Wikibooks:Reading room/Administrative Assistance/Archives/2008/January

Remove page protection
Can someone remove the protection of Programming:C plus plus/ctype.h header, txs... --Panic (talk) 03:11, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Done, not sure why it was protected in the first place. --Az1568(Talk) 03:27, 5 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Txs, I think it was done to enable a merge situation ( Book History )... --Panic (talk) 03:31, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Special:Userrights
Bureaucrats now have access to this special page. I do not think sysops can go here. This page is the page that has been used by the stewards: it combines the abilities of Special:MakeSysop and Special:MakeBot. I've heard some thigns over the grapevine that seem to indicate that maybe b'crats are going to get more "abilities" through this special page, although that might not be accurate. Current b'crats would probably do well to familiarize themselves with this page. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 20:30, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
 * You are correct, sysops cannot access the page. Mattb112885 (talk to me) 21:36, 1 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Simple, yet refined. -within focus 22:44, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

This can be accessed by sysops in certain cases, I think. For example, if we followed enwiki and allowed sysops to hand out +rollbacker, then sysops could access it, but would only be able to change some of the rights (just like the bcrats can't change all rights through Special:Userrights - ie you can't give +checkuser). I don't think that we need non-admins with rollback; we don't have enough vandalism to need that.

But I think we could benefit from handing out +patroller so non-sysops can patrol new pages. (There is an option to allow patrolling of any non-patrolled diff, but I don't think it's useful for us, but that's open for discussion. As well, allowing +patroller for autoconfirmed is too low a threshold, I think.) I think the new page patrol could be much better used if we had more people doing it. If you look at Special:Log/patrol, there are only a few names there. I think it'd be useful to spread the work around by giving +patroller to certain users that would like to help with that. I'd think it'd be a fairly low threshold for getting it - essentially a history of new page patrolling without abuse and a willingness to continue new page patrolling should be enough to get the right since +patroller isn't easily abused. Spreading the work around will make the task much less arduous for those who do it, and this allows us to do that without giving +sysop. New page patrol is essentially a perpetual backlog, and I think this will help us use patrolling much more effectively. It's a great software feature, but the burden to use it well it too concentrated currently. – Mike.lifeguard  &#124; talk 04:32, 10 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I like this idea for two reasons:
 * it would help to take some strain off our current patrollers (new page and vandalism patrolling, which tend to go hand-in-hand) and
 * it would create a more graduated system of "advancement" so that active editors can get a taste of administration without having to pre-emptively request adminship (and then get turned down).
 * If we had such features enabled, I would like to make two requests:
 * That admins can hand out +patroller (and possibly +rollback) privileges, and not require bcrats for that (although a trial run that was bcrat-only would be fine if that's what people wanted)
 * That we have the ability to also remove those privileges without requiring steward intervention. If the bar to receive them is so low, we have to account for the risk of "false positives", or giving the tools to people who can't handle them properly.
 * I would like to see what other people say about it, however. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 15:04, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Both those requirements can (and should) be met. – Mike.lifeguard  &#124; talk 20:43, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Something I would have been very pleased indeed to have when I started here. There are one or two folk here who I would be very happy to see granted those rights as soon as possible.  +patroller would be good but I would like to see +rollback as well.  Given the variety of .js tools around it will not make a massive difference but with multiple windows and a fairly quick hand a lot of vandalism can be dealt with quite quickly.
 * Are you planning an Rfp/r page or something. In practice anyone watching RC will know most of the people who maybe should be granted the tools anyway?  -- Herby  talk thyme 12:31, 11 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Anything we can do to make page patrolling easier for those who volunteer to do it sounds like a good idea to me. Might even be better if the RC logs could be changed so admins can see just the rollbacks as well, so we can follow up and block if necessary without the necessity of posting on WB:VIP (or whatever we're calling that now :-) ), and thus eliminating yet another hoop to jump through. -- SB_Johnny | PA! 13:46, 11 January 2008 (UTC)


 * It would be useful if the log shows whether edits/pages were patrolled definitely (Meta's does, Commons does not but "new pages" are shown as patrolled or not). The other thing is please can we find a nice simple way of dealing with this.  I just looked at en wp - the drama is well up to their usual standards :)
 * I'm happy to see this 'crat controlled but equally I have no problem with it being an admin controlled issue. It is a pretty stable (!) bunch here mostly and if it is revocable it is hardly a major issue. -- Herby  talk thyme 14:25, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I like Johnny's idea of filtering RC to show only rollbacks. I will submit to bugzilla if not already there. The issue will be knowing what is rollback and what isn't. The only way to do that is the edit summary since there's no log entry, but that's not realiable as &summary= can change the rollback default summary, and you can fake it when rollback isn't used. On second thought, I won't bother. It'd have to be scripted, I think.
 * I agree the process would have to be simple. No enwiki-style drama please. As Herby says, anyone who watches RC already knows who should get +rollbacker. +patroller might be a bit more weighty, but still easy to determine who should get it. A subsection on WB:RFA should do nicely, I think.
 * Special:Log/patrol shows all new page patrols (we don't have diff patrolling, and I don't think we should). Just to reiterate: I think patrolling would be hard to abuse, but there is at least a reliable log entry for every action. Not so with rollback. Nevertheless, if adminship is no big deal, then one or both of these is really no big deal (a lesson enwiki could do to learn).
 * As for the disappearance of WB:VIP, I think we still need to make it clearer that we just want people to start a normal section for "please block this doofus" on WB:AN. I know it's in the intro, but I've seen a few times people going to an admin's talk page. That's fine if they're online or if someone else sees it, but a central location is much more useful & reliable. I may take a look at the intro on that page shortly. – Mike.lifeguard  &#124; talk 15:56, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Only en wp could manage to make a good simple idea take up enough energy to raise Atlantis (I see people are now posting there for admin task - I guess the conventional boards have now been abandoned :)).
 * Personally I don't see "new pages" patrolling as much of a biggie but I guess rather more knowledge of scope etc would be required. Thanks for your work on this Mike, if I can help you knwo where I am, cheers -- Herby  talk thyme 16:02, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Template:SharedIP
I just created some new templates for shared IPs, there's also Template:VirginMediaIP for Virgin Media as well - hope these are of use.

I know I'm not active here much, but if you want help on a module, prod me at my Wikipedia talk page - w:User talk:Solumeiras and I'll see what I can do. --Solumeiras (talk) 17:17, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Another new toy
m:MediaWiki:Titleblacklist seems a useful idea but given the naming conventions here people with a little more knowledge may want to look at getting this underway here. Thanks -- Herby talk thyme 14:46, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Forget it - I see it is in hand! -- Herby talk thyme 14:49, 2 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the heads-up Herby! It's always fun getting new toys like this. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 16:56, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
 * All hail User:VasilievVV - this beats the hell out of over a dozen cascade-protected Hagger pages :) Also, no more spambot pages. /me is ecstatic. – Mike.lifeguard  &#124; talk 22:46, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm a tad late with this, but it's been disabled for performance reasons. Apparently it will make a comeback when it behaves itself. For now, admins can use creation protection for individual pages. – Mike.lifeguard  &#124; talk 22:34, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

This user should be blocked
I have reverted all his edits and they should be viewed as vandalism. Thanks, Laleena (talk) 21:39, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Looks like they've stopped after your warning because Whiteknight blocked them. – Mike.lifeguard  &#124; talk 21:45, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Automatic deletion summaries
Now that we have the dropdown for deletion reasons (and a good selection, which covers just about anything), I'd like to propose blanking the following MediaWiki: pages to remove the automatic summaries which make the deletion log ugly due to long, unwieldy reasons. These are the things like "Content before blanking was" and "Content was ... and the only contributor was" etc. Those don't really tell you anything useful - it's the other stuff that matters. If you ever need to add something custom, you still can, so you're not restricted to only the dropdown reasons. The relevant pages are MediaWiki:Excontentauthor, MediaWiki:Exblank, and MediaWiki:Excontent. – Mike.lifeguard  &#124; talk 17:16, 12 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree, these pages are typically very unhelpful, and trying to include the entire contents of the page in the edit summary causes it to overflow and it's typically just not helpful. We can make them more concise. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 17:54, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, seeing as we have MediaWiki:Deletereason-dropdown and there was no objection, I'm going to blank these pages. If you find that you're deleting something but there isn't a suitable deletion reason in the dropdown, either put a custom reason, or edit the dropdown to add another one if that case will come up again. – <font color="Indigo">Mike.lifeguard  &#124; <font color="Indigo">talk 22:39, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
 * There is currently no way to make the messages consist of blank space. I'm going to submit this to bugzilla (although it's clearly trivial) because there should be some method of getting this behaviour. – <font color="Indigo">Mike.lifeguard  &#124; <font color="Indigo">talk 23:39, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I think not having a default comment inside the other reason is a bad idea. However it could be done using javascript placed into a gadget for those who want it. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  00:15, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
 * @Mike: Have you tested it with saving as empty page? I think that should work.
 * But I don't think that's a good idea. For "normal" user it's often helpful, at least for me (in german wb). :) Because so they can controll whether sysops do their job right. If they only write that was e.g. a redirect and the summary is further not filled with content was: #REDIRECT ... I am very unsure whether it's right. Of course, there is a risk that the sysop has written it but that's another problem.
 * Regards, heuler06 (talk) 06:58, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
 * None of the developers could make it work earlier, but someone just suggested putting in a comment like, which I haven't tested yet. Since there's now opposition, I'll leave it be pending further discussion. As for being able to tell that sysops aren't abusing the delete button, it's every admin's reponsibility to leave a half-decent reason. We now have a dropdown combobox for common reasons, but the default reasons still get appended unless you remove them manually. This proposal would remove them by default; if you need to add something extra or if the reason you're deleting isn't adequately covered by an option in the combobox, then you'd have to either add it to the combobox, or add it in the (now blank) deletion reason. Admins shouldn't be deleting stuff with no reason; choosing one from the combobox (and not having these uninformative reasons appended) helps keep the deletion log clean, and keeps reasons standardized. The only downside is that admins can't just hit delete. That might be a good thing - they have to evaluate why they're deleting.  – <font color="Indigo">Mike.lifeguard  &#124; <font color="Indigo">talk 22:02, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Temporary Sysopping
I've had a request today for User:Reedy Boy to be promoted to sysop temporarily. He's trying to work out some bugs with w:WP:AWB, a tool that many of our wikibookian administrators use. Apparently, there are some bugs that are specific to wikibooks that simply don't occur on wikipedia. User:Reedy Boy is already an admin on en.wikipedia, and has promised not to do anything bad with the tools. If there are no objections, I would like to grant this temporarily (probably for a week or less), and then we can have the stewards remove the tools after the necessary debugging is performed. Are there any problems with this? If not, I would like to do it soon so that the testing can commence. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 23:43, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
 * - Reedy Boy is not going to delete the main page. In fact, he probably won't use the rights at all; he only needs them to debug proper detection of the rights in AWB. All the relevant bugs have all been reported by me and can be seen at w:Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Bugs. The issue with converting to talk pages makes AWB useless as a bot for warning uploaders, which was one of the main tasks I've used User:Mike's bot account for. – <font color="Indigo">Mike.lifeguard  &#124; <font color="Indigo">talk 23:56, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

❌ - +sysop wasn't needed and the bugs have been resolved. – <font color="Indigo">Mike.lifeguard  &#124; <font color="Indigo">talk 00:37, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Can I upload this content
Can I upload this content http://www.openicdl.org.za/devcourses/mod3/module3-all.html to wikibooks? It is a creative commons license?


 * The short answer: No, sorry.
 * The long answer: All text on Wikibooks is licensed under the GFDL. The Free Software Foundation (who wrote the GFDL) has stated that the GFDL is not compatible with creative commons. Though work is being done to make them compatible, at this point we cannot take text from one to the other without the authors' permissions. That said, since the authors were willing to license their text under CC, it is possible that they would be willing to license it under the GFDL; you're more than welcomed to contact them and find out. Mattb112885 (talk to me) 09:59, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

This user should probably be blocked
I would like to report this user as a consistent vandal. Herby has warned him and so have I. Thoughts? Laleena (talk) 23:05, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
 * [[Image:Symbol wait.svg|15px]] Not yet - Only the one latest edit was recent, and they seem to have stopped. Since the IP belongs to what looks like a university dorm, they may make a comeback. If so, we'll consider blocking at that time. – <font color="Indigo">Mike.lifeguard  &#124; <font color="Indigo">talk 02:17, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree with Mike (& responded on Laleena's page). Blocking is to prevent further disruption - if they stop (& the disruption hasn't been bad) we don't block.  Equally Laleena & I both warned them about teh same edit.  Thanks -- Herby  talk thyme 08:56, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I think you are both right, but what do you mean by a "university dorm" and why on earth would such people vandalize? It seems rather strange. Thoughts? Laleena (talk) 12:44, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
 * See here for a little more info. One problem is that now they are blocked for a year on en wp they look for other places to "play".  Other than open proxies (rather rare now!) schools/educational establishments generally are probably the main source of vandalism (perhaps better described as "immature editing" really).  Thanks -- Herby  talk thyme 12:47, 25 January 2008 (UTC)