Jump to content

User talk:Beetstra/Archive 17

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Archive 10←Archive 15Archive 16Archive 17Archive 18Archive 19Archive 20

Moved page

Hi Beetstra! Just wanted to let you know that I moved WikiProject Spam/LinkReports/westerncivilisation.hautetfort.com from articlespace to the Wikipedia space. Thought you might want to remove the redirect page created by the move after fixing the bot. Happy editing! GoingBatty (talk) 19:10, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that. I agree, it is a bug, but I have no clue why the bot is 'missing' the namespace (which is hardcoded in the settings): i18n.linksaver.basepath=Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spam .. as if the MediaWiki software forgets something there. --Dirk Beetstra T C 16:02, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

WP:PERM Request

If you are not on a hard WikiBreak, would you please look at Wikipedia:Requests_for_permissions/Autopatrolled#User:Pdfpdf. Thank you, — xaosflux Talk 15:18, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Please note, this is not a request to explain administrative actions, no response needed if you want to just stay out of it; I'll take a non-response as a non-objection. — xaosflux Talk 16:06, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

I'll leave it. It is long ago, and I continue to apply my WP:AGF on this. --Dirk Beetstra T C 16:03, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

MediaWiki: bookielist.com

Hi, can you please check [1] to place your idea. Thanks. Karlhard (talk) 14:50, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

I'll have a look. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:43, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Your listings

Dear Beetstra,

what was the purpose and how have you generated your Chemical listings?--Kopiersperre (talk) 17:22, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

I presume you mean the ones in my userspace? I generated these using a scripted version of User:CheMoBot's algorithms to extract chembox information, and have the values compared to online resources / downloaded lists. The lists originally were for comparing the ones which were 'wrong' (i.e.: unequal). --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:42, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
Which online resources do you use for comparison? Do the lists have still any use?--Kopiersperre (talk) 21:11, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
The primary sources were used - drugbank provides a file that you can download containing all Drugbank-IDs, CAS has a site with CAS-number and the compounds they represent, chemspider.com has compounds by ChemSpiderID and provides CAS, InChI, etc. etc. I just pulled the data and cross-check, having the script reporting discrepancies between what we have on Wikipedia and these databases.
The list could be used, but should be refreshed - they are very old and Wikipedia and the databases have moved on (more data available, values on Wikipedia have been corrected since, etc.). The editors active in the field are currently not very actively working on 'getting the identifiers right' (just doing it as they move on, I don't even know if the indices are updated regularly at the moment). I don't have much time nor resources to work on this at the moment. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:53, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Sneak preview

re InChI in chembox: you can take a preview, but please please do not ignite a debate or comments there before I publish the proposal. While juggling 30+ templates (or 150+) I cannot use distractions. pv1, pv2, pv3 -DePiep (talk) 11:08, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. This all looks good on my system, but the problem is that this is difficult to test on a system that does not have any form of Java .. I can technically turn of Javascript and see, but I am not sure if that is representative for what happens to the show/hide of long 'unbreakable' InChIs on those other systems. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:32, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
The Sandbox version on pv1 works with JavaScript turned off, the original does not. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:37, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
OK this way. I'll keep this at hand. Maybe you know: from my desktop(-view), I can check mobile view using the very last hyperlink on any wiki page. Assuming that mobile=no java, these test go OK so far. -DePiep (talk) 12:41, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
FYI, I am changing the names-block too (header, show/hide, long strings, organisation). Has this same linebreak issue of course. -DePiep (talk) 12:46, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
(edit conflict)I turned it off in my chrome settings - that currently screws up a page massively. Not sure what happens on systems that do not have Java - lets try on my Android phone - Indeed, no Java-script there, SMILES and InChI standard shown, have to find now a page with a long InChI. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:48, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
Added pv4 for long-string InChI's &tc. Has that new hot teixobactin antibiotic. If you know others to test, pls mention them. The java-points you raise, I will use later. -DePiep (talk) 13:52, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
I made sure it screws up now - try unhiding the InChIs with Javascript turned off in your browser. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:12, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

OK. Question: I check the testcases in mobile view and in desktop view. When you talk about Java present/switched on/switched off, does that require other checks? -DePiep (talk) 09:03, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Hmm .. what I do is, in Chrome, go to the settings, open up the advanced settings, go to the 'Privacy' section, and click 'Content settings ..' - there you have 'Javascript' section with 'O Allow all sites run Javascript (recommended)' and 'O Do not allow any site to run Javascript' - I select the latter and close the settings. Then I go to Wikipedia and press F5 to refresh. That does it - that should show the same result as people who have no Java, or who have it standard turned off: they get a screwed up page with a chembox wider than the page, overwriting menus etc. (it will go over the toolbox you have on the left of the page), and unable to 'hide' it.
Note, also with Javascript turned on, the right-hand box that I just edited with the long 'aaaa-aaaaaa' string goes to full-page width, whereas the left box seems to be locked at a certain width. So you may have solved the problem in the sandbox version! --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:16, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
That's a "how" not a "whether" ;-) , I won't go there myself. Guess your conclusion is right. -DePiep (talk) 14:49, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

User Guru78x appears to be back as CartoonFan2015

CartoonFan2015 is a new user who is undoing all of the reversions made to Guru78x's External Link changes. Perhaps the IP address can be blocked? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lazlocollins (talk • contribs) 04:57, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

User:CartoonFan2015 is a sock of User:Guru78x (or more gently, Guru78x is block evading with CartoonFan2015). Since the original account is blocked with blocking of the underlying IP, it is likely that they are on a different IP already, and that blocking of the IP is not helping. I have indeffed CartoonFan2015, and changed the block of Guru78x to indef as well. Report new users that show the same behaviour to WP:AIV, then revert the edits as vandalism (note that you are 3RR exempt on reverting vandalism, see WP:3RR). --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:03, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Excellent. I will come to you for guidance if needed if you do not mind (I know you are very busy so will limit this to true issues). Thank you again for the assistance and also the educating me on multiple Wiki-things. Lazlocollins (talk) 06:41, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Spamming by User talk:Icemanwcs

Thank you for your response on the Spam blacklist. I have warned the editor 1st warning from me but he has been advised in the past to not use himself as a source and concerns were raised by others about listing his own website repeatedly. Unfortunately he did not heed that advice and actually increased his spamming external links, further reading and article references which is self promoting WP:SPAMMER. I suspect he may continue to spam many articles so I am asking if you would be willing to also notify him about proper editing practices as well. It may help and also cause him to reconsider if he plans on re-spamming the many articles. I have spent several hours reading his edits and deleting many (not all) of his edits and references to his website. I am not claiming perfection but I am trying to maintain consistency with wiki policy. I actually feel I have left to much of his self serving spam. I also see a disturbing trend that most of his edits have the single purpose of promoting his own website, books and articles which raises the question of whether his account is a single purpose account WP:SPA. Thanks for your time. 172.56.9.67 (talk) 05:12, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

  • Thanks for the help with removing the link spam and sorry I got behind with the task. I was reading the RSN noticeboard concerning Icemanwcs and found something interesting which ultimately led to further delving or diving into a wallow. I reported what I saw as a possible sock by an editor who was recently blocked for socking and because of being an IP I had to endure much suspicion and illogical assumptions. That will teach me to stray into controversial articles. I got bit so hard I my lower brain housing group is still sore. I will look further into the link spam and try to keep an eye on the editors posts for awhile as time permits. I blew most of my free time so I am in need of a break to focus on other matters. I just went and found a barn star for your hard work.
The Wikilink Barnstar
Great Work Eliminating Link Spam 208.54.38.226 (talk) 05:18, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
Thanks! Did some cleanup last week, but there is still more - The references seem to be mainly for one task: linking to their own site and sell the book, these references are not linking to the book itself. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:19, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Tim Pool page

I'm not a writer. I don't work at vice anymore. I am the director of media innovation at Fusion. I havent primarily shot through a phone since 2012. I host documentaries and run a tech startup. You can google all of this or read about it in the NYTimes


It is frustrating to see this page wrong all the time but there is nothing I can do about it. It is even more frustrating to see someone finally correct/update it only to get into a dispute with several people who don't actually check the updates and references. Source -I'm Tim Pool — Preceding unsigned comment added by Timdpool (talk • contribs) 03:22, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Please, contact WP:OTRS - random changes by IPs are often reverted because they are difficult to check, as is the fact whether you are in fact Tim Pool. --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:28, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Aren't you supposed to check references before making changes to wikipedia pages? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.80.113.221 (talk) 09:55, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Regardless of whether IPs are hard to track, you made several changes without checking sources. Please go back to the page, check the sources then fix it. If you want to make changes or protect it then you should be responsible for removing or checking references as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Timdpool (talk • contribs) 15:17, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

You are mainly removing sourced information (some of it somewhat negatively stated), and the only source you add is in the title stating 'fusion-expected-to-name-tim-pool-its-director-of-media-innovation' (my bolding) - that is not enough, and that is what I saw (and not 'supposed to check').
As I said, your way to go is through WP:OTRS if there is negative information that needs removing, and explaining your edits properly, e.g. on the talkpage of the page that you want to edit/have edited. Just to note, the way you changed the page is also not according to our policies and guidelines. Please review that. --Dirk Beetstra T C 15:28, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

No, I actually did not edit the page. I do track it though and it is fairly inaccurate. You removed an accurate source but leave the inaccurate ones. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.45.205.233 (talk) 12:34, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

First, yes, you did, see Special:Contributions/24.45.205.233

Secondly, the source states 'expected to name' / 'is expected to announce' - that is NOT a reference that that actually happened yet, you'd need another source for that.

Moreover, that same source you added that talks about expecting to be named, states 'most recently worked for Vice Media', and that is referenced information that you actually removed. Your added source is not corroborating the information that you add, and the information (+references) that you remove are corroborated by the references, including the one you added.

As I said, if there are inaccuracies, either get proper sources, and/or if there is information that HAS to be removed, go through WP:OTRS. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:56, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Ref parameters

In {{chembox}}, the bot uses parameter names like |StdInChI_Ref=. At the moment, there also exist parameters like |Melting_ref= to add a formal <ref> to the data. This introduces possible confusion. Because _Ref is not actually a reference (it's more more like a _check), could we change that? Is it possible in the long long term to change that _Ref suffix, and make "_ref" available for (manual) references? -DePiep (talk) 15:22, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Never thought about that confusion .. it can be changed, the problem is that if there are old _Ref fields, that the bot would ignore those, and add new _check fields to all pages.
It is a matter of changing the settings and the bot will follow that, but maybe a quick run with another bot or AWB at exactly that same time to move all old fields to the new one would be a good thing. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:14, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Spam blacklist

You're correct. Thanks for the fix! Nyttend (talk) 12:34, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

You're welcome! --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:59, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

A bad template move I did

Resolved

About:

Template:Chemboximage(edit talk links history) (no redirect: Template:Chemboximage)
Template:Chembox image check(edit talk links history)

A year ago I moved template {{chemboximage}} to {{chembox image check}} (as uncontroversial RM). That was a bad idea, because the bot works fine with the old name. I propose/request that you undo (revert) that move, and make {{chemboximage}} the one and only. I have not enough rights myself, and you checking me is not bad either.

(I did move the template to separate the parameter name. Prevent confusion with parameters like |imagefile=. For the mental eye of an editor this might help, but back then I did not understand what the bot is doing). -DePiep (talk) 14:22, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Done, via an other way. -DePiep (talk) 16:36, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Change protection request

 Done

Hi. You have set PP protection on these two templates (in 2010). Can you change it (loosen it) to Template-protection?

In a few days I'll make the big {{Chembox}} changeover. I'd like to switch these too in the same run. I only have TE rights, no admin. -DePiep (talk) 16:00, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

I see this was already done. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:09, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
Yes, PP into TEMPL-PROT it a free question anyway I discovered. -DePiep (talk) 10:30, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Verify or watch indexed parameters

In the coming days I plan to update {{chembox}} with indexed ID fields. I mentioned this above, in #New parameters in {Chembox} for the bot. Seven ID's will be indexed "0"–1–7 each. They are: CASNo, CheMBL, ChemSpiderID, InChI, PubChem, SMILES, UNII. All indexes know & show the _Ref= marker (so |UNII7_Ref= works as expected).

  • For the bot changes, I have created User:CheMoBot/Settings.css/sandbox (.css extension to add?). Changed for {{Chembox}}: 1. sorted field names alphabetically; 2. added all indexed fields (only the "0"-index was there: |CASNo=). The diff is [2]. Is this proposal (the sandbox) correct?
  • The bot checking logic is a bit difficult for me. If I am introducing errors, I need a warning. If I understand this correct, missing _Ref markers in verified/watched fields are not an error, but better be bot-added in the future to be ok.
  • WikiData: not touched, not used.
  • I'll write more notes about these and other changes on Template talk:Chembox, and there are testcases links. -DePiep (talk) 16:42, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
  • Also in the sandbox: added |IUPACnames= (the plural). This parameter allows the editor to indicate that it has multiple names, so infobox label or header can spell in plural too. Gently. -DePiep (talk) 17:58, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
I'll have a look at the settings, the diff looks fine I think.
The settings are in a 'css', so that they are automatically protected (.css pages in your userspace are only editable by you and by admins - if I log into my CheMoBot-account, I can change the settings as well - If I ever would not be an admin anymore, or give control over the bot to a non-admin, at least the settings can be adapted).
Where are you afraid of introducing errors - if there are fields in the settings that are managed by the bot, but where the box can not handle it? The bot would just add a _Ref, but the template would ignore it. I guess at some time one could do a search whether there are unsupported fields being filled in in the pages, if that are _Ref fields then you know it.
I'll have a second look at the settings and what you intend to add - and let the bot loose on it. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:20, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
  • Question. About |CASNo= in {{Chembox}}. If an editor adds or removes that parameter having no =value before or after, does the bot fire and changes an |CASNo_Ref= setting? -DePiep (talk) 15:33, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
Consider answered. I am getting to understanding the bot action. -DePiep (talk) 10:31, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist

Hi, you've left several topics on hold here for some months. Please can you resolve them definitively somehow? Stifle (talk) 09:34, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, I saw. I guess these could all be closed - the blacklist rules were removed to give the spammers free game .. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:38, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:InChI

Template:InChI has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. DePiep (talk) 12:45, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Please update CheMoBot/Settings.css

Please copy User:CheMoBot/Settings.css/sandbox live into User:CheMoBot/Settings.css at first opportunity. Let's keep an eye on bot functioning; I'd like to have a warning if something is wrong. When it is stable, I can put the big {{Chembox}} changes live. -DePiep (talk) 14:20, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

OK, thanks for part 1. FYI, yesterday I added the ChEBI as indexed series. -DePiep (talk) 10:29, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
1. make complete for the verified params
2. more universal
3. catch & handle some errors (eg whitespace in input; handle unk "crroect" input)
4. all have the same pattern
5. categorize only in mainspace
6. use "Category:... with changed X identifier" names. Some needed to be created. See here.
7. The "No CAS reg number in chembox" categories are not filled by these bot templates. That is/should be done in template code. See here.
Notes: I'll check the effects for {{drugbox}}. btw, the tick-setting was performed twice: also in the {{chembox}} code after input! (so it was checking for |CASNo_Ref=changed lol -- here). Removed this second harmless & useless check.
Testing this mucho in testcases/5. Things unclear? -DePiep (talk) 10:56, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Last minute code change

I have decided to pull some changes from the proposals, now tested in the sandboxes:

The new, indexed identifiers numbered -6 and -7 will not be implemented.

That is, |CASNo6= and |CASNo7= are off. As are the others for ChemSpider6/7, UNII6/7, ChEMBL6/7, ChEBI6/7, InChI6/7, PubChem6/7, SMILES6/7.

The reason is that I discovered (must be by coincidence ;-) ) that {{chembox}} & {{drugbox}} is quite complicated and big already. Reducing this number makes it possible to expand indexes in the future (eg for DrugBank and KEGG), pre-Lua. Template being in wiki markup code sets some limit here.

As for CheMoBot:

  1. I have prepared code in User:CheMoBot/Settings.css/sandbox, starting with your last live code (=after your Feb 1st edits). I deleted the dropped parameters, see the diff.
  2. My intention was that the sandbox could go live right away (but be sure to take a look).
  3. I saw that you also added DrugBankN indexes. I see where that comes from, but for now DrugBank is not proposed to be indexed. Because I did a feature freeze, I wont add that one this time. But you can leave it in there for future option. (btw, KEGG is in exactly the same boat: "verified id, but not indexed yet").
  4. I understand I can proceed, include going live, without breaking any bot action.
-DePiep (talk) 10:25, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
The bot / code are fine next to each other, you will not break anything. I'll have a second look at the settings one of these days when I have time. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:26, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

More of the same

I'll try to have a look when I have time. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:39, 10 February 2015 (UTC)
Thanks. I made a mistake earlier: |PubChem= is not verified, but watched. Changed in the sandbox, see the diff link. AFAIK, can be updated. -DePiep (talk) 20:54, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Some clarification

I owe you some clarification about my position re renaming |*_Ref= parameters. These weeks I am working on complicated Chembox issues (RC). These are the topics I am involved in:

  • Temperatures conversion & formatting
  • Image presentation & formatting
  • Names and variant names
  • Collapsing InChI and SMILES names
  • Infobox subheader layout
  • Wikitable-as-infobox
  • Incidental issues like texts, wikilinks and formatting
  • Indexing and linking of parameters
  • External links, with uncommon format
  • Maintenance categories for mainspace only - but test in testpages
  • Decide and handle parameter deprecation

All this requires those /sandbox chains, variant testing, and a lot of administration for 500+ params and 150+ templates. (last change Feb 6 required 45 live template updates). For bot-related issues, I discovered new workings last weeks, which helped me:

  • Find out what the bot does & what I can/cannot touch
  • align the {{cascite}} series of bot-templates: make them work consistent,
  • Create or rename the bot maint categories into completeness & cosistency
  • Update the bot css data to perform as desired
  • While on the other hand, I explicitly did not want to change bot process nor validation-helping editors

On top of this:

  • And then all this is made complicated exponantionally because {{drugbox}} is in the same boat.
  • Plus, think of the common ambition to merge the two templates in a future, and make them module-based.

In short, I could not use an AWB parameter change being run, while I am juggling all 500+ parameters here. In parameter names, of course the bot cannot operate solitary (the template would need changes too). For all this, the best I can have is a stable and non-obiquous bot. And were this fleshed out in a talk, I could have noted all this before. -DePiep (talk) 20:33, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

I am sorry for jumping the gun a bit. Your concern was completely valid. I was considering that it would make the administration easier if a_ref is for a reference, that b_ref then is not for a check-value. As the bot will now start performing edits adding more of the _ref-fields I though it better to get them out of the way ASAP.
I'll leave initiating the changeover to you - I do think it should be done at some point in the future. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:16, 12 February 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for this reply. Yes it better be done at some point itf, as "_ref" should not confuse. Maybe a rename-bot will visit all pages anyway when going Lua. -DePiep (talk) 07:11, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

DJ Marfox

Hi there, Thank you kindly for revising DJ Marfox's english wiki. According to you "External links are not meant to tunnel people away from the wikipedia" — why???? In fact, if you consider that wiki is the first page that people look at it is only fair that they are redirected to other sites — that is the WHOLE point of the internet.

I understand that wikis should be as uniform as they can possible be, but there should also be room for different points of you, would you not agree? I would like to "undo" your edit for the reason stated about as well as because I have included those links at the request of the artist and I would like to abide by his guidelines.

Mariana Raposa — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mariana Raposa (talk • contribs) 13:22, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Because that is what the community has codified in the policies and guidelines that I and others have pointed you to on a regular basis. E.g. we are not linking to everything related to a person, we only use their official site, plus what is adding encyclopedic information beyond what is includable. A twitter account, e.g. does NOT do that, and we will exclude them, and/or remove them wherever they do not belong.
The artist is not to decide what is in the article, that is up to our policies and guidelines. The artist can suggest what they think is important, but we are not writing an advertisement for him, what gets in there should be notable. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:16, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Don't understand a reversion and deletion re: Bruce Ames

Hi Dirk, yesterday I was editing Bruce_Ames I got rid of a spammy link (to Juvenon), and added a real link to a recent interview where Dr Ames explains more recent theories on nutrition and his triage theory. For some reason my spam link deletion got reverted by a bot(!) and then you came and deleted the other, real links, including my new one. I'm a bit confused, and the srticle is kind of thin as it is.

you said: "External links--> So what do these add .. if interviews are adding significant information, the significant info should be included, otherwise they are superfluous per WP:EL"

and when i looked in the WP:EL it says: "Some acceptable links include those that contain further research that is accurate and on-topic, information that could not be added to the article for reasons such as copyright or amount of detail, or other meaningful, relevant content that is not suitable for inclusion in an article for reasons unrelated to its accuracy."

I don't really understand the connection between those statements in this context. The WP:EL says that further detail is appropriate, which is what i was trying to do here, since he is an eminent scientist, and his entry is anyway fairly short. (I'm not a scientist or qualified to add extensively to the text, unfortunately) So, the result of the deletion is a 20 year gap in referencing his work. A couple of links to high quality additional information are extremely helpful to understand the theories and continuation of his research, particularly if no other layman reference is present.

Anyway, the end result is an article left with much less information for the visitor than it started with, which is a shame. I'm sure you are busy and don't have the time to check out all links, but the ones you deleted (at least i can vouch for the krazney, though it is older, and the interview I just added) as really adding valuable information about his work over the years.

What do I do here? Thanks! Wiki88ikiw (talk) 05:31, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

The connection is a bit later in said guideline: "... it is not Wikipedia's purpose to include a lengthy or comprehensive list of external links related to each topic. No page should be linked from a Wikipedia article unless its inclusion is justifiable according to this guideline and common sense." There are 11 references and quite some prose. Although an interview with the subject can be adding to understanding of the subject, that then also means that that information can be included and used as a reference. If that extra information is not encyclopedic, or if that information is already there and referenced to something else, then this interview is not helping the reader (much) further in understanding the subject (the subject should be understandable through the Wikipedia-prose of the article, and such articles do not need extra external links to explain it further).
Now there were four interviews - what significant information did one add over the other, how to choose (well, clearly, go through a talkpage discussion and find out whether one is needed and which one). --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:29, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi Dirk, thanks for your time. I am committed to figuring out how to have a high quality article. We are discussing three links, since one was clearly inappropriate and I already tried to delete it. A layman's background article in a well known magazine, an audio link discussing his work, and a very recent video interview summing his work and its implications. Those three links cover, in an accessible and accurate way, the last 20 years of his work, which is not currently touched upon at all elsewhere in the article. Since the article now truncates the last 20 years, the end result is a very significantly less comprehensive article. I honestly believe these links would fit the guidelines you've pointed to, since deleting all reference to a reasonable summary of the recent work of someone who has won both Japan's and the US's highest scientific prizes does not qualify as common sense. Most other significant scientists have quite a number of background links, of which several are either audio or video, this does not seem to be a cut and dry Wikipedia policy, and I'm uncomfortable with the arbitrary nature of this wholesale deletion, even if it was with good intent. I'm sure the public is far less well served than previously with the article in its current truncated condition.Wiki88ikiw (talk) 17:28, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Then use them as proper references - and you did not answer my concerns. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:28, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Spam whitelist request II

I've got a request at the spam whitelist which Stifle seems to be ignoring. Would you please take a look and make a decision one way or the other. The source is required to reference three dates, as other items it was originally being used for have been sourced from elsewhere. There is nothing controversial, and the site appears to be reliable enough to use, given that other facts stated are borne out by RS sources. Mjroots (talk) 12:35, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

@Mjroots:I'll see if I have time to have a look. Mind linking the specific request here? --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:29, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
MediaWiki_talk:Spam-whitelist#lemairesoft.sytes.net Mjroots (talk) 08:46, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

David Biddulph

Kindly explain to me why do I need to have an External Links when the ONLY information I am allowed to display there i.e. the artist's webpage (see entry by David Biddulph) is already available in the Infobox?

I have choose to place that link in the infobox — since it is also a PREDEFINED possibility and consequently allowed and would very much like to understand why you believe that the same info needs to be repeated.

Thanking you in advance, Mariana Raposa — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mariana Raposa (talk • contribs) 18:24, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

See our external links guideline. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:10, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

unlockiphone.co.uk

Hello Beetstra, I see my site as spam here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spam/Local/unlockiphone.co.uk, I want to request you that please remove it from this list and I will not do any spam again on wikipedia.

Regards — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rsmaah (talk • contribs) 10:01, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

That is just a report, the original additions are still visible. No need to remove the report. --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:07, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
Thank you Beetstra for your reply.
So it means that my site is not blacklisted and i don't need to worry about this report.
Also please tell me can I try to add my link on related articles for reference or I need to completely stop adding links of my site as reference.
And i see that this pages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spam/Local/unlockiphone.co.uk says that links are still there in pink color but when I visit that pages so I can not found my links there.
Regards. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rsmaah (talk • contribs) 11:28, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
Excuse me for butting in here. Just wanted to note that I found and removed another spammy link to this site -- in Apple TV (I also took the liberty of cleaning up the indents above) ... richi (hello) 08:58, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Drugbox and bot css settings

About Template:Drugbox(edit talk links history); Template:Infobox drug(edit talk links history).
Long time ago old {{drugbox}} was renamed (moved) into {{infobox drug}}. However, in User:CheMoBot/Settings.css I only see drugbox mentioned. Does this mean that articles using {{infobox drug}} directly (not the redirect) are not tracked at all? Or does the bot know somehow? The good news is: 5730/5878 transc's are via old drugbox, so the bot might only miss <150 pages. Low priority this. -DePiep (talk) 11:33, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Should be updated - The transclusion-detection does follow redirects, but not sure in which direction. --Dirk Beetstra T C 17:00, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
Fine. -DePiep (talk) 18:45, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Lisa Craig Gautier

Hi - I just noticed that you have edited and commented on a page I created. I was wondering why you noted that these ecological publications were "cocky." And what you mean by that word in the professional sense. Thank you for any information you can provide. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lisa_Craig_Gautier&action=history

I removed "An optimistic, humorous, helpful tips book about the environment." - which is not a professional opinion about a book. Maybe my choice of words was not optimal. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:14, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi - I must be misunderstanding the process. May I ask, are you affiliated with BP? No worries if you are, I am just trying to understand the situation. This article is one of several articles I am working on and most of them are on ecologists. I am only interviewing people who have had press, published or are executives working on large scale programs. There are no products being sold, so therefore, no promotions. There is no money exchanged for the articles. No advertising. No spam. I am only interviewing nonprofit and government people. There are many people on wikipedia who have less press, work for for-profit companies or are selling music or themselves as products. I would like to present that people working for the environment are equally as interesting, historically relevant and useful to students writing papers. If this article is uncomfortable for people in BP because it refers to situations that occurred during an intense time for that company, I can remove that section. I would like to mention, however, that I have read many articles on wikipedia that had far more controversial information and just because this information might make BP uncomfortable, doesn't mean it should be deleted. It is through articles like these that more information gets out and complete stories are pieced together. Thank you for your consideration. We await your decision. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Energizerbetty (talk • contribs) 03:59, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

@Energizerbetty:
"May I ask, are you iated with BP?" - my affiliations are known to Wikipedia.
"There are no products being sold, so therefore, no promotions. There is no money exchanged for the articles. No advertising. No spam." - You misunderstand the concept of promotion - you can promote people, products, concepts, etc. What we report here, what we write about here, is however notable subjects.
"If this article is uncomfortable for people in BP because it refers to situations that occured during an intense time for that company, I can remove that section" - no, you only include the information when it is notable and independently referenced. And again your're wrong about BP having anything to do with this.
"I would like to mention, however, that I have read many articles on wikipedia that had far more controversial information and just because this information might make BP uncomfortable, doesn't mean it should be deleted." So what. WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS, and again wrong about BP, we're talking policies and guidelines of Wikipedia here.
"It is through articles like these that more information gets out and complete stories are pieced together." - And that is not the task of an encyclopedia, and outside the scope of Wikipedia. And aha, so it IS for promotional purposes: you want your information to get out.
"We await your decision." - is that a pluralis majestatis, or is this a shared account? --Dirk Beetstra T C 04:49, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

"So what. WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS," Ha - agreed. Good point. However, it's a hefty percentage of wiki articles.

"and again wrong about BP, we're talking policies and guidelines of Wikipedia here." Thank you for this. I'm happy to be wrong about this.

"what we write about here, is however notable subjects." Got it. Awaiting decision on "notable" or not.

"complete stories are pieced together." - And that is not the task of an encyclopedia, and outside the scope of Wikipedia. And aha, so it IS for promotional purposes: you want your information to get out." Respectfully, I disagree. I would say that is exactly the task of an encyclopedia. And I would hope that others will add their information. I don't need this information to be my information, however, if it is deleted there is less chance for others to contribute to this article.


"We await your decision." - is that a pluralis majestatis, or is this a shared account? It's just me. I did reach out to others for advice when I got your email, and they said to try to ask you and I am very grateful that you responded. Especially that you clarified it has nothing to do with BP, that is reassuring! Corectlon, I should have said "I await your decision."

Thanks again. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Energizerbetty (talk • contribs) 05:19, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

No, the task of an encyclopedia is to describe notable subjects in a neutral manner. News outlets, blogs, etc. are for getting the story out, and for completing the story, independent news sources or scientific publications are needed to show notability and when that is shown it may have a place in Wikipedia. There is much out there that is just not suitable for Wikipedia.
Great that it is just you, just wanted to make sure. Thanks. By the way, can you please sign your posts on talkpages? --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:24, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Kickboxing

Hi. Mate, his edits were good, he reverted the BOT who didn't allow him to add Facebook links but after he left the edits without the site. So I reverted your edits because they don't contain the Facebook pages. Twitter is allowed on Wikipedia but Facebook not. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yurigarin (talk • contribs) 14:01, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

No, Twitter is not allowed eiter. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:15, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

COIBot LinkReports bug

It includes in the "Links" section a note about domainname resolution for the hostname, and a {{LinkSummary}} of it. But it calls the actual resolution appears to be failing. See for example Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam/LinkReports/chemnorm.com#Links first second-level bulletpoint is "chemnorm.com resolves to X". Is it a general bot-bug? Or is it just that in this case the resolution failed? DMacks (talk) 08:15, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

I know this happens, but I checked Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam/LinkReports/gyanipandit.com (the last one it saved just now) and there the IP is mentioned. What I do not really understand is why the IP-resolving sometimes fails on certain domains, and maybe I should find another method for it (it is sometimes handy in spam fighting, do a linksearch for the IP of the domain and get all other domains on the same server, which then sometimes are simply all spam-domains spammed ..). Thanks for the heads-up! --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:47, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Removing borntosell from blacklist

Hi, in 2012 my friend (owning borntosell.com) hired someone for online marketing and that person decided to spam wikipedia with their website. It was nothing that could not have been handled by blocking those 3 accounts and the single IP that were spamming but an admin decided to put the website in the blacklist right away.

I am a little familiar with wikipedia so I'm trying to find the right place where I can get the consensus for requesting to remove it with the promise that this site will not be spammed to wikipedia again. Asking on proposals page by owners is not allowed so I am just going to say it on your talkpage and maybe you can help me on how to go about it?

The warnings on the talk pages of the accounts were actually given after the blacklisting if you see the timestamps. Wikipedia:Spam blacklist says users should be warned first and if other methods are available to prevent, those should be pursued first but none of the users was warned before blacklisting or even blocked.

Blacklisting was not fair as they would have stopped if warned that adding links to your own website would have negative effect such as blacklisting or even block. They did not know the rules then on what qualified for wikipedia links, which is no excuse, but also not fair enough to get blacklisted.

I read that standard offer is for blocked editors but maybe it can also be applied here as the spamming was dropped then and there and the site was not added to the wikipedia after that over years? Wikipedia:Give 'em enough rope seems to be a good deal for some one willing to abide by the rules. To prove that this applies to them can be seen by the fact that they have never spammed again. They don't even want to get off the wikipedia blacklist just to add any links here again. They only want to get off the list because other websites are copying the wikipedia blacklist and using it in their own way which is affecting their normal email newsletter, even to those who have double opted-in and want to get it.

I saw you are active on the blacklist pages so came to you if you can decide to remove it (if they spam you can add it back of course but they won't). If you want me to put this up in front of wikipedia community to get consensus I am also willing to do that. --Riven999 (talk) 06:48, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

@Riven999: - this indeed should really go up for community consensus, so to the right section of the blacklist talk ( Defer to Local blacklist). Be aware that you will likely hear that those requests should come from independent users, preferably with a longstanding experience on Wikipedia, and that you may have to make a case to show what use the link has. Note that contributing without the external links also show the goodwill of involved editors, and that granted whitelist requests for specific link (showing its use) is also a thing in favour of your arguments.
Regarding giving enough rope etc. - if three accounts and an IP are spamming a site, that is already enough rope to see that they are willing to use multiple accounts. Experience with spam is then that warning does not help, and when blocking accounts also that does not help (as accounts are easily made). I agree that it could have been tried, but if the link is deemed to be of no use to Wikipedia anyway (the prime function of the blacklist is to prevent abuse). Arguments that the blacklisting was unfair, or too fast do not really help, as with blocking the accounts it does the job (where with blocking accounts new accounts could still be made ..). --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:30, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. I want to send it for community consensus but proposal page is stating conflict of interest requests will be declined. Will I be taken as that because I am just helping some one with this problem? The problem is not about adding links to wikipedia. Infact they do not want to add links to wikipedia again ever. So whitelist is not the request. What they want is to disappear from the blacklist in exchange for a promise that they will not add any links ever and keep checks on any PR firms that work for them so that wikipedia is not spammed on their behalf. Removing the name from blacklist is important for them because some other websites copy wikipedia's blacklist to update their own blacklist. This hurts their website and this also hurts their email newsletter to their normal subscribers (it is not spam). Maybe now my case is more clear?

Regarding my arguments, I agree with you that the admins can take drastic measures some times to protect wikipedia but it was not needed then. And now they are ready to promise and prove that they will not add any links. I think wikipedia policies allow this request (give them rope for future because they did not add any links since years), if wikipedia is hurt because of them admins can always add them back but this is a reasonable request to get removed from the blacklist. The links may not be of benefit to wikipedia so adding them is not suggested. I am suggesting that the links wont be added after the site is removed from the blacklist.

I appreciate your time helping with this, I do not want to be rejected on technicality that I am a friend of site owner so maybe conflict of interest applies on proposal page so can I go to the general administrators noticeboard or something so that wikipedia community can hear me and decide themselves if I am asking something reasonable or do you have authority to take care of this? Regards. --Riven999 (talk) 06:54, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

@Riven999: I agree, but that is why I start with that this really should go up for community consensus through the normal channels (I've seen quite some cases going wrong because there was a 'rogue' admin not going through procedures and not taking time to get the whole picture).
By the way, which companies take Wikipedia's blacklist - if they do so it should be for the right reasons, domains blocked on spam blacklists are not on there because of the content on the external site, it is to protect Wikipedia. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:27, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
Note that I see that people involved with Born to Sell have been active up to December 2013 with .. promotional edits. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:32, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Ok I can go to proposal page first to go through normal channel. I do not know which companies copy the list but they said it was the case and they knew about it - it was effecting their newsletter and their site both. I agree that other websites should not use list without checking content on sites but it happens. Ok I will send my proposal for consensus there, if a single admin rejects it because of conflict of interest then I think I will have to find some noticeboard where community can read the proposal and decide without conflict of interest. Thanks for your help. --Riven999 (talk) 09:52, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Good luck. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:16, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

It has been 1 and a half year since 2013 I think it is reasonable time to prove that they have stopped this. --Riven999 (talk) 09:53, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

A year and a half is nothing - there are companies spamming here for way longer than that. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:16, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I have posted here as you said [4]. Is it possible to remove them from blacklist in exchange for some kind of probation period that they will not add it again? Please give your input. The main concern is just to get off the blacklist nothing else. --Riven999 (talk) 09:37, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Hello, there is no objection on proposal. Can you approve it? --Riven999 (talk) 07:34, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

I will leave it completely for independent review now. There is no discussion - blacklist and whitelist move slow, only a few specialists are there, and few will have time. As your friend had time to spent on spamming and search engine optimisation (also after the site was blacklisted), I am sure they have time as well to wait for this. I, for one, fail to see the benefit of de-blacklisting this for Wikipedia. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:22, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

I understand that wikipedia works slow and I want regular contributors to give input because it is declined by lone administrator. I am appealing for proper consensus at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard. --Riven999 (talk) 05:45, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

upload

Thanks. Please explain how I can upload multiple photo while editing/ creating a topic. Regards (Editwikig (talk) 07:59, 9 April 2015 (UTC))

Hi, User:Editwikig - I don't know how to, I do not work on uploading media. Wikipedia:File_Upload_Wizard <- this is where you go when to upload an image, and I presume that there will be links to give more explanation. I however think that you just upload the pictures (one every time), and then edit/create the topic and use the uploaded images. I hope this helps. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:14, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

You have new mail!

Hello, Beetstra. Please check your email; you've got mail!
Message added 01:40, 18 April 2015 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

— regards, Revi 01:40, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

@Revi: .. I don't think I got it. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:24, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
Weird. (It was about COIBot down. ps. My username is -revi. Revi ping won't work anymore with the SUL finalization.) — regards, Revi 05:56, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
I found it .. it was in my spam folder (you really should stop spamming me! ;-)). Ah, I copied the wrong username. Anyways, I started the bot again, it did not restart after the last whatever they did to the servers (all bots were killed and the other 4 automatically respawned 7 days ago or so). --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:44, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Jonathan Cahn

Why did you take down the edits that I placed up? — Preceding unsigned comment added by BethIsrael (talk • contribs) 16:45, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi I am inquiring as to why you have made changes on my wiki page, Jonathan Cahn. If I have done something wrong please forgive me for I am new to Wikipedia. Also all the info I have provided is from Jonathan himself he asked me to make these changes on his behalf.

Please correct or tell me what was the problem from before and I will gladly try to fix them myself.

Thank you. BethIsrael (talk) 17:25, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

@BethIsrael: I have not reinstated any old edits, I only stopped the warring - and the information is certainly not 'new' here (you may be, but then others before you tried to do exactly the same thing, for months).
If you are involved with the subject of the page, I ask you to first thoroughly read m:Terms of Use, and the conflict of interest guideline, as well as the other policies and guidelines that we follow here (I'll leave you a welcome message with all the data neededThey are linked from the top of your user talkpage) and after reading that, suggest you, strongly, to discuss on the talkpage of the subject (per that conflict of interest guideline), and achieve consensus there. --Dirk Beetstra T C 20:11, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

EW

Reverting when a topic is in the D of BRD is edit warring. Undo & stop it. -DePiep (talk) 09:12, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

You Boldly applied the removal of the 'median', it was Reverted back in - that is where Discussion starts. It is confusing, it is not correct, and you don't have consensus to remove it. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:23, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
No. In LD50 it was not even presented by you: [5]. In LC50 it was not present when deployed at all. Whatever: you should talk first. Welcome at Wikipedia. -DePiep (talk) 18:55, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
I don't need to talk first if there are things which are presented plainly wrong - it is a median lethal dose, not a lethal dose. That is one of the other parameters. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:09, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
OK, I had a bit of a look, and in both cases (LC50 and LD50) YOU introduced the term 'Lethal dose' in the template. When that was changed you insisted that it was interfering with template development, and when now a second person is telling you that it is wrong you insist that it should be discussed. I have yet to see a compelling argument from you that Lethal dose is a good representation of LD50 .. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:31, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
Nonsense. You keep evading the "D". -DePiep (talk) 21:23, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
And also that is not true .. I am at the discussion as well. You however still have not brought forward compelling arguments why 'lethal dose' is 'correct'. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:15, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Move conversation

I've been asked to move our conversation to discussion, but I don't think it really adds much besides clutter to the dialogue. I probably shouldn't have started it in the the first place. Are you ok with removal? ―Mandruss ☎ 23:50, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

No. I think it is relevant to the whole. --Dirk Beetstra T C 04:35, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Move comments in Talk:Hillary Rodham Clinton/April 2015 move request

Hi, I'm asking editors (on both sides of the question) who have made responses to individual !votes in the survey section to move those discussions to subsections in the discussion section. That will keep things tidy. Cheers! bd2412 T 23:42, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Nah, I think that they should stay where they are. The whole is not a vote, it is supposed to be a discussion. --Dirk Beetstra T C 04:36, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

homeyra

I corrected information about "homeyra" that can be verified. Her web site had been hijacked. I hope to keep the page, but block those who want to profit from her. She did not put the web site on wiki. Someone bought a domain under her name and is trying to sell it on wikipedia. I deleted it several times and put correct web site for public. mehrdad214 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mehrdad214 (talk • contribs) 04:49, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

@Mehrdad214: "I corrected information about "Homeyra" that can be verified" - the only thing you corrected was the website. The problem is the rest of the information in the article - articles need references to sources independent of the subject - in other words, what other people say about her - especially on a BLP. This article is tagged for years for that, and is unsourced for years as well. Please have a look at our policy on biographies of living people, as well as the general policy on verifiability.
Regarding the false websites - maybe they should go up for blacklisting if the problem persists. --Dirk Beetstra T C 04:54, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Azotti, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Sunshine Radio. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 09:21, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azotti


I'm totally new to editing a wiki page but I feel like the external links that I have posted are legit. I understand External links are not meant to tunnel people away from the wikipedia as you say on your page.

But if you look at, say Armin Van buuren, another world renown DJ, he's got a couple other external links, that I was trying to add to Azotti's page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armin_van_Buuren

What am I doing wrong? Regards, Tyler Harney — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tylerharney (talk • contribs) 07:39, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

The external links don't belong there - we do not list all possible online presences of a subject. That they are elsewhere is also not a reason to do it on this page.
The article does not have proper references to independent sources showing that the statements in the article are true, and showing that .. significant sources are talking about the subject. And that is particularly important on biographies of living people. I hope this explains a bit. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:50, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi, my name is Alyona. I added an external link to this article, but it was deleted. [[6]]

The link was

  • aperitas - Digital supply chain sustainability ratings platform

aperitas is also a platform as EcoVadis, Ecodesk etc. which is closed to the topic of supply chain sustainability. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alyona makarova (talk • contribs) 08:57, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

The statements are equally true without naming the subjects - no need to add those links to all applicable pages, we are writing an encyclopedia here, not a soapbox. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:52, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

BL_Handler

That looks handy, where do I get a copy please? Guy (Help!) 10:00, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Handy it is .. it is what we use for ages on meta. It is in my userspace - but still not working perfectly (still tweaking as I use it).
As I am learning to write js on the go, I have to learn what to do with what. The script is originally not suitable for writing in two different locations, and I have troubles passing that on at the moment (hence separate scripts for blacklisting and revertlisting), and I have problems having it read from different locations (hence separate scripts for separate pages). As I figure it out, I may at some point combine them back into one script.
Use at own risk, I am not taking any responsibility for its use. If you know JavaScript, please feel free to help tweaking them into perfection. --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:10, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

COIBot's trusted list

Can you add my cloack (wikipedia/Devwebtel) to COIBot's trusted list? Thanks. --Devwebtel (query) 16:40, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

@Devwebtel: - see diff. --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:15, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
Thanks. How do execute command (when I wrote on IRC channel something like "bl add test test" or "CVNBot6 bl add test test" there was no response from bot)?--Devwebtel (query) 17:39, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
You'd have to be in a channel with COIBot, CVNBot6 is a different bot. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:11, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
:). Thanks. --Devwebtel (query) 15:09, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your help

Thanks for your help, I am not very knowledgable about the protocols, but did my best. Hopefully, all of the errors have been fixed. I have one more question. How do I add a photo (self-portrait of the author, who gave me permission to use the image for the commons) to the page? From what I can gather, only an official wikipedia editor can add an image to a wiki page. Ranger x (talk) 12:16, 14 May 2015 (UTC)Ranger x

If you uploaded it to Commons, you can add it, you'll have to include [[File:<your filename>]] - it takes some parameters, I think it is best to have a look at Wikipedia:Picture_tutorial. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:21, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Whitelist request

I work for ProCon.org, and I see that at least two of our subdomains showed up on automated reports of spam linking. Please whitelist ProCon.org and our subdomains. We are a nonprofit public charity that provides pro and con research on controversial issues. We had 20.2 million uniques in 2014 and our content is used by educators in over 6,000 schools in 80 countries as well as 20+ intl. governments and 30 US state governments. You can read more about us at http://www.procon.org/view.background-resource.php?resourceID=004241. I mention this to emphasize that we are not spammers, and that we wish to be whitelisted so there won't be any future issues related to students and teachers referencing ProCon.org content. Please forgive me if I'm failing to observe certain protocols in making this request. Ignorance is my defense, and I don't mean to disrespect Wikipedia rules. Thanks for your consideration. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.196.183.198 (talk) 22:45, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

@173.196.183.198: - can you please point me to the automated reports that mention your subdomains. Without that I am not going to be able to make a judgement. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:27, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Self Promotion Issues

Hi there, I wonder if you could please take a look at a wiki article under the title of High Sabbath Adventists as I believe the article is being used more for Self Promotion and edited by those who seem to be part of the movement which they are writing about rather than producing a genuine wiki article, it gives the impression that it's balanced and non bias but only from the point of view of which the the article is promoting. it has very few if any realible references which seem to amount to purely original research which is against the policies of Wikipedia. I would like to call that the article is recommended for deletion citing self promotion and lack of realibile souces. (46.64.193.173 (talk) 17:47, 1 June 2015 (UTC))

I'll have a look. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:12, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Livid Instruments Page deletion

I've prepared a page for the company Livid Instruments, but I saw that you deleted it many years ago. I'd like to put up a proper page with citations and fact-based history. Peboer (talk) 22:17, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

@Peboer: you can start it as 'Draft:Livid Instruments', created through the articles for creation process. In that case you have time to work on it, and it will be reviewed before it gets made life. Please be aware of our policies and guidelines, and that the article has to adhere to those - I'll leave you a welcome message with some necessary reading. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:39, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
I see that you created the page already in your userspace as User:Peboer/Livid Instruments , that is also an option. I've cleaned out external linking in the prose of the document, that is inappropriate. It does feel a bit still like an advertisement. I'll see if I can give more of a review later.
I think I should point you to read the m:Terms of Use, and to strictly adhere to that. Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:49, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
@Beetstra: Thanks much. Regarding the external links in the prose, I put those in as evidence to support the story. I guess it would be better to just include pictures. I need to make some edits elsewhere so I have image upload permissions to do so, I guess! Looking forward to the review. Basically, I'm just trying to give information about the history and products, including basic descriptions of each product, making all attempts to avoid any claims, advantages or benefits, though I do see there is room for improvement on those. I'll keep culling the document of things like that. Peboer (talk) 16:25, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
@Peboer: - We use references to support statements, and those should preferably come from independent, secondary sources (though some primary sources are fine as well as long as the article does not rely on it). So I guess in some cases, you could use the links as a reference to the statement that you make 'product x', we would not link 'product x' externally (and one could argue, that if there is no internal page about it, and/or there are no independent references mentioning 'product x', that then it is not notable and should not even extensively mentioned in an article about the company that makes 'product x' - hence, everything needs support of independent references showing notability). --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:35, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Improved BL handler

Where can I get this please? Guy (Help!) 09:36, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

@JzG:: User:Beetstra/Gadget-Spam-blacklist-Handler.js is the latest version, just include that one (no need to make a copy). --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:47, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
Nice, I imported it, let's see how well it works for me :-) Guy (Help!) 11:50, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Page/url issue

Hey Beetstra,

Thanks for your message. I work for IFA Paris and our Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IFA_Paris has just been changed now, did you make it? We just want to correct the name and url for the French version of our page to IFA Paris, can you do it? Thanks.

Best regards, Dominik from IFA Paris — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nikki38394724 (talk • contribs) 06:28, 6 August 2015

Yes, I reverted it back to a less promotional version - see the remarks/warnings left on your talkpage.
I am sorry, I can not change the title on the fr.wikipedia, you'd have to ask someone on the French Wikipedia to do that. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:31, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

Ok, thanks, I understand. Can you give me a contact from someone on FR Wikipedia I can ask? Also, the version you put for our English page is outdated. It doesn't include the new programs in MBA and Bachelor degrees. Also, we don' t have a partnership with Polimoda anymore. I would like to put the correct infos but i'm worried you will ban me. If you can tell me what you think is promotional, then I can leave that away. Thanks! Nikki38394724 (talk) 03:42, 6 August 2015 (UTC) Nikki38394724 (talk) 04:07, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, I do not have a contact on fr.wikipedia, and my French is pretty low level. If you click on the 'view history' tab of fr:IFA Paris you may find s.o. to help you there.
You can update that, but be very mindful of WP:COI and WP:SPAM - I would keep to the current wording of the article (which is already reasonably promotional ..), not add your own verbiage. And if you have doubt, please post on talk:IFA Paris and wait for an answer from s.o. else. Another idea might be to go to find a related Wikipedia:WikiProject and see if someone can help from there. --Dirk Beetstra T C 04:56, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

Confusion

Hi Dirk,

I think you have somehow gotten the wrong idea about the proposal for VisualEditor at VPPR. There's no proposal to take away wikitext from anyone. (Seriously, the product manager is and has always been in an "over my dead body" state with that idea.)

The proposal there is just to tick the box for VisualEditor in Beta Features when someone new signs up. That's it. It will be fully reversible (just go back to Beta Features and un-tick the box), and it gives each editor the choice between wikitext and VisualEditor, in side-by-side buttons, on every article. If you want to see what it would look like, then go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures, change your prefs, and then go to Special:Random. The only difference between the proposal and what you said that you wanted is that the buttons are labeled "Edit source" and "Edit" rather than "Edit" and "Visual edit".

(It's really late in my timezone, so I'm going offline. If you've got questions for me, then feel free to ping me; I'll be around at least briefly tomorrow.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 06:51, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

This is what the proposed result looks like. Two buttons, not just one, available for each edit.
@Whatamidoing (WMF):: I did not mean that, and I assumed that. So there is from your side no reason to only offer the VE to new editors - offer them both at the same time and let them simply chose what to use. No 'the edit button is going to VE for new users' and then they have to manually switch - choice is the key. No need to set it in the preferences, even I want next to my 'Edit' button an 'Visual edit'-button (or the other way around, 'edit' and 'edit source'). No standards set. --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:59, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
You're right, there's no reason to hide the wikitext editor or to make people manually switch to get two buttons. Consequently the proposal is to give them both buttons, automatically, for every edit, without them having to set their preferenaces. The proposal is not to give them just VisualEditor. Let me try to be a bit clearer:
  • Today, new editors get no choice by default. They get the wikitext editor, and unless they just happen to know that there is an alternative, and can figure out how to manually enable that option in their preferences, then that's all they get.
  • The proposal is to automatically give editors a choice. New editors will get two buttons by default. They can choose whichever button they want, on each edit.
When I look at your comments, you seem to be saying "Strongly oppose, because editors must be given two buttons, not one." And I'm looking at the proposal which is exactly to "give new editors two buttons, not one", and I can't figure out why you think you're opposed to the actual proposal. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:45, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
I oppose, because it is unclear. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:11, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
And I oppose, because this still reeks of 'we decided it is wanted, we decided it is good, we spent money on it to develop it, so we want it turned on' (and yes, that is still how it feels - as a volunteer I spent hours last and this week because my bots did not work anymore - hours looking for 'what did the developer change that my bots now do not understand anymore. Is it software changes on tools, is it an update in a perl module, is it something in the diffs, the api, irc feeds? It turned out to be the last, one friggin' 's' was added which did not fit my regexes. The problem is, that there is not a good central repository where it is clear (and I only have half an hour per day time/access for programming/on Wikipedia - the whole cross-wiki anti spam effort had to do for days without database, and it is still not fixed). I am sorry, but I think that WMF are not thinking from the volunteer community - bugs stay open for months, nay, years because a volunteer finds something that is broken, and you push things through. And regarding that, I think that new editors is the worst group for who it should be turned on by default, before the community at large is using it and took out any problems that may still be there. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:42, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
Regarding the bot issue - it is still not working .. I wonder what else is broken. --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:29, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
@Whatamidoing (WMF): - 9 days later we have m:User:LiWa3 back up (that is how long it took me to figure out what was wrong), and 10 days later we have User:XLinkBot back up. User:COIBot tomorrow (COIBot has some basic understanding of MediaWiki already), and the other two (User:CheMoBot and UnBlockBot after that. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:31, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
I'm sorry about the bot problems. I know how important they are (perhaps even more than the typical editor  ;-). On that subject, is any of the "rawcontinue" stuff[7] going to affect you at the end of the month? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:04, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
@Whatamidoing (WMF): Yes, that is also one that is going to affect me. In fact, the warning there already killed my bots months ago (of course, all bot programmers that load xml from the server convert that to xml in their code - NOT, regexing out the info you need goes way faster, and the warning broke all my bots that read that because the regex did not fit, a problem similar to the one that was killing my bots last week). I will make a round through the thousands of lines of code and get the rawcontinue parameter in. It is beyond me why, with the thousands of parameters that the API can handle, these need to be re-used and one can not have a new parameter for the new situation. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:14, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
It is funny that my bots are not in that list - especially COIBot, XLinkBot and CheMoBot are riddled with the reading of queries. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:22, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
Not that I am subscribing to those emails (https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2015-June/thread.html#81931), but can you show me where was announced that on the Wikipedia IRC feed (irc://irc.wikimedia.org) the diff-url was changed from 'http' to 'https'? (that was one of the two cases why my regexes broke). --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:27, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
I have no idea. I tend to stay away from IRC as much as I can (also, mailing lists: who has the time?). If you're talking about the recent change to "all HTTPS, all the time", then I know that it wasn't announced in advance, so some bot breakage was sadly predictable. The Legal team handled that, and I really don't know anything more about their issues beyond what User:Johan (WMF) posted at WP:VPT last week. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 07:40, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
@Whatamidoing (WMF): I have no time for mailinglists nor IRC. I see now that the 'https'-issue is being discussed on VP, I however do not see any bot-operators complain about it. Maybe they are somewhere else. However, the discussion seems to follow the same line as what I see here, what I saw with VE - you (WMF) are so much on the 'push' side of technology that you ignore your customer. You (WMF) blindly accept(s) that bot operators will have to unbreak their software (we're 2 weeks down the https-road and I think all are now operational again), RE patrollers will need to follow up new editors with VE enabled (in my opinion, if VE is good enough then take it out of beta and make it available, but do not enforce or push it on communities to have users use it). And that while regular bugs and feature requests stay for ages and keep being ignored (I once reported a bug about an issue in the watchlist that broke it's display - it got ignored and got repaired because of a scheme-overhaul in the watchlist ('oh - that repaired this bug as well!'). Inadequacy of the AbuseFilter (it's good but too much of a hog - have a team think about that?), inadequacy of the spam-blacklist (requested for years) .. ignored (someone hacked some functionality in that helps, but in basis it is still an issue - have a team work on that?), and I am sure that there are more urgent or requested features that are longer on the list. You're so focussed on getting and keeping new editors that keeping the old 'happy' is ignored. And even if it is a Legal issue - if there is time for a developer to go through the system and implement that 's' and test it (it must break the internal software as well if it is not implemented properly), then there is also time to .. post to the known bot operators that there are breaking issues (did you see a post on my talkpage in the past about the xml-change ('rawcontinue') .. no, it was done in the xml which I may not even have seen; ironically, if you process the xml as xml you do not notice it at all, if you process it through regex as I do, the notice itself breaks your bot - at least it got noticed). You say IRC, you say mailing lists - but having bot operators subscribe to a list of announcements on a user talkpage of their choice (even for the more 'disruptive interface changes)? --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:46, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

If you want a list of announcements on a user talkpage of your choice, then you should subscribe to m:Tech/News. You can also follow Tech/News candidates on Phabricator. The rawcontinue stuff, for example, has been planned for two years and announced through all of these means: mailing lists, IRC, warnings in the logs, Tech/News, both VPT and BOTN here at en.wp, etc.

But for the switch to HTTPS, Legal deliberately did not announce it in advance, for the reasons explained by Bawollf and others at VPT. I believe they knew that there were downsides to both approaches (people with IE6 cannot read Wikipedia at all now), and made a choice about which downsides they could live with.

As for the rest, you're assuming that VisualEditor causes more problems than the wikitext editor. There is no evidence for that. I specifically asked for complaints from RecentChanges patrollers during the week-long test, and I received none. I saw no problems posted at the Teahouse, or the Help Desk, or at VPT, or anywhere else. Nothing. VisualEditor will be "beta" software until the product manager feels like changing the label (Mediawiki has no standards for that). What we can say much more usefully than "it's beta" is this: Half the newbies used it a couple of weeks ago, and we received zero complaints. It's been available to all users at several large Wikipedias for almost two years now, and the level of complaints there is low. There are things that they want to do in VisualEditor (just like there are features people keep requesting for wikitext, like proper support for nested footnotes and built-in dynamic columns), and there are some unique but relatively minor problems (just like there are some unique but relatively minor problems with wikitext), but editors seem to get along just fine when they're given a choice.

I know you're busy with more urgent things, but if you can find some time, you might want to spend a while doing some RecentChanges patrolling. That should give you an idea of what a big problem wikitext can be, and what a small problem VisualEditor can be these days. Or look at the recent weeks for the systematic evaluation of randomly selected edits, all from VisualEditor. Guillaume stopped doing it recently, because there were so few errors, and always the same ones (and the rate is even lower now, because they just fixed another nowiki annoyance in Parsoid). It's been running around 95% correct, and the rest evenly split between user errors and bugs, for over a month now. It's not 2013 any longer: the fact is that VisualEditor does not appear to cause any more problems than the wikitext editor does. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:06, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

{{rto|Whatamidoing (WMF) I had a look at that m:Tech/News. It does mention that Wikipedia can now only be used through https .. it does not mention that that subtle change was also applied to the IRC feeds and to some other places in Wikipedia. It wouldn't have helped me figuring out why my bots refused to read IRC .. nor the follow-up problem from that (that my bots were reading http and therefore did not get a proper response).
As for VE. There is a section 'Burden for Wikipedians' on m:Research:VisualEditor's_effect_on_newly_registered_editors/May_2015_study ('m:Research:VisualEditor's_effect_on_newly_registered_editors/May_2015_study#Burden_on_current_Wikipedians). That section only looks at the the difference in number of blocked editors and the number of reverted editors. First of all the data is misrepresented (there is no statistical difference, only a perceived one), second of all, whether a vandal is editing through source or editing through VE, it is a vandal, they will insert their 'poop', spam, whatever. The perceived lower number may just as well be because the vandal finds it less handy to vandalise the page through VE. The real expected change in burden is the number of left over broken Wikitext - which will be of a different nature, but might still be there. If a new editor coming out of a VE edit is leaving a broken page, what do they do? If a new editor coming out of a source edit is leaving a broken page, what do they do? I know that source editing leaves broken pages (misformatting, added <br /> for newlines, broken refs, etc.), I presume that that will also be true for VE (albeit of a different nature, I do not believe that VE is never leaving mistakes). That statistic is not presented to us. You show that VE editors are just as productive and survive, and that the ease of editing goes down. So, basically, there is no evidence that VE is better, at the best worse, and you push to enable it for NEW users. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:47, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
I don't believe that anyone was claiming that VisualEditor is definitely better in terms of key metrics – only that it was about the same overall (="no negative impact") for the items measured, and that consequently it might be appropriate to give editors a choice. There are things that it's well-suited to (e.g., copyediting) and things that it's not well-suited for (e.g., replacing {{unreferenced|date=July 2015}} with {{refimprove|date=July 2015}}). I'm happy to be using both and choosing whichever I want for the task. Also, I realize that you personally haven't been concerned about VisualEditor somehow inspiring vandalism, but there has once again been an evidence-free claim to the contrary raised by someone else, so I'm glad that concern has largely been debunked.
I'm not actually trying to change your mind on the overall question. As far as I'm concerned, if your comments can be understood by other people, then it's all good. I just wanted to let you know that I'd been thinking about your earlier comments and trying to address them with a clearer question.
I also wanted to check in with you today to make sure that your bots were okay after the leap second, and to note that the rawcontinue change is arriving at Wikipedias tomorrow. I hope that none of those create new problems for you. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:28, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
User:Whatamidoing (WMF) - look, in a way, I welcome the VE. I grew up in the time of typewriters and that was not exactly easy. The early versions of computer based editors was also not helping drastically but since the WYSIWYG editors it is much better. VE is certainly one of the better developments by WMF, but I will resist the pushy way WMF is implementing it, and I think that new editors is about the last group you want to push it on. I have the beta enabled, and I have a choice (but it is unclear, it is that I know that 'edit' results in VE - and when I freshly enabled it, I clicked wrongly on 'edit' a couple of times). Just announce widely that there are major improvements, and see the number of editors that enable it slowly increase. When you see that there is a signficant user base using it, do some polls under them whether they think it is 'good enough' and if it is, then consider to pull it out of beta and run a poll for enabling it (but with two clear buttons) for all editors. The time is wrong now, and the target group is wrong now. Even if this poll goes through, and in 3 months someone looks at the number of new editors starting monthly and sees it decline and it manages to show it is due to VE, or when VE shows other quirks, and the community then shuts it down again, you are in bigger trouble getting it through.
Well, you should be trying to change my mind - by providing me with the data that shows that VE is better. That you (pl) do not do that shows that you know that VE is not ready. Another reason not to push it through now (why actually now, why not wait?), because if really it is not ready and it needs to be disabled again, the resistance will only grow. And in a way, I am trying to change your mind - hoping that you will either show proper statistics that VE is better (and I hope for you that they do not turn out to be worse - I've mentioned the 'burden on Wikipedians' problem), or that you will withdraw this proposal as it stands now (pushing it on a group of editors who likely have no clue how to solve the problems if they encounter them), and chose another path forward.
The leap second did not affect me, it may have affected the servers of tools. I actually wonder if I have records stored in that one second, I should check. I am not ready for rawcontinue on all bots, I'll spend time on that in the next couple of days. Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:35, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
This is sort of a philosophical question: Why do you think that VisualEditor should be hidden until it is significantly better? Why "better" instead of only "equal"? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:54, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
@Whatamidoing (WMF): - That is not really what I suggest, and you misinterpret the comment: I do not think that VisualEditor should be hidden, I am fine with making it standard available to established users (who know how to handle problems if they arise - my understanding is that there are still problems), I am not fine with VE being offered as standard to new editors (if problems arise, they might not know how to handle it). Also, I do not say that VisualEditor has to be better, I say that VisualEditor does not have to be worse than current - and the statistics on meta are so limited that that can not be proven from there. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:20, 5 July 2015 (UTC)
You wrote above that I should be "providing [you] with the data that shows that VE is better" – "better", not merely equal. I assumed that you meant what you wrote, but I am glad to have that clarified. I think that the data we have proves that for big-picture items, it's equal (or possibly very slightly better). But I'm also looking forward to getting more information. It is not unreasonable to assume, for example, that newbies using VisualEditor are more likely to add citation templates than new editors who are not.
I doubt that established editors would appreciate anyone changing their prefs settings. The team would probably be willing to "flip the switch" for established editors (and then to let people opt back out if they want), but they would probably also insist upon strong evidence of community consensus to do so. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:25, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

User:Whatamidoing (WMF) - in a way, it is what I expect, right: that VE is at least as good. Your statistics (as presented on meta) are cherry picked, and misinterpreted. If you want to do this right, then you (WMF) should not be doing these statistics, but independently, with proper questions to be asked. As it stands now, and as I said before, the statistics are cherry picked and misinterpreted. As I now see on that statistics' talkpage on meta, you (WMF) don't want to go that extra mile to show that actually VE is not causing problems. It either speaks for willingness to show, or for knowing the result and avoiding the consequences.

However, I see remarks along the lines that established editors see regular edit-mistakes with VE, that need subsequent (source) edits to clean it up.

"I doubt that established editors would appreciate anyone changing their prefs settings" - so therefore we chose a group of people who don't know any better, and we enforce it on them. And as long as we don't/can't show any data whether it is worse ..

Yes, the community would likely want a say in whether they want the VE. I wonder why WMF did not ask them first. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:55, 7 July 2015 (UTC)(edited --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:32, 7 July 2015 (UTC))

Because I already did? Seriously, there are no good methods to ask people to change their prefs. The primary options are annoying, ineffective, and vaporware (and various combinations and permutations thereof). If you have ideas about how to do this in a manner that is both effective and non-disruptive, then I'm all ears. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:29, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
@Whatamidoing (WMF): - that is a question to ask people to voluntary turn it on. I do think that some did (actually, I have it turned on ..). But this is something different than opening an RfC to have the prefs standard changed so that everybody gets VE until it turns off. Yet you chose an RfC to the same community to turn it on for users who themselves by definition can not have their say.
Note: 'you' here generally points to 'WMF', this is not personal. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:32, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Trout

Whack!

You've been whacked with a wet trout.

Don't take this too seriously. Someone just wants to let you know that you did something silly.
Sorry, Dirk, but I think you need this.
The proposal to roll out VE is to turn on by default for new editors only, rather than off. When turned on, an additional button is added to every section and the top. "Edit" goes to VE and "Edit source" is the classic editor. When off, all you see is "Edit" which is the classic editor. Existing users will have their settings preserved.—cyberpowerChat:Online 17:32, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
. And I think that 'edit' is wrong - it should be clear that you then go to a visual editor. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:10, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Anti-Vandalism Barnstar
Thank you for protecting the Legend of Mir II page from edits. Reverting the non stop link vandalism was getting tiring. Farril (talk) 11:32, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
Well, thank you, Farril - note that this is not endorsing the current contents of the article, and note as well that this should have been handled way earlier by either of the two sides. I have seriously considered to block both sides for some lengthy time as an alternative, either party, or an uninvolved party, should have brought this and kept this on the talkpage with whatever version staying while discussing it, or should have brought this earlier to administrative attention. I have some pages on my watchlist now, and will liberally block anyone who continues elsewhere. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:20, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
And that is what I just did with the first account. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:24, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

CheMoBot: Verifiedimages supported today?

I am not sure how to read CheMoBot's settings in this. What is the current status of |Verifiedimages= in {{Chembox}}? Is it maintained by the bot today, or is it abandoned and so can be deleted from articles? User:CheMoBot/Settings.css says: chembox_change_images=Verifiedimages|changed

For {{Drugbox}}, it is not maintained I conclude. -DePiep (talk) 11:49, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

As far as I am aware, it is supported and maintained. What is likely the problem is our friendly and informative MediaWiki development team who have taken out my bots by making changes in the interface (and a second one which we bot owners were warned for is up in a couple of days .. sigh). Does CheMoBot edit since the beginning of this month? I have been focussing on getting my antispam-bots back up and keeping them up, I think I will do the update on CheMoBot next week, then UnBlockBot (latter IRC only). --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:37, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
I saw this (which suggests that CheMoBot has some basic understanding of the current state of the MediaWiki software as well .. I hope I am in time for next week's problem). --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:39, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
Yes it edited: [8], right after an edit by me so as expected. I can not judge any quality (or wm-disruption).
For me, the answer "Yes it's maintained" is enough thx. (I'll leave that parameter alone then in the articles). I don't think these mw-issues matter to my tempalte edits. -DePiep (talk) 15:46, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks (these mw-issues matter at the moment not to your template edits, or any edits, at least for the interface backward compatibility is important ..). --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:48, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Beetstra I Need your Help Badly

Beetstra 2 week ago my site has been blacklist .I register this domain 4 weeks ago and I'm trying to give people more and more information . but unfortunately I got unlucky and someone put my site into blacklist.I am trying for weeks to clear my site form blacklist but one ready to help me.Please Beetstra please help me to remove my site form blacklist.I did made mistake but next time it wont happened again.kindly remove my site form blacklist.

Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cooolkidpop (talk • contribs) 14:56, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

I think I explained this elsewhere as well - you got ample warnings that external linking is subject to rules (which is also true for having an account, by the way), and you intentionally ignored all of them. It will be removed (or more likely, specific links whitelisted) when established editors request for its use. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:53, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

maybe you are the better person to handle...

hi.

please look at User talk:Rich Farmbrough#User:COIBot/EditSummary. i left it there, because Farmbrough was the last person to edit this, but maybe i should have left it here... peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 00:05, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

so, Farmbrough fixed the issue, so you can safely ignore it... peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 19:55, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, user:Rich Farmbrough, for fixing this - קיפודנחש, thanks for finding the issue. Glad it is resolved and I can ignore it now .. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:26, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Farid Simaika

Hi. Why did you remove the YouTube link that I had inserted? Thanks Youssef simaika (talk) 19:16, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Lion Salt Works, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page WREN. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 10:55, 16 July 2015 (UTC)


My RfA

Pavlov's RfA reward

Thank for !voting at my recent RfA. You voted Support so you get a whopping three cookies, fresh from the oven!
All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 18:42, 16 July 2015 (UTC).

Just when I finished my coffee :-) .. thanks, Rich. I insist that that RfA should not have been necessary, you shouldn't have lost that bit. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:29, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

SpamBot

Please see this! SpamBot was recently shutdown due to a malfunction. It turns out some files involving Cyberbot's memory were corrupted, and some code broke, making it worse. Having had to delete the files, Cyberbot needs to rebuild its memory from scratch, which is what it's doing and as can be seen in the status reporter. Around the estimated completion time, Cyberbot will undoubtedly mass tag articles that it should've been tagging for some time now. A heads up this could mean increased requests over at the spam blacklist talk page.—cyberpowerChat:Online 00:31, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Just a reminder that the rebuild is approaching completion. Check the above links for updates.—cyberpowerChat:Limited Access 17:43, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

More Drugbox parameters to be followed

From this proposal, I ask the CheMoBot setting is changed to follow the new (to be) situation. As it says, I plan to add index-#2 parameters to {{Drugbox}} like |CAS_number2=. I suggest that the bot tracks those, just as it follows their #0 parameters. This is within my greater approach that in case of changes: {{Chembox}} and {{Drugbox}} should become more no less parallel. And of course because a #2 CAS_number should be a sourced number too, it should be within bot tracking.

I have added the css code changes to User:CheMoBot/Settings.css/sandbox, nine new parameters. Diff.

Unless something is not OK yet, I ask you to change the css page into the proposed sandbox version, and after that I'll change the template. -DePiep (talk) 21:28, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Must there be an entry like CAS_number2_Ref too? (CAS_number_Ref is under 'obsolete' ...). -DePiep (talk) 21:32, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
@DePiep: - I've applied the changes, and yes, for every <verifiedfield> there should be a <verifiedfield_Ref>, I'll have a look at that in the settings now. --Dirk Beetstra T C 04:56, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

RFC notification 1 August 2015

Hi. Since you participated in an earlier discussion on the same issue on the same page, please take a look at Wikipedia talk:Stand-alone lists#RFC: “Common selection criteria” ambiguity. If you choose to reply to this notice, please do so on my Talk page. (Don’t worry, my IP address is static.) Thanks! —67.14.236.50 (talk) 16:20, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Modify identifiers section of drugbox

A proposal to move the identifiers section of {{infobox drug}} (that contains CAS numbers and links to chemical/drug databases, etc.) from the infobox to the bottom of the article has been made at the above link. Your input is welcome. Boghog (talk) 02:18, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Special:AbuseFilter/665

Mind if we disable this? No hits in over a month — MusikAnimal talk 15:24, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

@MusikAnimal: - I think the basic question for disabling a filter should not be 'has it not had hits for XX time?', but 'has the abuse stopped?' (for which the number of hits may be indicative, but is not a measure). Did anyone check whether the editors yet found another IP range, or whether they found yet another MO? (I wrote the filter for someone else). --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:22, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Better not this way. Better not at all.

In regular talkpage talk [9], you wrote " I will revert those edits and possibly block that editor (I have done that, especially if the editor is no [sic])". That would be an abuse of admin powers, since in that situation you are an involved editor, plus this way you are actually threatening. I mention this, because in other situations we have met with equally 'I don't talk I use hardware' responses. As for style & sense, it downgraded your otherwise good comment in this. -DePiep (talk) 21:32, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

No, that does not make me an involved editor (one is not involved with a situation, one is involved with an editor), and no, that is not threatening, it is application of policy/guideline. And in cases where an editor is removing unsourced information with who I am involved (as that situation can indeed occur), I will not hesitate to go to AN/I. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:16, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Precious again

chemistry
Thank you, Dirk, with user pages in unbelievable languages, for demanding "change for the better", for welcoming and warning, helpful bots, categories, project tags, articles starting with a chembox, for "the positive side of fighting spam" and better chemistry among editors, - you are an awesome Wikipedian!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:54, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

A year ago, you were the 945th recipient of my PumpkinSky Prize, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:39, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Gerda. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:17, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

A wallywolly for you!

A wallywolly for you!
Thanks for helping at the spam blacklist. What you do on Wikipedia empowers activists to advocate for wallywolly conservation. Hopefully someday every horizontal service will have a wallywolly running on it. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:23, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
Heh, thanks! Forgot about that. this may be interesting in this respect. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:19, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Invitation to subscribe to the edit filter mailing list

Hi, as a user in the edit filter manager user group we wanted to let you know about the new wikipedia-en-editfilters mailing list. As part of our recent efforts to improve the use of edit filters on the English Wikipedia it has been established as a venue for internal discussion by edit filter managers regarding private filters (those only viewable by administrators and edit filter managers) and also as a means by which non-admins can ask questions about hidden filters that wouldn't be appropriate to discuss on-wiki. As an edit filter manager we encourage you to subscribe; the more users we have in the mailing list the more useful it will be to the community. If you subscribe we will send a short email to you through Wikipedia to confirm your subscription, but let us know if you'd prefer another method of verification. I'd also like to take the opportunity to invite you to contribute to the proposed guideline for edit filter use at WP:Edit filter/Draft and the associated talk page. Thank you! Sam Walton (talk) and MusikAnimal talk 18:22, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Google CSEs

Hey DB, when you have a chance, would you please take a look at MediaWiki_talk:Spam-whitelist#Three_Google_CSEs? I thought it would be an easy case, unless I'm missing something – czar 03:40, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Hi. I'll have a look .. but not much time. I'm sure it will be handled .. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:42, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Purchase of Cassius sulfate

hi beetstra, I'm trying to purchase cesium sulfate (CsSO4, preferably, and not the salt of sulfuric acid) for a school project. It seems as though you have a lot of knowledge in chemistry, and I was wondering if you knew of a vendor? I've been looking everywhere yet I can't find anywhere that sells caesium sulfate. Thanks in advance, beanjoe2@gmail.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.126.61.137 (talk) 16:59, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Hi. Thanks for the question. I would expect that you can buy that material from a typical chemical vendor. Many are listed here: Category:Research_support_companies (you'd be looking for something like Alfa Aesar, Sigma-Aldrich, Strem Chemicals, etc.). I don't know however whether you can actually buy something from them (for safety reasons they do not sell to anybody, only to registered ), don't you have an organisation linked to your school that can help you out with that?
May I ask what you are considering to do with CsSO4? --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:25, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Question

Hi, Beestra - back in September 2011 you blocked me for something I didn't do, and then you unblocked me when you realized the block was in error but you didn't remove it from my block log. I'm not familiar with the procedures or if you are able to remove it but if it is possible, would you please remove it? Thanks in advance.... Atsme📞📧 00:37, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

I'd prefer that someone else has a look - I think items can (now) be hidden, but would prefer independent confirmation that it is appropriate. I don't think that it is necessary, though - as long as it is not giving out something that should not be displayed in public, it is better that records stand visible and 'corrected' by using an appropriate unblock. --Dirk Beetstra T C 15:24, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
I don't see anything in the block that needs hiding, and as far as I can tell, the fact that the block happened cannot be completely hidden (just its details). Therefore I agree that it's better that it's all out in the open, so it's obvious to others that there was just a mistake and no actual violation rather than some underhanded dealing involved (the less unfounded suspicion, the better). DMacks (talk) 16:20, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
Well, with all due respect, the allegation was erroneous and actually reflects badly on the use of admin tools. I did not out anyone, and I should not have been blocked for something I didn't do. If an admin or other editor looks at my log at a glance without taking the time to analyze what actually took place, it appears that I've had more blocks than what actually should be there. My reason for wanting the erroneous block removed results from a recent case at ArbCom wherein an admin was accused of an unwarranted block, and an uninvolved editor suggested that the block be removed from the log. I agree provided ArbCom actually determines the block to have been unwarranted as it was in my case. Leaving it on the log reflects badly on the blocking admin and also raises unnecessary suspicion that is negative toward me for something I didn't do. It also shows up as 4 blocks in my user contributions when in reality I have one 32 hour block for edit warring dating back to 2014, and most recently a month-long block that I appealed and got reduced to a week of time served, but I'm thinking the latter may end up being reviewed by ArbCom when the GMO case actually opens to evidence phase, provided I am still being considered an "involved" party, even though I don't edit GMO articles. Atsme📞📧 17:02, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
First, that is exactly why I refrain from handling on it myself, it would reflect way worse on my use of admin tools that I hide my mistakes. However, I do not think that it reflects badly on me, it would have maybe if I would not have responded and if I would not have been willing to recall that first decision. I am a volunteer and an admin on this site, that does not mean that I was free from mistakes when I became an admin (I have a block log, before and during my admin time, and for what it matters, I believe that the last one is a mistaken block as well), it also does not mean that I did not make mistakes while being an admin (the second block was because I made a mistake .. ), or that I will not make mistakes in the future. If people are judging me on that, then that reflects badly on them. If another admin looks at that block log and does not read / analyze what is happening, and just handles based on numbers (or whatever), then thát would reflect badly on that admin.
As I said, I will not handle this myself, it is fine with me if you want it removed and in the end have it removed, but that action to remove it is not going to be mine - I do see it as a mistaken block, but I will not personally 'hide' my mistakes (if you wish, I invoke WP:INVOLVED on that). You'll have to find an uninvolved admin, Oversight, ArbCom, or whatever, and you can show thís edit as confirmation that I am fine with the log item being removed. --Dirk Beetstra T C 17:53, 28 September 2015 (UTC) (edited --Dirk Beetstra T C 19:13, 28 September 2015 (UTC))
I apologize if my explanation seemed like an accusation. That was not my intention. Chalk it up to one of the prices we pay for having to communicate with cold impersonal typeface in lieu of a live personable happy face that I would have displayed for you in person. Beetstra, the log was not an issue for me until recently - there was no way either of us could know it actually would have been. It took me by surprise as I'm sure my mentioning it to you now took you by surprise. I am not questioning you or what happened 4 years ago, but now that I have had to deal with unexpected experiences since then, I think my request is fair and reasonable as is your response for not wanting to be involved. I respect your decision. Would you be so kind as to advise me how best to get it handled? Thank you in advance, Atsme📞📧 19:20, 28 September 2015 (UTC) Question already answered during edit conflict. 19:22, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
@Atsme: I did not feel accused, no offense taken - I know I made a mistake there - you should not be having problems with it (admins should read - note: I know they don't, even ArbCom doesn't, they just count), you should call out to the judgement of those admins, you can ping me if you want.
I forgot, maybe WP:AN? Do note that the hiding of the item that I have access to will not hide it from admins anyway - so they might still respond to it. Oversight? But that is for more grave issues. --Dirk Beetstra T C 20:31, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
Thank you for understanding my dilemma, Beetstra. AN and AN/I scare me to death and I know it shouldn't but that's a different story all together. I went ahead and emailed oversight so we'll see what happens. Again, thank you and thank you for all you do to keep the peace on WP. Your efforts are truly appreciated. Atsme📞📧 21:35, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
Just wandering in as someone who's seen these sorts of requests in the past. In almost all circumstances, block redaction should not happen. The only time I can think of that it should is when the block summary is significantly inappropriate. Atsme, you can ask Arbcom, but if I was still on there, I'd be saying no. Wikipedia logs are records of what happened, right or wrong. The block is 4 years old and you have an explanation of what happened - that should be sufficient for any circumstances. WormTT(talk) 10:50, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Adding Our Site to Whitelist

Dear Beetstra,

Thanks for your contribution in adding our link on Wikipedia. We want to know how we can get our company website in whitelist of Wikipedia.

If you can help us please share your views on the same.

Currently we are getting one error on our page as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infibeam

Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jigargondalia (talk • contribs) 06:31, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

Whitelisting can be requested on the appropriate page ( Defer to Whitelist). However, requests from people with a conflict of interest are often not acknowledged. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:24, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

truecrimebookreviews.com

Hi Beetstra, I placed an entry at meta a couple of days ago because it is an attack site. Have I written something wrong or should there have been an entry here on en.wiki first? I was surprised that quick action wasn't taken on a site with malware.
 — Berean Hunter (talk) 13:27, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Seems to have been overseen by all editors active there, including me. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. --Dirk Beetstra T C 15:38, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
Thank you for taking care of it. Did that change in the template name make a difference?
 — Berean Hunter (talk) 16:05, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
You're welcome. And no, well, yes and no. We use a script (also here locally now) to blacklist the links. That reads the domains out of the LinkSummary template, but the script was not 'understanding' the variant with the space between Link and Summary, and hence it hang on the first occasion of me adding the domain. When I removed the space, it worked, so I knew where to adapt the script (which I subsequently did and tested). So thanks for showing me that there was a bug in the script on meta.  :-) --Dirk Beetstra T C 16:10, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

COI account

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Filmymantra

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Filmymantra

The only upload was the image of an aspiring actress who does item songs in Bollywood. --The Avengers (talk) 14:54, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

@The Avengers: I am not sure what you mean, this is one of the COI editors in that range, there are more editors who were involved in that website with edits which were in conflict of interest. --Dirk Beetstra T C 04:58, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
I mean promotional usernames. And how many types of ping exist in Wikipedia? Is there any list of pinging methods? --The Avengers (talk) 05:01, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
This user could indeed be blocked on that basis. I was however in my blacklisting alluding to Special:Contributions/Abhijitwgh94, another editor promoting Filmymantra.
Number of pinging methods, I don't know. In the end they boil down to the same, putting the username of the user in the post. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:14, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Why I am blacklisted?

I could see the link today [10] here and was astronished to see my name there. Pl. checkup again and do needful pl.

V.narsikar (talk) 05:03, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Linkwatcher-like database table being integrated to MediaWiki soon*

FYI: phab:T115119. I'd propose this in the 2015 Community Wishlist Survey, but I've already exhaused two of my three proposals addressing obvious problems in our capacity to deal with abuse. See phab:T118042 for the things we want to get out of this table.

* not SUL soon, I hope. MER-C 14:40, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

COI spammer or government benevolence?

Hi Dirk, These user contribs account for about 3/4 of the 190+ links of the Kent film office. I also found these IP contribs which spammed a few more. On the face of it, it looks like a run-of-the-mill COI spammer but I notice that at their website they have a "filmoffice@kent.gov.uk" email which implies that the commercial link, kentfilmoffice.co.uk is actually a UK gov endeavor. Do we treat like a COI spammer or more like US gov archives employees?
 — Berean Hunter (talk) 15:31, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

@Berean Hunter: Tracking. Maybe government benevolence, still likely someone who needs to be talked to/with. If not Spam/COI - such additions may still fail our inclusion standards if added too indiscriminately. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:36, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Smilescite

Template:Smilescite has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. DePiep (talk) 15:12, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Why? Are we not verifying SMILES anymore? --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:41, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Hello Beedtstra. I just noticed the message under my account from you ...

You may be blocked from editing without further warning the next time you vandalize Wikipedia, as you did at Divorce. Dirk Beetstra T C 14:57, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

... and you removed by link from the wiki divorce page and you referenced that I vandalized it.

"Vandalism is any addition, removal, or change of content, in a deliberate attempt to damage Wikipedia. Examples of typical vandalism are adding irrelevant obscenities and crude humor to a page, illegitimately blanking pages, and inserting obvious nonsense into a page. Abusive creation or usage of user accounts and IP addresses may also constitute vandalism."

I'm sorry but I am having a hard time understanding my putting up an external link, in the proper external link area to an article talking about how divorce affects children can be considered vandalism. I understand that regardless of what I say here, you are going to do what you feel is right, but there are not a lot of reference areas for people who have questions about divorce and people going through a divorce and others who are stuck in a nasty system of court dates and lawyers and processes that cost a lot of time, money and effort to be expended. There is a whole section of effects of divorce on children on the divorce wiki page and I pointed out an article that goes a little further into the same subject.

I really wish you would re-consider as the link is relevant to the page and in no way did I have the intention of vandalism.

Thanks, Dallas — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dakeith (talk • contribs) 17:37, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

@Dakeith: Thank you for your remark and response. The links you add do fail our inclusion standards, and the only thing you seem to be doing is .. adding those links, even after warning. Pushing links, after people showed their concerns, is also considered vandalism, though a better description is under the Wikipedia definitions of spamming, see this guideline. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:47, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

COI Bot strange behaviour

I've noticed that COIBot is creating strange pages. Can you have a look?

Thank you, M/ (talk) 16:38, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
Hi, pinging you again: this page - even if deleted - is recreated again in error. Could you please have a look? Thanks a lot. --M/ (talk) 14:35, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

@M7: Bot blocked until I can solve this. Hopefully one of these days. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:35, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback. The Bot is really of great help, your intervention will be indeed appreciated a lot. --M/ (talk) 11:42, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
And I have unblocked it - I've solved the issues. Thanks for the heads up! --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:43, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 24 November 2015

105.141.144.143 (talk) 00:51, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

And what did you want to have changed? --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:09, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:43, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

I have already voted, voting as usual. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:11, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Hello Beetstra. User Svoi_Perez is replacing the YouTube External Links for some Charlie Chaplin movies. From the ones I've checked, the previously existing external links were still active.

When I previously undid one of the replacements and included the comment "No need for link replacement as existing one already worked", he reversed it again. This is why I am coming to you, so as to not engage in an Edit War.

Thank you again. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lazlocollins (talk • contribs) 19:54, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

@Lazlocollins: - does this editor have a proper rationale for the replacing? I would indeed think that this is not needed. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:38, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
@Beetstra: Neither the initial replacements by the editor, nor their reversal of my reversal, include any comments as to why the edits were made, much less justification for replacing already-existing links. -- Lazlocollins (talk) 02:10, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
@Lazlocollins: I have reverted the editor again, and I think that all these edits need to be cleaned up. Whether for personal gain (you can make money with YouTube, they do have that incentive - are the movies the editor is linking to all of the same uploader / related to the same person?), or just failing our inclusion standards (even if a movie is free and free of copyright, there are a lot of other reasons in WP:EL/WP:NOT why we do not link to them - e.g. as for the first spamming concern, I am not able to see these movies here to check or enjoy ..). I am tempted to give a spam4im with possibly a block to 'enforce' discussion by the editor. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:25, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
@Beetstra: Thank you. As I know you're busy, this weekend I will check his edits to verify whether a working and valid link already existed and will revert back if so. I will let you know if there are any which he then tries to overwrite again so as to avoid an Edit War. I'm a huge stickler for making sure links to Public Domain films do not have potentially copywritten material such as scores. Thank you again. Lazlocollins (talk) 07:44, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Uncyclopedia

Last year there was an edit war which was eventually settled with the article as it stood until October 2015. This month there has been a drastic revision by two new users who changed it so that it now only reflects one of the Uncyclopedia websites (the one uncyclopedia.co). I saw that you were able to arbitrate on this one and peace was declared. Do you have time to check history log to see what has been happening? --Gepid (talk) 20:59, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

@Gepid: .. I will have a look .. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:37, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
Seconded! I tried to maintain this article in the spirit of that truce, but Shalir Salim cited me in an Admin Noticeboard and I am now under orders not to edit it. He may be too, but other accounts and IPs have arisen to fill the void, asserting that the Wikia site is not mentioned on social media that they elect to research, and IPs opining that deniers need to be silenced. UserAFW recently added a See Also to the Wikia site, which PKHilliam has just deleted. This is the extent to which the article has been cast in terms of a specific group of individuals and neglects the still very alive Wikia site, which Wikipedia is being used to direct traffic away from. Spike-from-NH (talk) 02:45, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
It appears that it is time to liberally hand out some blocks. I thought the previous consensus was to remove all unsourced information, which means that the currents sites were only mentioned in a minimal way (as that can not be significantly sourced) and that is it. I don't recall if the verdict was to remove both sites or to have them both listed.
@Spike-from-NH: Can you link me to the AN? --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:02, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
Sorry, I should have done this to begin with. The previous consensus was to treat the two websites impartially, whereas the current approach is to purge the article of references to Wikia as a disfavored former venue of the clique that is writing about itself. The article was never free of primary-source citations, such as to explain website policies. These have been systematically changed to point to editors' preferred website. A few are probably still necessary to explain the thinking/persuasion that led to there being two websites. See:
Thanks for your consideration. Spike-from-NH (talk) 13:21, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Technical Barnstar
Thanks for making and running a bot that removes unreliable links such as youtube, vimeo and etc Ⓩⓟⓟⓘⓧ (talk) 16:40, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
@Zppix: Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:17, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Resilient Barnstar
You know that you are one of my wiki and anti-spam heroes. Thanks for all that you do. And awarded not for the reasons given on the star, instead for pure resilience to the shit that is thrown at you and your determination that purpose defeats crap politics. — billinghurst sDrewth 07:35, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
@Billinghurst: Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:40, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Todd Field

Hi Dirk,

This is Opb567. You scolded me for reverting your edit to Todd Field page and directed me to See WP:EL/WP:NOT before undoing again. I followed your instructions and found the following: WP:ELYES

What can normally be linked

Wikipedia articles about any organization, person, website, or other entity should link to the subject's official site, if any. See § Official links. An article about a book, a musical score, or some other media should link to a site hosting a legally distributed copy of the work, so long as none of the § Restrictions on linking and § Links normally to be avoided criteria apply. Sites that contain neutral and accurate material that is relevant to an encyclopedic understanding of the subject and cannot be integrated into the Wikipedia article due to copyright issues,[4] amount of detail (such as professional athlete statistics, movie or television credits, interview transcripts, or online textbooks), or other reasons.

Given the above criteria am wondering if you can please explain why you feel it necessary to delete the links previously lister under "External Links."

Thank you, Andy Opb567 (talk) 23:23, 28 January 2016 (UTC)Opb567

Hi Andy. Thank you for your remark. That is indeed a part that is also written in another way in the introduction of WP:EL. But that introduction also says ' it is not Wikipedia's purpose to include a lengthy or comprehensive list of external links related to each topic. No page should be linked from a Wikipedia article unless its inclusion is justifiable according to this guideline and common sense. The burden of providing this justification is on the person who wants to include an external link.' The list that you include is rather long. And the key from your quote is 'relevant to an encyclopedic understanding of the subject' .. so I did first go through the titles:
  • "Field on Bergman" - that seems that the subject of the material linked to is Bergman, and that the subject of the page where it is on is the person who is telling something about Bergman - though I agree that that can yield more info about the subject of the page, that suggests indirectness.
  • "Charlie Rose: A conversation with director Todd Field, 3 January 2007" - similar, the subject of the document seems to be 'Charlie Rose', not Todd Field. Indirect I would say.
When I go through some of the others, the subject of the interviews with Todd Field seem mainly to be one of the movies by the subject, and that is the main topic. Those links are all indirect.
Some of these may make good references for specific facts, but generally are unsuitable as external links. They do not (significantly) provide more encyclopedic understanding of the subject of the page. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:30, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Dirk,

Thank you for taking the time to explain the criteria of direct vs indirect when including external links. The LATimes "Field on Bergman" article definitely does not hold up to this criteria. However, the Charlie Rose interview does, as it covers Field's career as an actor and director. Is there a proper way to title this link to reflect it as a direct link to subject?

Thanks, AndyOpb567 (talk) 15:14, 31 January 2016 (UTC)Opb567

@Opb567: It sounds that that Charlie Rose interview makes a great source to pull information from then and expand the article. See "If the website or page to which you want to link includes information that is not yet a part of the article, consider using it as a source for the article, and citing it." in WP:EL. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:21, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Hey, just a note about this edit and the others like it; please note that we're currently trying to establish consensus here, and reverting without any discussion is not helpful in the slightest (and, frankly, you should know better than that). Also, it doesn't help that your edit summary - which I can only assume is a reference to DIRECTORY - makes no sense in this context, since the additions do not fit any guideline we have. Would you mind self-reverting out of good faith? m.o.p 07:21, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

@Master of Puppets: No, the consensus is WP:NOT#DIRECTORY - we are not an internet directory to find everything that is related to a subject. Moreover, the list turned into:
Which results in now having three (!) links to the movie itself (the edit adding the third of them), clear linkfarming. The first one of those is already questionable, per WP:NOT and WP:EL - does linking to the actual movie add anything (encyclopedic) beyond what is not covered by the article itself, what can be included into the article, or what is already covered by the other external links that are there.
Now the next point is, you say that you are trying to establish a consensus whether these links should be there. Per WP:ELBURDEN and the intro of WP:EL, we are not discussing removals of external links, but the burden is on the people who want to add links that these links should be there. You say that you are trying to establish that consensus (suggesting that there is no consensus for the links to be there), hence the links should be left out until there is consensus to include them. The template results in strange linking, using pagename as source.
I will joint the discussion. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:45, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
Forgot to mention, the account that was adding them is close to spamming (if not spamming for real), ánd other link additions were reverted by humans as well. Moreover, YouTube does tick more of the boxes in WP:ELNO, and linking should to it is generally discouraged with some exceptions. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:46, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
I am not discussing whether or not WP:DIRECTORY applies to the article as a whole, I'm talking about the addition of that one specific link. I am talking about the question of whether or not an article about a film which is in the public domain can contain one relevant link to the media itself, which is a far cry from anything WP:EL, WP:DIRECTORY and other such guidelines/policies talk about. In my opinion, those are irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
Whether or not linking to a PD movie adds anything of value is subjective, but, being an inclusionist, I see absolutely nothing wrong with having it there. Analogously, it is like an article having a snippet of a song, or an image of a painting. I think we should instead be asking; is there any reason not to have said link there? Copyright isn't a concern - the movie is public domain. It's not a question of safety - YouTube is reputable. Etc. The only real reservation I'd say I have is that one could potentially monetize their channel and try to make money off of the resulting views, but that situation is reaching so far (not to mention that it wouldn't be even close to lucrative, even over a long term) that it's not really even a concern.
I do think this situation in specific does require further consensus, though. While certain policies/guidelines cover aspects of this behaviour, we don't have anything that definitively states "linking to public-domain works is prohibited". m.o.p 09:41, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
@Master of Puppets: That is exactly what WP:EL and WP:NOT#DIRECTORY talk about - the justification of the inclusion of external links. You yourself say 'contain one relevant link to the media itself' - if that link you talk about is the link I reverted, then that is an external link, and that is exactly what WP:EL and WP:NOT#DIRECTORY talk about. Moreover, 'contain one relevant link to the media itself' uses 'one' (bolded) - this was the third of those links, and the same is true on some of the other pages I removed the links from.
You may not see something wrong with having it there (and in fact, I did not remove the other two, though I think one of them should go as well, or both replaced by the one you added), it goes against our pillars (WP:NOTREPOSITORY). You also skip over the rest of WP:ELNO, which may be applicable. For me parts of YouTube are blocked and useless (same for other similar sites) - it is not accessible in some parts of the world. It is still something that requires significant bandwidth, which is again something that not everybody has. And I still doubt whether the link to the online movie adds more information that is not, or cannot be incorporated in the article. And that is exactly what is codified in our pillars and/or guidelines.
I agree that we do not have a prohibition on the inclusion (we have a prohibition of linking to copyvios, and that is it). Everything that falls outside of WP:ELNEVER is not prohibited - that does not automatically mean that we need to link that all that is available. I do see this as a 'it is PD, so lets link it', not a 'hey, it is PD, would it be beneficial for our articles to link to it'. That something is not forbidden, does not mean that everyone then automatically has to do it because it is not forbidden - I'm Dutch, grew up in the Netherlands. It is not forbidden to smoke marijuana, but does that mean that I have to smoke it? It is also not forbidden in many places of the world to bang your head on the desk until your head starts bleeding. I however don't see anyone around me go that far. There are many movies of birthdays of random people on YouTube, all showing what cultural behaviour people have in different area's of the world regarding that. Do we therefore add all those movies as external links to Birthday? It surely is on topic, not copyrighted (if uploaded by the person that made the movie), and it does tell you just about as much extra about birthdays (that is not included already in the article) as what the copy of The Masquerader shows you on The_Masquerader_(1914_film) that is not already included. And if three (like on The_Masquerader_(1914_film)), why not a couple of hundreds on Birthday?
Nonetheless, the burden of justifying the inclusion of the external link is on the person who wants it included. If that inclusion is challenged (and it was, both by a bot as well as humans), the inclusion needs to be discussed, and hence the link is not included until that discussion has established that consensus. --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:02, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
I think there's a bit of a misread on the situation here. Yes, the link is literally an external link, and yes, EL/DIRECTORY talk about external links. But the content of this link does not fit any of the policies/guidelines you've listed. And, again, we are only talking about the one contested addition. I have no problem with removing duplicates or other extraneous lists, but that's irrelevant, and not the topic of discussion.
You are misinterpreting NOTREPOSITORY. It defers to EL, but specifically states 'there is nothing wrong with adding one (or more) content-relevant links'. Is there nothing more content-relevant to a movie article than a link to the movie itself? As for point 3/4; these do not apply here because we are not hosting or transcluding anything. We are simply providing one link. Which parts of ELNO do you think are applicable here?
I'm not sure I understand your comparisons, but I don't think they're really pertinent here. In terms of videos not being accessible, a public domain video would not be region-locked in the first place, so that is not a concern. But technical concerns are not a reason not to include an option - we are not forcing people to follow the link, just providing it for reference - as well as a bit silly. After all, there are people in the world without internet - should we stop building Wikipedia because they cannot view it? You can see why that line of thinking doesn't really lead anywhere. Besides, there are also many people in the world - the majority of internet users - who'd have no trouble with YouTube bandwidth. Why exclude them from discussion? By providing an option, we cater to all types of visitors, and let them decide what they can and can't consume.
Also, comparing this to a general phenomenon, like birthday parties, is similarly out of place. There are many birthday parties, yes, but that has no bearing on a Charlie Chaplin movie filmed 100 years ago (this is known as an 'inconsistent comparison' fallacy), and adding a link to a unique object - a specific movie - means absolutely nothing in relation to what we should do with birthday parties. Unless you think that giving a reader an option to watch a PD Charlie Chaplin movie is equivalent to putting multiple examples of a generic phenomenon in the 'Birthday' article, in which case we've got bigger problems to tackle.
Finally, whether or not a bot challenges inclusion doesn't matter, since bots literally exist to follow programming, and do not understand gray area. In terms of humans challenging it, you'll find that most of the time this happens as an autonomous reflex, either because they saw a bot do it first and so assume the content is illegitimate or reflexively just remove a new editor's addition because they err on the side of caution. And, if they have legitimate concerns, they're welcome to add to the discussion at FILM.
Hopefully this all makes sense! m.o.p 22:25, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
No, Master of Puppets, it does make sense in the context that I place it. We have inclusion standards, and one of those is whether links add anything beyond what is already there. For the specific case the information was already there (at least twice!), as for the other cases. As for birthday, one specific movie to a birthday could be useful, but not three (let alone one hundred). It detracts the article from the purpose of Wikipedia.
Regarding the technical parts - when I was typing the reply yesterday I did not have access to YouTube, and living in a country where internet access is restricted (yes, the country's firewalls filter out certain movies on YouTube, as well as complete websites), I do know that that is an issue on some information that people would like to add. Now I do have access though. Still the bandwidth problem exists in some parts of the world, and access problems as well (software needed). Some of the parts of WP:ELNO do apply to YouTube (or video sites in general - they even have their own section: Wikipedia:External_links#Linking_to_user-submitted_video_sites). Saying that we should not write Wikipedia because certain parts of the world do not have computers/internet at all is a reductio ad absurdum, the bandwidth and the access is codified in WP:EL, not a random argument.
Regarding the bot revert - the bot is programmed by a human, and the rules on which it reverts are determined by a human. Other humans, through our policies and guidelines, have decided that YouTube links can be helpful, but are often a reason for concern. Therefore the bot has a rule regarding YouTube. The bot 'showed concern' because the humans on this site show concern regarding YouTube. If the bot then reverts on an edit, that means that there are concerns with such links. And whether you revert it back in, or add it for the first time - the burden of justifying the inclusion is then on you. For all the cases that I checked on the links where I reverted your re-addition of the link, there were already at least one other occasion of the full movie being linked, so in the end you linked three different (?) versions of the same movie 2 to 3 times on the page (and I think that what is offered by the internet archive on all the pages is better than YouTube, and I notice that some of the other links also link through to the internet archive and YouTube pages, further duplicating these links). And that is why I think that these specific additions were in violation of our pillar WP:NOT.
Now, on the subject of having a movie there in the first place. That type of links are always a matter of debate (it is not only movies, it goes for books, music clips, etc. etc.), and I always argue that they do not add much beyond what is in the article - the article does not get worse if the link is not there. This is maybe an extreme reading of WP:ELNO #1: "Any site that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a featured article," but that is what our pillars are built on (see it this way, if the link to the full movie is needed for the article to be of good quality, then none of the articles where there is no link to the full movie possible due to copyright concerns could be good/featured articles - if there are good/featured articles without the link, then that means that that type of information is not needed). Based on the then further concerns with YouTube (the technical ones) I would be somewhat reluctant on one side, but also not be by definition against the inclusion of one well chosen link if all other concerns are not being violated too much. And actually, that is what we generally see - the official music videos are often linked, and here on all the pages the movies are linked. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:46, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

About the Project Spam/LinkReport

Dear User:Beetstra. Thanks for your help in emptying Category:Pages_where_template_include_size_is_exceeded. We are now at 308 Spam/Link and 81 other pages, while starting from 818 pages. Concerning the Spam/Link pages, you wrote if you really want to get rid of the bot generated Link Reports and Local Reports of COIBot - just blank the blank all additions in the 'Additions' section, replacing it with a nice message stating that the data is in the history, and being aware that the bot will regenerate the reports. It would be great to use a bot to do that, instead of doing the job by hand. Can you help ? Thanks in advance. Pldx1 (talk) 11:08, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

If Dirk doesn't have a magic way to do that, I could probaby script something, but I would like to get the details clear. The section appears to look like this, with many EditSummary lines: 

== Additions ==
Message... ~~~~~

I was thinking five tildes would be good to leave a timestamp. Or possibly four tildes for a signature? How about the following message (no fancy box, just plain wikitext with an asterisk so any text added on the next line would not run into it):

Is that ok? Is it ok to remove the transclusions of User:COIBot/Additionlist_top and User:COIBot/Additionlist_bottom? Johnuniq (talk) 01:12, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

@Pdlx1 and Johnuniq: I am still utterly unconvinced that this needs to be done. This does break the (albeit here limited) tracking there is, COIbot is likely to regenerate some of these reports, I would certainly not do this on anything recent (edited by COIBot in the last handful of months, and probably not at all if the record is a record of evidence for a spamming/sockpuppet case), and will likely spew out more of them, and that these exceed the transclusion limit does not 'break' anything essential. This i templates, categories ..), and a nuisance on talkpages and their archives, but for the rest it is not a problem at all. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:40, 25 February 2016 (UTC)
From the discussion at the cat talk I got the impression you were ok with the planned blanking. I'm not going to press the issue, but I listed the 347 pages in my sandbox at permalink, showing the date of the most-recent edit for each. Johnuniq (talk) 09:59, 25 February 2016 (UTC)
@Johnuniq: I am OK with it, though I do see more downsides than any upsides for it. I thought I expressed that in the abovementioned quote: if you really want to get rid of the bot generated Link Reports and Local Reports of COIBot - just blank the blank all additions in the 'Additions' section, replacing it with a nice message stating that the data is in the history, and being aware that the bot will regenerate the reports (now bolded). I would not touch anything that was edited in the last year (that takes out about 325 out of 350). A quick AWB run should take care of it, replacing everything from the 'Additions' section header to the next section header ('==\sAdditions\s==\*?==', replacing it with '== Additions ==<newline><Your text here><newline><newline>==' ... but I still fail to see why one would do this in the first place. --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:24, 25 February 2016 (UTC)
The concern that I am seeing is that any bot should be written to test if what the bot has added to a given page did not generate an overflow. But this requires to check the Category:Pages_where_template_include_size_is_exceeded... and we have a circular problem. If the category is overcrowded, the test is too costly, and not done, and the category inflates again and again. In any case, the solution you proposed just above solves the problem, according to the stats
2010 40
2011 188
2012 80
2013 10
2014 5
2015 15
2016 10
sum= 348
Thanks for that. Pldx1 (talk) 11:34, 25 February 2016 (UTC)
@Pldx1: I have no clue what you are talking about here. There are pages in that category - So what? I haven't seen any argument why this category has to be empty beyond 'it is too full to see the ones that we need to care about', while I discuss that clearing out parts of these reports may have tracking issues and should be considered carefully. Still we get to the same argument that the category is overcrowded ...
The ones you should care about are the content ones, not the maintenance ones. Even if there are 5000 in there, the only nuisance is that you have to click past all that are not an issue. You can take the LinkReports/Local Reports out if you really want, but I don't see the necessity. It has no effect on the server (they are only regenerated when edited), people are not really reading them, it is just that they are in the category and happily sitting there (they do have a tracking function, though), partially unreadable (again, so what). Even the argument that you can't see important pages because the category is overcrowded is hardly true - they are grouped together since they all start with an unlikely elsewhere used start. So all the others are before it, or after it. The category is never overcrowded, the only thing you have to make sure about is that there are no 'content' pages listed there. And for that, I would suggest (again) that you raise a Phab-ticket to get the category split by namespace. That is why I say if you really want to get rid of the bot generated Link Reports and Local Reports of COIBot - just blank the blank all additions in the 'Additions' section, replacing it with a nice message stating that the data is in the history, and being aware that the bot will regenerate the reports, but I don't see any reason why one would need to that that in the first place. --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:05, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Wikiproject United States Coast Guard Auxiliary

As a current or past contributor to a USCG Auxiliary article, I thought I'd let you know about WikiProject United States Coast Guard Auxiliary, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage of the United States Coast Guard Auxiliary. If you would like to participate, you can visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks and related articles. Thanks!

COASTIE I am (talk) 01:01, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Blacklist handler gadget

Hi DB, I'm looking forward to checking out the new Blacklist handler gadget. If I determine as an admin (I am an admin) that a site should be added to the blacklist, should I click both the BL *and* the RL links, or is one sufficient? How do the links get removed from the project, otherwise? Sorry in advance if the question is irritating, I just want to make sure I'm doing the right thing. It seems that one of the qualifications for adding to the revert list is that the link has to have been spammed anyway, so I guess I'm not 100% clear on the distinction between the two features. Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 23:39, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi Cyphoidbomb. Thanks for the question. I guess it is not clear, I should work on a bit of documentation for it (and maybe consider making it a real gadget in Wikipedia terms).
  • Add BL is for adding to the blacklist, that disallows addition of links by everyone
  • Add RL is for adding to the RevertList of User:XLinkBot, then links can still be added, but for new editors and IPs the additions will be reverted by XLinkBot (unless stronger settings are used - but they are always weaker than the blacklist).
The choice between the two is depending on the situation - certain domains get spammed ánd used appropriately, where other domains are just plain useless ánd being spammed. The former are sometimes better first on XLinkBot, the latter can go on the BL directly. For what gets posted to the blacklist request page, most can just go on the blacklist, I hardly ever see links that need to go to XLinkBot there. Note that sometimes XLinkBot is the step-up - if XLinkBot gets ignored by the spammers the message is clear (and for true spam, XLinkBot is quite useless, they will revert and continue - it pays their bills).
The gadget runs in three steps, first it suggests an edit to the request page (the section you press the 'button' on - predetermined text, but you can freely edit to add a comment), when you click the save-link (button is gone) it will save your edit, take the domains that are mentioned in the section inside the 'LinkSummary' template(s), convert them to standard regexes and propose the edit to the blacklist. If you then agree it will save the blacklist, and appropriately log the added domains with a permanent link to the request and a permanent link to the edit to the blacklist-page. So when activating the gadget, the script will do three edits with two control points which can basically be clicked through without need for further input.
When you activate the gadget, the buttons will appear on the spam blacklist page, the talkpage of WikiProject Spam, the 'Local' linkreports from COIBot, and on the RevertList request page of XLinkBot (so for stuff reported on WTSPAM, RevertList requests and the local reports there is no need to go through a post on the blacklist request page .. if it is bad enough - if it warrants more discussion a cross-post on the blacklist request talk is preffered).
The links that are on pages need to be removed manually. For that tools are hard to write seen the many methods of linking within Wikipedia (plain, within square brackets, within square brackets with additional text, within templates, and templates that make the external links for you).
I hope this explains. If you are still unsure, make an addition request section for a non-existing link, and use the gadget to add them, then revert back directly afterwards. Thanks for helping, more help on the blacklist/whitelist/revertlist is needed! --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:59, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
Much obliged on the detailed explanation! Thanks! This seems like a really cool tool, so thanks to you and whomever else might have been involved. Having to learn how to write regex was not something I was looking forward to. :) One other question: do you think there are any weird conflict of interest issues if I spot spam like this, report it, (so that it's documented) and add it to the BL myself? Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 14:11, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
@Cyphoidbomb: thanks. I don't think there generally is a real conflict of interest, though you might get to the problem of being the policeman, the judge and the executioner in some cases. I generally put it in graduations - that problem does not exist with viagra-type spam or with redirect sites, but with other sites I prefer to be slower and leaving it open for discussion for some time (meanwhile feeding it through XLinkBot perhaps), or letting others decide on the action. --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:06, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
Fair enough. Thanks for the insight. As I dip my toe into this, I would be grateful for any friendly criticism you might have if you spot me doing something contrary to the culture. Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 13:03, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
@Cyphoidbomb: .. hehe .. culture seems to describe to ignore spam, and hence the spam blacklist, unless it is inhibiting your work (in which case yelling at the people who do work on the spam blacklist is the better practice: 'I don't know why <your domain here> is blacklisted, it is for sure not spam and I demand that you remove it from the list<full stop>').  :-) .. --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:07, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Hey B, I'm confused why there are two places to report spam, MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam? What's the deal? I'm over at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam like a schmuck reporting crap because that's what it says to do at the bottom of WP:SPAM when MediaWiki talk seems to be where all the action is. Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 18:06, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

@Cyphoidbomb: WT:WPSPAM is where spam cases get reported. Some of those don't need further action (too small in size etc.). It mainly functions as a kind of repository. Sometimes small cases get reported 2 or 3 times .. at which point it starts to pass a threshold. Sometimes is is also just a building-ground. You see one editor adding 4 links and report that .. then people look further and more links are found which are related, more editors are found .. and it then moves on to blacklistable.
Stuff that gets reported to the BlackList page often is already of a higher level problem. That is either directly identified as completely useless (even when spammed on small scale), or where the problem is already so big that blacklisting first and then clearing out the problem.
Do note, that we first should make sure that there is sufficient warning, other methods been tried, etc. So you are right, there is a significant overlap (cases reported to WT:WPSPAM that can go immediately on the blacklist, and cases reported to the blacklist which just are not ready yet). I hope this explains a bit. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:26, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Grant idea

Not sure how actively you watch your WM account, but please see this proposal. your input would be valuable based on your work on COIbot.. Jytdog (talk) 21:41, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Almost daily .. replied there! Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:20, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Reconsidering CheMoBot

About CheMoBot, {{Chembox}}, {{Infobox drug}}, {{cascite}}, etcetera. I am considering to propose: let's stop the bot-workings, and remove those icons from the infoboxes.

Consideration 1: it pollutes the article for the Reader. But to what? (Red X 3pxN says what?). The markings are distracting. Even worse: a Red XN makes Readers distrusting our pages.
Consideration 2: it does not help to improve articles. Are any editors today really cleaning up the category? (thousands here)?

As you know, I have seriously and actively supported the bot's actions (esp, in programming the templates). Still, it is a very confusing topic to encode and to document. Having spend serious time on this, I still can not see its benefits. What if I propose to stop the bot? -DePiep (talk) 00:00, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

People are still actively working on it, I just had a conversation about it with User:Walkerma (just a month ago). And whether or not there are Red X 3pxN, the pages should be distrusted. There should indeed be an effort to get it all to ticks.
Having the correct identifiers does help to improve pages, first because having correct identifiers is an improvement, secondly as the correct data is available and can be used to improve the pages. Having incorrect data there is not improving the pages. Moreover, the unexplained change of numerical data (vandalism) on these pages (and elsewhere) is a problem, having correct identifiers link into external databases helps in quickly verify correctness of the old / new value for other data as well. That keeps our pages more trustable.
There is no need to document it too much, the bot maintains those fields, editors do not need to touch them.
In short, editors should work towards having everything correct on those pages. I know it is a gargantuan task, but it does result in what the bot is written for - a more reliable Wikipedia. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:48, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
I wholeheartedly agree with Beetstra here. The ticks and crosses are getting to be a well known part of the chemistry Wikipedia, and they have been described several publications, including this recent one in J Chem Ed.. The science librarians really value this kind of thing; it's one of the rare places you can point to something on Wikipedia and say "this can be trusted".
There may come a time when Wikidata is mature enough to replace the current ChemBox. Till then, we have one of the best infoboxes on Wikipedia. Seeing that it was needing an update, I recently offered to Beetstra that I would be willing to spend a LOT of my time checking and updating the list. It's easy to forget that things we do affect millions of users, but just talk to people at a CINF session at an ACS national meeting and you realize how important it is. It's certainly worth 100 hours of my time to do this. Walkerma (talk) 14:09, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
@Walkerma and DePiep: In a way, I would actually say that making sure that the ticks are there is bringing Wikipedia forward, more than anything else.
I am looking into the bot's edits now on a regular bases. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:17, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
  • re. I mentioned two reasons, now a third issue has been added. re the original two:
1. About pollution for the Reader: the cross/tick system is an ad hoc quality indicator. To the reader, it has an obscure meaning. Even worse: the cross has the universal meaning of wrong, not unverified. It is not used elsewhere on wiki, and the reader is not used to it. So the reader is wrongfooted for the wrong reason. And let'sd not forget that pages are meant for the reader, not for the chem editor and not for the science librarians.
2. About the process of validation (data improvement). Most things said about 'unverified data is bad' are true, but that does not say the system is working. For years the (percentage) number of crosses has been high. Also, this verification process is hard to use, even by experienced chemistry editors. Being a chem ediotr is one, confirming data for the bot is another beast. After three years in this, I myself have not managed to get a beginning of understanding. (re Beetstra: "There is no need to document it too much, the bot maintains those fields": no some editor declared a verified id which the bot can not do; and this is probably the editing bottelneck).
3. About the new topic: This validation and verification process. Sure data should be V&V'ed. But the bots process had very serious flaws. First, the wiki has one process for all 5M pages: WP:VALIDATE, WP:VERIFY. That results in a referenced source for any statement. Every editor could be familiar with this. So if a chem identifier is verified, the correct standard procedure is to add that reference to the page. Covers everything. (This way, no need or use to indirectly freeze the correct value somewhere somehow). Another flaw is this: current validation happens by an editor, in itself not a verified action. This is against the "source it" routine too.
-DePiep (talk) 10:39, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
I can agree to this to a certain extend:
  • Maybe it should not be crosses, but question marks - ticks for verified, otherwise questionable. Ticked could technically be invisible - if it is correct there is not a real need to show that it is correct
  • The process of validation is documented: check all the necessary fields, correct if necessary, take the last revid of the page (is explained how), and record it in the place described. The rest is bot managed - that is what I mean with that you do not really need to describe the use of the verification-tags, there is no need for humans to change them.
  • I also agree that everything should be referenced (and these identifiers are intrinsically primary referenced - this is an allowed use of primary references). Problem is, that if they are changed from good to bad, it is easy to figure out that it is bad (as the primary reference goes to the wrong place), but you will have a job getting the good value back if there is not a recorded good value earlier (which probably means a search to find the correct value). Also if it is secondary sourced information, you'd have to check again whether the change was for good or for bad (digging through maybe a whole reference, or even having to go to a library to check) - having verified revids with good data makes it easier.
Note that properly verified data can also result in 'protecting' properly verified data - the boiling point of water is 100 degrees centigrade, that is what everyone knows. If someone changes it to 53 degrees centigrade you know that it is 'vandalism'. That datapoint is 'immutable' and is not to the editor's discretion. Same is true for trimethylphosphine, but if someone changes it, unexplained, from 38-39 degrees centigrade to 127-128 degrees centigrade, it either needs a specialist to know that the change is malicious, or a dig into the reference (which is now not there, so even more work). If that immutable data is however verified and recorded, we know it faster. Or the second best case, if there are verified identifiers linking to database sources, then it is also only one click away. Again, having at least the identifiers verified results in easier sourcing of all other data (which we know is generally badly sourced, though also generally correct). It is a drive towards more reliable data. --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:05, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

List of pages using Chemboxes

As well as my post above, I have another question I'm often asked. Is there a convenient way to get a full list of pages using the Chembox, other than working through this page one screen at a time? Since there are now about 10,000 such pages, it would be nice to be able to get a simple list somewhere. This would be particularly helpful for me working through the validation, and for when I approach CAS to expand our list. Thanks, Walkerma (talk) 05:10, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Not a full list, probably. You could pull it out of the API, which gives you the same list in a 'database format' (xml), but also per max of 500, and for the next 500 there you have to rewrite the query manually. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:31, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
{{tps}} Hi Walkerma, Beetstra! By playing with the URL manually, Special:WhatLinksHere seems to be able to give to 5000 at a time. DMacks (talk) 05:47, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
{{tps}} @Walkerma: You could use WP:AWB - you can get the list from AWB without registration (but you cant edit without). Otherwise, I would gladly put the list in you user space. Just ask :-) Christian75 (talk) 07:55, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
  • (ec) re Walkerma. First, to keep in mind is that both {{Chembox}} and {{Infobox drug}} aka {{Drugbox}} use the same CAS RN link for the same reason in teh same way (including the bottracking). That's potentially 10,454 + 6,480 P = 16,934 P transclusions max. In reality my reasoned estimation is there are 14,300 Articles (max) using the CAS link.
Of these, CheMoBot and template code have listed in here ~ 2980 + 1600 = 4580 Articles with CAS RN to be checked for some reason (changed or missing; a maintenance task; both templates are lumped together in this). Also from these figures: 14,300 - 1,600 = 12,700 Articles have a CAS RN.
The number of blank links (CAS RN not found on the CAS target site; is what you are talking about) is unknown.
On the Chembox talkpage you wrote "7800 [CAS RNs on the CAS site] we can use currently (of which perhaps 5000 are used on WP". That's a huge gap with the 12,700 Article having a CAS RN (+1,600 missing one for unk reason).
  • WLH articles already are actually listed on a WikiProject page, see {{Recent changes in Chemistry}}, a Recent Changes tool. They are updated manually and are not up to date (new pages are missing). The pages are:
Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry/Lists of pages/Chembox articles
Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry/Lists of pages/Infobox drug articles
Any questions remaining? -DePiep (talk) 08:10, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks a lot Beetstra, @DMacks:, @Christian75:, @DePiep: - those are all great tips! I used to use AWB all the time, but it's been years since I used it - I should look into that again. A lot of the time that manually-updated list should provide what people need. At least it's a lot easier than the one I used to help maintain one article at a time, List of organic compounds! Thanks, Walkerma (talk) 12:51, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

You want me to update those two pages or some userspace page? Sorry, can't promise this soon -DePiep (talk) 13:12, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

My edit you undid here actually added a spammy external link and wasn't the link the bot caught. The reasoning you gave was that "the bot perfectly told you why it was removed and should not be here -> WP:ELOFFICIAL," but I didn't actually add any links. My edit is here and you can see I didn't add a single link, but rather removed the inappropriate links per the policy you linked. None of those links are official and are rather all third-party movie reviews from random blogs (blogs which have been spamming their links all over Wikipedia actually). In summary, I'm not quite sure what's going on, but your edit added a link to a third-party review site which has been spamming links all over and your edit summary seems to indicate you intended to do the opposite (but the link was already gone anyway)? Thanks. Elaenia (talk) 18:20, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

@Elaenia: that edit looks really strange. The edit summary is half automated, and suggests that I indeed undid your edit .. but I did not. I'll have a look, but I think everything there needs a cleanup, external link wise. Thanks for notifying me! --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:46, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam#punjabigrooves.com .. hmm .. getting tempted to blacklist that stuff. --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:53, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
Thanks. Regarding the links, I've actually already removed a number of them, such as here, here, here, etc. I'm not sure where I first became aware of that domain being spammed, but I started following it after seeing it mentioned somewhere. Additional spam links I found on similar articles:
cinepunjab.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
bookmyshow.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
First one's a spam blog/review website and the second one is a booking website for movie tickets. Elaenia (talk) 19:05, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
Asked for fresh reports for the last 2 as well .. lets see what happens here. For the first we have rather clear spamming, for the second I have at least one user spamming already. --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:53, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

CheMoBot

Hi - I hope life is treating you well! I was wondering if we could chat about updating the CheMoBot check marks, updating the validation databases, and maybe even see about extending the scope. We may also want to consider the transition to WikiData. A lot of people I talk to seem very interested in what CheMoBot does and I want to make sure the information doesn't get "stale". You can reach me by responding here, or via my same old email (at potsdam.edu) or on Skype as firstname_lastname1. Cheers, Walkerma (talk) 04:36, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi Walkerma. How are you?
AFAIK CheMoBot is just running as normally (though it has been down for some time). I however don't know whether there is still a validation effort going on - I think that that is the part that is stale. I think that without a serious effort to get the current data up-to-date, there is not much use in extending it further, though it is just a matter of adding more parameters into the settings file, and doing the effort of checking all of them on-wiki.
@Walkerma: Regarding moving to WikiData - I am afraid that WikiData is an ocean of unverified data. It would be nice to move to a world-wide system, but the last time I checked they are not prepared for flagging their data (while it could be so simple - just a flag on each of the parameters they have, and a userright that allows trusted users to set the flag for each parameter to 'verified', which gets undone when s.o. is changing the parameter).
I spend very little time on bot-maintenance / programming lately. Don't have any time. For WikiData, I would need to set up a new system and if we use the current system, have a list of revids for each WikiData parameter, and an additional parameter on WikiData to flag correctness for each parameter, while all they could need is a 'flagged revisions' system there. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:25, 7 February 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for your reply. I'm doing well, thanks! I do know that the WikiTrust people are working with PubChem to get direct access to their data, and vice-versa. It would be a tragedy if there's no way to flag unverified changes, though!
My main focus is now, though; I'd like to put in some time to update the data. Hopefully it wouldn't require a lot of work/time from you, but here are a few things I'd like to do, if you're amenable:
  1. I'll send you current lists of validated IDs from ChemSpider, PubChem and ChEBI, so you can run your scripts to update these.
  2. I'll manually work through the main index one article at a time, checking that they're all green ticks.
  3. Update revIDs to include new things or updates, such as the decahydrate CAS no. at sodium sulfate which is correct, but currently marked with a red X.
  4. Get CheMoBot to update to new RevIDs. I updated the main index page six months ago to indicate that Praseodymium(III) oxide had the correct CAS No., but CheMoBot still hasn't changed the red X to a green tick. These new RevIDs need to be picked up by CheMoBot or all my update work will be a waste of time!
  5. I'll experiment with adding validated MP & possibly solubility data; if this turns out to be impossibly slow work I will stop, though. This is my "tribute" to the late Jean-Claude Bradley, who was keen to use his dataset for that purpose.
Does this sound like a plan? I realise I'm giving myself a lot of work to do, but I will try to recruit help from WP:CHEM, and it will be spread out over many months. Will you be able to work with me to get it started - to update databases and to make sure everything is working correctly? Once CheMoBot is updated/running smoothly I expect it would not require any more of your time. Please let me know - many thanks! Walkerma (talk) 23:17, 7 February 2016 (UTC)
I will not promise anything on updating identifiers. I will however try to get CheMoBot run appropriately. I see Praseodymium(III) oxide .. CheMoBot has updated the verified revid there, but failed to update the tickmarks ... I have to check why the bot fails to check that properly. I'll do my best! --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:17, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
@Walkerma: I've checked bot operation (Cephaeline), and it still seems to run just as before. I will try to monitor it over the next number of days.
You were above alluding to extending the scope .. if you feel like it we could consider to take ALL identifiers in account from now on. There is no reason why we should single out one of them. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:35, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
I'd love to do all identifiers, but I think it only works if we can get collections of identifiers that can be validated. Is that possible? Certainly, I can probably get updated lists from PubChem and ChemSpider, which are two big ones. I think CAS is the most important, though, so that's where I planned to start once we know the bot is updating normally. Walkerma (talk) 14:54, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

@Walkerma: I tested the bot yesterday with Cephaeline, and it all seems to work normally at the moment. I'll try and keep a bit more of an eye out whether the bot is running - tools lab has been hard on me lately. On Cephaeline I did notice that the bot does not like it when there are 'mistakes' in the chembox - it contained a duplicate parameter in the verified revid, resulting in the bot not understanding that the numbers were the same for some reason.

Quite some are downloadable or fully unconditionally accessible (as you mention, PubChem and ChemSpider, also Drugbank), and quite some have representatives here that we can 'use' (I know that the ChEMBL people are around .. I think most of the ChEMBLs that we have are correct, but not updated in the indices). Only CAS is 'difficult' due to the limited access to the db. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:26, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Let me know if you think you've solved the main problem. I see that Praseodymium(III) oxide is now a green tick again - but you had to do a manual trigger. Will other pages update to a tick automatically or is there still a problem there? I'd like to start, but I want to be sure my updates are picked up by CheMoBot! If you would like, I'll do a few trial updates. Thanks, Walkerma (talk) 05:00, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
If CheMoBot is up and running, then
  • if it notices an edit to the page it will follow up within 10 minutes (so if you update the index within that 10 minutes, the bot will follow up).
  • otherwise it randomly goes through the full list (which may for your article take a lot of time to reach). This will happen if you update the index without touching the article. If you want to enforce it to update, you'll have to do a 0-edit.
Do make sure there are no mistakes on the page - I think the bot did not understand the parameter-value that was I removed on the oxide. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:34, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Some practical notes on these bot issues Walkerma:
About duplicate arguments (main page: CAT:DUPARG). They are listed by toolpages (12 sec to load) Chembox, Infobox drug. Today both are empty, occasionally a manual edit mistake might show in there. (Recent months I have cleaned those lists. When in doubt, I removed the involved |..._Ref={{...cite}} param+value completely, assuming that the Bot would catch up from blank for that parameter. Did not check this.
About misspelled and nonexistant parameters: articles listed in Category:Chemical articles with unknown parameter in Chembox and Category:Chemical articles with unknown parameter in Infobox drug. Links to whitelisted parameters are there (this same setup also produces the Preview error message). These categories too were emptied by me in recent months. (Note: today that Infobox drug category has ~1900 pages. That's with |InChI=, I'm working on this). -DePiep (talk) 11:45, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
  • re wikidata: the royal route is to source a value directly in wikidata. Clearly this is to be automated.
The bot checking (either tick or cross) should cover this situation: there is a value in wikidata (which could be either the same or different from the local value). What's the process?
btw, such mayor process changes should be discussed at the talkpage. -DePiep (talk) 09:25, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
-DePiep (talk) 09:25, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
If we are to source data from WikiData, then the situation becomes different and difficult to maintain (the bot's operation would then either need to move to WikiData, also sourcing the ticks/crosses from there). At this time I am of the opinion that the data on WikiData is less reliable than here, so I would not consider yet to implement that. So at the moment we are ignoring WikiData ... --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:31, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
Yes, that is the problem. Efforts should be to improve wd data, not local data. CAn you quantify your statement on reliability? The numbers say 2,984 out of 12,700 CAS RN Articles have changed CAS RN (bot cross; 23%). And from the identifiers bot-verified, CAS has a low number (good rate). The question is: how to incorporate wikidata (-quality) into the current verification process? -DePiep (talk) 09:59, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
I don't know how much on WikiData is reliable. One could run a script to source them against each other and set them side-by-side, see differences. As with Wikipedia, on wikidata there is no editorial oversight (except now on en.wikipedia we have 'ticks' and 'crosses'). One could do that for ticked en.wikipedia CASNos vs. WikiData CASNos and see ..
It is probably better than that 23%, some are actually correct but changed from e.g. blank and then not updated in the revid. On the other hand, some of the 'ticked' CASNos are probably wrong (I just had such a case where s.o. changed the CAS with a reasonable statement showing they might be right, and when I check, they were right). I however think that more of the crossed CASNos are right than that there are ticked CASNos that are wrong.
Once you have one of the identifiers at high rate correct, it is easy to pull all the others out of databases (where available) - search for the CASNo in the drugbank database, and pull out the drugbank-ID, etc. etc. (all assuming that the external data itself is not flawed on CASNo .. CASNo does have that habit a bit).
And once we have correct en.wikipedia data, it is easy to extract lists, and then implement those lists on WikiData, porting the reliability data. However, that needs also an infrastructure on WikiData to be ready. (Another option is to have en.wikipedia reliable, and then port the ticks and crosses into WikiData).
All I then would need to do is .. port CheMoBot, for which I do not have sufficient time. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:27, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
I've been working with the assumption that we're not ready for a move to Wikidata, for the reasons given above, but we need to consider Wikidata as a fairly likely possibility for the long term. Therefore it would be better if CheMoBot is portable, or can help with Wikidata validation in some way, even if it means that someone else takes over the code (if Beetstra is unavailable). The reliability of chemistry data on Wikipedia (and its long-term maintenance), is a critical issue for us, I think. Walkerma (talk) 12:23, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
I would then expect to have a bot freshly written for that. The situation with Wikidata is much easier - no need to extract the values out of Wikitext, just use as-is, tag if correct/changed, and both value as well as tag can be used locally to show the value and the status. All we would need there would be the parameters to store 'validation', and a revid-like list of checked values (not sure if that is properly supported). --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:27, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
I was mistaken, revids do exist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:29, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
Looks like the thing you are looking for in wd is called Rank
enwiki article Tartrazine is d:item tartrazine (Q407158)
That item has d:property CAS Registry Number (P231) (wikidata today returns: 1934-21-0)
That d:property can have d:source (think: url); that one having Rank: Preferred Rank, Normal Rank, Deprecated Rank.
-DePiep (talk) 13:10, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
I think ranks are items that can have two values, but where one is ranked less important than the other, but both are correct. Here I am more thinking about a validation-tag and/or possibly a system like we have here now, where we have a page with revids of values which we know are correct (the latter needing a validation tag as well). If the value in the entity is different from the verified value, it should be flagged as 'changed' (which generally means that now there is a wrong value in the entity). But maybe the MediaWiki software of WikiData has a 'smarter' solution. --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:55, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
The closest I could find in de d:datamodel. There is no 1:1 translation for the verification model (AFAIK, in d: there is no restriction to classified users, different vandalism approach, confirm-by-editors-edit, ...). -DePiep (talk) 12:25, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Broken _ref-parameters

@Walkerma:. With Praseodymium oxide above I noted that the bot had problems with 'empty' verification fields ('{{cascite}} instead of '{{cascite|changed|'ref'}} and varieties thereof). It simply could not parse them, and display is then standard as 'crossed'. I have now added a check to all these templates, putting the ones without first parameter into Category:Chembox_and_Drugbox_articles_with_a_broken_CheMoBot_template. That gave about 150 articles, where I subsequently wiped the whole parameter from the box (like this). Bot has followed up on a good number of them (except for the ones that were actually not indexed in the first place ..), and marked many as 'correct' now. Hope this clears out a bit of a backlog ... but we may want to keep an eye on the contents of the category to see if more pop-up in time. --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:46, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Many thanks! If you think everything is mostly work, I think I'll try to start working through RevIDs a bit this weekend. That way we can see if there are any other problems lurking there. I will probably do the majority of the work over the summer, but I'd like to make a start soon if possible. All the best, Walkerma (talk) 12:01, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
All seems fine, judging by the follow ups. I think you can add revids. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:16, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
@Walkerma: - seen that these are mostly snugly followed up by a CheMoBot edit .. all seems to work fine. I must say, however, that CheMoBot has been crashing every now and then over the last couple of days. I'll try and check over the next days. --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:37, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

"Bot-list"

Hi there,

I have noticed by accident that you listed user:SSZ under spam list for many years (since 2008) for no good reason. Please remove this username from this list ASAP.

Thanks.

21:43, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

47.17.27.189 (talk)

@47.17.27.189: ehm, I am not sure I understand. Where is SSZ listed? --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:29, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

CAS number problem with Ezetimibe/simvastatin and Indacaterol/glycopyrrolate

Both articles have the same CAS number and the number is validated in both chemboxes but the articles are for different drug mixtures. According to ChemIDplus, Ezetimibe/simvastatin corresponds to 444313-53-5 and Indacaterol/glycopyrrolate to 1262431-94-6. Snipre (talk) 12:46, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

CAS number problem with Interferon alfa-2b and Peginterferon alfa-2b

According to ChemIDplus, Interferon Alfa-2b corresponds to CAS number 98530-12-2 and Peginterferon Alfa-2b to CAS number 215647-85-1. Snipre (talk) 22:29, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

@Snipre: I guess that there is then something wrong. Please change it in the documents and the bot will flag if the flags are set. Do double-check the CAS numbers with CAS itself, the numbering is not always unique or correct, even within CAS. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:31, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

Uncyclopedia bis

Seeing on my Watchlist that year numbers had gotten replaced with random numbers, I reverted them to those set out in a draft from last year. I also found that the current version retains a paragraph on the division of the user base as seen by one clique. Please review my edit, which replaces this bias with a neutral description of the event, and please keep an eye open if I show up on a Noticeboard, as happened last time. Spike-from-NH (talk) 16:48, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

@Spike-from-NH: sigh. I'll keep an eye open, thanks. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:39, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

IP 198.24.30.104

Hallo Dirk--I'm trying to find out why reverted them (edits like this). What's the problem? I didn't see anything obviously wrong with the three images I looked at. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 02:30, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

@Drmies: Persistent block evasion, so applying plain WP:RBI (without B, though there is an filter active). An editor who is indeffed here, but has been editing from their IPs even before being blocked, and continued to do that. I've had a discussion with this (checkuser etc.) with Courcelles, and I believe that there is checkuser data stored for this. I keep suggesting that they return to their main account and get it unblocked, but ... --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:17, 5 April 2016 (UTC) Expanded --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:26, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
@Drmies: I see where you are coming from. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:31, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
  • Your assessment of the sock that you blocked is right, it took me just one look to their talkpage to know, clear case of QUACKQUACK, it is good that you STOPped that one. We may need to add a ranges to the abusefilter, you may have more insight in that. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:40, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Fixing pings

In case you are not aware, your edit at WP:ELN will not generate a ping. The notification system has no knowledge of the history of a page; all it can see is the current diff. If someone fixes typos in their comment, the notification system will not ping anyone because they might have been pinged before. What that means is that to fix a ping you have to either completely delete your old comment, and save the page, then add a completely new comment with a new signature. Or, what many people do, is just add a new comment under the old one saying something like "Re-ping User:Example". Johnuniq (talk) 04:49, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. I thought that just editing the thread and adding a new signature will ping. OK, I'll just add a proper ping then. --Dirk Beetstra T C 04:51, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Full edit protection of Die Rote Fahne

Please reduce edit-protection of Die Rote Fahne to semi-protected status. There has not been any disruptive editing by logged-in users since on 21 February the semi-protection expired. As according to the hatnote you seem to be on WikiBreak, I will immediately proceed to WP:RFPP. --PanchoS (talk) 01:08, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Note that I consider it very problematic this happens after you added rotefahne.eu to the global spam blacklist, not based on any valid reason at all. Taken together, this rather looks like abuse of administrative powers to me. --PanchoS (talk) 01:34, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
@PanchoS: You lost your right on an answer by immediately issuing the abuse card. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:38, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
You're right. :/ I'm not expecting an answer anymore, and have to apologize – don't know what drove me into assuming bad faith. I usually don't, and shouldn't have done here, too. Sorry again. PanchoS (talk) 08:21, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
@PanchoS: apology accepted.
There were several concerns by several editors, on several Wikis that this site does not belong here (one of the commenting admins here on en.wikipedia is a de.wikipedia admin having the same concerns). Yet it is continuously being pushed despite warnings, blocks and page-protections. To me, it seems likely that this is plainly being spammed - the person who is adding this just wants this site to be mentioned and linked without willing to discuss, now the edits and additions need discussion. I agree that the full protection may be overkill and could agree to a lower protection level, but this pushing has to stop. If it is decided that a link to that website should be here, then that has to go through a regular discussion, and that is now enforced through blacklisting - a whitelisting discussion is now needed. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:28, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
Thanks, I appreciate your answer. I'm not convinced though, why rotefahne.eu should be blacklisted. IMHO, meta:User:COIBot/LinkReports/rotefahne.eu is rather unproblematic, if I don't misinterpret. I'm yet to see a problematic addition by logged-in users. From what I can see, some fairly trustworthy users referenced rotefahne.eu in a handful of articles on de.wikipedia, such as de:Liebknecht-Luxemburg-Demonstration, which from a counterspamming perspective is unproblematic.
The URL was however repeatedly added to de:Die Rote Fahne and en:Die Rote Fahne by various IPs. These IP edits were to some extent illegitimate, as none of the current publications titled "Rote Fahne" is an official successor, as the original KPD was banned in Germany. Repeatedly readding the URL, these IPs indeed waged an edit war that may amount to vandalism. They can be perfectly barred by semi-protection though, both on de.wikipedia and on en.wikipedia, and indeed, the problem only came up again on both Wikipedias, when semi-protection expired. Codc got this wrong when filing the Blacklisting request. Without the page being semi-protected, there is however no case for more drastic measures. Regards, PanchoS (talk) 09:28, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
@PanchoS: I am going to ping seth here, part of the reason was namely that the website in question is not in any form related to the subject at hand. My German is not sufficient to judge that further. I did however have the same concerns as you express earlier in the meta-blacklisting-thread. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:03, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
@Beetstra: Indeed you did raise more or less the same concerns, which makes clear there has been no reason for me to assume any bad faith. Feeling ashamed about that, I want to say sorry again – it was not okay. :/
Re the relation: Well, there obviously isn't any formal relation between any of today's publications titled "Rote Fahne" with the original KPD, after the latter was banned in 1933 and again in 1956. And none of them is a successor in terms of representing at least a major faction of the defunct KPD. While MLPD and KPD (1970) have resp. had a real party basis, the other two initiatives, KPD (1990) and KPD Initiative (now Spartakus) are tiny, if existing at all. The online newspapers however do exist, and are not altogether marginal, though controversial, especially in the case of the staunchly antizionist rotefahne.eu.
The best solution might be adding a short section like de:Die Rote Fahne#Nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg that shortly mentions the claimed successors, but refers to MLPD, KPD (1970) [de], KPD (1990) for weblinks. The only one we don't have a better place to put a weblink is rotefahne.eu. Unsure if a short stub about that online newspaper or its publisher Steins would be more appropriate, probably the former. Then we are finally able to keep the weblinks of all of these wannabe successors away from the article about the original newspaper, and should be able to enforce that with a semi-protection. How about that? --PanchoS (talk) 12:53, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
@PanchoS: I am not against lowering the protection to semi, I will do that today.
Regarding the link and the text, I would consider trying to write properly referenced stubs for the 'claimed successors' and see if they have merit. They can then be linked from the original article, all with an independent reference that shows the 'claim' that they are successors. If the 'successors' are not notable, then we do without article, but still we need an independent reference that shows the claim. If the article on the 'successor' that is now using 'rotefahne.eu' sticks, then you can request delisting of the website, otherwise there is no use per sé, let's leave it for some time to let the abuse cool down (note that it would not be the first time that when editors don't get what they want on their wikis of choice, that they start spamming all other wikis with google translated articles to get their way and make a lot of work for everyone). --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:22, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
Hi!
I guess, Codc is more involved in this and can give a better comment on this than I can do. -- 20:54, 9 April 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lustiger seth (talk • contribs)

Editor of the Week : nominations needed!

The Editor of the Week initiative has been recognizing editors since 2013 for their hard work and dedication. Editing Wikipedia can be disheartening and tedious at times; the weekly Editor of the Week award lets its recipients know that their positive behaviour and collaborative spirit is appreciated. The response from the honorees has been enthusiastic and thankful.

The list of nominees is running short, and so new nominations are needed for consideration. Have you come across someone in your editing circle who deserves a pat on the back for improving article prose regularly, making it easier to understand? Or perhaps someone has stepped in to mediate a contentious dispute, and did an excellent job. Do you know someone who hasn't received many accolades and is deserving of greater renown? Is there an editor who does lots of little tasks well, such as cleaning up citations?

Please help us thank editors who display sustained patterns of excellence, working tirelessly in the background out of the spotlight, by submitting your nomination for Editor of the Week today!

Sent on behalf of Buster Seven Talk for the Editor of the Week initiative by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:18, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Tammy Stoner, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Jill Bennett. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 10:33, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Edit warring IP on Google Translate Page

Hello Beetsra, I am contacting you because I am not sure what to do, on the Google Translate article there is an IP address that is repeatedly adding in random languages to the list without reason for it, every time I revert I get re-reverted shortly after, this IP address seems to be pushing the same edits as previously blocked IPs and socks, see recent edits compared to old edits from blocked socks, it is likely the same person, not sure what actions should be done, but I figured you would know what to do. — Abrahamic Faiths (talk) 16:30, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Not block not protect. --188.32.107.172 (talk) 16:53, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

You've got mail!

Hello, Beetstra. Please check your email; you've got mail!
Message added 05:00, 3 May 2016 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

— MusikAnimal talk 05:00, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Tammy Stoner, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Jill Bennett. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 09:53, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

UnBlockBot

Hey Beetstra, your bot in #wikipedia-en-unblock connect has been broken for the past few days. Could you take a look at it? — Coffee // have a cup // beans // 21:40, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

Hi Coffee. I restarted the bot from scratch. What seemed to be the problem? --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:08, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
It had gone silent and wasn't replying to commands either. But, it's fixed now. Thank you! — Coffee // have a cup // beans // 03:13, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

Notice

Information icon There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is Repeated WP:TPO violations by CFCF on Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Archive.is RFC 4. Thank you. Hasteur (talk) 18:58, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Whitelist proposal of support.fiverr.com/hc/en-us/articles/206693977-Pricing-Your-Gig-Beyond-5

Hi, can you please tell me if I made a mistake proposing the Whitelist entry of support.fiverr.com/hc/en-us/articles/206693977-Pricing-Your-Gig-Beyond-5 or do I just have to wait until somebody will process my entry? I saw that you are doing those edits and hope you can help me with that. Thank you very much 91.65.253.149 (talk) 12:02, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, I forgot to log in. This was my message: Kunstmolch (talk) 12:04, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

I added it. We suffer from lack of manpower there, sorry it took so long. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:16, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

Bot Redirect

Hi! Can you please redirect LinkWatchers reports from fawiki to it's own cvn channel (#cvn-wp-fa)? thanks.--Arian Ar (talk) 14:00, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi. I have changed the settings accordingly - I hope it will work. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:18, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
@Arian Ar: the bot is there, and it responds. I don't know if there is output in terms of reported external links, the bot is lagging (I see several thousands of fa.wiki edits and links in the to-be-processed edits and additions), so there may not be output very often. Please let me know if/when you see the bot report a link-additions, so we know it works. --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:05, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
sorry it took so long! Apparently the bot is functional but whenever i (or one of the channel Ops) try to send a command, it tells me to go away! little help?! thanks!--Arian Ar (talk) 13:18, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

Sunjata epos in orale traditie

Beste Beetstra,zoals literatuurwetenschap en antropologie leren zijn oude volksepen overal in de wereld eeuwenlang, en soms gelukkig nog tot op de dag van vandaag, ons doorgegeven in een orale traditie. Verwijzing naar twee weergaven van zeldzame specimina daarvan uit Mali, zoals door Baerenreiter ooit vastgelegd in de fameuze serie Les Cordes Anciennes, misstaan volgens mij (literatuurwetenschapper) niet in een informatief encyclopedisch lemma, dat immers onderzoekers en anderszins geïnteresseerden op sporen moet kunnen brengen. Daarom wilde ik die links toevoegen aan het enige uitvoerige wiki-lemma dat ik over het Sunjata-epos heb aangetroffen. Lijkt dat jou geen essentiële info op die plek? Indien wel, zet ze dan svp terug! Mvg, RijkM (Cuijk, NL)145.129.221.24 (talk) 07:17, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

@145.129.221.24: Nee, het lijkt me geen essentiele informatie. We schrijven hier geen linkfarm, we schrijven een encyclopedia. Er is redelijk veel informatie in het artikel zelf om een goed begrip van het onderwerp te krijgen. Als mensen voorbeelden willen zien, dan is er altijd Google om die te verkrijgen, dat is niet de taak van (en.)wikipedia. --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:36, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
Merkwaardige opvatting over wat een encyclopedie is... Bij een goed lemma kun je gelukkig vaak, en terecht, ook literatuuropgaven en\of illustraties vinden, en dat niet alleen ter verificatie van gegeven informatie. Vindplaatsen vermelden van zo iets essentieels als het zeldzame nog vastgelegde voorbeeld van de unieke bestaansvorm van een monument van orale cultuur lijkt mij een minstens zo belangrijke service aan wie de encyclopedie raadpleegt als het toevoegen van bijvoorbeeld afbeeldingen bij lemmata mbt. personen, gebouwen, handschriften of schilderijen etc. Maar misschien is - gezien je toevoeging "(en.)" - jouw opvatting specifiek voor de Engelse wikipedia? Mvg, RijkM. 145.129.221.24 (talk) 19:51, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
@145.129.221.24: dat is niet merkwaardig, het is zoals het is opgesteld in onze pilaren: WP:NOT#REPOSITORY, WP:NOT#DIRECTORY, WP:ENC, etc. Speciaal voor de externe links, is er WP:EL, waar het meer wordt uitgelegd. En dat is niet specifiek voor de en.wikipedia (maar daar is waar we nu over praten), het is vergelijkbaar in nl.wikipedia, de.wikipedia (op de hier waarschijnlijk nog strenger dan hier) en es.wikipedia. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:16, 7 June 2016 (UTC)
Dank, Dirk, voor je consciëntieuze verwijzingen naar de uitvoerige principes en richtlijnen die Wikipedia (terecht) hanteert. Toch heb ik daar niet zo gauw een rechtvaardiging voor jouw beslissing kunnen vinden; tenzij de twee YouTube video's - hoewel met licentie geplaatst - copyrightproblemen zouden kunnen oproepen; maar ik ben onvoldoende ingevoerd om dat te kunnen beoordelen, jij zal daar meer ervaring mee hebben. In ieder geval was mijn toevoeging geen lijst die de omvang van het lemma in de schaduw stelde; ook ging het om intrinsiek belangrijke (en "rare": zeldzaam te vinden), zeer ter zake doende informatie m.b.t. het onderwerp, misschien nog het duidelijkst bij het eerste van de twee sites waar ik naar verwees: Sidiki Diabaté & Djelimady Sissoko : The Sunjata Epic, waar de griot, dezelfde als die in de tweede site, slechts door één medeuitvoerende wordt vergezeld. (Ik citeer hier even de annotatie:)

Gepubliceerd op 20 apr. 2013 "This is the story of Sunjata Keita, founder of the Mali Empire, which lasted from 1235 to 1469 A rare retelling of the Malian epic Sunjata by veteran griot Djelimady Sissoko accompanied on the kora by the legendary Sidiki Diabaté. Recorded in July 1987 at the South Bank Centre in London, as part of the Malian section in a series of concerts under the banner "Music of the Royal Courts". Categorie Mensen & blogs Licentie Standaard YouTube-licentie"

Maar goed, ik hou het hierbij, heb mijn best gedaan voor wat ik, niet zonder enige onderzoekservaring op mijn eigen vakgebied, als een zinnige encyclopedische bijdrage zie. De wereld zal wel doordraaien. - Overigens: mijn respect voor je gewetensvolle reacties, ook al ben ik het niet met je eens. Wiki blijft een (soms misschien moeizaam bevochten) wonder! RijkM145.129.221.24 (talk) 17:45, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

Alien signal

.Alien*8*Signal.

G.o..D.
U.F.O.
M.I.A.
M.T.C.
C.D.P.
D.S.C.
A.H.
O.H.
H.O.
.B.O.X.
.6.6.6.

      .^.
     .^.^.
    .^.^.^.
   .^.^.^.^.
  .^.^.^.^.^.
 .^.^.^.^.^.^.
.^.^.^.^.^.^.^.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.117.54.94 (talk) 03:38, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

@75.117.54.94: I am sorry to see you were forced to leave ... is there anything I can help you with? --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:54, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Reversion bot XLinkBot on Propuesta Indecente

This edition is legitimate? or there is an error in it. --186.84.46.227 (talk) 19:23, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Dewas, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Holy Trinity School. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 09:37, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

XLinkBot

Hello, a concern about your bot, XLinkBot, has been raised at: Wikipedia:Bureaucrats'_noticeboard#Unflagged_bot_XLinkBot, please review the discussion on that page. Thank you, — xaosflux Talk 19:16, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm there. --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:57, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Nikodem Milewski, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Eff. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 10:39, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Favor

Next time you block a sock of a blocked account, could you check on if they have any articles that need deleting under G5? Arcituno had nearly a hundred, and by the time I realized, about half of them had aged beyond the reach of Special:Nuke.

Thanks in advance. DS (talk) 00:33, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi User:DragonflySixtyseven - Wow, I did not realise that this is also a problem here. I'll try to take that into account next time. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:21, 14 July 2016 (UTC)
As for why to use G5, I wrote some allegories. DS (talk) 14:15, 14 July 2016 (UTC)
RBI++. --Dirk Beetstra T C 16:11, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Peace Treaties in Art 30 x 30 Challenge/Participants and points

Hi Beetstra! The information you reverted could be helpful for challenge's statistics. Could you explain me please the reason of reversion? Thank you!--Xabier Cañas (talk) 15:41, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

  • Xabier Cañas, click on the user names and you'll see why. These are socks of an editor blocked years ago for blatant copyright violations, one who can't kick the habit of editing Wikipedia and likes to participate in competitions and brag about it. This is something not to be encouraged. Just FYI, Iñaki LL is aware of this (though they may not agree), as are Bbb23 and DragonflySixtyseven. Thank you, Drmies (talk) 16:00, 15 July 2016 (UTC)
Thanks Drmies! Urderstood!--Xabier Cañas (talk) 16:04, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited International Academy of Film and Television, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Final Draft. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 09:40, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Til

Sigh. As he says, he can pretty much edit with impunity, at least at the pop culture articles he likes. I manage to catch him at least several times a month, sometimes several times in one day when he goes on a tear. He clearly has access to almost an unlimited number of IP addresses. Doug Weller talk 19:01, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

If you catch him, so can an edit filter. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:18, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
And there is one, inactive, which I forgot about! Thanks. Doug Weller talk 10:53, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Til calling me a white supremacist

And now he's calling me a white supremacist, one of the most pathetic attacks he could make given my edit history on subjects related to white supremacism. And pinging Jimbo.[11] Shame he wasn't community banned. Doug Weller talk 11:11, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Of course you don't see youreself as a white supremacist, but every person of color sees you as a white supremacist, everything you ever touch with your "admin toolbox" is with a blatant racist political agenda, i know it is hard for you to look in that mirror and see yourself though — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.127.128.35 (talk) 11:15, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Lol. My edit history on white supremacist articles speaks for itself. I have nothing to be ashamed of. Doug Weller talk 11:18, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

@Drmies and Doug Weller: I just reacted to the situation at hand, did not judge further. There's more to it, IIRC. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:23, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Thondi Muthalum Driksakshiyum

The article Thondi Muthalum Driksakshiyum has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

No evidence of satisfying WP:FILM

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. PamD 22:51, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

@PamD: Please notify the first content creator, I created this as a redirect after deleting a copy of another page. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:20, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

COIBot

I can't access those reports, but per this, I am interested. Where else is there an issue? MSJapan (talk) 06:25, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that you've added some links pointing to disambiguation pages. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

Bitwise IIT Kharagpur
added a link pointing to Bitwise
Torrance, California
added a link pointing to Wilson Park

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 09:48, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Thondi Muthalum Driksakshiyum

The article Thondi Muthalum Driksakshiyum has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Film in its early announcement stage, WP:NFF.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Charles Turing (talk) 11:03, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

@Charles Turing: I am not the first content editor on this article, I deleted an original copy, recreating it as a (what turned out to be wrong) redirect. I'll warn the content editor. --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:08, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Discussion

Restarting the discussion here [12] regarding the redirect. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:58, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

@Doc James: answered there. --Dirk Beetstra T C 04:56, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

Time series database

Hi, you assisted with a third opinion on this article previously. If you have the time/inclination could you pop in and give an opinion again please? Thank you. -- HighKing++ 17:22, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

I have cleared the article with links to policy. The main problem is not notability, the problem is whether it is independently verifiable and worth to mention based on that. WP:SPAMHOLE applies. --Dirk Beetstra T C 04:57, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Two years ago ...
chemistry
... you were recipient
no. 945 of Precious,
a prize of QAI!

... and yes, there are signs that arbcom is improving, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:22, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

@Gerda Arendt: thanks (and this (and other discussions in the main thread) shows how ArbCom is, was .. ). --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:00, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
They unbanned two in 2016, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 05:14, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
That did happen before as well (though I don't know their yearly rate). But the issues of overload (no answers on emails) and lack of transparency (I'd prefer that you send us an email) are not gone. As are many other issues with the general operation (named parties will ALWAYS be admonished (at the very least) - where it is easy to make cases with numerical following, which does not show said bias), they do not really stop 'lynching' (other than taking away the named party, so they cannot be lynched anymore). Etc. etc. Still much room for improvement. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:59, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

Repeat incorrect deletion

I have twice now asked you not to delete a page pending discussion. There are a large number of arguments missing in the previous deletion discussion, please do not act out of spite. Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 13:38, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

@CFCF: - go to WP:DRV. --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:39, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
You really like wasting other peoples time don't you? You are misusing you administrative rights, and I know you are aware of that. Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 13:40, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
There is a discussion open, I have commented there, as others did also, with the clear indication that this needs to go through WP:DRV. You did not participate there yet. You've lost your point with your accusation. --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:43, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
No, but I know you are a strong proponent of WP:Bureaucracy, and I think it is extremely harmful for the encyclopedia. Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 13:45, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
@CFCF: No, I am not that much of a bureaucratic person actually - but I will NOT overturn something because one or two editors disagree when there is rather broad community consensus (8 !votes, IIRC, or a whole RfC earlier). --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:48, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
Each and every experience I've had interacting with you — you've advocated for extreme degrees of bureaucracy. This was not two people who disagreed with the decision, and on top of that you are aware that consensus is not a vote. The arguments set forth in the deletion discussion are ridiculous, and hold no water against any real rationale, which is why I asked for a new discussion to be had — which you decided to entirely ignore. Your insistence on being sole arbiter of cases causes massive extra work for everyone involved, and the idea that you would overturn a decision is preposterous — you are free to entirely ignore the non-issue, saving eons of time. Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 13:57, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
  • @CFCF: You've now been pointed to WP:DRV by two other editors. Add my name to the list for three. You are arguing for this administrator to overturn a unanimous decision that was made by the community, and properly closed by an uninvolved administrator. You accuse this administrator of abusing his tools because he won't go against community consensus. You are flatly, completely, utterly wrong. If Beetstra did as you want him to he would be abusing his tools. If you are so convinced you are right, then stop wasting time and get to WP:DRV as rapidly as you can. That way lies the pathway to restoration of this redirect, if it exists at all. Hounding people to restore it, against community consensus, will not work. I do hope I've been clear. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:26, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
Hammersoft, I am not arguing for Beetstra to do anything more in this case, just to be less bureaucratic in general. This is far from the first time he has chosen to put up entirely unnecessary hurdles and ignore any ordinary approach to reaching consensus in favor of one he deems to be precisely by-the-book, where he is able to perform administrative actions and to dictate what others should do.
The reason I haven't posted on DRV is not that I ignore what others say, but that it is an ordeal: a pointless administrative and bureaucratic hurdle that takes more time than I am willing to put in for something I honestly care very little about. This doesn't so much concern this case, but the fact that when many such hurdles are set up we lose editors and engagement, because each action requires much more effort than is necessary. People aren't stupid and they understand that if you force them to jump through hoops to get somewhere you're pretty much telling them that their efforts aren't wanted
I will not respond here again, but Hammersoft this is not about a "random administrator", but specifically about Beetstra's insistence on administrative action where none is needed. Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 16:49, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
  • @CFCF: Less bureaucratic? How is it, exactly, that you want him to be less bureaucratic? Should he ignore unanimous community decision in the deletion discussion? Is that less bureaucratic? I suppose it would be. I wonder, how do you think the rest of the community would then feel about his decisions in overriding unanimous community consensus in the deletion discussion? Do you think they would hail him as the Alexander to Wikipedia's bureaucratic gordian knot, or do you suppose the community would excoriate him for violating Wikipedia's fundamental model for editorial decision-making? Let's be clear here; you're asking him to violate policy, and accusing him of abusing his administrator tools for not doing so. I fail to see how you would expect a positive outcome of this. If this isn't what you're asking him to do, then clarify it for us. What, exactly, do you want him to do? I know you're saying you won't respond here again, but this remains unresolved. Please clarify. --Hammersoft (talk) 17:45, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
Choosing to forgo administrative action when it is unnecessary is not violating policy, or even any guideline for that matter. Enforcing a poorly made decision on the basis of no argument whatsoever, apart from the fact that it has been made, is a violation of both WP:Bureaucracy & WP:IAR. There are strong arguments for reverting the flawed decision, and since no one has even argued that it was correct, or even ambiguous, enforcing it was wrong. The actions made here by Beetstra are actually the very essence of why these policies exist — to not create pointless labor for editors which discourages them from editing. I will not respond, do not ping me about this issue. Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 14:50, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
  • It is perhaps ironic that you are now slow edit warring [13] to enforce a discussion. Please contrast and compare these two situations. How is it that Beetstra is in the wrong when you want him to restore against consensus, but you are in the right when someone else is attempting to restore against consensus? --Hammersoft (talk) 18:03, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

@CFCF: I find it extremely funny that these accusations come from an editor who selectively moved all discussions from only one person into a subsection because the instructions said that the discussion should be in a separate section. You are extremely out of line, and I hope you can put some flesh to the accusation that I am abusing my admin powers in upholding an unanimous consensus to delete a page. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:14, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

That is pure nonsense, and your allegations about any wrongdoing in reverting your move of comments are duplicitous at best. The actions were entirely correct as deemed by the external inquiry which you forced into being at AN/I. You are the one out of line, not necessarily abusing powers to the degree that it is an offence — merely taking each and every opportunity provided to justify using those privileges to enforce your interpretation of rules, setting up bureaucracy for others while evading it yourself. This happens at the expense of anyone actually engaged in productive work, and is very damaging. I do not wish to discuss either issue again, so please do not ping me from now on. Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 14:44, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
The initial selective move was yours. Whatever, you don't have anything to put flesh on yur allegation of admin abuse, good luck with the DRV. --Dirk Beetstra T C 15:21, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Extended confirmed protection

Hello, Beetstra. This message is intended to notify administrators of important changes to the protection policy.

Extended confirmed protection (also known as "30/500 protection") is a new level of page protection that only allows edits from accounts at least 30 days old and with 500 edits. The automatically assigned "extended confirmed" user right was created for this purpose. The protection level was created following this community discussion with the primary intention of enforcing various arbitration remedies that prohibited editors under the "30 days/500 edits" threshold to edit certain topic areas.

In July and August 2016, a request for comment established consensus for community use of the new protection level. Administrators are authorized to apply extended confirmed protection to combat any form of disruption (e.g. vandalism, sock puppetry, edit warring, etc.) on any topic, subject to the following conditions:

  • Extended confirmed protection may only be used in cases where semi-protection has proven ineffective. It should not be used as a first resort.
  • A bot will post a notification at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard of each use. MusikBot currently does this by updating a report, which is transcluded onto the noticeboard.

Please review the protection policy carefully before using this new level of protection on pages. Thank you.
This message was sent to the administrators' mass message list. To opt-out of future messages, please remove yourself from the list. 17:48, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Request to Remove from spamlist

  • Link

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/March_2016#filmymantra.com

  • Removal Request

Hello Sir, I am a passionate but not much experienced editor of wikipedia , I belong from India and a keen observer of Bollywood related news,articles,websites etc. sincle last couple of week i tried editing (minor edits) some wikipedia articles of some of the aspiring Artists from my nation i succeeded too, but here is a website 'Filmymantra' where I got stucked a couple of time while Updating Articles of several celebrities from India .

  • How this website can benefit wikipedia

Since Filmymantra is owned by (Filmymantra media pvt. ltd.)[1] and is a Big Online website (Bollywood based) like Bollywoodhungama.com,koimoi etc from India. I must Say someone may have intentionally tried to spam this because this website is giving great service since last 3 years and they also provides news related info of Indian film industry, particularly Bollywood, film reviews and box office reports along with that the site also manages Indian celebrities which includes like Sapna Pabbi ,Amyra Dastur, Natasa Stankovic, VIVEK VERMA[2], Disha Patani[3] and many more while trying to mention this company in the article of this celebrities (since filmymantra manages them) it showed Blocked and does not allows me to mention the site , Filmymantra also have a good ranking on Alexa[4] 

and in India the site is quite famous too, so I kindly request you to whitelist this website(if possible) So that I can Update the reliable Infornmation which i have about the artists managed by this website ! Thank you
  • The article or articles on which the links would be used

Disha Patani[5], Sapna Pabbi ,Amyra Dastur, Natasa Stankovic Because Filmymantra Exclusively Manages these celebs .

References

  1. ^ https://plus.google.com/108789782930496535075
  2. ^ https://www.facebook.com/VivekVermamusik/about/?entry_point=page_nav_about_item&tab=page_info
  3. ^ https://www.facebook.com/DishaToabh/about/?entry_point=page_nav_about_item&tab=page_info
  4. ^ http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/filmymantra.com
  5. ^ https://www.facebook.com/DishaToabh/about/?entry_point=page_nav_about_item&tab=page_info

Worldnpeace (talk) 04:55, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Reactionbox template concern

Someone raised a concern about two templates you had worked on...Template talk:Reactionbox#Calls to non-existent templates. I haven't looked at the reactionbox world in too long to be able to give any input yet. DMacks (talk) 19:22, 28 September 2016 (UTC) Hope you don't mind my cleanup of the sections preceding this one...I couldn't even find my own message:) DMacks (talk) 19:27, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

about page related to shirish kunder

This page and specially career section of this person seems to be edited by either Shirish himself or his well wisher. Its biased and does not mentions the failures and controversies of this person. I tried to add some events with reference(from Wikipedia and popular newpapers) and I am not sure why they are being removed.

Please look at tees mar khan (film), Joker(film 2012) reviewsavailable on wikipedia and edit shirish kunder's page accordingly. Even his short film published of youtube ran into controversy is deliberately skipped on his wiki page. Please do the needful. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kvingle (talk • contribs) 11:33, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

@Kvingle: You can make the page less biased as you wish, but do not remove information that is referenced, even if it points in one direction. I do know that this is a WP:BLP, and that, according to the Wikipedia article, there has been controversy with one of his movies. You say it is overly positive, and that may be true, but then that may also mean that negative information (and likely, especially negative information), needs high quality sources. One does not make an article less biased by removing properly referenced positive information ..
Besides that, your edits resulted in one sentence being repeated 3 times. That is anyway not the purpose. --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:50, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

COIBot report on call?

Hi DB, hope all's well with you. Is it possible to get the COIBot to run one of these reports on a domain without reporting the domain at the spam blacklist page? I sometimes come across links but I'm not sure if it's worth the effort of recommending a blacklist addition. It seems like if I could check it out beforehand, that would be a better approach sometimes--you know to see if we're talking about one guy spamming the link or a dozen IPs and ten accounts. Thank you, sir! Cyphoidbomb (talk) 03:31, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

@Cyphoidbomb: If you're on IRC, in one of the channels where COIBot is lurking, request 'report <domain>', and the bot will save a report.
On-wiki, there are on en.wikipedia 3 places (2 on meta): the spam blacklist, WikiProject Spam talkpage, and User:COIBot/Poke (the middle one is missing on meta).
Generally, we use the WikiProject as an incubator (though my script also blacklists straight from there), and the bad stuff goes to the Spam Blacklist page. The poke-page is nice if you want to refresh a report. Hope this helps.  ??--Dirk Beetstra T C 03:38, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
OK, cool. Thanks for the info. I think poke might be what I'm interested in. Regards, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 03:45, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi, is a link to official YouTube channel of a Football Federation considered illegal on Wikipedia? Your bot reverted my changes (removing the link), but article about legal links is too biiig to read it all, so i've considered more efficient to ask you directly. Thank You 89.28.5.39 (talk) 18:45, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

If you read the message on your talkpage, or the intro of thedocument linked, then that says enough. We do notlink to every possible web presence of a subject, one is enough with only very, very few exceptions. --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:52, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

The communication barnstar

The communication barnstar
For discussing a subject in a calm and civilized manner. I present you this and a bonus youtube video you'll find entertaining https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2phOwv_klM VegasCasinoKid (talk) 10:14, 9 November 2016 (UTC)
@VegasCasinoKid: Thanks! I'll have a look at the YouTube when I have access to that site! --~~

Having problem submitting a website informative page

Hi Dirk, I am writing you in context of an issue that I have been faced with for about 5 times now. The problem is I have a website and I want to publish an informative post regarding the work and services provided but not in a marketed way. Every time I have posted, it has been deleted. I wanted to know the reason behind the rejection and could you guide me through a proper way which can be helpful in the acceptance of my article. Your opinion and advice will be highly appreciated.

Thank you in advance for your kind consideration towards this problem. Kindly look into this matter as I await your positive response.

Yours sincerely Pablo Ruiz — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pabloruiz37 (talk • contribs) 12:09, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

@Pabloruiz37: The content as it was written was highly advertising, see our spam guideline and 'What Wikipedia is not'. Please create a draft article through the article wizard according these guidelines. Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:57, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

phab:T125132

You mentioned phab:T125132 in a BRFA, can you provide me visibility to it? — xaosflux Talk 15:46, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

@Xaosflux!: I'm not sure I understand, you can't read the phabricator file? Maybe you need to login? --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:17, 11 November 2016 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: (got the wrong ping) --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:17, 11 November 2016 (UTC)
@Beetstra: it looks like it is marked as security sensitive, the author may need to add viewers. — xaosflux Talk 18:26, 11 November 2016 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Curious, I am not cleared specifically. Is your nick Xoasflux on Phab? --Dirk Beetstra T C 17:06, 12 November 2016 (UTC)
I added you as subsciber .. --Dirk Beetstra T C 17:08, 12 November 2016 (UTC)
Thank you, works now. — xaosflux Talk 17:50, 12 November 2016 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Beetstra/Archive_17&oldid=1151040442"