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Stewards' noticeboard/Archives/2015-03

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arc.wikipedia

I just logged in after a long absence and noticed that there was a message per my admin status on the Aramaic Wikipedia. Not much happens on that WIki nowadays other than the occasional bought of nationalist vandalism, and when I do log in I try my best to use my admin status to clean it up, as few others are familiar enough with the language or would. As such I would prefer to keep my admin status. Steve Caruso (talk)

Since your admin access has been already removed, you need to reapply for the adminship. Ruslik (talk) 17:05, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Alleged use of tools on home wiki

Hello all,

I'd like to attend you all to this. As renaming is a steward task and this user did not have a global account, it is my opinion that Trijnstel violated policies by renaming this user locally, thus performing steward tasks on her own home wiki. What do you think? 198.11.246.182 12:08, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

There is no policy that forbids stewards from using their rights on home wiki. To avoid COI stewards generally avoid using their rights on home wikis. There is no partial decision made here so these kind of uncontroversial actions are allowed per policy--Shanmugamp7 (talk) 12:22, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
I agree. I'm also of the opinion that while usurping of accounts doesn't yet fall under the Global rename policy, it ought to be interpreted in the context of that policy. As all renaming is global and with SUL finalisation all account names will be global then the concept of "home wiki" doesn't really exist in the context of renaming. QuiteUnusual (talk) 15:59, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
By the same token, stewards couldn't lock SULs with local accounts on their homewiki because it would be a conflict of interest. I cannot see how local renaming could possibly pose a conflict of interest. It should also be noted that many other stewards (including myself) have performed such local renames since the ability was removed from local 'crats. Ajraddatz (talk) 16:09, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
Agree. Renames are crosswiki, stewards act crosswiki. Non-controversial.  — billinghurst sDrewth 10:34, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Possible Homophobia on Pashto Wikipedia

Moved discussion to Request for comment/Possible Homophobia on Pashto Wikipedia  — billinghurst sDrewth 23:14, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Now that I am not getting caught in edit conflicts. Thanks to those participants for being willing to involve yourselves in discourse, it is the better way to approach a resolution. I have moved the discussion to its own page as stewards are not an arbitration committee, and this is a matter that the Pashto community needs to find their way forward. Look to what you agree upon, and then try to lessen the matters that you disagree.  — billinghurst sDrewth 23:23, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
@Billinghurst: The problem is Khangul is unwilling to listen and I am blocked on Pashto wikipedia. Could you please ask an arbitrator to judge our case. I have given all the relevant references. Thank you so much Lewaal101 (talk) 23:30, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
This is up to the psWP community to determine, there is no arbitrator established to resolve a dispute within the community. Please utilise the discussion to highlight and demonstrate the issue. This is also why we don't have single permanent administrators on small communities, so please invite other psWP administrators to the discussion.  — billinghurst sDrewth 05:48, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Vitruvian@tr.wikiquote

Vitruvian@tr.wikiquote there is a problem with this sysop. He said that will not contribute to a wiki. That's why he blocked indefinitely. Sysops, no one is arbitrarily can't stop indefinitely. In fact, sysops can not prevent himself. The removal of block would be good. --Uğurkenttalk 21:27, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

So, he blocked himself. That is not stewards' business, he can unblock himself again. --MF-W 21:34, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
Annoyance there. He doesn't answer. Billinghurst, led me here. --Uğurkenttalk 21:36, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
It may annoy you, but it is equal to simply being inactive: It is nothing that is a problem for stewards. You just have to accept that he at the moment does not want to be active in tr.q. --MF-W 22:43, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Real IPs checking

At viwiki, [1], the admin refused to check user accounts with some IP addresses (not proxy). He said it could break the policy which may reveal the user information. Is it correct? How we solve a case when some IPs ultilize this gap to devastate articles or win over other editors? Can anyone can explain me clearly? Thank you. If here is not the right place, pls show me where I can post this. Alphama (talk) 10:15, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

In general a CheckUser will not publicly link a registered account to an IP address. The CheckUser policy states inter alia "Generally, do not reveal IPs." Confirming on-wiki that an IP address matches a registered account in effect reveals the IP. However, this does not prevent the CheckUser performing the check and acting on the information if required - they just need to do so with caution. QuiteUnusual (talk) 11:15, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

OK, thanks. I wonder how to prevent the vandalism when a user uses his registered account A and his IP 123.xxx.xxx.xxx on an article. CheckUser avoids revealling IPs and what can we do? (We can not always block articles) Alphama (talk) 05:50, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Norman Wikipedia Admins

Greetings,

I am one of three former local admins of the Norman Wikipedia. We were the only three admins with any knowledge of the language on the Wikipedia. All three of us have since had our admin rights removed due to inactivity. This means there are no Norman-speaking admins left on the Norman Wikipedia at present.

Two questions: What do we do when something on the wiki requires admin attention? How do we go about setting up a policy on our local wiki that could supersede the global policy that resulted in the loss of our admins?

(It's possible that Merlicoqùet has not yet lost his rights, but notice was served to him in English [in the middle of his talk page, for some reason], and he speaks Norman and French, but no English to my knowledge, and so I doubt he would be able to respond in time. I can assure you that we'd rather that he kept his admin rights, however.) 71.235.191.13 06:34, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

The global policy is only intended to remove completely inactive users; if you are still here, then please start a local request and after a week request your sysop rights back at SRP. Same goes for any of the other admins. The admin activity review should only remove people who have been inactive for 2+ years. Ajraddatz (talk) 06:40, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
If you have an admin request (while there are no local admins), please go to Steward requests/Miscellaneous. In order to make your own inactivity guideline, please hold a local discussion and post the results at Admin activity review/processes to review holders of advanced administrative rights. All the best, Taketa (talk) 07:05, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
To also note that notice was given about this. If you wish to provide us with a Norman translation of the notice please do so.  — billinghurst sDrewth 03:13, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Offensive sock used by User:Russavia

I've mentioned this at Commons:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Administrators%27_noticeboard/User_problems#Disruptive_Russavia_sock_EcuadorPutas

This is an offensive name, and Russavia used it to upload several hundred images from Flickr to Commons, and to do 1000 edits in all. My concern is that this offensive name shows as the uploader of all these images, etc. Can this name be suppressed globally? This name could potentially offend many Spanish-speaking and other editors if/when the uploaded images are used on various wikis. Thanks for your time. INeverCry 21:37, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

The name can be suppressed, the account can be moved too to a non-problematic name which will update the upload name in the db, though not on the uploads. If you are keeping the images, I would ask that the Commons community direct stewards how to proceed.  — billinghurst sDrewth 03:08, 23 March 2015 (UTC)
Agree that a rename would be better. I also agree that it would be best to wait for internal commons discussion to be done. Ajraddatz (talk) 03:55, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Problematic case - user Dcirovic and shwiki

What to do with user Dcirovic from Serbo-Croatian and Serbian Wikipedia? He's running bots both from user and from bot account.

shwiki
srwiki

He runs bot very fast, he mades several tens of edits per minute. In very short time he reached 1 Million of edits on both his accounts on srwiki and 6 Millions of edits on his bot account on shwiki in just 1 year!! Also he has 560000 edits on main account on shwiki.

He ignores all WMF rules and just overloads WMF servers to swell sr and especially shwiki. For instance see here>

History of article ″Agna, Parma″ on shwiki

He created article on 26 Sep 2014, and then he began to play with statistics:

On 5 November he added just an empty section == Литература == in this article and other articles from this series about Italian populated places. There are several tens of thousends of articles in this series and task took some time. After 2 days he come here again to add {{refbegin}} [2]

Three days later he adds in articles {{refend}} [3]

Then he made a lot of useless edits to add some dubious ″bibliography″ to article [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]

here, here, here, here, here and here — he added just an * !!!

Note that this false bibliography is almost unrelated to most of articles. He made 21 edits mass automated bot edits in articles (another example), although he could made all these changes in just 1 to max. 3 edits. Most probably he wants to ″swell″ depth of this botopedia.

Now he began his job to Mexican localities.

A lot of fresh useless edits from main account https://sh.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Posebno:Doprinosi/Dcirovic&offset=20150326023322&target=Dcirovic

I suggest to stop somehow this user, educate him or split shwiki from WMF and let him play his game on his own server. If you keep shwiki on WMF server in wikipedia family maybe it would be good to merge on server-side in database all those useless edits (like this) so as to shwiki statistics return back to normal. --178.63.21.4 03:01, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

The bot accounts seem to be approved as bots. We, as stewards, cannot act in these situations. I suggest you contact the user locally and transmit your concerns. Savhñ 09:55, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Mass destruction of Wikispecies data by an out of control crat

The following discussion is closed.

FYI, User:Dan Koehl is busy destroying masses of potentially useful data on Wikispecies, see here. These were categories which users can choose to read or not. They were doing no harm, and were potentially useful. They were created in good faith by me at a time when there was no policy limiting what could be added as categories. Now Koehl is trying to boost his edit count by destroying them, after a long campaign to have me permanently blocked and out of the way. Koehl is an insidious little misanthrope who has become the popular champion of a group of cretins on WS who have no idea what they are doing. The mass descruction of potentially useful data is a sad reflection of what Wikimedia has become, i.e. a cesspit of "politics" - Mafia-like mob rule thinly disguised as "consensus" Stho002 (talk) 03:49, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

No data removed, only categories, which, according to the community make no sense. Personally designed categories like Category:Zeclaviger explanatus (New Zealand) and identically Category:xxxx xxxxx (New Zealand), which had no use, according to users at Wikispecies. If those species had been endemic to New Zealand, the situation could have been different, as for now, only you saw any use in them, and you ignored others users opinions. But all data is there, so dont worry Stho002 (residing on New Zealand), just those New Zealand categories are removed, per discussion at Village pump. Your creation of those categories did not follow any standard or censensus, and there was a wish to remove them and other, for the project, irrelevant material.
I am not out of control, I am following the will of the community. Which you didnt, a main reason to why you became permanently blocked. As a productive and good taxonomist, its sad you didnt value collaboration with other users. Dan Koehl (talk) 04:09, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
Your drivel makes no sense. Zeclaviger explanatus is endemic to New Zealand! You have no idea what you are doing. You are just hell bent on destroying anything that I created. You are the sort of person who drags mankind down into the gutter, who retards progress, who hides knowledge, and who gets off on the popularity you get from supporting the lowest common denominator. Really, Dan, the most constructive contribution you could make to mankind is suicide. Sure my creation of those categories did not follow any standard or censensus, nor did it contravene any policy. Those categories were created in good faith, and the user had the choice to read them or not. Now, like any megalomaniacal dictator, you take choices away from the user. Is this constructive? I don't think so! All data is not there, as you are deleting category pages, on which I put data relevant only to the context of a particular country (e.g. New Zealand). This data is not repeated anywhere else, so you are destroying data. Still, it is nice to see you wasting your time on something so pointless ... I only wish I could have given you an order of magnitude or more to do. Rot in hell, Stho002 (talk) 04:22, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
You are entitled to your opinion, as we all are. But you are missing the point, the communiy doesnt see any sense in the "Nwe Zealand" categories. If we would have had made categories for each and every country for every species, then it would have been a standard within the project, supprted by consensus withing the community. Im sure you have followed the Village pump discussions, and you know that Im just following the wish from the comunity to clean out those categories. But all your real, hard work, of which you cn be proud of, is still there. I can only say Im sorry, you didnt make a priority to collaborate better with other users. Pleaes top of accusing me for personal reasons for this work I have to do, which is pretty tiring. Its easy for you to see that it was other users who brought up the issue.
I will not reply on this anymore, unless anyone at Meta wants me to that. This noticeboard is not intended for extended discussions. Please respect this. Dan Koehl (talk) 06:00, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
The contributions of User:Stho002 in this thread contain the following passages, addressing User:Dan Koehl personally and the WS community in general: "insidious little misanthrope", "a group of cretins on WS", "cesspit of politics", "mafia-like mob rule", "sort of person who drags mankind down into the gutter", "the most constructive contribution you could make to mankind is suicide", "like a megalomaniacal dictator". Everybody will recognise easily these heavy issues of incivility, which among others resulted in a permanent block of Stho002 from Wikispecies. Will this be tolerated here? Regards --Franz Xaver (talk) 09:32, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
Please refrain from continuing this thread. This should (and it looks like it has already been) handled locally. We will not act unless there is explicit local consensus that expect us to. Savhñ 09:52, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Discussion not closed

The following discussion is closed: Please take this via a RFC  — billinghurst sDrewth 13:07, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

The above discussion is not closed. How can stewards possibly not intervene to stop the mass deletion of potentially useful information by an out of control crat who has local backing of a small group of thugs (like Franz Xaver), while the bulk of the local community is too scared to disagree or get involved? This is a gross abuse of sysop powers by Koehl. Deletion is reserved for vandalism, or for mistakenly created pages. There are about 10K pages with N.Z. categories on them. Koehl intends to remove them all, and to delete the corresponding category pages, simply because he and his band of merry thugs consider them not to be useful! But they might be useful to other users. They are doing no harm. They are not vandalism. They were created in good faith, and their creation did not breach any policies in place at that time. The user has the choice to read or ignore these categories. Koehl is removing user choice. The reasons offered above by Koehl simply don't make any sense. For one thing, he is saying that because we can't do the category thing (in the short term) for every country, we therefore should not do it for any country! The same logic would result in the abandonment of Wikispecies altogether, since we cannot (in the short term) create pages for all the species in the world. It would follow that we should not create pages for any species! So, will some steward please be responsible enough to comment on the actual issues here, as they are very important. Stho002 (talk) 20:29, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

PS: To prove what a liar and a fraud Koehl is, just look at how much data and work he has deleted on this category page. He and his cronies might not be interested to know which new species were described from N.Z. in 2013, but other users might be so interested. They do not have the right to retrospectively deem articles to be "irrelevant". The site isn't there just for their own amusement and interests. This is massive scale vandalism, apparently being ignored by stewards! Stho002 (talk) 20:40, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

It is sad to see STho002 ignoring the broad community consensus, before the crat took actions. The more as STho002 was a very active member of the project. But even the most active member has to respect the community. --Murma174 (talk) 22:28, 26 March 2015 (UTC) (a simple member of the project, not under suspicion of being a "cronie")
Respect is to be earned. It is not a right. Koehl and some others have proven themselves to be unworthy of respect Stho002 (talk) 22:39, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
Stewards role is to act on the consensus of the community. In that we do at specieswiki the tasks for which they desire changes and do not have the direct rights and they have determined that a consensus exists. From a global perspective, where the broad community demonstrates a consensus, then that enables certain actions to be taken. We have no authority to intervene in this matter, please see Stewards for more information about our role.

The stewards' noticeboard is not the right place for the discussion you are looking to have. What you are able to do is to continue this thread as an RFC which puts your point of view to the broader community. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:07, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

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