Stewards' noticeboard/Archives/2013-03

Steward appointments 2013

According to the recent election results and the vote rules it is hereby resolved that the following 6 users are approved as Stewards:

1. Amqui (talk · contribs)
2. BRUTE (talk · contribs)
3. Jon Harald Søby (talk · contribs)
4. Mathonius (talk · contribs)
5. MF-Warburg (talk · contribs)
6. QuiteUnusual (talk · contribs)

The Election Committee wishes to thank the candidates for their time and interest; and the voters for the time spent reviewing the candidates and taking part in this global process.

The results of the 2013 stewards confirmation will be released in the upcoming days.

For the election committee,
Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 01:33, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
Vituzzu (talk) 01:33, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
—DerHexer (Talk) 01:40, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Congrats to all the new stewards! πr² (t • c) 01:34, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

+1 -- Avi (talk) 04:37, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Congratulations! Laaknor (talk) 08:36, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

++ :) LeinaD (t) 09:07, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Congrats ! -- Quentinv57 ^(talk) 11:29, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Congrats to our new fellow stewards! -Barras talk 11:44, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Hip hip hurrah! ✒ Bennylin 16:57, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

My congratulations to all new (and not so new) stewards. Ruslik (talk) 19:00, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

And my congratulations as well. I look forward to working with you. If there's anything my team can do to be of assistance (other than just generally staying out of trouble and not making a nuisance of ourselves, which we've proven incapable of), please do ask. Philippe (WMF) (talk) 06:46, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Congratulations to all of the new stewards and good luck! :) Trijnstel_talk 19:22, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Have the confirmations been confirmed? -- Avi (talk) 16:37, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Seems so, per Talk:Stewards/Confirm/2013/en. Rights have been already removed from those not confirmed. Best regards. -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 16:58, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Can't believe I missed that :doh:. Thanks. -- Avi (talk) 19:30, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Collingwood@en.wikiversity

Resolved.

A recently archived checkuser request for Collingwood / Poetlister was closed as positive. The IP trace for Poetlister IP was stale. How was this CU confirmed? Steward requests/Checkuser/2013-02#Collingwood@en.wikiversity -- Jtneill - Talk 20:17, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

I would suggest that you try contacting the steward that handled the case. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 20:52, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks - I've followed up here: User talk:Millosh#Collingwood CU/lock -- Jtneill - Talk 03:42, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Millosh posted[1] to Steward requests/Checkuser/2013-02 that " Presently, I am not able to disclose the details. But, I think that the details will be presented in the next couple of weeks. --Millosh (talk) 16:29, 16 February 2013 (UTC)". We looked forward to more details as appropriate as there is little to go on so far and Collingwood has requested local unlock via email for access to en.wv. Sincerely, James -- Jtneill - Talk 22:46, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

The Wikimedia Foundation has been monitoring the Collingwood account for some time, since suspicions were first raised. Using a combination of technical and non-technical data, we are confident (four independent staff members, analyzing independently and sharing their results at the end feel exactly the same way) that Collingwood can not possibly be independent of Poetlister. The Foundation will adamently oppose any local unblock. Poetlister represents a clear danger to our editing community, and we will not allow that. Full technical data will not be shared publicly, for a variety of confidentiality based reasons. Philippe (WMF) (talk) 21:25, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Thankyou for providing this additional information about how the check-user confirmation was made and also clarifying WMF's position with regard to the Poetlister et al. accounts. -- Jtneill - Talk 22:22, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Time zones on Stewards?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Hi all. Isn't it an idea to add the time zones of the specific stewards on Stewards (like this) so people know which steward might be around? Trijnstel_talk 22:53, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

It is an idea, though I don't consider it a beneficial one. People with issues are better to go and use the respective steward request pages in preference to targeting respective talk pages of stewards. Personally I direct most people to these pages as it allows a greater openness and quicker response from an available steward; or even a comment from someone knowledgeable in the matter who may not be a steward. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:56, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Agreed, also one consideration would be that revealing this information would theoretically also allow for better planning of vandalising attacks cross-wiki. Pundit (talk) 16:20, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

This information would serve little if any purpose given it's best to go on the various steward noticeboards or the irc channel anyway and we don't need to collect info that's can easily be used to time attacks (not just cross-wiki ones) and give it to them in ready to digest form. I should also note that timezone is hardly a good indication of when an individual is around. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 16:28, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Hm, I didn't think of time attacks ... a very good reason to not implement this suggestion. I'll close it immediately. Trijnstel_talk 18:45, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

---

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

What to do with Google9999?

Special:Centralauth/Google9999 was locked on 14 Dec for cross-wiki abuse. He was also locally blocked on a number of wikis, including enwiki, where he had the most edits, after a checkuser investigation, in which it was found out that he previously used the account Special:Centralauth/Google6666 (also locked) which was blocked for disruptive editing.

The reason for the lock, according to my memory, was that he before the lock, Google9999 edited articles mainly about "iOS" and and "Xbox360" and such stuff cross-wikily (e.g. using Google [sic] Translate); including trying to copy infoboxes used in the enwiki articles about them to other wikis (and as these were quite complex templates, a rat-tail of other templates followed). It is to add that sometimes templates of the same name already existed, he then simply overwrote them. Later on, he also started to copy templates that don't seem to have a clear connection to these articles which I mentioned. Two examples are:

• gawiki, where he has been warned numerous times about his actions on his talk page.
• pflwiki: warned for not writing articles in the project's language, later mass-copying templates. After blocking him there, I received two wikimails with requests that I should now create such templates for him etc. His style of writing btw is very incomprehensible and disregarding all rules of punctuation.

On Meta, he also created some rather nonsensical requests for new languages: Hawaiian Pidgin, Australian English, "WIKIPROJECT IRISH" (from where he found gawiki, I think).

After the lock, he continued his template copyings under IPs, which were sometimes gblocked by stewards. I don't have any example currently except luxo:90.222.250.124 (gblock log), which was blocked by Tegel (and later by me). Recent examples, which I blocked, are 83.142.226.101, 86.189.2.68, 87.117.253.75, 109.144.239.135, 67.205.103.205, 124.248.205.71, 178.239.59.82, 109.144.246.247 [many of them open proxies]. I sometimes also reverted his edits and/or deleted the templates, if they were newly created. Then on 6 March he contacted me on my meta talk page because he had actually done two useful edits on scnwiki, which I indeed should not have reverted. He has not given me an answer there to my question about his template-copying behaviour, but promised (in a very incomprehensible sentence) to stop it in order to get unlocked. AFAIK, he has not yet made a request in the matter than was described to him.

To add, he recently started to make edits on Requests for new languages again, e.g. Special:Contributions/46.45.143.219. Mostly he only changed the old request template to the new one, but he also created Requests for new languages/Wikinews Irish with the super-compelling rationale "I propose that Irish Wikinews be created because there is a Irish wikipedia so I thought we should have a Irish Wikinews". We know that he does not speak Irish from gawiki (see above). Additionally, there was Talk:Language_committee#Requests_for_new_languages.2FWikipedia_Middle_English.

It's probably getting boring to read this by now, but another case of abuse is ak:Special:Undelete/Wikipedia:Village_pump which he created copying from somewhere, including the sentence "To view these archives and the history before September 26, 2004, see (...)".

Today I reverted him on a template change on Incubator ([2]) and blocked an open proxy he was using, after which he went to complain on my meta talk page again. (Regarding the template, I should've given a better explanation than "bla bla bla", but was too enraged about it at the time. I have now done that on my talk page.) Now I am writing here because I would like to have it discussed how to deal with all this. I have occasionally talked with other users about Google9999 in the SWMT channel, reckoning that he is either stupid a subject of en:Wikipedia:Competence is required or trolling us. So, should I just continue to block him on sight (easy, because he almost only uses open proxies; bad style however if he just asked something on my talk page)? Do his template changes actually effect anything? Can we maybe try to give him a thorough and very clear explanation about what not to do (e.g. messing with templates in wikis you don't know the language of; though he has been told that often already) and then unlock him to be able to better supervise his edits? Or is that hopeless? --MF-W 03:31, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

• Hi MF-Warburg. Apologies for the late reply, but I guess your message is too long to read or to reply to. ;) Anyway, I encountered this vandal yesterday too and he really doesn't listen to me. Only after a few warnings he undoes his changes. So I'd say we should keep blocking him and hopefully some day we can do that for good. Although I doubt that's possible. Sadly he gives us too much work to do or to check. I can't give a clear solution for this problem. Trijnstel_talk 22:49, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Yes, I probably should have expressed myself shorter, but the amount of abuses from the user is so overwhelming ;-P Currently the only thing we can do seems to be blocking the ever-changing IPs, before he does too much nonsense. --MF-W 16:58, 31 March 2013 (UTC)
    • Yeah... We can't block ranges or so and we can't ban him completely. So I don't have another solution sadly. Trijnstel_talk 18:33, 31 March 2013 (UTC)
      • Has (s)he been notified of this discussion? πr² (t • c) 18:46, 31 March 2013 (UTC)
        • No. How so, if he is locked and all the time appears with different open proxy or other IPs? We could surely do so by putting an edit notice on RNL pages. --MF-W 18:48, 31 March 2013 (UTC)
        • Actually not. I was about to do so on Trijnstel's talk page but I think this should be done by the initiator of this discussion (MF-W) if necessary. Regards, Vogone talk 19:25, 31 March 2013 (UTC)