Wikibooks:Reading room/Administrative Assistance/Archives/2006/December

Other items for Admin attention
Worth keeping an eye on - new user User:Only1NIG1 ? -- Herby talk thyme 19:41, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

+ User:Online pawan - ok so it's me but that reads like online porn to me (it's my mind!) -- Herby talk thyme 19:45, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

+ User:Only1NIG1 - What? Oh I get it, the nickname I'm using comes from a project I used to be part of. If you read it quick enough it comes to Only 1 (one) NIG 1 (won). Basicly 'only one NIG won'. And yes, my name is Nigel hense NIG.
 * Apologies and placed on your talk page too - oversensitive I guess -- Herby talk thyme 20:10, 29 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Please use spell-check on MediaWiki:Uploadtext; specifically, every instance of "license" is spelled "licence." --Iamunknown 10:38, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Licence is the British and International spelling for the word. Although I'm Irish I tend to use American spellings but I think that the original spelling should always be kept.  You'll notice the same with words like "travelled", "cancelled", "colour", "aluminium", etc. Xania [[Image:Flag_of_Poland_2.svg|15px]]talk 12:59, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
 * If you look in the history, "license" was used first until Derbeth uploaded the text from Wikipedia.  And about my ignorance: I'm sorry. I didn't realise that "licence" was a correct spelling. Which is odd, because I actually spell words with British spellings more times than not. &mdash; User:Iamunknown 01:27, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Fundraising sitenotice
Don't play with that. "Happy New Years" is nice, but we are a Wikimedia Foundation project, and they want us to have the fundraising thing up there. While it's true they don't pay us enough ($0), it wouldn't matter if they paid us ten times that (still $0)... it's their website, so it's their rules :). -- SB_Johnny  | talk 23:27, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Mumfum stuff
Hopefully you are all watching this page! Kinda feel like some sharing of ideas/info could be helpful here. No doubt we are being targeted by someone who is trying to make things harder for us where possible. By the way we owe User:Az1568 for some good work in dealing with the latest one.

I'm assuming we are in agreement that indef blocks are the only appropriate block?

While I am uncertain that the protection of page moves is really good news the way that we are now getting multiple re-directs seems to suggest it might be good (but unravelling them takes some sorting - anyone with an "easy" way??). However going round protecting a heap of pages that might be vandalised seems like a lot of work?

Can we/should we be more agressive with the IPs that come from checkuser info - the situation did improve for a while after the last lot. I think sharing some info among admins and anyone else interested may help -- Herby talk thyme 13:03, 18 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Personally I don't think "circling the wagons" is a good response, nor listing it on VIP every time: if it's an admin who catches it, the admin should just quietly clean it up, rather than making announcements.
 * Certainly do the infinite blocks. If checkuser shows that a particular IP was used more than once (and no-one else has used it) it should be both long-term blocked and checked to see if it's an Open Proxy, and if so, blocked indefinitely.
 * Blocking more of the open proxies would be a good idea too. Wikiversity's newest admin has been going after tham like crazy, see the block logs on wikiversity for details (he's done several thousand, using data dumps from wikipedia). -- SB_Johnny | talk 16:08, 18 December 2006 (UTC)


 * As to "announcing" it Derbeth felt it was useful as he then runs checkuser on them (& in today's case I didn't have the time to cleanup). If you point us with a link to any concrete block lists I for one will happily do my share of blocking - I'm sure other admins will feel the same (I now checking any possible ones on WP as well DNStuff and using their block time rather more aggressively if appropriate - we may be seen as a "softer" target by playful folk) -- Herby  talk thyme 17:08, 18 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I just blocked Flo Gitt ( talk | email | contribs ), our latest Mumfum, also blocking account creation from the IP. Is this the best way to go about this? When should it be used? --Swift 07:41, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Please block User:Brian Barbera, as the user is being disruptive / vandalizing. See   and  --Iamunknown 01:31, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Dealing with Mumfum moves
OK having dealt with three now it is quite easy BUT read this first!

Having done the indef block DO NOT revert any moves. Look at the first page that was moved and its final place. Delete the first page and then "move" the final one back to the original location. The redirects in between are quite irrelevant and can then be deleted. This is much easier than reverting individual moves - believe me I've done that and it is a mess. Let me know if this is not clear (or if there is an even better way). Any non admin vandal fighters reading this you may well be better leaving page moves alone as the simplest/quickest way requires an admin to delete the first page. -- Herby talk thyme 12:10, 19 December 2006 (UTC)


 * OK, the way I understand this:
 * is the original, correct page location
 * is the final, vandalized page location
 * Identify the  and.
 * Delete  (as it only contains the redirect history)
 * Move  to (the now vacant)   (as it contains the page history)
 * Delete pages redirecting to  (if they have no other history).
 * Here, still one thing remains unanswered; what to do with ? Delete or keep? --Swift 07:57, 26 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Spot on from my point of view and dealt with well thanks. In practice it makes dealing with page move vandalism quite easy (trying to revert individuals moves left me with a mess!) I would certainly delete the final page. There does seem to be a difference on dealing with the user page concerned - I have previously deleted them but I see some recreate and protect them - any consensus?
 * The other issue is checkuser - WK prefers a note on his talk page while Derbeth checks ViP as a matter of course. Think WK is away and not sure of Derbeth currently - worth nudging either if anyone spots them I guess - regards -- Herby  talk thyme 10:07, 26 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Dealing with user pages: I'd say delete. I don't think we should be protecting pages unless there is a disproportionate damage done by vandalizing the page (e.g. in the case of common templates) or the page is disproportionally popular with vandals.
 * Checkuser: Perhaps we should put up something on WB:CVU, WB:VIP, or somewhere, such as a mention when to ask for having the Checkuser tool used and a link to a list of Checkusers with their preferred method of contact. --Swift 11:35, 26 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Both good ideas in my view. If they are permanently blocked as a user don't see a need to "keep" a page in any form (& I do prefer not to have pages protected - although move protection for key/important pages seems sensible).  Making sure people know what to do about checkuser requests has my support -- Herby  talk thyme 12:44, 26 December 2006 (UTC)