In future please don't leave warnings on the talk pages of responsible editors such as myself for reverting vandalism and enforcing policies. Afterwriting (talk) 17:39, 24 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It seems that your bot SDPatrolBot has asked for speedy deletion of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arun_Budhathoki. I kindly request to avert the decision as it's about an emerging Nepali poet from Nepal and all the sources are genuine. Please help instead to improve it. Thank you very much
Thanks Howicus. Hopefully should be able to keep the bot running slightly more consistently now. Haha, yes I should probably archive those year old messages - Kingpin13 (talk) 00:07, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
User:SDPatrolBot - minor issue
Hi, I closed the deletion discussion for Alexander Montagu, 13th Duke of Manchester as a delete with the creation of a redirect (due to legal issues with the Duke's title, we're discussing whether the redirect is appropriate). I created Alexander Montagu, 13th Duke of Manchester with a soft redirect as part of my closure of the deletion discussion and all was well, until it was improperly tagged by a relatively new editor. I tried to remove the CSD tag as the page is a result of a deletion discussion and speedy deletion is inappropriate, but was reverted by your bot and warned, this happened again (I assumed the bot wouldn't revert me a second time, but it did).
I considered disabling the bot at this point, as it was interfering with part of the closure of an AfD, but decided against it, instead choosing to protect the page in order to prevent SDPatrolBot from making an edit.
I realise this is a most unusual set of circumstances, but I thought I would raise it here for a couple of reasons, mainly to let you know in case there are errors that leave you a little confused, and also to see if there are ways to avoid adding back CSD templates on redirects created as a result of an AfD. Apologies if all of that is gibberish, it's late and I'm tired, just ask if you need to know more.
Cheers, Nick (talk) 23:12, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Nick. Generally in this kind of case my advice is simply to sit tight and wait for someone else to remove the tag, and not worry too much about it in the meantime. However, this particular scenario is actually quite common, so the bot does have a check to restrict it from replacing CSD templates removed by the creator of the page, if the page was created as the result of a page move (leaving a redirect behind). In this case, I see that you actually originally deleted the page without leaving a redirect, and then manually placed a soft redirect on the article. I assume that was in order to use a soft redirect instead of a normal one (although I'm not quite sure why you opted for that?) but in the future leaving a redirect behind during the deletion process would prevent this issue. - Kingpin13 (talk) 00:07, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The page had a bit of an unusual history, there's a question hanging over whether we should call Alexander the 13th Duke and during the AfD, the page was moved by someone else from Alexander Montagu, 13th Duke of Manchester to Alexander Montagu, which was the page with all the history that I deleted, the redirect was moved to 13th Duke of Manchester as that has the history stemming from the page move and at one point I considered that the more likely page to survive. The current soft redirect at Alexander Montagu, 13th Duke of Manchester is intended to be a temporary measure whilst a decision is made and if necessary, templates and succession boxes are updated. Yes, I'm slightly regretting closing the AfD. Nick (talk) 08:58, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hey.. I today only found about SDPatrolBot while doing some NPP. It's excellent and saves effort to keep track of users removing CSD tag from articles created by themselves. Thanks for bring it online again.--Vigyanitalkਯੋਗਦਾਨ09:19, 3 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You're listed as an active member of the Bot Approvals Group. I would like to draw your attention to the outstanding WP:BRFA requests (including requests that are specificly flagging as need BAG attention). Please take a few minutes out of your busy schedule and take a look at the open requests. Thank you Hasteur (talk) 18:12, 31 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
First, I still owe you a response on Dr. Allan Schore's work - please give me more time as I am trying to get past a term of grad school.
My reason for writing this is because I have run into a snag with proper citation syntax.
Please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prontosil
I added information regarding the usage of Prontosil in the United States and had two references. The link seemed to work fine but the book did not.
The book's APA Style cite is:
Chandler, C.A. (1950). Famous Men of Medicine. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co.
I'm not exactly sure how to "embed" the source. I needed more time to read through the help pages but its 3am here and I need to go.
Could you please double-check this page for me and let me know it is all right. I'll then go back and see what you did for my reference. I kept looking for an add 'reference footnote' link or something to that affect. I am spoiled with EndNote, I guess.
Hello, Kingpin13. You have new messages at Wikipedia:Bot requests. Message added 04:43, 16 October 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.
Hi. If you write any code towards such a bot, please reply there. :) If you need someone to host and run any .NET bot that you write, just ask there: I suspect that someone will volunteer. —Unforgettableid (talk) 04:43, 16 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
^Seconded :) I came to request the same thing. We've got a new permission page at WP:PERM for template editor. Thanks in advance Kingpin13. equazcion→20:26, 18 Oct 2013 (UTC)
Just saw the first archiving -- Thanks :) equazcion→01:35, 19 Oct 2013 (UTC)
I have received a message and a threat from this user (bot?) for alleged vandalism dating back to 2009. The vandalism is on pages I haven't even read, let alone edited.
I certainly wasn't on this IP back then.
Kindly fix your defective bot. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.154.208.229 (talk) 08:07, 4 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Kingpin13. I think that WikiAlerter is pretty nifty and I would like to try it out. Could I participate in the beta? Thanks, -24Talk22:26, 6 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Callanecc, thanks for the prod. I think the bot is still running, there's just nothing to fix on the page (it is still alphabetical). - Kingpin13 (talk) 17:39, 4 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, the bot is still going strong, just slightly less regularly (especially over the week). I might post the source code at some point if things get too bad, but for the time being I'm still managing to run it (I think) sufficiently. - Kingpin13 (talk) 19:36, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ian Thomas Morrow
Hi, Re. 19:22, 20 February 2010 Kingpin13 (talk | contribs) deleted page Sir Ian Morrow (G3: Vandalism). I was going to create this page and found your details. I find it odd that any page about this individual would have been deleted. I would appreciate receiving further info and perhaps a copy of the page as it existed prior to deletion. Thanks Graemp (talk) 13:05, 18 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I have recently launched a new downloads for beta testers that contains nightly builds of huggle, eg. versions that are built every day from our master branch and contains latest huggle. These builds are currently provided only for Windows and Ubuntu. You can find them here: http://huggle.wmflabs.org/builds/
Please keep in mind that these don't have any automatic updates and if you download and start using nightly build, you will need to update it yourself! So don't get yourself to running old version, it's possible to install both stable and nightly huggle, which is what I suggest.
Hello Kingpin13, I patrol the new pages and the recent changes. The wikiAlerter can help me doing my job quickly and covering more articles. Please grant me permission to use it. Thanks. ---Mahensingha(Talk)"Thanx n Regards"14:29, 23 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hey i want to offer my help support and contribution with monitoring and moderating Wikipedia , and i believe Wikialerter Can help me do it better and more efficiently , thank you --NikeThyrsus (talk) 15:00, 7 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I recently received a warning for supposedly writing profanity on the page of Brian Eno. I had never heard of Brian Eno before, and certainly never edited the page about him. I'm not sure how you detect profanity and issue your warnings, but it is apparently flawed. I don't much appreciate receiving warnings for things I haven't done, and I am sure that most other people wouldn't either, so please amend your methods to prevent this happening in the future. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.163.182.119 (talk) 14:39, 26 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You've got mail!
Hello, Kingpin13. Please check your email; you've got mail! Message added 00:59, 4 May 2015 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.
Taking you up on the offer to port your code to Ruby, if you're still okay with it! Please send via Special:EmailUser/MusikAnimal or however you prefer. I have my own ideas for development approach but want to be consistent with yours as it's rock solid and is rarely if ever glitchy :) Many thanks — MusikAnimaltalk02:03, 3 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Worm That Turned: It's complaining about the comment in the "Bots" section, which I added as I observed a user add a request incorrectly. The "Users" section has this same comment, but I guess the bot checks only for that and thinks the "Bots" comment is an actual request. Anyway, it shouldn't stop it from archiving, I believe the bot is simply not running at the moment. As Kingpin knows I've been working on MusikBot to take over archiving, and it's ready to go but awaiting trial. Not sure how long before a trial will be approved, so if Kingpin you do get this message please give your bot a go! Many thanks — MusikAnimaltalk20:36, 7 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Invitation to subscribe to the edit filter mailing list
Hi, as a user in the edit filter manager user group we wanted to let you know about the new wikipedia-en-editfilters mailing list. As part of our recent efforts to improve the use of edit filters on the English Wikipedia it has been established as a venue for internal discussion by edit filter managers regarding private filters (those only viewable by administrators and edit filter managers) and also as a means by which non-admins can ask questions about hidden filters that wouldn't be appropriate to discuss on-wiki. As an edit filter manager we encourage you to subscribe; the more users we have in the mailing list the more useful it will be to the community. If you subscribe we will send a short email to you through Wikipedia to confirm your subscription, but let us know if you'd prefer another method of verification. I'd also like to take the opportunity to invite you to contribute to the proposed guideline for edit filter use at WP:Edit filter/Draft and the associated talk page. Thank you! Sam Walton (talk) and MusikAnimaltalk18:22, 9 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, Kingpin13. Please check your email; you've got mail! It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.
Hello, Kingpin13. Please check your email; you've got mail! Message added 06:07, 20 June 2016 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.
Please take a moment to review and update your status at the membership page. If you have been semi-inactive, we would love to have you back in action!
If you have not already, you may want to consider adding Wikipedia:BAG/Status to your watchlist, it is a bot generated list of all in progress requests.
(You can unsubscribe from future BAG Spam by removing your name from this list.)
Extended confirmed protection
Hello, Kingpin13. This message is intended to notify administrators of important changes to the protection policy.
Extended confirmed protection (also known as "30/500 protection") is a new level of page protection that only allows edits from accounts at least 30 days old and with 500 edits. The automatically assigned "extended confirmed" user right was created for this purpose. The protection level was created following this community discussion with the primary intention of enforcing various arbitration remedies that prohibited editors under the "30 days/500 edits" threshold to edit certain topic areas.
In July and August 2016, a request for comment established consensus for community use of the new protection level. Administrators are authorized to apply extended confirmed protection to combat any form of disruption (e.g. vandalism, sock puppetry, edit warring, etc.) on any topic, subject to the following conditions:
Extended confirmed protection may only be used in cases where semi-protection has proven ineffective. It should not be used as a first resort.
Please review the protection policy carefully before using this new level of protection on pages. Thank you. This message was sent to the administrators' mass message list. To opt-out of future messages, please remove yourself from the list. 17:47, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
Hi Kingpin13, do you plan on resurrecting any of ListManBot's tasks? If not - does it still need to hold +sysop access? (or even +bot if it is going in to retirement). — xaosfluxTalk05:30, 1 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Two-Factor Authentication now available for admins
Hello,
Please note that TOTP based two-factor authentication is now available for all administrators. In light of the recent compromised accounts, you are encouraged to add this additional layer of security to your account. It may be enabled on your preferences page in the "User profile" tab under the "Basic information" section. For basic instructions on how to enable two-factor authentication, please see the developing help page for additional information. Important: Be sure to record the two-factor authentication key and the single use keys. If you lose your two factor authentication and do not have the keys, it's possible that your account will not be recoverable. Furthermore, you are encouraged to utilize a unique password and two-factor authentication for the email account associated with your Wikimedia account. This measure will assist in safeguarding your account from malicious password resets. Comments, questions, and concerns may be directed to the thread on the administrators' noticeboard. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:33, 12 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
A new user right for New Page Patrollers
Hi Kingpin13.
A new user group, New Page Reviewer, has been created in a move to greatly improve the standard of new page patrolling. The user right can be granted by any admin at PERM. It is highly recommended that admins look beyond the simple numerical threshold and satisfy themselves that the candidates have the required skills of communication and an advanced knowledge of notability and deletion. Admins are automatically included in this user right.
It is anticipated that this user right will significantly reduce the work load of admins who patrol the performance of the patrollers. However,due to the complexity of the rollout, some rights may have been accorded that may later need to be withdrawn, so some help will still be needed to some extent when discovering wrongly applied deletion tags or inappropriate pages that escape the attention of less experienced reviewers, and above all, hasty and bitey tagging for maintenance. User warnings are available here but very often a friendly custom message works best.
Hello, Kingpin13. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
Following an RfC, an activity requirement is now in place for bots and bot operators.
Technical news
When performing some administrative actions the reason field briefly gave suggestions as text was typed. This change has since been reverted so that issues with the implementation can be addressed. (T34950)
Following the latest RfC concluding that Pending Changes 2 should not be used on the English Wikipedia, an RfC closed with consensus to remove the options for using it from the page protection interface, a change which has now been made. (T156448)
The Foundation has announced a new community health initiative to combat harassment. This should bring numerous improvements to tools for admins and CheckUsers in 2017.
JohnCD (John Cameron Deas) passed away on 30 December 2016. John began editing Wikipedia seriously during 2007 and became an administrator in November 2009.
2017 has been busy, with 37 closed BRFA's so far this year.
If you have not already, you may want to consider adding Wikipedia:BAG/Status to your watchlist, it is a bot generated list of all in progress requests.
There are multiple discussions ongoing at Wikipedia talk:Bot policy regarding updates to portions of the bot policy. Please be sure to follow for any policy changes upcoming.
The BAG Newsletter is now the Bots Newsletter, per discussion. As such, we've subscribed all bot operators to the newsletter. You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.
And, I noticed that you have a nice nickname, I have a guitar that is also named that way, the Godin Kingpin . Farewell, —PaleoNeonate - 09:12, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Bots Newsletter, July 2017
Bots Newsletter, July 2017
Greetings!
Here is the 4th issue of the Bots Newsletter (formerly the BAG Newletter). You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.
21 inactive bots have been deflagged (see discussion).
WP:BOTISSUE has been updated to mention that BAG members can act as neutral mediators in bot-related disputes.
WP:INTERWIKIBOT has been updated to reflect the post-February 2013 practice of putting interwiki links on Wikidata, rather than on Wikipedia (see discussion).
(You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)
About your block
I rethought about the block you issued to me. I think it was complete nonsense to block me when I was not making new comments but instead was trying to fix an already written comment my me. Please reconsder to be more careful next time. This though came to me while reading Milgram experiment. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:11, 3 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Magioladitis, I understand that you feel more slack should have been given to you since you were only modifying comments you already made rather than adding new ones. This is exactly what I did in this case, I gave you a final warning about participating in that discussion, when you then went on to modify a previous comment you made, instead of blocking immediately for continuing after my warning, I decided to give you a second warning in which I made it clear I intended such modifications of comments to be covered by my warning, as I thought perhaps this wasn't clear to you the first time I warned (hence why you continued to violate the ban despite the warning). You then went on to make further modifications to comments despite being explicitly warned about it. It should be obvious that modifying your comments still constitutes participation in the discussion and hence would be restricted by your ban, but I decided to give you the benefit of the doubt anyway in the form of a second warning, a courtesy which you then expended. I don't really see the relevance to the Milgram experiment myself, but perhaps that is open to interpretation. All the best - Kingpin13 (talk) 15:11, 6 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
In the Milgram experiment, people caused serious injury and distress to others obeying to instructions (see policies) they were given. I think the rules are here to serve the community to cooperate within a healthy environment. It is my belief that reworking my comments was serving that. On the other hand, the block did not. Best, Magioladitis (talk) 15:10, 12 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Invitation to Admin confidence survey
Hello,
Beginning in September 2017, the Wikimedia Foundation Anti-harassment tool team will be conducting a survey to gauge how well tools, training, and information exists to assist English Wikipedia administrators in recognizing and mitigating things like sockpuppetry, vandalism, and harassment.
The survey should only take 5 minutes, and your individual response will not be made public. This survey will be integral for our team to determine how to better support administrators.
To take the survey sign up here and we will send you a link to the form.
We really appreciate your input!
Please let us know if you wish to opt-out of all massmessage mailings from the Anti-harassment tools team.
Hello, Kingpin13. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
Hi Kingpin. I had the pleasure recently of receiving a barnstar for my reviewing of new pages in the past year, and just now I realised the superimposed image is that of two pawns. Is the choice of pawns acerbic wit on your part? Or am I just being tetchy. Either way I appreciate the accolade . MarkDask17:02, 9 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Bots Newsletter, March 2018
Bots Newsletter, March 2018
Greetings!
Here is the 5th issue of the Bots Newsletter (formerly the BAG Newletter). You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.
While there were no large-scale bot-related discussion in the past few months, you can check WP:BOTN and WT:BOTPOL (and their corresponding archives) for smaller issues that came up.
The edit summary limit has been increased to 1000 characters (see T6715). If a bot you operate relied on the old truncation limit (255 characters), please review/update your code, as overly long summaries can be disruptive/annoying. If you want to use extra characters to have more information in your edit summary, please do so intelligently.
You will soon be able to ping users from the edit summary (see T188469). If you wish to use this feature in your bot, please do so intelligently.
(You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)
Thank you
The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
I appreciate your kind words in the AN/I discussion regarding the inappropriate removal of my NPP rights. It is nice to know there is at least one person out there who realizes this site can only work if we follow the rules, rather than make them up in a capricious manner. And Adoil Descended (talk) 14:55, 2 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Haha, not quite what I'm saying, but thanks. I would caution you against too much wikilawyering, as someone else mentioned at AN/I. It's easy with all the rules that exist on Wikipedia to forget that at the end of the day, they are just what people have written down about what they think is the right way to do things, and they can be trumped by what the community decides is the best way to handle a particular case. All the best anyway, - Kingpin13 (talk) 15:04, 2 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Well, then perhaps we need a few people who are willing to speak out and remind folks that there is a difference between following clearly specified laws and making up rules as you go along. It is no wonder why so many people sour on Wikipedia and cease contributing, not to mention why there are several sites devoted solely to highlighting the many, many faults of the site and its participants. And Adoil Descended (talk) 15:13, 2 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Bots Newsletter, August 2018
Bots Newsletter, August 2018
Greetings!
Here is the 6th issue of the Bots Newsletter. You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.
Highlights for this newsletter include:
ARBCOM
Nothing particular important happened. Those who care already know, those who don't know wouldn't care. The curious can dig ARBCOM archives themselves.
BAG
There were no changes in BAG membership since the last Bots Newsletter. Headbomb went from semi-active to active.
In the last 3 months, only 3 BAG members have closed requests - help is needed with the backlog.
{{Automated tools}}, a new template linking to user-activated tools and scripts has been created. It can be used in articles previews, and can be placed on any non-mainspace page/template (e.g. {{Draft article}}) to provide convenient links to editors.
AWB 5.10.0.0 is out, after nearly 20 months without updates. If you run an old version, you will be prompted to install the new version automatically. See the changelog for what's new. Note that the next version will require .NET Framework 4.5. Many thanks to Reedy and the AWB team.
BotWatch, "a listing of editors that have made >2 edits per minute [without] a bot flag", is being developed by SQL (see discussion).
Hello, Kingpin13. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
Recently, several Wikipedia admin accounts were compromised. The admin accounts were desysopped on an emergency basis. In the past, the Committee often resysopped admin accounts as a matter of course once the admin was back in control of their account. The committee has updated its guidelines. Admins may now be required to undergo a fresh Request for Adminship (RfA) after losing control of their account.
What do I need to do?
Only to follow the instructions in this message.
Check that your password is unique (not reused across sites).
Check that your password is strong (not simple or guessable).
Enable Two-factor authentication (2FA), if you can, to create a second hurdle for attackers.
How can I find out more about two-factor authentication (2FA)?
Administrator account security (Correction to Arbcom 2019 special circular)
ArbCom would like to apologise and correct our previous mass message in light of the response from the community.
Since November 2018, six administrator accounts have been compromised and temporarily desysopped. In an effort to help improve account security, our intention was to remind administrators of existing policies on account security — that they are required to "have strong passwords and follow appropriate personal security practices." We have updated our procedures to ensure that we enforce these policies more strictly in the future. The policies themselves have not changed. In particular, two-factor authentication remains an optional means of adding extra security to your account. The choice not to enable 2FA will not be considered when deciding to restore sysop privileges to administrator accounts that were compromised.
We are sorry for the wording of our previous message, which did not accurately convey this, and deeply regret the tone in which it was delivered.
Here is the 7th issue of the Bots Newsletter, a lot happened since last year's newsletter! You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.
BAG members are expected to be active on Wikipedia to have their finger on the pulse of the community. After two years without any bot-related activity (such as posting on bot-related pages, posting on a bot's talk page, or operating a bot), BAG members will be retired from BAG following a one-week notice. Retired members can re-apply for BAG membership as normal if they wish to rejoin the BAG.
We thank former members for their service and wish Madman a happy retirement. We note that Madman and BU Rob13 were not inactive and could resume their BAG positions if they so wished, should their retirements happens to be temporary.
Activity requirements: BAG members now have an activity requirement. The requirements are very light, one only needs to be involved in a bot-related area at some point within the last two years. For purpose of meeting these requirements, discussing a bot-related matter anywhere on Wikipedia counts, as does operating a bot (RFC).
Copyvio flag: Bot accounts may be additionally marked by a bureaucrat upon BAG request as being in the "copyviobot" user group on Wikipedia. This flag allows using the API to add metadata to edits for use in the New pages feed (discussion). There is currently 1 bot using this functionality.
Mass creation: The restriction on mass-creation (semi-automated or automated) was extended from articles, to all content-pages. There are subtleties, but content here broadly means whatever a reader could land on when browsing the mainspace in normal circumstances (e.g. Mainspace, Books, most Categories, Portals, ...). There is also a warning that WP:MEATBOT still applies in other areas (e.g. Redirects, Wikipedia namespace, Help, maintenance categories, ...) not explicitely covered by WP:MASSCREATION.
Pending suspension of administrative permissions due to inactivity
Established policy provides for removal of the administrative permissions of users who have not made any edits or logged actions in the preceding twelve months. Because you have been inactive, your administrative permissions will be removed if you do not return to activity within the next month.
Inactive administrators are encouraged to rejoin the project in earnest rather than to make token edits to avoid loss of administrative permissions. Resources and support for reengaging with the project are available at Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention/administrators. If you do not intend to rejoin the project in the foreseeable future, please consider voluntarily resigning your administrative permissions by making a request at the bureaucrats' noticeboard.
A recently closed Request for Comment (RFC) reached consensus to remove Autopatrolled from the administrator user group. You may, similarly as with Edit Filter Manager, choose to self-assign this permission to yourself. This will be implemented the week of December 13th, but if you wish to self-assign you may do so now. To find out when the change has gone live or if you have any questions please visit the Administrator's Noticeboard. 20:06, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
Bots Newsletter, December 2021
Bots Newsletter, December 2021
Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. Updates on reimplementing the Graph extension, which will be known as the Chart extension, can be found on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org.
BRFA activity by month
Welcome to the eighth issue of the English Wikipedia's Bots Newsletter, your source for all things bot. Maintainers disappeared to parts unknown... bots awakening from the slumber of æons... hundreds of thousands of short descriptions... these stories, and more, are brought to you by Wikipedia's most distinguished newsletter about bots.
Our last issue was in August 2019, so there's quite a bit of catching up to do. Due to the vast quantity of things that have happened, the next few issues will only cover a few months at a time. This month, we'll go from September 2019 through the end of the year. I won't bore you with further introductions — instead, I'll bore you with a newsletter about bots.
Overall
Between September and December 2019, there were 33 BRFAs. Of these, Y 25 were approved, and 8 were unsuccessful (N2 3 denied, ? 3 withdrawn, and 2 expired).
TParis goes away, UTRSBot goes kaput: Beeblebroxnoted that the bot for maintaining on-wiki records of UTRS appeals stopped working a while ago. TParis, the semi-retired user who had previously run it, said they were "unlikely to return to actively editing Wikipedia", and the bot had been vanquished by trolls submitting bogus UTRS requests on behalf of real blocked users. While OAuth was a potential fix, neither maintainer had time to implement it. TParis offered to access to the UTRS WMFLabs account to any admin identified with the WMF: "I miss you guys a whole lot [...] but I've also moved on with my life. Good luck, let me know how I can help". Ultimately, SQL ended up in charge. Some progress was made, and the bot continued to work another couple months — but as of press time, UTRSBot has not edited since November 2019.
Curb Safe Charmer adopts reFill: TAnthonypointed out that reFill 2's bug reports were going unanswered; creator Zhaofeng Li had retired from Wikipedia, and a maintainer was needed. As of June 2021, Curb Safe Charmer had taken up the mantle, saying: "Not that I have all the skills needed but better me than nobody! 'Maintainer' might be too strong a term though. Volunteers welcome!"
I felt that the whole dumb-as-a-brick-no-context-mindless-automaton comment is needless, it sets the wrong tone to talk about it like that. But obviously I appreciate you taking the time to actually deal with the BRfA. I'm not sure there were threats lobbed at Headbomb? But agree that the aspersions that Headbomb might be acting in bad faith were also uncalled for. - Kingpin13 (talk) 22:23, 23 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Probably the multiple threats of 'escalation', and calling for my de-BAG-ing. As for the 'dumb-as-a-brick-no-context-mindless-automaton' thing, I disagree that it sets the wrong tone. Bots are mindless automatons, they're utterly dumb, and unable to determine context and nuance. In the words of Ron Schmelzer,
It's understandable then, that people like to connect the idea of intelligence to automation, because automation is also about the idea of replacing human labor with machines. However, they're completely separate ideas. Automation is all about repetitive tasks and focusing on efficiency over variability. But intelligence is not about those things. Intelligence is about responding to the environment and all the variables and changes that happen. When we think someone is intelligent, we don't remark how wonderful their automation is. We ascribe all the positive traits of intelligence to being able to "think things through" and be "creative" about addressing a problem or having "intuition" or "insight" into how something should be done. We don't ascribe any of these concepts - intuition, insight, creativity, thoughtfulness, and adaptation - to the ideas of automation. Automation is not intelligent. It's dumb. - "Sorry, but your bots are stupid." Forbes.com
Seems to me that you're also reframing the issue here, the point is that the language is inflammatory and over the top, not about if it's factual to say that machines can't possess intelligence. Even if we did reduce the argument to if the statement is factual or not, I don't think it's fair to say bots have no context. At the end of the day, if you wanted to illustrate the actual point you were making that the program as it existed wasn't able to apply the same context-sensitive reasoning about if the tag removal was correct as was being used in the defence of the edit, I think you could have come up with a better analogy than a brick. - Kingpin13 (talk) 23:08, 23 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
How we will see unregistered users
Hi!
You get this message because you are an admin on a Wikimedia wiki.
When someone edits a Wikimedia wiki without being logged in today, we show their IP address. As you may already know, we will not be able to do this in the future. This is a decision by the Wikimedia Foundation Legal department, because norms and regulations for privacy online have changed.
Instead of the IP we will show a masked identity. You as an admin will still be able to access the IP. There will also be a new user right for those who need to see the full IPs of unregistered users to fight vandalism, harassment and spam without being admins. Patrollers will also see part of the IP even without this user right. We are also working on better tools to help.
We have two suggested ways this identity could work. We would appreciate your feedback on which way you think would work best for you and your wiki, now and in the future. You can let us know on the talk page. You can write in your language. The suggestions were posted in October and we will decide after 17 January.
Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. Updates on reimplementing the Graph extension, which will be known as the Chart extension, can be found on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org.
BRFA activity by month
Welcome to the ninth issue of the English Wikipedia's Bots Newsletter, your source for all things bot. Vicious bot-on-bot edit warring... superseded tasks... policy proposals... these stories, and more, are brought to you by Wikipedia's most distinguished newsletter about bots.
After a long hiatus between August 2019 and December 2021, there's quite a bit of ground to cover. Due to the vastness, I decided in December to split the coverage up into a few installments that covered six months each. Some people thought this was a good idea, since covering an entire year in a single issue would make it unmanageably large. Others thought this was stupid, since they were getting talk page messages about crap from almost three years ago. Ultimately, the question of whether each issue covers six months or a year is only relevant for a couple more of them, and then the problem will be behind us forever.
Of course, you can also look on the bright side – we are making progress, and this issue will only be about crap from almost two years ago. Today we will pick up where we left off in December, and go through the first half of 2020.
Overall
In the first half of 2020, there were 71 BRFAs. Of these, Y 59 were approved, and 12 were unsuccessful (with N2 8 denied, ? 2 withdrawn, and 2 expired).
January 2020
Yeah, you're not gonna be able to get away with this anymore.
A new Pywikibot release dropped support for Python 3.4, and it was expected that support for Python 2.7 would be removed in coming updates. Toolforge itself planned to drop Python 2 support in 2022.
On February 1, some concerns were raised about ListeriaBot performing "nonsense" edits. Semi-active operator Magnus Manske (who originally coded the Phase II software|precursor of MediaWiki) was pinged. Meanwhile, the bot was temporarily blocked for several hours until the issue was diagnosed and resolved.
In March, a long discussion was started at Wikipedia talk:Bot policy by Skdb about the troubling trend of bots "expiring" without explanation after their owners became inactive. This can happen for a variety of reasons -- API changes break code, hosting providers' software updates break code, hosting accounts lapse, software changes make bots' edits unnecessary, and policy changes make bots' edits unwanted. The most promising solution seemed to be Toolforge hosting (although it has some problems of its own, like the occasional necessity of refactoring code).
A discussion on the bot noticeboard, "Re-examination of ListeriaBot", was started by Barkeep49, who pointed out repeated operation outside the scope of its BRFA (i.e. editing pages in mainspace, and adding non-free images to others). Some said it was doing good work, and others said it was operating beyond its remit. It was blocked on April 10; the next day it was unblocked, reblocked from article space, reblocked "for specified non-editing actions", unblocked, and indeffed. The next week, several safeguards were implemented in its code by Magnus; the bot was allowed to roam free once more on April 18.
Issues and enquiries are typically expected to be handled on the English Wikipedia. Pages reachable via unified login, like a talk page at Commons or at Italian Wikipedia could also be acceptable [...] External sites like Phabricator or GitHub (which require separate registration or do not allow for IP comments) and email (which can compromise anonymity) can supplement on-wiki communication, but do not replace it.
May 2020
We heard you like bots, so we made a bot that reports the status of your bots, so now you can use bots while you use bots
MajavahBot 3, an impressively meta bot task, was approved this month for maintaining a list of bots running on the English Wikipedia. The page, located at User:MajavahBot/Bot status report, is updated every 24 hours; it contains a list of all accounts with the bot flag, as well as their operator, edit count, last activity date, last edit date, last logged action date, user groups and block status.
In July 2017, Headbomb made a proposal that a section of the Wikipedia:Dashboard be devoted to bots and technical issues. In November 2019, Lua code was written superseding Legobot's tasks on that page, and operator Legoktm was asked to stop them so that the new code could be deployed. After no response to pings, a partial-block of Legobot for the dashboard was proposed. Some months later, on June 16, Headbomb said: "A full block serves nothing. A partial block solves all current issues [...] Just fucking do it. It's been 3 years now." The next day, however, Legoktm disabled the task, and the dashboard was successfully refactored.
On June 7, RexxS blocked Citation bot for disruptive editing, saying it was "still removing links after request to stop". A couple weeks later, a discussion on the bots noticeboard was opened, saying "it is a widely-used and useful bot, but it has one of the longest block logs for any recently-operating bot on Wikipedia". While its last BRFA approval was in 2011, its code and functionality had changed dramatically since then, and AntiCompositeNumber requested that BAG require a new BRFA. Maintainer AManWithNoPlan responded that most blocks were from years ago (when it lacked a proper test suite), and problems since then had mostly been one-off errors (like a June 2019 incident in which a LTA had "weaponized" the bot to harass editors).
David Tornheim opened a discussion about whether bots based on closed-source code should be permitted, and proposed that they not. He cited a recent case in which a maintainer had said "I can only suppose that the code that is available on GitHub is not the actual code that was running on [the bot]". Some disagreed: Naypta said that "I like free software as much as the next person, and I strongly believe that bot operators should make their bot code public, but I don't think it should be that they must do so".
Beginning January 1, 2023, administrators who meet one or both of the following criteria may be desysopped for inactivity if they have:
Made neither edits nor administrative actions for at least a 12-month period OR
Made fewer than 100 edits over a 60-month period
Administrators at risk for being desysopped under these criteria will continue to be notified ahead of time. Thank you for your continued work.
22:52, 15 April 2022 (UTC)
Pending suspension of administrative permissions due to inactivity
Established policy provides for the removal of the administrative permissions of users who have made fewer than 100 edits over a 60-month period. Your administrative permissions will be removed if you do not return to the required activity level before the beginning of January 2023.
Inactive administrators are encouraged to engage with the project in earnest rather than to make token edits to avoid loss of administrative permissions. Resources and support for re-engaging with the project are available at Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention/administrators. If you do not intend to re-engage with the project in the foreseeable future, please consider voluntarily resigning your administrative permissions by making a request at the bureaucrats' noticeboard.
Hello! Voting in the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 12 December 2022. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
Imminent suspension of administrative permissions due to inactivity
Established policy provides for the removal of the administrative permissions of users who have made fewer than 100 edits over a 60-month period. Your administrative permissions will be removed if you do not return to the required activity level before the beginning of January 2023.
Inactive administrators are encouraged to engage with the project in earnest rather than to make token edits to avoid loss of administrative permissions. Resources and support for re-engaging with the project are available at Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention/administrators. If you do not intend to re-engage with the project in the foreseeable future, please consider voluntarily resigning your administrative permissions by making a request at the bureaucrats' noticeboard.
You recently removed (disambiguation) from the link at the top of Golden Slippers. My understanding is that when a link to a diambiguation page is intentional, as in a hatnote, then they are supposed to have (disambiguation). (See, for example, Fade (audio engineering) which has a For other uses, see Fade (disambiguation). note.) Was I not correct? Or did you mistakenly remove it? – Scyrme (talk) 21:09, 3 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Scyrme: Hey, according to WP:HOWTODAB you're correct. I only updated the link because for some reason the (disambiguation) link showed up as a red link to me, or perhaps I am just going colour blind! I'll change to back to make use of the redirect. - Kingpin13 (talk) 10:51, 4 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Sight (Clement-Davies novel) until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.
Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article until the discussion has finished.
Hello! Voting in the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 11 December 2023. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
Administrative permissions and inactivity reminder
This is a reminder that established policy provides for removal of the administrative permissions of users who have made fewer than 100 edits over a 60-month period. You are receiving this annual reminder since you have averaged less than 50 edits per year over the last 5 years.
Inactive administrators are encouraged to reengage with the project in earnest rather than to make token edits to avoid loss of administrative permissions. Resources and support for reengaging with the project are available at Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention/administrators. If you do not intend to be engaged with the project in the foreseeable future, please consider voluntarily resigning your administrative permissions by making a request at the bureaucrats' noticeboard.
The Wikimedia Foundation is conducting a survey of Wikipedians to better understand what draws administrators to contribute to Wikipedia, and what affects administrator retention. We will use this research to improve experiences for Wikipedians, and address common problems and needs. We have identified you as a good candidate for this research, and would greatly appreciate your participation in this anonymous survey.
You do not have to be an Administrator to participate.
The survey should take around 10-15 minutes to complete. You may read more about the study on its Meta page and view its privacy statement .
Please find our contact on the project Meta page if you have any questions or concerns.
I recently invited you to take a survey about administration on Wikipedia. If you haven’t yet had a chance, there is still time to participate– we’d truly appreciate your feedback. The survey is anonymous and should take about 10-15 minutes to complete. You may read more about the study on its Meta page and view its privacy statement.
Administrative permissions and inactivity reminder
This is a reminder that established policy provides for removal of the administrative permissions of users who have made fewer than 100 edits over a 60-month period. You are receiving this annual reminder since you have averaged less than 50 edits per year over the last 5 years.
Inactive administrators are encouraged to reengage with the project in earnest rather than to make token edits to avoid loss of administrative permissions. Resources and support for reengaging with the project are available at Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention/administrators. If you do not intend to be engaged with the project in the foreseeable future, please consider voluntarily resigning your administrative permissions by making a request at the bureaucrats' noticeboard.
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