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User:Citation bot unblock discussion is stalled
- Citation bot (t · th · c · del · cross-wiki · SUL · edit counter · pages created (xtools · sigma) · non-automated edits · BLP edits · undos · manual reverts · rollbacks · logs (blocks · rights · moves) · rfar · spi · cci)
Prior discussion: User talk:Citation bot/Archive_15#March_2019, Wikipedia talk:Bot policy#Clarification on "Bots operated by multiple users" and Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard#Bot unblocks
JJMC89 (talk · contribs) blocked this bot on March 16, citing two reasons:
- The addition of CiteSeerX links to articles in violation of WP:ELNEVER (due to copyright problems on CiteSeerX)
- Concerns that the bot is user-activated, yet does not authenticate and log the identity of the user who activated it.
The problem with the CiteSeerX links has been fixed by Martin, the bot's operator, by blacklisting CiteSeerX within the bot. However, JJMC89 has declined to unblock the bot because they feel that the matter of authentication and logging the identity of the user that activated the bot is sufficient grounds to leave the block in place.
There has been extensive discussion. The remaining disagreement is mainly around three points:
- Who is responsibile for the bot's edits. The bot's operator of record (Martin) and the two assistant operators, Kaldari and AManWithNoPlan, have stated that Martin, as the operator of record, is ultimately responsible for the bot's edits. This is also consistent with the bot's initial approval for automatic operation -- not as a user-directed bot. Subsequent approvals were also for automatic operation. However, the waters are muddied by the fact that the problem with CiteSeerX links was originally approached as a problem that could be best addressed by dialog with the users activating the bot rather than by the bot's operators. It is on this basis that JJMC89 believes that the bot is not in compliance with WP:BOTMULTIOP, which requires that bot operators be identified and disclosed for each edit. Thus the question hinges on whether the bot is "operated" by the users who activate it, or by the operator of record.
- Compliance with WP:BOTCOMM. While Martin remains engaged in technical maintenance of the bot, he has stated that he "no longer regularly engage[s] in discussions on Wikipedia talk pages" and is grateful to have AManWithNoPlan take this role. While WP:BOTCOMM permits communications to be delegated, some commenters believe that Martin, as the operator of record, has an obligation to engage with the community to a greater degree.
- Whether the bot's tasks are being performed as approved. The most recent BRFA for CitationBot was approved in 2011, and the bot has evolved considerably since then.
Discussion has stalled with JJMC89 declining to unblock, and Martin unwilling or unable to add WP:OAuth to the bot, at least in the near term. There does appear to be quite a bit of support for removing the block, including from those admins and members of the WP:BAG who have participated in the discussion, but not a clear consensus.
The bot does valuable work and I am listing here to try to find some sort of way forward. UninvitedCompany 17:30, 30 May 2019 (UTC)
Much of that thread is technically over my head, but this might be a good place to point out that there needs to be a consensus to maintain a block, not a consensus to lift a block. If there is, after further discussion, still no consensus, I believe the default must be to unblock. --Floquenbeam (talk) 17:53, 30 May 2019 (UTC)Striking per Gallobter's comment below. --Floquenbeam (talk) 20:55, 30 May 2019 (UTC)- While adding OAUTH to the bot is clearly desirable, it's not a trivial task and no one currently has the bandwidth to implement this. Frankly, it would be more productive to spend development time fixing bugs in Citation bot than adding OATH, in my personal opinion. Insisting that we need to know who activated Citation bot for each edit is a bit
pedanticpunctilious, IMO, as Citation bot used to just run across all articles all the time (in the old days). And just like then, Martin (as the operator) was the person ultimately responsible for the edits. I'm not necessarily up-to-date on all the bot guidelines and policies, and I agree that it's unfortunate that this venerable old bot doesn't really have a dedicated full-time maintainer, but it seems like the bot does more good than harm, so I would support unblocking it. Kaldari (talk) 18:15, 30 May 2019 (UTC)- I can't fault Martin for setting boundaries on how much time/effort/energy they want to contribute to the project. When the other issues with the bot are fixed, I think any stipulation that Martin increase their engagement with the community as part of an unblock would be unfair. Rivselis (talk) 18:21, 30 May 2019 (UTC)
- @Rivselis: You may think it unfair, but in that case your disagreement is with BOTPOL. While I sympathise (deeply!) with Martin's desire to avoid controversy and the often really toxic discussions that are beginning to be the norm on the project (CIVIL? collaborative? consensus? Bueller?), that desire is simply not compatible with operating a bot on Wikipedia (what, nobody remembers a certain bot "enforcing" NFCC and how that turned out?). This is not an issue of an operator being busy IRL and having limited bandwidth or long response times. They have been asked four times, over four months (five now) to
confirm whether they are in fact still the bot's operator, and to address WP:BOTACC, second para, and WP:BOTCOMM.
There has been no response, beyond removing the question with the edit summaryArchive aggressive comments
. They have received this question on their own talk page, on the bot's talk page, on the BOT noticeboard, and now here (UnivitedCompany notified them of this thread). They edit elsewhere on the project, they are just refusing to respond to a simple, neutrally phrased, question about how they view their adherence to policy. At the time it was first asked I would have been inclined to accept any responsive answer—even one I disagreed with—but after five months of refusing to answer it I am forced to consider it willful disregard of BOTPOL (not necessarily in bad faith, but the result is the same). Instead of an answer from the bot's operator to this straightforward question, I've gotten increasingly hostile insistence from others that this is an entirely unreasonable question to ask a bot operator. I asked JJMC89 to address a similar question about WP:ADMINACCT in their RfA and nobody seemed to object to the question at the time. Granted RfA can be a quagmire of toxicity at its worst, but, really, asking admins about ADMINACCT, and bot operators about BOTCOM, really shouldn't be taken as hostile unless it's at a level that involves curse words or something. --Xover (talk) 11:45, 1 June 2019 (UTC)
- @Rivselis: You may think it unfair, but in that case your disagreement is with BOTPOL. While I sympathise (deeply!) with Martin's desire to avoid controversy and the often really toxic discussions that are beginning to be the norm on the project (CIVIL? collaborative? consensus? Bueller?), that desire is simply not compatible with operating a bot on Wikipedia (what, nobody remembers a certain bot "enforcing" NFCC and how that turned out?). This is not an issue of an operator being busy IRL and having limited bandwidth or long response times. They have been asked four times, over four months (five now) to
- I can't fault Martin for setting boundaries on how much time/effort/energy they want to contribute to the project. When the other issues with the bot are fixed, I think any stipulation that Martin increase their engagement with the community as part of an unblock would be unfair. Rivselis (talk) 18:21, 30 May 2019 (UTC)
- The issue really here is whether the bot task should continue (no point unblocking if the bot doesn't make any edits), and bots need consensus to do a task. Galobtter (pingó mió) 18:29, 30 May 2019 (UTC)
- Point taken. Stricken. Still true for humans tho! --Floquenbeam (talk) 20:55, 30 May 2019 (UTC)
- While adding OAUTH to the bot is clearly desirable, it's not a trivial task and no one currently has the bandwidth to implement this. Frankly, it would be more productive to spend development time fixing bugs in Citation bot than adding OATH, in my personal opinion. Insisting that we need to know who activated Citation bot for each edit is a bit
- Hi there, xaoflux here, these are the relevant points I'm seeing:
- Is this bot making "bad edits", that is: edits that if they were individually made by any other editor would be considered unacceptable? If so, the operator needs to fix this or stop operating entirely. It is cetainly possible that the edits would not have been considered "bad" in the past, but as the project has evolved they are now.
- Is there an operator that is responsive and taking responsibility for their bot's edits? If not, it should stop operating.
- Is the bot making edits that are not approved under a BRFA Task? If so, the operator should cease these edit and seek a BRFA.
- Any of the above items that result in "stop", where the bot won't stop can certainly be enforced with a block until the operator says they are resolved.
- Have the community's needs signifigantly changed since this bot's tasks were approved, such that one or more tasks should no longer be performed, or not performed in the way they are now? (This is the 'what is needed in the edit summary line') If so, a thread should be opened at WP:BOTN to seek de-approval of the task(s).
- If this is the ONLY issue, unless it is so agregious, blocking shouldn't be needed.
- — xaosflux Talk 20:02, 30 May 2019 (UTC)
- Concerning 1), there's no outstanding 'bad edits', save for the occasional GIGO stuff. 2) The operator is Smith609. AManWithNoPlan is currently the main/active maintainer, and they are very responsive/active in addressing bugs. Concerning 3) not that I know of. But the bot is approved for general citation cleanup, so that's pretty wide reaching. Concerning 5) the needs of the community have changes yes, but mostly in that CitationBot is expected to do more than ever and be of use to less 'experty' users. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:10, 30 May 2019 (UTC)
- I doubt that
there's no outstanding 'bad edits', save for the occasional GIGO stuff
. Citation bot is currently excluded from 546 articles, which is high compared to other bots excluded from articles: more than 4 times the next highest excluded bot and more than 15 times the average exclusions per excluded bot. That number is ~3.5 times what it was a year ago, which seems to have been steady for a couple years until sometime after Q3 2018. — JJMC89 (T·C) 07:30, 31 May 2019 (UTC)- I don't know how helpful that statistic is. I spot-checked a few pages that Citation Bot is excluded from, and found that in many cases, Citation Bot had never edited the page in question. It seems that a number of aircraft-related articles in particular have the bot blanket excluded, and there's no edit summary or comment in the article source explaining why. In other cases, it's excluded due to the CiteSeerX issue - so if that issue is solved, we can't exactly use the fact that it was previously excluded as evidence that it would still make "bad edits" today. ST47 (talk) 12:23, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
- @ST47: if we unblock this and 'bad edits' resume, it can obviously be blocked again. The CiteSeerX complaint appears to be addressed by the operator, do you see any other impediments to unblock? — xaosflux Talk 13:26, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
- For what it's worth, I would support unblocking the bot. It has an operator who is willing to provide support, the CiteSeerX issue was resolved, and I personally don't think the issue of attributing edits to the specific end user who "requested" the bot visit a specific page was ever an issue in the first place. The overwhelming majority of {{nobots}} exclusions are either due to CiteSeerX or for no stated reason at all. Let's unblock it. If there are more issues, as you say, we can always block it again. ST47 (talk) 13:35, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
- @ST47: if we unblock this and 'bad edits' resume, it can obviously be blocked again. The CiteSeerX complaint appears to be addressed by the operator, do you see any other impediments to unblock? — xaosflux Talk 13:26, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
- @JJMC89: You can stop mass removing
bots deny: the ones I saw were added deliberately to prevent edits from Citation bot that were deemed objectionable (and people became aware after the RfC linked below), and in response to the bot's adherents suggesting there was no need for the bot to be fixed because editors could just use that template to prevent it. When they realised people would actually take them up on it they tried to switch to suggesting tagging each individual parameter in a citation template instead (but, obviously, still not fixing the objectionable edits at their source in the bot), and using a fiddly HTML comment for it. Shifting the burden to human editors instead of the bot, and making sure they can impose stylistic preferences on 5.5+ million articles and only actually discuss where someone objects. Or, hey, when the de facto maintainer (not the operator, they are still unresponsive) refuses to fix the first issue that eventually got the bot blocked the community can just make an edit filter(!) to prevent those edits (but let the rest of the bot operate). Note well: not "didn't have the time to fix", but "refused to fix" a genuine concern raised about the bots edits. Whether Citation bot has edited the articles before is completely immaterial: the instances I saw were people adding the bots template to articles they edit regularly or created, and specifically to prevent the objectionable edits the bot makes. They were doing that because the bot's operator was unresponsive to community concerns, its maintainers are opinionated beyond what CITEVAR provides for (and it takes a community RfC for concerns to be heard), and the oversight mechanisms designed to prevent just this situation have failed to do so. Using the bots template is neither a blunt instrument nor "FUD" (as you just told Nikkimaria), it is so far the most surgical and only recourse to prevent the bot from doing whatever its maintainers want to all citation templates regardless of consensus. The fact that it's now present on this many articles should in itself tell you that this bot's edits are both not uncontroversial (which BOTPOL requires) and not unproblematic (or so many editors would not feel the need to prevent the bot from editing so many articles). There is no edit summary and no hidden comment for it because they were not added by a bot, but by human editors who object to the edits the bot is making but who cannot hope to keep up with the speed or volume of a bot. This is why we have BOTPOL in the first place! --Xover (talk) 12:23, 1 June 2019 (UTC)
- I don't know how helpful that statistic is. I spot-checked a few pages that Citation Bot is excluded from, and found that in many cases, Citation Bot had never edited the page in question. It seems that a number of aircraft-related articles in particular have the bot blanket excluded, and there's no edit summary or comment in the article source explaining why. In other cases, it's excluded due to the CiteSeerX issue - so if that issue is solved, we can't exactly use the fact that it was previously excluded as evidence that it would still make "bad edits" today. ST47 (talk) 12:23, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
- I doubt that
- Concerning 1), there's no outstanding 'bad edits', save for the occasional GIGO stuff. 2) The operator is Smith609. AManWithNoPlan is currently the main/active maintainer, and they are very responsive/active in addressing bugs. Concerning 3) not that I know of. But the bot is approved for general citation cleanup, so that's pretty wide reaching. Concerning 5) the needs of the community have changes yes, but mostly in that CitationBot is expected to do more than ever and be of use to less 'experty' users. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:10, 30 May 2019 (UTC)
- @JJMC89: any additional insight in to this? — xaosflux Talk 19:48, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
- If I have a comment on the regard of the operation of this bot, it's this: Given our current bot policy, it should not take an RFC to stop activity for which there was never a clear authorization. I do not have faith in any of the operators of the bot at this time to operate the bot, whether actual or stand-in. --Izno (talk) 20:39, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
- @Izno: can you elaborate slightly? It would help if you can provide some diffs occurring after that RfC where this bot is making edits in violation of the RfC closing? — xaosflux Talk 21:39, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
- The bot has been changed since the RFC. The point I'm making is that the operator(s) (whoever those are) should not have forced an RFC to stop the bot's activity on the point, given that it was never obvious the bot had authority to perform those actions in the first place. That means somewhere, someone, or some process failed to ride oversight on what the bot is doing or what the bot operators have subsequently coded the bot to do. That's not okay. The correct way for the bot operators to have proceeded (again, if it were obvious who the bot operator was), once the activity was in question, was to stop that activity and verify with the community whether continued removal was okay. --Izno (talk) 21:44, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
- Essentially, #5 in your list above. --Izno (talk) 21:46, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
- @Izno: thanks for the update, is it your understanding that this issue is not expected to continue to occur should operations resume? Can you elaborate on what unaddressed issue is still so egregious that the task needs to be reevaluated prior to resuming operations? — xaosflux Talk 21:53, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
- I think Xover below hits on one of the points still egregious about the situation below. That particular point aside, the other "egregious" point is that the bot has not had a BRFA in some substantial time while its functionality has continue to increase. It's not doing whatever it was signed up to do in the most-recent BRFAs, and that's driven by the personality problems described by Xover also. If you were to review User:Citation bot#Bot approval, and then review what the code actually does, I think you'd find it clear it is not now and has not been for some time within any of its BRFAs. That's a problem by WP:BOTPOL; WP:BOTACC if nowhere else. To take a "personal" example, I much appreciate it when you (specifically) approach the community about a bot which may be problematic for the community, an activity that some significant portion of the BAG will also do. At no time in the past several years, besides the RFC that I initiated (not any of the responsible or less-responsible persons directly involved in the changes that have been made to the bot) has anyone from that bot project approached the community, when there have been several potentially-problematic changes made to the bot code. Either the bot operator (or one of his proxies) should have had, many times, the good sense to invite additional comment beyond the people who show up to the bot's talk page.
- Continuing, from WP:BOTPOL, we have at least one specific section that the bot is not in accordance with (though without fault of its own); that's WP:BOTMULTIOP. --Izno (talk) 12:54, 1 June 2019 (UTC)
- @Izno: thanks for the update, is it your understanding that this issue is not expected to continue to occur should operations resume? Can you elaborate on what unaddressed issue is still so egregious that the task needs to be reevaluated prior to resuming operations? — xaosflux Talk 21:53, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
- @Xaosflux: Citation bot ticks all three of your first "stop" criteria (which, it should be noted, are just the ones you adduce under BOTPOL and the BAG's remit, but just because it's a bot doesn't mean it is exempt from other community norms).
- The bot itself has not made any problematic edits, because it has been blocked for two months. However it is still operating in Gadget mode, and there it still makes mistakes: the last one I saw was setting
|publisher=London. Those were, thankfully, much easier to handle because in this mode the edits are attributed to the user operating the tool, and so they get notified when the edits are reverted. Of course, tellingly enough, the edit in question was by the bot's de facto maintainer: so much for checking the edits before saving and not making mistakes a human editor wouldn't. Before being blocked the bot made similar mistakes: changing a{{cite magazine}}into{{cite web}}, messing with the whitespace inside the template (which is annoying for cosmetic change reasons, but majorly so for anyone trying to maintain citations by hand), etc.; stuff that Headbomb above dismisses as mere "GIGO". And since the bot's maintainers claim they have authority to do essentially whatever they want to citation templates, it's just a question of time before it starts doing stuff like removing|publisher=and|location=from{{cite journal}}again (the latest use of valid citation parameters that its maintainers DONTLIKE seems to be|via=, so I'm expecting a spate of edits to remove that to show up any day now), again pointing to an 11 year old BRFA about adding DOIs to{{cite journal}}. - As explained (at length, sorry) elsewhere here, the bot's operator is not only not responsive but is actively refusing to interact with the community, even to the point of not responding to requests to address policy issues on their own talk page, the bot's talk page, BOTN, and here. Of its two "helpers" one doesn't have time to involve themselves (thanks for the "pedantic" comment btw, Kaldari; that really made me feel like you care about my concerns), and the other "doesn't have an opinion, they just want to code" (I'm paraphrasing because I couldn't be bothered to dig up the diff). This bot also doesn't so much have an operator as it has defenders, to the point that I'm actively avoiding its talk page (thanks for the ping there btw, UninvitedCompany, but I'm not going near that place unless the need is great; you migh try Serial Number 54129 and David Eppstein though, I think they still have the stomach for it).
- The bot's BRFA was in 2008, and was for adding DOIs, removing duplicate template parameters, and other such minor cleanup in
{{cite journal}}only. And even then its edits were problematic enough to end up… here at AN actually. And the consensus then was that it had to respect, in essence, CITEVAR. At the time that was regarding removing|url=when it pointed to the same place as|doi=, but in some articles they used the URL to signal that the journal article was free to access. That particular issue is, I think, moot now, but the point was that the bot should only make edits that were safe in the face of such citation style issues (i.e. CITEVAR). (It also, incidentally, concluded that when the bot was being directed by someone other than the operator of record, the user operating the tool should be identified. This concern was not sprung on them out of nowhere and recently.) In any case, the bot now makes edits far outside the scope of that BRFA. The RfC triggered by it removing|publisher=and|location=from{{cite journal}}is the immediate example: its maintainers don't think those parameters should be used, and so they program the bot to unilaterally remove it. There was no attempt to seek consensus for its removal from all articles, objections were met with… well, it ended up with a contentious RfC. And now they claim authority to do whatever they want to citation templates based on that ancient BRFA (so long as they think it qualifies as "tidying"). I have suggested elsewhere that the bot's functions need to be broken down, analysed and categorized, grouped into meaningful tasks, and each task subjected to a modern BRFA using modern standards. Because any new bot proposing to do what Citation bot is doing would, if not rejected outright, have been required to run an RfC to demonstrate that there is consensus for for its proposed tasks (just look at some of the hoops a few recent bot tasks have had to jump). --Xover (talk) 15:06, 1 June 2019 (UTC)
- The bot itself has not made any problematic edits, because it has been blocked for two months. However it is still operating in Gadget mode, and there it still makes mistakes: the last one I saw was setting
- @Izno: can you elaborate slightly? It would help if you can provide some diffs occurring after that RfC where this bot is making edits in violation of the RfC closing? — xaosflux Talk 21:39, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
- Sigh. I did warn that this would eventually end up at a noticeboard (but thanks for small mercies it's here and not at /I).@UninvitedCompany: I think you are mistaken: to my knowledge no one on the BAG has expressed an opinion in favour of unblocking; except Headbomb who unfortunately seems to have momentarily forgotten to note that they are so up to their ears INVOLVED when it comes to Citation bot that they should (and have been requested to) recuse from any BAG discussions about it. In fact, the BAG, despite the issue being raised on BAG/N, has so far responded in a way best described with "crickets" and "ten foot pole". Personally I expect this is due to the two (independent) factors that there are (some, I don't want to blow it out of proportion) behavioural issues surrounding Citation bot and its community of adherents (which is outside the BAGs remit), and because a BAG member is involved there and it would be awkward around the watercooler if they touched it (regardless of conclusion). We could have presumably have avoided ending up at AN if the BAG had involved itself at least to the point Xaosflux has done here (hint: letting stuff like this fester is unlikely to result in less conflict).I also think you should have included a link to the contentious RfC that is the proximate cause of the current situation. I realise that for those who have not yet lost faith in this bot's ability to perform in accordance with community norms and policy are enticed by the good functions of this tool, and thus inclined to see that RfC and the behaviour surrounding it as a single issue and water under the bridge; but it was the straw that broke the camel's back and is hence very relevant background. I'd link the concurrent discussions on the bot's talk page, but frankly I'm too discouraged to go trawling through that mess (I avoid it like the plague now, because of stuff like whatever this is every time I go near it). What this bot lacks in an operator it more than makes up for in defenders. --Xover (talk) 11:25, 1 June 2019 (UTC)
- "Headbomb who unfortunately seems to have momentarily forgotten to note that they are so up to their ears INVOLVED when it comes to Citation bot that they should (and have been requested to) recuse from any BAG discussions about it." You can request I recuse from discussions 3 billion times, I will not. I have recused from making decisions involving citation bot, and that should be enough for anyone. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:25, 1 June 2019 (UTC)
- @Headbomb: Indeed; since my comment that you quote can easily be misconstrued to mean more than I actually intended, let me be tediously clear about it:I think you need to recuse from making any decisions regarding this bot in your capacity as a BAG member: as you say yourself and as you have done. And—lest the opposite should be implied by mentioning it—it should be noted that you did without any prompting from anyone (least of all me). Very much appreciated!I also think that to the degree the BAG holds any discussions (on IRC or a mailinglist or a obscure talk page etc.) that are to some degree non-public, that you recuse from those discussions. Your status as an "insider" combined with the absence of outside voices would influnce such discussions no matter how hard you tried to be neutral and objective (and that's about all human nature, not you personally). I'm not aware that the BAG employs any such forums or processes, and if so you can feel free to just consider this a pedantic and theoretical request.And finally, I think that when you participate in discussions like here, you need to note that you are not speaking in your capacity as a BAG member. Your membership in the BAG means those reading your comments tend to assign them weight, authority, and presumed objectivity that are not merited on an issue where you are INVOLVED. For example, I believe UninvitedCompany read your comments as from a BAG member and for the BAG. I realise it is tedious, but when you have hats like that you do need to specify whether you are currently wearing that hat in certain discussions where the distinction has bearing (such as this one). That was the issue my above comment was actually addressed to, and the frustration you can probably detect in it was at your failure to make clear that you were not speaking for the BAG.I absolutely do not mean that you should in any way refrain from participating in public discussions regarding Citation bot, but I see that my comment could be read that way (and if read that way it implies an accusation that you had acted improperly in that regard), and so I apologize for not being clear there. --Xover (talk) 08:15, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
- @Xover:, fwiw, I did not interpret Headbomb's comments as speaking on behalf of the BAG. Indeed, I do not believe that anyone issues statements on behalf of the BAG. I had also interpreted Xaosflux's comments as being generally supportive of removing the block. I note that the BAG is small, with 13 active members at present. At least 4 of these members have commented on or formally approved Citation Bot tasks in the past. The BAG is collaborative by nature and I am unsure that it makes sense to ask BAG members to recuse themselves as a result of past collaborative behavior. I do value Xaosflux's and Headbomb's comments as each of them speaks from the experience of working closely with many bot operators, as a result of their involvement in the BAG. That said, I'm watching for a consensus to emerge, and do not necessarily have my own mind made up. Citation Bot has both proponents and detractors, which is unusual for a bot, and I am unsure what to make of it. UninvitedCompany 02:12, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
- @UninvitedCompany: Thanks for clarifying, but I feel you somewhat prove my point: you
value Xaosflux's and Headbomb's comments as each of them speaks from the experience of working closely with many bot operators, as a result of their involvement in the BAG
. They indeed have that (very valuable) experience, but in Headbomb's case they are so deeply involved with Citation bot (top filer of change requests, chief "defender" of the bot that interjects themselves in all discussions where the bot or its operator is criticized) that you cannot assign that weight to their statements. Were this at arbitration, they would be named as a party (not an accusation, just an analogy!); were the question discussed an admin action, they would be WP:INVOLVED; were they a member of ArbCom they would have had to recuse. They are subjective and biased (like everyone else, me included, that cares deeply about a given issue) and letting their frustrations with the bot's critics shine through (see their responses to my BOTCOM question at BOTN).Compare that with Xaosflux who has no discernable personal relationship with Citation bot or its operator, is very carefully neutral in how they address the issue (refering almost exclusively to BOTPOL), and does not express an opinion beyond that (I, frankly, wish they would; precisely because I value their experience even beyond the remit of the BAG). But I have not seen Xaosflux express an opinion on whether the bot should be unblocked: they have merely explained policy and tried to clarify how it applies here.I have also not seen any other BAG member (except Headbomb) express any opinion (either way) on this; so if that's indeed the case I'm afraid I'm going to have to say "Diffs please!" (sorry, not trying to be glib, but I've been watching the issue and haven't noticed those comments). That a BAG member performed the formality of approving a BRFA 11 years ago—when a huge part of the issue here is that the bot is not operating within its approval—does not mean they can be presumed to hold any particular opinion on the current situation. The issue was referred to the BAG at BOTN, and apart from Xaosflux trying to sort out what the issues were, there was no participastion from the rest of the BAG nor any conclusion or recommendation. In other words, so far as I can tell, it is actually specifically incorrect to say that the BAG or any of its members have expressed an opinion either way on this. --Xover (talk) 06:40, 3 June 2019 (UTC)- Could you, like, dial down the pointlessly inflammatory rhetoric about 204 notches here? I'm being pilloried for having opinions, filling bug reports, and making feature request, including one that requests that activators are identified. And somehow, this is a crime which means my opinion is now irrelevant and should be discarded. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:15, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
- @UninvitedCompany: Thanks for clarifying, but I feel you somewhat prove my point: you
- @Xover:, fwiw, I did not interpret Headbomb's comments as speaking on behalf of the BAG. Indeed, I do not believe that anyone issues statements on behalf of the BAG. I had also interpreted Xaosflux's comments as being generally supportive of removing the block. I note that the BAG is small, with 13 active members at present. At least 4 of these members have commented on or formally approved Citation Bot tasks in the past. The BAG is collaborative by nature and I am unsure that it makes sense to ask BAG members to recuse themselves as a result of past collaborative behavior. I do value Xaosflux's and Headbomb's comments as each of them speaks from the experience of working closely with many bot operators, as a result of their involvement in the BAG. That said, I'm watching for a consensus to emerge, and do not necessarily have my own mind made up. Citation Bot has both proponents and detractors, which is unusual for a bot, and I am unsure what to make of it. UninvitedCompany 02:12, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
- @Headbomb: Indeed; since my comment that you quote can easily be misconstrued to mean more than I actually intended, let me be tediously clear about it:I think you need to recuse from making any decisions regarding this bot in your capacity as a BAG member: as you say yourself and as you have done. And—lest the opposite should be implied by mentioning it—it should be noted that you did without any prompting from anyone (least of all me). Very much appreciated!I also think that to the degree the BAG holds any discussions (on IRC or a mailinglist or a obscure talk page etc.) that are to some degree non-public, that you recuse from those discussions. Your status as an "insider" combined with the absence of outside voices would influnce such discussions no matter how hard you tried to be neutral and objective (and that's about all human nature, not you personally). I'm not aware that the BAG employs any such forums or processes, and if so you can feel free to just consider this a pedantic and theoretical request.And finally, I think that when you participate in discussions like here, you need to note that you are not speaking in your capacity as a BAG member. Your membership in the BAG means those reading your comments tend to assign them weight, authority, and presumed objectivity that are not merited on an issue where you are INVOLVED. For example, I believe UninvitedCompany read your comments as from a BAG member and for the BAG. I realise it is tedious, but when you have hats like that you do need to specify whether you are currently wearing that hat in certain discussions where the distinction has bearing (such as this one). That was the issue my above comment was actually addressed to, and the frustration you can probably detect in it was at your failure to make clear that you were not speaking for the BAG.I absolutely do not mean that you should in any way refrain from participating in public discussions regarding Citation bot, but I see that my comment could be read that way (and if read that way it implies an accusation that you had acted improperly in that regard), and so I apologize for not being clear there. --Xover (talk) 08:15, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
- "Headbomb who unfortunately seems to have momentarily forgotten to note that they are so up to their ears INVOLVED when it comes to Citation bot that they should (and have been requested to) recuse from any BAG discussions about it." You can request I recuse from discussions 3 billion times, I will not. I have recused from making decisions involving citation bot, and that should be enough for anyone. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:25, 1 June 2019 (UTC)
- I'll also note there's a pretty easy solution to all this. If the anonymous activators are deemed undesirable, just have the bot fail to edit when no activator is specified. Either through a code update, or an edit filter. I don't understand why this hasn't been coded in yet, or implemented at the EF level so the bot can resume normal operation. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:33, 1 June 2019 (UTC)
- I agree with Headbomb. And anonymous activators are undesirable, as Citation bot can be used to do questionable edits. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:44, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
- I believe that JJMC89 had previously stated that they would not find any solution that does not authenticate the activator to be acceptable. UninvitedCompany 02:12, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
- BOTPOL reads
users able to direct the bot to make edits must be positively identified to the bot at the time of edit, in some manner not readily faked and unique to that user that cannot readily be bypassed or avoided (e.g. non-trivial password, restricted IP, wiki login, IRC hostname), so that the user directing any given edit and identified above, may be considered verified.
--Xover (talk) 06:54, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
- BOTPOL reads
- I will also note that keeping citation bot blocked is harming Wikipedia as it cannot be used to improve referencing. Our purpose here is to make an encyclopedia. The benefit of its use out ways the fear that it might be misused. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:11, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
- via= is removed if there is a doi/pmid/pmc and no url of any type. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 03:33, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
- I have yet to find a page that blocked the bot for any legit reason. I know that it is often there because someone flipped out after a gadget edit was done and a bunch of non-bot edits were down too and the bot took all the blame. As for the punblisher=London, that was GIGO, but still made article better since it now has locatio(just in the wrong place!). London is now in the bot as a bad_publisher AManWithNoPlan (talk) 03:57, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
- The bot seems to be mostly blocked because it converts ISBN 10 to 13. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:45, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
- the code for isbn upgrades has been changed to match the newer style guides and now only changes ISBN to ISBN13 when year is 2007 or newer. Also, someone claimed that the bot changed magazine to web: I find that hard to believe without an example. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 18:19, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
- I have yet to find a page that blocked the bot for any legit reason. I know that it is often there because someone flipped out after a gadget edit was done and a bunch of non-bot edits were down too and the bot took all the blame. As for the punblisher=London, that was GIGO, but still made article better since it now has locatio(just in the wrong place!). London is now in the bot as a bad_publisher AManWithNoPlan (talk) 03:57, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
- via= is removed if there is a doi/pmid/pmc and no url of any type. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 03:33, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
I blocked the bot in my pages because of the ISBN conversion and because it screwed up my cite journal entries by removing the publisher and location. I gather that the first issue has been fixed in a way that I'm fine with, but what about the second? And I very much did not appreciate the removal of my blocks with inexplicable comments like "not a blunt instrument" or whatever. Not helpful.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 19:19, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
- GB: Negative. Citation bot was blocked because it was harming Wikipedia by disimproving "references", and without adequate attribution of editing. As to the implied argument that various alleged improvements require us to accept any collateral damage: bullshit. And perhaps it is time to discuss that? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 01:13, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
- I added the {{nobots}} card to John Glenn as an interim measure on 17 October 2018 because the bot became confused by the use of handles for web sources other than journals. I did not see this as using the template as a "blunt instrument". I thought that was what it was there for. I raised the issue with the maintainers at User talk:Citation bot/Archive 11#Handles are not journals, and a fix was deployed on 31 October 2018. I should have removed the {{nobots}} template, but did not do so. My bad. Some clarification of the term "blunt instrument" would be appreciated. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:06, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
- Not really sure what the rationale behind a generic 'blunt instrument' removal would be, especially without diffs. Sure {{nobots}} is a blunt instrument, but it's also one that works as intended. A {{nobots}} template should only be removed once it's confirmed it doesn't screw up that specific page anymore, or the problematic citations are bypassed. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:22, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
- I added the {{nobots}} card to John Glenn as an interim measure on 17 October 2018 because the bot became confused by the use of handles for web sources other than journals. I did not see this as using the template as a "blunt instrument". I thought that was what it was there for. I raised the issue with the maintainers at User talk:Citation bot/Archive 11#Handles are not journals, and a fix was deployed on 31 October 2018. I should have removed the {{nobots}} template, but did not do so. My bad. Some clarification of the term "blunt instrument" would be appreciated. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:06, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
- To reply Xaosflux: 1) the number of erroneous edits (i.e. edits with more mistakes than intended fixes) is minuscule, to the point that it took months for some users, repeatedly asked for examples of harmful edits, to come up with any example; 2) in my experience the bot operator is very responsive to requests in his purview, while the most active developer generally fixes any reported issue within a few days, which is better than the vast majority of bots I know of; 3–5) the essential task (to fix citations so that they're closer to the expected usage as stated by the documentation) is supported by the original consensus and no new consensus has emerged (sometimes the consensus changes on specific parameters and how they should be used, and the bot has been changed accordingly). In conclusion, I agre with Graeme Bartlett and ST47. Nemo 15:21, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
- (Copied from my talk) in general I think most of the "making bad edits" issues seem to have been addressed by the operator, so on that consideration unblocking and resuming operations should be allowed. I think the force edit summaries to include the editor it is reacting to part is an outstanding consideration - however I don't think it is a showstopper. Policy-wise, I don't see these edits that react to requests as elevating the others to the status of "operator", as such editors do not exert autonomous control over the account. (Compare to how someone not signing an edit is not operating sign-bot). I'd want to see affirmation acknowledgement of the current operator (Smith609) that they will be responsive and take responsibility for all edits their bot makes, and that if minor adjustments are needed to meet changing standards (e.g. if a certain parameter should not be removed from a template) they will comply to the standards. Taking responsibility for edits of one's bot is a core tenant of bot operations, and "garbage in - garbage out" isn't an affirmative defense (it should be "garbage in - nothing out"), as they are always welcome to NOT make any edit. While I'm on BAG, this is not intended to be a response "for BAG". — xaosflux Talk 15:41, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
- I can confirm that I am happy to take overall responsibility for the bot's edits. I have confidence that the bot's overall error ratio is presently very small – for every deleterious edit, there are many, many positive changes, and (invisibly) the bot visits many pages and correctly identifies that no edit is required. The bot now has an extensive test suite against which edits to its code are evaluated, and as a result, I can't think how long it's been since the bot systemically introduced major errors (which would occur occasionally before this test suite was introduced). There is a transparent way to report errors, linked in each edit summary, and an active community monitoring the bot's talk page and its contributions. As a result, fixes to most bugs are now rolled out to the production code within 48 hours, and the bot can be blocked very rapidly if necessary. Likewise, any changes in policy or template protocol can be reflected in the bot's code rapidly (I would welcome any suggestions from the community as to how planned changes can be communicated to the bot operating team before they take place, to give us a head start in adapting the bot's code). Whereas I am not now in a position to donate as much of my time to the Wikipedia project as I used to be, I am reachable by e-mail (via my user page) where my personal input is required. Finally, I would note that the scale and incidence of bugs requiring input from the operating team is now much smaller than it used to be; I've manually reviewed runs of c. 1000 page visits without noticing any adverse edits. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 08:32, 5 June 2019 (UTC)
- (Copied from my talk) in general I think most of the "making bad edits" issues seem to have been addressed by the operator, so on that consideration unblocking and resuming operations should be allowed. I think the force edit summaries to include the editor it is reacting to part is an outstanding consideration - however I don't think it is a showstopper. Policy-wise, I don't see these edits that react to requests as elevating the others to the status of "operator", as such editors do not exert autonomous control over the account. (Compare to how someone not signing an edit is not operating sign-bot). I'd want to see affirmation acknowledgement of the current operator (Smith609) that they will be responsive and take responsibility for all edits their bot makes, and that if minor adjustments are needed to meet changing standards (e.g. if a certain parameter should not be removed from a template) they will comply to the standards. Taking responsibility for edits of one's bot is a core tenant of bot operations, and "garbage in - garbage out" isn't an affirmative defense (it should be "garbage in - nothing out"), as they are always welcome to NOT make any edit. While I'm on BAG, this is not intended to be a response "for BAG". — xaosflux Talk 15:41, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
At this juncture, I do not believe that there is any remaining rationale for keeping the bot blocked:
- The operator of record is clearly taking responsibility for the bot's edits
- The original reported problem with CiteSeerX links is solved
- There does not appear to be widespread support for the idea that authentication of the users activating the bot is strictly required by WP:BOTPOL
- There is an absence of diffs showing actual problematic operation other than problems already addressed
- Blocking policy states: "bots may occasionally not operate as intended for a variety of reasons. Bots ... may be blocked until the issue is resolved.... Blocks of [...] malfunctioning bots should be undone once the bots [...] are repaired."
I do not believe that a continued block is in accordance with policy, nor do I believe it is in the best interest of the project.
I do acknowledge that there are various other concerns unrelated (or loosely related) to the original block. It appears to me that the operator of record and maintainers are making a good-faith effort to respond to specific concerns. I would hope that these dialogs continue. I also recognize that there are a minority of editors who oppose ongoing operation of the bot. The proper venue for these concerns is to make a request for reexamination at the bot noticeboard.
I note that the blocking admin has been absent from the discussion for several days despite being aware it is ongoing. Accordingly, I am unblocking the bot. I will remain engaged in discussion should there be any further comment about the unblock. I will also follow any request for reexamination that is filed in an effort to mediate and build consensus. UninvitedCompany 17:20, 5 June 2019 (UTC)
Bot has unblocked, and the third edit I looked at caused a working link [1] to no longer work by changing it to [2] instead[3]. Doesn't give a good impression... Fram (talk) 10:11, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
- I reported this on the bot's talk page and will continue to monitor the situation. UninvitedCompany 11:57, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
- The link works, Academia.edu was down for a while. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:51, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
- Well no. The original link worked all the time, the "improved" link didn't work for a while and works now. Furthermore, the old link made it clear that you were going to a PDF, the new one doesn't. Why is the bot making changes which don't improve things and may make things worse (replacing a direct link with one which needs an extra resolve step at the source site, increasing the risk that it won't work sometimes, like here)? Fram (talk) 20:07, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
- The link works, Academia.edu was down for a while. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:51, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
In this edit, in one instance the bot changes a link to BBc news from cite web to cite news, and changes "work=BBC News" to "newspaper=BBC News". The BBC is not really a newspaper though. Baffling is why then in the same diff, in the next ref, the bot again changes a BBC link from cite web to citenews, but now adds "work=BBC News", the exact thing it removed higher up in a similar link. The bot seems to do a lot of good things, some useless but not in itself wrong things (like an edit which only changes "citeweb" to "cite web"), and then some weird stuff which seems more like annoying meddling than actually helpful improvements. Fram (talk) 07:48, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
@Fram: I believe these are legitimate concerns but are unrelated to the block/unblock discussion. Everything the bot is doing should be listed in one of the bot's BRFAs. If these changes are not listed there, initial discussion should be on the bot's talk page. Ideally then the maintainers would remove the feature or start a new BRFA covering it. If the response is unsatisfactory, I believe it would be appropriate to make a request for reexamination at WP:BOTN. UninvitedCompany 17:20, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
New problem
- Here's a problem. Someone is driving the bot to abuse WP:FOLLOWING. After this ANI case closed with the following editor being blocked, someone started following hard on the heels of both of our edits.... with the bot. It's still going on today. (There are about two dozen more diffs.) One bot edit included the username of an alt account of the blocked user, but the others are not signed. Can a checkuser read the IP of who is using it on these specific edits and block individual users of the bot based on that? Otherwise, this is being misused and we need another solution. - CorbieV ☊ ☼ 20:15, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- IP address logs are not accessible by tool maintainers. Bugs and issues with the bot should be reported at User talk:Citation bot. Thanks. Kaldari (talk) 20:45, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- I think this is as good a place as any to report such an issue. El_C 20:57, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- The bot operators of record are responsible for any edits the bot makes. If the bot is engaging in behaviour which falls foul of any policies, the bot operators are liable for those edits. Only in death does duty end (talk) 21:05, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- The bot is also being put to nefarious use, so I think we may have a problem here. El_C 21:22, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- @Kaldari: I emailed the bot owner, and you, and got no response. And I pinged you on talk. Clearly a number of people are concerned or this discussion wouldn't be happening. - CorbieV ☊ ☼ 21:35, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Kaldari just told me that they are looking into this. El_C 21:38, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- I just had a look at this, why can this bot even be activated to run tasks by people who are not the operator? (As is my understanding of what is happening) Is this intentional? As it seems a custom made harrassment tool if so. Does it log who activates it? Only in death does duty end (talk) 21:42, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- It's still happening.[4][5][6][7] - CorbieV ☊ ☼ 17:05, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- @CorbieVreccan: I looked at one of your examples: Special:Diff/901618104 - is something "wrong" with this edit? That is, should you revert it? — xaosflux Talk 18:00, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- I can't see anything wrong with the content of the edit
(except a trivial cosmetic-edit issue), but the bot is clearly here being used for block evasion and, given the context, as a way to keep stalking after being blocked (maybe we should ask T&S to block the bot?). Which was why the lack of authentication for using the bot was flagged previously. Which is why we have BOTMULTIOP. Which is why we demand all edits be attributed to the user that made them. Which is just common sense. But nobody wanted to spill the BEANS here, figuring the problem would be obvious. In any case, it has now been demonstrated. --Xover (talk) 18:25, 13 June 2019 (UTC)- @Xover: the edit is attributed, to the bot. The responsibility for the edit is the bot's operator. If this is an edit that if made directly by the operator would be considered bad enough to lead to blocks, - ask the operator to stop. If they won't stop - then it can be blocked again. — xaosflux Talk 18:30, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- I can't see anything wrong with the content of the edit
- @CorbieVreccan: I looked at one of your examples: Special:Diff/901618104 - is something "wrong" with this edit? That is, should you revert it? — xaosflux Talk 18:00, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- It's still happening.[4][5][6][7] - CorbieV ☊ ☼ 17:05, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- I just had a look at this, why can this bot even be activated to run tasks by people who are not the operator? (As is my understanding of what is happening) Is this intentional? As it seems a custom made harrassment tool if so. Does it log who activates it? Only in death does duty end (talk) 21:42, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Kaldari just told me that they are looking into this. El_C 21:38, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- @Kaldari: I emailed the bot owner, and you, and got no response. And I pinged you on talk. Clearly a number of people are concerned or this discussion wouldn't be happening. - CorbieV ☊ ☼ 21:35, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- The bot is also being put to nefarious use, so I think we may have a problem here. El_C 21:22, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- IP address logs are not accessible by tool maintainers. Bugs and issues with the bot should be reported at User talk:Citation bot. Thanks. Kaldari (talk) 20:45, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- For the record, I replied to the e-mail that I received within 24 hours. The e-mail did not make clear what specific harm was being caused, so I was unable to suggest a specific solution. I note that the linked section on "Hounding" states that "the singling out of one or more editors [...] to repeatedly confront or inhibit their work". Corbie, if you could you spell out how your work is being inhibited, we might be able to suggest a solution: for example, if the problem is that you are encountering edit conflicts, you could use the bots|deny= template to exclude citation bot until you have completed your edits. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 17:53, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- Can you please identify yourself by logging in? El_C 17:59, 13 June 2019 (UTC) [done - Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 06:03, 14 June 2019 (UTC)]
- Anonymous editor, being hounded by an individual and then by the bot does not make my experience here enjoyable. I also received troubling emails telling me that the initial block they were given would not prevent them from hounding me also with racist epithets. Having my watch list fill with bot notices prevented me from constructive editing. Indigenous girl (talk) 23:07, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- @UninvitedCompany:, the bot is being used for abuse (WP:FOLLOWING), and as far as I understand, the bot handlers cannot prevent it. I'm considering reblocking, since there is apparently no other way to prevent this abuse. As the recent unblocking admin, do you object? Otherwise we're asking Corbie to tolerate behavior from a malefactor using the bot that we would never tolerate from another identifiable editor. --Floquenbeam (talk) 18:52, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Citation bot is making unacceptable proxy edits for blocked users
- @Smith609, Xover, and CorbieVreccan: — xaosflux Talk 18:50, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
I'm breaking this out to it's own section so that it doesn't get lost in the huge thread above. If I understand your report correctly Xover, you believe that Smith609's bot is making edits in violation of the proxying component of the banning policy, correct? To lay this out specifically in the component parts, can you identify the edit(s) you suspect are in violation, and the editor you suspect is being proxied? — xaosflux Talk 18:49, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- @Xaosflux: In a nutshell: yes. But it's Corbie and El C who reported the problematic edits (in New problem. See that thread for a list of diffs). I just tried (poorly, it seems) to clarify that it's not the content of the edits that's the problem, but rather that the edits are being made at all: the bot appears to be being used as a proxy by a blocked user to harass one of the two admins involved in the ANI case that got that user blocked. Note also that the original thread contains further relevant information. --Xover (talk) 19:05, 13 June 2019 (UTC) [edited to correct per El C's clarification below. --Xover (talk) 20:17, 13 June 2019 (UTC)]
- For the record, the bot has not been used to follow me around. El_C 19:34, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- Further clarification, the bot has followed two of us to continue the harassment; the same two of us I reported being harassed in the initial ANI case: myself, and another user who is not an admin (Indigenous girl). - CorbieV ☊ ☼ 21:41, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- If someone made a spelling fix on every single page I edited, immediately after I edited the page, with the sole intention of annoying me, I don't think I'd be able to ignore that forever. If Corbie said "whatever, I'll ignore it", the blocked user (or some other blocked user with a different perceived enemy) would switch to someone who would care. And that behavior would be expressly forbidden by WP:FOLLOWING. My understanding is that a CU block on-wiki of the underlying IPs would still not prevent someone from using the bot. My understanding from Kaldari's post above is that it can't, anyway. Is that not true? --Floquenbeam (talk) 19:12, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- It looks like the bot is set up to accept requests from any editor or IP. My understanding is that its currently being used by IP's to harrass other editors. Unless there is a *quick* way to fix the bot so it doesnt allow anyone to set it off on a run, then it needs to be blocked. As the bot operators are responsible for all the bot's edits, they are enabling harrassment at this point. As an aside, I cant see how WP:BOTPOL allows a bot to be run by anybody. WP:BOTMULTIOP cant possibly be interpreted to mean a bot can be set to perform tasks by literally anybody. If it is, its not fit for purpose. Only in death does duty end (talk) 19:36, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- @Only in death: The bot isn't being "operated" by "anyone" it is just being "triggered" by anyone. Same as how sinebot isn't "operated" by people that don't sign their posts, and how ClueBot isn't "operated" by vandals. In any event, the current issue is that proxy edits by blocked/banned users are being facilitated and there are limited defenses to that, namely that the operator will have to show that their bot's edits are
either verifiable or productive and they have independent reasons for making such edits.
. — xaosflux Talk 19:50, 13 June 2019 (UTC)- (ec) I'm not going to rehash that issue here (my word count on the matter is already large enough to annoy people), but just so that an absence of objections is not later read as consensus: that is not a reasonable interpretation of WP:BOTMULTIOP and would make it pointless if it were so. Cluebot reverts (clear) vandalism and is operated by a known operator: nobody can go to a web interface and ask it to edit a particular page, it edits by rules set by the operator. Ditto Sinebot, and it is triggered by one's own edits, not directed by a third party. Neither of those bots can be used to harass an admin that blocked you. This situation is exactly why we have BOTMULTIOP. Just imagine if AWB allowed unidentified users to run its canned rules on any page (and AWB requires permission even for authenticated users)… --Xover (talk) 20:14, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- @Floquenbeam and UninvitedCompany: - pinging to this section. I agree that unless Smith609 can defend these proxy edits, it is against policy. — xaosflux Talk 19:52, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- Bots are required to be operated by someone if its not being operated by anyone its in violation of BOTPOL. There is a reason BOTPOL contains the word 'operator' a number of times, and 'triggered' zero. But I digress, WP:BOTMULTIOP has three criteria and as far as I can see this is breaking the first two, "1. operator disclosure – the Wikipedia user directing any given edit must always be identified, typically by being linked in the edit summary" - A number of the edits linked above do not list who is operating/triggering the bot that I can see in the edits. "operator verification – users able to direct the bot to make edits must be positively identified to the bot at the time of edit, in some manner not readily faked and unique to that user that cannot readily be bypassed or avoided (e.g. non-trivial password, restricted IP, wiki login, IRC hostname), so that the user directing any given edit and identified above, may be considered verified." - I cant see that the IP's triggering it are restricted in any way. Only in death does duty end (talk) 20:03, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- Pretty sure we're not going to come to a quick agreement on what elevates someone to the status of "operator" right now - but that is a bit aside of the claim of proxying for blocked users. Unless this claim is wrong, the exception is met, or there is some strongly compelling IAR reason - the proxy edits need to cease. — xaosflux Talk 20:10, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- [edit conflict] Unless the code of the bot can be changed, now, to always show the username of the person running it to make the edits, I don't think it should be in operation. I don't think it should continue being operated by anonymous people who are in violation of policy while we debate this. - CorbieV ☊ ☼ 20:14, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- @CorbieVreccan: from what I can see above, "identifying" the triggering party won't be sufficient to prevent proxy edits, the bot would need to also be able to make a determination that the party is eligible to make edits, something that would be quite difficult. (e.g. Just knowing that a blocker user was triggering the bot isn't going make this better for you). — xaosflux Talk 20:35, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- I think the web interface has to be removed. Enabling the bot through the off-wiki web link means literally anyone can trigger it. I think the bare minimum is that people need to be signed in to their (unblocked) wp account to run it. That would stop blocked users. I don't know how to code the thing, but that seems to be a pretty basic requirement, yes? - CorbieV ☊ ☼ 20:54, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- @CorbieVreccan: there are ways to authenticate someone via a web interface, and a major re-write could do lots of things, keep in mind "blocked users" can still "sign in" - they just can't "edit" (and can't do some other actions too). I'm assuming good faith that the claims of bad-faith edits here are legitimate, thus this should be taken seriously. I don't think I've seen harassing edits that have risen to the extreme of "emergency" levels of urgency and would ask that we give at least 24 hours for response on why this bot operations is other wise acceptable. (See below). — xaosflux Talk 21:14, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- I think the web interface has to be removed. Enabling the bot through the off-wiki web link means literally anyone can trigger it. I think the bare minimum is that people need to be signed in to their (unblocked) wp account to run it. That would stop blocked users. I don't know how to code the thing, but that seems to be a pretty basic requirement, yes? - CorbieV ☊ ☼ 20:54, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- @CorbieVreccan: from what I can see above, "identifying" the triggering party won't be sufficient to prevent proxy edits, the bot would need to also be able to make a determination that the party is eligible to make edits, something that would be quite difficult. (e.g. Just knowing that a blocker user was triggering the bot isn't going make this better for you). — xaosflux Talk 20:35, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- [edit conflict] Unless the code of the bot can be changed, now, to always show the username of the person running it to make the edits, I don't think it should be in operation. I don't think it should continue being operated by anonymous people who are in violation of policy while we debate this. - CorbieV ☊ ☼ 20:14, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- Pretty sure we're not going to come to a quick agreement on what elevates someone to the status of "operator" right now - but that is a bit aside of the claim of proxying for blocked users. Unless this claim is wrong, the exception is met, or there is some strongly compelling IAR reason - the proxy edits need to cease. — xaosflux Talk 20:10, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- Bots are required to be operated by someone if its not being operated by anyone its in violation of BOTPOL. There is a reason BOTPOL contains the word 'operator' a number of times, and 'triggered' zero. But I digress, WP:BOTMULTIOP has three criteria and as far as I can see this is breaking the first two, "1. operator disclosure – the Wikipedia user directing any given edit must always be identified, typically by being linked in the edit summary" - A number of the edits linked above do not list who is operating/triggering the bot that I can see in the edits. "operator verification – users able to direct the bot to make edits must be positively identified to the bot at the time of edit, in some manner not readily faked and unique to that user that cannot readily be bypassed or avoided (e.g. non-trivial password, restricted IP, wiki login, IRC hostname), so that the user directing any given edit and identified above, may be considered verified." - I cant see that the IP's triggering it are restricted in any way. Only in death does duty end (talk) 20:03, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- @Only in death: The bot isn't being "operated" by "anyone" it is just being "triggered" by anyone. Same as how sinebot isn't "operated" by people that don't sign their posts, and how ClueBot isn't "operated" by vandals. In any event, the current issue is that proxy edits by blocked/banned users are being facilitated and there are limited defenses to that, namely that the operator will have to show that their bot's edits are
- It looks like the bot is set up to accept requests from any editor or IP. My understanding is that its currently being used by IP's to harrass other editors. Unless there is a *quick* way to fix the bot so it doesnt allow anyone to set it off on a run, then it needs to be blocked. As the bot operators are responsible for all the bot's edits, they are enabling harrassment at this point. As an aside, I cant see how WP:BOTPOL allows a bot to be run by anybody. WP:BOTMULTIOP cant possibly be interpreted to mean a bot can be set to perform tasks by literally anybody. If it is, its not fit for purpose. Only in death does duty end (talk) 19:36, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- Regarding the claim that this bot is enabling bad-faith proxy editing, I'm recommending blocking (in 24 hours) unless someone can show:
- That the claim is not credible
- That the claimed bad edits meet the exception to WP:PROXYING
- That there is an unrepresented overwhelming consideration (e.g. If the edits are of such great use and the "damage" is being greatly exaggerated, such that stopping operations would ultimately lead to a worse project, even when considering the outcome could be driving away productive editors).
- — xaosflux Talk 21:14, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- From looking at this a little, I think a block would be justified now, but I would ask Corbie's forbearance for 24 hours to see if anyone can think of a way around having to block. The problem seems to be that it is literally not possible to throw out the bathwater without throwing out the baby. But CitationBot does valuable work, and if Corbie can put up with the annoyance a short time longer, let's see if anyone has any brilliant ideas on separating the two. To be clear, Corbie: do I understand right that the sole problem is that they're WP:FOLLOWING you? There are no other errors being introduced? If so, are you OK with being patient a short time longer? Because frankly, if you're not OK with a short delay, I don't see how we justify not blocking right now. I acknowledge it isn't fair to ask you to wait a while, and no problem from my end if you say you aren't willing to. --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:34, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- p.s. I think I wrote this weird, probably from my lack of technological prowess. Maybe people smarter than me already know for an absolute fact that this can't be prevented. If so, then my replies to Xausflux's list is: I've looked at this, and the claim is credible. The edits themselves don't seem to be the problem, but the articles chosen to run the bot on are chosen specifically to violate WP:FOLLOWING; deliberately flicking Corbie's ear. There can't really be an overwhelming reason to keep the bot running in the face of this, because it has not been running for months and the world hasn't ended, whereas I have to believe that if it isn't stopped, the LTAs have a new tool in their arsenal to drive off editors one by one with no consequence. To be clear: if an identifiable editor was doing this to another editor, I would have already blocked without a second's hesitation, no matter how productive an editor they were elsewhere. I think we should block now, and the only reason I don't is I defer t xaosflux's superior technical understanding, and fear I'm misunderstanding something. --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:48, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- [Edit conflict]Well, as I noted above, the bot driver is also still harassing Indigenous girl, as well. At first I thought the bot following was funny: I thought the legit bot owner was making sure the harasser hadn't messed up the templates, and was correcting the mistakes the troll had made during the hounding. Then I realized it was the same pattern, and the troll had carjacked the bot. Not so funny anymore. I want the IPs of the stalking driver logged and blocked. Yeah, I can "tolerate" it. But I don't think anyone should have to, just for the sake of automating a few edits. I don't think it's good for morale to have disruptive users using this for block evasion and harassment. I don't think we should have to be making this kind of decision to tolerate abuse for the sake of making a few formatting tweaks more convenient. - CorbieV ☊ ☼ 21:57, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) @Floquenbeam: the delay I'm suggesting is somewhat related to Nemo's question below - at least at first glance these edits don't seem to be very offensive or difficult to ignore, so I at least wanted to give the operator a chance to respond (also if the only offended party is an admin - we sort of expect admins to have thicker skin). — xaosflux Talk 22:02, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- p.s. I think I wrote this weird, probably from my lack of technological prowess. Maybe people smarter than me already know for an absolute fact that this can't be prevented. If so, then my replies to Xausflux's list is: I've looked at this, and the claim is credible. The edits themselves don't seem to be the problem, but the articles chosen to run the bot on are chosen specifically to violate WP:FOLLOWING; deliberately flicking Corbie's ear. There can't really be an overwhelming reason to keep the bot running in the face of this, because it has not been running for months and the world hasn't ended, whereas I have to believe that if it isn't stopped, the LTAs have a new tool in their arsenal to drive off editors one by one with no consequence. To be clear: if an identifiable editor was doing this to another editor, I would have already blocked without a second's hesitation, no matter how productive an editor they were elsewhere. I think we should block now, and the only reason I don't is I defer t xaosflux's superior technical understanding, and fear I'm misunderstanding something. --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:48, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- From looking at this a little, I think a block would be justified now, but I would ask Corbie's forbearance for 24 hours to see if anyone can think of a way around having to block. The problem seems to be that it is literally not possible to throw out the bathwater without throwing out the baby. But CitationBot does valuable work, and if Corbie can put up with the annoyance a short time longer, let's see if anyone has any brilliant ideas on separating the two. To be clear, Corbie: do I understand right that the sole problem is that they're WP:FOLLOWING you? There are no other errors being introduced? If so, are you OK with being patient a short time longer? Because frankly, if you're not OK with a short delay, I don't see how we justify not blocking right now. I acknowledge it isn't fair to ask you to wait a while, and no problem from my end if you say you aren't willing to. --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:34, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- To clarify, what part of the edit makes them "hounding"? Does the specific username mentioned in the edit summary matter? Does the content of the edits? By the way, I can't avoid thinking that an unwanted consequence of noticeboard conversations like this is WP:BEANS: if nobody has ever suggested that edits following a certain pattern would be such a terrible thing, probably nobody would have thought of making them; now, the goal of such edits may also be to get the bot blocked, which is disruption in itself. Nemo 21:54, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- Nemo, page up and read the original ANI case. Someone is using the bot to follow two of us and continue a pattern of harassment they are indef-blocked for. The other editor is not an admin. I've pinged them if they want to weigh in. Their contribs are linked above, and you can see that they're also being followed. I'll post diffs if you want. - CorbieV ☊ ☼ 22:17, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- I was harassed/stalked by an individual who is now blocked. Part of that harassment included them using the bot. This person also emailed me more than once via the WP interface and said some pretty racist stuff and creepystuff. They also told me that the block against them would not matter which is when the bot started following me around. It's very creepy when a person tries to negotiate harassment (they initially stated they would not harass Corbie and I for 48 hours if the initial block was lifted. I believe their final negotiation attempt was a year of not harassing us). I don't feel that it is helpful to have a bot that can be utilized to retaliate or harass editors. I am a little weirded out that people think this is permissible harassment when it is being done by a human driven bot. El_C ended up having to semi-protect more than half a dozen articles I regularly work on. This is not cool, this does not benefit WP or the editors that keep it going. Nemo they made it very clear by using their name on at least one occasion while driving the bot. Indigenous girl (talk) 22:53, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- Just a note that I did block both SolarStorm1859 (lostpwd) and SolarStorm1859 indefinitely for misusing the bot for the purposes of harassment. El_C 11:42, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
- Just so we're all on the same page on this: Nemo bis is here implying that one or more of the bot's critics (and they probably have me specifically in mind, given their previous accusations on my talk page) have deliberately impersonated a blocked harasser, and used the bot to continue harassing that editor's victim, for no other purpose than to get the bot blocked through underhanded means. Since I suspect they may genuinely not understand just how serious an accusation that is I'm not even going to bother asking them to retract that, I'm just noting it for the record. --Xover (talk) 06:44, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
- Nemo, page up and read the original ANI case. Someone is using the bot to follow two of us and continue a pattern of harassment they are indef-blocked for. The other editor is not an admin. I've pinged them if they want to weigh in. Their contribs are linked above, and you can see that they're also being followed. I'll post diffs if you want. - CorbieV ☊ ☼ 22:17, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- I've reblocked the bot. I'm sorry, I know it's really useful in good faith hands, and that good faith users are like 99% of the users. But the current configuration cannot prevent this from happening. --Floquenbeam (talk) 23:14, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- It sucks for the 99% of good-faith edits by the bot to be blocked like this. But it was the right thing to do. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:08, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
- Could this maybe be remedied by checking "Human (not bot)" in the Watchlist settings? --213.220.69.160 (talk) 00:10, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
- If someone is being harassed, it is not an adequate response to say "but maybe if you stop paying attention to the harassment it will go away". —David Eppstein (talk) 00:21, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
Hello. The Anti-Harassment team at Wikimedia Foundation has been asked to help out with the Citation bot by adding an authentication step before the bot can be triggered. We are working on this at the moment and hope to have a fix in place soon. Kindly refrain from making any code commits to the bot in the meantime. Please reach out to me directly/ping me if you have any concerns about this. Thank you! -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 05:00, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
- NKohli (WMF) - Awesome! Thank you for letting us know! :-) ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 11:46, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
Category:SPI cases awaiting administration
53 cases currently listed here, including some that have been there for weeks. Please can uninvolved admins review? GiantSnowman 15:33, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
- 56 now :) GiantSnowman 09:08, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
- Working on it... GABgab 23:07, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
- Appreciated, but still at 56... GiantSnowman 12:09, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
- A few of us worked on it all afternoon and got it down to ... 50. Progress! Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 20:18, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
- I got it down to 41. I'll take a minute to go off on my soapbox about needing more patrolling admins at SPI to assist in conducting investigations and taking administrative action as needed. The CU completed section is chronically backlogged and could really use some admin hand even if just to say not strong enough evidence and they haven't edited in a month. Re-report if it starts again and things become clearer. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:55, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
- There are editors (like me) who would gladly prefer to help out, rather than just report. If I thought it all possible to be approved a CU without being a sysop, I would ask. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 23:26, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
- I guess I didn't read that close enough. The problem is lack of admins? Only one way to fix that. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 07:08, 9 June 2019 (UTC)
- There are several problems, but a chronic shortage of consistently willing admins is part of it. SPI has a high burnout rate, you kind of deal with the worst of Wikipedia constantly. That said, applications are accepted for non-admin clerks. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 12:39, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
- I guess I didn't read that close enough. The problem is lack of admins? Only one way to fix that. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 07:08, 9 June 2019 (UTC)
- There are editors (like me) who would gladly prefer to help out, rather than just report. If I thought it all possible to be approved a CU without being a sysop, I would ask. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 23:26, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
- I got it down to 41. I'll take a minute to go off on my soapbox about needing more patrolling admins at SPI to assist in conducting investigations and taking administrative action as needed. The CU completed section is chronically backlogged and could really use some admin hand even if just to say not strong enough evidence and they haven't edited in a month. Re-report if it starts again and things become clearer. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:55, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
- A few of us worked on it all afternoon and got it down to ... 50. Progress! Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 20:18, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
- Appreciated, but still at 56... GiantSnowman 12:09, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
- Working on it... GABgab 23:07, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
Portal namespace deletion
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Not sure how many editors have noticed but the portal namespace is been reduced by 80% percent since the mass creation of portals incident and there subsequent deletion with a strong effort to eliminate all portals that seems to be going well with little participation over at the deletion noticeboard. At this point I think its clear that portal namespace has failed. I agree that there was a recent RfC about retaining them ....but the effort to update them has not happened with a few editors having a field day deleting portals with zero attempt at fixing problems... that has reduced the namespace to fewer then 1000 portals for 5000+ (that all agree was to much...but no call for mass deletion of non automated portals). I am sure many are aware I am not a fan of deletion over improvement when possible (lazy way out in my view)..but.... since no one is caring at large about thousands of portals deleted in the past few months ....I am proposing again to drop the portal namespace since we have no system in place to notify the community when portals are outdated as we do with ever other namespace (like a page banner-tag) and the fact we cant get far if they are being deleted faster then the community can fix them up....clear not many care anymore!!! --Moxy 🍁 15:56, 5 June 2019 (UTC)
- I agree with Moxy that the lack of any monitoring of portals is a huge problem. As Moxy rightly notes, there has never been any systematic monitoring of quality of portals, nor any way of tagging those which are deficient. Sadly, WikiProject Portals has been more interested in quantity than in quality.
- However, the figures which Moxy cites are misleading unless read in context. Here's some numbers:
- Number of portals before the WP:ENDPORTALS RFC: 1500
- Number of portals when TTH's portalspamming was halted: 5705
- Number of portals now: 1018
- So we are actually down about 30% from the pre-portalspam total.
- So what's actually happened is that a wave of deletions, including the two mass deletions (one, and two) removed nearly all the deprecated automated portals.
- Once portals were being scrutinised, I and a number of other editors have continued the scrutiny, and have MFDed many other portals which failed the portal guidelines because they were abandoned, broken, too narrow a scope, etc. This is catching up on backlog of 14 years of neglect, and even now we are still finding portals abandoned in a pitiful state since before 2010, e.g. MFD:Portal:College basketball.
- There are currently about 100 portals being discussed at MFD, and I expect that there are probably about another 100 portals which will be deleted in this cleanup phase. That will leave us with about 750–850 portals.
- Some of those are highly maintained and do quite a good job. Most are mediocre, exceeding the bare minimums set out in the guidleines, but add little value for readers.
- The big issue is that two newish features of the Wikimedia software means that head articles and navboxes now offer most the functionality which portals set out to offer. Both features are available only to ordinary readers who are not logged in, but you can test them without logging out by right-clicking on a link, and the select "open in private window" (in Firefox) or "open in incognito window" (Chrome).
- mouseover: on any link, mouseover shows you the picture and the start of the lead. So the preview-selected page-function of portals is redundant: something almost as good is available automatically on any navbox or other set of links. Try it by right-clicking on this link to Template:Dhaka, open in a private/incognito tab, and mouseover any link.
- automatic imagery galleries: clicking on an image brings up an image gallery of all the images on that page. It's full-screen, so it's actually much better than a click-for-next image gallery on a portal. Try it by right-clicking on this link to the article Dhaka, open in a private/incognito tab, and click on any image to start the slideshow
- Similar features have been available since 2015 to users of Wikipedia's Android app.
- Those new technologies set a high bar for any portal which actually tries to add value for the reader. Most existing portals use an outmoded format which displays a preview of the lead of selected articles under a few headings, and an image gallery. These are now redundant, since both previews and image galleries are built into every page.
- They are also a maintenance nightmare, because they are built from swarms of sub-pages, each consisting of a content forks of the lead of a selected article. These become outdated (most are now a decade old), and are attack vectors. They need to go.
- The question is whether there is a) consensus on a new format for portals which does actually add value for readers, and b) editors with the energy and commitment to build and maintain those portals.
- I think that we already have the model for a new format, in the shape of those adapted by Bermicourt from the German-language Wikipedia. They are what one editor recently described as mega-navboxes: e.g. Portal:Harz Mountains and Portal:Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. They don't need the forest of sub-pages, and they don't waste time offering previews, because the Wikimedia software now does that already.
- That's only my personal preference, but I have so far seen no other proposal which would make portals useful in the face of the new technologies.
- We need an RFC to decide what new format to adopt, and then probably another RFC to decide what to do with the hundreds of old-style portals.
- But whatever is decided for the future, the removal of hundreds of abandoned or misconceived portals will make the path ahead clearer. One of the perennial problems with portals has been that the number of editors willing to create portals has way exceeded the number of editors willing to do the hard work of building them into something which genuinely adds value for readers, and way exceeded the number of editors committed to maintaining the portals on an ongoing basis.
- The Jan–Feb 2019 data on portal pageviews shows that only 52 portals get more than 100 pageviews per day, and only 150 portals get over 50 views.
- I think the way ahead is to concentrate efforts on fewer, better portals. So I would support a radical cull ... but I would oppose outright deletion of all portals. That all-or-nothing binary thinking was rejected last year, and it would be folly to delete the portals which get hundreds of pageviews per day. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:18, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
- Can anyone please explain to me the intended purpose of portals and how they relate to the "outline of ..."/"index of ..." pages that we have for various things. I've never figured it out.
- An aside:
One of the perennial problems with portals has been that the number of editors willing to create portals has way exceeded the number of editors willing to do the hard work of building them into something which genuinely adds value for readers, and way exceeded the number of editors committed to maintaining the portals on an ongoing basis
The same can be said of the majority of stub creations, notably for villages and schools, unless we are intending to be a basic gazetteer. - Sitush (talk) 06:16, 6 June 2019 (UTC)- @Sitush: I agree about that sort of stub raising similar issues. However, the difference with stubs is that they are actual encyclopedic content, and most of them are capable of expansion into meaningful articles. I think that the bar for stubs is set too low, so that too many of them are simply standalone list entries. We haven't entirely shaken off the heady optimism of the late 2000s expansionist era, when it seemed that any topic would eventually be built on. The reality now is that we have a large collection of permastubs, and some sort of rethink is long overdue. For example, most articles on Irish townlands have been merged to lists, and I would favour a similar approach being more widely adopted.
- Portals are a different issue, because they are not content. The are a navigational device and/or a showcase for content, so the case for retention is utilitarian: if they aren't doing that job, we shouldn't waste readers's time with them. They should either be deleted (as we do with superfluous categories or navboxes), or mothballed: unlinked from articles etc, and marked as historical unless and until someone revives them.
- I too am unclear on the distinction between portals, outlines and index-ofs. My overall impression is that most portals exist because some editors like making them, rather than because they meet any particular need or add any significant value. Most of them are products of that optimistic era of expansionism, when there was an implicit assumption that any page on anything would eventually attract editors to expand it ... but insofar as there was a purpose, the idea seems to have been that a) portals were a magazine-type way of allowing readers to sample sub-topics in a given field, and b) that they provided some sort of bridge between reading and editing, by indicating areas where work was needed.
- In practice, neither role has been served well. The magazine-type approach requires huge amounts of ongoing effort, and while that works reasonably well on the main page, the large active teams working there have been replicated on v few — if any — portals. The result is that most portals are just outdated magazine covers. And I have yet to see any evidence that the theoretical bridge between reading and editing works in practice; even the pages which try to provide it have too few pageviews to make much impact.
- The mega-navbox style portals such as Portal:Mecklenburg-Vorpommern do have a lot of similarities to outlines and indexes, both of which are unloved and little used. I think that all of them function best when used at v high levels, on topic areas spanning tens of of thousands of articles ... but I am unpersuaded that more than a few of them add enough value to enough readers to justify the work involved in crating and maintaining them. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:08, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
- Strong support, although I think this needs broader discussion. It's about time we euthanize the portal namespace, which I'm starting to feel is the Esperanza of our times (there are certain parallels; potentially good ideas, initial RFCs/MFDs that resulted in keep/no consensus and spurred on reform that was half-hearted and in portals' case might have actually done more harm than good, and nominal guidelines that neither community actually respected, although portals didn't have bureaucracy). In the ~10-12 years I've read Wikipedia (although my current account is only a year old) I've never once looked at a portal except in light of the controversy. I thought it was just a preference of mine but it appears I'm not the only one. Per WP:PRESERVE, and to preempt a potential pro-portal argument, I say we delete the namespace and move all existing portals from "Portal:X" to "Wikipedia:Portal X" and protect them if the community feels like it's not that much a waste. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 04:50, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
- Strong oppose. The fact that a) there was an ill-conceived portal-creation spree and b) there are unmaintained portals out there is no more reason to delete portal space than mainspace, which suffers from similar problems i.e. mass creation of useless stubs, poor maintenance of thousands of articles and many with low viewing numbers. As the community voted recently against deleting all portals, what is needed is consensus on the role of portals and then standards to be achieved. BHG and I have tried to get this going, but we've just swung from portalmania to anti-portalmania, neither of which is a responsible approach to managing an encyclopaedia. So I agree with a lot of BrownHairedGirl's comments, although I probably wouldn't go quite as far in some ways; nevertheless I think there is a consensus to be had if editors don't swing towards the extremes. And that would bring benefit to Wikipedia with portals being used both as navigational aids alongside categories and as tools to assist projects in achieving coverage, balance and article improvement in their topic areas. Bermicourt (talk) 16:24, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
- Can we not have proposals that require community comment at WP:AN unless administrative action is required? If this is really a subject we want to get into again, WP:VPPRO is -> that way. --Izno (talk) 16:29, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
- Support per John M Wolfson. CoolSkittle (talk) 16:56, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
A request to see deleted edits of files
- I have received a request by a non-admin, to see deleted edits of 13 files, at User talk:Anthony Appleyard#Can you help?. The piece of Chinese text in it (已刪除版本和已刪除的內容) Google-translates as "Deleted version and deleted content". What should I do? Is this request legitimate? Anthony Appleyard (talk) 13:31, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
- @Anthony Appleyard: perhaps there is a compounding language barrier here? None of those appear to be links to files at all, just pages. As far as the deleted page versions go, I'd decline this massive fishing expedition without some good reasons from the requester. — xaosflux Talk 13:35, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
- @Xaosflux: Sorry, by "file" I meant "page" :: word usage persistence from older computers. I will ask him what he needs this information for. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 13:40, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
- Back in January, MCC214 filed some an WP:SPI against 0格格不入 (see the bottom section of User talk:0格格不入 and Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Allthingsgo/Archive), and most of the others appear to have some sort of sockpuppetry connection. Note that NumCinq, ET4Eva, Advogato4, and 格格不入 were included in the same filing, and CometQ and Advo2 appear on the same page in earlier investigations. (All of these accounts' userspaces are linked in the list of pages.) I suspect that MCC214 is trying to prove sockpuppetry by someone. Nyttend (talk) 23:04, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
A non-admin wants to see deleted edits
- Please see User talk:Anthony Appleyard#Can you help? and advise me and User:MCC214 . Anthony Appleyard (talk) 11:17, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
- @Anthony Appleyard: I've combined this with the section you already opened here, see responses above. If they want a SPI, send them to WP:SPI where admins can investigate. — xaosflux Talk 11:37, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
- @Nyttend and Xaosflux: Thanks. I and User:MCC214 seem to be having difficulty in understanding each other because of his apparent imperfect command of the English language, including of computer-related words. Examining some of his edits seems to show that his own language seems to be Chinese. If so, are there any administrators here who know Chinese well and can continue discussion with User:MCC214 in his own language? :: see "perhaps there is a compounding language barrier here" above. (I sympathize with User:MCC214 ; I have experiences of being in countries where I did not know the language well.) (Link to MCC214's contributions list). Anthony Appleyard (talk) 08:03, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
I'd have to go through them later when I have more time, but it looks like a request that could be fulfilled to an extent. Some of the deleted pages are just corporate spam, makes sense to know what that was to determine a paid editor's employer; at least one account has no deleted edits; and at least one really has nothing useful in the deleted contributions that I would want to share, but there's no more information there than you'd find in the username itself. Yeah, I'll take a deeper look later. Someguy1221 (talk) 08:12, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
Page move system jam
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
- See https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requested_moves/Technical_requests&oldid=900928021 Anthony Appleyard (talk) 14:45, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
- Since we're only able to move up to 100 subpages, I suspect the system sees 145 subpages and doesn't know which ones to move. I've left a request at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks#Mass_page_move; hopefully someone can move some or all of the subpages individually, and then the rest of the work will be easy. Nyttend (talk) 15:41, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
OTRS request
Could someone who is active in SPI and an OTRS agent take a look at: ticket:2019061010006591
Based upon this WP:SPI, it appears they should also be a CUS Philbrick(Talk) 15:10, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
- Sphilbrick, would you be best transferring the ticket to checkuser-en-wp? It could be transferred back afterwards. AGK ■ 17:48, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
- AGK, Good idea
Done S Philbrick(Talk) 18:08, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
- AGK, Good idea
Fram banned by WMF office
Moved to WP:FRAMThe following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Cross-post for those who haven't seen yet: Fram banned for 1 year by WMF office. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 18:31, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
- Holy shit, what? That’s insane. It appears that their admin rights have also been removed... can only wmf restore the rights, or will fram have to go through an rfa?💵Money💵emoji💵💸 18:57, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
- Neither; this is a WP:OFFICE action so we can't overturn it. Per my comments at the main thread, I can't even imagine the circumstances in which this is legitimate, since if it were genuinely something so problematic he needed to be banned instantly without discussion, it would be something warranting a global rather than a local ban, and permanent rather than time-limited. ‑ Iridescent 19:03, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
- ?!?!?!?! ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 19:00, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
- It might be useful for people not to comment here, but instead to comment at the original BN post. GiantSnowman 19:02, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Discussion has now been moved to Wikipedia:Community response to Wikimedia Foundation's ban of Fram. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 13:08, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
User:WMFOffice - Ban Proposal
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Hi folks, I'd like to propose that this account, WMFOffice (talk · contribs), be banned and indefinitely blocked. Whoever is in control of this account has demonstrated, on numerous occasions, unwillingness to communicate transparently as well as poor attitude/behavior incompatible with the policies and guidelines of Wikipedia. As for diffs, I simply point readers to this discussion: Wikipedia:Community response to the Wikimedia Foundation's ban of Fram. I imagine a ban like this is symbolic in nature, but it may have the added effect of forcing the WMF staff responsible for this fiasco to either a) start using their role accounts instead of socking through User:WMFOffice, or b) identify so we know who we can contact with complaints/inquiries. -FASTILY 08:01, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Symbolic support- this is unlikely to go anywhere, but what the WMF is doing is furtive and sneaky, and there's few other ways for the community to express our lack of faith in them. Reyk YO! 08:04, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Support. Symbolic or not, everything that has been done thus far would lead any rational person to believe that the account was compromised. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 08:08, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- I would also suggest any ban include a deop. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 08:12, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Support - for gross negligence and incompetence, unaccountability and lack of transparency, disregard for the community, conduct unbecoming a humanitarian nonprofit organization, for suspected corruption, and for directly damaging both the project and the community. ~Swarm~ {sting} 08:09, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Support - for breaching WP:WHEEL if nothing else. - SchroCat (talk) 08:10, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Support Not here to build an encyclopedia. --Pudeo (talk) 08:12, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Support per SchroCat and Pudeo. Mr Ernie (talk) 08:13, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Support - I'd thought about this yesterday, and I voiced that I'd support any community based sanction up to and including a CBAN. I agree that this is likely symbolic, but I don't see any policy that says we can't. The rest is per Swarm, and from a policy perspective WP:WHEEL. Mr rnddude (talk) 08:14, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose. Don't get me wrong, on this occasion I think their actions were breathtakingly clueless, but there are sometimes legitimate reasons why an action needs to be taken anonymously (some of the people against whom the WMF takes action genuinely are violent criminals). ‑ Iridescent 08:14, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- xaosflux technical question: would an account with the staff userright be prevented from actions by a local block? –xenotalk 13:17, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- @Xeno: actions that are checked by the "are you blocked" type checks (such as editing) should be, however keep in mind that "staff" global group, just like stewards, retain the "unblockself" right that administrators used to have - so they can always just unblock themselves. — xaosflux Talk 13:21, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- xaosflux technical question: would an account with the staff userright be prevented from actions by a local block? –xenotalk 13:17, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- I'm fairly certain Fram is not a violent criminal. And I'm fairly sure the smart people over in San Francisco (who are being paid top dollar) can engineer an alternative solution that doesn't piss off 95% of the project in one go. -FASTILY 08:19, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Iridescent, with all due respect (and I mean that), that really is irrelevant here. It's not sufficient to simply say, as you did in your first comment on this controversy "What the hell? There had better be a damn good explanation", but expressing your dismay without backing it up with action of some sort is simple a futile gesture. The range of actions open to us is very slim, and this is one of them. Beyond My Ken (talk) 08:20, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- "This is an action we can take" isn't synonymous with "this is an action we should take". That whoever's currently behind this account is abusing the privilege of anonymity in this particular instance doesn't mean there aren't circumstances in which the WMF will legitimately need to use this account in future. ‑ Iridescent 08:26, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- I do not foresee a ban or block lasting long beyond this issue's resolution. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 08:28, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Iridescent, they will unblock through meta (prob. immediately) to de-sysop and ban the admin who chose to pull that trigger. And blocking them here hardly renders them technically unable to undo the block, either.
- It will be obviously reversed by them but the symbolism of the block is more important. ∯WBGconverse 08:31, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- "This is an action we can take" isn't synonymous with "this is an action we should take". That whoever's currently behind this account is abusing the privilege of anonymity in this particular instance doesn't mean there aren't circumstances in which the WMF will legitimately need to use this account in future. ‑ Iridescent 08:26, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- The WMF is shamelessly demonstrating that they're able to exert absolute and unappealable power over their projects, even where opposition is unanimous, even when they breach our policies. There has never been a greater and more direct insult and disregard for the actual community that built their multimillionaire organization. Yet you'd defend them from this symbolic protest gesture of banning their role account, because "they need it for violent criminals"? Really? From a practical perspective, really? If the purpose of this account was to protect their personal safety, then they're abusing it by executing faceless illegitimate political disappearances. If and when they need an anonymous account to deal with a violent criminal, then nothing is stopping them from creating a new one, but that's clearly not what is going with this account in this situation, and a statement needs to be made that we will not roll over and take it. ~Swarm~ {sting} 08:24, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Support - something's got to give, and they are not above everyone else. CassiantoTalk 08:16, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Support - They will of course, simply undo do the block used to enforce the ban, but it's very clear that they're simply not understanding how seriously we view their actions, and the point needs to be made in as many ways as possible. Non-admins such as myself can't take direct action and issue the necessary unblocks to those who have been the target of inappropriate office actions -- as Floquenbeam and Bishonen have courageously done -- but we can make our displeasure loudly known to ther WMF, and hope that sooner or later the Foundation and its staff will come to their senses. Beyond My Ken (talk) 08:16, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- who would carry it out?50.106.16.170 (talk) 08:16, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- If there is community consensus for such a ban, then any admin can pronounce the ban and enforce it with a block. Beyond My Ken (talk) 08:24, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Support We need to know who exactly we are talking to. This is exactly the type of misuse that WP:ROLE is designed to prevent. Tazerdadog (talk) 08:17, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Symbolic support- This won't go anywhere and they will unblock through meta; but still. And, if this passes at all, we will have yet another admin desysopped, who chose to pull the block-trigger. ∯WBGconverse 08:18, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) Not realistic. Staff global group can unblock themselves. -- 94rain Talk 08:25, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
-
- And with a consensus for a ban, that means we can continue to enforce it by any means we deem necessary. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 08:29, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose This is a time for thoughtful negotiation, not inflammatory escalation of the conflict. Take it slowly, folks. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 08:30, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Normally I'd agree with you, but it takes two to negotiate. The Foundation has already made it clear they are not interested in discussing, well, anything. -FASTILY 08:35, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- If WMFOffice was willing to actually negotiate as opposed to throwing us canned orders over a loudspeaker, we wouldn't be having this discussion. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 08:43, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Support GiantSnowman 08:34, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- The fact that the WMF can unblock themselves is technical statement of fact, not an opinion. A block and a ban are two completely different things. A block is a tool, a ban is a social decision. We have unblocked Fram, twice now, but the WMF says we can't overturn their ban, no matter what. Fine, then WMFOffice can unblock themselves, but that doesn't make them unbanned from our project. Even if they can defy the ban from a technical perspective, they can't overturn the social decision that they are unwelcome here after abusing our community. It's a pretty serious proposal, and it goes beyond a symbolic gesture. I'd urge any opposers to give it a second thought. ~Swarm~ {sting} 08:35, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Thank you, excellent point. Beyond My Ken (talk) 08:40, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Support per the opening statements and comments from the other supporters above. I am in full agreement with them. EclipseDude (Chase Totality) 08:36, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose and request for anyone supporting this to have any elevated privileges revoked and to be issued a one year ban. It is actively calling for a violation of the Terms of Use. Anyone supporting it can run their own website. There are plenty of avenues left and unlike what everone seems to indicate, there is no reason to rush any of this. If the foundation took 4 weeks to make a decision, we can take 4 weeks too. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:39, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Let me make my signature a little larger so that Trust and Safety can read it clearly without their glasses. Tazerdadog (talk) 08:46, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- As an admin, and presumably familiar with out policies and rules, please point me to where in the Terms of Use -- or anywhere else for that matter -- that urging people to civilly disobey the Terms of Use is a de-sysopable offence, or even a blockable one. I do not believe that "sedition" against the WMF is mentioned anywhere. Beyond My Ken (talk) 08:44, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- No. Time is of the essence here. This isn't about Fram's ban or the deops, it's about having the trust of the community - trust which, with each passing moment, is eroding to the point of being broken irreparably because WMFOffice is patently not acting in good faith, and their actions (The limited ban of Fram, not escalating Fram's ban for revealing information when they claimed everything was privileged, the canned responces, the refusal to actually talk to the community about the "issues" that are apparently so serious that ArbCom cannot be trusted to address them) show this. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 08:47, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Your statement is honestly nothing short of disgusting, and a betrayal of your own community. This situation reeks of corruption rather than enforcement, and we've literally lost several of our best admins of all time standing against it already. You'd side with the corrupt WMF over your own colleagues? To reduce it all to "violation of the Terms of Use" is pathetic, and you should be ashamed for shilling without even looking into the situation. If the Foundation wants to strip supporters of this proposal of their extended privileges, they can start right fucking here with me. I'd be far more honored to join the likes of Floq and Bish, than to join the likes of yourself in actually defending this shitshow. This is Wikipedia history, and you chose the wrong side. ~Swarm~ {sting} 08:49, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- LOL, vindictive politically motivated witch hunts are what caused this shitstorm in the first place. Reyk YO! 08:52, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- It's a good thing Tank Man didn't share your attitude towards "Terms of Use." Mr Ernie (talk) 08:53, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Congrats. You've officially sold out the community. Please resign. Seriously, I have no sympathy or respect for anyone who demands that the people who built this encyclopedia must humbly bow to the people who happen to own the servers. And it's particularly astonishing when this sentiment comes not from a WMF staffer, but from one of our own. Your suggestion of bans is the icing on your totalitarian cake. Lepricavark (talk) 11:59, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- "
request for anyone supporting this to have any elevated privileges revoked and to be issued a one year ban
" There has been a lot over over-inflated nonsense written over the last few days, but that is possibly the most ridiculous and laughable piece of rubbish of the lot. - SchroCat (talk) 12:02, 12 June 2019 (UTC) - @TheDJ: si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses. ——SerialNumber54129 12:19, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose I doubt this can be done, other than symbolically, but I would oppose even that, not least for the reasons in the latter part of Iridescent's !vote, and those given by TheDJ Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 08:42, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose I'm not a fan of how the Fram matter has been handled at all, but this proposal isn't part of the solution. The WMF has the right to do what it's done under the terms of use, and banning its account is both impossible and pointless. A much better use of WP:AN would be to gain agreement by lots of admins to a complaint about the WMF's approach here - I'd like to hope that the admin corps' views carry a fair bit of weight, but expressing this through a gesture as is proposed here is a bad idea. Nick-D (talk) 08:45, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose - Back in the day we had a principle that you don't disrupt Wikipedia to make a point... As Cullen says, this is a time to think and reflect, not indulge in this kind of harmful posturing. The Land (talk) 08:47, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- WMFOffice threw the first stone on that front. Again, the ban on Fram is time-limited and en.wp only, they're claiming everything is privil;eged yet don'tt escalate Fram's ban for revealing stuff on Commons, they completely overrode ArbCom (who is MORE than capable of handling this sort of hing), and they've refused to discuss anything with the community (including everything which, due to Fram's words, is not privileged). Again, if the WMFOffice took ten minutes to make its case for the bans to ArbCom or the community as opposed to just glossing over it in the monthly teleconference (per OR) then we wouldn't be here discussing whether or not the Office's role account should be banned for their behaviour, especially since this is the sort of behaviour any admin would get deopped and blocked/banned over. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 08:53, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- @The Land: - to really
think and reflect
, we would need to know from WMF, exactly why Fram was banned. starship.paint (talk) 08:59, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Support per nom, and because role accounts are fundamentally bad, and a powerful role account, anonymously controlled is extremely irresponsible. AUthorised WMF staff should use individually accessed account, a basic rule of security, but by far mostly for transparency and honesty. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:52, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose' as WP:POINTy. We could say much about the Terms of use and about the WMF-community relation status, but this requires time and a more organised discussion within the community. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:58, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose. So we seek more communication and transparency from the office, and to achieve that, we will ban them from communicating with us? That aside, any such action would only be seen as retaliatory, and that is not the way to proceed. ST47 (talk) 08:59, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Where is your outspoken opinion against malicious retaliation at WP:FRAM? Sometimes I swear the WMF has a canned fanbase cheering them on like they're a shitty developer at E3. ~Swarm~ {sting} 09:09, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) That is of no import. Any named "(WMF)" account is claimed to be "official" and not used for personal edits. They could still communicate through that method and at least we'd have a name then. Assuming they didn't just unblock it anyway. - Sitush (talk) 09:11, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Strong support WMF processes which aren't emergencies need to be 100% transparent where every action is documented and presented properly on-wiki before enforcement. WMF has violated their duty in helping the community by superseding the role of the community in conduct-related sanctions. Until a proper ban policy is placed, the WMF should be disallowed from taking any actions on the English Wikipedia. Period. --qedk (t 桜 c) 09:12, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Strong support even if it is technically just symbolic. --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:19, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose symbolically or otherwise. Let's not be in a rush to burn things down. And I say that with feeling. Whatever the merits of of the ban of Fram and especially the way they've handled things since, I do not believe we've behaved any better since. If anything, we've demonstrated to the WMF that they are right not to trust us to make level-headed, reasonable and fair decisions. Further as a non symbolic gesture, we're getting in the way of the important work the WMFOffice need to do some of which is not project specific. (To be clear, I'm not referring to any project specific bans/blocks of editors.) Finally while I'm not an expert on Californian employee law, or employment law anywhere really, from what I do know the law in a lot of jurisdictions mean that the WMF actually likely have a far greater duty of care to their employees than to any of us whether we like it or not. If we think we can force them to submit the many staff involved to this especially the lower level ones to a lynch mob, I'm sure we have another think coming. Again, we've simply re-enforced to the WMF that it makes sense to use role accounts for this from what we've said and done. Nil Einne (talk) 09:21, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- full support for this statement. Well formulated. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:28, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Minor clarification on my final point: "Again, we've simply re-enforced to the WMF that it makes sense to use role accounts for this sort of stuff which are surely only enacted after multiple people have agreed anyway so can't really be ascribed to one individual in the first place, from what we've said and done. (Simple mistakes like effectively extending the ban for 2 days are the only thing which can likely be ascribed to one particular person in this mess.) Even if the WMF is convinced somehow, and I think we've made it clear already how we feel, to stop using a role account, it's only likely to be some very high level person who is involved in signing of on what's happening. " Nil Einne (talk) 09:31, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- This aspect of employment law ('duty of care to employees') is an often overlooked point. Some (especially TheDJ here) have made that point forcefully. It is entirely possible that the continued expansion in numbers of WMF employees and their interaction with the editing communities, will increasingly see this sort of thing happen, where the needs of WMF employees and employment law trump the needs of the editing communities (for transparency and having the freedom to make forceful critiques). That sort of conflict should be avoided where possible, ironically because in the long-run the future of the WMF and the movement and jobs it sustains is dependent on maintaining healthy editing communities (to be clear here, I am talking about the demoralising effect heavy-handed WMF actions have on the editing community). If this escalates and leads to a [likely failed] attempt at a fork, the damage may be irreparable. What may really be needed here is to get people who understand these issues elected to the WMF Board, to oversee a culture change at the WMF. Carcharoth (talk) 10:07, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Support,absolutely. At themoment thataccount is in breachof multiple behavioural guidelines and should be treated—whether symbolically or not—like any other editor.If nothing else, it may perhaps havethe effect ofreminding the WMF of the quality of behaviour we expect as a community.——SerialNumber54129 09:27, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose. I'm greatly troubled by the recent events, but it is correct that actions on behalf of the WMF Office should not be pinned on a single individual. In this case, can you imagine the opprobrium that would be heaped upon any individual who performed these actions in their own name? There has to be a way for WMF employees to act on the direction of the WMF without the employee tasked with pressing the actual buttons suffering the backlash personally. The problem here is what the WMF did and how they did it, not which account was used to do it and which individual was tasked with doing it. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 09:40, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- But the buck has to stop somewhere. That's why people get paid the big money, whether at the WMF or any other business or charity. - Sitush (talk) 09:50, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- The buck should not stop at the messenger. And, seriously, empty angry escalation like this is absolutely *not* the way to resolve it. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 10:10, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- I find it perfectly reasonable that the WMF wouldn't want a single employee harassed (for being the messenger as Boing! says, because decisions are made by multiple people collectively). Galobtter (pingó mió) 10:18, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- But they're happy to point the finger at Fram? FWIW, I don't agree with all of the speculation about the LauraHale accusation, so that cuts both ways except for the fact that the LH thing is/has been indeed speculation whereas the Fram situation is actuality. - Sitush (talk) 11:02, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Oh, and I meant to add: the buck has to stop not with the messenger but with the person ultimately responsible for running the show, either right at the top or departmentally. That would be Jan E., I think, in this instance. I seem to recall James Alexander was willing to put his name to awkward things on wiki. - Sitush (talk) 11:05, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Yes, I think this issue needs to be owned by a senior individual. But that's not a good reason for trying to ban and block the WMFOffice role account. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:25, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- The buck goes to The ED User:Katherine (WMF) and before her User:Mdennis (WMF) Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:35, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Yes, I think this issue needs to be owned by a senior individual. But that's not a good reason for trying to ban and block the WMFOffice role account. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:25, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- But the buck has to stop somewhere. That's why people get paid the big money, whether at the WMF or any other business or charity. - Sitush (talk) 09:50, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Support--Summer ... hier! (talk) 09:48, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose This will only have the effect of making communication harder and more fraught. You don't shoot the messenger, and you certainly don't do it before you've even heard the message. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 09:50, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- They've already given us their message. It's canned orders over loudspeaker. We're rejecting that because it's of absolutely no help[ in understanding what the hell has gone on. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 10:07, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose, this is not helpful. Civil disobedience, protestations, and reasonable actions to demonstrate that in this instance they are doing the wrong thing, yes yes yes. Blocking the main role account of the Foundation that owns Wikipedia, which is used to protect the project from legal issues and protect people where there are safety concerns, no no no. Fish+Karate 10:00, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- @Fish and karate: WMFOffice rarely takes actions, if and when an emergency need arises, they can use another role account, that is barely a justification to not ban the main account as a symbolic move. --qedk (t 桜 c) 10:07, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Support per everything Swarm said.Smeat75 (talk) 10:05, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Support per Pudeo: WP:NOTHERE. --A.Savin (talk) 10:20, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Support The account is behaving in a disruptive manner, contrary to the interests of the encyclopaedia and the community, and is refusing to engage in any meaningful discussion thereof. DuncanHill (talk) 10:27, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Support per Swarm. Oshawott 12 ==()== Talk to me! 10:28, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Support Let them put their names to these out-of-process blocks. Chris Troutman (talk) 10:32, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose We do not have enough information to know whether this was out of process and I support the WMF's right to intervene even in local matters regarding trust and safety issues. StudiesWorld (talk) 10:37, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose Admins who want to take a vacation from ad-mining just take the vacation don't use tools. We all agree to Wikipedia:Terms of Use every-time we edit or post or act, and WP:CONEXCEPT is the Wikipedia:Consensus. Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:40, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Support per Swarm and others. The coward(s) hiding behind WMFOffice, handing out sanctions and robotic boilerplate responses should be ashamed of themselves. They have overstepped their just authority, and there's reason to believe that their ban of Fran was for reasons incompatible with the WMF's purpose. Note: Once the facts are known, I may change my mind. It's up to WMF to explain their actions, and there is no reason that can't be done while protecting private information not already present in page history and logs. - MrX 🖋 10:45, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Support. User:WMFOffice is required to comply with all admin conduct related policies, as they are failing to comply, making up special rules just for themselves, and refuse to be accountable, community supported sanctions are an obvious next step in line with a common understanding of natural justice and good governance of privileged sysop rights. If the WMF staff member were using their own named account rather than an anonymised role account, by WMF policy, they would be required to be accountable to local procedure. Hiding behind a role account should not be a magic cloak of invisibility to hide from community agreed policy. --Fæ (talk) 10:55, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Support - Per Fæ. This is an absurd activity from this account that warrants action. - Aoidh (talk) 11:02, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose (and the unblocks). It's just an inflammatory escalation. It will be immediately reverted by omnipotent powers and will only antagonise both sides.
- (But the WMF actions have been poor here, and need explanation) Andy Dingley (talk) 11:08, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose/Impossible. We do not have the authority to ban an official Wikimedia Foundation account from the wikis. All this will do is trigger both the Foundation and volunteers to escalate the situation even more, which is the opposite of what we need to resolve this situation. --Deskana (talk) 11:18, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Or, put another way, "They're bigger and stronger than us so we should just let them do what they want, however unethical and disruptive they are being". DuncanHill (talk) 11:20, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Support. This editor has misused their permissions repeatedly to include wheel warring, disregarded and ignored community consensus, repeatedly and deliberately undertaken disruptive actions, and has made clear that they intend to continue doing so despite repeated warnings by the community to stop. That isn't some special case—we ban editors who behave that way routinely. As to the WMF having a "duty of care" to protect its poor employees from doing their primary job, that being supporting (not lording it over) the volunteer community here, well, Tom Petty's got some advice for you. If you do not want to follow our rules and respect our community while on our project, stay off it. We don't really need you anyway. Seraphimblade Talk to me 11:27, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- "Our project", their website. If you don't want to agree to the TOU, then you are free to fork or simply stop editing. You don't get to pick and choose if and when the TOU applies while you're using the website as long as it's hosted by the WMF. -- User:KTC (talk) 11:39, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- @KTC: What TOU would that be? The TOU that WMF say Fram broke or the TOU that Fram clearly did not...? ——SerialNumber54129 11:46, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Or we could continue taking a stand against blatant overreach with the knowledge that the WMF exists because of the willingness of the users to build and maintain content. In fact, it's the content that brings in the tens-of-millions of dollars of donations feeding WMF, not MediaWiki or the server farm.- MrX 🖋 11:51, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- KTC, no, we're not going to keep seeing this falsehood. WMF is a support organization. They hold the Wikimedia trademarks and handle some affairs as a matter of convenience to the community. Their job is to keep the lights on and the servers humming, not to tell the community what to do. Wikipedia existed before the WMF did. It is not "theirs". It belongs to the community that built it, both literally (while we agree to free license our contributions, they still do belong to us) and figuratively. Seraphimblade Talk to me 11:55, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- I'm so tired of this argument. Who cares if the WMF owns the servers? They are NOT the ones building this encyclopedia. Who do people keep acting like editors are here for the sake of the WMF when it is the other way round? Telling the people who have built this site to fork or stop editing is a highly insulting response. Lepricavark (talk) 12:18, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- If you tired fine, but that seems more reason to take a rest. No need for you to get in high dudgeon with people who have and are writing the pedia, just because they are reasonable thinkers and happen to know how the internet and terms-of-use work, and are clued into exactly where they are writing and under what terms. We agreed to the TOU by posting our work here, that is the terms under which we are volunteering to write. (Now others agreed to volunteer to administrate, they agreed and are continually agreeing to volunteer to administrate under the Terms of Use.) Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:42, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- "Our project", their website. If you don't want to agree to the TOU, then you are free to fork or simply stop editing. You don't get to pick and choose if and when the TOU applies while you're using the website as long as it's hosted by the WMF. -- User:KTC (talk) 11:39, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose This is foolish and stupid. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 11:42, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- A good summary of the WMF's actions :D ——SerialNumber54129 11:46, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose. Yes, the WMF Office's actions have been (based on what is publicly known so far) stupid at best and highly suspect at worst, but there is no point in proposing unenforceable actions and escalating the conflict. This needs to be resolved at the WMF Board level via the community's Board representatives. Sandstein 11:49, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose per Boing! and my comment above. Galobtter (pingó mió) 11:55, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Strong support for whatever form of non-violent resistance is necessary to get their attention. Lepricavark (talk) 11:59, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Support as per Swarm and others above. –Davey2010Talk 12:20, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose per Iridescent. Office actions are sometimes necessary, and we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater here. Also echoing the comments that this action would be (a) unenforceable, and (b) be premature, given the apparent ongoing efforts by DocJames and Jimbo to bring this saga to some sort of amicable resolution. — Amakuru (talk) 12:32, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- oppose. Meh. --Jayron32 12:51, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose Don't be daft, this solves nothing. Mike Peel (talk) 12:58, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose would be unhelpful at the present time. While its annoying that they are using the account for PR waffle rather than anything constructive blocking it wouldn't be constructive either.©Geni (talk) 13:04, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Support, a strong message should be sent, either this is a community ran and maintained project or not, the actions are fundementally adverse to how dispute resolution should be. Shame on Jimbo Wales for allowing this to happen. Hell in a Bucket (talk) 13:10, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Arbcom. They wheel warred against Floquenbeam, pure and simple. "Break the wheel, Arbcom's deal." I wonder if they've got any immunity in policy against that. Wnt (talk) 13:11, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Support - Violation of the username policy. CoolSkittle (talk) 13:16, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose per Iridescent. Newyorkbrad (talk) 13:26, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose per Iridescent. In stark contrast to some, I think I would feel different about a CBAN against individual (WMF) accounts given the need to make a statement about the lack of comity between the en community and the WMF at the moment.Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 13:42, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose I get why this has been proposed but I don't think it would help.-- Pawnkingthree (talk) 13:44, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose. Have to be real here, not only will this ban serve zero purpose as it is practically impossible to enforce, but also it doesn't solve any ongoing problem. On one way WMF Office can simply override such a ban and continue the actions similar to what they have already done, while on the other way if they "comply with" the ban and still need to make Office actions they can simply globally lock accounts (including the ones reversing the Office's actions, see Shahirmihad--note this particular action was done at this wiki instead of meta when the configurations allowed global locking action on all wikis; this has been changed so all locks can only be done at meta, but either way the account is still globally locked and cannot be logged in) and make no communication at English Wikipedia citing that they are "banned" here. I believe that the second scenario will damage our community even further, and therefore I do not support a ban that potentially hurts ourselves, even if just "symbolic". -★- PlyrStar93 →Message me. ← 13:49, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Weak Oppose: While the response from the Foundation has been nothing short of abominable, and I do have questions regarding the propriety of the usage of this role account, I cannot, at this time, authorize, accept, or otherwise allow the loss of another administrator. As Amakuru correctly notes, there is a board meeting or something along those lines (I honestly don't really care what) on Friday, and we do have two people who may advocate for us. Should circumstances change, I am willing to reconsider; but in light of the current situation, this currently unnecessary action would only serve to further fray the bonds of trust between the Foundation and the community. (Not that the bonds aren't already fraying, but I'm afraid this is a step too far right now.) —Javert2113 (Siarad.|¤) 13:53, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose The account is used for office actions and messages on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation. It has completely legitimate uses. This is not a constructive way to seek change; it's an unnecessary escalation of an already over-escalated conflict. Vermont (talk) 14:00, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Note. The WMFOffice account looks like different people use the account. It may be a general account for the WMF office. QuackGuru (talk) 14:01, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose - so this is supposed to be a dramatic symbolic gesture. Okay, those can work. But do we think it would work now - would it help pressure the WMF to open dialogue? No? Me neither. Instead it opens us to a legitimate rebuttal that we are hindering an account that protects against death threats and child pornography. If we want to win, then don't let us look like the bad guys. Nosebagbear (talk) 14:06, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose. While it seems like a good idea, the reaction is too rash and radical and does not demonstrate that we the community are a lot more intelligent than the WMF whose salaries we provide with our volunteer work. The drama is not worth it. They will be hoist with their own petard over this soon enough. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:17, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Weak Oppose. Tempers are high right now, probably on the WMF side too. At least wait until the outcome of Friday's board meeting and hopefully some better answers before driving the wedge deeper between WMF and the community. creffett (talk) 14:20, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
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User:EngFram
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If this isn't noticed: @Bishonen: forget to unblock it also --Habitator terrae (talk) 09:13, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- We can address the legitimate alt later. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 09:21, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
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Requesting removal of user right
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
As a mostly symbolic gesture in protest of the Wikimedia Foundation's inconsistent, opaque, oblivious and inadequate handling of user conduct issues on the English Wikipedia and on other Wikimedia projects, I would like to request the removal of my template editor permissions. This is the only user right I currently hold other than extended confirmed and autoconfirmed. Jc86035 (talk) 14:03, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Done. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 14:06, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
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Changes to Oversight team
The committee has been notified that GB fan (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) anticipates a period of inactivity. Accordingly, their Oversight permissions are removed. The committee sincerely thanks GB fan for their service.
Support: Callanecc, Courcelles, KrakatoaKatie, Mkdw, RickinBaltimore, Worm That Turned
Oppose: None
Not voting: AGK, Opabinia regalis, Premeditated Chaos
For the Arbitration Committee,
Katietalk 13:44, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Note regarding WP:SO
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I have received several emails from blocked sockpuppeteer Zenkaino lovelive regarding him being blocked for sockpuppetry. They were mainly regarding WP:SO and shortening the period to 2-3 months instead of 6 months.
- The first email from Zenkaino: "Dear SlitherioFan2016, I'm Zenkaino lovelive. Congraturations for your unblock! I'm blocked indefinitely because of abusing multiple accounts, but this block is occured beacuse of someone's misjudgement. I didn't use sockpuppet at all. ABOChannel is my sister's account. The block is misjudgement. What is the best way that I can do?"
- My response on Zenkaino's talk page: [8]
- Early this morning Zenkaino sent me another email: "I'm keeping waiting, but I have a question. Is it true that WP:SO is poisonous for unfairly-blocked users by misjudgement? We'll have to change SO's term from 6 months to 2-3 months. (by discussion) Because it's poisonous for unfairly-blocked users. If you want to respond, please do through e-mail, not talk page."
Zenkaino's last email prompted me to open this thread here, as I do not want to disclose my email address my responding via email. — SlitherioFan2016 (Talk/Contribs) 23:02, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- CheckUser confirms block evasion after the SPI. As this is a CheckUser block, it may only be lifted with the consent of a CheckUser. Since there is technical evidence confirming block evasion after the block, I cannot support this in my capacity as a CU. If they wish to appeal, they should contact the Arbitration Committee. TonyBallioni (talk) 23:12, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- (edit conflict)I'm not an admin, but I might be able to help. First of all, thanks for bringing this here! Second, from a cursory glance of their talk page, if their claim is truthful (that they haven't socked) then they've engaged in meatpuppetry, which is also very bad (and according to Tony, whom I just edit-conflicted with, that isn't truthful, which would limit the possibility of a successful appeal at this time to exactly zero). Third, I'm not sure what they mean by "poisonous for unfairly-blocked users by punishment"- my guess would be that it's unfair to not be able to appeal for six months when the block deserved a trial (?), but as I'm not sure, I have no comment on that part. -A lad insane (Channel 2) 23:19, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- I went to pull the user's email access and found it's been disabled since April. checkuser needed can you fine folk have a look and see what account's being used to email SlitherioFan and shut it down? Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 23:22, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Ivanvector, there were no additional accounts on two of the very sticky IPs. There was logged out block evasion, however. SlitherioFan2016, if you want to forward the email to checkuser-en-wp
wikipedia.org I can look further. Having a named account they are emailing from would be helpful if it was not their own. If they're doing it on another project from their main account, we can request the account locked if it is becoming disruptive. TonyBallioni (talk) 23:29, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- @TonyBallioni: Zenkaino was using his main account, Zenkaino lovelive, in both instances to email me. I don't see the need to forward it. SlitherioFan2016 (Talk/Contribs) 23:31, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Well then they're doing it from another wiki. @Ajraddatz: if you're around, could you lock? Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 23:34, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Yes, done. At first I was going to decline because they have 2,500 contributions on kowiki and are not unblocked, but then I looked and found that all but 1 (!!!) were in the user or user talk space. Abusing the emailuser function from other projects is enough justification for this given the circumstances. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 23:38, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Well then they're doing it from another wiki. @Ajraddatz: if you're around, could you lock? Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 23:34, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- @TonyBallioni: Zenkaino was using his main account, Zenkaino lovelive, in both instances to email me. I don't see the need to forward it. SlitherioFan2016 (Talk/Contribs) 23:31, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Ivanvector, there were no additional accounts on two of the very sticky IPs. There was logged out block evasion, however. SlitherioFan2016, if you want to forward the email to checkuser-en-wp
- I went to pull the user's email access and found it's been disabled since April. checkuser needed can you fine folk have a look and see what account's being used to email SlitherioFan and shut it down? Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 23:22, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) I feel its warranted to note that Zenkaino was active in the Discord server and repeatedly asked for guidance on how to get unblocked. The response was to wait out his 6 month SO (Octoberish? Last I recall). The topic was brought up repeatedly until he had to be warned (May 12) that bringing it up further would lead to his removal (after which he disappeared). It is my understanding that he came to Discord because he had already been banned from IRC due to similar repeated inquiries. I know offwiki doesn't have much bearing, but the pestering and seeking out every avenue possible is a reoccurring behavior. Sock accounts may need email disabled? -- ferret (talk) 23:25, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
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User:Tonybins reverts text with NOR in the article Oleksiy Poroshenko
User:DoNotArchiveUntil 11:43, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Reporting a higher than average number of spambot account creations than I usually see
Hi fellow administrators! I just wanted to start a discussion regarding the number of spambot accounts that I've seen today.
The accounts I've blocked as spambots today (so far) include MiriamZ1120644, LorraineRischbie, Tabitha64I, LeonoraBrumfield, Lawerence38B, BrainGale73656, ReyesWallen87, MckenzieColby35, LidaDunrossil, DarcyPotts9, SoilaCote58512, NonaRetzlaff976, FreddieLykins45, LionelMcCulloch, MarcyJanzen097, BudNemeth704, TahliaRounsevell, MaiCoode3106816, BeatrizBrifman, YolandaBetche86, InesHobart2775, MarianaS02, HarryHargis1, AlejandroMadison, BernieceHrm, VidaHavelock, LonnyDemko334, TyreeGriver, and MervinBlackwell.
They're easy to spot if you know what to look for: They usually always create accounts with similar usernames, which are usually a first and last name, followed by some random integers at the end. Some of their usernames omitted the last name or the ending integers or random characters, but are all generally the same. Their first edit is made to their user page, which adds some random "information about themselves", then use multiple HTML line breaks (<br><br>) between their "personal information" and the spam URL that they're trying to add at the end of their edit (they usually add exactly two HTML line breaks), followed by "Also see my blog", "my homepage", or something similar, followed by the spam link.
If you go through the deleted contributions of each user I listed above, you'll see how they started trying to change their M.O. very slightly. The next group of users made the exact same edits to their user pages as I described above, but then immediately made another edit afterwards to remove the spam portion from their user page... which is strange, but okay. Then I noticed a bunch of similar accounts simply adding "%About_Yourself%" to their own user pages (I suspect because whoever this is accidentally broke something in their code that was supposed to replace that variable or text with the actual text containing the spam before publishing the page, but I'm obviously can't be 100% sure, just fairly certain). I just wanted to ask other admins or users here if they've also noticed an increase in the number of spambot accounts being created today compared to most other days? I usually only block a small handful, maybe 4-5 per day on average. I wonder if a long-term blocked IP address expired maybe, and what we're seeing is the result of the expiration? I also wanted to ask other admins and users if they happen to see or recognize the "%About_Yourself%" edits some of these accounts are making to their own user page? I just wanted to confirm that this isn't something legitimate like a gadget, tool, wizard, or tutorial, etc that might have broken that's adding this, and not what I believe/assume is happening (someone's spam code broke).
If anyone could provide input, comments, or could answer my question regarding "%About_Yourself%", I would appreciate it very much. Please ping me in your responses so that I'm notified. :-) Thanks - ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 05:58, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
- @Oshwah: 17 seconds ago - MohammadJoris59 created their user page with the same "%About_Yourself% --DannyS712 (talk) 06:00, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
- DannyS712 - Blocked. Thank you. :-) ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 06:01, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
- @Oshwah: As I was going through the new accounts, I saw again new users creating other accounts, reminding me of Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive308#What to do with a new account creating another?. Now, I understand that they could just log out and create another, but is there any policy regarding this? --DannyS712 (talk) 06:37, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
- DannyS712 - I don't believe there's a set policy regarding what to do, but I will generally block all child accounts created by the parent account if the parent account is blocked as a VOA, spambot, etc where there's a near-zero chance that the user would use them within policy and a near-absolute chance that they'd be used to evade blocks and cause additional disruption to the project. ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 11:07, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
- @Oshwah: As I was going through the new accounts, I saw again new users creating other accounts, reminding me of Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive308#What to do with a new account creating another?. Now, I understand that they could just log out and create another, but is there any policy regarding this? --DannyS712 (talk) 06:37, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
- DannyS712 - Blocked. Thank you. :-) ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 06:01, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
- Probably not expired. [9] —Cryptic 06:06, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
- @Cryptic: What do you mean? --DannyS712 (talk) 06:07, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
- DannyS712 - There was a recent RFC that reached consensus to unblock all IP addresses that were blocked back in 2009 or earlier that are still blocked today, due to the IP addresses most likely no longer being assigned to the same user or network after 10+ years. That's what Cryptic was referring to. ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 06:36, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
- @Oshwah: I understand that, but what does that have to do with the spambots? DannyS712 (talk) 06:38, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
- DannyS712 - I believe that Cryptic was suggesting that it's possible that one or more of the IPs we recently unblocked due to the RFC enabled or made it easier for more accounts to be created due to no longer having the account creation restriction set on them because of the block. This is certainly possible, but I doubt that this is the reason. These spambots were able to be created (and have been) for quite some time, and long before the RFC mentioned even became a discussion. ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 06:42, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
- @Oshwah: I understand that, but what does that have to do with the spambots? DannyS712 (talk) 06:38, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
- DannyS712 - There was a recent RFC that reached consensus to unblock all IP addresses that were blocked back in 2009 or earlier that are still blocked today, due to the IP addresses most likely no longer being assigned to the same user or network after 10+ years. That's what Cryptic was referring to. ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 06:36, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
- @Cryptic: What do you mean? --DannyS712 (talk) 06:07, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
- @Oshwah: I've taken a look with the magic goggles. They're using some wildly dynamic IPs from around the world, with typically one edit per IP (despite the IPs being dynamic, I'd still class them as 'dodgy' - this is in no way legitimate). There's no IP that's been unblocked, and really nothing to block to prevent this. I suspect as you suggest that these are one of the regular spambots that we already know and love, with something gone wrong, which is something we see occasionally. Last time I saw this I had to be generous with the spam blacklist, and an edit filter might also help, but blocking IPs is not going to figure in the solution. -- zzuuzz (talk) 07:34, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
- Hi Zzuuzz! Thank you for the input and your response here, and for taking a look at this situation with your "special eyes". ;-) I figured exactly as such, and that this isn't due to anything that happened recently (such as an IP being unblocked) and isn't occurring from a single IP or range that can easily be blocked that will stop this. Otherwise, it would've happened long ago and this wouldn't be an issue. I'll continue to patrol the new user log and be on the lookout for user page creations with that variable I mentioned above (as well as the usual spam edit). I've added these conditions to the edit filter I created and maintain on a regular basis (#51), so this will hopefully help in catching more spambots that may get missed by others. I just realized, however, that edits from some of these users that are just adding that variable I noticed (%About_Yourself%) isn't technically a G11 (I delete the user page of the spambot as part of my normal response when I find one). I might have to go back and undelete those for not meeting the criterion. What are your thoughts on this? Should I undelete those pages? Other than that, your response unfortunately comes with no surprise and no silver bullet. Oh well; just gotta keep doing what I've been doing... :-) ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 07:44, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
- I just nabbed another of them. Pedantically speaking, I've always maintained that vandalspambots (whether working properly or not) are a G3 because they're listed at WP:Vandalism. -- zzuuzz (talk) 07:50, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
- Zzuuzz - I just did as well. Thank you for digging and for blocking any spambot accounts I've missed - much appreciated. :-) Fair enough; I'll just leave the pages as-is then. Thanks again for the input. :-) ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 08:05, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
- I just nabbed another of them. Pedantically speaking, I've always maintained that vandalspambots (whether working properly or not) are a G3 because they're listed at WP:Vandalism. -- zzuuzz (talk) 07:50, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
- Hi Zzuuzz! Thank you for the input and your response here, and for taking a look at this situation with your "special eyes". ;-) I figured exactly as such, and that this isn't due to anything that happened recently (such as an IP being unblocked) and isn't occurring from a single IP or range that can easily be blocked that will stop this. Otherwise, it would've happened long ago and this wouldn't be an issue. I'll continue to patrol the new user log and be on the lookout for user page creations with that variable I mentioned above (as well as the usual spam edit). I've added these conditions to the edit filter I created and maintain on a regular basis (#51), so this will hopefully help in catching more spambots that may get missed by others. I just realized, however, that edits from some of these users that are just adding that variable I noticed (%About_Yourself%) isn't technically a G11 (I delete the user page of the spambot as part of my normal response when I find one). I might have to go back and undelete those for not meeting the criterion. What are your thoughts on this? Should I undelete those pages? Other than that, your response unfortunately comes with no surprise and no silver bullet. Oh well; just gotta keep doing what I've been doing... :-) ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 07:44, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
- (Non-administrator comment) @Oshwah: Just in case you weren't familiar with it - the user page format ("about me", <br><br>, spam URL) looks like the NTSAMR pattern. I believe there's a private filter that tries to catch these, might need some updating. If you were familiar with it, well, oops. Hopefully someone else who reads this wasn't. creffett (talk) 13:18, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
- Creffett - That's good information; thank you for replying and for taking the time to provide it to me. I'll take a look and check out the edit filter. I also added conditions to the one that I maintain (#51) that have been catching edits from that spam user. I'll see what needs to be updated on the other. :-) Cheers - ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 13:49, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
- Filter 499 catches a few spambots as well. MER-C 17:25, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
- (Non-administrator comment) Spotted a handful more of the failed text replacements (all very stale, but might as well be thorough): User:JanKnaggs8063, User:SusannahMetcalfe, User:CharlotDCH, User:MalloryDickey, User:RobertoJOJ, User:AlyciaNickle12, User:IHSKimberqu, User:ChantalGalarza0, User:GingerPhelan, User:NickolasWIW, User:FaeSchaafwpudx, and omitted a couple that are globally locked already. Not too important, since the main spam link failed, but if anyone's interested in watching for this in the future the search I used was
insource:"about yourself" insource:/%About_Yourself%/(might also be worth adding some variant of this to the filter). creffett (talk) 23:46, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
User:Marina1banch Linkspam/Paid editing? Seeking guidance
I'm seeking guidance on how to proceed, and not necessarily any particular action.
All contributions by this user follow the exact same pattern: They add a "new" fact to the article, and always contain a reference with a link to an article on social.techcrunch.com - see the latest example (they are all the same, basically).
The user has been active for some months, none of their contributions cited any other reference than techcrunch and they did not make any other type of edit.
While each edit in itself seems innocuous, the overall pattern may indicate an agenda. I'm unsure on how one would proceed with this, so I'm bringing it up with the admins who may have more power to investigate.
I'll be leaving the required notice on the user's talk page, but they have not previously engaged on talk pages, even in a previous ANI case. Averell (talk) 06:32, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
- This was previously discussed here. Clear possibility of COI editing.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 07:08, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
Request for Assistance at Dispute Resolution Noticeboard
The Dispute Resolution Noticeboard has a long-term shortage of active volunteers willing occasionally to open a case for moderated discussion. Most of the volunteers at this noticeboard are not administrators, but we welcome both administrators and non-administrators, and we also welcome administrative assistance on difficult cases (and with occasional disruption of the board). If you want to make a small additional contribution toward civllity in Wikipedia (and I know that most of you are already working toward that objective), please consider either adding your name to the list of volunteers and checking the board every few days, or verifying that you are already one of the volunteers and checking the board every few days, or just checking the board every few days.
Thank you. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:02, 14 June 2019 (UTC)