Wikibooks:Reading room/Administrative Assistance/Archives/2007/August

Algebra I in Simple English
This book has been transwikied to the Simple English wikibooks, and now somebody is nominating the pages in it for deletion. I personally am against deleting this book for a number of reasons. Just because they have a copy of it doesnt mean that we can't have a copy of it as well. I would like to ask all admins to refrain from speedy deleting any of these pages until we can get some kind of consensus on it. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 17:01, 17 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Changed them to vfd.  – Mike.lifeguard  | talk 02:40, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Help, I need an Image(s) deleted please
I mistakenly uploaded 2 images I would rather not have loaded. There are the same image but I messed with the overwrite upload and now I have 3 images in the history.

I would ask if some one could please delete them all for me please.

The image is

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Image:AuthorsTeardropTrailer.jpg

Sorry and Thanks

Wikiwerks 02:39, 22 August 2007 (UTC)


 * ✅. Mattb112885 (talk to me) 02:57, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks so much, Matt! I'll try to be more careful. Wikiwerks 03:27, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Public user accounts
Whilst recent-changes patrolling, I came across these accounts:

Both seem to be published-password accounts, can someone block them please, thanks?? --SunStar Net 16:34, 23 August 2007 (UTC)


 * If i may ask, how did you determine that their passwords have been made public? are these accounts doing anything suspicious or vandalous that would cause them to need to be blocked? --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 16:38, 23 August 2007 (UTC)


 * If you see their userpages, it says "The password is ...". They currently have no contributions. --SunStar Net 16:59, 23 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm against blocking public accounts (shared password), we should treat them as anonymous and fallow the same rules. --Panic 17:40, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I disagree with this one Panic. They are effectively concealing their IP address in this fashion (they are welcome to edit from an IP anyway).  In this instance probably using an Open Proxy which would have allowed anonymity anyway until anyone found it and took action.  Edit by all means but not in such a concealed fashion - just my 0.02 - cheers -- Herby  talk thyme 18:24, 23 August 2007 (UTC)


 * There are several problems in censoring this:
 * You can't enforce it effectively. (you will only catch the ones that are very obvious about it)
 * It can even be discussed that sharing an account is legit (lets say a group of people wanting to share authorship of the work, this would be a way of going about it)
 * Registering an account doesn't hide the IP. (it hides it from the "public" but not from the "system" it does even make it easier to see what the "user" did, if he/she decides to do problematic actions using several IPs it will only give more trouble to correct)
 * As for blocking public proxys it is only being done because its the less of two evils (preemptively blocking the ability of users to use anonymous proxys or allowing their use for vandalism), it is even against the Wikibookians spirit to expect the worst from others but was a solution of compromise. --Panic 18:42, 23 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I can't see a problem. Until some vandalism has been done using these accounts we shouldn't do anything - we are not the United States and preemptive account isn't the Wiki way.  Has anyone ever proven that blocking all these anonymous and open proxy IPs actually reduces vandalism? Xania [[Image:Flag_of_Italy.svg|15px]]talk 21:50, 23 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I think the logic was to save work and use available lists on other Wiki projects (we are talking about a minority of users that may need to use such services, I haven't seen no one asking for a unblock.  I would support such request if some kind of justification was presented, as it is I'm for blocking and saving work on cleanups).
 * PS: If someone needs such services please attempt to use the mailing list or the IRC channel to ask for it unanimously. --Panic 23:10, 23 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm with Xania on this one, until the accounts are used for vandalism, they really can't be treated like vandals. Even if they are a strange way of duplicating an open proxy, at the first site of vandalism we will block the account, do a CU, block all source IPs (probably for a short time), etc. Having a registered account name doesnt cause any problems for us, if anything it's a way to group together several vandalism source IPs (if the account does indeed produce vandalism) and then we can block them all at once. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 22:54, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

stewards
Hi guys,

(btw, the link "post a comment" was broken for me, then we'll do it the oldfashioned way :) ) I heard and noticed that some of the policy pages on WIkibooks mention a possibility to file an arbitration case with the stewards or the Wikimedia Foundation Board. This either directly either as appeal. I have to disappoint you that there is *no* such possibility at least regarding the stewards. The stewards have been elected by the Wikimedia community to perform administrative tasks on the request of the Wikimedia communities. We do not have a mandate to handle arbitration cases. Please remove all mentioning of such appeals etc in your policies. I have made a few remarks on the talkpages of the policy pages I was able to find.

As for the Wikimedia Foundation Board I am not sure. Please approach them to be certain. I assume that they don't have time to handle such cases. They neither do have such mandate imho, they are elected / appointed as board member of an irl foundation, not as godking of communities. Please reconsider these mentionings thoughtfully, and if you still think they should remain, first ask the Board whether they feel OK with it.

Best regards, Effeietsanders 19:30, 23 August 2007 (UTC) (steward)


 * I believe I've fixed any issues with arbitration besides the now-defunct Panic arbitration process which is now being discussed on the appropriate page. -within focus 03:15, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Template: delete
This template has several links for admins to check before deleting anything tagged. One of them (that you're "especially" supposed to check) is the last edit. Shouldn't it be the edit before that? The last edit is almost-guaranteed to be someone tagging it for deletion (surprise!). Anything of interest would be before that. Thoughts?  – Mike.lifeguard  | talk 22:22, 26 August 2007 (UTC)


 * That is a good call, and an issue i've never noticed before. I can't find a way to show the second-to-last edit either. Barring that, should we remove the link entirely, or should we change the link to point to the history page, instead of to the last diff? --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 23:04, 26 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I just made some changes that I think fixes that problem, if I understand what is wanted. --dark lama  23:40, 26 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure what changed there. It still looks like it's going to the last edit. Hopefully there is a way to get the 2nd-last edit. There is already a link to the history, so it should get deleted if the 2nd-last edit can't be done.  – Mike.lifeguard  | talk 23:47, 26 August 2007 (UTC)


 * What Darklama did was create a link to the previous version of the page, not to the previous diff. That should serve the same purpose, i think. Looking at the previous version of the page will show you why exactly it is nominated for deletion, but it still wont show you what was there previous to the bad contents. It could have been a legitimate page that got hit with spam, and that's what we want admins to find out before deleting. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 23:53, 26 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Maybe the one I did now does whats wanted then? Seems to show the difference between the 2nd to last edit and the previous edit. --dark lama  23:59, 26 August 2007 (UTC)


 * That does appear to be what we want. good job darklama. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 00:07, 27 August 2007 (UTC)


 * That's is exactly. Thanks a bunch!  – Mike.lifeguard  | talk 02:23, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Are these redirecting to themselves?
These are listed as double redirects. But each of the 3 pages for all of these looks like it's the same as the other 2. Can a page redirect to itself?  – Mike.lifeguard  | talk 23:50, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) User:Nahallac Silverwinds (Edit) →‎ User:Nahallac Silverwinds →‎ User:Nahallac Silverwinds
 * 2) User talk:Globalautomation (Edit) →‎ User talk:Globalautomation →‎ User talk:Globalautomation
 * 3) User talk:Nahallac Silverwinds (Edit) →‎ User talk:Nahallac Silverwinds →‎ User talk:Nahallac Silverwinds


 * I is strange, I admit that. However, I dont care how other people choose to waste their user or user talk pages. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 23:52, 29 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't either, I was just trying to clear out the double redirects, and I got stuck on those.  – <font color="Indigo">Mike.lifeguard  | <font color="Indigo">talk 23:57, 29 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I managed to fix these. As you thought Mike.Lifeguard, these pages did indeed redirect to themselves. I didn't know a page could redirect to itself. Urbane   (Talk)   (Contributions)  09:09, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

DeleteMyAccount
Hi, A wikibooks account has been created in my name and IP address. I never knew about this until I got a message from wiki@wikimedia.org. Please delete my account. User name: Mala Thanks Mala 23:55, 30 August 2007 (UTC)


 * What account do you want to be deleted, "User:Mala"? I've checked the records, and there are no other accounts from your IP address. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 14:28, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Sitestatstext
Hi everybody,

At the statistics page there are showed some variables which have been disabled since 2005 or so. These are $3 and $6. Could you please remove it? It looks a bit strange when I see that there are nearly 27,000 pages, but only 25,000 page views. How does that work?! ;-)

-- 89.204.132.8 08:15, 31 August 2007 (UTC)


 * You know, that's actually not a bad idea. No sense keeping around values that arent even being updated. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 14:28, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

WB:VIP
I really have to ask, because it's something that I feel like doing all the time and I have to stop myself. Would people really object if I redirected WB:VIP to the administrator's noticeboard? The VIP page is hardly used at all anymore (last notification was in July), and most people come here with their problems directly anyway. Would people mind if we merged that page into this one? --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 18:08, 31 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I feel like the purpose of WB:VIP is so non-admins can tell admins that there's someone screwing stuff up and we need to block them and fix it... if an admin sees stuff happening, they'd just deal with it themselves; no real need to log it. So: yes! users wanting to tell the admins something should do it here; that's what this page is for.  – <font color="Indigo">Mike.lifeguard  | <font color="Indigo">talk 19:50, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

autoblock
When and how should autoblock be disabled? I didn't notice a checkbox on the block page, but I notice that a bunch of the blocks in the block log have autoblock disabled.  – <font color="Indigo">Mike.lifeguard  | <font color="Indigo">talk 20:12, 31 August 2007 (UTC)


 * The second clickable option on the block dialog is "Automatically block the last IP address used by this user, and any subsequent IPs they try to edit from". That's the autoblock. When you look at the list of currently blocked accounts, it will show random numbers to designate those IPs and the block will be for 24 hours. As a rule, it's better to leave that selected, so that a vandal won't just log in to another account and go back to mischief-making. Some admins unselect it out of concern for accidental collareral blocks, and admins with checkuser will sometimes not bother with autoblock because they'll go straight to the IP and analyze what they find there in order to decide whether to hardblock the IP. -- SB_Johnny | PA! 21:32, 31 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm guessing this has no bearing on blocking of IPs?  – <font color="Indigo">Mike.lifeguard  | <font color="Indigo">talk 21:42, 31 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Nope, has no effect on IPs (since you're already blocking them), just as "block anonymous only" has no effect when blocking a registered account. -- SB_Johnny | PA! 22:22, 31 August 2007 (UTC)