Stewards' noticeboard/Archives/2012-03

Cleaning up redundant local messages

I once built a tool that gives local messages, split into 1) a list of local messages identical to the default, which can be deleted and 2) a list of custom mesages. I wanted to delete the messages in the first list, because they're redundant and prevent the efficient centralized updating from translatewiki.net. There was some opposition of stewards, because I first would need to get consensus of local communities, which would take too much time I think. (Note that I would do it especially on small, less active wikis.) Now Nemo bis & Logicwiki convinced me to propose this again (see also recent blog post of Gerard). I am a global sysop so technically I can delete them on most small wikis but I want to avoid misusing my tools. If allowed to, it would be better to give my bot global bot status (or something, not familiar with that) and the ability to delete (global sysop?). TL;DR Am I allowed to delete redundant messages, and can my bot be given the necessary rights? Thanks, SPQRobin (talk) 02:54, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I already heard, that some don't like that, because of the edit histories which might get lost - Hoo man (talk) 14:00, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

This is a very weak problem, not enough to oppose; but thanks for mentioning it, you allow me to address it. If they really care they can always restore and move to another namespace suppressing redirects, but deletion is the standard system for messages since the beginning of time. Also, they probably just care about editcount, which is fair but not needed as deleted edits are counted as well. Attribution is not an issue because SPQRobin won't move any message to translatewiki.net, this is work for a translator in following step. Nemo 22:20, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

What is the scope of the exercise? Can we get a dummy run report prepared on which files, which wikis and numbers. I see this as a two part exercise: 1) the discussion about the files at local wikis and getting feedback on what is required, 2) the technical resolution of the matter. I see that this is primarily a decision for local wikis or a decision for stewards where there is no local decision. billinghurst sDrewth 03:23, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

The scope is that of an obviously needed maintenance, see mw:Localisation#Old local translation system. There actually isn't any decision to make about it, but I agree that a list of things to do would be useful to determine how to proceed, in particular whether SPQRobin needs some help. Nemo 16:13, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

I want to improve my tool to include all MediaWiki pages and to work on all wikis (not only Wikipedias). And the list of pages is per-wiki and it's not easy to get a full report on all wikis. But I would like to know if I am allowed to run a bot to delete redundant messages. My concern is about the "decision for local wikis", because the task to inform each wiki and follow up their decision, seems a bigger task than actually running the bot and doing stuff. SPQRobin (talk) 03:14, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

spam links

Hi; I am an adminstrator on Ansiklopedika.org. Since nearly two months we are having trouble with spam links and spam users like this. They are usually adding spam links also. We are using captcha but really we dont understand how they add this links. Nearly to months ago we changed our robot.txt and these spammers started after then. We really dont know how to stop them. Pls help us. Thank you a lot. 95.10.149.95 19:54, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Actually that's not a stewards' matter. But these are spambots using xrumer, you can simply set up an abusefilter requiring a certaing number of edits or a certain account age to let an user add external links. A compulsory email confirm before editing may also works. --Vituzzu (talk) 20:07, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

My suggestions:

1. Upgrade your MediaWiki site to the latest MediaWiki version.
2. Make your project to use our spam blacklist, ask at mediawiki.org for help.
3. It may help your wiki to instal extensions such as AntiBot, ConfirmEdit, Captcha, TorBlock, etc; see more antispam suggestions here and here for antispam extensions. mw:Extension:AbuseFilter may help you too.
4. Rangeblocks may also work stopping spammers. You may want to install mw:Extension:CheckUser.

Hope that it helps. Regards. —Marco Aurelio (Nihil Prius Fide) 15:25, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Appropriate place for your questions is the wikitech-l mailing list, and if you look at the archives for the list you will see that this same matter was a recent conversation, especially about an upgraded capture process. billinghurst sDrewth 03:49, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much. 95.10.178.166 21:39, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

General steward request

I notice it is not clear from the requests page where to place general requests of stewards. Should this noticeboard be linked from there?

Ruslik reasonably asked me to update the sitenotice of the Wikimania 2005 and 2006 wikis. This brought to my attention the weird status of those wikis. The 2005 wiki seems to be locked, though I don't see that noted anywhere; a mention in the sitenotice would be appropriate. The 2006 wiki seems not to be locked, but admin and bureaucrat flags have been removed from all editors. And when I try to edit the mediawiki namespace there, I get a message that this task has been restricted to stewards :-)

Update: this has now been resolved thanks to Ruslik, and I pushed those changes. I suppose this could have boiled down to a permissions request, though I was also curious about the current status of those wikis. :) Regards, –SJ talk   08:08, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

mania2006 and mania2007 wikis were added to http://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/closed.dblist but not removed from http://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/fishbowl.dblist . The latter status apparently takes precedence. Ruslik (talk) 11:19, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

What is the function of http://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/fishbowl.dblist ? Thanks. —Marco Aurelio (Nihil Prius Fide) 14:32, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

These wikis are outside SUL and you need to ask somebody to create an account for you on them (like foundationwiki). Ruslik (talk) 18:09, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. Regards. —Marco Aurelio (Nihil Prius Fide) 19:20, 20 March 2012 (UTC)