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

Special:Import
Why is this Special page not allowed to all users? I would like to use it, because I use the stuff and I cannot quickly import it. Thoughts? Laleena (talk) 19:46, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I asked this about a year ago. The Import tool is sort of in beta testing right now, and it still doesn't work perfectly.  But the real reason it's not generally available (or so I've been told) is because it chews up a lot of bandwidth on the servers.  But methinks the best way to get that tool in your hands is by making you an admin.  Shall I nominate you? --Jomegat (talk) 22:18, 23 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm don't know the exact reason why this wouldn't be available to all users, but there are a couple possible reasons why:
 * It does eat up a lot of bandwidth, as Jim mentioned. It has, therefore, been limited in software.
 * It has legal implications because improper use can create works which are not in compliance with the GFDL. This is, at least partially, because of the hard limits imposed in number #1.
 * Because importing a page over an existing page would cause the original page to be overwritten, and histories merged. History mergers are currently only allowed by admins. History mergers cannot, currently, be undone.
 * Maybe the case could be made that this should be opened up to more users, but considering the potential problems, and the bugginess that Jim mentioned, I think it's probably better to keep it for just admins for now. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 01:47, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
 * To Jomegat: If you think I am suitably admin-enough, then go ahead and nominate me, I would love to have the permissions. To WK: I thought that all Wikis were GFDL. How can you create a page (unless form a non-wiki site) that isn't GFDL? Thanks, Laleena (talk) 01:53, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
 * It is possible to import incorrectly; the tool is not foolproof. Since that's the case, it's possible to do an import which doesn't comply with the GFDL. Such cases might include an accidental history merge or a partial import. – Mike.lifeguard  &#124; talk 20:37, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Bot Run, Appoligies RC Patrollers
I used my bot to fix links on the entire Muggles Guide tonight, it was about 500 edits in the space of 10 minutes or less. I watched the RC list myself live, so the RC patrollers won't miss anything if you skip over that patch in the logs.

In retrospec, I probably should have given myself the botflag for the event, but I wasn't sure if that was something I should do without prior discussion, so i didnt. Maybe for tasks like this in the future, giving the botflag temporarily to bot operators might be a good idea.--Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 02:51, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I never did understood why the flag was removed. – Mike.lifeguard  &#124; talk 00:09, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Vandal
User:65.185.186.183 has continued after being warned. Νεοπτόλεμος ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 03:25, 10 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Blocked. Thanks for the heads-up. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 03:27, 10 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks! Νεοπτόλεμος ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 03:27, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

strange issue on page
if you go to http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Aros you will notice that some of the links link directly to the edit form when I viewed the source of the wiki page content the links are all of the same format. Something in your wikiContent -> HTML rendering is making them edit links rather than going to "This page doesn't exist please ..."

Thanks

Aldur (talk) 16:49, 13 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Hello Aldur, welcome to Wikibooks. "Red links", links which are red in color, point to pages which do not currently exist. When you go to a page which does not exist yet, you are taken to the page editor, so that you can create the page. I don;t know of any way to change this behavior. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 16:59, 13 March 2008 (UTC)


 * As Microsoft would say, "this behaviour is by design". Webaware talk 23:31, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Thats fine, any wiki I've used sends you to the page then you have to hit the create this page button., Unfortunately I've been talking with the AROS team and they feel that the licence of your wiki content conflicts with their licence for AROS so I won't be updating this content to the same extent that I was for.

== 69.141.23.32 ( talk | email |  contribs | [ logs ] ) ==

Non-constructive edits and garbage page creation. I cleaned up what he's done so far but there might be more. -within focus 00:23, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

spambots on the rise?
Today I have noticed that several pages have been edited by anonymous IP's replacing huge amounts of text with "Nice site!" or some garbage followed by "Cool, bro!" In some cases, the page is created rather than edited. I assume this generator of insincere compliments is some sort of spambot that has been loosed upon us. I blocked several of these for 3 months on March 18. But I wonder if that's long enough. Any thoughts? --Jomegat (talk) 04:29, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * 3 months should be fine. I'll check if any are open proxies and perhaps block for longer if so. – Mike.lifeguard  &#124; talk 04:45, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I did find 3 open proxies; I reblocked them for 1 year. Hope you don't mind. The rest are not active cross-wiki (or at least I can't see it; replag is bad for s3). Good eyes on the pattern there; I missed it. – Mike.lifeguard  &#124; talk 05:00, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks Mike. Of course I don't mind - that's kinda why I brought it up. --Jomegat (talk) 12:29, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Before blocking for such long periods of time, check to see whether they are dynamic/allocated/pooled IP or assigned. There is no point in blocking a dynamic/allocated/pooled IP address for any longer than a week (or even a day!) because the IP will be given to someone else in short order, and they'll be blocked instead. To check, you can use whois from a *nix shell, or the tools at DNSStuff – although the level of information seems to be dropping (probably due to privacy concerns, ironically). Webaware talk 13:02, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

images from Wikipedia to Wikibood Prealgebra_for_Two-Year_Colleges
I want to copy public-domain drawings from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_reasoning to Wikibooks, but I don't know how to fill out the licensing.
 * Image:MrShortMrTall.JPG
 * Image:Water-triangle.JPG
 * Image:Left-right-graph.JPG
 * Image:Tall-short-graph.JPG

Can someone please help?

--Dr.enh (talk) 05:02, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I've moved those images to Commons, so you should be able to use them as normal now. You don't need to upload them to Wikibooks. The software will get the image from Commons if it doesn't exist here. – Mike.lifeguard  &#124; talk 05:08, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Spam filter
I just reverted a vandal who went on a page-blanking spree. Halfway through my rollbacks, I was stopped from doing so by the spam filter. Is there a way to get rollbacking to not get blocked by this filter so vandal sprees can get taken care of more effectively? Νεοπτόλεμος ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 20:12, 18 February 2008 (UTC)


 * The SPAM blacklist will stop you saving a page with a hyperlink that matches an expression in the blacklist. Either your rollback would have saved a version with a hyperlink to a SPAM website, or we have an expression error. If it was the latter, then you need to report the hyperlink that tripped the blacklist (just the url without the http:// stuff) and one of the admins will fix it. If it was the former, then just edit a version of the page prior to the vandalism you're trying to rollback, and remove the SPAM link too. Webaware talk 01:27, 19 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't think that's what the problem was. I don't remember exactly what it said, I think it was something about making too many edits during a short period of time. If someone could edit my sandbox, I'll do rollback on it until it blocks me again and paste the message I get here. Νεοπτόλεμος ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 01:40, 19 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Okay, I edited your sandbox. It's my best vandalism impression! Try reverting that, and see what it says. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 01:46, 19 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Oh noes! I R teh n00b. Here's the message I got:

Action throttled From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection Jump to: navigation, search As an anti-spam measure, you are limited from performing this action too many times in a short space of time, and you have exceeded this limit. Please try again in a few minutes. Return to User:Neoptolemus/Sandbox. Thanks, WK. Not bad with the vandalism. :D Νεοπτόλεμος ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 01:49, 19 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Glad to help! I just tried it myself, and i didnt see a throttle error. It may only affect people with rollback, and not admins. I'm trying to ask the devs on IRC, but nobody is responding right now. I'll let you know as soon as I hear an answer. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 01:59, 19 February 2008 (UTC)


 * All right, thanks! Νεοπτόλεμος ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 02:09, 19 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Interesting - per mw:Manual:$wgRateLimitsExcludedGroups, we'll need to get rollback group added to this list. Learn something new every day :-) Webaware talk 02:31, 19 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, I just talked to brion, briefly, and he mentioned that there was a limit of 5 edits per minute. Now, I'm not sure if that is for all edits, or just rollback edits. I'll ask him about lifting this limit for our rollbackers, so you can fight vandalism better. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 02:49, 19 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Sounds good. Not that I typically average an edit every ten seconds, but it'd be easier to quickly revert vandal sprees. Νεοπτόλεμος ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 02:52, 19 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree. There is no reason why our vandal fighters should be limited to making edits less frequently then our vandals! This is why... --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 03:02, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Raise Edit Limits for Rollbackers
After the discussion above, I talked with some devs on IRC, and it turns out that our rollbackers are limited to 5 edits per minute. Admins are exempt from all editing limits, so this isn't an issue for them. I'm also not entirely certain if the 5/minute limit is for all edits, or if it is just for rollbacks. Regardless, there is no reason why our rollbackers should be limited like this, especially when our vandals can easily circumvent an edit throttle by creating sock puppets. I propose, therefore, that we ask the devs to increase the edit limit of our rollbackers from 5/minute to something much more reasonable for vandal fighters. 20 per minute or so would be 1 edit every 3 seconds, which is pretty impressive by any standards, should be good enough. What do people think about this? --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 03:02, 19 February 2008 (UTC)


 * It would probably be applied through $wgRateLimits affecting all edits and moves, but admins and 'crats are spared this through $wgRateLimitsExcludedGroups - and we should add rollbackers to that. My local wiki has the default 'null' on all rate limits, but I'd guess that there would be a limit set in LocalSettings.php for Wikibooks and other WikiMedia projects. 5/min would basically require a script or at least a fast-keying mindless vandal, as I know I haven't exceeded 3/min in past I'm-a-robot editing efforts :-) Webaware talk 03:16, 19 February 2008 (UTC)


 * per above thread. Νεοπτόλεμος ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 03:19, 19 February 2008 (UTC)


 * - I'd say 20/min is plenty, or just remove the limit. OTOH, If a rollbacker is getting anywhere close to 20/min then they should be hollering for some backup cuz there's some blocking to do :) Still, I see no reason to limit our rollbackers like this.
 * While we're at it (and I'm thinking about it), we might think about giving our patrollers the autopatrolled permission, as admins and bots currently have. If we trust them to mark pages as patrolled, I think we can trust them to not make garbage pages. This change would mean that all pages created by patrollers would be automatically marked as patrolled, as is currently done for admins and bots. – Mike.lifeguard  &#124; talk 03:21, 19 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree with Mike, patrollers should not have to patroll other patrollers. Νεοπτόλεμος ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 03:37, 19 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Just a point about the limit rate: 5/minute is equivalent to one edit every 12 seconds. IMHO, that's already beyond the bounds of sane, reliable manual page editing. It could only be achievable via a script. As noted above, I've managed 3/min or one edit per 20 seconds when doing mindless page or image tagging, and even that requires a modicum of mental participation to ensure that the page is suitable for the action being taken. What we're talking about here is dropping the limit completely for rollbackers who might be using scripts to automate some actions. Talk of 20/min limit rates, i.e. one edit per 3 seconds, is pointless here IMHO as it's probably faster than transaction speed unless your script is running on a computer inside WikiMedia's LAN. Webaware talk 03:56, 19 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Just a note: I'm able to rollback much faster than that by opening new pages on each button hit (then closing them before they even load). Still couldn't get more than 12 or 13 a minute though. Also, we could ask for Special:Nuke to be enabled here as well... this rools back all of a users contribs with one click (and would have been handy yesterday). -- SB_Johnny | PA! 11:27, 20 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I thought that extension wasn't ready for production use yet, but looking at the documentation... apparently it is. So yes, I'd support enabling the extension. It doesn't let admins do anything they can't do already, it just makes it easier to do. – <font color="Indigo">Mike.lifeguard  &#124; <font color="Indigo">talk 13:56, 20 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I think the rate limit is for rollbacks (there is a separate one for moves, for edits etc, I think). If that's the case, then we either need a very high rate limit on rollback (or none at all) to avoid just this sort of situation. – <font color="Indigo">Mike.lifeguard  &#124; <font color="Indigo">talk 03:59, 19 February 2008 (UTC)


 * We'll have to see what the dev's say, but AFAICT there are separate rate limits for edit, move and mailpassword; rollback would be an edit. My point above was simply that beyond 5/min you might as well drop the rate limit for that group of users, as anything faster would be approaching transaction speed across the Internet anyway. It would be interesting to know why rollback is triggering this, however, because my reading of the doc for $wgRateLimits suggests that we must either have a small number of edits per a small number of seconds specified, or a rollback is doing quite a number of edits in a single transaction. Webaware talk 04:42, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
 * In response to a few points made above, I've clocked my bot at just under 60 edits per minute (slightly more then 1 second between edits). This was done during a relative lull in activity, so the servers had some bandwidth to spare. I personally, without bot help, have pushed between 12-20 edits per minute for repetitive tasks, such as rolling back a large list of malicious edits, or copy+pasting templates on multiple pages. I won't say that it's common, and I also won't say it's reasonable, but it has happened. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 13:37, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I'd say that is certainly unreasonable - did you have someone following behind to read / check for errors? Not something I'm happy to hear coming from a 'crat, I have to say! Webaware talk 01:18, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
 * FYI: I confirmed that there are separate rate limits for edits and rollbacks; the documentation is (as always) out of date. – <font color="Indigo">Mike.lifeguard  &#124; <font color="Indigo">talk 17:16, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Cool, should be an easy fix then. I hope the doco catches up soon too :D Webaware talk 01:18, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

FYI: - The rate limit on rollback was raised to 20/min globally (sysops are still unlimited). – <font color="Indigo">Mike.lifeguard  &#124; <font color="Indigo">talk 18:12, 2 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Well today Chazz hit the 20/min rollback rate limit, and was stopped. While 20/min seems like a lot, it really isn't considering that a) these are not normal edits, they're rollbacks and b) our rollbackers must be able to go at least as fast as the vandals. Even a single vandal can make enough edits that a rollbacker would hit the 20/min rate limit. I'd like to ask the developers to remove the rollback rate limit for this project. – <font color="Indigo">Mike.lifeguard  &#124; <font color="Indigo">talk 02:02, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

New book: Prealgebra for Two-Year Colleges
I'm new to Wikibooks and I am starting a book called Prealgebra for Two-Year Colleges.

I think it belongs on the Mathematics_bookshelf under Basic Math, but I don't know how to put it there.

I also uploaded two images

Image:half.png and Image:quarter.png

Now I realize that they probably belong in Prealgebra for Two-Year Colleges/half.png and Prealgebra for Two-Year Colleges/quarter.png but I don't know how to move them there. (I could upload them to Prealgebra for Two-Year Colleges/ but I don't know how to delete the old images.)

I also don't know how to delete my scratch pages, such as User:Dr.enh/Prealgebra for Two-Year Colleges Thanks for your help!

--Dr.enh (talk) 18:26, 17 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Hi there; welcome to Wikibooks!
 * Image are always located as Image:name.ext, so there's no problem there. As for adding your book to the bookshelf, you won't be able to until your account is 4 days old. I'll add it for you now. If you need help, come on back here! – <font color="Indigo">Mike.lifeguard  &#124; <font color="Indigo">talk 18:34, 17 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I've deleted the subpages for you and removed the resulting redlink above. Νεοπτόλεμος ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 00:57, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Delete all this users contributions and block
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/F0ckT4rd Thanks --Remi (talk) 06:31, 26 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Got it, thanks. Webaware talk 07:11, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Cookbook, search for Labskaus
Liebe gemeinde, wenn ich unter wikibooks auf cookbook gehe und den suchbegrif  Labskaus eingebe finde ich nichts

in der Deutschen Hauptseite finde ich aber Labskaus warum werdet ihr nicht verknüpft? danke und Gruß Thomas Wagner

translation:

Dear community, I can't find anything if I search for Labskaus in the cookbook of Wikibooks. On the German mainpage i find it, though. [Why isn't it linked?/Why isn't this linked to?/Why aren't you linked?]

Thanks and greeting from Thomas Wagner


 * I suspect this might be the dish that originates in Liverpool called Scouse whose name originated from Labskaus (not certain of the spelling). Indeed you'll see a reference to it on Cookbook:Cuisine_of_the_United_Kingdom although the page hasn't been created which is suprising considering that the dish is so popular and so easy to make.  Maybe one of our German speaking editors would like to copy it over to our Cookbook and add an inter-wiki language link. --Xania [[Image:Flag_of_Italy.svg|15px]]talk 22:13, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

67.49.250.19
Some vandalism of talk pages and others. Seems to have got bored and left. Have cleaned up. Could somebody block? --AdRiley (talk) 09:05, 27 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Done. thanks, Webaware talk 09:13, 27 March 2008 (UTC)