User talk:Pathoschild

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Talk to me — if you have questions or comments, feel free to post them below or send me an email. If you saw me edit on your wiki, it was probably related to the synchbot service (which maintains global user pages for others) or interface editor (which lets me maintain my user scripts).

About me — my name is Jesse. Nowadays I quietly write scripts, make the occasional edit, and love Shanel. Many moons ago I was an active editor and administrator on several wikis, a Wikimedia steward (2006–2014), a language committee member (2006–2011), an email response volunteer (2006–2011), and a Board elections committee member (2008 and 2009).

Any idea what happened to user:Shanel?

Hi. Any idea what happened to user:Shanel? —4thfile4thrank (talk) 22:24, 09 December 2020‎ (UTC)

Yep, we're married now. She's not active on-wiki anymore though. —Pathoschild 23:47, 09 December 2020 (UTC)

@Pathoschild: Thanks for the quick response. —4thfile4thrank (talk) 23:49, 09 December 2020 (UTC)

AND we luvs you both! Hope all doing well. :-)  — billinghurst sDrewth 05:07, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Custom signatures

Hi, Jesse. Your username is the only one that appears in https://signatures.toolforge.org/reports/nl.wiktionary.org as having an "invalid" custom signature. MediaWiki was changed last year to require a local link in a custom signature. The linked page can be a redirect, and there only needs to be one local link. So, for example, you could have a link to your Meta-Wiki user page, your Meta-Wiki user talk page, and your local contributions, or a link to your local user page (which displays your global userpage) and a link to your talk page here. There's more information at mw:New requirements for user signatures/Help.

If you set this up across multiple wikis, then I believe that you will unfortunately have to update each one separately. It seems that the bulk-prefs-changing tools have all been disabled, and GlobalPrefs doesn't seem to handle signatures. (Please ping me if you have questions.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:02, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Hi! I removed my custom signature on that wiki. (I've been removing them on each wiki as I notice them.) —Pathoschild 01:57, 07 January 2021 (UTC)

Catanalysis

Hi! Catanalysis throws an error [1] for oldwikisource:Category:Georgian, and it seems like only for that category. Could you have a look into it? (Is this an OK place to report bugs? I'm not sure if the github repository linked is still the correct place, and, well, I don't have an account there) --MF-W 23:03, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Hi! Here is fine. I optimized the query to fix that; let me know if you notice any other issues! —Pathoschild 23:06, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Your tool

Hallo. Some days ago I saw, that the link https://meta2.toolforge.org/crossactivity/Tlustulimu doesn't work. Greetings --Tlustulimu (talk) 10:12, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

That should be fixed now. Thanks for reporting it! —Pathoschild 23:55, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

Thank you very much, that it works now again. --Tlustulimu (talk) 09:27, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

Next Synchbot run?

Hey there Pathoschild, any idea when the next Synchbot run will be? The page says that the next run will be on August 7-8, however, it's well past that :) EpicPupper (talk) 20:30, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Hi! The next scheduled run is September 4–5. (Synchbot was run as scheduled on August 7–8, but I didn't update the intro; that's fixed now.) —Pathoschild 05:54, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

Hi

I happened to notice you are still around here even quietly, and just stepped in to say hello - and learned the news. Live long and prosper, you beloved two :) --Aphaia (talk) 18:16, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

Hi! Long time no talk. We're prospering so far; hope you are too! —Pathoschild 00:38, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

Category:Other interface screenshots nominated for deletion

Hello. An item which you created or you have edited substantially (Category:Other interface screenshots) has been nominated for deletion. Please see the ongoing discussion at Meta:Requests for deletion. Thank you. ~~~~
User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 14:40, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Requests for comment/Start allowing ancient languages/Appendix II: Prior policy documents and decisions

You might be interested in this appendix, because this page includes these contexts:

“ Language proposal policy changed, minutes and rationale not found or not available ”

which reflects to your one edit made years ago. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 23:43, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Hi! You can find many of the policy discussions in the langcom archives. In particular, 2007-10#Policy change might be relevant to that edit (and some of the earlier discussion it references). —Pathoschild 03:53, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

gUsersearch bug

Hello, I noticed that when doing a search query at https://meta.toolforge.org/gusersearch/ with the "Match any capitalization" setting enabled, changing the results limit resets this setting to off. ~~~~
User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 11:38, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Fixed. Thanks for reporting it! —Pathoschild 00:07, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick response! ~~~~
User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 00:44, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

Today gUser search appears to be broken entirely, throwing a SQL error on the start page. Looks like you can't access the gu_hidden column any more. ~~~~
User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 23:44, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

There was a breaking changes to the Toolforge DB. I didn't find any announcement for it, but seems like T289068 replaced the column, and hidden accounts are no longer available in Toolforge. I just pushed a commit to drop the special handling of hidden accounts. Thanks again for reporting it!

There's also a localuser error with stalktoy, but based on the #wikimedia-cloud logs that one is a bug they're already looking into. —Pathoschild 06:04, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! Another bug I've noticed is that usernames appear to parsed as HTML, which causes display issues for some invalid usernames still existing in CentralAuth (and would have been a vulnerability if one of those names was sophisticated enough). ~~~~
User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 09:05, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Fixed! —Pathoschild 19:33, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Category:Tools nominated for deletion

Hello. An item which you created or you have edited substantially (Category:Tools) has been nominated for deletion. Please see the ongoing discussion at Meta:Requests for deletion. Thank you. ~~~~
User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 22:24, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Hello!

It's nice to see another Stardew Valley lover (especially one as notable as you)! 12.169.98.114 21:54, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Hi anon, nice to meet you! —Pathoschild 07:11, 07 November 2021 (UTC)

Custom request for Synchbot

Hello! I want to migrate to global user page on all wikis. But I am using subpages on en-wiki for archives and signpost. I no longer desire local user pages, and instead want the meta one to appear. Please advice. MxWondrous (talk) 16:59, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Hi! The quickest option would be to post a Synchbot request to delete your local user page on each wiki (and optionally CSS/JS subpages), then manually add {{db-u1}} to your other subpages on enwiki. (The bot is optimized to change one page across every wiki, so for individual pages on one wiki it's faster to do it manually.) —Pathoschild 19:48, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

I’m sorry for not being clear previously, but I wanted to say that I wish to retain my subpages and css and js subpages. I only want the user page gone, but for its subpages to stay on enwiki. The rest of the wikis, I want the bot to remove everything (I don’t think I have subpages elsewhere). MxWondrous (talk) 07:32, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Yep, that's fine. You have three subpages on other wikis (namely Sandbox on itwiki, sandbox on simplewiktionary, and Черновик on ruwiki). Since there's only three and those wikis have active admins, you could just add {{delete}} to those pages, then have a Synchbot request to only delete your top user page on each wiki. —Pathoschild 05:31, 03 December 2021 (UTC)

@Pathoschild Can the bot delete redirects without deleting the page that is being redirected to? MxYamato (talk) 09:29, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Yep. —Pathoschild 16:36, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Category:Pathoschild

Hello, do you still need this category? It looks kind of out of place with this name. ~~~~
User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 08:30, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Nope, feel free to delete it. It was a temporary category for a maintenance task. —Pathoschild 01:48, 01 May 2022 (UTC)

Done, thanks. Apparently the tool I used to remove the category left a bunch of <noinclude></noinclude>s on the pages (a silent "bot" rollback might have been better in that regard), though I don't think that's necessarily a problem. ~~~~
User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 22:49, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Synchbot

Hello. Is it possible for you to do a one time run to delete spam from a single user across multiple wikis? --Minorax^«¦talk¦» 08:14, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

Hi! Synchbot has a pretty specific remit for how it can use its global permissions, and it's optimized for editing/deleting one page title across all wikis. So that's not really something Synchbot can do, unless it was requested by stewards and consisted of the same page title(s) across many wikis. You can ask at Steward requests/Miscellaneous or Global sysops/Requests instead though. —Pathoschild 17:54, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

It's actually just User:Bgmaster across all wikis. I've deleted most of them but there's still 20+ userpages left that contains the spam links. --Minorax^«¦talk¦» 02:25, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't see you were a global sysop. Synchbot could do that pretty quickly if a steward requested it (since otherwise I'd be overstepping the specific remit Synchbot was granted global permissions for). —Pathoschild 03:53, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

Appreciation

Hi there! When I saw your wonderful effort on Synchbot, I thought I should thank you. Thank you for being a part of the Wikimedia projects. --Victor Trevor (talk) 20:20, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind words! I'm happy to help. —Pathoschild 00:32, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Help

Hi! Could you please help us here? --Caro de Segeda (talk) 20:02, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

Hi! See Requesting wiki configuration changes for help getting the logo changed. Feel free to ask if anything is unclear. —Pathoschild 20:09, 06 August 2022 (UTC)

Stalktoy feature

Could you add the ability to see all blocks (not just active ones)? I was recently discussing a rangeblock on SRG and needed this. – Ilovemydoodle (talk) 18:32, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Unfortunately not; it seems only active IP blocks are available in the Toolforge databases. —Pathoschild 15:37, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

Synchbot - just wondering

Does it mitigate for abuse - by checking to ensure the user page wasn't moved from mainspace, and the like? –xeno 23:25, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

Hi! There's some checks built into the bot and process. For example:

• I manually review every request before running the bot, which includes reviewing the target pages (I created a Toolforge tool just for that). I'll often check all of the target pages if there's just a few, or a random sample if there's many. I'll also look more closely if there's anything suspicious or unusual about the request (e.g. a new user, an old user who hasn't edited in years, a small number of target pages to delete, unusual or inconsistent page sizes, etc).
• Each completed request has a log of applied changes and the previous page sizes, which is a second opportunity to spot anything unusual.
• The bot has a number of hardcoded validation checks. It'll flag inconsistencies in the request (e.g. the username doesn't exactly match the page title), it won't delete if they have any local block history, it'll check if anyone else edited a talk page, etc.

Fundamentally no system can totally prevent abuse, but I think there's enough validation and tracking to either detect a malicious request before it's executed or let me undo if one did slip through undetected. —Pathoschild 00:05, 04 December 2022 (UTC)

Cool, thanks for the details! –xeno 02:16, 4 December 2022 (UTC)