MediaWiki talk:Anontalkpagetext

Rework

The use of he and she, his and her are making this text overly wordy. xaosflux ^Talk/_CVU 03:02, 25 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Version 1

Suggested rework:

This is the discussion page for an anonymous user. Anonymous users are identified by their numerical IP address. Some IP addresses change periodically, and may be shared by several users. If you are an anonymous user and feel that irrelevant comments have been directed at you, please create an account or log in to avoid future confusion with other anonymous users. If you do not want others to see your IP address here, we recomend creating an account.

xaosflux ^Talk/_CVU 03:17, 25 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a way to include a link here for quick IP whois lookups? — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 03:18, 25 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Any link could be put in, and would show on every anon's talk page, were you thinking something like a link to ARIN WHOIS or a server side script that would do it for you? xaosflux ^Talk/_CVU 03:34, 25 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I meant a link to ARIN WHOIS which would automatically input the ip address that you're looking at — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 05:14, 25 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Appears to be easy enough to do, e.g. see this link in User Talk space for 207.142.131.203 the code was simply:

[http://ws.arin.net/whois/?queryinput={{PAGENAME}} ARIN]

Resulting in a simple link, prepopulated with the IP info. Perhaps making that at the end of the suggested rewrite, with Address Information instead of ARIN in the example above. xaosflux ^Talk/_CVU 05:48, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Version 2

This is the discussion page for an anonymous user. Anonymous users are identified by their numerical IP address. Some IP addresses change periodically, and may be shared by several users. If you are an anonymous user and feel that irrelevant comments have been directed at you, please create an account or log in to avoid future confusion with other anonymous users. If you do not want others to see your IP address here, we recomend creating an account.
RIR WHOIS links: ARIN RIPE LACNIC AFRINIC APNIC

I updated the sample posting with working links on 207.142.131.203's Talk Page. Assuming this looks good, what is the steps that would need to be followed regarding editing this MediaWiki page, as they are all protected, would a request for unprotection be the correct route, just asking someone, or does it need to go through something like RFC? xaosflux ^Talk/_CVU 16:41, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Just read the information at Wikipedia:MediaWiki_namespace, it is a little ambig, saying changes can be suggested at 3 diferant places, with this being one of them. Is there a way to sandbox this test to be sure that it will work before implementation, e.g. my proposed change uses HTML and WIKI links, but will both of those types work from the area this message is used? xaosflux ^Talk/_CVU 16:55, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

They should both work. The MediaWiki: namespace pages are protected. Perhaps we should go suggest this at the Village Pump, because these are good ideas. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 17:01, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Just added to VPP Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#MediaWiki:Anontalkpagetext xaosflux ^Talk/_CVU 18:18, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Whether or not HTML and wikitext are actually parsed depends upon the code; not all system messages are processed in the same way. Furthermore, the entire MediaWiki namespace is protected for a reason. Just clearing those two things up. 86.133.53.111 02:25, 27 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that it is protected for a reason, a good reason! Thus my desire to make sure this change would be acceptable, both programatically, and for content and usability. xaosflux ^Talk/_CVU 04:28, 27 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Version 3

Those changes seem rather helpful; I tweaked the proposal a bit to make the text more concise and the links more user-friendly (below).

This is the discussion page for an anonymous user, identified by their numerical IP address. Some IP addresses change periodically, and may be shared by several users. If you are an anonymous user and feel that irrelevant comments have been directed at you, please create an account or log in to avoid future confusion with other anonymous users. If you're concerned with privacy, registering also hides your IP address. [RIR whois lookup: America Europe Africa Asia-Pacific Latin America/Carribeans]

// Pathoschild 02:35, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Those look great, if this goes long enough without complaint, is that ok for getting this section edited? —the preceding unsigned comment is by Xaosflux (talk • contribs) 02:56, January 6, 2006

I'll give it another day just to make sure, but otherwise I think there's been a fair attempt at discussion. // Pathoschild 18:04, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure of the code, or how it would format on diferant resolutions, but is it possible to right justify the rir stuff, without right jsutifiying the rest of the line it is on (I DON'T want to add br's and make more lines to accomplish it!) xaosflux ^Talk/_CVU 03:22, 7 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's possible, but we should keep templates this important as simple as possible. Simple means fewer unexpected results in an older browser we didn't think to try. ;) // Pathoschild 22:32, 7 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The template should be made simpler if possible. --S iva1979^{Talk to me} 20:16, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have some suggestions? — xaosflux ^Talk 01:00, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Spelling error

Can someone with the appropriate powers change "Carribeans]" to Caribbean"? Thanks, Graham/pianoman87 talk 10:42, 2 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I fixed the spelling error. Thanks for pointing it out. // Pathoschild (_admin / ^talk) 13:45, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for that. There's still an extra "s" in Caribbean", and there's an extra closing bracket at the end of the message. Graham/pianoman87 talk 10:06, 3 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

<sp_ch>friend</sp_ch>

Plainlinks

Is there any interest in converting the RIR WHOIS lookup links to <span class="plainlinks">? They look a little strange as-is, imho. ~Kylu (u|t) 03:06, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tested and implemented. Please let me know if there are any issues from this. — xaosflux ^Talk 05:04, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely gorgeous! All the annoying little arrows are gone. Thanks! :) ~Kylu (u|t) 05:10, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Div id

Please add <div id="anontalktext">, so people can blank it out in their own css file. --GeorgeMoney ^T·C 21:37, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If no objections will add in a few days. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:41, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Done. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:16, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

dnsstuff.com links

I moved the dnsstuff inline with the RIR's, but removed ping (something had to go to make it fit on 800x600 screens without scrolling). Pinging vandals doesn't seem very helpful. — xaosflux ^Talk 02:44, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Are the 2nd set of links even necessary? DNS Stuff will do WHOIS for anywhere. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-22 02:45
- I'd suggest keep for now, the RIR's are the authoritative sources, dnsstuff.com is a non-free (as in speach) site that threatens automated users with fines. Although this is free (as in speach) information, dnsstuff.com also slaps copyright notices on all their results pages. — xaosflux ^Talk 03:01, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Formatting change

Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)

As was mentioned at WP:VPT, I think that we need to make the anon talk text at the bottom of anon talk pages more prominant, and not just looking like a copyright notice at the bottom of some web sites. What do you think of this:

This is the discussion page for an anonymous user, identified by the user's numerical IP address. Some IP addresses change periodically, and may be shared by several users. If you are an anonymous user and feel that irrelevant comments have been directed at you, please create an account or log in to avoid future confusion with other anonymous users. If you're concerned with privacy, registering also hides your IP address.
[IP info · Traceroute · WHOIS · Abuse · City · RDNS] [RIRs: America · Europe · Africa · Asia-Pacific · Latin America/Caribbean]

—Mets501 (talk) 16:03, 23 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I like the idea. It's an important part of that page, and it should be prominent. Fagstein 04:58, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Shouldn't this be brought up at MediaWiki talk:Anontalkpagetext? Prodego ^talk 13:25, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Doesn't look bad, will want to make sure this is heavily endorsed though, as it changes millions of pages! I would prefer if the image were a pubilc domain image as well, (that one is GLPGL). Additionally any images transcluded on this page will need to be uploaded to en: and be fully protected. — xaosflux ^Talk 02:32, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Changed to a public domain image (very similar). What do you think? —Mets501 (talk) 15:16, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Momentarily tested the placement on this page, and it looked ok, would like to see more nods here though. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:11, 26 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I agree. Let's wait for a little while (a few days), and if no one objects then we'll try it out. —Mets501 (talk) 02:36, 26 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Fine by me. Prodego ^talk 02:37, 26 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

*nod*. // [admin] Pathoschild (^talk/_map) 03:42, 26 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What? No thick red borders and flashing text? ;) No seriously this looks fine and I don't see a problem to change the look of this particular template without informing people if the content stays the same. - Mgm|^(talk) 18:34, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why must we always design glowing boxes with images in them in order to distract from the rest of boxes with glowing images on them on pages? Was something broken about the unintrusive plain text that meant it had to have glowing images? -Splash - tk 00:56, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I moved the padding back from 5em to 1em, this was getting large on browsers with low resolutions, and is closer to the last agreed upon size above. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:16, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK, no problem. —Mets501 (talk) 13:29, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

External links

I'd like the external links removed please or changing to proper external links. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 20:11, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How are the links improper? Fagstein 21:35, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please clarify (i.e. post a copyable example) what change you are suggesting, and re-add the {{editprotected}} tag. Thanks! JesseW, the juggling janitor 03:24, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Are you suggesting undoing to change requested above MediaWiki_talk:Anontalkpagetext#Plainlinks? If so the page really did look a lot worse (to me at least) without the plainlinks setting. — xaosflux ^Talk 03:40, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The plain links to me are slightly misleading i thought when i clicked it i was being taken to a wikimedia website (ie. meta). thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 06:30, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Information icon

Does anybody mind if I update the icon from to ? -- Renesis (talk) 18:39, 11 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I generally prefer svg, but that png looks so much nicer. You can go ahead and change it. —Mets501 (talk) 19:28, 11 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Glad you like it. I am keeping track of the pages I put this on, and I will be trying to convert it to SVG soon. -- Renesis (talk) 20:11, 11 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's been converted to SVG, see here: Image:Information.svg --Cadby ^(talk) 02:49, 29 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Another website

Shouldn't http://www.ip-adress.com/ be added?--Richard (Talk - Contribs) 21:45, 23 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Why? Also, geographic information associated with IP addresses is sometimes misleading. —Centrx→talk • 19:37, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

DNSstuff now needs membership?

I'm getting a message that this site now needs a membership. What can we do? I believe our external links policy requires we only link to free sites. Katr67 01:21, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm...I'm not getting it. —METS501 (talk) 01:50, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am. Whenever I try to run a whois on an IP, I get a message that states "You landed here most likely from doing a direct tool lookup using a URL. This type of DNSstuff tool access requires DNSstuff membership. If you would like to do any of the following, please join us for just $3/mo". At first I thought it might be some kind of limitation on the number of reports (I tend to check often), but I've cleared all files on my computer and have been assigned a new IP within the last 24 hours. - auburnpilot talk 01:55, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

They turn it on and off somewhat arbitraily. They may be throttling based on ISP's as well. That's why I'm a major advocate of keeping the RIR links no mater what other commercial tools are useful. — xaosflux ^Talk 03:05, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually you do now need to pay. Which is pretty bad for our purposes. Anyone have an alternative site? All still true, but xaosflux seems to be right about them messing with their requirements. Prodego ^talk 04:29, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like they got hit with a lot of backlash from their membership requirements, probably lost a lot of traffic. Now they don't know what to do, and are just trying things. See this letter. The site is therefore quite unstable, and soon we will find out whether we can keep using it. Prodego ^talk 04:52, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There's samspade? http://samspade.org/whois/127.0.0.1. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:56, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That is what I have been using myself, but we still need to have alternates for Traceroute (personally I am just using tracert) and RDNS. Prodego ^talk 05:04, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There's also ARIN [1] —METS501 (talk) 05:15, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

FYI, I noticed I could still access this at work (state government agency) but not at home (my ISP is Qwest). Not sure if that makes a difference. Katr67 04:02, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I believe it is referers. If it was directly URL-linked from another site, it requires joining. On companies etc the proxies usually strip out the referrers, as do some PCs, and some ISPs. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 05:49, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just to clarify, no referrers = access, referrers = no access. At least that's what I think it is. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 05:50, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And no action was taken for a whole month? Well, I've been bold and have replaced that dnsstuff.com link (which does require login) with a link to samspade.org (which does not). If it doesn't work for anyone, feel free to add a better link instead. Lupo 13:35, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I like the samspade link, but it doesn't appear every time. Is this a transclusion/server thing (forgive me, I don't know the technical terms)? How long do you think it will be until we get samspade every time and not DNSstuff? Katr67 15:26, 30 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think that the contribution page is transcluded from an other message (I can't find which, though). I tried 2 pages, the talk had the new version but the history had the previous one. Any idea on where the contribution tab message comes from? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lucasbfr2 (talk • contribs) 13:14, 1 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Here we go, I edited MediaWiki:Sp-contributions-footer-anon, tell me if you still find some "old" links. -- lucasbfr ^talk 13:24, 1 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, thanks. I didn't even think of it being two separate templates. I'll let you know if I run across any more. Katr67 16:00, 1 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

FYI, http://www.mydnstools.info still seems to be free to all —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.179.30.97 (talk) 19:50, 22 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Is this really necessary?

I'd like to request the removal of the whois links from this template, seeing as it's shown on the contribution page of every anonymous user. If someone really wants to find information about an IP address, they already can; readily providing links like this only encourages other users to pry into things that would otherwise be of no interest to them (if the links were not displayed). Please respect users' desire for privacy. -83.7.125.188 (talk) 01:38, 24 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

These tools are very helpful for admins and other users fighting vandalism, the best way to increase your anonymity is to sign in with a free account, then your IP will be masked. — xaosflux ^Talk 12:21, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to insult admins on the basis that... well, they're idiots if they need these hyperlinks on every userpage. What does this information tell you anyway? That user x is using a computer in network y so we should just block the whole ip range? Add in that Wikipedia can automatically ban users who login from a banned IP (and that some admins automatically do that) and you can have a lot of unhappy people. So what? You write an incriminating letter to the owners of the network? This is hardly sounding like a tool that anyone would actually NEED to use... maybe play with so that they could insult users... or "fight vandalism" by mailing anthrax... or perhaps it could be used to extract vengence upon your dearly beloved enemy, just send a stream of incriminating letters to the place of buisness (or better yet, the land lord) and see if you can't piss someone off enough to "get rid" of the trouble.

Other than detecting proxys, why else would you need this information? And how difficult is it set it to favorites... or even throw it in the Firefox search bar (or IE search bar) 64.238.178.124 (talk) 05:02, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I petition that because no admin will remove these links... that someone write a PHP script that shows all the info without even needing to click the links!

Reverse DNS link

Could we maybe add another link to replace the http://openrbl.org/query?{{{1}}} link that was removed. Reverse is useful in identifying EDU shared IPs because often the whois is listed as the provider when the reverse will identify the user of the IP. And just for my own education - why is an "outing site" bad in this context. (seemed like I should have posted this at Template talk:Anontools, but there is no discussion there, and these discussions seem to be related). -- Mufka ^(u) ^(t) ^(c) 15:52, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]