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Rihanna

Don't know what's happening with me today. It was my mistake. You were right reverting me :)! Greetings.— Tomica (talk) 18:17, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

No worries, sorry that I was a bit grumpy in that undo message. Amalthea 09:34, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks

Thank you for your support at my RfA. I will do my best to live up to people's confidence in me. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:07, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

ConfirmAccount extension

Hey :). You're being contacted because you are involved in the ACC process, or participated in the original discussion in '08 about the ConfirmAccount extension. This is a note to let you know that we are seeking opinions on switching this extension on, effectively making the ACC process via the Toolserver redundant. You can read all the details here; I would be very grateful if people would indicate how they feel about the idea :). Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:18, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Mediawiki:Gadget-popups.js bug

hi.

so there is this function: 

function removeTitle(a) {
	a.title='';
	if (a.originalTitle) { return; }
	a.originalTitle=a.title;
}

this is clearly a bug (you empty a.title and then copy the empty value to originalTitle, which ends up always empty) - it should probably be something like 

function removeTitle(a) {
	a.originalTitle = a.originalTitle || a.title; //if originalTitle is not empty don't touch it.
	a.title='';
}

peace, קיפודנחש (talk) 15:24, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Not ignoring you, I'll look into it as soon as I can. :) Amalthea 18:08, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
this may be slightly more important than seems initially. there are some gadgets/scripts that depend on "title" which gadget-popup throws out (e.g., gadget cat-a-lot, which is in use in commons and on other wikis, such as hewiki). we could augment those gadgets to continue working correctly even when gadget-popup is present, by replacing, e.g., a.title with something like a.title || a.originalTitle, but for as long as gadget-popup still has this bug, this is not feasible. since we use popup by loading it directly from enwiki, we do not have a local copy where we could fix the bug ourselves. would appreciate it if this small bug can be fixed. קיפודנחש (talk) 13:20, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
I noticed that TheDJ applied a thorough fix of that mess by now. :) Amalthea 18:41, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Edit war

I didn't know there was an edit war going on the Lone Wolf and Cub article until I checked both the history and talk pages. I mean without proper spelling, links or references to that I didn’t know what that meant. But as you can see[1], that person is not listening.Æ-202 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 07:19, 14 April 2012 (UTC).

Main SPI page not showing pending CU requests, etc.

Do you know what's going on there? Per Wikipedia talk:Sockpuppet investigations/Archives/Archive11#Navigation links. Thanks. Valfontis (talk) 19:27, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Replied there. Amalthea 18:40, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
I think the previous discussion was archived, but if there's a backlog, I'd still like to help out if possible. :) - SudoGhost 18:48, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
Thanks Amalthea, saw that, got it. Valfontis (talk) 20:18, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

MediaWiki talk:Gadget-popups.js

Would you be able to help with MediaWiki_talk:Gadget-popups.js#.22.2F.22_in_front_of_page_names.3F please ? --İnfoCan (talk) 15:14, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Since it only too five minutes, fixed now. Amalthea 18:40, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
Thanks, works now. --İnfoCan (talk) 18:54, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Abuse Filter on the Article Feedback Tool

Hey there :). You're being contacted because you're an edit filter manager, At the moment, we're developing Version 5 of the Article Feedback Tool, which you may or may not have heard about. If you haven't; for the first time, this will involve a free-text box where readers can submit comments :). Obviously, there's going to be junk, and we want to minimise that junk. To do so, we're working the Abuse Filter into the tool.

For this to work, we need people to write and maintain filters. I'd be very grateful if you could take a look at the discussion here and the attached docs, and comment and contribute! Thanks :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:07, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Berlin hackathon invitation

Just a reminder that registration is now open for this year's hackathon. Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation Volunteer Development Coordinator 02:07, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

It would be pretty wonderful to have you there. And if you need financial subsidy to attend, please register by 1 May. Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation Volunteer Development Coordinator 23:47, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Quesitons for an MSU research project

Hello, I am involved with a research project for Michigan State University and am wondering if you would be able to answer a few questions regarding tool sets on Wikipedia. If so please let me know and I can post back to you. Here is a link to the project if you are interested Wikipedia:United States Education Program/Courses/Wiki-Project Management (Jonathan Obar) , and if you have any questions please let me know. Ltezl (talk) 01:21, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Sure, within reason. What do you want to know? Amalthea 09:13, 10 April 2012 (UTC)


What were your tool sets you utilized before you became an admin, and what were they afterwords? Those are the only questions I have for you, sorry for the dramatic build up but for the project it is important to be clear and informative. Thanks Ltezl (talk) 14:14, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Could you define 'tool set', please? Amalthea 14:16, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Basically the functions you used in Wikipedia, most answers before users became admins is similar to "basic editing functions and reporting functions" and after "blocking functions, discussion" etc. Basically just a short summary of how you used Wikipedia before and after. Thanks Ltezl (talk) 14:21, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm still not really sure what you're trying to find out. My exact focus has always been a bit in flux, but I've certainly mostly done maintainance work in my time here. Some such maintainance tasks only really make sense for admins so I assume I've done more of those tasks after being made an admin (relatively speaking), but I don't think adminship has significantly changed the kind of work I'm doing here. Admin work is still mostly just maintainance, and to be made an admin in an RfA one should already be doing the same type of work before.
If you're asking about MediaWiki functionality granted by Special:ListGroupRights#sysop, I guess I've mainly made use of 'block', 'browsearchive', 'delete', 'deletedhistory', 'deletedtext', 'editinterface', 'edituserjs'. Before being made an admin I've asked admins to perform those actions for me.
If you want to make a more objective analysis you should probably simply analyze my use of active rights in Special:Log/Amalthea and Special:Log/Contributions.
Amalthea 16:31, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your time and answers, I will check out that link as well. Ltezl (talk) 21:43, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

User:Amalthea/culoghelper.js

Hi, Amalthea. Your script to allow for colouring and sorting the results screen for CU queries is fantastic, but I can't seem to get your log linker script to work. When you have a spare moment, would you look at User:AGK/vector.js to see if you can recognise what I'm doing wrong? Thanks! AGK [•] 23:45, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

There isn't really anything you could be doing wrong here. A couple of questions
Amalthea 06:53, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
Sorry for the delay in responding. I just used the CheckUserLog in Firefox on the same machine and it works perfectly, so it's apparently Google Chrome that the script doesn't like (for me, at least). AGK [•] 15:18, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Contacting you

Regarding wikis, I emailed you. Greg L (talk) 06:10, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

I think I need help. Greg L (talk) 21:12, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Twinkle script

Hi, 90% of the time whenever I leave a page, an error message shows up saying,"could not load twinkleoptions.js". I don't think that Twinkle is currently not working for me, but the error message shows up anyway. Is there something wrong with it? --Drla8th! (talk) 20:18, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

It seems to be fixed now.--Drla8th! (talk) 20:44, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

SPI clerks

Dunno where you keep the secrez list of SPI clerks for the bot :D, but could you please add Keilana and DoRD per the clerk talkpage? Thanks, -- DQ (ʞlɐʇ) 05:55, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Done. Secret list is currently offline. Will make it configurable (or have it attempt to parse the clerks page) as soon as I have a moment. :/ Amalthea 19:06, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
Separately from DQ's request, I updated what I now know are the old lists at User:Δbot/CheckUsers and User:Δbot/Clerks. If you have a moment you may need to check whether these need to be copied to your offline copy. The CU list in particular had a few omissions. On the other hand, you may be on the ball, as always, but I'm sure it's worth an FYI :-). (Parsing Special:Listusers/checkuser and the clerks' list would be extremely useful.) AGK [•] 19:14, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Editnotices in WP space

You deleted the template that enables every WP:editnotice in Wikipedia space. Was that really your intention? If so, what alternative mechanism is available for putting editnotices on pages in that space? WP:RSN certainly has need of one. LeadSongDog come howl! 15:52, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

It doesn't just affect Wikipedia space. It affects all Namespaces including Template, Category, etc. It was Cascade protected because it affected a lot of things across multiple namespaces. Kumioko (talk) 16:14, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
Hi LeadSongDong,
like Kumioko said that was the namespace-wide edit notice, in turn loaded via MediaWiki:Editnotice-4 and {{editnotice load}}.
If you want to set one up for WP:RSN specifically you can have one created at Template:Editnotices/Page/Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard.
Cheers, Amalthea 19:02, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
Ah, I think I get it now. But if Wikipedia namespace-wide edit notices aren't ever to be used, shouldn't the redlinked entry under Wikipedia:Editnotice#Creating editnotices (and similar cases) be unlinked? If only admins can create these templates, a simpler way should be devised for users to request them that doesn't involve wading through half a mile of how-to instructions that are only usable by admins. Argh! LeadSongDog come howl! 21:23, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Sock investigation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/ChronicalUsual

They have been very active again.

Sopher99 (talk) 23:20, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

page protection

We would like the the Syrian_uprising_(2011-present) page and its talk to be protected, as it is under constant attack by chronical and his socks, not to mention the occasional vandalism by ips.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Syrian_uprising_(2011–present)#RFP_.3F

23:20, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Alarbus et al socks

Hello. I see you handled Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Alarbus/Archive. Would you mind checking this user more? Gimmetoo (talk) 23:25, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

related reading: Citation templates and since you asked (quote "drama spilling over onto half a dozen user talk pages", discussion now closed) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:53, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Billy Hathorn socks?

Hi, User:Amalthea. I really hate to bug you with this, but I'm hoping you can take a look. It seems to me like Billy hasn't managed to get his block lifted and is still editing in violation of his block with at least [3] (which he confessed to be his IP) and almost certainly [4], given overlap. I don't know if he's still violating copyright policies. I have no idea what to do about it. As you know, Billy never really did seem to "get" it. :/ Do you have any thoughts? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 22:11, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Unsigned comment templates

Hi, I noticed your comments on Template talk:Unsigned and thought you might be able to help with this. Thanks. --xensyriaT 19:26, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Amalthea. You have new messages at Template talk:Welcome-anon-border.
Message added 06:08, 26 May 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Ankit MaityTalkContribs 06:08, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't need to do anything there though, right? Amalthea 09:56, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Note:

When about to notify User:Beefcake6412 of a deletion discussion, I noticed he was blocked... but his userpage was not tagged. I then checked and found and added templates to he and a few others that had missed being tagged from the Questionable pulse sockpuppet investigations as well. Feel free to revert it if I am incorrect in doing so. Best, Schmidt, MICHAEL Q. 03:51, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

That's ok. Amalthea 09:55, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Sync

Chance of another sync? I made a pretty big commit, and I worry that it might break, but I've tested it, so fingers crossed... — This, that, and the other (talk) 00:38, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

OK. :) Amalthea 09:10, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia Help Survey

Hi there, my name's Peter Coombe and I'm a Wikimedia Community Fellow working on a project to improve Wikipedia's help system. At the moment I'm trying to learn more about how people use and find the current help pages. If you could help by filling out this brief survey about your experiences, I'd be very grateful. It should take less than 10 minutes, and your responses will not be tied to your username in any way.

Thank you for your time,
the wub (talk) 18:06, 14 June 2012 (UTC) (Delivered using Global message delivery)

More User:Billy Hathorn

Just thought you'd like to know banned User:Billy Hathorn is still editing. He has been editing James D. Martin here by adding an obscure 1993 local article by Billy Hathorn called "A Dozen Years in the Political Wilderness." Then he moved to J. Lister Hill here with that same IP adding another by Billy Hathorn article called "James Douglas Martin and the Alabama Republican Resurgence." And then that IP added another Billy Hathorn article called "The Frustration of Opportunity: Georgia Republicans and the Election of 1966" to Peter Zack Geer. This IP (72.191.52.222) is also making similiar edits today. Easy to track just search "Billy Hathorn" to see the more 100 wiki articles he added his name to. — Preceding unsigned comment added by VLARKer7 (talk • contribs) 04:05, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Today

your bot came up with a good story (hidden message: "open mind"), awesome Wikipedian of 5 May 2009 and 20 February 2012, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:23, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

Credo Reference Update & Survey (your opinion requested)

Credo Reference, who generously donated 400 free Credo 250 research accounts to Wikipedia editors over the past two years, has offered to expand the program to include 100 additional reference resources. Credo wants Wikipedia editors to select which resources they want most. So, we put together a quick survey to do that:

It also asks some basic questions about what you like about the Credo program and what you might want to improve.

At this time only the initial 400 editors have accounts, but even if you do not have an account, you still might want to weigh in on which resources would be most valuable for the community (for example, through WikiProject Resource Exchange).

Also, if you have an account but no longer want to use it, please leave me a note so another editor can take your spot.

If you have any other questions or comments, drop by my talk page or email me at wikiocaasi@yahoo.com. Cheers! Ocaasi t | c 17:06, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Ping

You should have received mail from me.—Kww(talk) 02:15, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Translation help

"Südabbrüche" und "Schrofenflanken" -- any idea what these mean in the sense of mountain geology? See User:PumpkinSky/Fritzerkogel. PumpkinSky talk 02:43, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

An idea what they mean, but no idea how to translate them.
  • Schrofen are rough, typically steep areas with both grass and rock. I assume the word comes from de:wikt:schroff. He, and I notice we have an article on them: Schrofen.
  • A Felsabbruch is I believe simply a cliff, so a Südabbruch would be the south face.
For more reliable info I'll have to ask the Alpinists in the family.
Late to the party, don't know whether this is still relevant. :)
Cheers, Amalthea 07:30, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
Danke, - supports what we found, no need to ask further, - the Main page appearance on 26 July opened new heights, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:05, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Re-create Emanuel Pleitez page now that he's running for mayor of Los Angeles?

Hi! Getting in touch because I was looking for information on Emanuel Pleitez' run for Mayor of LA and you were the administrator of record on his deletion page. Full disclosure: the reason I was looking is that I went to college with him. I don't know if the new run for office has put him over the threshold for "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject of the article" from WP:POLITICIAN, but there has been | some reasonable amount of coverage and it's very likely it will produce more going forward. I don't have a dog in the fight as a contributor, but as a user I was looking for an encyclopedic summary of his career and I suspect I will not be the only one, so I thought it was worth bringing up. Thanks! Kstinch (talk) 02:00, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't think that I had been involved with that article until now, but I see it has been recreated two days ago. Generally, if you consider the original consensus for deletion no longer valid because e.g. there are now sufficient reliable sources then you can simply go ahead and recreate it.
Cheers, Amalthea 07:11, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Smiles for you!

TheGeneralUser (talk) has smiled at you! Smiles promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by smiling to someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Smile to others by adding {{subst:User:Cowman109/Smile2}} or {{subst:User:Cowman109/Smile3}} to their talk page with a friendly message. Happy editing!

Just came around to say Hi :). Regards and Happy Editing! TheGeneralUser (talk) 21:29, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Amalthea (bot)

Hello Amalthea. Your bot last ran task III around 4.5 hours ago, so the SPI pages are getting pretty stale. I went through every case that has been edited since then and fixed three formatting issues that I though might be confusing the bot, but it still isn't running the task. Hopefully you will have a chance soon to look to see what's wrong. Thanks ​—DoRD (talk)​ 21:16, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Odd. It recovered a few hours ago, and it seems it chocked on this SPI, but I don't know why yet.
Thanks for the note! Amalthea 08:34, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
Very odd, indeed. I don't see anything in these edits that would have substantially changed things from the bot's point of view. Oh well, life goes on. Cheers! ​—DoRD (talk)​ 12:32, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
Fixed and makes sense now: a change in the API made it break if it couldn't find the last Clerk or CU in the last 25 page revisions. Amalthea 12:17, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

"banned user" IP rvs.

I've noticed you're making reverts of edits made by several IPs, with edit summaries stating they are banned users. With no comment on the merits of the reversions or the editing behaviour of the IPs (though from the limited view I have had they may seem potentially problematic), they don't appear to be banned (though one had a temporary block). It's possible I've missed something, in which case apologies, but I thought I'd point it out. Mutt Lunker (talk) 16:05, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

It's Nimbley6 (see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Nimbley6 for background), I should have been clearer. I didn't really expect there to be so many anon edits, the named socks are all properly tagged. I'm just about finished though.
Cheers, Amalthea 16:07, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
Alright, the few stable IPs are now marked in the block log for clarity, but I think they are both in dynamic ranges so won't prevent any further disruption.
Feel of course free to undo me whereever you think it appropriate -- I tried my best to check any changed information to be sure I don't re-introduce mistakes, but was rather liberal with removing information since he so notoriously pushes his Scottish independence agenda. Amalthea 16:12, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification. I think the intial couple of IP edits I saw were potentially justifiable but overall I'd agree there would appear to be a chauvinitstic inconsistency in their editing (though nothing necessarily to indicate their view on independence, in the edits I've seen at least (it's perfectly possible for individuals with the (anti-English?) attitude apparent in this editor to be pro-Union)). Mutt Lunker (talk) 17:05, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
In this case it's probably both (e.g. "Scotland is a constituent country of the UK" → "Scotland is currently part of the UK"). :) Amalthea 17:14, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
Yep, fair enough. Mutt Lunker (talk) 17:18, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Reminder

You have not yet followed-through on this commitment. --Walter Görlitz (talk) 16:12, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

I have, but via mail -- if the intention was to retire a real-name account I thought to minimize the explicit on-wiki connections. I haven't heard back yet and I see he has made one edit since, so I'll follow up. Amalthea 16:16, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

NoCal SPI

Sorry, I just noticed your request. I've sent the evidence, though I am unsure if it matters at this point (except perhaps to ask for a sleeper check). Thanks, nableezy - 16:32, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Great contribution to wikipedia!

Congratulations. You have just erased many thousands of bits only because they were done by a person labeled "banned" by a slav-leftist group ruled by user:Joy and others. Do you ever think that may be you are being used by them? You should think before damaging wikipedia....if you really care -like me- about an impartial and honest encyclopedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.77.38.94 (talk • contribs) 19:43, 27 August 2012‎ (UTC)

Get yourself unbanned and we talk. Amalthea 19:45, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
How? How can I get rid of this ban?.....not even Jimbo is able to control the nationalistic/political/ethnic groups that are 'slowly but steadily' (these are his own words) damaging wikipedia's reliability. B.D. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.77.40.82 (talk) 20:12, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
You can appeal to Jimbo, but it's unlikely that he'll act on it. Other options are appealing to the community (Discussion at WP:AN) and ArbCom (see details at WP:BAN#Appeals and discussions). While not a requirement, with your history of ban evasion you will typically be asked to respect your block for a significant period of time. Amalthea 20:25, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for your suggestions. But I am afraid my case is "desperate". I was initially banned from the Italian wiki because 2 relatives from Italy came to live for a full summer in my Florida house and used my same address to write on wikipedia. Before their visit, I had collaborated with wiki for nearly 2 years without any problem. But they wrote on the same subjects with me from my house and a check up showed that we had the same IP, of course: we were all 3 temporarily blocked. I was enraged and "just indicated" that I could denounce the italian admin who did the block....and suddenly I received an "infinite ban" because of this. This was my initial "crime", and I could do nothing against it: I was not even allowed to defend myself, because continuously banned every time I tried to post something about me (I remember having offered to talk to italian admins even by phone together with my 2 relatives, so that they could realize that we were 3 different persons!). Then the nationalistic croats (ruled by user:Joy, with others like user:DIREKTOR) discovered that I had been banned in the Italian wiki and quickly banned me from all wikipedia......... Anyway, thanks again. Sincerely, Bruno. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.77.39.49 (talk) 21:21, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
I'm not sure that matches what I've read earlier today at this ancient checkuser and your ban discussion here, you were banned due to abuse of multiple accounts on this project. And I still see you talking to yourself, presumingly to pretend that the accounts are used by different people (1, 2, 3). That is plain inappropriate in this community project.
Still, no situation is too desperate. First step would be to believably assert that you accept community norms and any prior problems will not reoccur. Everyone can be unbanned eventually, every editor can be welcomed back if the community believes he is here to help. Until you can convince the community of that however I am tasked to enforce your ban.
Amalthea 21:41, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
I told you my case is desperate. Nationalistic slavs like user:AlasdairGreen27 have built in group a perfect ban scenario for me, as they have done with other Italians with provocations of every kind. These fanatics (like the banned user:PaxEquilibrium you cite) in group have forced to react in a wrong way many of us Italians. Try to write something against their beloved Tito and -if you write with an anonymous IP- you'll see what they'll do to you. You'll finish talking to yourself, because they can talk in group while you're alone....and probably your anonymous IP will be banned because forced to react in a wrong way (like I did) as they want. Additionally let me pinpoint that, for example, even the commentaries (well referenced) from president Truman about 400,000 murders done by Tito to get control of Jugoslavia cannot be posted on en.wikipedia! I and others have tried unsuccessfully for years....Furthermore, they will never accept my return, I am sure about it. Anyway, I know that there are other ways to go on writing on wikipedia. Friends and relatives can help me soon or later with my erased posts, for example, or I can move and start from scratch (after some months/years without posting on wiki). Sincerely, thanks again. B.D. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.77.103.229 (talk) 22:39, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
If you are willing to follow this community's norms then no case is desperate. ArbCom tries to be a neutral body, and bans can be appealed with them. But you must first stop your inappropriate use of multiple accounts else nobody will listen, and you must be willing to build consensus with those who have a different opinion else you'll quickly be back where you are now even if you disappear for a year. Trust me. Amalthea 08:48, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Kaul

Hi, I realise that you have been cleaning up after Jais Chauhan and that is what caused you to make a null edit at Kaul. Alas, I didn't spot the original unattributed copy/paste and it is my opinion, as a party to the draft article, that it should not have been inserted. I have therefore reverted it for now. I will explain to the other party to the draft. - Sitush (talk) 23:23, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Sure, I have no opinion myself. Amalthea 08:06, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Brunodam (August 2012 socks)

Hi. Please see Vituzzu's request to you at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Brunodam. I've placed a checkuser hold on the investigation, until I know what you want to do with the IP information for Brunodam's latest socks. Regards, AGK [•] 13:04, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, replied there. Amalthea 13:26, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

EugeneDiamond

Thanks for looking into the case and for resolving it quickly - much appreciated. Cheers, Stalwart111 (talk) 00:17, 30 August 2012 (UTC).

Sorry, side note - I suspect all three usernames might also be involved with User:JacksonAnderson1234. I didn't want to edit the investigation (which has now been archived) or start a new one (without substantive evidence). I'm almost certain a checkuser test would find they are all one in the same. Would appreciate your thoughts. Stalwart111 (talk) 00:25, 30 August 2012 (UTC)
Meh, I actually saw that but got the page creator and the first account in the AfD mixed up. Is cleared up now, thanks. Amalthea 07:44, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Simplification of Template:Ranking_movements

I guess we were both thinking similar changes to Template:Ranking_movements, and I realize you removed the unneeded {trim} templates, when I was planning to bypass all that column-count logic of multiple {str_number}. For the column colspan, I used the trick where simply colspan=21 can handle a table-wide header in any table of fewer, 3, 4 or 15, columns. That prior column-colspan logic was a convoluted mess as nested 17 levels deep, so I bypassed all that:

{{#expr:{{#ifexpr: {{str number| {{{poll1lastweek}}} }} > 0 | {{#ifexpr: {{str number| {{{poll2lastweek}}} }} > 0 | {{#ifexpr: {{str number| {{{poll3lastweek}}} }} > 0....

Similarly, for the live column-count, I bypassed the convoluted logic, and just used {max/4} as the longest of 4 rows, 1/2/4/5. However, I have written new Template:Max/5 (still testing) to get the longest of all 5 rows, in case row 3 is longer in some types of sports charts. I think the use of {max/4} reduced the logic there from 17-level nesting to just 9-level, and {max/5} will have only 8-level depth, as designed for "Category:Templates with minimal expansion depth". Somewhere between what we both changed, the limit-exceeded was fixed for those 100(?) sports articles which use that table. The final limit-exceeded group are the bio/species articles, and perhaps rewriting {Str_find} would fix them as well, as people think they formerly fit within the 40-level limit, as if reducing some few levels would be enough to fit again. Long-term, must increase MediaWiki 40, to 60 or 80. The Scribunto Lua scripts are far too complex for most template writers, not to mention make them learn "yet another" language, so templates will remain here for years to come. Sleepy, gotta run. -Wikid77 (talk) 19:13, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

I would argue that templates that require 40 levels are so complex that they should be rewritten in Lua, and that all template editors who can set such complex template structures up will also be quick to learn Lua and be happy that they did. :)
Regarding the ranking template, right, I first thought I'd have to continue with getting rid of the {{str number}} transclusions, but that 360K monster really should get a complete rewrite. Since removing the trim and your further changes appear sufficient to fix the immediate expansion depth issues I kinda put that off until we can write decent helper code in Lua to get rid of all the wikicode repetition -- it still takes 15 seconds to render so it desperately needs a rewrite. :)
Amalthea 10:15, 31 August 2012 (UTC)
I'm not sure it's a good idea that {{max/5}} works differently than the other variants, i.e. ignores non-numerics instead of emitting an error. How about renaming it to something else? Amalthea 11:25, 31 August 2012 (UTC)
The non-numeric precedent was set by Template:Max/4, where I think the likelihood is that users will have "n/a" text entries when more, but the use of expensive #iferror will limit {max/5} to 100 instances (5*100=500 expensive limit). Yet, it is also likely to be used few times in an article; however, I was thinking "maxnum/5" for a pure quick numerical maximum. I have not seen much improvement from Lua speed, and of course, the extra {#invoke:} accessor templates will irritate people. Meanwhile, we have millions of templates, such as 100,000+ infoboxes. So, I think we just need more basic template parser functions, such as {#length:string}, {#numeric: data}, and yes, {#set:val|70*5} to set parameter values mid-stream (like a "real" language), rather than calling another template to pass val=70*5. As for the expansion depth, experienced programmers are more likely to exceed the limit, due to typical if-else-if-else-if-else logic, and bottom-line, the 40-limit expansion is just way too low for modern computers, which use perhaps, 200 if-else nesting, easily, where perhaps a limit of 60 would solve most problems now. My hope for Lua is to create "smart" advisor/wizard templates which cross-check parameters and make complex decisions to help improve article text. -Wikid77 (talk) 14:45, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Allen Ross Culpepper

Hi - You deleted the Allen Ross Culpepper page. I am not arguing that, but I'm wondering if you can share some background. Obviously, I didn't start the page, but I spent a good bit of time getting it to look like a typical military person page, vesting some interest, and watching it. Enough so I would think to pass the G5 threshold, put perhaps not. Was I snookered in by assuming good faith? Was it all a hoax, and did I perpetuate the image of Wikimedia at the whim of editors, adding to fantasy? Thanks JMOprof (talk) 02:27, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Problem here is that the page was created by an editor who has severe problems following our copyright policy and plagiarism guideline (see eg. WP:Contributor copyright investigations/20110727, the second-largest case page we have, and I'll soon add about 1800 anon edits there). The editor is a prolific content creator, but discussions with him about the problems went nowhere, he didn't really seem willing to face or understand the problem, so he never got unblocked. Instead, he started editing anonymously and creating throwaway accounts (see SPI).
Since his pages are still having the same problems and we simply can't keep up with cleaning his pages we see no choice but getting stricter now and delete the page creations unless they have been checked for copyright problems and cleaned. Ignoring it would put the project in jeopardy, and one hope is that the editor will initiate a discussion again at some point and can be made to understand the issue.
In the case at hand, I have restored Allen Ross Culpepper for you and severely stubbed it. You are very welcome to restore material from the history if you first check it thoroughly for copyright/paraphrasing issues or, of course, if you rewrite the content from scratch using only the information from the history.
Cheers, Amalthea 08:09, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
Severely stubbed for sure. ☺ I'll get around to it. Certainly Culpepper's citation is well sourced. Thank you for taking this time and illuminating some of Wikipedia's problems. JMOprof (talk) 12:43, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Checkuser Request

Could you run a checkuser on Special:Contributions/98.204.146.142 and Special:Contributions/Lilunclefester, please? The IP was blocked during the 2am hour EST and the named account was created and began vandalizing (including one page the IP account has vandalized numerous times) almost immediately. The IP is blocked for 72 hours, the named account is blocked indef. Would like to know if there are any sleepers and if there is a possiblity of a rangeblock. - Neutralhomer • Talk • 09:50, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

IP andd account don't seem to have any overlap, and edits were 16 hours apart. What makes you think they are connected? Amalthea 09:53, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
Both vandalized WDLD, a page the IP has vandalized numerous times. The IP was blocked at 2am, the named account pops up at 4am. To be honest, I think they are one-in-the-same and are just some bored kid. The IP traces back to Walkersville, Maryland and school has started in that area, so that adds to my "bored kid" theory. We normally see an increase in vandalism when school goes back in session. - Neutralhomer • Talk • 09:57, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
Hmm. To be honest I don't see the connection. IP has always focused on radio articles, and hasn't vandalized at all (edits weren't helpful, but I don't see deliberate intent to compromise Wikipedia).
The named account has, I'd say, used Special:Random to vandalize with the image insertions, and happened on the the WDLD article. The connection to the IP you listed is very vague (he also touched others that were vandalized very recently), the edits were 16 hours apart (when the block was instated doesn't really factor in), in my opinion it's merely a plausible coincidence. With blatant "bored kid" vandalism, WP:RBI generally works well enough, but I'll consider whether I can do more.
Amalthea 10:18, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
To follow up, was a school kid, but not related to the IP above. Our old process of soft-blocking school IPs isn't particularly effective anymore now that everyone has a smart phone to create accounts with ... Amalthea 10:37, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
Okie Dokie, I just wanted to play it safe when I see the edit to WDLD and check. Thanks for the CU, much appreciated. :) - Neutralhomer • Talk • 15:09, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

revision delete

Could you delete my edit from Growlanser: Heritage of War which accidentally includes an email address the edit summary (I pasted and hit save page before realizing I didn't have what I thought I had in the clipboard.) RJFJR (talk) 16:16, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

I can't do that any better than you I'm afraid, but I've forwarded it to the appropriate channels…. Cheers, Amalthea 16:22, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
Done now. In the future it may be best to rev-delete it yourself with an innocent summary and request WP:OVERSIGHT via mail, not on-wiki where such a request may call unwanted attention to it. :) Amalthea 18:40, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Editor review/TheGeneralUser (2) Your review is required and will be greatly appreciated :)

Hi Amalthea ! I have started my second editor review at Wikipedia:Editor review/TheGeneralUser (2). I will be greatly delighted, thankful and valued to have your review for me regarding my editing and possible candidate for Adminship. As you are a experienced and long term Wikipedian so i have asked for your kind review. Take your time to review my editing and give the best review that you can :). Feel free to ask me any questions you would like to on the review page itself. It will be a great honor to have you review me for which I will truly feel appreciated and helpful! I always work to improve Wikipedia and make it a more better place to be for Everyone :). Regards and Happy Editing! TheGeneralUser (talk) 18:58, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, spamming this message to (I project) 100 editors would be my first negative point on that review. Amalthea 19:02, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
But Amalthea, I am just asking for review from different editors for an Editor review. Please do not misunderstand me but i would like to have a review of many experienced people that I trust here on Wikipedia including you. I will be happy to clear if there is any doubt or misunderstanding. Thank you. TheGeneralUser (talk) 19:28, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
Ok, but so would every editor asking for a review I'm sure. I don't consider it good practice to indiscriminately canvass editors for tasks or discussions like this en masse -- at least I think it's indiscriminately, I only remember us talking once before. In my opinion, it would have been preferable if you'd only asked two or three users directly plus adding a banner to your user talk page. I would not have minded being one of those few, but seeing that you started giving the same message to other admins in alphabetical order it feels like I was spammed.
Amalthea 20:00, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for your message Amalthea. Actually i am not giving the message out to every other Admin out there. These are all the people i have had previously talked before and all the users from Wikipedia:Request an RfA nomination and some other users who i have previously seen them regularly on Wikipedia. The watchlist showed users to be in alphabetical order whom i had watchlisted so that's why it appeared like that to you. And with all due respect Amalthea, this is not Canvassing, I am just asking for review from many users i know and not asking for votes for an RfA. Also see my previous post on Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship#Things to Keep in Mind before running for RfA where i was told by User:Worm That Turned about Wikipedia:Editor review and Wikipedia:Request an RfA nomination. I have previously already had one editor review Wikipedia:Editor review/TheGeneralUser but it was not until 1 month later when i asked a few users to come over and review me and happily most of them did. I am sorry if i have done anything wrong, I just wanted an actual review of many users i trust and know. And it will also be helpful for me to have reviews of many editors which can help me to become better and improve Wikipedia more which can be only be done by leaving a polite note on their talk page, and it's everyone's wish whether to review or not. There have been many bots and users who leave notices for different things, bu that is not considered inappropriate, so please do not think the other way round for me. I hope i have cleared all the misunderstandings. Regards. TheGeneralUser (talk) 20:14, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
You're not getting my point. A myriad issues and tasks on Wikipedia would profit from broader participation. Every editor with an editor review would find it helpful to have reviews from many editors. What would that place be like if every editor actively advertised their important concerns to user talk pages?
You mention bots, as it happens someone used a bot earlier today to send a message to 961 user talk pages. The editors did not opt-in, the sender thought the recipients would benefit from the message, but see the blow-back from angry editors feeling spammed here WP:Bot owners' noticeboard#Did someone seriously approve a bot to spam people? (and on a few other pages, too)
It annoys editors if they feel they are being spammed, no matter what you want to call it -- I'm certain the user in the linked discussion felt they were doing something positive, and I am sure you felt that too. Nonetheless, in my opinion you clearly took the wrong approach to get your message out.
Amalthea 20:31, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
I never even thought of spamming Amalthea, I can't even think about doing it for a project where i love to work. If i hadn't given the notice to some people then i don't think so i would be getting many reviews that i wanted. It's your wish if you want to review me or not and i am not forcing anyone to do it, it was just a kind request. Thank you. TheGeneralUser (talk) 20:51, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
Your counter-arguments seem to be based on technicalities and labels. I'll try one last time to rephrase: you sent an unsolicited message to 50+ users. I can think of very few cases where I'd find such a mass-mailing appropriate. Hoping to get input in an editor review is absolutely not one of those cases.
Like I indicated in my first reply here, I considered that bad judgement. That you dismiss my opinion as a misunderstanding and, as far as I can tell, aren't even considering that editors may reasonably frown upon mass messaging for causes such as this would now be my second criticism. Amalthea 07:16, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
I will keep in mind the points you have mentioned Amalthea and will be more careful and alert regarding these types of issues in the future. I hope you believe everything I did was in good faith as I always do. Deep Apologies if i have bothered you or anyone else in any way, I never intended to do or even thought of doing that. Thank you for your time and comments. TheGeneralUser (talk) 14:38, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
Absolutely, and no apologies necessary -- I know you only wanted input. And I hope I haven't scared you off with the above, my main concern was to make clear what I consider good and bad practices here. You are always welcome here if I can help you with anything. Cheers, Amalthea 17:02, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Theman244

Hi, I'm sure this (Thejatboy) [5] is another sock account of Theman244/Thejatt/Desijatt1. [6] What do you think?--Nasir Ghobar (talk) 01:06, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

You can check. You will find no connection between my account and Thejatboy. No other users/third party agree with Nasir Ghobar on Talk:Ranjit Singh, so he is accusing me. If you find any connection block me and i will have no objection. Thanks Theman244 (talk) 02:10, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
I think you need to show evidence why you think so first, a similar name is not enough. Amalthea 10:50, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
Theman244, the discussion on Talk:Ranjit Singh is about whether or not to add the relevant information regarding Ranjit Singh being appointed as governor by King Zaman Shah Durrani in 1799. Nobody disagreed with me on that but just one person and that is you.--Nasir Ghobar (talk) 11:46, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

CCI

The CCI has been added here: Wikipedia:Contributor_copyright_investigations/20120412. IRWolfie- (talk) 22:40, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I see the discussion with the editor is already under way ... Amalthea 18:59, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Please check and correct me if I'm wrong; I butted in. There was nothing major here, some close paraphrasing at the most but in many cases sources aren't there anymore. There was one, and I left it for someone (you) to check. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 20:02, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

  • Actually, please do check me--I don't mind being told I did it wrong, and if I got it right I can help with the rest. Drmies (talk) 20:03, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
    I've re-checked per your request and re-phrased two sentences that were possible copyvios/close paraphrasing. Borderline cases both, and probably didn't matter - nobody can get them all right, and I believe it's enough if we make a good effort.
    I'm not actually the best person to check and give you tips, I focus mainly on the many trivial diffs, not the ones with significant content -- mainly because I have a hard time rephrasing stuff if I'm uncertain. Nonetheless, here are some tips I find helpful:
    • If the sources are gone or appear too different it sometimes works to use wayback (http://web.archive.org/web/*/<OLD URL>). Or just google the phrase with a "-wikipedia" and attempt to filter any reverse copies manually.
    • With most CCIs the editors weren't malicious, but simply not informed enough about copyrights or close paraphrasing, so often they still supplied the source of their material as a reference. If I can't find the phrase in the source or at google, and it doesn't appear fishy to me I accept it as clean.
    • Typically, most editors cleaning the CCIs remove the diffs when they've finished with an article, add a {{y}}/{{n}} for "had copyvio"/"was clean", and add their signature (and if appropriate a comment) afterwards. See also e.g. here for instructions. With Dhlomo I've now started to remove all the trivial diffs to make it easier cleaning up the rest afterwards.
    • If you find something was copied from another article, see WP:COPYWITHIN for how to repair that. I thought I found one such case here, but that was actually from an article Dhlomo wrote himself.
    • The newer CCIs are usually easier to clean cause the sources and search engine results are obviously cleaner -- see User:Amalthea/CCI/Overview for an overview with dates.
    Hope that helps, and thanks for helping out -- the backlog there is quite ridiculous and can use every editor!
    Cheers, Amalthea 13:25, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
    I was afraid of that, I scared you away. I keep doing that lately … Amalthea 18:14, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Happy 7th Wikipedia Anniversary to you :)

Hi Amalthea :) Greetings on your 7th Wikipedia Anniversary since your joining of Wikipedia on 11 September, 2005! Best Wishes. Regards and Happy Editing! TheGeneralUser (talk) 20:08, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Huh, nice, thanks! And if you check my very first edit you'll know what prompted me to create it on that particular day, too … :) Amalthea 20:51, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Amalthea. You have new messages at Jtmorgan's talk page.
Message added 01:49, 15 September 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Jmorgan (WMF) (talk) 01:49, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

G5

So are you saying we could do a G5 on Becker Avionics? Logical Cowboy (talk) 03:11, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, it matches the criterion, yes, and I'm sufficiently convinced that it's a sock.
I don't know whether that's the most constructive way forward though. Amalthea 10:02, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Twinkle

Do you edit and maintain the script operating twinkle? Now compatible with HTML5.—cyberpower ChatOnline 23:24, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, I have in the past, lately I only synch the gadget with the version control system. Why do you ask? And yes, the requirement that the page source is valid XHTML has been removed with last years rewrite, so the switch to HTML5 should pose no problems. Amalthea 10:08, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
I wish to add a notification exception when explicit bad images are tagged for deletion using Twinkle. Since my bot tags bad images, I receive the notifications of the CSDd image. It gets quite annoying frankly. I was wondering if it could check to make sure its not sending anything to Cyberbot I before it follows the redirect and spams me. In other words have Twinkle not send any notifications if Cyberbot I is the one that should receive them. The HTML5 thing is coupled in my signature because I changed the tags to support the new HTML5 rollout. Now compatible with HTML5.—cyberpower ChatLimited Access 15:28, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
So all of you're talk messages will conclude with 'Now compatible with HTML5' for the foreseeable future? I expect much confusion without any benefits ...
I'll see what I can do with Twinkle. It's probably sufficient to make it as narrow as possible, so probably only notifications for the few criteria that will apply.
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam
Amalthea 15:37, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
No it's only in my signature for time period. I already adjusted it when I realized it can be quite confusing. I assume you are using that last statement to confuse me.—cyberpower ChatLimited Access(Now using HTML5) 15:44, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
This just reminded me of Cato who ended each of his speeches with his demand until the senate finally gave way and Carthage was destroyed.
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. ;)
Amalthea 15:52, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
SCIPIO!!!!—cyberpower ChatOnline(Now using HTML5) 16:15, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
F2 notifications to Cyberbot I are now suppressed. This should take care of all correct SD nominations. Cheers, Amalthea 19:21, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. It's your call but, wouldn't it be wise to let the user know that no message is being sent? They may start to think Twinkle is broken. A red message along the lines of "Notifiying initial contributor: contributor is a bot; aborting"—cyberpower ChatOnline(Now using HTML5) 00:31, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Appealing a block?

Hi Amalthea. I'm unsure of how to go about doing this, but I wonder if you would be able to help me to appeal a block that was placed on my account (ArkRe), which prevents me from posting anywhere at all to appeal the block. I have begun the formal appeal process on my talk page, but the guide to appealing blocks also suggests entering into negotiations with the blocking editor(s) to see if something can be worked out. I'm not sure whether it was you or Tim who blocked me, but you were both involved in the sock investigation, so I thought I'd try to get in touch with the both of you.

It appears that my account was blocked following a sockpuppet investigation (see [7]) for a user who posted in a few AfDs that I have commented on, though I am not in any way connected to this user. I have read the investigation topic and I have no choice but to assume that I am a victim of collateral damage, as my ISP (Telstra Bigpond) utilises dynamic shared IPs - I understand that I don't have my own IP address and that rather I am given a new one each time I connect to the network. I have been blocked from editing Wikipedia as an IP in the past because of this, as well, which was my reason for creating an account. Given that the investigated user appears to be from a similar geographical area as me (I live in Bendigo, Australia, which is a few hours from Melbourne), I would like to appeal my block on the basis that my ISP (which gives me a new IP every time I connect to the network) has at some point given me the same IP as the sockpuppet user. I believe it is clear enough that I am not connected to the sockpuppeteer, as, aside from editing articles in the same general area of interest, I have not agreed with any arguments proposed by the user and do not have the same linguistic peculiarities as the user. I have merely been caught in the crossfire in an admittedly rampant case of sockpuppetry, when I was just trying to improve the content of several articles related to my area of interest.

From the very start, my contributions had me tagged as a Single Purpose Account, which I later had removed through an appeal to an admin, and I have in no way posted anything that agrees with or validates the sockpuppet user (in fact, in the AfD for the article Eternal Eden, for which the nominator is supposedly one of the sock accounts, I did NOT agree with the nomination and I actually edited the article to incorporate sources mentioned by other participants in the AfD with the intention of improving the sourcing of the article). I have provided constructive edits to Wikipedia and I have edited for a long time as an IP, and given the readiness of the admins to block me, I can only assume that bad faith is being harboured towards me due to a geographical match with the other user. In terms of being a sockpuppet account, I do not even know who the user 03SadOnions is or what their connection to the articles is, and I'm not connected to him in any way - the only thing that brought me to the AfDs in question is that the articles concern one of my areas of interest (which, I presume, is something I share with the puppeteer, as he created them). Given the severity of the sockpuppetry in this instance, I understand the reasons for the hasty block, but I would like to affirm that I believe that blocking me was wrong, and I would like to see what can be done about it.

Any help that you can provide will be appreciated. Please forgive this post being from a different IP - as I said above, I receive a new IP every time I log onto my ISP's network, so I very rarely edit from the same one. 128.184.132.38 (talk) 01:01, 19 September 2012 (UTC) (ArkRe)

Already requested at User talk:ArkRe. Amalthea 10:13, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Morning277

I have added to the SPI a note about two other SPAs who worked on the Bianca Jade article that HappyTwoBEE is pushing at DRV. JohnCD (talk) 16:53, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

My guess would be that those are somehow affiliated with the topic which would explain their strong interest, but Morning277 was shown to have a couple of very old socks so it certainly could be. I'll look into them later to see whether a check is warranted.
Thanks, Amalthea 19:18, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Regarding the COI notice on One Night Trilogy

Hi Amalthea. While I was editing RPG Maker related pages, I noticed that you had placed a COI notice on One Night Trilogy. I did some research, as the creator of that game isn't typically known to self-promote. I cannot speak for someone connected to him making the page or editing it, though I did find something, which I posted on the Talk page:

Regarding possible COI: It is not known to me who the original creator of this article was, nor who the main editors are (I simply came across it while editing articles that branched out from the RPG Maker article), though I couldn't help noticing that the external link to the creator's blog at the footer of the article leads to a blog post where the creator states being unaware of the article's existence or any issues surrounding it. This probably suggests that he/she had nothing to do with the creation or editing of this page. Sentient Cat (talk) 15:47, 20 September 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sentient Cat (talk • contribs)

Be that as it may, I'm rather certain that some of that article editors' goals were not building a neutral encyclopedic article. That is the definition of a conflict of interest, no matter the root cause. Amalthea 08:45, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
    • I'm not related to Sentient Cat in any way, though I decided to comment on this request instead of making a new section for much the same thing. I'm currently trying to clean up some of the RPG Maker pages after some errors were pointed out to me (in addition to some edits of my own on a few other topics - I registered here to edit the RM articles but I have a keen interest in other indie games, too) and I was just wondering what can be done to get the COI notice removed? I was considering cleaning up the article but I'm unsure of which parts in particular need to be revised to have a neutral tone. The tone does not seem very promotional to me and there is even criticism present in the Reception section. Thought it would be best to ask before I edited, in case I accidentally did something wrong. Thanks for your help! RPGMakerMan (talk) 05:05, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Return of sock of blocked user Sascha30

Hi Amalthea, you asked me to contact you if socks of blocked user user:Sascha30 returned (Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Sascha30/Archive). He has now made some edits to International recognition of Kosovo‎ as User:79.233.7.124. He also posted on the talk page. It is obviously the same person as the style is entirely consistent - capital letters and missing spaces after punctuation. The key giveaway is that he always signs his posts with a name and place - though this time he is slightly trying to disguise himself as "MARCO,USA" instead of the usual "Sascha,Germany". Also, the IP resolves to Hessen, Germany which is where all of his other IPs resolve to. Thanks, Bazonka (talk) 06:53, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

And now the offensive posts have started: [8]. Bazonka (talk) 07:14, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
Blocked shortly after you left this message, let me know if he gets past it somehow. Amalthea 08:54, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. Bazonka (talk) 16:06, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

I believe you're acting in bad faith!

You accused me of being a sockpuppet account, whatever that is. I don't know what it means but apparently I'm breaking wikipedia rules by supporting someone else's argument? Could you explain to me what reason you have to block me from editing when I did nothing wrong!

Well, I must say I'm very distressed to see these accusations! I registered specifically to edit RPG Maker related articles after a discussion on an RPG Maker forum, I identified myself as such on my user page and I have not broken any rules! I am confused by the allegations made by amalthea you and do not understand how they mean that I am abusing the policies of Wikipedia. I should clear something up, I don't know what he/she is talking about when they say I "showed support for the Legionwood" article! I have not posted in its AfD or talk page, or made any edit to it other than attempting a simple grammatical cleanup on the page! Check my edit history and you will see that I have not made any such edits that even attempt to support it or promote it. I have been attempting cleanups of other RPG Maker related pages and even completely unrelated pages, and how this could be seen as me "supporting" one troublesome article is unknown to me! I have nominated pages for deletion that I believe fall under the criteria for deletion, only as part of my cleanups! For one I am from Canada which is nowhere near where the creator of these games supposedly lives... Come on, this is 2012, many users know how to use Wikipedia and many new users are aware of policies and things such as AfDs when they register! This shouldn't be used as a criteria to label me as some sort of troublemaker! In addition when I log on I find that my primary IP is blocked for no particular reason, I use a web hosting service to edit Wikipedia because I work for a web hoster and route my home computer through this network too. I even had to contact our other division and get my IP changed to one of our other servers JUST SO I COULD DEFEND MYSELF, which I was denined the opportunity to! I was under the impression that wikipedia is supposed to be a place of fair discussioin and that acting in bad faith is discouraged... how is this fair? If this is how Wikipedia treats new users, then I don't want any part of it! I try to edit and all of a sudden I'm blocked! So much for assuming good faith! It seems that everyone here is assuming bad faith just because a new user who identifies himself as an editor of a specific suibset of pages knows how to use Wikipedia! RPGMakerMan (talk) 18:07, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

"had to contact our other division and get my IP changed" ... I don't see how this can make sense. You've proxied through two independent hosting companies now. With the extensive socking regarding RPG maker topics during the last days I see only one reason why you would do that.
You'll also note that your account is not blocked. I leave that decision to another admin, but hosting ranges like those you used are generally blocked since they are almost exclusively used as anonymous proxies -- and the ranges you used were used for link spamming.
Amalthea 18:25, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
Excuse me they are not two different companies. I work for a company with multiple affiliates. we have servers in Ontario and in several states in the US (or at least or affiliates do). we provide web hosting with our proxy servers and also act sometimes as an ISP. There is nothing wrong with an ISP using a proxy server and I am not hiding my home IP as you say because this is legitimately my only option for using the internet! that's twice I've had to change now! please stop blocking the IPs because I believe I should have the right to defend myself and I am only able to access the internet through my company's servers. if the IPs have been responsible for spam, that is not my concern as I am not the first person to use them! I simply believe that you are acting in bad faith when I am a new user. You have caused enough grief to me today, I won't be editing Wikipedia anymore since it is so hostile here and I am apparently such a troublemaker, and our company will be contacting Wikipedia head office. you are not upholding your duty as an admin, you are supposed to follow your own policies, and that includes not banning new users for no reason!

I didn't know there had been issues with the RPG Maker articles. that isn't my concern, if someone has been abusing the rules there, then it looks like it was bad timing for me to edit at this time. all I wanted to do was make constructive edits and if you check all of my edits, you will see just that - i haven't made any bad edits or broken the rules or spammed or created COI or anything. if you recall, I even asked you for help in editing one such RPG maker article to not have COI issues. If I intended to further that editor's agenda, I wouldn't have asked, I would have just edited and I would especially have maken more questionable edits to other articles which I haven't! All of my edits have been grammatical fixes and cleanups! Now all I want to know is WHY you are targeting me like this? It is upsetting me that I am being slandered and have done nothing wrong other than being apparently in the wrong place at the wrong time. I find it hard to believe that this is not personal !!! For one I still don't understand how I showed "support" for the Legionwood article and when.. I havent even made any significant edits to it and nor did I wish to! whoever the creator of that game is, he must be pissed to learn that his creation is constantly mocked and seen as such a source of trouble that people cannot edit it without getting in trouble,.maybe I'll find out who he is and contact HIM huh!! He'll be hearing from me about the trouble he's caused! in either case he probably won't appreciate hearing about how he apparently wrote his own article (COI notice) but that's what wikipedia does after all, don't care about peoples feelings or anything, you pretty much just blocked me without even considering my side of the story!!RPGMakerMan (talk) 18:36, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Look I'm sorry, i'm not trying to attack you or something, i just don't appreciate being accused of being a troublemaker or called a liar or my words mocked or being made to look as if I am stupid. I'm not some idiot you can patronise, okay. I'm just asking for a fair consideration of that i'm a new user and not causing trouble. Please remove the allegations from the sockpuppet article as I dont want to be blocked as an editor. you have got the wrong guy! RPGMakerMan (talk) 18:49, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Cogent Fibre

Just a note that Cogent Fibre (company) has been created, apparently to restore the deleted content. I've placed a speedy tag but I must add that a lot of content deleted by does appear to be referenced with independent trade publications and the like. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 16:14, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

(ec) Yes, this is a clear sock. :/
And anybody is of course free to take the content I (or DGG earlier) removed and "own" it by bringing it back while verifying that it is due and neutral, or making it so.
Amalthea 17:50, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

{{Ranking movements}}

Thanks for your help with {{Ranking movements}}. Do you know of any tools to calculate how expensive a template is and/or what templates that are being used are causing the most expense? I'm all for making the template less expensive but not at the expense of functionality. --ben_b (talk) 21:44, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

The only metrics I use are found by looking at the page source after purging/previewing a transclusion of the template: At the end of the page content you'll find a comment with the "NewPP limit report" showing how much of the limits are used, and at the end of the html you'll find a comment with the number of seconds it took the server to deliver the page.
Prior to the recent modifications, most urgent problem was that the expansion depth was near its maximum limit. Once that limit is reached the template will start to fail normal execution, which depending on the template logic can yield an incorrect result.
Remaining problem is the high render time. Purging the /doc page I get Served by mw34 in 13.390 secs, meaning that with every edit/preview of a page that is using the template, the editor will wait 14 seconds to have the ranking template rendered.
I was considering rewriting the template, but seeing that it isn't used on that many pages I thought it can wait until we can use Lua to write the logic in a proper programming language, and avoid the quirky template logic.
Regarding tools, I'm afraid I have none. I generally try to remove template components until I see where most of the time is spent.
Hope that helps, Amalthea 10:58, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Cogent Revert

Greetings! I wanted to drop by and let you know I’ve taken a crack at sifting through the content at Cogent Fibre that seems to have been placed by a paid editor. I agree that most of the info added by ML9C seems extraneous, though I’ve tied to salvage a few facts that seemed useful and improve a citation. Cheers! Phrenology (talk) 23:43, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Absolutely fine with me, like I said two sections up. :) Amalthea 06:52, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Avoiding scrutiny at AFDs

Please take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/block&page=User%3A173.241.225.163 . Given MuZemike's previous blocks, I upped the block strength to hard-block. I have no idea who the named accounts associated with the IP are. Since MuZemike has requested that he not be asked to deal with checkuser requests any more, I turn to you to determine if anything more should be done. My personal feeling is that the account associated with this needs to be dealt with: any misbehaviour that has been persisting for 18 months doesn't get shielded by the privacy policy any more.—Kww(talk) 17:21, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

First guess after looking at these three recent edits is that it's likely A Nobody, but I'll take a look ... Amalthea 17:29, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
Can't say anything concrete, no named account edits through that IP in recent times. I stand by my suspicion, a lot of minor connections to him and previous investigations around him, but like I said nothing concrete -- theoretically possible that it's merely someone with similar enough editing habits that they keep being mistaken for him.
I will strike the AfD comments. IP belongs to a university so you may want to adjust the block message.
Amalthea 17:59, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Zoological conspiracy theories (Arab-Israeli conflict)

Hi, I noticed you are striking the !votes of likely socks. Please note the additional !vote of a likely sock. [9] Thanks, --brewcrewer (yada, yada) 13:13, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, not just on a whim of course, I need to have something to do that. Obviously odd to see such a new account edit contentious AfDs, but if you look at his very first edit you'll notice he has edited as an IP before which could explain it to some degree. Is there anything concrete from that account that makes you suspicious?
Amalthea 13:28, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#User:HauntologicalPhenomenon, an AfD SPA. It's his 17th edit and in his argument for deletion he cited like five different policies. --brewcrewer (yada, yada) 13:43, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/HauntologicalPhenomenon. Simply being 'likely not new' is not enough to make him WP:ILLEGIT. I need at least a good indication that this is inappropriate use of multiple accounts before striking any AfD opinions in good conscience. Amalthea 13:46, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
yes, i saw that and it is linked there. as far as I can see there is no positive CU for the IP that you struck (correct me if I am wrong please). That being the case, the strikes have to be consistent. Either they should be struck only if a positive CU results or they should be left unstruck and tagged with the {{SPA}} tag.--brewcrewer (yada, yada) 13:54, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
See one section up for that IP: There was no explicit SPI page to link to, but considering the history of the IP and other findings I can be reasonably certain there that the editor there was using alternate accounts inappropriately, and likely evading a ban. That's really the only consistency I can offer: Whether I consider an account violating WP:SOCK likely enough to block. Amalthea 14:12, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
Your conclusion that one has a greater chance of being a sock is very reasonable. But its not conducive to civility, appearances of fairness, policy regarding afd's or admin tools, for you to strike the !votes of those that in your opinion are reasonably certain socks and leave alone those that are a little less than reasonably certain socks. Either strike both or tag both as an SPA. The SPI might sort itself out soon, but if it doesn't I'd like you rethink your actions at the afd. Thanks. --brewcrewer (yada, yada) 15:18, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
I've now went back to the AfD to see which opinions the accounts expressed, and it's unfortunate, for the appearances of fairness, that they had different opinions. However, I can't really see a more appropriate course of action here:
Do you think that opinions of accounts proven to be in blatant violation of WP:SOCK should be struck? If so, then we need to draw a line somewhere between 'accused to be a sock' and 'proven sock' beyond which such opinions are struck. I can't see a better one than 'account is blocked as sock'.
In the gray area this system won't be perfect, different people may come to different conclusions -- not that I think that the IP was actually in that gray area. But I can't simply return to the AfD later and strike some semi-suspicious opinions to even things out, that would be a very illusive appearance of fairness, and not actually fair at all: we need a criterion that is applied equally to accounts, independent of what other accounts in the same AfD may be doing.
But all of this is more or less only my opinion. You are obviously and of course very welcome to bring this up wherever you think is appropriate (WT:DELPOL, WT:SPI, WT:AN come to mind).
Amalthea 16:43, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you're saying. The !votes of proven socks should be struck per WP:BAN. Anything less then proven socks should not be struck because of the contentious nature of differing subjective levels of required proof. New accounts that are most likely socks should be tagged with {{SPA}} and thus the closing admin knows to discount these !votes. This appears to be our policy and this is how I've seen it conducted in the thousand-odd afd's I've participated in. --brewcrewer (yada, yada) 16:55, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
Then I'm not sure what you are saying. I consider it proven that the recent three edits by 173.241.225.163 were made in violation of WP:SOCK, just like the last two times the IP was blocked.
At the moment, no such determination has been made about HauntologicalPhenomenon.
Amalthea 16:58, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
ah, then we are talking past each other. Your initial comments suggested to me that you were just more confident that the IP was a sock. --brewcrewer (yada, yada) 17:11, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Apology

OK, so, as you know the recent edits I've been making are in good faith, and I've supplied references for any edit I have made. However, I am agreeing to not edit for the next six months and start a fresh and complete my block. 90.216.108.126 (talk) 16:51, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, OK, but after that time we will need to have a discussion first -- WP:OFFER does not offer an automatic unblock, you must show that you respect the goals and norms of this community and want to be a constructive editor. For example, as I saw it you were always trying to represent your city/county/country in the best possible light, thus pushing a non-neutral point of view. That will have to stop.
Amalthea 17:00, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
As you will also have saw, my recent edits have been completely good-hearted and I have backed them up with reliable sources? 90.216.108.126 (talk) 18:43, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
Well, depends on what you mean by recent. For example, consequently removing a "UK" postfix after every "Scotland" while adding a "UK" after every "England", "Wales", etc. is as I see it your continued attempt to highlight Scottish accomplishments, not a good-faith desire to improve this encyclopedia. You were doing that as recently as 10 days ago. Amalthea 18:55, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
Well, that I will stop, but many articles have Aberdeen, Scotland, UK and some article have Manchester, England, so not always entirely fair but that's a different matter. As for that I will stop, and as I've said and hopefully you've witnessed, edits recently have been good-faith. 90.216.108.126 (talk) 19:16, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

On the SPI against me

Could you please read my comments on the relative page? I believe that I got involved in this case through circumstantial evidence (I'm Greek and live in Greece, oppose Nazism, am against the Security Battalions and have happened to commented after the "wrong users") due to events in which I had no participation whatsoever. I don't know what's going on, but I fear that I don't want to end up becoming some sort of collateral damage here. Thank you. Moderatelyaverage (talk) 23:22, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Checkuser

Hallo, Amalthea. Kannst Du bitte nochmal hier reingucken? Seit Deinem letzten Check sind zwei neue Kandidaten aufgetaucht. De728631 (talk) 18:33, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

I've added another possible sock to that SPI as well since it still hasn't been closed. VernoWhitney (talk) 22:32, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
Update: AGK (talk · contribs) closed the SPI but no check had been run on the account I added. If you could take a look at that I'd appreciate it; if not just let me know and I'll file a new SPI case so someone else can handle it. VernoWhitney (talk) 16:49, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
Nevermind, I stumbled across another likely sock and so opened a new case. Sorry for clogging your talk page. Cheers! VernoWhitney (talk) 20:23, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Not at all, and my apologies to you and De728631 for going AWOL. It's one of those months, I'm afraid ... :( Amalthea 16:47, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

IP user's behaviors

Hi. I think he/she started his/her disruptive edits and POV-pushing again. Please check his/her contributions. Also one question: For the disruptive edits, POV-pushing, falsification of sources/article content, and etc. How can I report them? They are categorized as vandalism or not? Please reply om my talk page. Thanks. Zheek (talk) 13:38, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

D1

142.91.77.171 (talk) 03:37, 10 October 2012 (UTC) (Vanyka 2011)

Cryptic. Amalthea 16:51, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
lol --78.35.245.52 (talk) 20:46, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Amalthea (bot)

Hi Amalthea, the bot stopped updating the SPI case list some hours ago. I've gone through many of the current cases looking for anything obvious, but to no avail. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 14:50, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

I just noticed that there was a hidden and suppressed edit to Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Mrpontiac1 shortly after the bot's last update, so perhaps that is the cause of the stoppage...? ​—DoRD (talk)​ 15:05, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Ah, fixed, thanks -- you're right that it was caused by the hidden revision. Annoyingly fragile bot, in some regards, I whipped it up in a hurry and never came back to refactor. :\ Amalthea 16:49, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Fragments of Jade

Fragments of Jade has found a new set of proxies, apparently. Can you take a look at

and see if there's anything that can be done?—Kww(talk) 18:29, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

I added this as a quick SPI as well, since you don't seem to be very active right now.—Kww(talk) 19:23, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Dealt with by DeltaQuad.—Kww(talk) 23:28, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

FurMe help

Hi there, Amalthea, hope you're doing well!

Check this out. Any idea why WP:FURME stopped working for me?

Thank you for your time, — Cirt (talk) 17:01, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Any thoughts? — Cirt (talk) 03:29, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
Sorry, very short on time these days. Is this resolved? If not then user:This, that and the other may have some insights, he was doing some work a while ago to integrate it with Twinkle v2. Amalthea 20:29, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
Ah, okay, no worries, will try that avenue next, thanks! :) — Cirt (talk) 22:01, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Rian13

Hi, I noticed an edit you made to the user page of Rian2010 (talk · contribs) so thought you'd like to know there's another Rian account just sprung up in the last few days. Rian2008 (talk · contribs) began editing on 6 November, and is becoming bolder with each day. Paul MacDermott (talk) 15:25, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Just an update on this to say I've mentioned it at WP:ANI. Paul MacDermott (talk) 15:45, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
Ok, I see it's resolved there already, thanks for the note. Amalthea 20:47, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Sync

Any chance of another sync? I'd say people would be keen to get their hands on pending changes in RPP (though not PP yet). — This, that, and the other (talk) 02:38, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Sure, checkY done.
Cheers, Amalthea 13:22, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
And another one, to fix the brokenness of the TW menu in Vector? Sorry to bother you again. — This, that, and the other (talk) 00:41, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
No bother at all! Cheers, Amalthea 16:53, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Rkjtc

Can you take a deeper look at Rkjtc. It is very suspicious that a new user crops up and immediately starts "granting" AFCs and moving them into article space. Something very odd going on - possibly deeper socking. --Biker Biker (talk) 17:07, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I was coming here to say the same: could you check Harsh N. Patel (talk · contribs), created only on 1 Nov, who twice accepted the blatantly non-notable Raj Kamdar from AfC. Regards, JohnCD (talk) 17:12, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
Ah, I thought Rkjtc only knew AfC from when he created Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Raj Kamdar with his first edit. Interestingly, Harsh N. Patel moved Rutvik Oza from AfC, which an apparent sock of Rkjtc now nominated for deletion. Likely they at least know each other in real life. Amalthea 17:22, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
I think it is probably worth moving all the articles concerned from the various users back into AFC space. Can that be done? --Biker Biker (talk) 17:23, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
Maybe it's easiest to just notify someone at AfC to look through the articles and handle as appropriate. The articles certainly should be double-checked, doesn't look like they received the necessary scrutiny before they were moved. Amalthea 17:51, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
Did so at WT:AFC#Review required. Amalthea 18:05, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Hello! The both links I sent to you are gonna be used in the article "Easy Livin'".Thanks again.14:16, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

SPI

Hello, Amalthea. 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.

TFD (talk) 01:26, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!


TheGeneralUser (talk) is wishing you a Merry Christmas! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Happy New Year!

Spread the cheer by adding {{subst:Xmas2}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Hello Amalthea! Wishing you a very Happy Merry Christmas :) TheGeneralUser (talk) 12:59, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

... and a happy new year to you! Amalthea 13:02, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Little Britches and Cattle Annie articles.

Hi Amalthea. I saw that you had deleted the aforementioned articles because they were created by a sock puppet entity, not on the merit of the articles alone. Just wondering if there's any way they could be salvaged and reinstated instead of someone else having to recreate them from scratch. TheGoodGrinch, or whoever they really were, IMHO created a couple of nice little articles on historical figures previously not covered. My interest in this is primarily due to my membership in WikiProject Missouri, since Little Britches was a native of the state. Since they've been deleted by you are the articles gone forever off into cyber heaven (lol) or are they still maybe retrieveable? I'd be willing to rewrite/revise them under my name if needed, and I assure you I'm not a sock puppet for anyone, as my long activity log can attest. Any advice appreciated! Sector001 (talk) 19:38, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Well, the situation is a bit more complicated than that. TheGoodGrinch is a sock of Billy Hathorn, an editor who caused huge copyright problems here. His cleanup page has still 6857 articles left to check, the most of all WP:CCI cases open at the moment, and while other editors made similar mistakes, Billy Hathorn ignored attempts to discuss the problem or denied that there is any problem and continues editing to this day, anonymously or with sock accounts. We can't block him since he has access to an enormous amount of IP ranges, so all we can do is to try and contain the problem.
I regularly check his articles before deleting them, to see if he has changed his approach to editing. Although maintainance editors like me are often in danger of losing sight of the big picture when in the trenches, I do know what we're doing here and don't simply delete as a matter of principle. If he'd learn to paraphrase properly there would not be a problem, but alas, I regularly find phrases copied word for word or inappropriately paraphrased, so I do what I think I have to. For example, and this is from the first citation in the first article I just checked, The Sontag Brothers vs. source:
  • "the railroad track where they wanted to stop the train" vs. "the railroad track where they intended to stop the train"
  • "they would come from hiding and order the engineer to halt the train" vs. "they would appear and order the engineer to stop the train"
  • "They used dynamite to blow up the express car and to gather the loot on board. Then they grabbed the horses and made a quick getaway" vs. "Using dynamite they would blow up the express car and gather up the money, then find the horses and make their escape."
A great example of WP:Close paraphrasing, an infringement of the original author's copyright. He hasn't learned anything.
Now, if you want to rewrite those articles I'd of course welcome it! I guess I can restore and blank those articles and move them to your or my userspace for a while, or mail the content to you if you set up an e-mail address in your preferences. That is, if you're still interested?
Amalthea 20:43, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
I think I'll pass and just leave it to someone else some other time. Not knowing the history of the Billy guy or his sock puppetry I took his articles at face value. If they were plagarized extensively from other sources word for word or even too closely paraphrased, then it's hardly worth trying to salvage anything except his reference sources, and even those might be a bit dubious. I never meant to infer that you didn't know what you're doing, I was simply inquiring about saving/restoring the articles because one has a Missouri connection. Sorry if I stepped into some ongoing conflict by accident. Remember, always assume good faith! Thanks, and have a great Wiki kinda day. Sector001 (talk) 21:53, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
Oh, not at all! Sorry if I came over that way, I was merely trying to be clear what's going on -- I kinda expected that someone would approach me about them when I deleted them.
And I have no reason to believe the sources are suspect (although the one I linked above might indeed be of questionable reliability), so if you ever change you mind, please feel free to ping me again!
Cheers, Amalthea 21:59, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

CCI update

MER-C 02:43, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

SPI bot down

Hey, I'm sure you know, seeing as you manually updated the page, but just so you know, the bot that updates the SPI table has gone down. (X! · talk)  · @860  ·  19:38, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Right, not sure what's going on. Can't reach it from the outside anymore either and was kinda hoping it might recover on its on since I can only do something about it tomorrow. I'll have it run from home till then.
Cheers, Amalthea 20:00, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Scotland

Hi. You recently protected the page Scotland for semi-protection, but you removed its move-protection. Could you restore its indefinite move-(sysop)-protection. I think it was removed by mistake and there is no reason to non-admins to move it. Thanks in advice. Tbhotch.™ Grammatically incorrect? Correct it! See terms and conditions. 03:16, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I believe Courcelles removed the move protection last March? If I'm reading the log right at least. Amalthea 16:13, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
OK, thank you. I will contact him. Tbhotch.™ Grammatically incorrect? Correct it! See terms and conditions. 02:45, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

SPI case FYI

Hi Amalthea, you may want to see this case for which I believe you may already have the evidence. Cheers,
 — Berean Hunter (talk) 23:55, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

I had it watchlisted, but thanks for the ping, handled! Amalthea 13:24, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/NoCal100

Hi Amalthea. This is simply a friendly reminder that you intend to finish up your checks at this SPI. If you need somebody else to take over, please let one of us know. Thanks! AGK [•] 10:54, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Closed now, sorry for the unintended delay. Amalthea 13:24, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Christi Craddick

When you have a moment, could you userfy Christi Craddick for me? I've only had a brief glance of it once, but it seemed to be a workable article on a notable subject. I could be wrong of course, but there's no way for me to tell from this angle. I just became aware of the deletion due to its link being removed from a page I watch. Thanks. --| Uncle Milty | talk | 18:42, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi,
ah, the situation here is the same as a few sections up, at #Little Britches and Cattle Annie articles. Long story short, I have to assume that the article contains copyright violations. I see two options to make the content available to you:
  1. I'll restore and blank it, and you check it within a reasonable timeframe for copyright problems and clean/rewrite it (and then let me know so that I can revdel the old revision).
  2. I email you the content, and if you restore any clean material from that revision you'll let me know so that I can restore (and again revdel) the old revision, for proper attribution.
Amalthea 19:31, 16 January 2013 (UTC)
Ah, ok. Now that I know the back story please hold on a bit and let me consider. I hadn't realized there was a problem with that user, as I've seen his name in histories for many locally-related WP articles. It may make the most sense for me to start from scratch at this point. Thanks for the info. --| Uncle Milty | talk | 20:23, 16 January 2013 (UTC)
Ok, if you reconsider please let me know, and if it helps here are the sources that were linked in the article:
Extended content
Cheers, Amalthea 20:34, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
Thanks for all the copyright diff trimming you're doing. Noticed it on Aiman abmajid first, and that's made that CCI infinitely easier to deal with, far too many tiny diffs in that one; an impossible project suddenly looks almost done. Wizardman 22:38, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

I started doing that with the Darius Dhlomo CCI: Most diffs there were real simple, but loading, checking, and removing all edits to 16k articles manually was just too slow and ineffective. Now I'm going through them semi automatically with a tool where I load them in the background and just have to press a key to dismiss a diff (and have a much better diff algorithm, too). Aiman's was the second one where it was extremely helpful.
My only regret is that the remaining diffs are then much more of a grind, I'm robbing you and the other CCI workers of the simple joys of checking real easy diffs. :)
Amalthea 11:43, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Your suggestion

Thank you for your suggestions to enhance my code. There is a prepend feature in the framework that I forgot about. I will also apply your other valid suggestions. As for edit conflicts, I believe the framework is designed to handle it, but I don't know how it handles them. I made my own safegaurd in the code to be sure it doesn't cause issues.—cyberpower ChatOnline 01:53, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

For the API to detect an edit conflict, the edit request must pass the basetimestamp, which must be the timestamp of the revision you are basing your edit on. To detect deletion conflicts you should also pass the starttimestamp, although the nocreate parameter should be sufficient in this case. See mw:API:Edit and the relevant MediaWiki sources ApiEditPage.php, EditPage.php for the gritty details.
As far as I can tell, you are currently trying to minimize edit conflicts by getting the page source right before submitting the modified text
if ($buffer == initPage($page)->get_text()) {
	initPage($page)->edit($template."\n".$buffer, "Tagging page with PC2 protection template.");
} else {
	echo "Page is different from the analyzed buffer.  Aborting edit...";
}
Correct?
However, consider that someone makes a change to the page between the get_text and the edit calls. Your edit won't know anything about that change, and can't possibly pass the timestamp that belongs to the original page revision, so MediaWiki can not detect the conflict and will certainly overwrite that change.
That's why I suggested you look into the framework you are using: It probably is already able to pass the basetimestamp, it might even be sufficient to just reuse the same page object and not call initPage multiple times, since the get_text call possibly stores the revision timestamp in the page object and possibly passes it along with the edit call. If you search the framework sources for basetimestamp and you should be able to figure out how it was intended to work.
Amalthea 13:21, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Wondering

What happened to the Americans for Educational Testing Reform WIKI page? Where can I find out more?184.8.201.25 (talk) 03:59, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Bottom line, it was deleted since it made no attempt to show that the topic passed our inclusion guideline.
Wikipedia does not have standalone articles on everything that exists, only on topics that pass our notability guideline, which requires that a topic must have been covered in-depth in multiple reliable, independent sources (like newspapers). At a glance, I can't even find any mention of that organization at Google news, so I still do not see evidence that it passes that bar now.
Kind regards, Amalthea 12:40, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

NoCal

Hello Amalthea, I've sent you an email. nableezy - 20:23, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi, I didn't get any response to that. I'd appreciate one, even if the response is that's not enough. Thanks, nableezy - 00:48, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
I now think you're right; let me get a second opinion first though. Amalthea 14:12, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Stabilize API code

Just a bit of a Twinkle dev request. Do you think you could test out the code in the "protect-pendingchanges" branch of the Twinkle tree (the top two commits here)? I tried it on testwiki, and the new Pending Changes stuff just gives a HTTP 500 (WP:WFEM). Does it work properly on enwiki? — This, that, and the other (talk) 06:17, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Did you see my name and instinctively sync the gadget? This request is different. — This, that, and the other (talk) 09:08, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
Heh, no, but it made me aware of your recent master commits and reminded me to synch. :) BTW, minor bug with the new "Current protection level" display, if you close and re-open the PP form, there is a second green "Current protection level:" line.
I've now had a minute and tried your changes, and am getting the same error. Not a problem in Twinkle, request looks good, a get request reminds that "The stabilize module requires a POST request", but a post with the same parameters causes the server error.
Cheers, Amalthea 09:42, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
Hhhhhh frustrating. I'll have to file a bug, which will no doubt languish for years... Oh well, thanks for testing it out locally. — This, that, and the other (talk) 23:31, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
Sorry. :/ I kinda expect it will get fixed quickly though, is probably a small thing, and anything that breaks hard enough to cause a HTTP 500 should get attention. :) Amalthea 11:53, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
You're right: bugzilla:44468. Seems that reedy was looking at the server admin logs, because I'm pretty sure that was when I was testing it out on testwiki. As for bugzilla:24068, though... — This, that, and the other (talk) 00:45, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Join d club

Given the general rancor surround MMA oriented sockpuppets, I think the resurrected vandalism-only account Join d club (talk+ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki) might warrant a quick peek. His first edit in six years was to vandalize an article that I contributed to heavily, and two of his grand total of eight edits was to Chuck Lidell, an MMA artist. Can't point a specific master, but MMA related edits would be pretty conclusive of socking.—Kww(talk) 22:35, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

The only MMA related socks I'm aware of are from the BigzMMA group, and it would be rather odd for him to have such an old sleeper resurface now -- and he didn't vandalize either; If you don't have any other master that vandalized articles I'd write that one off just that, simple vandalism.
Cheers, Amalthea 23:18, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

User:DegenFarang

I am disappointed to say that User:DegenFarang looks to be reengaging in his campaign against User:2005 which lead to DegenFarang blocked for a few months [11], just yesterday I've notice that he has once again place and AFD notice on the article Shirley Rosario an article that he had AFD before which was originally created by User:2005 this to me is clearly a bad faith attempt on his part by targeting that specific article looking at the history you'll see an edit war in 2011, I saw that you took a fair and reasonable attempt to resolve the conflict before, I'm hoping that something can be done before matters escalate further. as they did in the past; Here and Here for examples, thank you for your consideration in this. ▪◦▪≡SiREX≡Talk 08:21, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

I'll try to keep an eye on it, and feel free to ping me if this gets worse; that one odd edit he made so far isn't really sufficient to see whether this situation is going to escalate again, I think.
Thanks, Amalthea 21:24, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
I agree with it's just a minor provocative move, I'm hoping it just ends at that, it was nothing I was going to take straight to ANI or to the parties themselves, I just had a bad feeling about on why he seemingly opening up old wounds from years past, hopefully you're right and it's just ends there. cheers ▪◦▪≡SiREX≡Talk 22:30, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

DegenFarang has now nominated for deletion, again, one of the articles, Steve Badger, he previously vandalized, that was also speedy kept after the last time he vandalized it and tried to have it deleted. He was unblocked last year by an apparently naive admin, and he bidded his time for awhile, but now his recent edits are simply returning to his tendatious actions. He should be barred permanently and his IP blocked, not only for this but for his long history of vandalism, spamming, abusive editing, and just being a fantatic. 2005 (talk) 21:24, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I noticed, the article was still on my watchlist. I wouldn't call any of the edits vandalism as per our definition. I'm not sure what his motivation is, actually, but with such a low edit rate I think we can afford to observe the situation for a while longer. I realize that it may seem articles created by you are being targeted, but it doesn't seem your content is in any immediate danger, so please do not worry. Amalthea 00:43, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. I do admit worry mixes with frustration, with a dash of disbelief. The vandalism I was refering to was three years ago deleting most of the article, then nominating the bare stub for afd. At least he didn't do that this time. 2005 (talk) 19:21, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Today the user engaged in his usual flurry of angry edits on the article deletion page after once again trying to gut the article of references during an AfD, something he was told not to do the last time. Putting an article up for Afd, not liking the result, then removing sourced content and references, this person is simply incapable editing responsibly. 2005 (talk) 20:25, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm wondering if it really is an AFD since it wasn't done correctly (He cut/pasted the text from a different page in AFD rather than actually following the instructions.) It doesn't show in the AFD logs at all. --| Uncle Milty | talk | 20:45, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
Either he didn't care enough to do it right, or perhaps he did it wrong to try and keep the tag on the article indefinitely. 2005 (talk) 22:30, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
Door number three. I'm unfamiliar with proper protocol. As I posted on your talk page just now, I'm willing to make a good faith effort to approach this in a respectful manner and come to agreement on the article. I don't need all of my edits to stay or the article to be deleted. I just think it reads like an exaggerated sensationalized account of his poker career and would like it more accurate and neutral. DegenFarang (talk) 23:35, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
Respectful conduct, coming to agreement on accurate and neutral article, that is always proper protocol. → Talk:Steve Badger (poker player). Amalthea 23:44, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

I know you're already aware of Degenfarang's previous behavior, but I feel like his trying to intimidate me into not contributing is a type of bullying. Do you have some suggestions for how I should address this? See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Rray#WP:HOUND_Warning Rray 13:46, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Commented there. Amalthea 21:21, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
Just an update--the harassment campaign continues, as I've now been reported for "wikihounding": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard#WP:Hound. Rray (talk) 04:45, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Degen has also AFD'd 5 articles created by 2005 in the span of half an hour. (1 2 3 4 5) Amalthea, I noticed that you cautioned Degen about these nominations, but you may not have been aware that they were apparently part of this feud with 2005. I'd urge that the AFD's be speedily closed to avoid further waste of the community's time. Toohool (talk) 06:18, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Instead of seeking refs from the curent 146 google mentions of the organization, he nominated the American Gaming Association article for deletion. He's gone even further over the edge than the eight previous times he has been banned. There is obviously no "coincidence" in these nominations, but the nuisance of these actions to so many editors should not be allowed to exist. 2005 (talk) 20:16, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Can you please help us out at Talk:Steve Badger. User 2005 is being extremely rude and disagreeable, insulting me with every comment that he makes and blindly reverting multiple edits in one fell swoop with no discussion other than to insult me and say 'you're wrong'. DegenFarang (talk) 02:28, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Oh for crying out loud ...
I'll try, but can't promise when I will get around to it. It may be better if you go through WP:Dispute resolution.
Amalthea 09:23, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

You asked me to follow BRD and I think that was a good idea. However 2005 and I are the only people who care about that article so we are stuck on D and no consensus can be reached. If I try to change the article, he just reverts and insults me. How would you like me to proceed? DegenFarang (talk) 09:56, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
Third opinion won't be of use, so the next step in dispute resolution is Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard. Amalthea 19:19, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Amalthea I just wanted to thank you for your attempt to resolve the issues with DegenFarang's editorial practices, you may be already aware of this but what I hadn't realized was that his unblock was conditional another editor pointed this out to me on my talk page, as it turned out his unblock request was based on him being topic banned form poker biography articles for six months and was offered a volunteer adviser User:Madman, to make a long story short Farang decided to report 2005 to the Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents and was blocked himself after his would be volunteer adviser reviewed the situation, I really do appreciate the time and effort you put in dealing with numinous situations, I hope any wiki-stress you may had experience over this matter is short live. and hope you don't feel that your time was wasted I find your temperamental approach magnanimous, again thank you for your help, ▪◦▪≡SiREX≡Talk 07:46, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

No stress, just a slight annoyance. Degan is not entirely wrong with his points, but I guess it was an illusory hope that he could work with the other Poker editors -- or even wanted to do that. :(
Thanks for the notice! Amalthea 09:55, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi Amalthea! It looks like the above CCI is finally done - I've closed and archived it. I noticed that you helped out there, so I wanted to stop by and leave my thanks, as well as let you know the good news. :) - Bilby (talk) 12:41, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

It appears I've made an awesome contribution by checking one (1) diff there, yes. :) Amalthea 14:51, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
I got a thankyou for checking one as well, once. I figured it still counted as contribution. :) - Bilby (talk) 16:03, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
I'll accept it as good advertising, maybe a few TPSs will now decide to check one in the hope to receive a similar thank you note a few months down the line. :) Amalthea 17:51, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Favor

Hey. Would you be able to do a trivial edit run on RAN's CCI? Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/20111108. I don't imagine there will be that many based on what I've done so far, but even knocking out a few hundred would be a big help and might calm down those worried about the process over at arbcom. Wizardman 03:23, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Well, we've reduced the number of articles that need checking by over 20% since March 2012, four more years and we're done. Statistically. ;)
I'll put 20111108 to the top of the list, but can't promise how much time I'll find. Have you figured out how the attributed quotes in the citations should be handled? Personally I would think they are fine WRT copyright as long as they can legally be accepted as fair-use, even if they may conflict with our fair use policy.
Amalthea 11:00, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
For quotes, I just decided to trim them if they are over a sentence long or if it's a very long sentence and leave it otherwise. It's a bit iffy, but there still hasn't been groundwork on the parameter despite efforts so I'll just go with what I feel is fair use for that parameter. Wizardman 02:51, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
This seems like a waste of energy; Hard criteria for this parameter would allow us to quickly bot through a huge chunk of that CCI. Amalthea 19:28, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Precious again

reviewing eyes
Thank you for reviewing in the Contributor copyright investigations/PumpkinSky! Paraphrasing (I hope not too closely): If everybody who reads this looked at one more article it could be over today. - repeating: you are an awesome Wikipedian (5 May 2009)!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:17, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

A year ago, you were the 36th recipient of my PumpkinSky Prize, repeated in br'erly style. I miss the photographer, again, trying "Letting go of the past" on top of my talk, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:10, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Gadget

Possible for some sybnchrosation, or however you spell it? — This, that and the other (talk) 11:31, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Doesn't seem possible, way too many changes to compress into one edit summary ... Amalthea 12:32, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
I made it work. ;) Amalthea 12:51, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
"morebits: improve stuff" - very nice :) Thanks for that — This, that and the other (talk) 05:10, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
Sorry... do you think you could do it once more? I'm trying to restore admin confidence in our previously buggy Protect module (all my fault, since I rewrote it with no way of actually testing it) and I am failing at the moment... — This, that and the other (talk) 02:00, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
Sure, done. Amalthea 02:05, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Page à supprimer sur WP:FR

Merci de consulter fr:Discussion_modèle:Talkbackalien/Suppression — Preceding unsigned comment added by Juanes852 (talk • contribs) 10:09, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

The page was imported from here to fr-wiki, I didn't actually edit it there and have no opinion on whether it should be deleted or not. Amalthea 11:56, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

SPI case overview updating stopped?

Hi. It appears that your bot has stopped updating Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Cases/Overview. Could you take a look? Thanks. — Richwales (no relation to Jimbo) 00:24, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the note, fixed. Apparently an overly restrictive test met a trivial API change.
Cheers, Amalthea 00:42, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Traffic Statistics

Just wondering if it is possible that a bot/virus could be responsible for the recent dramatic and sustained increase in the London article's traffic statistics. I have no doubt that the increase could be real, but I'm just wondering if Wikipedia checks for this kind of thing. Thanks, Castncoot (talk) 21:17, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

What increase in which statistics? Amalthea 22:56, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
If you mean http://stats.grok.se/en/latest30/London then I guess there's simply a gap. See http://stats.grok.se/en/latest90/London for a wider angle.
Amalthea 22:58, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
What I'm actually referring to is ever since this calendar year started, as compared to previously. It seems rather odd that the initiation of a new year alone would account for such a prominent, sustained increase. Castncoot (talk) 23:20, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
viewed 543874 times in 201301
viewed 508147 times in 201201
viewed 589833 times in 201101
viewed 374598 times in 201001
viewed 418402 times in 200901
viewed 662403 times in 200801
2013 doesn't seem to be too extraordinary, compared with those other counts. But I'm not really the right person to ask (why did you ask me, of all people?), I'm not a statistician, can't say how those views are counted exactly (could be that changes in caching infrastructure affect it), or how Wikipedia's page views developed over time, or how search engine queries for 'London' developed over time ... I'd expect that all those factors are more likely to have an impact on page view counts than someone making bot queries to inflate the count on that particular page.
Amalthea 23:34, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Oh, I simply asked you as an admin, I thought you would have the answer. I wonder who really would have a definitive answer on the bot issue. What seems odd is the spike between December and then the following months. Thanks, Castncoot (talk) 00:44, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Nobody will have an answer ready on whether automated processes are inflating view statistics, I assume; finding out will be difficult at least, and may be impossible since a negative can't be proven here.
Admins are only site admins, not system administrators -- for technical questions, a good first stop is usually WP:Village pump (technical).
Cheers, Amalthea 10:03, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Quickie help

Easy fix help, can you have a look at User:Cirt/monobook.js, and see why User:Ais523/votesymbols.js doesn't seem to be working? — Cirt (talk) 17:04, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

If I import your site script it works for me, but I get errors in User:Rjd0060/OTRS-Text.js and User:Tra/sidebartranslate.js. If you remove those two and bypass your cache, does it work? If not, any error messages in your script console (see WP:JSERROR)? Amalthea 21:27, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
That fixed it, thank you!! — Cirt (talk) 13:08, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Email to e-mail

Just wondering if your intent in this edit was to replace back the use of "e-mail" or if that was a result of some copy-pasting done elsewhere? ~ Amory (u • t • c) 22:30, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Direct changes to the Twinkle gadget pages are always in danger of being lost when the gadget is synced with the github repository https://github.com/azatoth/twinkle. I've replicated your change in the repository and re-synced.
Thanks & Cheers, Amalthea 22:42, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Restricted-use media list

An RfC that may interest you has been opened at MediaWiki talk:Bad image list#Restricted-use media list, so please come and include your opinion. – PAINE ELLSWORTH CLIMAX! 09:59, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Noted, but I have no opinion. :) Amalthea 11:21, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Checkuser?

Hey Amalthea, are you available to run a CU for me? - Neutralhomer • Talk • 11:23, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Why no WP:SPI? Amalthea 13:36, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
Because I would like to get this taken care of without waiting on the SPI. Call me impatient. I have reason to believe that User:Other Side One is a sockpuppet of serial sockpuppeteer (and blocked user) User:Rollosmokes. You can see his SPIs here and here. - Neutralhomer • Talk • 10:55, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
Any Rollosmokes socks are stale, as far as I can tell, so even if you could give me diffs to show a strong connection CU can't really help. I don't think I can spare you the SPI. :/
At a glance, timing seems right, as do interests, and the Other Side One account was already blocked twice for edit warring so still shows the same old problems.
Amalthea 12:05, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
Yeah, that was the other thing that made me thing we had another Rollo sock on our hands. *sigh* Looks like I will be creating an SPI. I hate doing those things. :( Thanks for your help, though. Much appreciated. :) - Neutralhomer • Talk • 12:32, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Smile for you! Happy editing!

 Hello Amalthea, Eduemoni has given you a shining smiling star! You see, these things promote WikiLove and hopefully this has made your day better. Spread the Shining Smiling Star whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or someone putting up with some stick at this time. Enjoy! Eduemoni↑talk↓ 16:28, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

JSON user rights

Hi, I noticed Amalthea (bot)'s update of User:Amalthea (bot)/userhighlighter.js/sysop.js have stopped, any chance that can be restarted? Thanks a lot! -- KTC (talk) 10:45, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

A trivial API change early March made some of my scripts fail, it's fixed now. Thanks for letting me know!
Cheers, Amalthea 16:16, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Easyblock

Thanks for tweak, but that basically just returns it to the original form. If, for example, I click on your User/Talk/Contribs, only the last shows the block tag. It used to work on all the expected pages, so I must have done something to affect it, but no idea what Jimfbleak - talk to me? 09:22, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Ok, but now it has at least a chance to work, without the user_usertalk it was disabled by design.
Could you try it again now, after a WP:BYPASS? I've disabled one of your scripts that had an error and likely stopped all subsequent script execution.
Amalthea 09:32, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
Oh, wait, it's working. Many thanks — and I won't block you (: Jimfbleak - talk to me? 09:37, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Half Barnstar
For making the Twinkle Teahouse header live. User:This, that and the other has the other half. öBrambleberry of RiverClan 15:09, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free media (File:Rihanna - Rude Boy Cover.jpg)

Thanks for uploading File:Rihanna - Rude Boy Cover.jpg. The media description page currently specifies that it is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, it is currently orphaned, meaning that it is not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the media was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that will be useful. However, please note that media for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

If you have uploaded other unlicensed media, please check whether they're used in any articles or not. You can find a list of 'file' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "File" from the dropdown box. Note that all non-free media not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Hazard-Bot (talk) 04:12, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

TJ Spyke "fixing" redirects

We've got another problem with this user. If it's not too much trouble, would you mind intervening? -Thibbs (talk) 00:24, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

I was just looking over his block log again and it's really shameful. I'd recommend a more dramatic ramp-up of the block length to sort of jolt him to reality. As you can see it actually took an indef. block back in 2007 to get him to stop with the 3RR vios. Anyway I don't want to tell you how to do your job, but given how prolific an editor he is (top 400 Wikipedians by edit count apparently), this guy poses a serious threat of disruption on a project-wide scale. Thanks in advance for looking into it. -Thibbs (talk) 02:02, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Invitation to join the Darius Dhlomo Drive

Hello. You are invited to join Darius Dhlomo Drive, a project which aims to cleanup and resolve one of the oldest copyright investigations on the sire. We hope that you will join and help to clean what's left of the copyright violations. You are getting this invitation because you have helped out previously, and I am inviting you back to hopefully wrap this up. Wizardman 01:43, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
I believe I already reduced that backlog by 10000 articles last year so I'll probably pass this round. :) Amalthea 09:40, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Your input is requested

Greetings, Amalthea/Archive 7! If we have not met, I'm AutomaticStrikeout. I've come here to ask you to take part in the survey at User:AutomaticStrikeout/Are admins interested in a RfB?. I am trying to gauge the general level of interest that administrators have in running for cratship, as well as pinpoint the factors that affect that interest level. Your input will be appreciated. Happy editing, AutomaticStrikeout (T • C • Sign AAPT) 01:55, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

I believe Billy Hathorn is back

Not that he ever leaves. :/ Can you take a look at him and see if you think so? Close neighbor to some of his earlier socks - focus on tv shows and politicians. Revisiting some of the same articles. If you agree, I'll do the mop up on major contribs. Maybe a sock drawer check, for sleeper accounts? I can file a SPI if needed. <sigh> --Moonriddengirl (talk) 23:19, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

I can only look at the edits since 25 March 2013 but those are all Billy Hathorn, yes (and the edits before that are of course still in his area of interest).
Like you said, he never went away, and has access to such an absurd number of ranges that blocking those IPs we notice has proven to be quite futile. It appears to me that his more recent edits weren't as problematic as before, so maybe the most pragmatic way forward would be to unblock his account and make him edit through it so that we can at least track and check the edits?
Cheers, Amalthea 08:54, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
That seems plausible to me. I haven't looked widely, but I haven't identified a copyright issue in those edits I've spot-checked, and I was never really up on the BLP issues. I guess they were related to using unreliable sources. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:05, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
You could have a look at George Dement and Elma Salinas Ender for two new articles, probably more likely to find problems there. Amalthea 16:03, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
And the articles from user:Wftxjkfk13 -- he's been using that one for a few days now, might be a place to start a discussion. Amalthea 16:15, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
I've done a spot-check through the first, and I don't find any issues. I was able even to look at book sources, and it seems like Billy is paraphrasing just fine. I could not see the major source for the second. With regards to engaging him, I'm not quite sure how. :/ I'm not comfortably unilaterally unblocking him myself (it wasn't my block to begin with), and I have urged him before to request unblocking on his main account. He's always simply ignored that. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:51, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
A year ago he did ask for unblocks twice, but the talks always died down pretty quickly. He's moved on now anyhow, makes it rather impossible to even begin another conversation. Briefly used user:Monla3456. Amalthea 21:40, 25 April 2013 (UTC)
I'm comfortable with being pragmatic, I've gone ahead and unblocked since he just returned to Wftxjkfk13 -- the block is clearly not working and has, in the end, only worsened the situation. New account, by the way: user:Cubplayer391. Amalthea 20:31, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

A small extension to the SPI clerk bot

After seeing a "quick" CU request that lasted for 5 days without anyone answering it, I'm wondering if it is possible to add those to the case overview as well? Obviously it's harder to figure out the last edit to a request since it's all to the main SPI page (it might be necessary to parse signatures), but even having a partially filled line on the case tracker should help a lot at getting more eyes on them. T. Canens (talk) 17:56, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Sure, I'll look into it. Amalthea 21:39, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
By the way, did the bot crash? It has not edited the table in several hours. --Rschen7754 10:16, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
Fixed that, by the way -- I though I had a month ago, but it turns out I missed a spot. Amalthea 21:32, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Grammarly

Regarding the above article, why has it not been removed if indeed it was supposed to be? I might add that I am preparing text that will cure all of the problems found in the current piece, which is still alive. How do you suggest I handle these changes? The platform Grammarly now has many more WP:Reliable sources than the current article references. Should I simply make my suggested changes on the current page? Sincerely, GeorgeLouis (talk) 03:51, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Consensus can change: that article was deleted because it was found to lack sufficient independent reliable third-party sources covering the topic in detail. If that has changed then you should feel free to work on the text -- in fact I'd welcome it if you would -- currently it's pretty much an ad.
Amalthea 07:11, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
... someone else apparently found that the sources that were used in the article were insufficient. If you want to make sure before you work on an article you may want to your sources in a deletion review first. Amalthea 12:52, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

To Mr. Amalthea

Liebe Herr Amalthea,

vielen dank for your assistance and congratulations for your immediate response.

I would like to point out four more pages that I have just seen.

The links for them are the following :

http://wiki.verkata.com/en/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive679#Panagiotis_Xenos-Kokoletsis.27s_clueless_edit-warring_redux

http://www.mashpedia.com/User_talk:Theresa_knott

http://www.zensquared.com/email/index.php?q=aGh0dHA6Ly9lbi53aWtpcGVkaWEub3JnL3dpa2kvU3BlY2lhbDpDb250cmlidXRpb25zL1RoZXJlc2Ffa25vdHQ=&hl=3ed

http://www.zensquared.com/email/index.php?q=aGh0dHA6Ly9lbi53aWtpcGVkaWEub3JnL3cvaW5kZXgucGhwP3RpdGxlPVdpa2lwZWRpYTpBZG1pbmlzdHJhdG9ycyUyN19ub3RpY2Vib2FyZC9JbmNpZGVudHMmYW1wO29sZGlkPTQxNzk4Mzg1NQ==#User:Panagiotis_Xenos-Kokoletsis


Conserning this japanese page, I would highly appreciate it if you can tell me how to contact the person that owns it in order to ask him to delete it.


I am looking forward for your reply — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.117.76.138 (talk • contribs) 09:04, 26 April 2013‎ (UTC)

Hmm, those are a problem. We here take care that user discussions are marked so that they won't be indexed by search engines, but Wikipedia mirrors don't apparently take as much care. We have no direct control over any of them, we do not even know who mirrors Wikipedia content and for what purpose. You'll have to find try and find out who is responsible for those sites directly and ask them to help you out, e.g. by configuring their site properly.
I'll see what I can do for you on our end, but I don't expect you'll be able to purge all mentions of your name from the Internet.
Amalthea 12:24, 26 April 2013 (UTC)


Hello Herr Amalthea.

Please excuse me for this small delay in replying. I delayed to reply because I was travelling since yesterday evening. I am afraid that I do not understand what you mentioned about the mirror pages. Could you give me a few tips of how to find out who are the owners of these pages? If you think that my knowledge and comprehension on I.T. is not sufficient enough to ask them to delete them, could you please do it?

The ones that I am mostly interested are :

http://wiki.verkata.com/en/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive679#Panagiotis_Xenos-Kokoletsis.27s_clueless_edit-warring_redux and

http://wpedia.goo.ne.jp/enwiki/User_talk:Panagiotis_Xenos-Kokoletsis .


I am looking forward for your reply — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.78.214.169 (talk) 23:49, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

No, I don't want to do that for you. Go to the respective websites and click around until you find contact information, it's not difficult. On the verkata page it took me 10 seconds to find their contact address. But like I said before, I don't expect you'll be able to purge all mentions of the name from the internet. Amalthea 07:26, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Can I just say....

Can I just say a little something, but I know it will make no difference what so ever. Can I just say, I think its terrible that you remove some of my good edits (which most of the time are supported by references) and this information is true. For example, lets look at the The Macdonald Brothers. There is self-sufficient evidence that the band have no changed their names to The Macs, so why undo my edit and give false information to Wikipedia users?

I know this post will make no difference, cause watch this, ill get blocked again and no doubt you will remove this post, but do as you please, because at the end of the way, I am replacing out-of-date information and updating it with support, and you choose to revert back to old information which is misleading readers. Think about it. Good day. 90.222.118.177 (talk) 16:50, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

I used to invest more time in the past, trying to separate useful changes from you pushing your Scottish independence agenda, but that didn't seem have any effect.
If you stop making edits of the latter kind, i.e. stop with damaging edits, I won't even notice you and we won't need to worry about good edits getting undone.
Amalthea 17:00, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
... and I still remember that you claimed an intention to stop doing that kind of edits last year. Amalthea 17:03, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
Well, lets get one thing clear, I don't support Scottish independence what-so-ever. However, on the Scottish Government page, I don't see the need for the United Kingdom to be mentioned in the article in the Headquarters section, the same with the SNP? I see this as a way of trying to wind up the Scots and nationalists, so yes your going to get people converting it, however, United Kingdom is not added into say Welsh Government HQ? Your correct, I did pledge to stop, and I believe I have. If you look at my recent edits, they have been in good faith and supported by references. In reference to, what you call "Scottish independence agenda", this is simply to do with it seems every Scottish article has Scotland's place diminished, such as Texas, no mention of Scotland in Origin, same with Travis and Susan Boyle? I hope we can come to a conclusion, as I am only trying to make things more readable and simple for readers! 90.222.118.177 (talk) 17:10, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
You did not stop (e.g. 1 2), and your motivation is pretty obvious from edits like these -- whether it's just petty nationalism or something else is not important, your motivation is not the improvement of the encyclopedia.
The community considers your contributions a net negative for the encyclopedia and has banned you. If you want to come to a conclusion that includes you making welcomed contributions again, you need to get yourself unbanned first. You know how.
Amalthea 17:26, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
Well, I don't see how trying to add Scotland back into Susan Boyle, Texas or Travis etc is seen as "petty nationalism". I'll tell you what, if Scotland is allowed to be placed back into these articles, then I'd be happy, and United Kingdom atleast removed from the Scottish Government, because I see no real reason for it being there, other than to wide some people up. So, what your saying is i'll become unblocked if I stop these edits or make good edits? And when will this be? 90.222.118.177 (talk) 17:29, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
And in regards to the Robert Burns edit, I done that simply because Robert Burns is associated with Scotland, not the entire UK, just like Shakespeare with England and not Britain, and United Kingdom is not added into the Shakespeare article but has been to Robert Burns only lately. So I think the nationalism argument can also be turned on its head here, as those people making these edits may be guilty of it too....90.222.118.177 (talk) 17:31, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
Regarding UK nationalities: In my experience, you see "Scotland, UK", you remove "UK". You see "England", you add "UK". I could find scores of diffs showing that pattern, and never the reverse. And again, you conceded that you did that last October (and claimed you'd stop).
Regarding an unblock, you know what needs to happen before lifting the ban will be considered, you said it yourself last October in the thread you named "Apology" when you pledged to stop editing for six months. I believe you managed one week, and by now I think you are either way too addicted or way too immature to ever manage six months.
What I implied above was: If nobody notices your edits, nobody will revert them. Stay away from any Scotland related articles, don't make edits related to UK nationalities, make the encyclopedia better instead of making Scotland appear better, respect the community, and you'll have no problems. But as long as you are banned and I notice you, I'll revert you (and my watchlist if full of Scotland related articles by now).
Amalthea 18:00, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
So even if my edits are in good faith and are 100% true, like the Macdonald Brothers change of name, you will revert it back? That makes no sense. 90.222.118.177 (talk) 18:03, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
To quote an old colleague: banned means banned. Amalthea 18:54, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

User talk:Daufer

Thank you for your deft lifting of my block of this user. Regards.--Bbb23 (talk) 20:15, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

... and I should have of course discussed it with you first, but I was hoping you wouldn't mind the largely symbolic unblock under the circumstances. :) Amalthea 20:16, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
You were right. This is one of those relatively rare cases where discussion with the blocking admin was unnecessary. It's great when people explain what they do, and your explanation was clear and admirably concise.--Bbb23 (talk) 20:21, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
Yuk, rereading that I'd say my grammar and sentence structure was even more off than usual. :) Amalthea 20:38, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
Perhaps, but I'm a stickler for grammar and punctuation, and the fact that I still found it lucid meant that it communicated your points so well that I didn't care. So there!--Bbb23 (talk) 21:01, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

SPI comments

I am a bit concerned with your recent comments on SPI pages, as you seem to be advocating that the CUs will explicitly disclose the connection between accounts and IP addresses, when I know for a fact that the vast majority will not. Please also read the comments I've left on my talk page. --Rschen7754 19:06, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

My apologies for not having responded on your talk page yet. :) I've seen your reply, it's still open in a tab, and your response was valuable to me, but I'm not yet quite sure where to go from there.
But I'll ignore that for the moment and just respond to what you wrote above, that will be wordy enough. ;) I believe the comments of mine you're referring to are these: 1 2 3. I stand by these remarks, but I don't think I'm advocating anything there: I'm trying to correct statements that I believe are misconceptions, at least as I've read them. It is not true that CU policy/privacy policy forbid making a connection between a sufficiently disruptive account and its IP public. It is certainly not true that even a check is impossible. And I don't think our instructions say so, as was claimed once. To support that:
  • Privacy policy: Where the user has been vandalizing articles or persistently behaving in a disruptive way, data may be released to assist in the targeting of IP blocks
  • CU policy: a user who is disruptive and needs to be addressed as such may have to accept the price of disruption is their IP becomes linked to their account
  • CU policy: Users who engage in problematic conduct to the point that requests for administrative action or blocking are raised and considered valid for CheckUser usage, and where CheckUser then determines the user probably has engaged in such conduct, must expect the protection of the project is given a higher priority than the protection of those who knowingly breach its policies on editorial conduct, if the two conflict or there is a problematic editing history
  • AUSC clarification: Those circumstances can include editors logging out to behave disruptively
I hope I've never made it appear that CUs would happily and explicitly publicize a problem user's IP at a whim, that would not have been my intention. Making private information public must be avoided wherever possible -- but the project comes first. If it is necessary, the goal should still be to be as circumspect as reasonably possible, almost always will the connection only be an implicit one.
My main concern is that I've seen a number of SPI cases where CU was requested and then summarily declined only because all suspected sock edits listed by the filer were by anon accounts. That has not been standard practice the last time I was active at SPI, and I don't think it's a change for the better, for several reasons.
However, the reasoning I read in the reply on your talk page brought up two points to explain the status quo, and that's where I'm not yet sure how to resolve this. And of course I'm not sure whether I should even consider proposing a workflow change here, who knows how long my burst of activity at SPI lasts, if the current system works for everyone else then who am I wanting to change it? :)
Amalthea 21:09, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
However, also from the privacy policy: "As a general principle, the access to, and retention of, personally identifiable data in all projects should be minimal and should be used only internally to serve the well-being of the projects." In virtually all of these cases, CU is not necessary, either because the behavior can be used to determine a connection, or because the IP is obviously dynamic / stale and CU would be worthless.
I am aware of quite a few instances where a CU was done connecting a named account and an IP address. However, the results were never disclosed onwiki, and the specific scenarios were both arb-related and when there were no other alternatives. I am also aware that sometimes CUs will block IPs. However, the CUs will only say something like  IP blocked, and some will go to substantial lengths to protect the IP address connection (see User talk:DeltaQuad/Archives/2013/March#Checkuserblock). In my opinion, when someone requests for a CU connecting names to IPs explicitly, that puts us in an awkward position as we cannot say yes or no, leaving the CUs to no No comment with respect to IP address(es).
Finally, I am a bit concerned that these statements appear to be made on behalf of the CU team, when I am fairly positive that several CUs do not agree with this line of reasoning. As a member of the clerk team, I think this sends a mixed and confusing message to the clerks, who have to fulfill expectations that vary depending on whichever CU picks up the SPI, and makes it difficult for us to have trainees when we have to train them to varying standards; it also affects our effectiveness as a team to have such conflicting messages. Also, I think this sends a mixed and confusing message to those who file reports at SPI, and encourages people to file more reports explicitly asking for these sorts of CUs to be done.
Thus I personally don't think that leaving comments at various SPIs is particularly effective, and is causing more harm than good. I don't hold CU, but this seems like something that needs to be discussed among the CUs rather than putting the clerks into the middle of this. --Rschen7754 22:23, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
Hi guys, what Deskana says below is true. I would also like to note that I have disclosed explicitly (very very rarely) the IP address of a given sockmaster. Rschen, if you ever feel an IP needs to be checked, please endorse it, don't hold back. Worse we can do is say no, but we can also say "we have dealt with it" and move on from there without disclosing the connection. It is the general status quo that we decline it with that text, and maybe that should be changed. I don't know. I just don't want to give off the impression that we are disclosing IPs freely, and it's why I use a similar statement, though I try to apply it just to that SPI and not in general. But don't worry about endorsing cases that would disclose an IP, if the check is needed. We'll find our way around it. I endorsed at least one in my day against one of our heavy sockmasters...but I'd have to look to find it. Anyway, hope this helps. -- DQ (ʞlɐʇ) 00:23, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

You can disclose a connection between an IP and an account, but you almost always shouldn't (especially on an SPI case). This has zero bearing on the applicability of a check, of course. That's the facts of the situation. --(ʞɿɐʇ) ɐuɐʞsǝp 22:30, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

First, I'd like to let the question of when and in what way it is acceptable to have private details made public rest for a bit: I think our interpretations of policy are actually much more aligned than it may seem, except maybe in nuances. I'm having cases in mind like this, where an editor deliberately logged out to continue behavior he was blocked for, some editor already picked up the connection and opened a case, and I range block myself and directly without any smoke and mirrors. In my opinion that is OK. If others disagree then I need indeed urgently speak with the other CUs.
Instead, I want to focus on our case workflow, cause that's really what had me unsatisfied (and really just me, I'm not speaking for anyone else). At the moment, I'd tend to say that we should do away with anyone endorsing CU requests. This is based on my experience over the last days and the feedback you wrote, Rschen:
  • What SPI lacks most is people working cases. Much more cases are marked as open or checked than endorsed.
  • If anyone handling a case thinks CU is not necessary then good -- but it would be much much more useful if he then went on and handled the case, either by taking the appropriate action in clear cases, or throwing it out for lack of evidence.
  • If a case is marked as declined, it naturally is less likely to be looked at by a CU, the person who is in a significantly better position to decide whether CU could be useful and appropriate because:
    • If you don't have practice with CU, it's hard to really get a feel for what information is useful and what isn't. Stale IPs can be useful information. Dynamic IPs can absolutely be useful information. Whether a check is appropriate is a whole different question.
    • Clerks don't get consistent, truthful, transparent feedback from CUs: Even if a CU says 'no comment on IP', he still will often have used the information given. That's not awkward. If all socks are IPs, it may still be appropriate for a CU to look into it even if he can't comment on it publicly and must disguise any action that is taken. Without that feedback, a clerk can't possibly draw conclusions from that for the future.
    • Clerks don't want to endorse a CUrequest and then have it overturned by a CU. That's only natural ("I am very reluctant to 'endorse' [...] a check that may [...] be subsequently declined by 75%+ of CUs"), but I'm worried that since the negative feedback of an overturned endorse has a much stronger effect, they will much rather err on declining a request. It's an impossible situation for clerks.
However, and that's the counter point I also read from your feedback: CUs have very different workflows and expectations. I actually thought of you there, Deskana: I think you focus much more on cases flagged as CUrequest/endorsed than I do, and you certainly have much stricter requirements of the prepared evidence than me: I almost always dig through contributions myself anyway to convince myself of sufficient evidence and find further correlation (which may be why I'm getting sick of SPI so quickly while you help there much more consistently :)). I don't know if those approaches can be unified.
Or if any of this makes sense at all. I'm well aware that I'm pondering a change to a system that has been in place for years while I'm back working it since five days: I don't know whether I should class my impression as a fresh perspective or ignorance of the system, which is why like I said I'm not sure where to go from here. Any thoughts are welcome. :)
Amalthea 00:23, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
I've talked to a few of the CUs and apparently there are things that can be done with named accounts and IP addresses that I was not aware of, and I apologize for any misunderstanding. I will be taking a closer look at such cases - I still expect to decline most of them, but just in case. But the clerks are definitely not on the same page about this.
I'd largely have to agree about your third point regarding clerk declines; even worse, once something gets declined, it usually sits unnoticed for up to a month before someone (usually me) finally picks it up and deals with it. I do think that something needs to be done about that, but I'm not exactly sure what.
I was going to say more I think, but as I've left this window open for an hour or so I think I'll leave it at that, though overall I'd have to agree that more communication between the CUs and clerks is always good. Incidentally, I don't think a rangeblock is as big of a problem - I see stewards do it all the time, and even reveal spambot IPs - but spambots are not people of course. --Rschen7754 04:16, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Page protection at Superpower article and edit warring

The IP is deliberately going against the consensus agreed upon by several editors - therefore making it impossible to make the appropriate changes to the article. The IP will not even acknowledge the consensus and reverts any edits made by other editors. This is deliberate POV pushing by the IP. So what are we to do? Throw away the consensus reached by several editors just because one IP doesn't like it? Also, why did you protect the article whith the current unsupported revision online - are you ignoring the agreed upon consensus too? Antiochus the Great (talk) 23:33, 30 April 2013 (UTC)


Amalthea - Ip user "Antiochus the Great" has been abusing the superpowers article by inserting information referring on consensus on potential superpowers and claiming he can change the content under superpowers but there is no consensus prior to the unconstructive edits by Antiochus the Great. Antiochus the Great has been on consistent war edits to say there is consensus but there is no consensus on that discussion on superpowers by saying this[12] as prior there has been no open discussion anything on the superpowers talks page since March 13, 2013 copy of history here of showing no consensus [13] and here showing that user talk keeps throwing out this section completely[14], leaving not one word or source from the original context of the proir discussion of this article. Antiochus the Great is blaming me for saying I am refusing to acknowledge consensus and blaming I am continuing to repeat restore content. First there is no consensus, none under Superpowers and second restoring when Ip user Antiochus the Great reverting back his content saying this was discussed but there is no discussion of it under Superpowers. Why didn't Ip user Antiochus the Great start a discussion under Superpowers talk? But to say there is consensus when there is clearly nothing to defend that claim. Third, to say "battleground mentality and initial efforts made my me and other editors involved in the consensus" again where. And to bring up something I was never involved in such as consensus here, I never opened any discussion there nor do I plan to. So there's no claim there.
Personally I am clued and I think Ip user Antiochus the Great is trying to make rules above law when making a consensus and forcing the content without prior knowledge (such as not using the same talk pages from the original articles you wish to change or etc). That's like an example if I could go over "US Marines talks page" for example and had a discussion about the "US Army" and consensus about them under the "Marine's[15] talk's page" instead then a 4 days later I came over and changed everything on the "US Army article"[16] claiming people were talking about it under the "US Marines talks page. That is precisely what is going on here but more so Ip user Antiochus the Great is not clear on his consensus and the content in question is not specifically stating the content is going to be written or consensus on to look like. He has provided no copy & paste history of discussions facts and I think that is really asserting the rules over rules here. I think it is forceful and disruptive to the editors to say nothing to the article editors of the very article you want to change; he hasn't done that where it needs to be said & done. I disagree with that and personally feel their is an nationality discrimination on color and authority by talk on his remarks made on Russian culture but I am not going to start anything on that nature. The article needs peaceful consensus without disruptive edits from talk and should be on superpowers article if there consensus of updating, it should be done in the very place of the article lays, is it's talk's page not another article talk page. Please maybe set a rule over this article to set that Ip user Antiochus the Great to calm down and work this out. He is really taking this matter over the edge and that is not the way the article should be handled.--103.22.129.249 (talk) 23:46, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
I'm really not the right person for you to talk to. I would recommend keeping it at ANI as long as the thread is open, and if that yields no useful result, use WP:Dispute resolution, please.
Regarding the protected version, the version that ends up being protected during an edit war is, by definition, the wrong version, depending on who you ask. If a moment's glance at the 140k discussion describing the supposed consensus could have made it clear whether the 4.5k diff should be in or out I could have put thought into which version was the desirable, but alas, that was not so (which is exactly why this dispute is still ongoing, I assume), no WP:BLP or copyright violation was apparent in the diff to sway me, so by tradition the latest version at the time of protection will "win", for now. Wikipedia will survive the wrong version for a few days.
Amalthea 00:33, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
You are presently the only Admin to respond, making you the only person to talk to at the moment.
The discussion holding the consensus was closed and a summary of the consensus was included when the closed discussion template was added. However this anonymous IP then decided to re-open the discussion so now a clear understanding of the decisions made during the consensus is not easy to assitain. BTW, is the IP allowed to re-open a closed discussion holding a consensus?
As for the latest revision "winning" at the time of protection, is that really proper? I'll take a quote from an editor involved in reaching the consensus; "I find it quite outrageous that the page has been protected with the version supported by a clearly trolling IP editor, rather than that supported by several long-standing editors." David (talk) 08:03, 1 May 2013 (UTC). Also if you take a look at the revision history at the Superpower article you will see that User:Mrodowicz, User:Joaquin008, User:Dpaajones and my self reverted changes that were made to restore the unsupported revision as per consensus. I urge you to reconsider the version to be displayed at the Superpower article. A revision supported by consensus and one that several editors have actively tried to preserve? Or the current revision at the time of protection supported only by an anonymous IP?
Surely you can see that if 4 editors revert the unsupported version then there must be a consensus behind it? Otherwise ill start editing Wikipedia as an IP, because it appears as an IP we can override any consensus and re-open any closed discussions we want too. Even Admins don't have that power.Antiochus the Great (talk) 22:08, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
How obvious does sock puppetry have to be? David (talk) 17:41, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Recent actions on blocked user

User Ottoniel is removing tags by his own, that I think shouldn't be removed, according to WP:BLANKING. He is trying himself to remove his own block with a sort of tag tries, check Revision history. Thanks for reviewing, Osplace 01:27, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the note, Kww has already handled it. Sorry for the late reply. :/ Amalthea2 (talk) 13:21, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Cyberoam

Hello Amalthea,

I am glad you have reviewed my submission on Cyberoam on Wikipedia.

Currently the page is pulled down and the reasons cited include copyright infringement and blatant advertising.

As far as the copyright infringement is concerned the source link you have cited is a Cyberoam partner in Bangalore who has duplicated my wiki content on to his website. We don’t mind giving a reference to the related website.

But with regard to the second reason of blatant advertising I would like to know the exact reasons for the same. Could you help us understand this clause by identify the portions of the text i submitted, enabling me to avoid the repetition of the same mistake.

I hope you will co-operate and help me improve my understanding about wiki pages enabling me to contribute to Wikipedia more.

Will await your reply eagerly.

Regards.

Pete Mahen (talk) 09:16, 6 May 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pete Mahen (talk • contribs) 12:38, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Regarding advertising, it is almost never appropriate to take text written for a company homepage and use it as its encyclopedic entry here. On your homepage, you want to highlight strengths and products of your companies, you use language to promote yourself. Here, we want to have a neutral description of the company.
Could you please have a look at our FAQ for organizations, Wikipedia:FAQ/Organizations? I think it will have answers to most of your questions, if not please feel free to ask further questions here.
Amalthea2 (talk) 13:28, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Bot

I think it died again. :( --Rschen7754 11:06, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Mmh, apparently I can't connect via https anymore: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#https:// -- I'll switch it. Thanks! Amalthea2 (talk) 13:11, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Amiram Goldblum

There are growing concerns that Amiram Goldblum is himself editing the article about him. He has two accounts: User:Rastiniak and User:רסטיניאק. Take a look at the this sockpuppet investigation. Also, read the following discussion. רסטיניאק has removed the POV tag from the article twice so far: 1 and 2. While I don't find this subject particularly interesting, I'm alarmed by the fact that Goldblum is fighting tooth and nail to get users who question the neutrality of his article to get blocked. I request you to help us determine whether the two accounts indeed belong to Goldblum. Nataev (talk) 11:25, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Please note that Nataev (talk · contribs) is posting this item on the talk pages of > a dozen admins. It might be instructive to investigate more deeply via his contribs as to why he is doing this -- I suggest that it has to do with his right-wing (Israeli) sympathies and his desire to smear Goldblum for being a leftist (on which [17]). Nomoskedasticity (talk) 11:37, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
Here we go again. This is the first time I have asked for help from a user who has access to CheckUser. Now Nomoskedasticity himself is calling me names. I don't know much about left-right politics. I have no interest about subjects related to Israel either. My sole problem is that Amiram Goldblum has written the entire article about himself. If doing so is acceptable on Wikipedia, then I have no problems with it. Nataev (talk) 11:43, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

You've got mail

Please check it.—Kww(talk) 17:15, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Verkata Mirror Page Issue

Dear Mr. Amalthea,

I have contacted you a few weeks ago conserning the removal of my name from some Wikipedia pages.

First of all I would like to thank you for your advices. I have followed your instructions and all of them but one, responded and removed the pages from their Websites.

There is this Website though, that I have contacted three times already and I have not received a reply and as you can understand they have not removed the pages either.

I am referring to the following page : http://wiki.verkata.com/en/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive679 .

Could you please recommend a solution for this issue?




I am looking forward for your reply — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.232.246.156 (talk) 08:59, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Continued problems from TJ Spyke

Hi Amalthea, I mentioned you in this AN/I thread as an admin I've contacted regarding TJ Spyke's unwillingness/inability to follow WP:R2D/NOTBROKEN. This is just a courtesy note. Feel free to weigh in if you wish. -Thibbs (talk) 13:58, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Thibbs, sorry I was absent during the time. Having to indef block for such a silly issue is absurd, but ... Amalthea 10:27, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free media (File:Planetary Duality.jpg)

Thanks for uploading File:Planetary Duality.jpg. The media description page currently specifies that it is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, it is currently orphaned, meaning that it is not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the media was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that will be useful. However, please note that media for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

If you have uploaded other unlicensed media, please check whether they're used in any articles or not. You can find a list of 'file' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "File" from the dropdown box. Note that all non-free media not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Hazard-Bot (talk) 04:20, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, bot. Amalthea 10:23, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Main Page history/2013 June 23

Your bot created Main Page history/2013 June 23. I have moved it to Wikipedia:Main Page history/2013 June 23, where I think it should have been. It seems to be a one-off error, no idea what happened there, but perhaps you can take a look? Fram (talk) 10:21, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Oops. Bot server went out over the weekend so I started things at home, and (without access to the latest codebase) had to run what I had available; The main page history script was apparently out of date. Thanks for fixing it! Amalthea 13:22, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Block evading user

Hi Amalthea,

I came across the user Claus Michael2 (talk · contribs) who states on their userpage that you blocked their old account for reasons unknown. The user appears to be using their main space for hosting make-believe contests as if it were a social media blog. Just thought I'd do the right thing and inform you, in case there is block evasion going on here. Regards, Wesley♦Mouse 11:04, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

I was about to notify you of the same thing. Not sure who this, but it is rather suspicious. CT Cooper · talk 19:54, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
Thanks everyone for handling it! Goes back to a 2011 ANI-thread you started, Wesley. Amalthea 11:04, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Billy Hathorn

Why did you unblock User:Billy Hathorn back in April? [18] Novaseminary (talk) 03:02, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

You indicated the reason as "ineffective", but is that a valid reason for unblocking people who continue to sockpuppet; if it were, why would we ever bock for sockpuppettry in the first place-- see User talk:Cypresslogs391  ? I see the note you left for Ironholds, but there is the same inadequate sourcing. See the contributions for User:Cypresslogs391. The article Rush Wimberly is sourced to USgenwebs , but the source is the book copied there. This is the same problem as before, I think this needs a discussion at AN/I, perhaps you will start one yourself. DGG ( talk ) 00:16, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
For what it is worth, I asked because MilestogoKY3, the creator of Ben M. Bogard which was speedy deleted as a copyvio, seemed to edit like Billy Hathorn. And the deleted Bogard article was also edited by an IP with an edit history that seemed similar. I asked the editor at User_talk:MilestogoKY3#Billy_Hathorn whether s/he was Billy Hathorn. No response yet. Novaseminary (talk) 04:16, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
Brief discussion was at User talk:Amalthea/Archive 7#I believe Billy Hathorn is back. The situation we had was: The original account was blocked, but the extremely active editor kept making edits with so many accounts and IP ranges that he was not only unstoppable but also untrackable. From time to time I tried reverting his changes and deleting his new pages where, but that always took a huge amount of time and didn't seem to deter him.
I see that he is editing with the original account again since yesterday. Personally I think this is an improvement: up until then all we effectively accomplished was having the problem edits obfuscated; now we can at least track them, check them, and try and educate him again.
If anyone has a more constructive way then I'm all ears and, of course and as always, I'm very open to community discussion.
Sorry for the late reply. Amalthea 13:48, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
So, we've unblocked someone for socking effectively... brilliant, let's just tell that to other prospective sockmasters. Was this discussed in a wider forum? Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 07:16, 26 June 2013 (UTC)
... while before the unblock (and his return to the account), we've effectively found a great way to sweep a known problem under the rug.
In August/September 2012, during a large effort to discourage him from ongoing socking, I've spent many hours trying to find all anon edits that could not simply be reverted to add them to a new CCI subpage: 1500 anon edits from 20 ranges edits in three months, and I knew we did not find all accounts and ranges. Nobody has any idea how big the iceberg is, and I don't see a way of measuring it.
As I've said, I'm all ears for better solutions, but from what I can see, in this particular case tracking and hopefully educating him is the only way I can see that will reduce the problem.
Amalthea 09:52, 26 June 2013 (UTC)
Sorry to step in, but a quick question - if there's a problem with his new additions, did you want me to raise it with you to follow up, or would you rather I raised them directly? I'm happy to go either way.- Bilby (talk) 05:13, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
No reason to be sorry, and please do talk to him directly: As long as we keep it constructive and don't gang up on him too much I'm very glad for any help!
Currently, it seems he still writes off deleted articles as isolated problems and doesn't see that this is a systemic problem with his approach to writing. To get there I think we need to point out specific recent examples from his edits to a range of articles.
Thanks & cheers (and congrats to the great result in your RfA!), Amalthea 07:21, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
Amalthea, someone deleted Rush Wimberly, Gil Dozier, and Sidney McCrory. Can you get these restored? Thanks, Billy Hathorn (talk) 16:27, 9 July 2013 (UTC)
You were evading your ban when you made them, so absolutely not. Wizardman 17:17, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Iterate

Template:Iterate has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 22:38, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Disruptive IP editor

Hi. I saw that you just blocked 183.171.177.144 (talk · contribs · WHOIS). I just thought you might want to know that they previously posted on my talk page as 183.171.177.205 (talk · contribs · 183.171.177.205 WHOIS). Same /24, same fractured use of language. For what it's worth, they seem to be from Malaysia. -- The Anome (talk) 17:27, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Anon edits from that range seem generally ok, and he's stopped his excessive cross-posting, so I'd say we're ok for now. Didn't seem interested in a constructive discussion though. :/ Amalthea 17:49, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Special:Contributions/Juror5

Hi Amalthea the user above should be (again) Brunodam I've also opened a local SPI Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Brunodam, see you! --Vituzzu (talk) 18:45, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Paraphrasing

Moved to User talk:Billy Hathorn § Status

Ben M. Bogard

Amalthea, the Ben M. Bogard article has been extensively revised and returned to the board. Thanks, Billy Hathorn (talk) 01:19, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Hey, thanks

Thanks for keeping an eye on my talk page :). Hope all is well, –xenotalk 21:40, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Wasn't around much myself, but you're very welcome. Nice to have you back, xeno! :) Amalthea 09:27, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Userhighlighter bug

Hi. Just a quick bug-report, that User:Amalthea/userhighlighter.js isn't working correctly for Rannpháirtí anaithnid. Hope that helps. –Quiddity (talk) 18:44, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the report, Quiddity! Fixed a missing decoding so that it works on his signature now, but the matching logic should really be rewritten from scratch at some point. The noping-wrapped link above still doesn't work, for example, and the script doesn't appear to work on your signature either, but that may have a different cause …. :) Cheers, Amalthea 09:47, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
Haha! As if I don't have enough projects on the go already! Thanks for the hint though, and maybe in some future year. :) –Quiddity (talk) 20:29, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

TFD nomination you might be interested in

Hi Amalthea, you may be interested in this TFD; see my comment there. Graham87 05:02, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! Took me a bit to figure out how I related to that, I completely forgot about that, but seems to have worked out the way I would've liked. :) Cheers, Amalthea 09:52, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Gunmetal Angel

Gunmetal Angel seems to be back as several IP addresses. An SPI has been opened. Since you had been involved in his most recent SPI's (late last year), I thought you might be interested in taking a look:[19]. Ta, -- Winkelvi ● ✉ ✓ 18:01, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. I don't think I would have had additional information and am happy to see it seems to have been resolved quickly anyway. Cheers, Amalthea 09:55, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

What on earth is going on with thise IPs?

It's painfully obvious from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:AbuseLog&wpSearchFilter=526 that these IPs are all the same user:

They are scattered all over the world, but look to be some kind of bot. Anything you can see that would help me be proactive?—Kww(talk) 16:12, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

The list has grown to be enormous: see WP:ANI#Mass rollbacks required.—Kww(talk) 17:14, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
Ok, an seems pretty clear by now what editor is responsible here. Amalthea 10:02, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Marcel Reich-Ranicki

Hi, Amalthea: I didn't intentionally overwrite your edits. Checking the edit history it seems your editing ended about 6 seconds before mine did. That's cutting it close but apparently not too close. I didn't get any edit conflict message, so no offense intended. I'll get back to tweaking. Yours, Quis separabit? 01:20, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Odd. Is it possible that you edited an old version?
But no worries, I didn't think you were reverting me on purpose; it happens with busy articles, and my part was probably easier to restore anyway. :) Amalthea 08:21, 19 September 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for your work with the German references on Marcel Reich-Ranicki LukeSurl t c 08:02, 19 September 2013 (UTC)
Thanks, and right back at you: You brought it to the point where I only needed to fill in the refs, that was the harder part! :) Amalthea 08:21, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

List of Nobel laureates

Hello, I'm Einsbor from Polish Wiki. I'm working on List of Nobel laureates in pl Wiki, and I saw little mistake here: in the description of second photo there are two red links. I can't fixed that becouse I am not autoconfirmed. It should be David J. Wineland instead of David J.Wineland and Brian Kobilka instead of Brian K. Kobilka. Can you change this if you'll find free time? Thanks in advance, Einsbor (talk) 12:35, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Certainly, checkY done. I've also marked your account as "confirmed" so that you should now be able to edit that page yourself in case you spot further errors.
Cheers, Amalthea 14:19, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

ReverbNation blacklist

Reference your comments to MuZemike, if you believe that reverbnation.com should be un-blacklisted please post here in the Proposed removals section of the Spam-blacklist. 76.254.21.49 (talk) 20:21, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Ah, I didn't know there was already a de-blacklisting proposal. I've actually removed it earlier today after researching the situation per WP:BLACKLIST, and am now working through all links since it still is almost always an inappropriate external link for us per WP:EL. Thanks for letting me know, I'll comment there right away. Amalthea 20:27, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

"Checkuser needed" template

It's come to my attention that no one is monitoring Category:Requests for checkuser anymore, which makes {{checkuser needed}} useless. Think any of your bots could do something to help with that?—Kww(talk) 17:05, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't see why not. It doesn't /really/ fit to place them on the SPI case page, but that would be the place to get the attention: A list of pages in the category and timestamp when they were placed there. Probably also a list of quick CU requests (unless transcluded at wp:SPI). I'll see to it.
Cheers, Amalthea 10:07, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
Ok, Kww, pages in the category are now listed in the table, as well as any open quick CU requests -- Timotheus Canens actually requested that one half a year ago at User talk:Amalthea/Archive 7#A small extension to the SPI clerk bot. Sorry it took so long.
Amalthea 12:36, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

SPI/MyVoiceIsHeard

I was asking for a CU to see if there are other socks, and if there are other underlying IPs. Basically just housekeeping to flush out probable other socks. I missed your comment otherwise I would have commented prior to it being closed. Werieth (talk) 16:15, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

I think I got the timeline wrong when I looked at the edits and blocks so I see why you requested CU now, sorry; with the autoblock from Johnmaroun's it was probably handled though. The block on the master account has expired since, if he becomes active again and continues the disruption please don't hesitate to re-open and/or notify me. Amalthea 09:03, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Update

I updated the bot per your specifications. It should be functioning a lot better now. —cyberpower ChatOffline 20:13, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Those? Glad to hear that! I noticed a false negative though on Sozin's Comet: The Final Battle, that examiner link is still on the page and still blacklisted. Amalthea 08:39, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks and a question

Hello! I had a look at that script and decided that it will be better to leave this sort of thing to the experts! Thanks very much.

I see that you also have done work at the whitelist, and I have a question that I could not find an answer to on that page. If a page is whitelisted is it whitelisted for the whole encyclopedia or just the specified page? I noticed, for example that the blacklisted nambla.org website nambla is blacklisted, though presumably it might be an appropriate link on the NAMBLA wikipedia page. --Slp1 (talk) 16:19, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi,
the bad image list allows to specify exempt pages, but the blacklist/whitelist system for external links sadly does not, a link can only be whitelisted for the whole site. I've only helped there recently so I'm really not an expert as to how things are usually done there, but as far as I can tell we always whitelist the home page of a site if the associated topic has an article here and the home page itself wasn't spammed.
I was about to do just that for Nambla (and I know and affirm you have not asked for this) until I realized what Nambla is; with this site we'll need to go through the official motions with a section at Mediawiki talk:Spam-whitelist, to make sure we show that this is done procedurally and also to get a few more eyes/opinions: The domain wasn't spammed but explicitly blacklisted for the content. Do you want to start a section there or shall I?
Cheers, Amalthea 20:40, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the information and that's exactly what I was afraid of hearing - I did know why it was blacklisted... that by whitelisting the page that link can be used elsewhere. I think that is another reason why there is a problem with this bot, and why it can be dangerous to make people whitelist these links. It is actually better to remain with status quo: for the link to remain on that one page as it is, but that it continue to be blacklisted, and not whitelisted at all. Slp1 (talk) 20:55, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Addendum... it actually turns out that that case is somewhat moot because the blacklisted links were deleted by another editor. But I know of another similar one the Canadian Children's Rights Council which was blacklisted for spamming not only about itself but also links to copyright violating (and altered!) newspaper articles. Again, I would be reluctant to request a whitelist that allowed it to be used elsewhere but the link to the organization's website should probably be on their page. Slp1 (talk) 21:05, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
TODO: Give Slp1 a proper answer tomorrow, when it's not past midnight. :) Amalthea 22:08, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Sorry for not getting back as promised, Slp1. I was also expecting Tool Labs requests to be processed in a timely manner, but that is evidently not the case, so I haven't really started to formulate a specification of the bot task as I imagine it.
My idea to address your concern is to (technically) whitelist such a home page, but soft-blacklist it by telling the bot which pages the whitelist entry is supposed to be valid for. If such a whitelisted link is then found to be used on any other page it can be reported the same way blacklisted links are.
Amalthea 11:01, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
Hi.. I've been roaming the real world recently, and out of WP life. I see that Cyberpower is taking a break, which I am sure is a good idea, though I worry what that means practically to the discussion, the pages tagged, changes to the bot etc.
I am really lacking in knowledge about technical things, but personally, I would maintain the blacklisting from the WP angle, but allow some sort of whitelisting notification to the bot that human editors had decided that a particular link was okay on that particular page. In other words, I think the onus should be on bot to understand exceptions, rather than WP to change blacklisting for the bot. My reasoning is that that might be safer if anything happens to the bot or its operator/management in the longer term. But maybe that's not somethin to be concerned about? I really don't know....
Is there anything we can or should do while Cyberpower is on break? Maybe s/he is working with you behind the scenes? Slp1 (talk) 00:26, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

User:Theopolisme/Scripts/adminhighlighter

Hi, I happened to notice "or rather, a complete rewrite, doesn't appear to match everything correctly" in User:Amalthea/userhighlighter.js and figured, "Hey, why not?" Just letting you know; any feedback is welcome (I'm still rather new with js). Theopolisme (talk) 21:40, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

:)
I've never used the script myself and I can't really remember what prompted me to write that. It's kinda later here so I'll look at your code tomorrow and try to find out again where the old code failed. I only know one recent example that was pointed out to me in User talk:Amalthea/Archive 7#Userhighlighter bug, can you get Tóraí highlighted?
Amalthea 21:59, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

I can handle unicode characters just fine ([[User:Tóraí]] highlights correctly), but {{noping}} overrides our css rules by surrounding the link with <span class="plainlinks">, which includes the cursed !important. According to stack overflow, when multiple rules use !important, the one that used it last takes precedent ... and in the case, apparently the site stylesheet (common.js/vector.js/whatever) is being loaded after the user's css -- so here's my firebug output (top is "worth" more in css): 

.plainlinks a	rgba(0,​ 0,​ 0,​ 0) <-- (this has !important and is ultimately the winner; from the site stylesheet)

.userhighlighter_sysop	#FF0000	<-- (this has !important, from user stylesheet)

@element.style	        #00FFFF	<-- (this in inline styling, injected by the script)

div#content a.external	rgba(0,​ 0,​ 0,​ 0) <-- (site stylesheet)

a	                rgba(0,​ 0,​ 0,​ 0) <-- (site stylesheet)

One half-functional workaround is to change the injected style from #00FFFF (or whatever color, I'm just using red now because it's visible) to #00FFFF !important. This would override in terms of inheritance combined with !important (stack overflow again). However, this doesn't work for custom highlight colors, only the injected color, since there's no such thing as !important !important. ;) Am I making sense? Theopolisme (talk) 23:52, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Ah, I see. If it's only a CSS problem then you should be able to resolve it, "!important" does not disable the normal specificity rules but is only the highest factor:
  • Remove the element style and instead inject some CSS with "appendCSS(".userhighlighter_sysop.userhighlighter_sysop {background-color: #00FFFF !important}");". The duplicated class selector will push its specificity past the plainlinks style.
  • A user-defined syle override could then use a rule with even higher specificity, like "a.userhighlighter_sysop.userhighlighter_sysop {background-color: #FF00FF !important}", or you move the configuration to javascript and decide there which style to define.
Amalthea 14:01, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
Fabulous, I've got it working now. Thanks! Theopolisme (talk) 23:10, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
Theopolisme, I've made a few tweaks directly, hope you don't mind. :) Amalthea 10:09, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
Regarding this, that was my mistake, I didn't actually want to rename the parameter, sorry about that. :) Amalthea 11:11, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Cynthia Lummis

Amalthea: can you help with a problem I am having? The mother of U.S. Rep. Cynthia Lummis of WY died, and I took a small amount of info from the lady's obit and put into the congresswoman's article. Here is what was added:

Lummis is one of four children born in Cheyenne to Doran Arp Lummis and the former Enid Bennett (1928-2013), a native of Denver, Colorado, who was reared in Cheyenne and was highly active in Cheyenne Frontier Days and the Republican Party. Lummis' maternal grandparents were Clarence "Buck" Bennett, the head mechanic at the Greyhound Bus Lines in Cheyenne, and Eda Erickson Bennett. Her siblings are Christine, Claudia, and Dell and his wife Sally Lummis, all of Cheyenne.[1]

User:CactusWriter deleted it; he thinks there is no proof that this is the congresswoman's mother, but it says in the list of survivors Cynthia Lummis and her husband Alvin, which is the husband's name. There is 100 percent proof that this is her mother if one reads the obit.

I have the same problem with somebody "lording over" the Hattiesburg, MS article. He deleted a link I put with a source for the journalist Iris Kelso, who started her journalism career at the Hattiesburg American.

Thanks for your help. If you can't be bothered with this, who could I consult? Billy Hathorn (talk) 20:07, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

@Billy Hathorn:: Sorry, I don't really have much time at the moment. Your first step in a content disagreement should usually be to go to the article's talk page and briefly explain your change and why you think the revert was incorrect. Concerning the two cases you mentioned:
From the edit summary I don't think CactusWriter doubts the family relationship of Cynthia Lummis and Enid Bennett Lummis (and there'd be corroborating sources, e.g. [20]), he questions whether the facts you added are actually given like that in the source. For example, the source you listed doesn't seem to support that Doran Arp Lummis is her father?
Similar thing at Hattiesburg, Mississippi: You listed Iris Kelso as a notable resident, but your source doesn't support that. Richard apple double-checked and per his comment couldn't support the factoid elsewhere, so he removed it; that's the proper thing to do. If you have a WP:reliable source to verify it, you can probably add it back and make a note of the new source in the edit summary, otherwise we simply shouldn't make the claim in the article. (That list is already rather long, BTW, there usually comes a point where only the most noteworthy people are listed or the links are removed from the article and listified.)
So, both reverts seem to be due to verifiability concerns. Verifiable accuracy is a core principle, it's always more important to get things right, and when in doubt the editor adding contested material needs to provide reliable sourcing in support.
Hope that helps, if you can't resolve this feel free to ping back or consider the steps outlined at WP:DR.
Amalthea 22:03, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Bot down?

Is your bot down? The SPI overview hasn't updated in several hours.--Jezebel'sPonyobons mots 21:13, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Server is down, sorry; can't really resolve this today (and I'm still waiting for my Tool Labs application to be processed), but I'll run it from home until it can be resolved. Amalthea 21:24, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Ok, thanks. It certainly is an important component of the SPI page! --Jezebel'sPonyobons mots 21:31, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for pointing it out, I wouldn't have noticed until tomorrow otherwise! Amalthea 22:05, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Was apparently a faulty network interface; if that was really the root cause then it should now be running reliably again. Amalthea 13:18, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Happy Halloween!

 TheGeneralUser has given you some caramel and a candy apple! Caramel and candy-coated apples are fun Halloween treats, and promote WikiLove on Halloween. Hopefully these have made your Halloween (and the proceeding days) much sweeter. Happy Halloween!


If Trick-or-treaters come your way, add {{subst:Halloween apples}} to their talkpage with a spoooooky message!

Hi Amalthea! Wishing you a very happy Halloween :-) TheGeneralUser (talk) 22:39, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Help, please

Hey Amalthea, I got a request lingering at MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist for almost a month now, and I just blocked another spammer for the same outfit. Can you look into it? And, if you have the knowledge and the power, can you block the lespaulstore address on all the wikis? There is nothing good that can come from that site. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 01:00, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi Dr.,
done, but I'm afraid I don't have admin rights on meta; to get the domain blacklisted globally you'd have to add a request at meta:Talk:Spam blacklist.
Cheers, Amalthea 08:49, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for your help, Amalthea. Drmies (talk) 15:01, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Security fix -> breaking the script?

Hello. Popups is acting strangely on Commons: see my screenshot. It is not pulling in any user contribution history when hovering over the user. And according to Reedy in IRC, it has stopped working altogether in meta. Could the recent security fix have broken the code there?

Thanks. Magog the Ogre (t • c) 15:32, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I'll look into it. I know that the contributions were broken for ca. 10 minutes, but the second edit should have repaired that. Amalthea 15:34, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

OK. I did a hard refresh on the browser (Chrome) FWIW. Also, I meant to post this in MediaWiki talk:Gadget-popups.js, but posted it here by accident. Feel free to move it at your leisure. Also, the {{tb}} link no longer appears in my list of options; I'm not sure if that is popups or not. Magog the Ogre (t • c) 15:36, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

(ec) Very strange. Reverted for now, I'll find out what's going wrong. Thanks!
Don't know about a tb link.
Amalthea 15:38, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Tb is back now.It was probably getting eaten up by a JavaScript error somewhere. However, the undefined bug still exists, even after a browser refresh. Let me know if you want help debugging, as I too am a programmer by trade. Magog the Ogre (t • c) 15:43, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

@Magog the Ogre: Somebody broke escapeQuotesHTML on commons/meta. Can you ping this to Reedy? He should know who to escalate that to. :) Amalthea 15:56, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-ambassadors/2013-October/000471.html Amalthea 16:06, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
"Purposely" broken
/**
 * Escape utilities
 *
 * To be removed in MediaWiki 1.23.
 *
 * @deprecated since 1.18 Use mw.html instead
 */
mw.log.deprecate( win, 'escapeQuotes', $.noop,'Use mw.html instead' );
mw.log.deprecate( win, 'escapeQuotesHTML', $.noop,'Use mw.html instead' );
See also [21] Reedy (talk) 16:08, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
Yes. Should work again on commons. Amalthea 16:27, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
Meta is using it's own ancient copy, I would very much recommend to hot-load from here. Amalthea 16:28, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
All fixed on Commons! Thanks. Magog the Ogre (t • c) 17:02, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Yay!

Always good to see the list go down. :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:40, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Template:Signing

Hi Amalthea, dropping you a quick note as you appear to have edited {{signing}} some. It's breaking when being called in {{User information templates}}. Best, — Scott • talk 15:01, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Scott ... the routine change at the end broke it. :/ Amalthea 17:14, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

CCI update

Thanks for pitching in. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:14, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

G5 deleted article

Was there anything else wrong with Donkeys_(film), besides that it happened to be created by some unknown (to me) socker? It's just so frustrating to see articles deleted in this way, when there are no apparent faults in the article itself. I've personally raised the issue twice at WT:CSD, and there are many more numerous threads about it, but somehow it remains.

If there's nothing wrong with this individual article, at least, would you be averse to a restoration? (Or must it absolutely be created by a non-socker?) -- Mentifisto 23:22, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

@Mentifisto: Yes, author is a known POV-pusher of Scotland related topics, the background section is absolutely non-neutral, and plot summary is a copyright violation. Background section as well, now that I looked.
I don't generally delete/revert edits from socks, but with one or two editors it's the last choice I see. Nimbley6 is one of them, where all attempts to get him to edit within policy were pointless, and all promises were broken. In this case I've more or less stopped looking at the content of the edits since I can readily assume that all significant edits have severe problems, and a second person permanently maintaining all his edits can't be our solution. G5/reverts aren't a good solution either, but with a few select editors it's at least a workable one. I'm open for better suggestions.
I never have a problem if any of those reverts/deletions are undone if the content is double-checked and found to be good. In this case, as far as I can tell, nothing but the basic facts can be restored.
Amalthea 11:52, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Spambot

I finally fixed the exceptions list bug. I can't believe it was something really small.—cyberpower OnlineMerry Christmas 13:49, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Ok. You've restarted the job as it was? Not sure that was a good idea, after all the feedback ...
Amalthea 11:53, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
  1. ^ "Enid Bennett Lummis". Wyoming Tribune-Eagle. Retrieved October 15, 2013. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
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