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Bots Newsletter, January 2022

Bots Newsletter, January 2022
BRFA activity by month

Welcome to the ninth issue of the English Wikipedia's Bots Newsletter, your source for all things bot. Vicious bot-on-bot edit warring... superseded tasks... policy proposals... these stories, and more, are brought to you by Wikipedia's most distinguished newsletter about bots.

After a long hiatus between August 2019 and December 2021, there's quite a bit of ground to cover. Due to the vastness, I decided in December to split the coverage up into a few installments that covered six months each. Some people thought this was a good idea, since covering an entire year in a single issue would make it unmanageably large. Others thought this was stupid, since they were getting talk page messages about crap from almost three years ago. Ultimately, the question of whether each issue covers six months or a year is only relevant for a couple more of them, and then the problem will be behind us forever.

Of course, you can also look on the bright side – we are making progress, and this issue will only be about crap from almost two years ago. Today we will pick up where we left off in December, and go through the first half of 2020.

Overall
In the first half of 2020, there were 71 BRFAs. Of these, Green checkmarkY 59 were approved, and 12 were unsuccessful (with Dark red X symbolN2 8 denied, Blue question mark? 2 withdrawn, and Expired 2 expired).

January 2020

A python
A python
A python
0.4 pythons
Yeah, you're not gonna be able to get away with this anymore.

February 2020

Speaking of WikiProject Molecular Biology, Listeria went wild in February

March 2020

April 2020

Listeria being examined

Issues and enquiries are typically expected to be handled on the English Wikipedia. Pages reachable via unified login, like a talk page at Commons or at Italian Wikipedia could also be acceptable [...] External sites like Phabricator or GitHub (which require separate registration or do not allow for IP comments) and email (which can compromise anonymity) can supplement on-wiki communication, but do not replace it.

May 2020

We heard you like bots, so we made a bot that reports the status of your bots, so now you can use bots while you use bots

June 2020

A partial block averted at the eleventh hour for the robot that makes Legos

Conclusion

  • What's next for our intrepid band of coders, maintainers and approvers?
  • Will Citation bot ever be set free to roam the project?
  • What's the deal with all those book links that InternetArchiveBot is adding to articles?
  • Should we keep using Gerrit for MediaWiki?
  • What if we had a day for bots to make cosmetic edits?

These questions will be answered — and new questions raised — by the February 2022 Bots Newsletter. Tune in, or miss out!

Signing off... jp×g 23:22, 31 January 2022 (UTC)


(You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2022).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • The user group oversight will be renamed suppress in around 3 weeks. This will not affect the name shown to users and is simply a change in the technical name of the user group. The change is being made for technical reasons. You can comment in Phabricator if you have objections.
  • The Reply Tool feature, which is a part of Discussion Tools, will be opt-out for everyone logged in or logged out starting 7 February 2022. Editors wishing to comment on this can do so in the relevant Village Pump discussion.

Arbitration

Miscellaneous


Copyvios outage

Hi Ben. Just stopping by to let you know that the Copyvios tool has been down for more than four hours, with "504 Gateway Time-out". Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!— Diannaa (talk) 13:16, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Update: It was working for a while but has been down again for another three hours. Thanks, — Diannaa (talk) 19:45, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I restarted it this morning after seeing your message before I left for work. This buys some time by clearing the backlog of requests but does not solve whatever the underlying issue may be. I can’t do anything until tonight. — The Earwig alt (talk) 20:27, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Thank you!— Diannaa (talk) 23:41, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

WP:AFC Helper News

Hello! I wanted to drop a quick note for all of our AFC participants; nothing huge and fancy like a newsletter, but a few points of interest.

  • AFCH will now show live previews of the comment to be left on a decline.
  • The template {{db-afc-move}} has been created - this template is similar to {{db-move}} when there is a redirect in the way of an acceptance, but specifically tells the patrolling admin to let you (the draft reviewer) take care of the actual move.

Short and sweet, but there's always more to discuss at WT:AFC. Stop on by, maybe review a draft on the way? Whether you're one of our top reviewers, or haven't reviewed in a while, I want to thank you for helping out in the past and in the future. Cheers, Primefac, via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:00, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Cache time for Copyvios

Hi Earwig, what's the cache time for toolforge:copyvios? I'm building a similar tool for files and wanted some inspiration. Cheers, 🐶 EpicPupper (he/him | talk) 05:23, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Hey EpicPupper. The cache time is 3 days, but it's also per-revision and we resolve the latest revision every time, so could probably be much longer. — The Earwig (talk) 06:51, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

The Signpost: 27 February 2022

Administrators' newsletter – March 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2022).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous


Permalink.js

Hello! Lately I was recommended to use your user script for easier section sharing options and I'm loving the function it provides. I was wondering, could it be possible that beside the URL+Permalink options it already provides 2 more alternatives were also added? Wikilink + interwikilink (the long/full path)

Also, a kind of nitpick but currently there is no way to set up personalized piped contents to the links provided (other than deleting/modifying what was already provided. This is a user script so behaviors like these are fully expected and very minor, minor nitpicks. But I thought I'd bring it to your attention anyway (every though you most likely are already aware). - Klein Muçi (talk) 11:36, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Hi Klein Muçi! I'm glad you find the script useful. These are good suggestions and I've wanted the wikilink functionality myself a few times. My main concern is to avoid making the interface too cluttered, but I'll think about how these options can be added cleanly. Thanks! — The Earwig (talk) 03:19, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
Yes, I do understand your concern and it makes sense. Currently it is being discussed to make the share option a native feature of MediaWiki and the usual "Wikipedia way" is being considered: Add [Share] in blue beside the link. I've got to say that I dislike the overall lack of buttons Wikipedia presents, using instead only word-links everywhere so your concern makes sense. What I would suggest would be to make a 2 level design: first you choose URL vs Wikilink and then you choose Current vs Permanent or Relative vs Absolute depending on the prior choice. It seems better than having 4 buttons show up in a row.
Speaking of the overall interface, MAYBE a slight change in color could be considered also? I'm not exactly sure why - maybe it is because the chosen blue it's not (?) the blue Wikipedia uses for its links - but somethings feels strange in the buttons' appearance. Maybe it's their font-size which should be decreased a bit. I hate that I can't exactly pinpoint what's "wrong" given that I'm an interface admin myself but, again, I thought I'd let you know. Thank you again! :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 09:36, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Copyvio detector + user script issue

Hey Earwig. How are you? Just wanted to bring to your attention this phab ticket: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T303088. It looks like the fix for this bug might be adding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DannyS712/copyvio-check to some kind of safelist on the copyvio detector API. Are we on the right track? When you get a chance let us know what you think. Thanks for your time. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:13, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

Hey Novem Linguae! I'm well, thanks. I'll reply on the ticket. — The Earwig (talk) 03:53, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

Bug for Earwig's Copyvio Detector

Tool would report similarity as 0.0% while check chinese page, e.g. [1], may a bug of encode. SunAfterRain 15:54, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Terminal

Template:Terminal has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:28, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Thoughts on a variant of Wikiproject Tagging, but with Wikidata Query and dual tagging scope

I'm looking for feedback on the idea (which feel free to run with). Most Wikiproject tagging bots I've seen seem to rely upon categories on Wiki to categorize, but does your bot or any you know considered tagging pages returned via a Wikidata query and have a language linked article? This could be directly tagging or generating a category for human review for a Wikiproject.

The reason I ask is while working on Wikidata Wikiproejct Every Politician and while working through Wikiprojects - Lakes, Rivers, Mountains, etc items all queries seem to fall in scope of certain project scope, but they often don't have the corresponding Wikiproject tag. Often a dual project scope is obvious, but lack a corresponding geographic tag which also applies. While petscan offers a means of evaluating this, a more regular and consistent scan would help offload those efforts to other tasks not as easily automated. Example a lake in Michigan - Wikiproject Michigan as well as Wikiproject Lakes would apply. Example persons having held the position of member of the State Senate of Michigan - falls withing scope of Wikiproject Michigan as well as Wikiproject Biography with Politician-work-group=yes tagging.

Would you be interested in supporting this query based Wikiproject tagging approach with your bot? How do you think Wikiprojects could provide indications of their project scope to let a bot know what query should be run? I was thinking possibly either a template or new parameters to the Wikiproject Infobox that would not display, but could provide a query or property-value pair to indicate possible scopes to check. Any initial reactions to any part of this concept which are a cause for concern? Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 18:22, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

The Signpost: 27 March 2022

Administrators' newsletter – April 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2022).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • Access to Special:RevisionDelete has been expanded to include users who have the deletelogentry and deletedhistory rights. This means that those in the Researcher user group and Checkusers who are not administrators can now access Special:RevisionDelete. The users able to view the special page after this change are the 3 users in the Researcher group, as there are currently no checkusers who are not already administrators. (T301928)
  • When viewing deleted revisions or diffs on Special:Undelete a back link to the undelete page for the associated page is now present. (T284114)

Arbitration

Miscellaneous


New administrator activity requirement

The administrator policy has been updated with new activity requirements following a successful Request for Comment.

Beginning January 1, 2023, administrators who meet one or both of the following criteria may be desysopped for inactivity if they have:

  1. Made neither edits nor administrative actions for at least a 12-month period OR
  2. Made fewer than 100 edits over a 60-month period

Administrators at risk for being desysopped under these criteria will continue to be notified ahead of time. Thank you for your continued work.

22:53, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 April 2022

Administrators' newsletter – May 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2022).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration


A barnstar for you!

The Technical Barnstar
For creating the Copyvio detector I only just found (and it was through a google search!). Wish I had known about it sooner. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 18:19, 10 May 2022 (UTC)
Thank you, Blaze Wolf! — The Earwig (talk) 00:13, 11 May 2022 (UTC)
No problem! I accidentally gave this to User:Earwig at first because your copyvio detector just said "Earwig". ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 12:54, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

Copyvio tool

I was wondering if the copyvio tool is down. I can't get it to load. SL93 (talk) 23:25, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

@SL93, it was briefly down when you sent this message, but is back up now. — The Earwig (talk) 00:00, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
Maybe it's just my computer. It just says Loading... on the tab and I wish I could use it to help me file a contributor copyright investigation. SL93 (talk) 01:27, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
It works now. Now time to start the case. SL93 (talk) 01:29, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
I spoke too soon. SL93 (talk) 01:38, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
SL93: Sometimes I find the tool won't work for me, too. I have noticed sometimes the weekends in particular. I try to do the tasks at times of day that are not so busy, and tend to get a better result than at peak editing hours. Also: We have a status thingy for the tool at https://stats.uptimerobot.com/BN16RUOP5/784331770. — Diannaa (talk) 23:44, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
Diannaa Thanks for the information and tool. SL93 (talk) 15:15, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 May 2022

Plus two other pages. Xx236 (talk) 09:26, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2022).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • Administrators using the mobile web interface can now access Special:Block directly from user pages. (T307341)
  • The IP Info feature has been deployed to all wikis as a Beta Feature. Any autoconfirmed user may enable the feature using the "IP info" checkbox under Preferences → Beta features. Autoconfirmed users will be able to access basic information about an IP address that includes the country and connection method. Those with advanced privileges (admin, bureaucrat, checkuser) will have access to extra information that includes the Internet Service Provider and more specific location.

Arbitration


WIR Metrics

Hi, The_Earwig; it's that time again. WIR Metrics have not updated since 1 June - e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:WikiProject_Women_in_Red/Metrics/June_2022&action=history ... if you'd be able to have a look into that, it would, as normal, be very much appreciated. thanks --Tagishsimon (talk) 10:35, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Ah; either, thank you for fixing, or, they're back in any event & request cancelled. I'll go with the first of those. --Tagishsimon (talk) 13:04, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Indeed, Tagishsimon :) - I kicked the bot back into gear but was in a rush and didn’t have a chance to reply. Happy editing. — The Earwig alt (talk) 15:16, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

t/y. Very glad you're here. --Tagishsimon (talk) 20:34, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Copyvio Detector timing out

Hi, I was wondering if the copyvio Detector is malfuncioning in some way? Every comparison I've attempted this morning has timed out. Not a gateway timeout, but a time out like "The URL https://nickquested.com/about timed out before any data could be retrieved." Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, — Diannaa (talk) 14:12, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

Adding, attempting to search an entire article using search mode results in a 502 Bad Gateway. The example I tried this on was Margaret Sullavan. — Diannaa (talk) 14:32, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

Update: All functions are operating properly again. Peppy and fast, in fact. Thanks, will update again if the problem resumes. — Diannaa (talk) 16:43, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

revdel-responder.js

Hi User:The Earwig/revdel-responder.js is very useful but won't work with any redirect to {{copyvio-revdel}} and a number of the people identifying copyvios are using the redirect {{revdel}}. Can you amend the script to include redirects or at least this one? Thanks Nthep (talk) 17:19, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

I'll fix this. Thanks. — The Earwig (talk) 17:21, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
Hi again, I don't know if this is a WP:THURSDAY issue or not but the script isn't working. It loads and if i hit the history button, the page history opens but the revisions that need revdel aren't checked. The other functions like decline and complete aren't working either, the page reloads but that's it. Nthep (talk) 14:30, 12 May 2022 (UTC)
Nthep, thanks again for reporting an issue. This edit broke it, but I think I've fixed it now. — The Earwig (talk) 03:18, 13 May 2022 (UTC)
Looks like we're cooking on gas again. Thanks. Nthep (talk) 12:39, 13 May 2022 (UTC)
something has snapped again - so no highlighting of the required revisions when it's a redirect to {{copyvio-revdel}}. No problems with the other functions though. Nthep (talk) 12:37, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
Thanks again, Nthep. I believe this is fixed now. — The Earwig (talk) 00:40, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

The Signpost: 26 June 2022

Administrators' newsletter – July 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2022).

Technical news

  • user_global_editcount is a new variable that can be used in abuse filters to avoid affecting globally active users. (T130439)

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

  • The New Pages Patrol queue has around 10,000 articles to be reviewed. As all administrators have the patrol right, please consider helping out. The queue is here. For further information on the state of the project, see the latest NPP newsletter.

The Signpost: 1 August 2022

Administrators' newsletter – August 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2022).

Administrator changes

readded Valereee
removed Anthony Appleyard (deceased) • CapitalistroadsterSamsara

Guideline and policy news

  • An RfC has been closed with consensus to add javascript that will show edit notices for editors editing via a mobile device. This only works for users using a mobile browser, so iOS app editors will still not be able to see edit notices.
  • An RfC has been closed with the consensus that train stations are not inherently notable.

Technical news

  • The Wikimania 2022 Hackathon will take place virtually from 11 August to 14 August.
  • Administrators will now see links on user pages for "Change block" and "Unblock user" instead of just "Block user" if the user is already blocked. (T308570)

Arbitration

  • The arbitration case request Geschichte has been automatically closed after a 3 month suspension of the case.

Miscellaneous

  • You can vote for candidates in the 2022 Board of Trustees elections from 16 August to 30 August. Two community elected seats are up for election.
  • Wikimania 2022 is taking place virtually from 11 August to 14 August. The schedule for wikimania is listed here. There are also a number of in-person events associated with Wikimania around the world.
  • Tech tip: When revision-deleting on desktop, hold ⇧ Shift between clicking two checkboxes to select every box in that range.

"Interstate Twenty-one" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Interstate Twenty-one and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 August 6#Interstate Twenty-one until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. -- Tavix (talk) 21:23, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

Aaron Golbin protection

On 14th June 2021, this user protected the page titled “Aaron Golbin”. This protection is such that the page may not be created: only confirmed or extended confirmed users can edit it. This information was found in the protection log. This user did not provide a reason for this action, and no other information about this action is available on Wikipedia. The user makes overwhelmingly positive contributions on the whole, but this unexplained action is somewhat confusing. LeetToTheBeatMakeItRoar (talk) 11:58, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

Te poster above has made similar comments at two other user talk pages, in one case criticism of an editor who hasn’t edited for over two years. Doug Weller talk 12:54, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
Hi LeetToTheBeatMakeItRoar. The page log shows the reason for protection: the draft was repeatedly recreated after being deleted several times over the years for being blatantly promotional or having other issues. It can be difficult to follow the log as the title was moved multiple times, so you can also check the logs at Aaron Golbin and and Aaron Gabriel Golbin.
Our draft review processes tend to be be backlogged, and we sometimes instate this protection when repeated attempts are made to create an article that does not follow our policies on spam, copyright, or the subject's suitability for an encyclopedia article, especially when the repeated attempts don't seem to be improving on these issues. I don't remember the specifics of this case other than what I've written here.
If you think the subject is suitable now and want to create an article with this title, you can create it as a userspace draft and then submit it for review so the protection can be removed. — The Earwig alt (talk) 22:45, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 August 2022

Administrators' newsletter – September 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2022).

Guideline and policy news

  • A discussion is open to define a process by which Vector 2022 can be made the default for all users.
  • An RfC is open to gain consensus on whether Fox News is reliable for science and politics.

Technical news

Arbitration

  • An arbitration case regarding Conduct in deletion-related editing has been closed. The Arbitration Committee passed a remedy as part of the final decision to create a request for comment (RfC) on how to handle mass nominations at Articles for Deletion (AfD).
  • The arbitration case request Jonathunder has been automatically closed after a 6 month suspension of the case.

Miscellaneous

  • The new pages patrol (NPP) team has prepared an appeal to the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) for assistance with addressing Page Curation bugs and requested features. You are encouraged to read the open letter before it is sent, and if you support it, consider signing it. It is not a discussion, just a signature will suffice.
  • Voting for candidates for the Wikimedia Board of Trustees is open until 6 September.

Earwig question for Rudy Hartono

Hi -- I'm a fan of the Earwig tool, as so many of us are (thank you), but I have a question. Running it in copyvio mode on Rudy Hartono finds a mirror but then nothing down to 26.5%. Running it in comparison mode against this URL, which is in the article, finds a 69.8% copyvio which turned out to be real. Shouldn't that have been caught in copyvio mode? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:04, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Hi Mike and thanks for your question. You're right that this URL should've been caught. The problem is the site is rather slow, taking about 11 seconds for the tool to load. When we run a full check, the tool will only wait 5 seconds per URL to avoid taking too much time (it's slow enough as it is...), so this URL times out and doesn't get compared. When we do the direct comparison, the tool waits longer and is able to load it. — The Earwig (talk) 19:35, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
Good to know. How about created a collapsed list of the URLs you have to give up on, so users can see and perhaps try them in compare mode? Or even better, put them on the percentage-sorted list as "unknown %" with a link to allow one-click running of the comparison for each? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:45, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
That's a good suggestion. I can make the tool clearer about the reason it couldn't evaluate each URL. — The Earwig (talk) 20:00, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Thank you

I just wanted to come and say thank you for the Earwig copyright violator tool. I use it ALL THE TIME!! It is such a huge help and I am grateful it's available! It has saved me all kinds of grief I'm sure. Jenhawk777 (talk) 20:17, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, Jenhawk777! — The Earwig alt (talk) 16:50, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

The Signpost: 30 September 2022

Administrators' newsletter – October 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2022).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • The Articles for creation helper script now automatically recognises administrator accounts which means your name does not need to be listed at WP:AFCP to help out. If you wish to help out at AFC, enable AFCH by navigating to Preferences → Gadgets and checking the "Yet Another AfC Helper Script" box.

Arbitration

Miscellaneous


The Signpost: 31 October 2022

Administrators' newsletter – November 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2022).

Guideline and policy news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous


The Signpost: 28 November 2022

ArbCom 2022 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 12 December 2022. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority 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.

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Administrators' newsletter – December 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2022).

CheckUser changes

removed TheresNoTime

Oversight changes

removed TheresNoTime

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • A new preference named "Enable limited width mode" has been added to the Vector 2022 skin. The preference is also shown as a toggle on every page if your monitor is 1600 pixels or wider. When disabled it removes the whitespace added by Vector 2022 on the left and right of the page content. Disabling this preference has the same effect as enabling the wide-vector-2022 gadget. (T319449)

Arbitration

Miscellaneous


Running a query of yours

Hi Earwig, I was working to deorphan the currently orphaned talk page archives in October. Got busy in November, and now I'm back. Can you please run the SQL query at User:The Earwig/Sandbox/Orphaned archives once again so that I can get a fresh up to date list in which I can work? Thanks! CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {CX}) 15:29, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Hey CX Zoom. Sure, User:The Earwig/Sandbox/Orphaned archives is updated now. — The Earwig (talk) 01:43, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
Thank you so much! CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {CX}) 10:11, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Happy holidays!

Spread the WikiLove; use {{subst:Season's Greetings}} to send this message

MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 03:14, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free image File:Town of Devon Flag.png

⚠

Thanks for uploading File:Town of Devon Flag.png. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in section F5 of the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Yeeno (talk) 04:35, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Revdel script (WP:THURSDAY?) again

Hi again, the revdel script User:The Earwig/revdel-responder.js seems to have another issue, although it might be User:Enterprisey/url-select-revdel.js that has the problem. The last couple of days, the scripts are correctly identifying the revisions to be deleted but then when I hit the change visibility button the script isn't either setting the option to delete the revision text nor is it populating the reason box and the source pages. Nthep (talk) 12:28, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Hey Nthep! This is fixed now. Indeed it looks like a MW software change last week was the cause. — The Earwig (talk) 05:41, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
Many thanks (again!) Nthep (talk) 13:20, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, The Earwig

Or Season's Greetings or Happy Winter Solstice!
As the year winds to a close, I would like to take a moment to
recognize your hard work and offer heartfelt gratitude for all you do for Wikipedia.
May this Holiday Season bring you and yours nothing but joy, health and prosperity.
Onel5969 TT me 20:07, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

The Signpost: 1 January 2023

Administrators' newsletter – January 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2022).

Guideline and policy news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

  • Voting for the Sound Logo has closed and the winner is expected to be announced February to April 2023.
  • Tech tip: You can view information about IP addresses in a centralised location using bullseye which won the Newcomer award in the recent Coolest Tool Awards.

The Signpost: 16 January 2023

Administrators' newsletter – February 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2023).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • The Vector 2022 skin has become the default for desktop users of the English Wikipedia.

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

  • Voting in the 2023 Steward elections will begin on 05 February 2023, 21:00 (UTC) and end on 26 February 2023, 21:00 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
  • Voting in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey will begin on 10 February 2023 and end on 24 February 2023. You can submit, discuss and revise proposals until 6 February 2023.
  • Tech tip: Syntax highlighting is available in both the 2011 and 2017 Wikitext editors. It can help make editing paragraphs with many references or complicated templates easier.

The Signpost: 4 February 2023

Copyvios tool is down

Hi Ben. Just stopping by to let you know that the Copyvios tool has been down for more than six hours, with "504 Gateway Time-out". Any help would be appreciated. Thanks! — Diannaa (talk) 01:47, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

We're back up now. Sorry for the trouble. — The Earwig (talk) 06:25, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 20 February 2023

Administrators' newsletter – March 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2023).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

  • The 2023 appointees for the Ombuds commission are AGK, Ameisenigel, Bennylin, Daniuu, Emufarmers, Faendalimas, JJMC89, MdsShakil, Minorax and Renvoy as regular members and Zabe as advisory members.
  • Following the 2023 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: Mykola7, Superpes15, and Xaosflux.
  • The Terms of Use update cycle has started, which includes a [p]roposal for better addressing undisclosed paid editing. Feedback is being accepted until 24 April 2023.

WPMED

Six years ago, you did me a favor by assessing some articles for WikiProject Medicine. Now I am back with a new request: Do you know how to extract the mw:ORES assessments? I'd like to have all stubs tagged as being stubs. (In my experience, ORES is 100% reliable for stub ratings.)

@Nettrom did some research on this in the past; I don't know if any of that would be helpful.

Eventually, after Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Display assessments on inactive wikiproject banners and Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Project-independent quality assessments get settled (pinging @Aymatth2 and @Piotrus), I'd like to have this run for all unassessed pages. More than 400,000 existing articles are tagged but not assessed for quality, and about half of those are stubs. There's no need for Stub assessments to be assigned by a human; doing it by bot would be ~200,000 minutes (=five months of round-the-clock work) of volunteer time saved. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:25, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

As someone who was pinged and who often does assessment, I concur that bots should be perfectly fine assessing content as stubs based on length (249 words of prose or less, IIRC based on WP:STUB). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 03:54, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
WP:STUB is vaguer than that, as multiple methods are used and acceptable. ORES is conservative about its understanding of stubs (what I call a "good stub", ORES labels as Start-class), though, so if we can use ORES's rating system, anything it tags as a Stub will be accurate.
A bot should be able to detect errors in Redirect-class (both articles that are incorrectly listed as redirects and articles that have been merged/redirected but are still listed with a different rating). Beyond that, I've generally found that when the rating is off by 2+ classes (e.g., ORES says Start and the rating says B-class, or vice versa), then it's worth a human review. When ORES suggests an adjacent rating (e.g., long Stub vs short Start), it's less useful to pay attention. I wouldn't recommend that for a bot, though. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:13, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
ORES is good at predicting how humans would assess an article, but both ORES and humans place much too much weight on length. An excellent two-paragraph article would never get an A rating even if it is gives complete coverage of the subject. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:48, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
Hey WhatamIdoing. I think this is an interesting idea and potentially a good bot task, but I'm afraid I don't have much bandwidth to commit to it any time soon. It might be best if we can find another bot op to work on it. — The Earwig (talk) 04:47, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
Shall I take it to WP:BOTREQ, and is there anything beyond the link above that I should tell them? WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:13, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
Yes, let's take it to BOTREQ. The links above and one to this discussion should be sufficient for context. Thanks! — The Earwig (talk) 13:37, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
I've posted this to Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 84#Stub assessments with ORES. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:06, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 9 March 2023

The Signpost: 20 March 2023

earwig/earwigbot/pull/79

Hey, wasn't sure the best place to poke you — I have an earwigbot PR open to add DuckDuckGo as a search engine option. I think it'd be interesting to compare the results from the Google Search API and DuckDuckGo's search API. What do you think? TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 09:37, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Hey! I definitely saw it, and it's on my radar, I just haven't gotten around to it yet. Rest assured it will happen. — The Earwig (talk) 04:16, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

copyvios.toolforge.org is down

Hi, I just wanted to let you know your tool is down:

$ curl https://copyvios.toolforge.org -v
*   Trying 185.15.56.11:443...
* Connected to copyvios.toolforge.org (185.15.56.11) port 443 (#0)
* ALPN, offering h2
* ALPN, offering http/1.1
* successfully set certificate verify locations:
*  CAfile: /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
*  CApath: /etc/ssl/certs
* TLSv1.3 (OUT), TLS handshake, Client hello (1):
* TLSv1.3 (IN), TLS handshake, Server hello (2):
* TLSv1.3 (IN), TLS handshake, Encrypted Extensions (8):
* TLSv1.3 (IN), TLS handshake, Certificate (11):
* TLSv1.3 (IN), TLS handshake, CERT verify (15):
* TLSv1.3 (IN), TLS handshake, Finished (20):
* TLSv1.3 (OUT), TLS change cipher, Change cipher spec (1):
* TLSv1.3 (OUT), TLS handshake, Finished (20):
* SSL connection using TLSv1.3 / TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384
* ALPN, server accepted to use h2
* Server certificate:
*  subject: CN=toolforge.org
*  start date: Mar 18 10:47:38 2023 GMT
*  expire date: Jun 16 10:47:37 2023 GMT
*  subjectAltName: host "copyvios.toolforge.org" matched cert's "*.toolforge.org"
*  issuer: C=US; O=Let's Encrypt; CN=R3
*  SSL certificate verify ok.
* Using HTTP2, server supports multi-use
* Connection state changed (HTTP/2 confirmed)
* Copying HTTP/2 data in stream buffer to connection buffer after upgrade: len=0
* Using Stream ID: 1 (easy handle 0x561fa31fc2e0)
> GET / HTTP/2
> Host: copyvios.toolforge.org
> user-agent: curl/7.74.0
> accept: */*
> 
* TLSv1.3 (IN), TLS handshake, Newsession Ticket (4):
* TLSv1.3 (IN), TLS handshake, Newsession Ticket (4):
* old SSL session ID is stale, removing
* Connection state changed (MAX_CONCURRENT_STREAMS == 128)!
< HTTP/2 500 
< server: nginx/1.14.2
< date: Mon, 03 Apr 2023 08:51:23 GMT
< content-type: text/html
< content-length: 291
< 
* HTTP/2 stream 0 was not closed cleanly: INTERNAL_ERROR (err 2)
* stopped the pause stream!
* Connection #0 to host copyvios.toolforge.org left intact
curl: (92) HTTP/2 stream 0 was not closed cleanly: INTERNAL_ERROR (err 2)

Thanks Metamorforme42 (talk) 09:01, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Many tools are down, there was an announced maintenance period. See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Scheduled_tools_downtime_next_weekTheDJ (talkcontribs) 09:11, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for the link @TheDJ. Sadly, it hasn't been announced on my local wiki. Metamorforme42 (talk) 09:42, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 03 April 2023

Administrators' newsletter – April 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2023).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration


The Signpost: 26 April 2023

Administrators' newsletter – May 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2023).

Guideline and policy news

  • A request for comment about removing administrative privileges in specified situations is open for feedback.

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous


Hello, I recently edited the draft of this article, however, the draft was declined for not being "written in the formal tone expected of an encyclopedia article." However, to me the tone feels very formal, straightforward, and factual. Could you please advise on any specific changes that need to be made for me to resubmit?

Thank you! --Smithdt12 (talk) 16:34, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 8 May 2023

The Signpost: 22 May 2023

The Signpost: 5 June 2023

Administrators' newsletter – June 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2023).

Guideline and policy news

  • Following an RfC, editors indefinitely site-banned by community consensus will now have all rights, including sysop, removed.
  • As a part of the Wikimedia Foundation's IP Masking project, a new policy has been created that governs the access to temporary account IP addresses. An associated FAQ has been created and individual communities can increase the requirements to view temporary account IP addresses.

Technical news

  • Bot operators and tool maintainers should schedule time in the coming months to test and update their tools for the effects of IP masking. IP masking will not be deployed to any content wiki until at least October 2023 and is unlikely to be deployed to the English Wikipedia until some time in 2024.

Arbitration

  • The arbitration case World War II and the history of Jews in Poland has been closed. The topic area of Polish history during World War II (1933-1945) and the history of Jews in Poland is subject to a "reliable source consensus-required" contentious topic restriction.

Miscellaneous


Copyvio tool is down

Hi Ben! Just a note to let you know that the Copyvio tool has been out of service for 4 hours now. Reason: 504 gateway timeout. Thanks for any assistance! — Diannaa (talk) 23:21, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 19 June 2023

Administrators' newsletter – July 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2023).

Administrator changes

added Novem Linguae
removed

Bureaucrat changes

removed MBisanz

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

  • Two arbitration cases are currently open. Proposed decisions are expected 5 July 2023 for the Scottywong case and 9 July 2023 for the AlisonW case.

The Signpost: 3 July 2023

The Signpost: 17 July 2023

Copyvio exclusions

Hi Earwig! I noticed a mirror site for Spanish Wikipedia, and I wondered if we can add them to the exclusions page of the Copyvio detector. The page is https://es-academic.com/contents.nsf/eswiki/, let me know if I can help with anything, and also thanks to you for the tool!! Best, Soylacarli (talk) 15:20, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Added, thanks! Might take a few hours to update. — The Earwig (talk) 15:34, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 1 August 2023

Administrators' newsletter – August 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2023).

Administrator changes

added Firefangledfeathers
removed

Interface administrator changes

added Novem Linguae

Technical news

Arbitration


The Signpost: 15 August 2023

Copyvio tool is down

Hi Ben, the copyvio tool is not functioning properly today. It is throwing a 502 Bad Gateway error, or failing to load at all (it just spins and spins). If you have a minute I would appreciate it if you could have a look. Thanks, — Diannaa (talk) 16:34, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Hey Diannaa, I'm not seeing any issues at the moment, are you still having problems? — The Earwig (talk) 17:43, 27 August 2023 (UTC)
I just resumed editing after some real-life activities and the tool seems to be functioning well again at this time. Thanks for taking a look. — Diannaa (talk) 20:35, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

An RFC that affects you has closed

You are receiving this message as one of the overseers of TFA Protector Bot. I have just closed the TFA semi-protection RfC with consensus to implement both it and its sub-RfC. I leave the finer details in the hands of the bot operators. Your service is appreciated :) CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n! 22:30, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

As a further note, in case you already read my close, I have amended my close after a conversation with Sdkb, withdrawing my close of the sub-RfC. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n! 23:35, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 August 2023

Administrators' newsletter – September 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2023).

Guideline and policy news

  • Following an RfC, TFAs will be automatically semi-protected the day before it is on the main page and through the day after.
  • A discussion at WP:VPP about revision deletion and oversight for dead names found that [s]ysops can choose to use revdel if, in their view, it's the right tool for this situation, and they need not default to oversight. But oversight could well be right where there's a particularly high risk to the person. Use your judgment.

Technical news

Arbitration

  • The SmallCat dispute case has closed. As part of the final decision, editors participating in XfD have been reminded to be careful about forming local consensus which may or may not reflect the broader community consensus. Regular closers of XfD forums were also encouraged to note when broader community discussion, or changes to policies and guidelines, would be helpful.

Miscellaneous

  • Tech tip: The "Browse history interactively" banner shown at the top of Special:Diff can be used to easily look through a history, assemble composite diffs, or find out what archive something wound up in.

The Signpost: 16 September 2023

Women in Red metrics

I'm afraid there's once again a problem here. Would appreciate your attention.--Ipigott (talk) 06:38, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Looking. Harej, did you make any changes to the way the bot runs on Toolforge? It looks like its virtual environment has disappeared. — The Earwig (talk) 15:21, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
I recreated the venv, and it seems to be running now. We'll know for sure in about half an hour. — The Earwig (talk) 15:41, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
Fortunately that resolved the issue, though I still don't know how it broke in the first place. — The Earwig (talk) 03:57, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

A category or categories you have created have been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2023 October 1 § Category:WikiProject X members on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Qwerfjkltalk 09:36, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 3 October 2023

Administrators' newsletter – September 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2023).

Guideline and policy news

  • An RfC is open regarding amending the paid-contribution disclosure policy to add the following text: Any administrator soliciting clients for paid Wikipedia-related consulting or advising services not covered by other paid-contribution rules must disclose all clients on their userpage.

Technical news

  • Administrators can now choose to add the user's user page to their watchlist when changing the usergroups for a user. This works both via Special:UserRights and via the API. (T272294)

Arbitration

Miscellaneous


The Signpost: 23 October 2023

November Articles for creation backlog drive

Hello The Earwig:

WikiProject Articles for creation is holding a month long Backlog Drive!
The goal of this drive is to reduce the backlog of unreviewed drafts to less than 2 months outstanding reviews from the current 4+ months. Bonus points will be given for reviewing drafts that have been waiting more than 30 days. The drive is running from 1 November 2023 through 30 November 2023.

You may find Category:AfC pending submissions by age or other categories and sorting helpful.

Barnstars will be given out as awards at the end of the drive.

There is a backlog of over 1800 pages, so start reviewing drafts. We're looking forward to your help! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:25, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 6 November 2023

Administrators' newsletter – November 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2023).

Administrator changes

added 0xDeadbeef
readded Tamzin
removed Dennis Brown

Interface administrator changes

added Pppery
removed

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

  • Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate themselves from 12 November 2023 until 21 November 2023 to stand in the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections.
  • Xaosflux, RoySmith and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2023 Arbitration Committee Elections. BusterD is the reserve commissioner.
  • Following a motion, the contentious topic designation of Prem Rawat has been struck. Actions previously taken using this contentious topic designation are still in force.
  • Following several motions, multiple topic areas are no longer designated as a contentious topic. These contentious topic designations were from the Editor conduct in e-cigs articles, Liancourt Rocks, Longevity, Medicine, September 11 conspiracy theories, and Shakespeare authorship question cases.
  • Following a motion, remedies 3.1 (All related articles under 1RR whenever the dispute over naming is concerned), 6 (Stalemate resolution) and 30 (Administrative supervision) of the Macedonia 2 case have been rescinded.
  • Following a motion, remedy 6 (One-revert rule) of the The Troubles case has been amended.
  • An arbitration case named Industrial agriculture has been opened. Evidence submissions in this case close 8 November.

Miscellaneous


Comment Search summary - filter by date

Hi, can you take a look at [2]. I get no responses from Σ and I saw you co-manage some tools, so maybe you have access to that tool as well? If the source code is available I can try and donate the change myself. thanks Kotz (talk) 15:29, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Hi Kotz. Thanks, this is a reasonable feature request. I've added it to the tool. Hope you find it useful. — The Earwig (talk) 04:07, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Cool!! Thanks a lot. I'll check it up and either put it up for use immediately or come back to complain some more. Thanks again Kotz (talk) 10:02, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Inspired captions...

User:The Earwig (left) and some earwigs
Piper Gilbert Kerr (right) alongside a penguin, March 1904

CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n! 02:30, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

Love it! Thanks Eek! — The Earwig (talk) 04:24, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
surprisingly for me, you are young. I always thought of you to be in 40s/50s —usernamekiran (talk) 00:05, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
Heh, thanks... I've heard this quite a bit at meetups. — The Earwig (talk) 08:31, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 20 November 2023

ArbCom 2023 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 11 December 2023. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority 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 in the 2023 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:34, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Copyvio lang hu

Hi! Copyvio Detector doesn't work with lang=hu. https://copyvios.toolforge.org/?lang=hu&project=wikipedia&title=Rakovn%C3%ADk&oldid=&action=search&use_engine=1&use_links=1&turnitin=0 Could you please post your answer here? Thanks, Bean49 (talk) 21:25, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll reply there. — The Earwig (talk) 03:34, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 4 December 2023

Administrators' newsletter – December 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2023).

Guideline and policy news

Arbitration

  • Following a motion, the Extended Confirmed Restriction has been amended, removing the allowance for non-extended-confirmed editors to post constructive comments on the "Talk:" namespace. Now, non-extended-confirmed editors may use the "Talk:" namespace solely to make edit requests related to articles within the topic area, provided that their actions are not disruptive.
  • The Arbitration Committee has announced a call for Checkusers and Oversighters, stating that it will currently be accepting applications for CheckUser and/or Oversight permissions at any point in the year.
  • Eligible users are invited to vote on candidates for the Arbitration Committee until 23:59 December 11, 2023 (UTC). Candidate statements can be seen here.

Happy holidays!

Spread the WikiLove; use {{subst:Season's Greetings}} to send this message

MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 14:25, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks MrLinkinPark333, and same to you! — The Earwig (talk) 20:33, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Copyvio Tool 504 Gateway Timeout

Hi,

The copyvio tool is timing out already, could you take a look at it.

Thanks, Seawolf35 T--C 15:47, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/KiranBOT 8. —usernamekiran (talk) 15:57, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

I have commented there, your response/feedback would be appreciated a lot. —usernamekiran (talk) 15:57, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
Replied there. — The Earwig (talk) 04:41, 21 December 2023 (UTC)