of your bot here. If we don't hear from you in a week (or whatever), your bot will be listed as inactive." Whether inactive bots are de-flagged, blocked, or otherwise noted is up to consensus - but, I'd recommend that the operator checks in and updates status before resuming his/her bot's operations. This might also be a good chance to audit approved functions that current bots no longer do, so we can identify functions that other bots might pick up. Just tossing out an idea or two, UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 13:37, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me that most complaints about bots are not in line with policy, and those that do are dealt with promptly. _(1 == 2)^Until 18:01, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree that they are often dealt with quickly but, in some instances, it seems that the previous intervention does not preclude future issues from the same bot operator. Which is frustrating, at best. --Iamunknown 21:10, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

You can get a list of flagged bots from special pages. I'm sure if you offer to compare with the Status and Registered Bots pages, and the user contributions of those bots, and invite updates where needed, the bot community would welcome it. Rich Farmbrough, 14:37 6 February 2008 (GMT).

Just a note- the opposite of assuming good faith is not assuming bad faith, it's not assuming good faith. Speculation of bad faith is, therefore, violating AGF just as much as an assumption of bad faith would be. That said, you could have made the same points you just did while at the same time assuming that everyone's acting in good faith. --Rory096 18:12, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Ah, yes, you're right, Rory. Sorry. Yes, I am probably just being paranoid. On the bright side, it did make for a neat addition to WP:List of cabals.

Still, at the very least, I'm right about the bad record-keeping, just wrong on the lack of WP:AGF. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 04:17, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

The record keeping on approvals is pretty good last time I looked. But the status page relies on bot operators to update it, which if they go-away, die, just plain forget, whatever, is not always going to happen. Rich Farmbrough, 14:37 6 February 2008 (GMT).

Summary

Trying to summarise the above:

• (1) The Main Page got deleted accidentally after a "joke" discussion on IRC led someone to test the assertion that the Main Page couldn't be deleted. See Wikipedia:ANI#I deleted the Main Page.
• (2) Some other off-wiki discussions led to two users (an admin and a bot operator) to implement a workaround to prevent this in future, based on the recent "5000+ revisions = can't delete" fix. They did this by having a bot do lots of null edits to a subpage (User:East718/empty), and then the admin deleted the Main Page and merged the two histories (see also here), thus bring the edit count up above 5000 (well, in fact it seems they possibly fell short, and two other admins (User:Nakon and User:Graham87) made some manual null edits to bring the total above 5000; one later blocked himself for doing this, see here). The bot in question was BetacommandBot, but the edits are no longer visible because they got removed at some deep level by developers (because the page was over 5000 edits, only developers could do this - see point 5).
• (3) Tim Starling found out about this (see here and here) and blocked BetacommandBot for 1 week for "abuse of system resources", and has called for East718 to be desysopped.
• (4) A technical fix now means that the main pages on all WMF wikis can't be deleted or moved (regardless of how many edits they have). However, this is not a true fix. See here for a process that could be used for emergency deletion.
• (5) The 'junk' revisions have been removed from the Main Page history.
• (6) Several other discussions are ongoing, on mailing lists and on-wiki and (presumably) elsewhere. The wiki-tech mailing list disucssion has been linked, and there is this WP:AN thread. Two others are: Main Page talk page discussion, wiki-en mailing list, and a bugzilla discussion.

I think I have that about right. What needs to be sorted out moving forwards?

• (A) Consequences of BetacommandBot's block and how to handle the work it does.
• (B) Whether an arbitration case should be opened to handle the desysopping points.
• (C) Whether there has been abuse of a bot flag.

My views are that the block on BetacommandBot should remain, if only to force the community to face up to the consequences of a permanent block or future departure (for whatever reasons), and hence become less reliant on this (and other bots) in case things like this happen again. It is not acceptable to have bots be "unblockable" because they do "vital work". Splitting of bot functions seems well overdue. I'm not too fussed about East718's sysop flag - I don't think he will do anything like this again any time soon. Carcharoth (talk) 11:53, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

This isn't an RfC, but I concur with Carcharoth's summary of the issues. I would also add as a footnote that, whatever happens, I believe East718's actions were undertaken in a good faith attempt to improve the encyclopedia (and the security of the main page). The elements of concern in my mind are the lack of discussion beforehand, not necessarily on the intent itself. I also believe that that should be taken into account during any further proceedings, if and when. UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 13:45, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Of benefit to the discussion of Task A, in re: Betacommandbot's block, the prefix list for all Requests for Bot Approval regarding Betacommandbot. I'm sure there's a more recent summary somewhere, but this might be a good place to start. The critical task I am aware of is tagging Disputed Fair Use Rationale images, but - given the active backlog on that category, adding more images to the backlog seems to be a low priority at this time. UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 13:59, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Tim Starling made it clear above that he will accept unblocking Betacommandbot. Doing so would be the simplest way to move forward. Rewriting all the bot code would be nice, but ultimately it's probably not worth it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:27, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Probably is the simplest solution, I agree. But whoever does it needs to make clear in the log summary that bots should not be merely unblocked to carry out other tasks. Becoming indispensable through one set of bot tasks is not a free license to carry out other (unapproved) bot tasks. This is a serious concern that has been brought up in the past and never satisfactorily addressed. It is effectively the same thing with editors (eg. Giano is effectively being asked to split his functions as article writer and Wikipedia namespace contributor). Humans can't always be asked to split between role accounts, but bots can and should be. Carcharoth (talk) 14:32, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

This is one reason I haven't unblocked the bot myself. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:55, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Just a note, my actions were a single one time request, that I did not think would cause as much trouble as it did. I did and do not have any plans on repeating the incident. Im am sorry that my good faithed attempt to protect the encyclopedia, caused as much drama as it did. I dont like drama. As for the source for my bots, I am willing to share it with people that I can trust. I wrote RfC bot and gladly handed that code out to a user that I know is responcible. I have also written code for other users and they have abused it, since then I only give it to people I can trust. within the next month or so I also plan on releasing the code for my image renaming script. (I need to finish testing and clean up the code). β^_command 15:28, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Betacommand, do you want to tell Tim this and ask if he will unblock the bot? Or would you prefer the community to review the block of the bot? Carcharoth (talk) 15:40, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I told tim prior him blocking that that was a single event that I was not planning on repeating. But he was fairly mad at the time. if someone wants to try and talk to tim for me Id be thankful, or if the community wants to review it. β^_command 15:56, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Of course, all this would be an excellent argument for requiring that all bots on Wikipedia be entirely open-source, and that this be periodically verified by someone attempting to run the bot on a test wiki and making sure it actually works as advertised. Why Wikipedia has not yet agreed on this I'm not sure, except to the extent that it seems never to be able to agree on anything. (Yes, yes, anti-vandal bots' source code will be open, I'm sure that will be a great aid to the huge number of vandals who are also programmers and malicious enough to spend hours analyzing twisty heuristic-based source code. The idea of security through openness is that they'll be outnumbered by the group that's identical but willing to help out by sharing any exploits they find.) Without open-source bots, it seems to me Wikipedia is asking to have major bot contributors get annoyed with the project and leave, or just disappear for any reason, seriously inconveniencing everyone. Actually, this has happened in the past, if I'm not wrong. How is it that The Free Encyclopedia is relying so heavily on non-free software? If not for the bots and scripts that are permitted to be closed, you could come close to saying that the only proprietary software used in creating and serving the encyclopedia is routing software.

But I doubt this is the first time that argument has been made. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 15:06, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I can't agree more with Simetrical. Moreover, publishing the code, particularly during a BRFA, allows code review by other bot owners, and several improvements : DumZiBoT got significantly improved by Dispenser during its BRFA.

There is some pride in maintaining a bot, and I understand why some bot owners are reluctant to the idea of publishing their sources... However, keeping the source "secret" is not helping at all non-English wikis. From what I know, I have several examples of bots that could have been put in a great use at fr:, but that aren't, because the source is not available, and because English bot owners don't have time to spare for other projects... NicDumZ ~ 15:28, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

NicDumZ, have you asked these bot operators about this? β^_command 15:36, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Positive. 'Want a concrete example ? I was thinking about SineBot : Slakr wants to develop a new tool, completely rewriting a PHP framework, and doesn't want to release SineBot's code until this is done. That's honorable, and I'm far from blaming him for this : Having such a new tool would certainly open a lot of new possibilities. However, this is taking a significant time : SineBot is running here since september... During that time, the only possibility that we, on fr, have to run such a bot, is to rewrite its code, and I personally consider this as a waste of time.

I mean. I am a bot owner, and I code everyday as a living : I don't want to blame any coder for their efforts, I also by myself have a lot of troubles when someone comes, looks at my hard work, and tells me : "This part of your code is useless, delete it", or when some random guy comes and add dubious functionalities to my script. But a strong fact is that several developers working together usually develop better tools than one developer alone, and eventually, I always consider these interventions as useful and helping. Just consider how efficient is the pywikipedia community ! At some extent, that's the way wikipedia works : others sticking their noses in your articles, in your work; but eventually, "your" articles are most of time far better with the help of others... Sharing the code is an immediate way to improve it. NicDumZ ~ 16:06, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

NicDumZ, Ill see what I can do about sinebot. I think your approach to the operator could use some work. β^_command 16:16, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your help, even if that wasn't why I wrote this. I'm just saying that every coders have reasons not to publish their code (code cleaning, refactoring, new project, new functionalities, not enough time to maintain it/document it, and so on... ). Sometimes I just think that making a little effort to clean our botcodes to release it every week or so on one of our subpages could help *a lot* the community. NicDumZ ~ 16:52, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Simetrical, your comment about vandals getting a big help from the source to anti-vandal bots is not really true. ClueBot has had its source open since its inception, and I haven't seen any vandals who have been trying to get around ClueBot.  :) -- Cobi^(t|c|b) 00:50, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Precisely as I said. I don't believe an open-source anti-vandal bot is any problem at all. You can sometimes make an argument for security through obscurity when heuristics are used, because a lot of correlations can be avoided with some care if the subject knows they're being looked at, but this isn't such a case. The overwhelming majority of vandals aren't going to trawl through source code or even know it exists, and the tiny number who might are too clever and careful to be tricked by a heuristic-based bot anyway. They'd probably spend their time getting through a rogue admin account or something, if they were interested in their vandalism not being immediately reverted.

So I don't see any reason for continuing the practice of permitting closed-source bots to operate. If it were up to me, an iron-clad criterion for bot operation would be publication on the web of the live source files actually being executed by the bot as it runs, and this would be enforced retroactively after a suitable grace period. I don't, unfortunately, have the time or inclination to immerse myself in Wikipedia policy-mongering hell sufficiently to actually get anything resembling this agreed to, but if anyone else does, you certainly have my support. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:33, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Bot Tasks

Somewhere floating around in the back of my mind, I have a recollection that the Bot Approval Group has to approve new tasks on Betacommand Bot. Or maybe I'm mixing that up with something else... can someone confirm/deny that? I think it has bearing on this: if such a requirement exists, and it was ignored, then we have a problem. If not, and I'm confused (which is more and more likely every day) then someone should feel free to strike through this section. ;-) The link I'm concerned with is Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BetacommandBot, but I may be misinterpreting it. - Philippe | Talk 16:42, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

that was related to the mess back early last year. approval for those tasks were rejected and I had to re-file. bots are usualy exempt from needing approval for user subpage editing. β^_command 16:48, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

OK, I didn't know they were exempt from needing approval for user subpage editing. Thanks for explaining that. Cheers. - Philippe | Talk 16:56, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I am not aware of any such exception. Can you point me to the location of this guideline? Happy‑melon 21:24, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

It's not part of the guideline, as far as I'm aware, but neither is every single task completed or to be completed in Wikipedia. It has been allowed in the past at reasonable rates, mostly for statistics and record-keeping, but Betacommand's actions were neither at reasonable rates nor, uh, sane (although in good faith). Gracenotes^T § 01:40, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Betacommand, were you aware that the edits, even though made to a user subpage, were going to be moved by East718 to the page history of Main Page? If so, then I'm afraid your excuse is the flimsiest and most disingenuous one I've ever seen. It is absolutely clear that any bot would need approval for a task to make edits to the main page. I see that WP:BAG are having elections at the moment, but this is something they will need to discuss as a matter of urgency. Carcharoth (talk) 23:44, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I've thought about this more, and I'm disappointed in Betacommand's reasoning here. Given that the task was run in userspace with the sole purpose of then affecting the main space, I think this reasoning is a cop-out. I believe the task should have been cleared through BAG and anything else is unacceptable. Betacommand knew that this was to be used on mainspace, and found a way to work around BAG restrictions. - Philippe | Talk 17:11, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

And from a BAG member at that. Soxred93 | talk count bot 17:12, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Eh? I'm not a BAG member - and neither is Betacommand. Or do I misunderstand? - Philippe | Talk 04:55, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Betacommand has been reinstated as a BAG member since December Wikipedia:Bots/Approvals group MBisanz ^talk 05:01, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Good lord, I gotta re-watchlist that page. See what I miss? - Philippe | Talk 05:13, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

The next step

I believe Carcharoth has laid out the problem here perfectly, but I'm concerned about where we're going now. East and Betacommand have yet to comment on the issue, and until then I believe an ArbCom case with what we have is overkill. I'd prefer to see an RFC on user conduct initiated (preferably using Carcharoth's analysis as an introduction), so both users can share their views and rationales. There is unanimous consensus among the community that their actions were wrong, let's hear their responses and let the community decide what to do next. - Mtmelendez ^(Talk) 14:46, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

• Lets take a step back for a minute and consider some points. East was quite clearly attempting to help the encyclopedia with what he did, as did Betacommand. I'm sure they didn't expect the drama that arose because of it. Whilst Tim Starling is a key developer, and don't think we need to take his advice without consideration of the facts - let's not start the desysopping talk - there was no malicious intent here, and by stopping the main page getting deleted, they were doing an honourable service for the project (although they went about it the wrong way). All seems sorted now, the revisions are gone - let's just move on, we really don't need this escalating further than it already has. I fail to see how an RfC would accomplish anything. Ryan Postlethwaite 14:48, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
  • While I assume (and don't doubt) that Betacommand and East were acting in good faith, that doesn't mean there certainly shouldn't be any action taken. Desysopping could be necessary if it's likely something like this can happen again in the future, even if this happened in good faith. It should be discussed whether the involved users have learned from their mistakes and will be sure to have a consensus before they do controversial things like this in the future, and we should seriously discuss what to do with BetacommandBot, so Wikipedia doesn't rely so much on a single bot to keep things running smoothly. There are certainly things to be done, or at least discussed, even though the users were acting in good faith. --Rory096 18:34, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
• I agree with Mtmelendez. I don't have time to initiate an RfC, but if anyone does, please feel free to copy paste my summary above, and add anything else that is needed. Possibly wait until the end of the day for more responses here, and pray that no-one files a presumptuous request for arbitration. Let's see if we can get things done productively, and address issues while minimising drama (Ryan, just letting it all go doesn't address the valid issues and concerns - this is precicely the sort of things that user conduct RfCs are for - pointing out lapses of judgment and getting community opinion on said lapses of judgment - doing this sort of thing without any on-wiki discussion, as far as I can tell, was unacceptable). Carcharoth (talk) 14:52, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
  • I'm not suggesting that we let this go per se, many people have weighed in now, and I expect East realises his mistake - I just think it would be wrong to start an RfC over someone who made a good faith (yet extremely misguided) effort to help the encyclopedia. My advice would be for someone to go to Easts talk page, say that he messed up, don't let it happen again but that it is the end of it now. Ryan Postlethwaite 14:57, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
    • Waiting until East and Betacommand reply here is probably a good idea (but see the note below about East and the notice he has left). For the record, here is what Tim Starling said in that mailing list post:

      "East718 and Betacommand got together, and decided between themselves, apparently without review or approval by any other party, that they would add 1200 junk revisions to the main page. Betacommand edited User:East718/empty the requisite number of times, and then East718 deleted the main page, moved his subpage to Main Page, and then undeleted it to merge the histories."

      Not the best judgment call there by either of those users. As far as I can tell, neither Betacommand or East718 have responded to the messages left for them so far. East was notified as early as 01:32, 4 February 2008. That comment by MZMcBride specifically mentions IRC, and also mentions Nakon (presumably User:Nakon, recently renamed). Was there an IRC discussion and decision to do all this? Also, East718 went silent for two hours after carrying out the deletions, and then made this edit to leave the message: "Something's come up and I won't be editing for a while. Feel free to leave messages." Is it too presumptuous of me to ask what "came up" to prompt that notice? Carcharoth (talk) 15:15, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
  • I don't see the need for an RFC just to cover a single action; just pointing out a mistake is enough feedback for an isolated incident. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:58, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Is there a pattern of bad judgement, or is this an occasional mistake? I don't see evidence of a pattern. Jehochman ^Talk 15:01, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
    • The lack of response worries me. Sometimes there is an attitude that hunkering down for a while is the best way to avoid drama. Sure, things do happen in real life to prompt people to stop editing for a while, but the impression is that sometimes the timing of such interludes is convenient. Until a fuller explanation emerges (and at that point I will be the first to apologise), the impression given is not good. In East's case, probably no pattern. Betacommand's case is more problematic. These were good-faith attempts to protect the encyclopedia, but there needs to be an open admission that they quite simply got this wrong and realise they shouldn't do this in future. Carcharoth (talk) 15:21, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Let's review the facts. User and Admin collude to do something that they Probably Shouldn't Do. UserBot does garbage edits to a subpage, and Admin moves it to the Main Page, thereby misusing the admin tools. The admin tools were granted on an implicit agreement to not misuse them. Solution: Sternly warn said misuser of tools, and take away UserBot's access since this is the 500th time it's done something that makes the entire community mad at it. Luigi30 (Taλk) 15:03, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Anyone who deals with fair use images, even if it is a human, will have people knocking on their door on a constant basis, sometimes in an angry state of mind. This is the first time I noticed the bot do anything very wierd such as this. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 15:44, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

• I've asked User:Graham87 and User:Nakon to comment here, as they made the null edits to the Main Page (still visible in the history). What I want to know is how they were aware of all this and what communications were made to take these actions? I've also asked User:MZMcBride, as he seemed to become aware very early on (he posted to East's talk page at 01:32, and the wiki-tech mailing list post by Gurch was at 01:39). I'll ask Gurch as well how he became aware of all this. Carcharoth (talk) 15:50, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

  As one of the admins who made a few null edits to the main page, I've been asked to comment here. I have Talk:Main page on my watchlist (and thus Main page) and noticed this edit. I assumed that since the page was deleted earlier, someone was trying to ensure that it wouldn't happen again. I found that the number of edits was lower than the bigdelete threshold and I made a few more to bump up the number. I apologize for any problems I may have caused. Nakon 16:34, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

  The Main Page was deleted. It's the sort of thing that is fairly easy to become aware of – Gurch 17:14, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

  As far as I'm aware, deletions don't show up in watchlists. Let me be frank. Was there an extended discussion off-wiki (be it mailing lists or IRC) before it was raised on-wiki? If so, why? Carcharoth (talk) 17:18, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

  The developers aren't in the habit of hanging around Talk:Main Page or the administrators' noticeboard. However, they do read the mailing list. Since the mass editing was an attempt to use the deletion size limit in a way the developers had presumably not foreseen when they added the limit, I thought they should know about it – Gurch 17:30, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

  One would think that recent Sandbox deletion would hint at the neccessity to discuss all these "bright" unusual ideas first ∴ AlexSm 17:26, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

  Gurch has explained in more detail on my talk page. I'm satisfied that the dummy edits are what attracted some people to this - but I'm still unsure how those making the null edits became aware of the deletion and page history merge and the "let's get it above 5000 revisions" plan. I just want to be crystal clear who contributed to these off-wiki discussions before during and after this incident. Ultimately, as Gurch says, it comes back to the judgment of the users in question, but I'm still (like others) worried that people just don't seem to be getting the message. Off-wiki discussions, or those with a limited number of people participating, are inherently risky due to lack of review and lack of transparency. Please, please, please can those using IRC, e-mails or whatever, think next time something like this comes up? Carcharoth (talk) 17:49, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

  You're still trying to put blame on the mode of discussion. Had the handful of users involved discussed this on each other's talk pages before doing it, it still wouldn't have been any better. Conversely, if they had asked for an opinion in the #wikipedia-en channel before doing it, they would have been told not to, by me. And needless to say, if they had asked on the Wikitech-l mailing list, they would have been met with the same threat of desysopping that they have now been met with anyway. Please stop labelling all "off-wiki" discussion as bad and "on-wiki" discussion as good, because that simply isn't the case – Gurch 18:19, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

  The problem is that those who give advice in closed areas don't get shown up for the purveyors of bad advice that they are. In the Hoffman arbitration case, Moreschi commented in an ANI thread that Hoffman was "obviously a sockpuppet" - that bad advice was in the open for all to see. If that had taken place on IRC, Cuerden would have not had the ANI thread to point to and say "look, I got support for my block", but equally, the giver of bad advice would have remained in the dark. Similarly, here, we just don't know who else gave bad advice. Carcharoth (talk) 18:28, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

• Just a small note: please do not call these null edits, this is very confusing to those familiar with already established terms, see m:Help:Dummy edit: null edits are not even recorded in the page history ∴ AlexSm 17:26, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Wow. Simply incredible that so many people can make so many poor choices in the span of about 12 hours. Tim laid it all out pretty well. I wasn't able to be on IRC while this was going on, thus my post to East's talk page. Beta did a task for East; Beta's really not all too much to blame -- almost any bot user could've done the exact same thing. Alex is correct in the post above this one -- null edits do not add revisions to the database. What Beta made are called trivial or "dummy" edits. Going forward: (1) All bot discussion should go to WP:BON or WP:BOTREQ. This page is inappropriate for bot discussion; (2) I'm of the opinion that ArbCom and RfC are both unnecessary here; I propose that East (and perhaps Maxim and Ryan) stand for a new RfA in a week (when everyone's called down a bit). Meanwhile, I think that he / they should be barred from using any admin tools. Kudos go to Krimpet and Animum who attempted to reduce the possibility of a Main Page deletion without fucking everything up and causing all this drama. Kudos go to all of the admins who didn't unblock BetacommandBot; if there's one thing this community doesn't need, it's another sysadmin who's particularly pissed with us. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:54, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Addendum: I mentioned User:Nakon and User:Betacommand in my post on East's talk page because they were the ones I could see in the Main Page history and they were the ones that I knew for sure are regularly in the admins channel. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:57, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I think MZMcBride is referring to this by Krimpet. Animum undeleted the Main Page three minutes after Maxim deleted it. Presumably Maxim had noticed his mistake and was trying to undelete it, but Animum got there first. Carcharoth (talk) 18:12, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

When referencing Krimpet and Animum, I was referring to their edits to the global CSS files. On a side note, I completely agree with Gurch that it makes no difference whether this conversation between East and Beta occurred on-wiki or off-wiki. Had I been able to get on IRC last night, I would have immediately told them what a stupid and ill-thought-through idea it was to add null edits to the Main Page. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:10, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

They didn't talk about it on IRC either. Well, they might have done in a private message, but not in any of the channels – Gurch 20:14, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I for one just checked out the history after the Main Page deletion to see if anything happened in the hour or so since its undeletion. I found BCBot's edits and decided to try the final push to 5,000 edits. Graham87 23:06, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

And that is one of the most ironic things about the whole incident. It seems that even after doing all this, they miscounted or something, and the bot hadn't done enough edits! I mean, really, getting the number of edits right isn't that difficult is it? Carcharoth (talk) 23:21, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I may have skimmed through all of the comments above, but I don't see where this has been addressed. Where was Betacommandbot authorized to do these edits? The bot should have gone through bot review to do any other tasks than what it has already been approved for. If Betacommand is adding new features to his bot without approval, he should stop, now. Corvus cornix_talk 23:17, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

In the subsection titled "Bot tasks" there is something about how editing user subpages is an exception. Of course, if Betacommand knew that these edits were going to be moved to the page history of the Main Page (as it seems he did), then this whole excuse disintegrates like a mass of soggy tissue paper. Carcharoth (talk) 23:24, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I have made an extended comment on this situation in a user subpage. — Werdna talk 09:20, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

What next?

It has been almost 24 hours since the deletion and page history merges by East718 took place. The following is an attempt to refocus the discussion again and see if anything remains to be done before moving on.

• (1) BetacommandBot remains blocked (it is a week-long block that started at some point on 4 February 2008). Betacommand has asked above if anyone will speak to Tim Starling for him, and failing that, would be happy for the community to review the block. At the moment, it seems no-one is willing to unblock, though maybe someone will put forward a good reason for unblocking. One question is whether the block is causing problems - are Betacommandbot's other functions being carried out? See also the questions below that I've posted to the WP:BAG talk page.
• (2) East718's actions - it seems that nothing much more can be done until East718 returns and responds to the concerns raised above and elsewhere. What is the normal procedure in situations like this? Leave a note on their talk page summarising what has been discussed and pointing them to somewhere (back here?) where they can respond to the concerns? How long should should someone be given to respond?
• (3) Bot actions and issues - as was pointed out above, this needs to be discussed at the various bot pages, such as WP:BAG. Betacommand is a member of BAG (the bot approvals group). I've posted the following questions over there: (a) Did this bot action need approval? (b) What are the views of WP:BAG on the block of User:BetacommandBot? (c) How can the issue of too many functions being tied up in one bot be addressed?
• (4) The Bugzilla discussion about Main Page deletion hacks, patches and whatnot. Anyone want to summarise that? Not sure what more can be done with that other than to note the outcome somewhere if it is relevant. Most of the technical stuff seems to have been sorted or is being discussed elsewhere.
• (5) Other issues - auditing of bots (cleaning up existing records) and dealing with BetacommandBot's tasks, if needed. Again, all bot stuff. Can these issues be safely turfed over to WP:BAG and similar venues to deal with?

In summary, I think the remaining admin issues are (and we should really concentrate on these issues and not be distracted by the other ones):

• (I) The block of BetacommandBot (let it run out, or lift it early based on what Betacommand has said?).
• (II) The actions of East718 (were the following acceptable: the decision to do this, the discussion of the actions, the actions themselves, and the response afterwards). We can review the first three. The last one (the response afterwards) is not fully known yet, and will need East718 to make an on-wiki response.

Apologies if anyone feels I'm prolonging this thread. I think stuff is slowly being directed off to the correct venues to be discussed, and hopefully the above will help focus on stuff relevant to this noticeboard. Carcharoth (talk) 00:09, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Response

Hey, everyone. Leave for a day and look what gets stirred up. :O First off, I'd like to apologize for any disruption caused; I hope you all recognize that this was one of those things meant with the best intentions that went completely off the rails. It was a good-faith effort to lock down the main page which was messed with twice just yesterday, once by a compromised account and another time as a joke gone wrong. It was very bad form of me to just unilaterally do this, but I've always been of a mind to just get things done. In the end, it's been rather harmless as the history is now cleaned up and a permanent solution is in place. I'm not going to put up a fight if anybody wishes me to be sanctioned in some manner, but it won't be useful as I'm disappearing for a long while due to unrelated reasons.

BCBot should probably be unblocked, since Betacommand wasn't aware of what I was doing - I made an open-ended request for a bot account in #-admins and he just happened to be the first person to respond. It was my mistake for passing him a bot that made a bunch of garbage edits at reckless speed without informing him of its nature, although I suspect he's learned a lesson to not run unvetted code on his account.

One last bit of housekeeping: it's a very poorly kept secret that I run a bunch of unapproved adminbots that perform repetitive tasks so other admins can worry about more pressing matters. The most important of these is a bot that hunts down and reverts/deletes XRumer (aka /w or index.php) spam in real time, and blocks spam-only accounts and IPs if the spambot is running from a zombie proxy. Around 30 or so spambots are stopped daily with 10% or so being open proxies or compromised computers. Obviously I've taken it down already but can pass it on to any other admin willing to run it, just email me. east.718 at 03:15, February 5, 2008

Hi East. Thanks for the apology and for explaining what happened. Hopefully you will be around for long enough to reply to this, but if not, then I guess it will have to wait until you get back.

• "It was very bad form of me to just unilaterally do this" - can we have assurances that you won't act unilaterally like this again?
• "I've always been of a mind to just get things done" - in future, will you discuss things like this before doing them? There is boldness and then there is recklessness. No harm done this time, but what about next time?
• "but it won't be useful as I'm disappearing for a long while" - the question is whether you will repeat the misjudgments made this time round, so this thread will be useful in determining that - sure, it can wait until you get back, but the attitude that going away for a long time means that the possibility of sanctions (even if it is only a thread like this with lots of criticism of your judgment) should be discounted, is, well, rather strange.

Then there are the three points I raised above:

• (1) discussion of the actions - did you in fact discuss this with anyone? I thought you had discussed it with Betacommand, but it seems now that you didn't.
• (2) the actions themselves - I think it is clear now what you did - can we have assurances that you won't add dummy edits like this in future, or do page merges like this in future, without discussing it first? Especially given that Tim Starling has said he will block anyone who does this?
• (3) the response afterwards - if you do do something unilaterally in future (boldness is sometimes good), can we have reassurances that you will make every attempt to be around in the aftermath? The notice you put up two hours later saying that something had come up is fair enough - but can you tell us what happened in those two hours? Did you see the talk page messages people had left you? Did you get lots of people asking you what had happened, and did you respond to them? Off-wiki response are all very well, but the on-wiki records just shows silence, a notice after two hours, and then this response. If you are not going to be around to deal with the follow-up to something, discuss (on-wiki) with others and maybe let someone deal with it - there was no urgency here.

I'll let others respond to the other points, and I'll respond to the Betacommand bit in the section Ral315 started. I appreciate the image work you do, East, so I hope things do work out. If I'm happy with the above points, I won't be taking things any further, and I would hope no-one else would either. Have a nice wikibreak! Carcharoth (talk) 08:27, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I have a lot of tolerance for good faith screwups, for the simple reason that, if they're truly good faith, they're unlikely to be repeated (unless the user in question is demonstrably incorrigible, which East isn't). I say we leave things were they now sit. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 08:32, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

How difficult is it for East718 (when he gets back) to take the time to answer the above? Ideally, East718 won't be the only one to learn how not to do things. Others watching this will learn what not to do in more general terms - ie. discuss first, really think about the consequences of the actions, and stay around to deal with them. Carcharoth (talk) 08:36, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, what I meant was that I was satisfied with the response, not that further questions to East were inappropriate. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 08:37, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Unblocking BetacommandBot?

Given that Tim's willing to let the community handle whether Betacommand should unblock, I'm wondering whether BetacommandBot should be unblocked. Clearly this was a lapse of judgment. And this isn't the first lapse in judgment that Betacommand's made. But I think that, with no permanent harm done, and Betacommand promising not to do this again, there's no reason to make him sit the block out.

This unblock would be with the understanding, of course, that he not run bots like these without prior approval from the BAG. I'm personally willing to do this, so long as it isn't controversial; any thoughts? Ral315 (talk) 04:43, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Bot owners are responsible for the actions of their bots. The edits were a waste of system resources and should not have been made. I hold Tim in very high esteem, and I imagine many other admins do as well. It is pretty rare that a sysadmin steps in to a situation like this and takes action; it's even more rare that revisions are then deleted from the database. Things like that generally indicate quite an error on someone's part. A week is not a very long time, and I hope this block gives people time to appreciate the work that BetacommandBot does for the community and perhaps other bot owners can write similar bots in the event that Beta someday decides to no longer be as active as he is. BetacommandBot can be out of commission for a week -- we'll live. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:58, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree with MZMcBride. Let's see how things pan out for a week. I understand the argument that East718 was also responsible, but before any unblocking, Betacommand needs to state clearly and unequivocally what lessons he has learned. For one thing, I wouldn't be happy to see BetacommandBot unblocked until Betacommand explains the following from East718 (see above): "passing him a bot that made a bunch of garbage edits at reckless speed without informing him of its nature, although I suspect he's learned a lesson to not run unvetted code on his account" Beta, did you really run unvetted code on that account? How much did you know of what East718 was trying to do? Carcharoth (talk) 08:33, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Just above, you state (and, I agree), that in this instance, no real harm was done. I find it REALLY hard to believe that Betacommand didn't know at least what the bot did, and, I can reasonably understand why it might have been thought to be a good idea (a good enough idea, to protect the main page from deletion, that Tim tweaked the main page to be not be deletable himself!). They were just trying to protect the project. I'm not sure, what the point of punishing keeping BCBot blocked for a week at this time, exactly is. SQL^{Query me!} 13:25, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I'll repeat myself: "before any unblocking, Betacommand needs to state clearly and unequivocally what lessons he has learned" I normally disagree with this "make them show they know what they have done wrong" approach, but then that approach is too often applied to new editors who can't be expected to know all the site standards. Betacommand should know by now what is and isn't acceptable - what will and won't create drama. Plus the question that East718's response has thrown up (the "unvetted code" bit) - either Betacommand knew what the bot request was for (and thus shares responsibility for thinking it should happen without discussion) or he ran the bot request without really thinking about what it was for - not suitable behaviour for someone who is now back on the bot approvals group and is trusted with helping to approve or deny other bot requests. I would prefer that Betacommand actually steps up to the plate and addresses these issues (and gets his bot unblocked early), rather than him just staying quiet and waiting for the block to expire. I agree that this block is not the right point to talk about splitting up BCBot - but that discussion shouldn't be deferred much longer (BC needs to lay out a clear timetable by when he intends to get this done - and there needs to be checks to prevent over-reliance on single bots, or any bots). Carcharoth (talk) 13:59, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Until BCB is split up into multiple bots (a completely reasonable request that has been made multiple times in the past) I see no reason it should be unblocked. Opening the source would be good too. Haukur (talk) 10:24, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

While that's a fair point, and one perhaps Betacommand should do, I don't think it's fair to hold a block over Betacommand's head over something as trivial as that. Nevertheless, I see the points made above as well. Ral315 (talk) 10:46, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, I strongly oppose holding BCBot's block over his head, to get what you want. If you believe that every bot should be forced to have separate accounts (and, be open source), per task, then, please get consensus and modify the bot policy. SQL^{Query me!} 13:08, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. BetacommandBot might emphasize some necessary changes to the Bot policy, but BetacommandBot's case must be considered as an independant thing, no matter what. NicDumZ ~ 16:03, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I haven't suggested any broad policy changes - I just want Betacommand to split his bot. With any reasonable code design this would be an easy task. Haukur (talk) 15:27, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I was saying, that, if you want bot owners to be required to run separate tasks, under separate accounts, this isn't the time, nor the place. Until then, there really isn't any requirement, for BCBot to do so. SQL^{Query me!} 16:06, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I am not in favour of an early unblocking; Betacommand has not been blocked, his bot has. If he cannot run his bot within the agreed limits, it should stay blocked. An early unblocking merely confirms to Betacommand that he can pretty much do what he likes with his bot. Neıl ☎ 11:02, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

BetacommandBot has a long history of problems, especially bugs and unauthorised actions. Do not unblock it. I suggest we ban it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.189.64.44 (talk) 13:46, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely do not unblock BetacommandBot. You don't keep giving the car keys to the kid who keeps driving off of Deadman's Curve. This whole latest hullabaloo happened precisely because of a failure to stop and think. Had this issue been calmly deliberated on-wiki, it would have quickly become obvious that it was a hideously stupid idea from the get-go. Instead, it was dashed off as a "hey, let's try this!" idea on IRC, and quickly implemented, to the project's detriment. I think that making BetacommandBot cool its heels for a week (or more) is clearly necessary in order to prevent this sort of slapdash irresponsibility in the future. Nandesuka (talk) 15:06, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Nandesuka puts it better then I did. Apropos of very little, this is the 36th block to be issued to BetacommandBot, for various reasons including misuse, continuing to work outside trial periods, general bugginess, and so on. Most of them get undone early because Betacommand always promises he's learnt his lesson and won't screw up again. How many more chances will this bot get? Surely we could find a user or a group of users more suitable, civil, and with the capacity to learn from their mistakes to run bots that cover the tasks BetacommandBot does, split by task and with open code to allow for collaborative improvement. Neıl ☎ 15:16, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Neıl, you fail to note that 90% of those blocks are groundless and quickly reverted. I also take offense to your attacks against me. Ive personly done over 60,000 contributions to this project, and BCBot has ~800,000 edits. yes there will be mistakes, errors and bugs with that number of edits. In this case I did one act to protect the encyclopedia people completely fail to assume good faith with me. I now know why so many good users are leaving the project in droves, on average we loose an admin ever two days. we seem to want to hang every good user for the slightest mistake. it seems that now users like creating drama, and banning users. it almost seems that the current consensus is to have be banned and sent to hell. β^_command 15:45, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

As Haukurth says, "90% were groundless" was patently untrue. The fact many were quickly reverted is because you have already been extended a lot of good faith and many admins have been willing to unblock the bot because you promised it would work from now on. But it's clearly not working, as there's at least 16 blocks that are valid (even if they were undone before expiration). "People completely fail to assume good faith with you" - does this mean you don't even understand why what you did was wrong? Neıl ☎ 16:16, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

lucasbfr's count below has it that 50% of the blocks are valid. That's still a lot of blocks. A bigger problem is that you react with this same indignant attitude every time you've made a mistake and been criticized for it. Haukur (talk) 16:00, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Haukur, Ive admited that I fucked up, I was acting in what I though was the betterment of wikipedia. Im sorry if I get a little irratated when people miss-quote facts and attack me for making good faith efforts to help. it seems that people ignore all the good that I do and they just attack me and call for my head on platter. or that I get banned β^_command 16:19, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, from a COOP perspective, I'm a little worried on how reliant elements of wikipedia seems to on the BCbot performing rountine tasks and how little redundancy we have. As a matter of urgency, we need to work towards developing bots that are under the control of the community (by that, I mean the community has access to the code via some mechanism - so that if the owner leaves or falls under a bus we have a fallback position). I agree entirely with Neil's other comments. Is there a working group or other "body" who could take a lead here? --Fredrick day (talk) 15:22, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Theoretically, WP:BAG. But that nearly got shut down by the community at one point. One idea would be to get developers more involved. See User:Werdna/Comments on main page deletion:

"It is my suggestion that the development and systems administration team should play an integral role in the administration of a successful bot system. While the community of the English Wikipedia should be tasked with determining whether the purpose of a bot is sound, it is the general Wikimedia technical community which must evaluate a proposed bot, feature, or other technically-sensitive change for its impact upon performance, and on whether it is better achieved with, for instance, extensions and modifications to MediaWiki." - User:Werdna

This would also help build bridges between the community and developers. I really think this is a great idea, and should be followed up as far as possible. Carcharoth (talk) 15:34, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Carcharoth, it's a good idea in theory, but it's bad in practice, simply because the developer squad is already spread thin and overworked. If they were interested, yes, that would be great, but I really doubt that is the case. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 05:00, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Here's a suggestion. Why can't Betacommand spend the week-long block tidying up his code, running it on test wikis, and preparing for this splitting of tasks and opening up of the code that he seems to be on the verge of doing? We can't force him to do this, but we can politely suggest that he do this. Carcharoth (talk) 15:34, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

It would be lovely if BC were prepared to do that. I'm pretty sure he has been asked politely to consider this ona number of occasions and refused to do so. Neıl ☎ 16:12, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Neil, last time I counted (out of 27 blocks) I counted 11 valid blocks and 10 out of process. I guess that 50% of blocks on the bot are still rubbish. -- lucasbfr ^talk 15:45, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

16 valid blocks (plus at least 4 valid ones on User:Betacommand for malfunctioning automated scripts, running the bot on the main account, bot-spamming RFCU, automated deletion etc) makes 20. Even with a number of blocks being "out of process", 20 valid blocks suggetss there's something to be resolved. Splitting the bot tasks would be an excellent start. Neıl ☎ 16:12, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Keep blocked until functions are atomized. Folks keep saying that we shouldn't keep it blocked because no permanent harm was done. That's an insane standard that we would never apply to an editor. Cool Hand Luke 16:04, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I hate this, but I believe the bot should stay blocked. I've tried to be open minded, but I've seen, over the past year, too many mistakes coming from Betacommand and I simply don't trust his judgment with the Bot, unfortunately. I tried - really tried - to wipe the slate clean after the fiasco of a year ago, and I had almost rebuild my trust in Betacommand and then he went and did this. I'm sorry, in my opinion, the bot should remain blocked for the full duration. I also strongly suggest that the BAG get involved in this and codify whether or not bots should be allowed to run unapproved tasks in userspace. By the way, given that the task was run in userspace with the sole purpose of then having it impact on main-space, I am horribly disappointed in Betacommand's reasoning that "since it's in userspace" it was okay. - Philippe | Talk 17:09, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I believe that if BCB's edits were not so crucial as they are, his block should remain. I believe that until we can get his tasks split up between trustworthy users, he should remain unblocked, but merely to do work that is extremely difficult and/or tedious by hand. When this is finished, he should be blocked. I barely even edit Wikipedia much anymore, but I still know of the infamous qualities of BCB. I don't mean to slam on its master, Betacommand, because his edits have been very helpful. Unfortunately, I must agree that these crucial tasks must be handed over to someone who will not make such errors in judgement. - ђαίгснгм ^таιќ 04:52, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Unblocked BCB, left note for Tim. Rich Farmbrough, 11:07 6 February 2008 (GMT).

Rich, how do propose the above concerns should be addressed? A warning to Betacommand not to run new bot requests or code without getting them approved first? You do realise that is what he did, right? And that Tim's block was after the bot had ceased its "system resources abuse", and was probably to prevent future abuses of system resources? How can this be prevented in the future? Has Betacommand said clearly what he has learnt from this? If you are going to unblock after a long discussion like the one above, I think you should say a bit more than just:

• Tim's talk page: "BetacommandBot. Hi Tim, just to let you know I'm unblocking this account as the system resource issue is no longer. Rgds" (10:52)
• Unblock log: "System resource issue no longer an isue - bot not doing that" (10:53)
• Betacommand's talk page: "Bot unblocked. Effective now. Verb sap. etc." (10:56)
• In this thread: "Unblocked BCB, left note for Tim." (11:07)

Otherwise it seems that you are ignoring the above concerns. Carcharoth (talk) 11:49, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

As the unblocking means that no further admin action is required, it seems that this discussion will have to move to a requests for comments, which I was hoping to avoid. If Betacommand is more responsive to the questions above, then maybe this can be avoided. Carcharoth (talk) 11:49, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, the block served no further purpose. BCB isn't going to do "something silly" in the next six days, so we need to avoid cutting off our nose to spite our face, here. What BCB did in this case was well intentioned, and could have been done without breaking any "rules" in a dozen different ways. The question of user behaviour can be taken up with Betacommand on his talk page, or RFC if appropriate, of changes to bot processes or standards on the appropriate discussion pages. This particular incident is, it seems to me, only important as part of a pattern of behaviour, which if seen as a problem, should not be addressed by temporary block. Rich Farmbrough, 12:24 6 February 2008 (GMT).

I have raised the bot issues at Wikipedia talk:Bots/Approvals group#Bot issues at WP:AN thread, but there has been no response so far. If you feel this was meant as a temporary block to prevent abuse of system resources, an abuse that is indeed no longer occurring, why not ask Tim that first? My reading of it is that you are wrong, and that the block was aimed to be left in place until Tim or the community (not just you) were satisfied that Betacommand had responded adequately to the concerns raised. Neither East718 nor Betacommand have indictated what they discussed, who they discussed it with, and why they failed to discuss it with anyone. Just saying "I fucked up" is not answering those questions. I will copy my comments above over to Betacommand's talk page. The level of responsiveness is a concern, and is a constant refrain. It shouldn't have to take all this to get Betacommand to respond to concerns. Carcharoth (talk) 13:40, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Whoa, what, Rich? You unblocked? There are clearly concerns, that is not a consensus action. I'm not sure that's the route I'd have taken. - Philippe | Talk 13:53, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm less concerned about the unblock than the poor response by Betacommand so far. He has said he is sorry for causing drama and doesn't intend to repeat this action. No apology for the failure to discuss. TO make it easier for him to respond, I've laid out my concerns at his talk page. See here. Carcharoth (talk) 14:20, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

And Betacommand has responded there. As I said here, I'm satisfied now those answers have been given, and am happy for this AN thread to be archived (though others may want to continue). Some issues remain for WP:BAG to discuss, and for East to respond to when he returns. Carcharoth (talk) 14:53, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

source code?

An important issue that is central to this is that of the source code. My understanding is that it is currently closed? I see a number of requests on here for BC to open it to the community (or at the least "approved" members of the community?) Can we get a yea or nay on that request? If it's a nay - that's fine and I have no issue with that but the community needs to know so that we can start developing bots to perform those important but routine tasks and are under the control of the community rather than single editors. This is no slight on the good work that the bot had performed to date but rather a pragmatic way forward and an attempt to insure that the best needs of the community and project are served. --Fredrick day (talk) 16:25, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

As I was about to post above, I do release my code to a very very limited number of trusted users. one I dont like clones of BCBot floating about that I cannot control. the code is very powerful (Ive clocked it at 700 edits a minute). I dont make my code idiot proof. I build it so that I can use it without a lot of hassel. Also I dont have the time to review code changes made by other to my code. As for splitting the bot into several accounts Ive been working on that. I have also been doing other requests (Wikipedia:Image renaming) changing several thousand lines of code spread accross multiple files just takes time. with RW commitments I need 30 hours a day, and as we all know there are only 26 hours in a day. β^_command 16:54, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

"the code is very powerful (Ive clocked it at 700 edits a minute)". Come on. Editing a page is pretty simple, code-wise, and there are vast quantities of free code available. I have very strong doubts that any code can be any more "powerful" than other code at making edits. And even if your code has some magic that makes it ten times faster than everybody else's, accounts that are not autoconfirmed can make only 8 edits per minute, and other accounts tend to have internet connection latency and speed as a much greater limiting factor than how "powerful" the code is. — Werdna talk 06:02, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I started a conversation to this end at Wikipedia talk:Bots/Requests for approval#Code publishing.3F yesterday and the response has been lukewarm at best. My feeling is that bot operators don't want to release code

1) To keep control of it tightly, and have it be "theirs". I.e., no clones.

2) Arguments that the bot codes are "sensitive".

3) Operators not wanting to have to clean up their code.

4) Bot operators not wanting to be responsible for others using their code.

The only way to force release would probably be if the community (not the BAG) ordered that all code be published to get authorized to run new bots. Lawrence § t/e 16:35, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I can understand all of those feels but the community really needs to achieve a better balance between considering the feelings of the people creating the bots and ensuring that we have sufficient control to ensure Continuity of operations/development if a developer goes under a bus. I think retroactively asking for all code to be released can be a problem but certainly there must be scoop for improving the situation with future approvals? --Fredrick day (talk) 16:51, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

As I understand it, the crats actually oversee the BOT process, but have delegated the review part to the WP:BAG, so if the crats said as a group "no new bots/bot tasks may run unless the code is released via X means" that would solve this debate IMHO. MBisanz ^talk 18:14, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Bureaucrats only give out the bot flag. They don't say whether automated scripts are permitted to run to begin with. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:43, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

All of those reasons are standard and patently wrong-headed objections to open source.

1. Possessiveness is not an acceptable excuse for anything on Wikipedia. You can choose to participate or not, but if you choose to, in certain respects you need to forfeit all possessiveness for the good of the project. That already applies to edits' copyright and there's no sound policy reason it should not be applied to bots as well.
2. No bot code is sensitive. Any idiot can already hack up a ten-line Perl script to spam as many edits as he pleases, once he creates an account and figures out how to calculate a valid edit token. And anyone willing to look at the source code of an anti-vandal bot to figure out how to more effectively vandalize would evade the bot somehow in any case, it's not very hard.
3. Nobody says you have to clean up your code, you just have to release it, and provide just enough documentation that others can actually get the thing running. If it's an ungodly mess, that's not great, but people can still run it if you disappear ― at the very least, until someone can write up a replacement.
4. Every bot will still have to be registered and approved, and it's the operator who's responsible for what the bot does, not the author. If someone wants to run a bot whose source code they don't remotely understand, they should probably be denied the right to do so without fairly good reason.

I think that, in retrospect, it was always a bad idea to have the BAG consist of bot operators. It would be better for it to consist of programmers who can understand the issues involved but don't actually run any bots. There's too much conflict of interest right now, and as a result, too much self-indulgence, IMO. Bot authors and operators provide invaluable services to the community, but that doesn't mean they should be given any right to operate against the project's principles or its interest. Better people get by with manual methods all along than rely on a closed-source bot that may suddenly disappear one day. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:43, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Here is a bold suggestion: Treat all (bot) source code in a similar way that we treat articles. Let everybody be able to edit the code: Create new tasks, improve any code, debug, etc. Vandalism is dealt with similar to main space vandalism. Unwanted tasks (not compatible with policy) will be deleted. Good-faith-errors will be corrected. Disputes solved by trying to reach consensus. (Utopia or straighforward?) If we require all bot runs to be revertible (similar to ordinary edits – when the developers come up with a robust rollback function), then running a bot is not such a big deal. Oceanh (talk) 02:36, 6 February 2008 (UTC).

That would be a HUGE security risk, in my opinion. SQL^{Query me!} 04:41, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Very bad idea. It would only take a change to one line of OrphanBot's code and it would start replacing unsourced images with penis pictures. --Carnildo (talk) 05:53, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Indeed very bad. A few lines changed in ClueBot could either completely disable it or make it revert *everything*. Furthermore, one character in ClueBot's source could make it negate the heuristics and thus revert only good edits but not bad edits. Also, the huge security risk to the servers that run these bots ... Most of these bots are written in very powerful languages. Languages that are capable of lots of stuff outside of Wikipedia. Languages that could run DDoS code ... Languages that could forkbomb the server running them. You know the limit of 100 ifexist calls per page? A forkbomb could (and indeed would, if coded properly) use billions of more resources than an ifexist call. As the bots' password has to be stored on the server somewhere, readable by the bot, what keeps someone from writing a piece of code to read the password and post it to a Wikipedia page? What about the ability to run any command on the server the bot is running on under the user running the bot (often the same user account that the bot owner uses). We know that bots can go at very high speeds, now what if someone were to compromise 5 or 10 bots? Someone could very easily vandalize a lot of Wikipedia before someone could block the bots. Suppose 10 bots at 10 edits per second (this is possible with forking and such), and it took 1 minute to block all 10 bots, in that short time, the bots would have vandalized 6,000 pages. Now, let's assume that it took a bit longer to block them and it took 5 minutes, the bots would have vandalized 30,000 articles. -- Cobi^(t|c|b) 06:33, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Good grief. I don't think anyone was suggesting that the live code be made publically editable without review. — Werdna talk 07:26, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

What about the idea of a trusted repository like OTRS? They maintain copyright permissions and secure user communications. As part of the bot approvals process, each bot task could be issued an OTRS ticket number verifying that a copy of the code has been given. Then, if something like BCB's block or Gurch's travel happened, an OTRS rep could issue the code to a new, vetted bot operator (probably an existing operator) who would at least have that far a head start on coding a replacement (if not being able to implement the bot automatically).

As a followup, some bot ops have released their code and there are somewhat useful (to a programmer) documentations on how to code in specific languages used on wikis. What is to prevent someone from coding their own bot, setting up several sleeper-socks, and doing the same thing you suggest? Using rotating names and proxies, a concentrated attacked, like what happened to GRC.com several years ago is probably just as possible with or without bot code published.

Certainly, somebody could do something like that if they had the time, motivation and resources. But somebody that motivated is not going to be stopped by a lack of available bot code. I mean, there are countless wiki editing modules available on CPAN, and it's not exactly difficult to write one. I think it took me an hour or two. — Werdna talk 07:30, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

In fact ClueBot has had its source open since its inception, and I haven't seen any vandals who have been trying to get around ClueBot.  :) -- Cobi(t|c|b) 00:50, 5 February 2008 (UTC)"

so isn't there already a risk of someone switching the heuristics or forkbombing (assuming that part of the code is released) and re-running it on their own system to attack your server or wikipedia? MBisanz ^talk 07:13, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

No more risk than there is of somebody picking up pywikipedia and sending through some mass-changes of replacing images with something offensive. It is my opinion that the place of anti-vandalism bots is to revert unsophisticated vandalism by bored schoolkids — bored schoolkids who are, on the whole, unwilling and/or unable to look up the source code of particular antivandalism bots and to figure out how to get around them. — Werdna talk 07:21, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

No, you misunderstand, forkbombing is an attack against the server executing the source code, not against a remote server like Wikipedia. And, no, ClueBot doesn't have any fork bomb code in it. Anyone technically savvy could easily create a bot (or use a heavily modified version of any open source bot) and run it on their own computer. That isn't the reason it is a bad idea. The reason it is a bad idea is that most people aren't going to take the time to do that, but if they could insert a single '!' into User:ClueBot/Source to make it negate its heuristics, that is a different matter entirely. Furthermore, the major bots on Wikipedia are trusted when you see them make an edit. How many times have you checked MiszaBot III's edit to see if it actually just archived stuff without changing anything else? -- Cobi^(t|c|b) 07:25, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I've checked Misza's a grand total of once, when I set up an archiver for another user and screwed up the date coding and had to go and undo Misza's move to correct my error. And I'm not saying code should be editable, but right now someone with the proper knowledge could take User:ClueBot/Source, copy it to a non-protected page, insert the !, and do damage across many sleeper accounts. On the other hand, requiring all code to go to OTRS for storage, would solve the problem of disappearing bot ops, compromised bots (we've had compromised admins), and maybe even eliminate the need for bot ops to feel some duty to publish their code. MBisanz ^talk 07:33, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't think you really understand what you're saying there. Putting the code in a non-protected page and editing it doesn't magically make it run (try it!). You need a server, you need several accounts, you need decent bandwidth, you need the appropriate software installed on your server. Developing and operating a vandalbot is certainly not a particularly easy task. The easiest part is figuring out how to edit Wikipedia from a script. — Werdna talk 07:44, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

(ec) No, they couldn't. They would have to have access to a Linux machine, a PHP CLI interpreter, a working knowledge of PHP, cURL, MySQL, and a ton of other prerequisites. That page is solely for reference, that page has no special status. As a matter of fact, you can edit it now. It won't change a thing, believe me, many have tried. You would have to copy the source into the correct files, create a proper directory structure, MySQL schema, and create a config file for it from reading the source and figuring out which variables need setting. They would then have to create User:TheirBotName/Run and set it equal to true, otherwise the bot wouldn't run. Then they would have to actually start the bot and after the bot did some sanity checks and read some wiki pages, then it would need to connect both to Freenode and to the IRC feed. After it did that, it would attempt to login as the user defined in the config file, then and only then would it start doing what it is supposed to do (with any changes the malicious user decided to make). -- Cobi^(t|c|b) 07:54, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

(ec2)No, I get that I can't run a bot by magically entering a script. What I mean is that if Cobi's fear is that a user will edit 1 character of his code, so he puts it on a protected page, {or doesn't I see now), along comes a vandal programer, and now that code is in an area that it can be copied to an editable area (I said page, but compiler, text file, etc would also do), then a vandal could copy it, change the code, compile it, run it on their server, and do all sorts of damage. MBisanz ^talk 07:58, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

The difference is the access to the trusted bot's account. User:ClueBot is recognized and trusted not to cause havoc. This saves a lot of time: people don't have to double-check all its edits. In the case of many bots, they even have bot flags, so that not only do people not have to double-check their edits, they can't (at least on RC) unless they go out of their way to show bot edits. Currently nobody does, precisely because the bot flag indicates trustworthiness.

What you are suggesting is, to all intents and purposes, that anyone (who, granted, knows a little programming) be allowed to make any edit they please using the account of any bot. The problem with this should really be very obvious. The entire idea of accounts is to allow recognizability, the ability to associate different edits with each other and use that to draw conclusions that allow you to treat different edits differently. If that weren't important, we would just do away with all account names and IP addresses, and have no way of telling one edit's author from another. It's a bad idea, and no better for being suggested only for bots. Why don't you just have all bots run under one account? It would amount to pretty much the same thing.

This is on top of the fact that arbitrary code execution by untrusted third parties is completely unacceptable in any context. Arbitrary code execution immediately implies trivial DoS capability, intentional or unintentional. This is why you cannot edit the source code of MediaWiki. This is why you cannot edit site JavaScript unless you're an administrator. This is why you cannot run arbitrary SQL queries. Even if you were totally well-meaning, inefficient code or a simple programming error could kill whatever server is running the code. This is why load on the toolserver, where anyone can sign up for an account to run programs, is ridiculously high. Nobody there is malicious (well, except for one guy who apparently ran a Counterstrike server, but that didn't last long). They just aren't being as careful as they should be about optimizing code. And they still bog the server down to a crawl.

So no, really, this isn't a good idea. I promise.  :) If you want to advocate anything more extreme than just requiring the bot to be open-source, you could suggest that it be put in a central repository on a Wikimedia server that a large pool of trusted users can access, and a much smaller pool of trusted users can put live after review. This would be basically like how MediaWiki development is handled, or how most open-source projects are. I'm not advocating that, at least for the present. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 01:11, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia is one of the strictest sites about using only freely licensed images and other media. If we are so strict on images that appear on the main page, why, no, how can we not look at the code that a bot runs to make edits to thousands of articles? How can we allow this code to be proprietary, when the rest of the site is free? If featured articles require sources, multiple editors, etc. How can we allow bots to just be approved by a committee and ran? Does the community as a whole get a say in this? I firmly believe that bots on Wikipedia must be open source, that all editors on Wikipedia can view and comment on. Though you may realize that there are a million reasons that this "would never work", everyone here realizes that this has to happen. Something like this fiasco cannot happen again. - ђαίгснгм ^таιќ 05:08, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

This current episode happened because an admin and a bot operator did not communicate with developers and larger community – licensing of the code has little relevance. Bear in mind also that the key role of BAG is not really vetting the code, it's vetting the operators. There are examples of people picking up some code, and wanting to run it without understanding how it works (just browse the rejected bot requests). I don't believe the community on the whole is geeky enough to be trusted with this role, as one must know something about the subject to be able to act as a judge. Turning bot requests over the community would simply turn it into a popularity contest, a bit like RfA. Most of the people who know enough of programming and are interested in bots have already gravitated towards BAG. – Sadalmelik (talk) 06:27, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

But that's not really the issue from an organisational point of view, the issue is that we are becoming highly reliant on closed sourced bots and their owners to perform many routine or important tasks. If that editor falls under a bus or goes rogue, then we don't currently have any redundancy in place. Yes - those things can be done manually, yes someone could write a replacement bot - but it's still a waste of time and resources when we can develop processes that minimise disruption from the start by bring bots more tightly under the control of the community. Hell we don't even have to do anything with the sourcecode, just log it somewhere (which does not have to be publically available). If you want to register a bot, you turn over the source code and you agree that in the effect of your incapacity that someone else can manage/develop it. I have a bit of a background in organisational resilience and this stuff seems like a non-brainer to me. --Fredrick day (talk) 11:32, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

This issue has been discussed extensively over on the Bot pages. Two more useful things (than open source per se) would be if each significant task has a number of operators that can perform it, and if rather than being extrinsic, bot functions could be made intrinsic to MediaWiki. Nonetheless this would not stop, nor should it, people using automation in general, without redundancy. Rich Farmbrough, 12:46 6 February 2008 (GMT).

Agreed. Rich, is there a well-organised list of bot functions, the history of who performed them in the past, and who performs them now? If not, shouldn't some effort be made towards carrying out that sort of organisation? Carcharoth (talk) 13:46, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

No, and what is needed is carefully constructed list of important bot functions (i.e. that would be missed). However that's the easy part, the hard part is ensuring that they are all "covered off" by another bot operator - and maintaining the list as operators come and go. Whether BAG would take on this task I don't know, most BAGers seem inordinately busy. Rich Farmbrough, 14:47 6 February 2008 (GMT).

If bots were open-source and acceptably documented, each significant task would automatically have a number of operators who could perform it, i.e., anyone who wants to download the source and get it running. That would be the major point (other than moral freeness issues) in requiring open-source bots. As for adding bot functions to MediaWiki, the main problem is that there's necessarily a much lower barrier to running a bot, than to submitting code to a widely-used application that is relied upon for performance and functionality by not only Wikipedia but thousands of third parties.

There are definitely bot tasks that should be in the software, though. One thing that would obsolete quite a few bots would be a reasonable discussion system (no need for archiving, signing, ...). Another thing that would help a ton is a sufficiently flexible task-management system, which could assist in things like AFD, RFA, etc. by automatically creating pages, maintaining lists of open tasks in a category, tracking time limits, listing ended discussions in an appropriate place, and so on. Improved handling of templates, categories, and interwiki links would kill a whole bunch more bots. If anyone wanted to write new features to help out with that kind of thing, it would be great. Anti-vandalism is probably best to keep in bots, though, because it doesn't really benefit from tighter connection to the software at all and is very fluffy and heuristic-based, so hard to get unambiguously right. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 01:11, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

No, those things should not be in the software, because they're not set in stone. This is one of the strengths of wikis - that we can get processes working without the software enforcing them. These are social policies set on each wiki, and should never move beyond that. – Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 15:01, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

A built-in discussion system and improved category/template/interwiki handling should definitely be in the software. A task-management extension would also be very nice to have. I think all of these could be made flexible enough to accommodate most needs currently served by bots that handle those tasks, and to the extent they can't, the bots can be retained. Compare to the introduction of categories as an improvement over lists: lists have become much less important, but are still used due to limitations in the category system (e.g., no ability to associate different names to articles, no ability to add comments next to entries, no ability to add custom headings, . . .). That doesn't mean categories aren't an extremely valuable feature, it just means they aren't perfect.

Integrated features have a variety of critical advantages over bots, including speed; reliability; ease of use (using a specialized interface vs. editing wiki pages, the latter possibly requiring arcane templates, etc.); and working out of the box, which is extremely important not only for third parties, but for smaller wikis that don't have large numbers of people willing or able to run bots. (I doubt there are a lot of things done by bots on any but the ten largest wikis.) As I say, in a few cases, like anti-vandal bots, none of these qualities are as important as unlimited adaptability, which bots have and the software usually doesn't. But in many cases, the more limited adaptability of a software feature is easily sufficient.

The task-management extension is perhaps the most arguable of my suggestions. I do think it would be very valuable, and could enormously simplify participation in processes like AFD. There's been some discussion at mw:User:Robchurch/Work queue, but no work has been done on it, at least not by MediaWiki developers. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 17:04, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Possible vandal bot

I've read a lot of mistakes in the discussion above, I'd like to try to correct some.

1. A DoS attack using one of the multiple bot frameworks that are available, or one modified bot, is very unlikely to happen. Fork bombs are absolutely off-topic here : That would require several servers running very speedy bots to work, and from my point of vue, there are others types of attacks, way more efficient that could be used to take down the fundation's servers. Modifiying a bot in order to attempt a DoS attack is a waste of time, and that's for sure.
2. The other type of attack that you should worry about would be a simple mass automated edit wave. Not some attempt to take down any server, but simply some characters switching, some page blankings, etc, to alter the content and not the service. And such an attack is VERY EASY to set up actually, without having to modify any particular bot scripts:
   • Pywikipedia only needs : python, an internet connection, and a fresh wikipedia account. Easy.
   • With one of the basic script included in pywikipedia, you can perform automated replacements and customize your edit summary
   • a 10 (Actually, the limit for unconfirmed user is 8) edits per second edit rate can be very, very easily reached with a very slow connection and/or hardware. (And I insist on that : Our bot scripts are using timers around every corner to slow down their processes)
   • Setting up 10 computers to start such an attack at the same time is very easy for an individual.
   • Also some IT students have access to powerful servers that are way more speedy than individual computers: I'm currently sitting at a computer school, which has 4 *huge* servers for its student needs, with a 15Gbps connection : I will not try, but setting up 50 threads to make automated edits from 200 different accounts, using automatically changing edit summaries to make them hard to detect (hum... generated from random google searches ? or, better, from edit summaries from the last XML dump ? ) is EASY STUFF, really.
   • I don't think that there would be any way to easily counter such an attack, and yet I'm not even this experienced on computer attacks. Really, I do think that wikipedia is already vulnerable to such an attack, so please, please, please, stop worrying about a possible attack following the release of the code of an antivandal bot...

Wannabe hackers have more chances to succeed monitoring the latest vulnerabilities, or using a very simple replacement bot.

How many of you, bot owners, 'crats, and admins, are logging in using HTTPS to secure your password ? Really, I think that there are some security issues requiring way more attention that this so-called problem about bot code releases...

NicDumZ ~ 13:02, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Most of your points are true, however, you have lost the context. All of this was in response to someone suggesting that we let the bots' live code be changed by anyone at any time. This opens all sorts of attack venues against the server that the bot's code is running on, including a forkbomb against the server running the bot (while (1) pcntl_fork(); for PHP) or using the bot to download a DoS program to the server running the bot in order for the attacker to add another server to their DDoS botnet. The problem is not releasing the code ... ClueBot's code already is. The problem is letting anyone change the live, running copy of it and having the server running the bot execute the new code. -- Cobi^(t|c|b) 18:30, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh, did someone really proposed this ? :S

I assumed that live code was meaning that a running bot should have its actual source published somewhere, and allow others to change it, but... using a SVN, or this sort of system ?!

NicDumZ ~ 13:27, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, above:

“ Here is a bold suggestion: Treat all (bot) source code in a similar way that we treat articles. Let everybody be able to edit the code: Create new tasks, improve any code, debug, etc. Vandalism is dealt with similar to main space vandalism. Unwanted tasks (not compatible with policy) will be deleted. Good-faith-errors will be corrected. Disputes solved by trying to reach consensus. (Utopia or straighforward?) If we require all bot runs to be revertible (similar to ordinary edits – when the developers come up with a robust rollback function), then running a bot is not such a big deal. Oceanh (talk) 02:36, 6 February 2008 (UTC). ” — User:Oceanh, Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard

-- Cobi^(t|c|b) 05:50, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

RFC/RFAr against BetacommandBot

Betacommand is stubborn and does not want to fix his bot. And you all ignore the problems and let BetacommandBot cause more damage. Everytime BetacommandBot gets blocked, it gets unblocked very fast, whether the block is correct or not. <redacted sentence> Please deal with the problems. File an RFC/RFAr against BetacommandBot. Also, shut it down until it is fixed. --Kaypoh (talk) 01:43, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

If you've got a problem with BCB, you take it to RfC or ArbCom. Don't come here demanding others do it. ➔ REDVEЯS has changed his plea to guilty 14:28, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

And, if you want people to take you seriously, start your userpage; That bright red link just looks stupid. (and inviting to vandals). BETA 00:26, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Having a userpage isn't mandatory, and isn't a prerequisite to being taken seriously. There are admins (such as User:JzG) who do not have userpages, but still expect (quite rightly) to be taken seriously. Dreaded Walrus ^{t c} 09:54, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

JzG understands this principle, and has smartly modified his signature to divert to his userpage. —BETA 04:33, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

In case you're interested, I keep my userpage as a redlink because some people instinctively react differently (and not usually in a good way) if your name comes up as a redlink. It can be a useful litmus test for Clue. I got the idea from someone else, of course. Guy (Help!) 23:57, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Possible Solution

Attack the source of the problem:

1. Change the revision limit protocol to only take the size of the article and history into account, not the amount of edits. (if that makes a difference)
2. write in a permanent redirect (or add a normal redirect and protect the article) to a 404-like "article has been deleted, click to go back" page.
3. Progressively delete the original article.

Hope this helps,

BETA 00:11, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Regarding (1), you misunderstand the cause of the problem. A 1 GB article (not that those are permitted on Wikipedia) is no slower or faster to delete than a zero-byte article. Deletion moves a row from the revision table to the archive table; it doesn't touch the external-storage servers, where the text of the relevant revisions is stored. The text of the article remains exactly where it is, it's just now associated with a deleted revision's ID instead of a non-deleted revision's ID. This is why the limit is on revisions per page, and not the size of the revisions.

I don't understand (2) or (3). What are you proposing to redirect to what? What do you mean by "progressively delete"? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 21:05, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

The reason for the revision limit, as I understood it, was to stop the server from grinding to a halt when a large article and its history are deleted. That's the reason for this suggestion. Progressive deletion was just an idea to alleviate this congestion. delete it piece by piece so it's easier on the system. I must have gotten it wrong somewhere. Oops BETA 15:17, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, if by progressive deletion you mean deleting a few hundred revisions, waiting a while, deleting a few hundred more, waiting, etc., then yes, that would certainly work, and would be a feasible solution. It and similar solutions have been discussed, for instance, here. The problem is that nobody's written the code to do it. The current code is just a patch job of a few lines: it's not meant to be a definitive or permanent solution, it's just meant to stop people from breaking the site until someone writes a proper fix. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 00:38, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

The solution is to block the bot and leave it blocked until Betacommand fixes it. The only reason he hasn't is because he doesn't want to. Jtrainor (talk) 07:15, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

I think Betacommandbot should be blocked until its problems are fixed. Enigma (talk) 01:13, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Requesting that Betacommandbot be blocked

The owner has been ignoring complaints about the bot. The only one responding on the [6] is someone who keeps saying he has no power over the bot, meaning the discussions go nowhere. Given the immense number of editors who have complaints about the bot, I think it should be blocked until the owner is willing to address concerns about the bot in a civil and mature manner. Enigma (talk) 01:43, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Ive addressed all concerns, please check the archives. β^_command 02:05, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Whoah there! You seem like you don't care about what other people (possibly a majority of people) think. That's pretty offensive. It's also kind of offensive that you care so little about the errors that your bot makes, resulting in the deletion of the work of others and apparently the paralysis of WP. In other words, your actions are the single-greatest liability we have... Do you care at all about that?? There are far too many concerns to be addressed in just your archives, BTW. Jimbo made it clear that admins aren't supposed to edit war over things such as blocks. As far as I can see, your bot is technically still blocked under WP policy. The fact that it's still editing is an injustice, not a vindication for you. It's still editing because it can, not because it should be and definitely not because it's been judged in any sort of way to be compliant with policy.--7yt6 (talk) 02:30, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

I still think the bot should be blocked. Enigma (talk) 04:47, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

BetaCommandBot is an excellent tool, and we're lucky to have it. Thousands and thousands of edits have proved it. If you made 1000s of edits, I guarantee that you'd delete something someone cared about. —BETA 04:52, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't see this Bot, or the policy it enforces, as making Wikipedia better. It should be possible to use a simple pre-loaded template upon image uploading to satisfy the fair use rationale. Why must we create the need for such red tape and endure endless talk pages littered with BetaCommandBot carpetbombing? If there is a proper forum for such a proposal, please let me know where it is. Thank you. --Pesco (talk) 05:06, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

When you say that you don't support the policy it enforces, is that the policy that protects Wikipedia from being sued for copyright infringement when people misues copyrighted pictures? That policy? --Jayron32.talk.contribs 05:09, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

The bot does not protect us from being sued in any way, it enforces the letter of a Wikipedia policy. Pictures which are rightly used as fair use but have an incorrect rationale on the image page will get tagged for deletion, while images that should never be used as fair use because e.g. they are replaceable by a free equivalent) but have a "correct" fair use rationale (e.g. claiming that no free equivalent is available and so on) do not get tagged. This is not the bot's (or his operator's) fault, this is how bots work. However, this also means that this bot offers no protection from being sued at all, and is only used to make sure that all images seem to follow our policy to the letter. If done correctly, this is a good thing, and is not intended as a criticism of the bot, but it should not be defended with incorrect arguments. Fram (talk) 08:32, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, I have made 1000s of edits. Anyway, look at the bot's talk page. A lot of people have an issue with it. Enigma (talk) 05:00, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't know what the issue is with the main page and BetacommandBot, and frankly I don't care. In so far as the bot's enforcement of WP:NFC #10c is concerned, I fail to see a reason to block the bot. The bot is simply enforcing policy. It was approved for this task by the Bot Approvals Group (see Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BetacommandBot Task 5) on 31 May 2007. It's actions have been debated on a number of occasions. One of them is at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/FURG. At times, the bot has been asked to slow down, which Betacommand has complied with. It is currently running at rates accepted by the various discussions on this point.

People keep complaining that the bot can write rationales. It can't. Let's say the bot comes across an image which is used on five articles, but the rationale only covers the use for one article. The bot can not make a determination about how the image is used in the other four articles, and thus can't just simply add a link to the rationale for those four other articles. That takes a human. there's no way around that.

The reality is, as User:Mark noted in the BAG request for the task, the culture of not providing rationales that comply with #10c has to change. An alternate solution is to deprecate #10c. There's no middle ground. Either we comply with #10c, or we get rid of it. We do not stop enforcing other policies because numbers of editors do not like them. Who likes to be blocked? Nobody. Does that mean we suspend blocking because it's universally reviled by the people who get blocked? Of course not. Similarly, we don't suspend #10c because people who have not been complying with our #10c policy vociferously complain about the bot enforcing approved policy.

The solution here isn't blocking the bot. The solution is either getting rid of #10c or fixing the images. If you get rid of #10c, the bot won't be tagging images as having insufficient rationales. If you fix the images, the bot won't be tagging images as having insufficient rationales. There you go. Two solutions to the problem that do not involve blocking a bot that's been approved for its task, conducted hundreds of thousands of edits in support of that task, vetted and ultimately supported in its actions. --Hammersoft (talk) 17:28, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Hammersoft - above its claimed that the actions of the bot don't constitute complete enforcement of the non-free policies. Obviously, this is correct. The bot is responsible (and can only be responsible) for the parts of the policy that can be enforced by a bot. The rest of the policy needs to be enforced by people. This isn't an argument to get rid of the bot - its an argument for people to stop complaining when the bot enforces the policy and start abiding by the policy on their own. The simple fact is that if it is operating as designed then the bot only tags images that don't follow the policy - and tagging is all it does. So, quibble with the policy if thats your problem, or with the deleting admin if you think a rationale should be written instead of the image deleted. BCBot is part of the solution, not the problem. Avruch ^T 17:37, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

The problem is not poor policy, or a broken bot, the problem is an excess of "fair use." Wikipedia is supposed to be a free encyclopedia, yet we have tens of thousands of non-free images. How much they really add to some articles is debatable. How much is your understanding of a 2 hour movie increased by seeing 1/16 of a second of that movie? A poorly made screenshot tends to make an article look worse, not better. People complain that they only get a week to fix thousands or hundreds of images - if you have 2 dozen BCbot notices on your talk page, that's probably a sign that you've been uploading far too much fair use. Perhaps instead of trying to "fix" all of them, we should only keep the most important ones. Mr.Z-man 17:55, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Mr.Z-man, at last count we had ~292,000 non-free images. β^_command 17:58, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Despite a vocal minority on the subject, the purpose of non-free policy is not to discourage fair use by using a bot to harass people out of using non-free images. The vast number of non-free images in Wikipedia, and those being deleted, are routine well-accepted uses of logos, album covers, book covers, film posters, cover art, and so on that are completely within the bounds of fair use law and Wikipedia policy. The problem is a recordkeeping issue on the image page, not that the image is inappropriate. It arose due to a poor image upload feature, poorly written instructions, an arbitrary and disorganized enforcement means, new users, and changing policies. Use within policy and guidelines is just fine. If the policy and procedures were clear from the start, and new users had learned how to do it, we would have the exact same number of images but very little housecleaning to do. Wikidemo (talk) 18:25, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, that isn't where we are right now for whatever reason. The cause is not as relevant as the solution, which is bringing as many images as needed into compliance and deleting the rest. There is no deadline here, i.e. even if we delete a lot of images that could be useful and could perhaps have a reasonable rationale we can still put new images back later on. The competing interests of a free-content encyclopedia vs. improving some articles with fair-use images have been weighed, and the Foundation and the community has decided that free content is more important. The initiative here is a common point of confusion - we aren't trying to comply with US copyright law, because WMF liability in that regard is murky anyway and fair use is something we could legitimately establish in court. We are trying to create a free and completely reusable product, however. Tagging images at high speed to promote that goal is a small price to pay. Avruch ^T 19:32, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

I also request that BetacommandBot be blocked. It's not "enforcing policy", instead it is merely annoying the heck out of wikipedia editors. Some editors have said "fine, delete my images" because it's so annoying. Others have retired from editing Wikipedia entirely. The verbiage associated with BCB is frankly offensive (it's a bot. It can't "dispute" anything.) The passive voice is used, to ill effect. It needs to be fixed, and if Betacommand refuses to fix it, then it should be blocked.

Also, because the policy used to defend BCB is ineffective in solving the stated problem, BCB should be blocked until the policy is fixed. RussNelson (talk) 21:30, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Please block Betacommandbot

Leaving 8 messages on my talk in less than twelve hours violates WP:STALK, WP:HARASS, WP:POINT, WP:DICK etc etc et al. I don't want to come back after a couple of days off to this. I don't need it. No human user would get away with this, a bot should be doubly required to behave. Exxolon (talk) 22:51, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

You are lucky. One admin got 65 in 2 days. Oh to be popular. MickMacNee (talk) 23:04, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

65!?!?!?!? - that's got to violate some policy - why hasn't this bot been blocked already?!? Exxolon (talk) 23:06, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

It's a robot. How can it "harass" or "stalk" you — it's just leaving notices of things you need to fix. It's not targeting you, nor does it mean you any harm. --Haemo (talk) 23:09, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

If anything the fact it's a robot makes it worse. It's faceless, unaccountable and inhuman. How would you like your pc to suddenly start telling you you're doing something wrong? You shouldn't name your files like that, it's inefficient. Single letter filenames save disk space, I'm changing them all now! Exxolon (talk) 23:12, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

I'd appreciate that actually. But back to business; there's no need to block BCB here; it's simply telling you something you uploaded is lacking something vital and giving you a chance to correct it. So, rather then beg that it be blocked for doing its job, how about you do yours and look at the files it's warned you about? -Jéské ^{(Blah v^_^v)} 23:14, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

That's uncalled for and I dislike your use of the word 'beg' here. Nor do I appreciate being told to do my 'job'. In case it escaped you I'm a volunteer here. I give freely of my time and energy to make Wikipedia a better resource. This bot actually discourages me from doing that and it's editing in such a fashion that if it was a human it would get blocked in short order. But you seem to feel it's easier to attack the messenger (me) rather than actually respond to my concerns. Exxolon (talk) 23:20, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

I understand you're a volunteer; but if you're being notified by any bot that something is wrong - a picture upload, a bad edit, etc. - it behooves you to at least look to see if something is wrong rather than (as you put it) attack the messenger, as you yourself are doing here. I did not mean to be so snappish with you, but, as with Pedro below, I'm sick and tired of seeing Betacommandbot's name on by watchlist as part of an edit summary. -Jéské ^{(Blah v^_^v)} 00:01, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

If my PC had a policy which required single letter filenames, and would cause me to get sued if I didn't use them, I would rather like a notification like that. The bot may be faceless and inhuman — but there is a whole help desk set up to give it a face if people have a problem with its tags. --Haemo (talk) 23:15, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

With total respect and sympathy to Exxolon: <tired of this debate>Given the relentlessness of complaints here and at WP:AN can someone build Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Betacommandbot Complaints to save us going through the same sodding debate three time a week? </tired of this debate> Pedro :  Chat  23:17, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

(ec)You could always add a {{Non-free use rationale}} to the images you uploaded. If you do that, you'll never hear from BCB again. --Bobblehead ^(rants) 23:19, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

It's not so much what it's doing as the way it's doing it and the fact it's a bot. Last time I checked this is the free encyclopedia anyone can edit, not anybot can edit. Exxolon (talk) 23:23, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Never mind the fact that this bot is deleting otherwise perfectly valid image content far faster than we mere mortals can keep up. Unlike bots that actually perform helpful tasks, this thing is a bloody cancer that's eating away at Wikipedia. Clayhalliwell (talk) 23:20, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Yet again the defenders of this bot don't seem to understand the issue is not the policy, it is the tidal wave nature in which it is being applied, and in many cases to legacy correctly uploaded images, and for the most trivial of issues because it is poorly designed. MickMacNee (talk) 23:21, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Clayhalliwell, and have more to say about this. It is tagging thousands of images a day, and from the comments on it's talk page, the bot is making numerous errors. I have seen several images tagged with warnings that they are not properly tagged with non-free rationales, when in fact many, or even most, are plainly there. This bot is poorly written, or is perhaps deliberately written to encourage (or actually, harrass) editors into deleting images needlessly. It has tagged over 600,000 images, by its own count. That is excessive, and destructive to Wikipedia. - Nhprman 23:34, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

UNINDENT - The crux of the issue is this. The goal here i to build the world's best free encyclopedia. So does having this bot running help or hurt that? I believe it hurts it by driving away contributors by barraging them with harrassing notices. The longer it runs, the more discouraged editors will become, the more will leave and the worse wikipedia will become. This bot is endangering the entire long term future of the project and it must be stopped forthwith. Exxolon (talk) 23:29, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

The bot needs to change its language of warnings. Also, why is it mandatory that the original uploaders are responsible for adding links to "articles where this image is used"? After all, they did upload the image, provided fU-rationale, and source info ... then it should be trivial for a well-written bot to see where this image was added by the uploader, and fix per WP:NFCC#10c. Going on a deletion-rampage is not the solution ... these images are easy to fix, and the task should not be limited to only the original uploaders. --Ragib (talk) 23:33, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

I'd just like to add that I have no objection whatsoever to the general principle of a bot tagging images in need of a fair-use rationale. The problem is that the author of this bot, in going the further step of having it delete images it deems invalid, has made two implicit but wrong assumptions:

1. That the bot is infallible

2. That any users will necessarily notice the bot's edit before it decides to delete the image

Thus, BetacommandBot is inherently flawed. It needs to either be defanged or permanently blocked. Preferably the former. Clayhalliwell (talk) 23:46, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Another amazing fact is this bot has been run like this in the last few days: 5 days no activity, 3 days, >20,000 edits (peaking at 11,000 in one day), then for 4 days, none. I am struggling to see how anyone can't see that that is madness, especialy when you look at some of the reasons for tagging, and betacommand's talk page, or what more accurately is described as a vide-printer on acid. I have not seen the slightest piece of evidence that the bot meets one of its stated aims of not getting images deleted, or that it results in proper rationales in the whole rather than mass dumping of images and editors. MickMacNee (talk) 23:40, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

That's because the bot gets blocked and/or shut down very often because of complaints; those days of no activity are more likely than not due to User:Betacommand trying to fix the bot's code. -Jéské ^{(Blah v^_^v)} 00:01, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

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

Old discussion not finished?

For the record, I have asked East718 for further responses to part of this discussion. See here. Carcharoth (talk) 12:00, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Request for more admin eyes on an issue (RE:RfCU result)

Moved to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Mantanmoreland.

Transwiki

Resolved

Hello, I hope I am putting this in the right place. I would really appreciate these former articles be transwikied to the Lego Wikia because I can't access them. Unfortunently, I was unable to obtain the contents before they were deleted:

• Voya Nui
• Vahki
• Takanuva
• Krana
• Bionicle society
• Rahi (Bionicle)
• Metru Nui
• Bohrok
• Protodermis
• Kanohi
• Mata Nui (Great Spirit)
• Great Cataclysm
• Visorak
• Dark Hunters
• Bionicle timeline
• Barraki
• Kanoka
• Piraka
• Zamor
• Rhotuka
• Karzahni

Thanks. -AMK152^{(Talk • Contributions • Send message)} 22:31, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

We can temporarily undelete them here, but you'll need a sysop on the Lego Wikia to export the pages from here and then import them there. Mr.Z-man 00:48, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Yup this is feasible. I'll put them in your user space if nobody objects? -- lucasbfr ^talk 10:06, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Seems reasonable to me (I was pinged about this), did this happen already? ++Lar: t/c 16:29, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Nope (to be honest, I forgot), I'll do it then. -- lucasbfr ^talk 11:09, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Almost done, I'll finish it this afternoon. -- lucasbfr ^talk 11:20, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Broken process management on particular article

Moved to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Corey Delaney discussion

Indefinitely blocking vanished users

On the "Right to vanish" talk page on Meta there's been discussion about indefinitely blocking and removing all user rights from users who exercise their right to vanish. It seems like a perfectly logical step to take. The right to vanish is a serious thing that should entail serious consequences. The discussion is located here.

I'm thinking that we should adopt a standard practice when someone exercises their right to vanish on en.wiki that includes an indefinite block (including e-mail) and having any user rights removed by a steward. Thoughts? (Feel free to comment below or on Meta.) --MZMcBride (talk) 00:26, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Strongly oppose. How is this a problem? Admins have left and come back. There's no need to kick them out the door on the way out. Corvus cornix_talk 00:28, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

This is, I presume, only for users who specifically indicate their intention to permanently vanish, and request deletion of their user page, and won't be applied willy-nilly to users who simply haven't been heard from in a while but haven't expressed any intentions regarding the future of their account? *Dan T.* (talk) 00:30, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Only upon request (regardless of what our blocking policy says) could be considered part of the right to leave. But not when someone just leaves. The same way some choose to leave with wikidrama, others may choose to return in silence. If someone really, really wants to leave forever, he would delete the email preference and choose a long random password which, by all means, is the same. -- ReyBrujo (talk) 00:33, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, sorry if there's been confusion. This is not for a {{retired}} template applied in a fit of anger or anything like that (inactivity, etc.). This is for the users who have their user talk pages and user pages deleted and have made a conscious decision to split permanently from the project. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:34, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

I would only support this as long as the user makes i very clear that they wish to vanish, and that they understand their account will be indef. blocked and will have all user rights removed. I do not see what harm this can do. Tiptoety ^talk 00:45, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree with this. Vanishing an account is no trivial thing; it should be done only when someone truly wants to vanish forever. If someone's gone (or at least left their account behind) forever, then there should be no issue with a block. And if they don't really intend on being gone forever, then they shouldn't be invoking the right to vanish. -Amarkov moo! 00:48, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Amarkov, you made my point for me. нмŵוτнτ 01:16, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree, and it sounds great on paper, but I think it happens way too often that vanished users come back. I'm unsure of the need for this, unless it is simply to emphasize that vanishing is a serious thing. I guess this would be ok, given that the user could still log in and request unblock on the talk page, but I personally, I'd have to think about this.. -- Ned Scott 01:20, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Vanished users should not be coming back under the same account. Period. The process of invoking the right to vanish involves destroying many records of bad behavior; how can we go back and undo all the edits replacing the username with "Former user X"? Vanishing and coming back with the same name looks far too much like a free user history wipe, and that is not good. -Amarkov moo! 01:26, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

(e/c)I would agree with this as well. I think part of the reason is so that if they come back, they don't just start editing again, they'd be fully un-vanished first, to avoid people using RTV as a way to hide something by only vanishing temporarily. Mr.Z-man 01:29, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Where's the difference between a vanished user returning under his old username (with the bad behaviour records deleted) and a vanished user returning under a new username (with the bad behaviour records deleted)? The latter makes it even harder to spot any previous wrongdoing, actually. We would only make one of the two impossible if we'd block the vanished user, unless we treat such users as banned and block their new accounts as well. And I doubt anyone is trying to propose that. --Conti|✉ 02:26, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

I would definitely support this. As Amarkov says, RTV should only be implemented when a user really is leaving....for good, so I see no reason not to block the account, and remove any user rights. - Rjd0060 (talk) 01:22, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't see any need for or value to taking this step, at least in the absence of very unusual circumstances such as a user vanishing in lieu of an impending indefinite ban for serious case. Otherwise, I see this as a solution in search of a problem, and a deterrent to once-valued contributors, having become temporarily disenchanted with Wikipedia but then changing their minds, returning to us. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:26, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Giving people the option for a permanent RTV block could be a good thing, if they want to really cut the cord. If that happens, I can see also deleted their talk page and protecting vs. recreation. Gone with the option of coming back, vs. gone and gone for Good with a big G. Lawrence § t/e 01:28, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

The problem with this is that there is no necessary correllation between how strongly a user believes that he or she wants to cut all ties to Wikipedia at the moment he or she is upset enough to vanish, and whether he or she might want to come back a few days or weeks or months later. People want to come and go for all sorts of reasons, both real-life-based and wiki-related, and if we eliminated from the ranks of Wikipedians everyone who at one point or another announced that he or she was leaving forever, we would be without the services of many, many decided contributors and administrators. Unless the "vanished" user had been a serious problem before departing, I don't see why we would want to add even slightly to the disincentives that face a departed user who is thinking about returning. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:31, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Though they can always request a unblock. Tiptoety ^talk 01:29, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

People should not request RTV if there is any possibility that they will be returning. -Rjd0060 (talk) 01:36, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Many unhappy users simply don't always think that way. People change their minds. We shouldn't discourage people from coming back unless there's a real reason to. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:40, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Reading through the RTV page on meta, suggests it to be a permanent solution, as it should be. There are other options aside from vanishing. Users need to weigh them, and if they do decide RTV is the best way to go, that should be the end of it. - Rjd0060 (talk) 01:44, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Like I said above, there is a real reason to. Vanishing completely destroys records of user history, and that is not good if the user isn't really gone. -Amarkov moo! 01:47, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Nothing is permanently lost. If a user un-vanishes, the records are easy enough to restore. --Carnildo (talk) 03:29, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

NYB has it exactly right. There are plenty of irritating editors, there are a fair number who vanish, there may even be some who irritatingly vacillate between vanishing and appearing. If there are too many in the last category (which I doubt), send some of them my way and I'll vanish them and resuscitate them as requested (as long as it's merely a matter of bog-standard deletion and undeletion). I'll even welcome them back with personal messages, not tedious boilerplate. And I expect that I won't be alone in making such an offer. Meanwhile, no need to turn up the menacing tone and add to the drama. -- Hoary (talk) 08:30, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't think I like the idea of indefinitely blocking departed users, but I had always assumed that the removal of userrights was standard practice. An unattended account with rights is infinitely more dangerous than a fresh vandal account. I could very quickly do a lot of damage with a compromised bot account; more still with an admin account. A compromised bureaucrat, oversight, checkuser or steward account would, of course, be disastrous. Even something like rollbacker or autoconfirmed is potentially more dangerous than a fresh account; and if the editor was well known in the community, their edits are more likely to pass unnoticed in recentchanges or watchlists than an unknown new account. An unattended account is much more likely to be compromised than a used and monitored account. And if an editor does decide to return, his or her rights can easily be restored if they left in good standing. So if removal of rights isn't already standard practice, it certainly should be. Happy‑melon 10:06, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Many administrators or other users with higher-level user rights often give up their extra abilities upon resignation from the project, however, there has never been any solid rule that enforces all those with special rights to resign them at once should they decide to leave. I don't particularly see how an unused account has a higher probability to become compromised in any form than one that is actively used, and accounts that have been compromised have often been detected quite quickly, as prior situations have demonstrated. Spebi 10:15, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps I should rephrase: of course the chances of someone guessing/cracking the password of an unattended account are no different to that of an account in use. But an unattended account, once cracked, can be used indefinitely by an invader, until it is realised that it has been usurped. The most common reaction to an admin account being compromised is, apparently, to edit the mainpage to a large and usually obscene image: this is a fairly good indication that the account has been compromised, and the time for them to be desysopped is usually extremely short (I've heard 3 minutes). I imagine, although I doubt it's happened, that a compromised bureaucrat account would be used first to desysop Jimbo or similar. This crude and attention-grabbing use of compromised accounts naturally results in quick identification and blocking. There are much more malicious uses a compromised account could be put to if it is possible to have some preparation time. You might be able to put a penis on the mainpage for twenty seconds with a crude edit, but if you took the time to bury it somewhere deep in the transclusion structure it could be five minutes before anyone worked out how to get rid of it. Every time I put my mind to this question I come up with more effective ways to damage the site with a stolen admin or bot account: I can think of ways to irreperably remove all external links from all pages, to slow the loading of 95% of articles to a crawl, or to place a penis at the top of all our featured articles. But with time to prepare, to make a number of edits which don't appear to be nasty until you hit the one edit that drops the lewd image, you can do more insidious damage. The point is that an active account will notice these edits: if you look at your contributions and see something you don't remember doing, and don't understand why, you would get suspicious. If there's no one legitimatley using the account, that's not going to happen.

In fact, it's fairly immaterial whether the compromised account is used or unused by its legitimate owner. We all know that accounts with userrights can potentially be dangerous: that's why we have RfA, RfB, RfBA, etc. If the owner of the account has left, they are not going to be using their userrights for the benefit of the project, so it makes absolute sense for them to be reset. Why have more potentially dangerous accounts lying around than are genuinely necessary? I'm not saying that, once removed, those rights should not be restored if the editor returns - as I said above, if the editor left in good standing there is no reason why they should have to do anything more than ask. But leaving admin/bot/crat accounts lying around when we all know their potential for misuse strikes me as an unnecessary weakness. Take them away automatically as part of RTV, give them back automatically if they return. If their account is compromised in the meantime, they'll have to stick to ordinary vandalism. Happy‑melon 16:04, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Wow, that was longer than I expected :D! Happy‑melon 16:05, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

It was pretty on the button, though. I would concur that any inactive account with a good pedigree - with extra tools or not - is a prime target. The good faith shown toward a returning editor of some standing may allow some of the less obvious malicious edits to survive much longer. LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:32, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Bureaucrats can't desysop people. Only stewards can. Stifle (talk) 14:20, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I'd have to disagree, strongly. We have admins who "leave" the project only to come back within days. Some repeatedly. We have rules against admins blocking themselves or other users for "wikibreaks" - why are we wanting to block a user for a "rtv", which is but the ultimate "wikibreak"? Why is this, of all possible admin actions and consequences, to be the one thing you don't get to change your mind on? Yes, it's a serious act, but it's wholly in the realm of that users concern, not the projects. Achromatic (talk) 01:21, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

• The point in all this that seems to be being missed is that 'right to vanish' is serious. When people use it to make a dramatic, pointy, disruptive exit, they are abusing the right to vanish, and that abuse is doubled if they return later. Please, if you want to leave the door open for a future return, blank your pages and use the {{retired}} template, or leave some other sort of message. There seems to be a need to leave a 'message' by having your user and/or talk page links in signatures turn red. Instead of asking for pages (especially user talk pages!) to be deleted, you can leave dramatic messages and departure essays on your user page, but using 'right to vanish' as a standard departure method is wrong. Most departures can be handled other ways, and there need to be good reasons for exercising 'right to vanish'. The main one being that you really do want to vanish, or you need to disassociate from your real name. The only way, regrettably, to discourage frivolous use of the 'right to vanish' is to make much clearer that if you do return, that everything that was done to enable the vanishing will be undone, except the removal of user rights. Carcharoth (talk) 08:59, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

• I could not agree more with this. RTV is not a form of "wikibreak." Invoking the right to vanish means the user wants to leave permanently. Vanishing to create drama, only to come back a couple days later, should not be an option. RTV is a serious thing, and it should have serious consequences. --L. Pistachio (talk) 05:20, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

• Somehow, I can't help but feel that this is a solution to a problem we don't yet have. (There are too many people out there connected to the Internet to say definitely that any specific behavior will never occur.) What about a compromise? On the second exercise of the Right To Vanish, the user is also blocked indefinitely. If we agree to this, then let's keep a count of how many of these kinds of blocks were given, then revisit the issue in 6 months or a year. If the number of these cases are few or none, then obviously doing this is overkill; if there are a lot, then we should consider blocking after the first time this right is invoked. (And yes, I am being vague about the numbers. I would rather give this approach a try then argue if too many RTV incidents repeated, than delay the experiment because we couldn't decided how many is too many.) -- llywrch (talk) 20:08, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Improper RfC

This discussion has been moved to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Mantanmoreland.

Userbox

I am aware that the page was name-protected for having "disputes"... Something needs to be done because that just looks tacky. Imagine when some random person goes to that page and sees "This page is currently protected for edit warring purposes" and he thinks "Oh, well there's the entire En-Wiki gone to pot." Okay, that was pretty weird, but seriosly, something needs to be done. ^F*^L*^RAP 04:43, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

What page? --Jayron32.talk.contribs 04:56, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

The page Userbox. ^F*^L*^RAP 05:01, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Ah, what article are you meaning to start in its place? It is a protected against recreation since it has been deleted a rediculous number of times. If you have a valid article to create in its place, could you create it in your userspace and let us have a look before we unsalt this one? --Jayron32.talk.contribs 05:21, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Nah, I'll just leave it to someone who isn't about to fall asleep in his office chair. ^F*^L*^RAP 05:35, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Why would a non-regular ever search for that page anyway? It's a non-issue. - Revolving Bugbear 18:52, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

UP vio?

Is it ok this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.93.20.130 (talk) 08:49, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, the user claims that the articles belongs to him/her... this is taking ownership of the article... is that allowed? You are allowed to put articles that I have created/started but My articles? --The Helpful One ^(Review) 10:16, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Not only that, questioning Admin's AfD closing decision also. (see the last one). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.93.20.130 (talk) 10:25, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Sure why not? Non-admins are allowed to question admin decisions and express disagreement, if they want. As for "My articles", I don't see the problem there, either. He just seems to be listing the articles he wrote or started. He doesn't say, "they're mine and no one else is allowed to edit them". As long as he doesn't try to stop people editing them, I don't see the problem. We try to give people some latitude on their userpages. You (IP), should sign up for an account so you can have your own userpage. Sarah 10:29, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Check this out. All the users who have "My articles" sections and pages. Even some admins, if I'm not mistaken. :) Sarah 10:32, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Ah OK! :) --The Helpful One ^(Review) 10:36, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Strange as it may seem, you start to bond with articles you've worked with a lot. At least that's the case for me. bibliomaniac15 05:26, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

AIV backlog

Resolved

There is a huge smaller backlog at WP:AIV. Assistance would be very helpful. Luigi30 (Taλk) 15:07, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

With 13 blocks performed, it is no longer backlogged. However given the amount of anti-Valentines Day vandalism, I doubt it will stay out of backlog-status for long. --Kralizec! (talk) 19:02, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Odd demand

Resolved

 – confident this is just run of the mill. MBisanz ^talk 23:48, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

In December I participated on a WP:DRV on Daniel Malakov that had been to WP:AFD. I didn't vote in the AfD. Today I got this message from the article creator User_talk:MBisanz#Daniel_Malakov_affair:__New_information_has_been_published, which was also spammed to at least half a dozen other users. Now I'm really not concerned about this request, other than the line

If you demand a conviction, then I plan to hold you to your promise.

Granted I'm not afraid for my own safety, but if this person is involved in the actual legal case, I'd be concerned that they might do something like fake testimony to ensure a conviction. Any ideas or is this really run of the mill stuff? MBisanz ^talk 18:28, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Quote is taken out of context. In context, it reads:

If not, what would you need to see to support such an article? If you demand a conviction, then I plan to hold you to your promise.

It seems to be pretty likely he means that he believes other people want to see a conviction in the case before notability can be established. Kind of a silly notion (although it would address some BLP concerns), but it's apparently what he believes. The "hold you to your promise" apparently means he'll recreate the article if there's a conviction.

And, for the record, if someone's faking evidence for a conviction, as awful as that is, it's not really our problem unless they post it to the wiki. That's why we have courts. - Revolving Bugbear 18:33, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Hal Turner (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) stubbified

This is notification that I have blanked the article Hal Turner (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), for constant violations of our policy on biographies of living individuals, in particular, opinionated against subject, even in the lede, and many "citation needed" tags, very controversial figure.. I request that all editors do not revert, but work to include verifiable material. Will ^(talk) 21:41, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

As long as this is being blanked, I'm tempted to delete it per this. However, there are over a thousand revisions, and I personally don't have the patience to go through every one of them for one with no BLP concerns. (The five or so random ones I clicked on, including the first one, did.) - Revolving Bugbear 21:59, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

I have sprotected the article for 24 hours. At the time there was a only a banner commenting the article has been blanked. I would very much prefer that there was at least a stub article available for the readership, and the ugly banner was removed. I hope that consensus for a previous stub to be re-instated pending expiry of the protection will soon form on the talkpage. I am happy for another admin or uninvolved editor to edit the article to replace the banner with such a stub without referring to me, providing that that consensus exists. Also, generally, please start talking folks! LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:04, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Caltrop's talk page: Forced merge and restoration appropriate?

Caltrop has deleted his talk page, and broken up the (deleted) history across many subpages. I personally feel this violates the deletion policy, and advised Caltrop about this twice. The first time I received no response, the second he told me that if I had a problem with policy violation, I should take it to arbcom. As any admin can undo something that is against policy, I would rather come here and gain consensus then go through the arbcom procedure, though I will do that if needed. Am I overreacting, or incorrect? I think none of us are above policy here. Also see the log here, with the comment "goading user prodego", which I feel is also problematic. Prodego ^talk 22:15, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

That's horrible! Barring a very good explanation from Caltrop, I cannot possibly see how his actions constitute anything other than an attempt to render the history of his talk page unreadable. Deletion is very clearly proscribed as an archiving technique in WP:DEL, and rendering an archive visible only to admins is inappropriate in normal circumstances. Putting the history back together will be an absolute pig, but unless Caltrop can explain very clearly why this is not sinister, I fully support anyone who is prepared to do it. Happy‑melon 22:25, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

This is ridiculous. Personally, I think he should have to fix it but if you're willing, go right ahead. If he does it again, block him. John Reaves 22:38, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

It is not sinister at all. If you check the history you will see where I enlisted the help of other admins to piece back my history after I mistakenly made a pig's breakfast of it after I was notified of the consensus policy of archiving talk pages. In previous years the talk page was akin to an email inbox. My inbox contains little to be proud of or ashamed of. Sinister, I think not. I think that Prodego should go fight serious crime elsewhere and let me continue my record of years of useful service and generous donations to Wikipedia. I have no knowledge of Prodego, but really there must be more sinister things to battle than a boring and garbled talk page. Anyone want to put this mess back together? Good luck, two other admins and I couldn't do it. Personally I don't agree with the consensus policy because I still view Talk as my inbox, but I also understand the reason for the policy, but I throw up my hands at this mess. You want to resurrect zillions of requests to give sources for images I created and thought were long deleted? And which were created before the new (and proper) cite your sources rule? Heaven help us all. Read my boring articles. Check my minor copyedits. I think you will find nothing you'll care about. Just someone who has been here since NuPedia with a pedant's sense (or lack of sense) of what an interesting article is. Caltrop (talk) 02:02, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

That is all well and fine, except that I told you I was willing to do it for you twice, and you continue you delete your talk page, including the very message I sent you so recently explaining why not to do it. So to be clear, I may restore it, and you will stop deleting it? It would have been much simpler for you to have agreed to that before rather then suggesting I take it to arbcom, if you are aware it is wrong, and that I offered to try to rectify it. Prodego ^talk 02:10, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

As a matter of theory Prodego is absolutely right, but according to User talk:Jimbo Wales, Caltrop feels sufficiently beleaguered at being pressed on this matter that he is considering leaving the project. The matter does not seem to be worth jeopardizing the participation of a contributor of some 7 years' standing, and I hope that a reasonable and amicable solution here can be reached. Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:49, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I did not realize that such a trivial policy issue was such a huge issue for Caltrop that he would consider leaving the project over it. My lack of understanding is compounded since I offered to do all the work to fix this myself, even after he went out of his way to "goad user prodego" Not only that, he says he attempted to restore the page before, so how could it possibly hurt to have another user attempt to do it? I personally would appreciate assistance in something I was unable to fix before, and I often look to others in situations where I am lost. (i.e. User:Topaz on Mediawiki:Gadget-Blackskin.css) If anyone should be frustrated it should be me for being openly "goaded", ignored when asking for clarification, and then told to go to arbcom if I wanted to fix this page, which Caltrop does not WP:OWN, since obviously "longstanding admin[s]", as he put it, are not subject to policy. I think that Caltrop is way out of line here. Prodego ^talk 03:00, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Prodego on this, it's just so wrong on so many levels to constantly delete your talk page. It might not be the intent but it certainly has the effect of preventing good faith non-admins from following discussions and adds to the sense of elitist adminship. Unless there is a good reason for deleting it, such as personal information etc, it should be restored as much as possible and the user should stop deleting it. It also isn't appropriate to respond to a fellow admin's message by ignoring it and then deleting it from the page history. I also agree with Caltrop that he should probably take a break and a very deep breath if he would have such a reaction to a reasonable inquiry from a fellow admin offering to repair his page. Sarah 03:34, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I have completed it. Note that the deletions make it look like some users blanked the page to add their comment, but the history is completely intact. I left things I couldn't explain at User talk:Caltrop/Not1, and archived what pages were merged in the history of User talk:Caltrop/Merge log. Some superfluous material lives in the deleted history of User talk:Caltrop/restore3 as well. Prodego ^talk 01:34, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Lena Yada

Resolved

Would an admin be willing to tell me if the article listed here is a recreation of deleted material? I saw it was deleted today, so though it would be safe to check that is wasn't the same thing. Icestorm815 • Talk 22:59, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Are you looking for this: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anastacia Rose? Tiptoety ^talk 23:19, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Yep, Thank you. Icestorm815 • Talk 23:59, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Backlog

Partly Resolved. Backlog cleared, conversation about bot still taking place

It looks like WP:AIV is getting a pretty good size backlog, just FYI. Cheers, Tiptoety ^talk 23:34, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

"Whew" *Wipes sweat from face*, that was hard...but it looks pretty clear now. :P Tiptoety ^talk 23:49, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

That's three times today... Odd, for a Thursday. Perhaps we could get one of the AIV Helperbots to drop a note here (or WP:ANI) when it gets beyond 8 or 10 pending reports? UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 00:23, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

10 seems reasonable. Tiptoety ^talk 00:29, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I'll post a note at AIV's talk page, when I get home tonight. If it's a heavy day like today, then the time I and two others took to seek assistance at ANI or here could have been spent checking a vandal, helping the backlog. It's rare enough that it's not of pressing concern - unless tomorrow is busier - but it might be worth discussing. I know Helperbot 7 was recently approved, maybe their op would add the function? UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 02:33, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Unblock request

I received the following unblock appeal by e-mail, with permission to post it. What does the community think? Durova^Charge! 23:46, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Sigh. Please don't indulge these people. They've been trolling us consistently for at least three years and are continuing to do so by having people post their messages here after being rebuffed by OTRS and unblock-en-l. Their most recent socks have just be rooted out and blocked after a lot of work both on and off site by administrators and checkusers both on WP and other non-foundation projects and their IPs shut down by checkusers. See the ANI thread on Solumeiras for Lar's description of their longterm abuse and his description of the discussions among checkusers. Also note Matt's comment from 18 months ago that I linked to on ANI. Once again, these people are playing us for fools. They may have been 16 when they started, but they continued until as recently as yesterday. If they want to have their ban reconsidered they need to go away for awhile and stop trolling us on multiple fronts first because we've heard, "I'm sorry, I've learned my lesson" before. Many times before. As for forgiving Willy on Wheels, well, that's rather telling as there are admins, CUs and foundation people who believe that these are the kids behind the WoW abuse and it's rather ironic that the sockpuppet Sunholm happened to be the one who removed WoW from the list of banned people claiming that WoW was welcome here. Please, don't be sucked in by these people. Sarah 02:25, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I've removed the email because I think they've manipulated Durova into posting on their behalf because yesterday a checkuser hardblocked their IP. If anyone wants to see the email it's here. Sarah 02:44, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Hell no. They've been saying the same things on the BJAODN wiki. I don't trust them at all. And there's evidence that they've run XRumer, via an account and one or two IP addresses. Nwwaew (Talk Page) (Contribs) (E-mail me) 03:09, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Agree with the above, everytime we track down and block we get the same sob stories, claims of aspergers, claims of autism, mental illness, it's x and they've had their web access remove, the original from the sunholm/sunfazer days along the lines of "it was a public ip, but my friend who is the network engineer has reassigned it to me" etc. etc. It's long past being old. --81.104.39.63 (talk) 07:30, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

FWIW, I wasn't manipulated. I received a request and put it to the community for discussion. Durova^Charge! 19:03, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I have absolutely no interest in (nor has anyone demonstrated any reason to) unblock(ing) this account. This is another example of someone who is paying the price for abusing the community's trust. - Philippe | Talk 19:08, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Seriously, I was, and am still, trying to give you the benefit of the doubt. I know that you have a standing offer to do this for users who have sat out a reasonable time (is it 6 months?) without using socks to evade their blocks and bans and causing other disruption to the project, but this person was caught using socks just the day before they emailed you this request. They have literally just been banned and we've just cleaned up after and blocked their recent socks. And the only reason I could think that you would post this for them was if you were manipulated and not aware of the facts. Their emails are full of lies and I'm not prepared to waste time refuting all their blatant lies other than to note here, for the record, that the people who were emailing OTRS, unblock-en-l and various editors and admins, myself included, under various pseudonyms to complain about the blocks and to protest their innocence and so on were using the IP 82.42.237.84 and this just happens to be one of SunStar Net/Solumeiras's IP addresses. They've been trolling us for at least three years, causing the most unbelievable amount of vandalism and disruption, and they are continuing to troll us now. I still have Matt Brown's words from eighteen months ago ringing in my head: "The person/people behind this IP are playing us for fools; don't let them do so again." Sarah 00:25, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

And seriously, there's no need to respond in a heated manner. I have not supported this bid for reinstatement. Just because I have a standing offer under certain conditions doesn't mean every request I relay comes with any endorsement. Durova^Charge! 02:40, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't think I'm being heated. Not in the slightest. I'm just having trouble understanding why you're doing this given the circumstances. That is all. Sarah 02:56, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Covention requests to be "unlinked"

A little history about what has been going on at the article Anime Detour. In July of 2007, one of the staffers of Anime Detour repeatedly added a message to the article telling readers that they should check the convention's website for the "latest information" about the convention.[7] This resulted in a minor edit war that resulted in the "announcement" being removed from the article.[8][9]

Now the same editor, first as an IP, is back adding in unverifiable information about the attendance of the 2008 convention which is to be held this coming April.[10] I removed the information under WP:NOT#CRYSTALBALL but the editor kept reinserting the information because it has been "confirmed" by the convention and was therefore official.[11][12][13]. After I informed the editor about Wikipedia's policies on verifiability through third-party sources and that Wikipeida is not a place for the convention's staff to [[publish their perditions, the staffer attempted to remove information about this year's convention from the article[14], which has be reverted, and requested that the Wikipedia, "not link to this convention"[15][16], whatever the heck that means. Apparently, the staffer is unhappy that the article cannot be used as a mouthpiece for the convention. --Farix (Talk) 00:40, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Placing community ban on User:David Lauder et al

This is to inform the community that I will be adding the above named user to the list of banned users, and to invite discussion or to see if there was any dissenting opinions to this. I will explain my reasons below for this action, and the timeline of this situation:

End of 2005- Beginning of 2006: User:Robert I was banned by ArbCom in the ArbCom case Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Robert I (this ArbCom case was courtesy deleted by the request of the person involved in August 2007. I have restored it solely for this discussion), for legal threats regarding an article about a politician in the United Kingdon who was identified either as a "traditional conservative" or a "right-wing extremist", depending on your point of view. (This article has since been deleted and redirected.) User:Robert I also posted via IP addresses, and self-identified as this politician when he edited via IP addresses. This ArbCom Case closed on January 31st, 2006.

7 February 2006: The account User:Sussexman is created, and goes on editing much in the same way as User:Robert I

11 May 2006: The account of Counter-revolutionary is created.

20 June 2006: User:Sussexman was indefblocked for sending a solicitor's letter to legally threaten another Wikipedian, on articles, amongst other things, the since redirected article mentioned above. The solicitor's letter was signed as the politican above. You can see the ANI Discussion here.

23 June 2006: The account User:Chelsea Tory created.

29 November 2006: User:David Lauder creates a new account on Wikipedia

October 2007: User:David Lauder and User:Counter-revolutionary were involved in the very contentious ArbCom case Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/The Troubles.

Yesterday: User:Sussexman, User:David Lauder, User:Chelsea Tory and User:Counter-revolutionary were all found to be at times editing in ways that contravene Wikipedia policy. The CheckUser's comment on this finding was: I can confirm that they (being David Lauder, Chelsea Tory, and Sussexman) have edited from the same computer, sometimes within a minute of each other. The first three are matched as hits.. the fourth, Counter-revolutionary, had edited from that same machine, but not as often. You can see the CheckUser result here.

At the time of the Checkuser User:Sussexman, User:Chelsea Tory was advocating that User:Sussexman be unblocked. User:Counter-revolutionary had previously advocated for the unblock.

So, this twice blocked user (once via ArbCom ban, once via ANI discussion, both for legal threats) has now apparently moved on to either using direct meatpuppets or sockpuppets to disrupt Wikipedia.

I am bringing this to AN to confirm what should already be obvious. The person behind this account is not here to build an encyclopedia. He first attempted to write a glowing puff-piece of an article about himself as a politician, and when that dream was sabotaged by other editors (including, admittedly, some people who had a bone to pick with his politics), he turned to legal threats and disruption of Wikipedia. He is therefore banned from Wikipedia, unless other administrators object. SirFozzie (talk) 01:20, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

The person behind this account is not here to build an encyclopedia.

Just to be fair, under User:David Lauder this person has made substantial content contributions, including Lauder (where I has a run in with him!), George Lauder, Lauderdale, I could go on for a while. For all his misdemeanors he still deserves credit where it is due. Regards, Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 01:32, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Even if true, his history far outweighs his contributions, no matter how laudable. SirFozzie (talk) 01:35, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm not denying that of course, just trying to be fair. He can be perma-banned after all without a total Damnatio memoriae in addition! :) Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 01:43, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

A couple of points; while I certainly endorse a community ban on David Lauder, given the evidence to-date, including the now-undeleted ArbCom case (I was completely shocked by that one), I'd like a little more clarification on "et al". Specifically, who else of the editors discovered during the checkuser case should come under this ban? If that includes User:Counter-revolutionary, I might have a bit of a problem with that as I see him as being guilty of collusion and meat-puppetry but not as a sock or a major player here. Indeed, I'm still concerned about his indefinite block. I'd also note that David Lauder had a substantive history of constructive editing so to say he "is not here to build an encyclopedia" is a little unfair - Alison ^❤ 01:55, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

If Counter-revolutionary is willing to leave off using multiple accounts (when I talked via email to him, he was asking to RtV and promised not to use any of the other accounts he had), and not edit as a proxy for User:David Lauder, I see why no reason he shouldn't be unblocked. I will ask him directly via email, now.

The et all was to indicate that the accounts directly controlled (Robert I, Sussexman, David Lauder, Chelsea Tory) and any future accounts should be blocked. I wasn't sure what account to log it under, that was the et all. (and I note that a LOT of the positive contributions noted by Deacon of Pndapetzim were about things that he could have a COI about, if they are related to his real-life identity.) SirFozzie (talk) 02:16, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I support a ban on Lauder and his sock-puppets. Counter-revolutionary I am not so sure about. My understanding is that most people intimate with the details are of the impression that he is probably a different individual, albeit one closely involved with Lauder and who has engaged in some tandem editing in the past. Thats not cool, of course, but its not really that unusual among editors involved in and around the Troubles. Therefore, if he is a different person, then I'm not sure there is any good reason he should remain indef blocked, much less banned. Rockpocket 02:38, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Per Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Robert I User:Robert I may well be Gregory Lauder-Frost, or he's definitely someone closely connected to him. When Sussexman was indef blocked User:Morven said "I also strongly believe that User:Sussexman is Gregory Lauder-Frost, given the similar tone found in the excepts of the letter Ed Chilvers received". It's established that Sussexman, Chelsea Tory and David Lauder have edited from the same computer, sometimes within a minute of each other. Counter-revolutionary has also edited from the same computer (but to a lesser extent).

As can be seen by my comments here, I was expecting "discussion on the other [Counter-revolutionary] possibly on TER, especially with regards to COI". I wasn't in favour of an indef block (although I wasn't necessarily opposed to it), more a possible COI restriction on the High Tory related articles he has a very close connection to based on his image uploads, in particular the images of Gregory Lauder-Frost taken in various countries over a ten year period (see Sussexman checkuser for details). Counter-revolutionary is not an "innocent bystander" in all this. He's clearly involved in the whole situation up to his neck, he knows what has gone on and who is who. If he's prepared to be honest and open about this I'd support an unblock under certain restrictions. One Night In Hackney₃₀₃ 03:04, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I support the ban of [politician]'s accounts. The David Lauder account has made useful contributions in Scottish history, as Deacon of Pndapetzim observed. There may be mild COI implications in his insistence on Victorian histories and genealogies as the last word on scholarly material, but I am uneasy with the notion that his contributing to Lauder, Lauderdale, etc., is ipso facto a COI — similar accusations have been voiced in Troubles-related cases, IMO more for the purpose of bludgeoning those foolish enough to reveal their real-world identity on Wikipedia that for any encyclopedic purpose. All that said, it's clear in retrospect that even before the checkuser, there's a remarkable convergence of editing interests between David Lauder and [politician]'s previous incarnations; I'm a little surprised no one familiar with the previous case didn't call for a checkuser long ago. Given the legal threats and various other unpleasant circumstances surrounding the original ban, compounded by the sockpuppetry and vote-stacking practiced by the current incarnation, I don't see any reason to lift the ban, even for positive and apolitical historical contributions. As for Counter-revolutionary, he's aided and abetted some quite disruptive quarrels on behalf of someone whom Wikipedia told to get lost a while ago. Blocks are not punitive, but any conditions for his return need to address his own COI issues and proxying. Choess (talk) 03:33, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I supported this block in the discussion at WP:TER, but there are a few things I would like to note here:

1. As Deacon of Pndapetzim noted, David Lauder (talk · contribs) did make many positive contributions. Sure, there were also some suspect contributions too and persistent unwillingness to consider world-views other than his own, but DL's misconduct should not be used to obscure the positive contributions he made, including writing several well-written and well-referenced articles.
2. Lauder insists on his talk page that checkuser is simply wrong. I understand that checkuser has some limitations, but it seems to me that changing IPs cannot account for the pattern of behaviour shown here. So I have two suggestions:
   • Can someone else with checkuser powers but who was not in any way involved in the Troubles arbcom case recheck Alison's tests? Personally, I have full trust in Alison, but for the sake of avoiding any accusations directed at her, an independent confirmation of her checkuser results would remove any scope for accusations of bias.
   • How robust is the checkuser system? It seems to me to be an inherently rather simple system (IPs are logged, database is scanned for IPs used by particular users, matches are reported), but given Lauder's outright denials, it would be useful to have confirmation that the code has been checked for robustness.

--BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:55, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi there. For the record, I have absolutely no problem with anybody else running a checkuser on the accounts and coming to whatever conclusions they see fit, indeed I welcome it. In terms of RFCU work, it's a pretty straightforward case, really - Alison ^❤ 08:34, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

"It's established that Sussexman, Chelsea Tory and David Lauder have edited from the same computer, sometimes within a minute of each other. Counter-revolutionary has also edited from the same computer (but to a lesser extent)." That section I have highlighted says a lot in my opinion. They are up to their gills in it, and should be treated the same. I don't mean to sound hard, but I'm sick sore and tired of the disruption this causes. They have made it difficult because of their carry on to assume good faith, when new accounts pop up (with a detailed knowledge of our policies) and start editing on Troubles related article. I been made to feel like a thick, the number of times I've had editors gang up on me only to discover it was the same editor. Thats just my opinion anyway. --Domer48 (talk) 09:17, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

• Lets get this clear. I am no saint - infact I am a sinner. My sins are wide and varied, I have caused a lot of trouble in my time and spent months blocked. There were plenty on here that wanted me out and only for the storng voice of a few I am sure I would be gone.

Must of my trouble has stemmed for arguements with a group of editors - usually the same ones, they appear to adopt the moral high ground and have got me in more shit than I care to remember. I always thought that I was dealing with a group of editors and this got me in a lot more trouble as on a number of occasions it looked like

The WHOLE Troubles arbcom would have been avoid if this editor was not editing for months from different accounts and that is what pisses me off the most.

I could go on and on about this issue but I wont as I dont really want to get involve but I just want to end by showing you this AfD which I believe was the kick off of the Troubles issue that roared for many months. If Lauder et al had been acting honestly and in good faith from the begining then we wouldnt have had the month and months of hassle with resepct to these issue and we would have saved a lot of editors and admins a lot of grey hair. ((The previous comment was posted by User:Vintagekits.. I'm surprised that Sinebot didn't get him)) SirFozzie (talk) 14:06, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Looks to be in order with me. Stifle (talk) 14:22, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

What we are discussing here is adding a community ban to an existing ArbComm ban. The first remedy in that ArbComm case, unless we have evidence that "all legal disputes have been withdrawn or resolved either by settlement or final judicial resolution including payment in full of any costs and judgment" then the user is already banned by ArbComm. We don't have any evidence that the multiple legal disputes are withdrawn or resolved. I don't know if we need to add a community ban to the ArbComm ban, but I don't object to doing so.GRBerry 14:54, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

• I was closely involved with the article on Gregory Lauder-Frost (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (see AfD and deletion review), and with Sussexman and Chelsea Tory as well as the numerous anonymous friends they brought wiht them. Personal legal threats were made to Wikipedia editors whose real identities were inferred, including at least one solicitor's letter. We fixed a serious problem with that article despite their involvement, not because of it. I don't know why they were not banned at the time, other than that a "fishing expedition" would have been rejected by RFCU. It comes as no surprise to learn that they are all if not related then at least working in very close collaboration. I suggest that interested parties ask William Pietri for input, as another closely involved participant in that dispute. If people want to question indefinite blocking in this case, I suggest arbitration - the sockpuppetry, legal threats and other abuse, including apparent ban evasion, would seem to me to be at the very least worthy of a trip to ArbCom. Guy (Help!) 17:12, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
• I was only peripherally aware of the Troubles ArbCom when it was on, noticing merely that it seemed filled with some extraordinary bad faith. However, I saw at the time nothing to distinguish it from several other ArbCom cases involving difficult hyper-nationalist editors. Recently I began editing some of the articles over which these accounts have established a pattern of ownership, including Western Goals Institute and Lord Sudeley. I was met with considerable resistance and some great incivility, though I've been subject to worse. At some point one of the account left a 'note' on another account's talkpage warning them of the wild-eyed Bolshie who'd turned up to vandalise their articles. There was certainly a touch of tag-team reverting involved; and I was 'reported' for my 'vandalism' to AN/I - the complaint is still up there. (Where, entertainingly, it was speculated that I was someone's puppet.) It was only after I did some poking around in edit histories, discovering some puzzling deletions and so on that I asked a few discreet questions and discovered the history, which was plainly shocking. (Turns out there's an off-wiki mirror as well.) It was becoming obvious that these accounts were closely connected, and that they were using their artificial consensus to disrupt editing across a swathe of articles to which they had undoubted connections off-wiki. (Judging by image uploads.) This is unacceptable.

If an indefblock is considered too harsh, I would strongly recommend a community ban from editing any and all articles related to the right-wing of the Tory party, the House of Lords, and republicanism. If their energy can be redirected to safely apolitical genealogical research and COI-free articles of pretenders to Eastern European monarchies, it will probably not be disruptive. However, having viewed the ArbCom, I can certainly understand if we simply don't want this person - or two people, at most - around. Many - perhaps most - people who have been community banned have been banned for less obvious disruption. Relata refero (talk) 18:16, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I strongly support unblocking Counter-revolutionary, or well reframing his block to being something less than a month. I also agree with BHG that check user is pretty unreliable (and indeed should be overhauled but that isn't for here) but it is better at proving guilt than innocence. I would also support unblocking Lauder with the agreement that he doesn't edit political articles relating to the UK (which includes the Troubles, of course). Thanks, SqueakBox 20:09, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Re:Lauder... heck no. he's been blocked/banned TWICE for legal threats (not just.. "If you don't do what I want I'll sue you". type idle threats on WP (which is bad enough), but actual legal threats from his solicitor, sent to an editor's home address. (See the Sussexman discussion linked above). Technically, as said above, he's already banned, because he never fufilled the first ban's requirements (a full apology and payment of any all legal fees incurred as a result of the threats) SirFozzie (talk) 20:18, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

• support ban - after reading this and the ssp report I think a community ban is in order for the DL and directly related. I'm not sure about User:Counter-revolutionary, and would support topic restrictions and similar restraints discussed above. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 21:18, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
• Support Ban - This question pretty much answers itself. By the time you've gotten to the point of socking/meating to avoid an Arbcom block, you're as valuable to the Project as a hand-grenade in a china shop. Throw away the key and lets move on. As for counter-revolutionary, at best he's a WP:SPA and a Checkuser-proven meat-puppet of a disruptive indefblocked user. At worst he's just another David Lauder sock. Even his user-name touts his political agenda. How precisely does any of this indicate that we should give him the benefit of the doubt? Bullzeye ^{(Ring for Service)} 23:09, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
• Support Bans Certain individual(s) having been waging a campaign for over 2 years attacking anyone who gets in their way, all the accounts are inexplicably links --Barryob (Contribs) (Talk) 01:44, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
• Support ban - two things say it all: "The WHOLE Troubles arbcom would have been avoid if this editor was not editing for months from different accounts" - VintageKits, and "Personal legal threats were made to Wikipedia editors whose real identities were inferred, including at least one solicitor's letter." - Guy. Lauder has got to go. I do believe that I also may have had some experience with this user (see Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Astrotrain; looks like I guessed wrong), and thought the user should be banned simply on this brief encounter (which, to date, no one has mentioned that I can see). You cheat this badly, for this long, then you are not responsible enough to edit here, and this block sure is heck is a preventative one if I ever saw one (for all the disruption caused). The Evil Spartan (talk) 12:27, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
• Support ban As per my previous comments. In addition, they were already banned! --Domer48 (talk) 13:36, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Tom on Tires

Resolved

Tom on Tires (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log) Sound like User:Willy on Wheels to anyone here? Contribs also indicate this. I don't have time for this, because I have to log out now, so I'm reporting this to other admins here. Malinaccier (talk) 02:01, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Already indefblocked as a page move vandal. Moving a page "on wheels" is a dead give away, no? — Save_Us † 02:03, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Save Us has a point :) AGK (talk) 15:03, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I have added this to User:HBC_NameWatcherBot/Blacklist. —Random832 17:50, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Pending deletion script (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

This is a bot account unused since 2005 and it appears to have admin powers (there are logs of it deleting things although there are no rights logs for it). I think it would be a good idea to desysop/block this account. -Nard 02:50, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

The name "script" indicates it is probably part of one of the Mediawiki (the software running Wikipedia) update scripts, that was used in a previous update (possibly the Phase III update). There is no need to touch it. Also see User:Conversion script. Prodego ^talk 03:25, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

The user page says its a holdover from when Admins couldn't delete articles. Its controlled by User:Tim Starling, so I'd start there if I had questions. MBisanz ^talk 03:34, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

It does not appear to have administrator rights, although it does run with a bot flag. Nard, did you intend to say that its userpage gives the impression of it being an administrator account? AGK (talk) 12:11, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

USACASNATIONAL (talk · contribs) block review

I originally blocked this user for 3RR, content deletion, potentially libelous statement reasons. However, after seeing their comment to me on their talk page after I left the block notice, I changed the block to indefinite. The editor has also used UKC CASSA (talk · contribs), CASSA (talk · contribs), and 74.78.174.145 (talk · contribs). Finally, the editor is part of a WP:COI/N notice here. If anybody has an issue with my escalating block to indef, feel free to comment or reverse. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 08:19, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Seems fine to me, harassment and disruption aren't on at all. Stifle (talk) 10:33, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

"Next time it will be kids". Gahahahaha... JuJube (talk) 01:55, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Image:Tramzone6.png

User:Party uploaded this image last month and it came to my attention at WP:MCQ. I speedied it under CSD:I7 on February 13th because it was tagged with a currency fair use tag but was a transport ticket. Martinp23 restored it a couple of hours later. Since then, Party is slow-reverting to place various classes of public domain tags on it, using rationales such as "it's a expired bus pass so it may be used according to the owner" and "Public domain image, since it's a governement organism". A permission was sent to OTRS ticket 2008021310019992, although I am not able to read it.

During the matter, Party has also misused rollback and been generally uncivil.

I have now listed the image on WP:PUI pending receipt from an OTRS user of the text of the permission, to see whether it is indeed a PD or free license release. We may also be able to justify a non-free use (in which case the image will need scaling down) but need to first work out the copyright status of the image.

Can someone please explain public domain to Party better than I can? Stifle (talk) 10:28, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I undeleted the image assuming good faith that Party would be able to find an appropriate tag, or permission. Party seems to be endeavouring to do this, and my suggestion would be to wait for a couple more days for the permissions to smooth themselves out. The OTRS ticket is unclear. It states that the images are released to the public and AMT has no objection to them appearing on WP. There's a "but" to the permission later on though, but my French skills (specifically lack thereof) make me unsure about my translation of that part - so I won't paraphrase it here.

My feeling is that the email on OTRS *doesn't* express a full release into the public domain. Now, whether the tickets actually are PD and AMT is trying to impose a constraint on them is an interesting question - before undeleting the image I took a look at other ticket images on Wikipedia, and, where they were scans, they seemed to be released into PD or under the GFDL nearly all the time.

Having said all of this, my feeling is that there is no need to delete the image when, if a free licence cannot be securely obtained, it can be safely used under fair use to illustrate the "Fares" section of the AMT article. I think we just need to wait for clarification from AMT via OTRS. Thanks, Martinp23 15:06, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

If you or anyone emails or otherwise communicates to me the content of the OTRS ticket I would be obliged. I can speak/read French. Stifle (talk) 15:25, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

The email has already been replied to, and the terms of release given by AMT are currently not sufficient (the "but..." statement noted above and it is unclear if it was released for all use or just on Wikipedia). I should also note that permissions for this, and other images where permissions are sent to OTRS, should be given much more than a couple days for someone to confirm the permission. The OTRS permission queue has a backlog of ~370 open tickets, 100 of which are in permissions-en (though this specific one was put into permissions-fr, which only has 2, so it should get picked up quickly when we get a reply) Mr.Z-man 18:44, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Waterboarding

This Arbitration case has closed, and the final decision may be reviewed through the above link. Further to the relevant findings of fact, Waterboarding and all closely-related pages are subject to article probation (full remedy); editors working on Waterboarding, or closely related pages, may be subject to an editing restriction at the discretion of any uninvolved administrator, whereby any edits by that editor which are judged by an administrator to be uncivil, personal attacks, or assumptions of bad faith, may result in a block. (full remedy).

Should any user subject to an editing restriction in this case violate that restriction, that user may be briefly blocked, up to a week in the event of repeated violations. After 5 blocks, the maximum block length shall increase to one year (full enforcement). Before such restrictions are enacted on an editor, he or she must be issued with a warning containing a link to the decision.

For the Arbitration Committee,
AGK (talk) 14:25, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

The last link should be linked to Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Waterboarding#Enforcement by block rather than Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#Enforcement by block (which is to a non-existent anchor). x42bn6 Talk Mess 18:49, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Message for granting rollback

I noticed a user who did vandal fighting and no edit warring so I decided to grant them rollback permission. I could not find a standardized message for "welcome to rollback" so I made my own. Do people think this is a good idea? Should it be moved to some place in the template namespace? I don't think WP:DTTR quite applies as it's more of an award. —dgies^t_c 17:11, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I created User:Acalamari/Rollback, which was moved to Template:Rollbackgiven, and there's also User:NoSeptember/Rollback as well. There is nothing wrong with your userspace template, however. I think the templates are fine. Acalamari 18:10, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Didn't see those as they weren't in Category:Wikipedia rollback feature. I like your wording better so I merged in some of the features from my version into Template:Rollbackgiven. —dgies^t_c 18:26, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

The merge looks good. Fine work on improving the template. One question though: with the user rights log link in the template now, if I grant a user rollback, and leave the template on their talk page, will the link show them that their rights have been changed? Acalamari 18:31, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

When the template gets placed (and substituted) on User talk:FooUser, it creates a link to the user rights log of User:FooUser. This will show all users rights changes for that user, including those made before or after you place the message. Therefore if you place the message before granting rights, the rights will be shown in the link as soon as you grant them, and if someone later changes that user's rights, that will also be reflected. —dgies^t_c 18:39, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Okay then: thanks for the clarification. Acalamari 18:50, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Usernames being blocked, is this according to policy?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Usernames#Company.2Fgroup_names

"Use of a company or group name as a username is not explicitly prohibited, but it is not recommended..."

The policy states that use of a company name as a user name is not recommended but it is not prohibited. I used to think that all corporate names are prohibited and are to be blocked but I see this is not the case.

Should we stop blocking people for this reason? Or should we just ask that users certify that they are not a group account. Archtransit (talk) 17:14, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

My personal rule on this is I block only if the user is using Wikipedia for advertising their group, business, what have you. If a user like "KevinsShoeWarehouse" created the article Kevin's Shoe Warehouse or adds the business to an article like List of shoe stores, that deserves a block. And really, unless they're using WP to advertise, it's pretty tough to tell if a username is a business, group, etc. Of course, if a user chooses the name of a very well known business or group, it is my opinion that they should be blocked, as this invites potential lawsuits, e.g. if a user named "Microsoft" vandalizes Steve Jobs. Cheers, faithless (^speak) 17:38, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

The way I come by most company usernames is as faithless says above, they post ana d for their company. More generally, I think we assume that if its a group name, then its a shared account. Also, for major corps, there is of course the trademark issue. Even if User:Miramax didn't edit movie articles, there would still be the concern of trademark dilution. MBisanz ^talk 17:46, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

This came up recently. We assume it's a role account unless we get confirmation (somehow, OTRS I guess) that it's used by only one user. I'm not sure what the relevant policy page is. Luigi30 (Taλk) 18:28, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

The other problem is that of people believing the account represents the company in some official capacity, either to push a certain view point or to vandalise. The question aside from advertising, is the username likely to be confusing or misleading? --81.104.39.63 (talk) 19:24, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

WT:Text of the GNU Free Documentation License - image/logo

The correct, already uploaded image

GNU logo: finally uploaded!

I am aware that on WT:Text of the GNU Free Documentation License, some people have been wanting an image of the GNU logo. Well, it took me a while, and I had to look on the source coding for [17], but I finally uploaded the logo (at right) and would like to put it on the page. Unfortunately, the page is full-protected; could someone put the image on there? Please? Flaminglawyer (talk · contribs) 17:52, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Ok, never mind, it was already uploaded (already uploaded on left). But can someone still put it on the above mentioned page? Flaminglawyer (talk · contribs) 18:06, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Wow, are seriously suggesting that the logo of the GNU free documentation license is actually non-free? A few things: 1) the image is already on the Wikimedia Commons, it is a free image. 2) Image:Gnu-head.png is a free image as well, so you mistagged your image, and you can remove the non-free rationale as well. 3) If it was non-free, it wouldn't be allowed to be placed on WT:Text of the GNU Free Documentation License, per WP:NFCC, but since it is free, it can be if someone wants to put it on there (but more than likely they would be putting Image:Heckert GNU white.svg on there, not your image). — Save_Us † 18:56, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

The dog ate my homework

I’d like to start a discussion about dealing with accounts who respond to accusations of sockpuppetry with “It was my roommate, we edit from the same computer and have identical interests. Why, is that not allowed? No one told me, I had no idea.”

The current policy at WP:SOCK already addresses this, (even more so after Jehochman’s recent addition) and notes that it can be treated the same as sockpuppetry. However, the “Why, is that not allowed? No one told me, I had no idea” part of this means that what will actually happen is an accusation of sock puppetry, followed by this defense, will result in the user being “notified” of this provision, and told not to do it anymore. One free pass, as it were.

Yes, I know about AGF, and once in a blue moon, I suppose the dog really does eat the homework. But no teacher automatically accepts this excuse, and says “well next time, keep the homework away from the dog, but you don’t need to turn your homework in this one time.” At least none of my teachers ever did. Giving puppeteers one free pass before there is any consequence greatly increases the likelihood that this gambit will be used by everyone accused of sockpuppetry.

In cases where the existence of a similarly-minded roommate is a distinct possibility, I’m resigned that the solution above is the best we can do. If I had any great ideas, I’d propose them, but I don’t. Instead I’m asking for a discussion to see if anything can be improved, and Jehochman suggested AN might be a good place to discuss this.

The only thing I’d throw out there is a suggestion that in the future, we might consider actively attempting to disprove the excuse whenever possible, and imposing much more severe consequences on those who abuse it, so that others aren’t encouraged to try the same thing. In other words, at the very least, I suggest we find out if the student actually has a dog or not. --barneca (talk) 17:53, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

The other problem is - why _isn't_ it allowed? We are, in these cases, holding two adults responsible for one another's actions with absolutely no basis. Assuming that it really is two different people, why are two different people who live near each other and have similar interests not allowed to both edit? Checkuser data interpretation techniques have gotten more sophisticated and I've noticed that the checkusers have been getting more confident in saying they are sure that it is or is not the case; so if we are in fact reasonably sure that it is two different people, why should these be treated any differently from two people who are geographically remote than one another? —Random832 18:03, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Two separate people most definitely should be allowed to edit from the same computer, as long as they either disclose their interconectedness, or avoid editing reverting edited for clarity per Lara's comment below the same articles or voting in CFD's ditto. I think that's what most people have always assumed, and that's what Jehochman's clarification of WP:SOCK a few hours ago puts into writing. I'm more concerned with this being a free pass to sock with no consequences. --barneca (talk) 18:14, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

The comment I'd have is why can't there be a warning when a person registers that their IP is tracked and they shouldn't edit the same topics from a common computer. MBisanz ^talk 18:10, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

When the edits are coming from the same IP, it's not so much an issue that they're editing the same articles, as long as their not backing each other in conversations, or avoiding 3RR by alternating reverts, etc. At that point, it doesn't matter if the accounts are one person or two. Sock or meatpuppet, either way is unacceptable. Am I wrong? Do you block people who share an IP and only edit constructively? Lara❤Love 18:42, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Well no, the concern is abuse (or what looks like abuse), not erecting a wall between people that live together or know each other in real life. But a Checkuser wouldn't really be run on two editors only editing constructively, so this shouldn't be an issue. I'm not interested in knowing about anybody's personal life, I don't need to know it it's a friend, roommate, partner, etc, or if the user lives in a dorm with one IP, or anything. A short "This user, and User:Foo share an IP address and recognize the requirements of WP:SOCK", placed on User:Bar's page, should do it. The question is, whether something can be adjusted to make it more difficult for one person to rely on this explanation to shield him from consequences the first time he's caught. --barneca (talk) 18:54, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I seem to remember a case where 3 people worked in the same office with a common IP subnet. They agreed not to edit the same articles and declare the common IP, which was acceptable. Barneca makes a good point that a checkuser wouldn't be run unless something suspicious was going on, so 2 editors not-meatpuppeting and making constructive contributions, probably would go un-noticed. MBisanz ^talk 19:14, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

The checkusers also have some discretion here. Two accounts who both trace to the shared IP of a large university or corporation may very well be independent. Two accounts who tandem-revert a single obscure article and trace to a single residential IP are violating WP:SOCK, regardless of whether there are two people taking turns at the keyboard or one. It probably ought to be intuitively obvious that this is gaming the system, even if it's two people, particularly when they see their "adversary" blocked for 3RR. As has been noted, this was not an innocent case of two people with shared interests, but a case of overt tag-team edit-warring. The bottom line is that our policies are intended to facilitate the goal of writing a collaborative encyclopedia. This sort of editing is disruptive and counterproductive whether it's one or two people manipulating the accounts, and it should be dealt with accordingly. MastCell ^Talk 20:50, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

• I suggest a template notice is rustled up that people can put on their user pages if they are aware that their IP is shared with other users (be that a community, corporate, university or household sharing). There is no need to explicitly name those other users, unless there are other reasons to make the community aware of such connections between accounts. In other words: a notice for checkusers to read and be aware of information they need to interpret the checkuser data correctly. If people are unaware that their IP is being shared, then they will have learnt a lesson the hard way. Or a similar notice can be displayed for people to state "as far as I know, the IP or IPs I edit from are not shared with other users". Carcharoth (talk) 09:14, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

new edit given a neutrality query but nothing on the talk page to say why

Hi I'm new here in editing. So, I'm not too sure how all things work. But it seems from your guidelines that any edit then given a query as to neutrality is supposed to have details of this in the talk page. This has not happened by the person who queried neutrality to my addition on the unconditional election page earlier today. Can the neutrality issue be removed or substantiated please. Jarom22 (talk) 18:50, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Which article are we talking about here? Luigi30 (Taλk) 19:06, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

We appear to be talking about Jarom22's edits to Unconditional election. Jarom22, what exactly are you asking for here? Ioeth _{(talk contribs friendly)} 19:46, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

The easiest thing you can do is just ask Flex on his talk page (User talk:Flex). Someguy1221 (talk) 19:49, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Explicit images

Resolved

 – SkierRMH (talk) 20:47, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I recommend that Image:Foreskinintact.jpg and Image:Foreskin CloseupV2.jpg be added to MediaWiki:Bad image list since they make attractive targets for vandals to use for image vandalism due to their explicit nature.--Urban Rose 19:43, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Experienced user who fails to give edit summaries

There is an experienced editor (who I won't name, but has been around since 2004 and has nearly 17,000 edits), almost invariably fails to leave edit summaries (other than automatic ones). Polite requests have been made about this going back for some time (two years!), but none of these requests have ever really been acted upon. Although this is only a nuisance, other editors find it rather frustrating: in general, can anything be done about this behaviour? Thanks, --RFBailey (talk) 20:28, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

We could ask the user to change their preferences so that they will be reminded to provide an edit summary when they try to save a page without one. That's what I do, and I have had edit summarys 100% of the time since I changed it. J Milburn (talk) 20:39, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

If the user is amenable to change, that's a good suggestion, but if they've been asked before and don't care, you can't really make them. I mean what are you going to do, block the guy? Using an edit summary is not required by policy. —dgies^t_c 20:49, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

(ec with both the above)I've come across a couple of editors of varying length of service who are non-summary people. I've tried asking, pleading and threatening, but to no avail. These people are often very poor communicators - that would explain the lack of summaries and the lack of response (or promises to change that are not followed through). The problem is that trying to make an otherwise good editor use summaries is unenforceable. We don't have access to their preferences to turn the summary-demand thing on; there will be no support for blocking a good editor with poor communication skills just for the latter problem. I suppose we could add Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts/Force edit summary alternative to their monobook.js, but would there be a consensus of editors that forced behavioural modification is something we should be doing? And we'd need to protect their monobook.js if they just reverted us, which could be a drama magnet. Perhaps we just need to be a tad pointy and keep hitting them with {{Summary}} until they get sick of it and start using them? ➔ REDVEЯS knows how Joan of Arc felt 20:54, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

The "bad communicator" assessment is probably right: of the 17,000 edits in question, only about 400 are to talk pages of any kind, and only about 40 in the Wikipedia: namespace. --RFBailey (talk) 21:06, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

So, if the editor in question made 16,600 edits, +400 talkpsace edits, and doesn't use edit summaries (which is annoying, but meh), what's the problem? Are the edits vandalism? Are they disruptive? If an editor has stuck around long enough to make 16,600 edits, I don't imagine I'll need an edit summary to know that he/she is doing good work for the betterment of the encyclopedia. If any one particular edit is in question or possibly conroversial, it's only one extra click on the "diff" to see what the edit was exactly. This seems a good faith post on AN, but it also seems to be a solution in need of a problem. You are know 2 cents richer. Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 21:10, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

The short answer is no. If they don't want to, they don't have to. WilyD 21:12, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Keeper, I agree with you (except about the "solution in need of a problem" bit - I see no solutions in this thread, problem-seeking or otherwise). I can't speak for RFBailey, but when you have a non-summary editor who is editing across your watchlist, no matter how well you know of them, you're bound to click (diff) just in case. If it's ten edits across ten articles, all saying [Corrected foo to say bar], you will look at the first one then move on. If it's ten edits that say nothing, you will check all ten. Similarly, if you every have reason to look at their contributions - say for an obvious good-faith but nevertheless dubious edit on one article + curiosity - if there are no summaries, it's hard not to examine every edit; if the "dubious" edit is marked [Corrected foo to say bar because of foobar] and all the others are too, then you know that the AGF you're naturally feeling is correct and don't check. In other words, not using edit summaries wastes editor time, due to editors here being, by and large, human beings. ➔ REDVEЯS knows how Joan of Arc felt 21:23, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. I Overspoke there. There is no solution in need of a problem because, really, there is no solution. It really comes down to recognizing the dedication of a user I suppose. Anyone that has made 16,600 mainspace edits, IMHO, deserves community trust. I don't anticipate that I, or any other editor, would have the time to find 16000+ edits to be, in your words, dubious. But I completely understand the frustration. I use edit summaries always and I greatly appreciate them from others. But, what can you do? (Rhetorical question, doesn't require an answer) Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 21:27, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Agreed with Keeper76. You take the good with the bad with every editor. If the good is 16,000 edits and the bad is zero edit summaries, that's pretty good overall IMHO. I assume the person knows that a lack of edit summaries increases the risk of getting reverted. If s/he is aware of that and decides that's an acceptable risk, there's not much you can do. —Wknight94 (talk) 21:36, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Ask really nicely. Maybe offer to give a barnstar after the first 1,000 edit summaries.Wikidemo (talk) 00:32, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Edit summaries are nice, but not required. It's not like it's a blockable offense to not use them. — Rlevse • Talk • 03:34, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

It is a means of avoiding scrutiny. Ironically, it may also be attention-seeking behaviour, as outlined and demonstrated by ➔ REDVEЯS. Not using edit summaries is highly disruptive, at the time of the edit and as part of the page history/ cygnis insignis 05:50, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Or they're just a little lazy, or think their contributions can speak for themselves. Either way, assume good faith please. I wouldn't call good faith editors making thousands of quality article edits "extremely disruptive" simply because they aren't using edit summaries. Mr.Z-man 06:01, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Neither would I, please don't misquote me. It should be obvious that I am describing how the behaviour might be disruptive - I'm not assuming anything! The options you present are probable and frequent causes, but not justifiable in a long term contributor. Until one knows otherwise, by checking the unexplained contributions, the editor remains unknown - multiply this by the number of watchlists they appear on. This could be self-serving and arrogant behaviour or an ignorance of the advantage to others in using summaries. It should be policy, if it is not already. cygnis insignis 08:20, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Er, just to nip this silly "anyone with tons of edits is probably a good editor" thing in the bud, I don't see a need to assume this. Obviously, I can't judge without knowing who the hell everyone is talking about, but I've seen editors who'll make hundreds of edits a day that each constitute no more than adding a single word or punctuation mark (to the same article!). So yeah...don't be silly. And yeah, always assume good faith, blah blah, etc. Someguy1221 (talk) 08:26, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I must own up to being a culprit in this regard myself - I have a few more than 17,000 edits (five times that many - I need a life), but don't give that many edit summaries. In my case part of the reason is that many, if not most, of my edits are minor, and in a lot of cases, I don't see no-summary minor edits as much of a problem (and, given that it often takes longer to write the edit summary than make the edit, can be very time consumikng when you're on a "batch-job"). With non-minor edits, though, I try to make some sort of effort, though I do often forget (probably because of the minor edit thing). I know we now have an automatic edit summary added for new articles (where the edit is given by the first line of text added in). Perhaps something similar could be done for edits to exiting articles, adding an automated summary showing the first line of text changed? That might at least make things more transparent to watchlist-readers. Grutness...wha? 08:33, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

What a good suggestion! I don't do many 'batch-jobs', but I sometime use a 'paste note' function in my browser with the appropriate edit summary. cygnis insignis 08:48, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I love that suggestion. Anyone know a way to get enough support that the devs would actually listen to it? Someguy1221 (talk) 08:56, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Newbie admin needs a bit of advice

In response to this report at WP:AN3 I blocked 88.64.91.102 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) for 12 hours for edit warring on Futurama (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). However, the individual has a dynamic IP and returned minutes later with a new IP and a few personal attacks for good measure. So I blocked 84.56.0.140 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) for 24 hours for edit warring and personal attacks.

Predictably, the individual returned again to revert war on the article with a new IP. What is my best course of action here? I've considered:

• Blocking each IP in a game of whack-a-mole
• Semi-protection
• Full protection (since there is an underlying content dispute)

However, none of the above seem satisfactory to me. Thanks. CIreland (talk) 22:33, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

If they seem to be targeting one article, the first step could be semi protection, which I have done here. Then you can either block individual IPs or try a range block, depending on the situation. Crum375 (talk) 22:40, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the fast response. CIreland (talk) 22:46, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

How to handle the WMF non-free image deadline

I'd like to start a discussion on how to handle the upcoming Wikimedia Foundation non-free image deadline. I've notified various people and posted a notice at WT:NFC. Please see the WMF resolution here. Despite the unclear wording there, it has been confirmed by others that the deadline of 23 March 2007 does apply to project with an Exemption Doctrine Policy (for Wikipedia, the EDP is WP:NFC).

The relevant wording is: "As of March 23, 2007, all new media uploaded under unacceptable licenses (as defined above) and lacking an exemption rationale should be deleted, and existing media under such licenses should go through a discussion process where it is determined whether such a rationale exists; if not, they should be deleted as well." and "By March 23, 2008, all existing files under an unacceptable license as per the above must either be accepted under an EDP, or shall be deleted"

What I want to get clearly laid down here is how things will change after this deadline. What I don't want to see is mass bot taggings and deletion of non-free images without discussion. Please note that the license resolution uses the terms "unacceptable license" and "lacking an exemption rationale". Betacommandbot (to give an example) is incapable of determining whether an image lacks an exemption rationale. It is capable of determining the quality of a possibly existing rationale (ie. whether or not it names the article the image is being used in), but that is not the same thing.

My basic question is this: Is it possible to determine which images should and should not be deleted after 23 March 2007? I fear that it is not possible to do this, and that chaos may ensue if people see the passing of the deadline as some free license (pun intended) to arbitrarily delete non-free images because they feel that they are "unacceptable" or "lack a rationale" (when the definition of "lack a rationale" is disputed).

Thoughts on the central question (bolded above) and how to manage this and avoid huge amounts of drama? See also the section below, but please comment in this section as well! Carcharoth (talk) 09:42, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Does this 23 March 2008 deadline even exist?

these comments split off under new title. Carcharoth (talk) 11:19, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

What you've quoted in the "by March 23, 2008" section is from point #6 of the resolution, which is expressed as applying to projects which do not have an EDP. We do. Stifle (talk) 09:57, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I know. I pointed this out many months ago. Others have pointed it out. But it seems that the resolution was poorly worded. Point 5 only has a 2007 deadline. I suspect it should have had a 2008 deadline as well, otherwise the "discussion" bit is essentially open-ended. If you really want to get agreement that there is no deadline, and that the last year of drama has been a misunderstanding, please get some official word on this. I've written to various people with no responses. One example is at: User talk:Mindspillage#Licensing policy clarifications ([18]). I've left another note as I think she was away at Wikimania the time. Any suggestions as to who else to write to would be appreciated. Carcharoth (talk) 10:08, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Notes left for WMF Board of Trustees - Please see here, here, here and here for the notes I've left for the people listed here (Is that up-to-date? I've linked to the current version). The en-wikipedia page for Jan-Bart is not active. Looking at that list, I now get the feeling that I should actually be contacting members of the staff. Who are likely to be more responsive to this plea to clarify the deadline, the Board of Trustees or people like Sue Gardner, Erik Moller, Cary Bass and Mike Godwin? Who should I be asking my questions to? Carcharoth (talk) 10:37, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I've notified Erik Moller here, as I believe he was on the Board of Trustees at the time the Resolution was passed. Carcharoth (talk) 11:50, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Commment. It seems to me that our deadline passed as of last year. We should also be enforcing very strict limits on the use of non-free images, as expressed in the Foundation policy and at WP:NFCC. Images uploaded after March 23, 2007 without a valid EDP license (appropriate non-free license and rationale) should be deleted. Images uploaded before that time should be given a chance to be placed under an appropriate license and have an appropriate rationale, if they fit under the limited circumstances. I believe a lot of the "drama" has more to do with a serious resistance to heavy limitations on fair use images, than anything else. There may be some ways to minimize the problems, but the underlying issue is simply that some users are (to be kind) reluctant to adjust to the Foundation's policy. Short of changing people's minds, there's not a whole lot that can be done to ease the pain and drama in the community. Vassyana (talk) 10:32, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I actually tend to agree. So why does Betacommand (and others) have 45 days left at the top of his (their) user talk page(s)? Carcharoth (talk) 10:40, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I believe it is because of a misunderstanding of the policy, specifically accounting the deadline for non-EDP projects to EDP projects such as en.wiki. As an additional thought on the whole matter, I think that in the interests of minimizing drama that we have been exceptionally lenient when it comes to points 8 and 10 under "Policy" at WP:NFCC and on point 3 of the Foundation licensing policy. I tend to think that is a mistake, as instead of reducing drama, it appears (to me) to have muddled the issue and weakened the community perception of the policies. Vassyana (talk) 10:46, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

You say "Images uploaded after March 23, 2007 without a valid EDP license (appropriate non-free license and rationale) should be deleted. Images uploaded before that time should be given a chance to be placed under an appropriate license and have an appropriate rationale, if they fit under the limited circumstances." - so why is Betacommandbot not discriminating between the two? The older images are being given the same amount of time as the newer images. I think any images uploaded after the 2007 March deadline should get only 7 days to be fixed, period. Everything else (the older images uploaded before then) should be tagged now and given until 1 April 2008 to be fixed. And Betacommand and others should be told that after 01 April 2008 things will not change dramatically. The way I see it, the tagging and 7-day deadlines for newly uploaded images will still apply indefinitely, and this 7-day deadline will now apply to older images as well. Carcharoth (talk) 10:46, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I believe the answer lies in the lack of distinction in local policy and missing/disputed rationale templates. There's a lot of misunderstanding about the Foundation policy and the local EDP. A solution might be to make variant tags for images uploaded before March 23, 2007 and to work out consensus language regarding the distinction between "old" and "new" images either at Wikipedia:Non-free content#Implementation and enforcement or in the policy itself at WP:NFCC. Vassyana (talk) 10:50, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I've found an old discussion I had with Durin here and here. If this is a misunderstanding, it extends all the way up to Board level! I don't know which Board member Durin was referring to. Carcharoth (talk) 11:35, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

It may be simply be that the document is very poorly worded, but as worded our deadline was last year, not the upcoming one. I agree it would be good to receive clarification from the WMF. Vassyana (talk) 11:38, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I've also rediscovered a clearer way of putting this, which I will quote here:

"The matter of this deadline of April 2008: I had a closer look at the WMF Licensing Policy, and it looks like the layout of the document is confusing. The deadline is the third subclause of bullet point 6, and thus appears to be only referring to projects without an EDP. Bullet point 5 contains a date for projects with an EDP, but the date only refers to the point from which the policy applies to new images. There appear to be no deadline for the discussion of old images. I'm convinced this is a layout typo, but it is rather sloppy." - Carcharoth 22:33, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

As I've said above, I have contacted four members of the WMF Board of Trustees. I would like to contact those that actually discussed and voted on the Resolution, but who voted on this resolution is not clear from their documentation. I hope there is some response from the Board, and I would like to ask those with accounts on meta to leave the Board members brief notes about this discussion, or those subscribing to the WMF mailing list to leave a brief note there mentioning this discussion, if possible. Thanks. Carcharoth (talk) 11:42, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Couple points: the resolution wording is weird because if you read it strictly as written, projects without an EDP in place before the resolution have to get all their images in appropriate order by March 23 2008 (Clause #6), but with those with existing EDP effectively can be read to have no deadline (clause #5) which is extremely unbalanced. One could argue that en.wiki, while having a written EDP, did not have one that was enforced or possibly failing #2: Non-free content used under an EDP must be identified in a machine-readable format so that it can be easily identified by users of the site as well as re-users., and thus en.wiki is subject to #6 as well. (The act of BCB going through to validate article names gets us some way to start #2). BCB did discriminate between older images and newer images in that he only recently took off the bot's restriction that only looked at articles after a given date, thus giving the older images the time outlined in the resolution (but of course, this is why BCB is getting so many complaints now).

Regardless, I think even without a deadline, we should bite the bullet and allow BCB to continue, allowing for more time for correcting the rationales for this period only (14-21 days if we allow BCB to burn through the rest of the images before the end of Feb). Once we get that done, the amount of noise that BCB will generate thenon (in maintaining such a state) should be very minimal and we'll never have to worry about it again. If we allow BCB trickle its way through the images, we're going to get a BCB once a week until he's done. The only thing I would change about the process is to make sure the BCB message points to the image help desk, make sure that's a box, very top of the page "If you have received a notice from BCB, please review the following..." to cut down the number of the complaints that are generated. --MASEM 14:04, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Avoiding drama with Betacommandbot during March 2008

Suggested action points:

• By 23:59 2nd March 2008, Betacommand will provide a clear schedule for his planned 'disputed non-free images' tagging runs using Betacommandbot during the rest of March 2008 and he will sticks to this schedule.
• Betacommand is asked to avoid using his bot to tag thousands of images in the week before the deadline (23 March 2008), and is encouraged to finish his tagging at least two full weeks before the deadline (ie. by 23:59 9th March 2008). This does not apply to images uploaded after 9th March 2008, or to images tagged before this date and untagged without being fixed.
• Betacommand is encouraged to tag older images and newly-uploaded images (ones uploaded this year) separately.
• When Betacommand announces that he is finished with his tagging runs, then existing tagged images will have their deadline extended closer to the 23 March deadline to allow editors time to work on them. As before, this does not apply to newly-uploaded images.

It is possible that Betacommand is already happy to do this, but I would like to get this on the record. Please add more action points above as needed, and discuss below. Carcharoth (talk) 09:42, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Why do we need to do this, per my message above? Stifle (talk) 10:00, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

To avoid drama. Betacommand thinks there is a deadline. Others don't. This needs to be sorted out before the "deadline" arrives. Carcharoth (talk) 11:24, 16 February 2008 (UTC) Previous, unhelpful comment by me, replaced - sorry Stifle.

I agree. I don't particularly care much about the specifics, but Betacommand and his (her?) bot are the spearhead of this image-tagging drive and it'd be irresponsible not to have all our ducks in a row before proceeding with the tagging. Specifics like what images get tagged, what kind of response time uploaders are afforded, etc. etc. are important issues that should be sorted out so that later there isn't any confusion or worse, accusations of bad-faith editing. -- Y|yukichigai (_ramble argue ^check) 12:06, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Surely it would make more sense to reprogram Betacommand into understanding the resolution correctly? Stifle (talk) 19:12, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Suggestion for reprogramming

I have transferred this from ANI where it was rolled up for starting forest fires, against the WP:don't start forest fires policy. MickMacNee (talk) 12:02, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
I am increasingly seeing how this bot works through its invasions of my watchlist and watching the results. What appears to be happening is that images with no rationale and images with an attempted rationale, but no article link, are tagged as being completely the same, i.e. deletabble in 7 days, i.e. here: [19]. I believe this is unnacceptable, as the cases of attempted rationales would clearly pass muster in a court, which is what the policy aims to meet. In order to decrease the stress and anger this bot is causing every time it goes on a 20,000 tag run, it should be reprogrammed to only run a few hundred images at a time, and to dump the resulting tagged images into an expert clearing house, before placing a huge warning and endless spamming of talk pages, only some of which are appropriate, so that images can be screened into the obvious 2 categories here, non-compliance full stop and in need of time and attention, and non-compliance with the bot's specification, but fixable in 10 seconds without stress and alarm by experienced editors, and the consequent uneccessary loss of images/editors. This would also increase the accuracy of the bot process as a whole itself, as the bot can be defeated easily by putting a gibberish rationale, as long as it contains the appropriate number of links. I know time/numbers is a factor, so I suggest images in the clearing house not given any attention in 7 days are then tagged and users warned as usual, irregardless. The clearing house can be accessed by anyone, in a collaborative effort that WP is supposed to be. MickMacNee (talk) 18:08, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

And still we continue with the "someone else should be doing rationales for my copyright image uploads" theme that has been running throughout this drama. What is stopping the uploaders doing these rationales for themselves? We can keep providing extra time, extra work spaces, extra help etc, but this doesn't solve the major problem: add the rationales in the first place (or when the nice bot tells you about a problem to give you a week to correct it) and the problem goes away. ➔ REDVEЯS knows how Joan of Arc felt 12:12, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

• The issue being, no one has shown this bot achieves this task, and even worse, it actively causes losses of images that are perfectly acceptable, due to it's harrassing and poorly written (in secret) code and operation. It is true that the specific issue of how to improve the process of getting all fur's to the correct format is being lost in the noise, this is purely down to no-one taking this issue seriously and letting betacommand do whatever he sees fit. The few images I have looked into shows me this bot is a blundering idiot at best, a complete incompetent at worst. MickMacNee (talk) 12:18, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
• And on "someone else should be doing rationales for my copyright image uploads", no, all my images are correct because I know what is required, but in trying to save some of the many that have popped up in my watchlist, I have seen what this bot is doing, and am making a suggestion as to how to stop the complaints, harassment, annoyance and general disruption it is causing. To pretend it is not is a pure head in the sand attitude. MickMacNee (talk) 12:21, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Redvers, you think everyone knows the million rules about fair use and free use and the thousand steps about writing a fair use rationale? --Kaypoh (talk) 12:55, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps if they don't understand how to license the images properly they should not be uploading them? Spartaz ^Humbug! 13:45, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Again, that is not the whole issue with this bot, there are many many previously acceptable images being re-flagged, and the tidal wave operation of this poorly implemented bot, combined with the fact images from 2005! are being tagged and uploaders are long gone, this is causing anger amongst experienced editors, not just new uploaders. One admin had 65 tags placed on his talk page in one day. Other have just jacked it in and said 'delete them all, I give up', even though they were saveable images. Anyone minded to try and work with this bot in its supposed aim of not deleting images, is just overwhelmed. MickMacNee (talk) 13:56, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Over in Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains we are having to deal with a rash of these, as BCB runs through and tags a huge percentage of the railroad herald images. The irony is that most of these appear in infoboxes which give mechanically interpretable evidence that image appears in a fair-use situation. I suspect that the album covers and DVD cases are similarly recognizable. At any rate, failing this, it would be useful to list the tagging where it can be gathered by the appropriate project. For the railroads we started going through all the articles manually, looking for problem images in the infoboxes. That's the kind of work we pay computers to do. Mangoe (talk) 14:23, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Whether or not the images are being used appropriately, they need fair use rationales, and should have been given one when they were uploaded. J Milburn (talk) 16:41, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

See above about images uplaoded before the policy was changed. MickMacNee (talk) 16:57, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requested Moves

Can we get some help at Wikipedia:Requested Moves? There is a backlog going back a full month. Any help would be appreciated. --Woohookitty^Woohoo! 10:55, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I've taken a crack at the backlog, but I need to head off for the day. If someone else could jump in, it would be appreciated. Vassyana (talk) 12:08, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Page move / delete cleanup

This is a list of all pages in the User: namespace that don't have a corresponding user in Special:Listusers. Some of the pages are deletable under WP:CSD#U2, however, it seems that most are users who mistakenly created a page in the wrong place. User:Zizai:LY18 vs. User:Zizai/LY18, User:EricRodenbeck vs. User:Ericrodenbeck. Seems other pages are from when the Rename extension wasn't able to move subpages. Some of the other pages are apparently attempts at users "renaming" themselves. Still some other pages are tagged with "sock" tags, however, it's pretty difficult to have a sock puppet account if you've never created an account with that name. The last category of pages seems to be people who "created" doppelganger accounts (however, without registering the account, creating just a user page is pretty useless).

Quite a large mess. Any help cleaning up the list (specifically appropriate page moves and deleting the newly-created redirects) would be great. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:41, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I feel like this would take forever. --PeaceNT (talk) 19:31, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Goodness me :) AGK (talk) 19:36, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I thought the same thing. I went to the link, and I was too overwhelmed to even start doing anything (for now). Who has motivation? We need you! нмŵוτнτ 19:41, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Huggle/Whitelist

Resolved

Maybe something to take a look at... assuming this page keeps growing, shouldn't it start timing out when users try to save to it? Mønobi 18:49, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

It's actually not that large; ANI is twice as big in terms of bytes. Will ^(talk) 19:02, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

'Assuming it keeps growing. Mønobi 19:04, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

If it becomes an issue, make subpages of it and transclude them. Stifle (talk) 19:11, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Username policy on famous person

Leonardo DiCaprio (talk · contribs) I left a note on her user talk page advising her to change her name. To sound less bite-y (WP:BITE), I asked her to save it for the famous (not real) Leonardo. Is a polite message and block the right thing to do? Mrs.EasterBunny (talk) 19:33, 16 February 2008 (UTC) I have studied WP:U which states "You should not edit under the real name of a well-known living person unless it is your real name, and you either are that person, or you make it clear that you are not. Such usernames may be blocked as a precaution, until it can be confirmed that the user in question is using their real name." So this person makes it clear that she is a fan and not the famous Leonardo. Do we let her keep her username??? Somehow, I don't like it but I don't want to be nasty to her either. Mrs.EasterBunny (talk) 19:42, 16 February 2008 (UTC)