Stewards' noticeboard/Archives/2022-04

Important technical problem

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T305311

Hello. The password change page does not work. When I go to save the password the password does not change. Thanks! AlPaD (talk) 19:10, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

@AlPaD: This is out of scope for stewards. Please file a bug report on Phabricator instead. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 19:19, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Works for me @AlPaD: are you getting an error message of some sort? — xaosflux ^Talk 19:33, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: No, but the password doesn't change. @NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh: OK thanks! AlPaD (talk) 19:41, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

@NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh: so far phab:T305311 seems to just be people not having the issue. FWIW, I did just successfully change my password without issue, here on metawiki. When you are at the Change credentials page, does the "Credentials type:" section say "Password-based authentication"? — xaosflux ^Talk 20:40, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Yes, exactly that. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 20:47, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

┌─────────┘
Can't reproduce. I have changed my passwords 6 times, both successfully, using my main account (2FA) and an alternative one (no 2FA). NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 20:56, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: Stang 23:37, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Inflating article count of Wikipedias

Hi, I was recently granted Adminship on pi: Wikipedia, a rather tiny project. While performing my routine maintenance tasks, I realised that we have articles on pi:१–pi:२०९९ (Latin: 1–2099) (Gregorian calendar years). They are all just skeletons of article as present on English Wikipedia on creation date. They were all created 15 years ago by a bot, and all of them remain unedited ever since (apart from few bot edits maintaining inter-language links, before Wikidata's creation). This enabled the project to have 6–7 times as large article count as it had 2.5 days before the bot concluded it's task. But, they have no encyclopedic content whatsoever, and doesn't further Wikipedia's mission in any capacity.

As mentioned above, no editor has shown interest in this articles in 15 years and I don't see them expanded any time soon either. On English Wikipedia, such pages would be deleted. On Pali Wikipedia, lack of community means I need Steward's suggestions. Should I delete them? Afterall, when an editor determines to actually create encyclopedic content, they can recreate the pages. Or leave them alone because it helps the project seem bigger than it actually is?

I also realise that this issue is global. Go to Wikidata entry of any random year (except for 2010–2023 range), there would be at least 130 Wikipedia links, of which at least 115 would just be skeletons created a decade ago, usually by a bot. They, much like pi WP, has no content even after 10+ years of existing, because no editor showed any interest. What should their future be?

Finally, I don't know if there is a standard procedure for stewards to follow in such cases. Do we need a global RfC or something to deal with it? Thanks! —‍CX Zoom (A/अ/অ) (let's talk|contribs) 13:39, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

@CX Zoom: On Pali Wikipedia, lack of community means I need Steward's suggestions... No. Lack of community means you and other admins will have to decide. Stewards should not even intervene with vandals when there are local sysops, let alone content problems. As a user whose homewiki is a project that once used bots to enlarge article count, I'd say keeping them causes no harm. Remember this: English Wikipedia has 120–130000 active users, 1050 admins, more than all other 9 in the top 10 Wikipedias (in term of both active users and number of admins) even if you add them up. While learning from them is good, not everything can be applied to other projects due to lack of human resources. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 14:17, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm of course no steward anymore, but some time ago when I still was, there was this person whose entire stick was to create such useless articles, mostly to artificially inflate the article numbers on small wikis. User:Dcljr, who keeps track of the milestones on Wikimedia News, probably remembers him well as well. We deleted these where we found them, as they were useless and clearly done in bad faith. Here, you can decide either way, I think: the pages were probably created in good faith and it's not an ongoing thing anymore, and deleting them takes time you can probably better spend elsewhere. --MF-W 14:29, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

FYI: They are still active at Santali Wikipedia. See these recent log entries. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 14:46, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks all, but I think I might delete them eventually. They're just one line of content, that too in Sanskrit language, which got it's own Wikipedia. I left a message at those pages' creator's home-wiki talk page (see new:छ्येलेमि खँलाबँला:Eukesh#Regarding some past contributions on pi.wikipedia). I'll wait for their response on it for some weeks, and then decide what to do. Thanks to y'all again. —‍CX Zoom (A/अ/অ) (let's talk|contribs) 17:00, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

I updated enwiki's entry of AAR/L

FYI, see Special:Diff/23210318, am I inputed something wrong? Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 07:39, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

Global ban for Niveles

Hello! I started this RfC to globally ban Niveles and his socks in early February. The global bans policy states that a Discussion should be open for at least two weeks, but no more than one month, however this one is open for almost three months by now, so it should probably be closed sooner rather than later. ~Styyx^{Talk? ^-^} 14:55, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for making note of this. I’ll take a look later today if no one has gotten to it by then. Best regards, Vermont 🐿️ (talk) 15:14, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

@Vermont: --Minorax^«¦talk¦» 06:45, 6 May 2022 (UTC)

There seems to be an issue over whether the accounts listed actually are the same person, which I have not been able to confirm. And participation is quite limited, I am not comfortable closing it at this time. Vermont 🐿️ (talk) 12:24, 6 May 2022 (UTC)

His arguments are not correct @Vermont the SPI case confirms that. Kadı Message 06:18, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

I tend to agree with @Vermont. 19 comments doesn't look to me like a "broad and clear consensus", as the policy mandates, to implement a global ban. —MarcoAurelio (talk) 09:04, 11 May 2022 (UTC)