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The Signpost: 25 November 2015

Thank you for this notice: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3A173.66.63.102&type=revision&diff=692371838&oldid=692371677 since the ss who blocked me once again did not follow rules and did not notify me. PLease link me to it as when I click the link you sent I do not see the block review. I would like to read the comments. Thank you. 173.66.63.102 (talk) 03:55, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Replied on your talk page. — Earwig talk 03:59, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 02 December 2015

Suspend bot request for approval

Hello, First of all I'm sorry for being late in replying to this request. I'm kind a busy these days, and I can't follow up the request right now. Could you please suspend the request for a while? (a month maybe). Or please close the request, and I will open a new one, after I became available. Thank you.--ASammour (talk) 19:08, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

@ASammour: Okay, I withdrew it for you. You can just undo my last edit to the page and re-add it to WP:BRFA when you're ready to resubmit it. Thanks! — Earwig talk 19:27, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Invitation to WikiProject TAFI

Hello, The Earwig. You're invited to join WikiProject Today's articles for improvement, a project dedicated to significantly improving articles with collaborative editing in a week's time.

Feel free to nominate an article for improvement at the project's Article nomination board. If interested in joining, please add your name to the list of members. Thanks for your consideration. Qwertyxp2000 (talk | contribs) 22:07, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Email

I have sent you an email in your capacity as a BAG member. Please reply when you are able to do so. jcgoble3 (talk) 01:51, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Read it, will respond tonight. — Earwig talk 04:02, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
@Jcgoble3: I emailed you a reply. — Earwig talk 08:42, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
Replied back. jcgoble3 (talk) 18:17, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/Cyberbot_II_5

Hello Earwig, would you please review Wikipedia:Bureaucrats'_noticeboard#Bot_flag_request for a bot task you approved. I'm missing where a new account was to be used, and it is certainly out of process for an operator to ask for their own flag. Thank you, — xaosflux Talk 23:19, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Please comment at Wikipedia talk:Bots/Requests for approval/Cyberbot II 5. — xaosflux Talk 23:57, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the pointer. Replied there. — Earwig talk 00:04, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Barnstar

You awarded me a "Barnstar" - thanks! what do I do with it? Osborne 19:22, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi Osborne, you don't have to do anything with it; they're just a way of recognizing editors for good contributions. I was impressed by yours and noticed you hadn't received much acknowledgement. Some people like to put them on their user pages, while others just leave them alone. Wikipedia:Barnstars has more on the history of the award, an idiosyncratic little bit of wiki culture. All the best — Earwig talk 00:45, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll take a look at my user page and see if it's there!Osborne 19:00, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 09 December 2015

Thank you

Thank you for telling me how to do the Redirect function. I see you are an administrator so if i may, can you delete the page that is not my user page, for simplicity and useless's sake?Winterysteppe (talk) 02:30, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

@Winterysteppe: All done. Happy editing. — Earwig talk 02:31, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
@The Earwig: thank you so much. I appreciate and Happy Editing!! I 'll admit i'll just confine myself to things history and personal experiences. Winterysteppe (talk) 02:36, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 16 December 2015

Merry Christmas, Earwig

And may your holidays be merry and bright . . . . Cheers. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 22:52, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Dirtlawyer, and the same to you this holiday season. — Earwig talk 23:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Season's Greetings

File:Xmas Ornament.jpg

To You and Yours! FWiW Bzuk (talk) 22:18, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

78.26's RFA Appreciation award

The 78.26 RFA Appreciation award
Thank you for the participation and support at my RFA. It is truly appreciated. I hope to be of further help around here, and if you see me doing something dumb, you know where to find me. Again, I thank you. 78.26 (spin me / revolutions) 01:32, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Copyvio tool

Hi Earwig, the great copyvio seems to be down for some reason, have you already noticed it, and will it work in the future? Best regards, --Lord Bumbury (talk) 13:58, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

It should be working now. Based on the logs, it was back up about half an hour ago after you posted this. This kind of thing happens intermittently and usually fixes itself after a short period of time. — Earwig talk 22:33, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 30 December 2015

Please add www.chemie-schule.de to Mirror sites

Hi Earwig, could you please add www.chemie-schule.de to the mirror sites? Copyvio Detector reports copyright violation but in fact www.chemie-schule.de just contains copies of historical WP articles. Many thanks and Merry Christmas --Bert (talk) 11:48, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

please also add biancahoegel.de to the mirror sites. Thanks --Bert (talk) 12:40, 25 December 2015 (UTC)
Done. — Earwig talk 21:43, 25 December 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for quick support, regards --Bert (talk) 20:46, 26 December 2015 (UTC)
Hello, same problem: de.wikipedia.nom.pw is a mirror site. ([1]) Regards Kein Einstein (talk) 14:55, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
Fixed. — Earwig talk 17:58, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Admin's Barnstar
I wanted to leave you this barnstar to commend and thank you for blocking that IP range leaving mass messages on everyone's talk pages and for rev del'ing all of those edits left by each one. Therefore, I bestow upon you a stamp of approval, a beer, and a fist bump. Cheers! ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 21:05, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Missed one

[2]. Mlpearc (open channel) 21:04, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Already nabbed by Favonian, I think. — Earwig talk 21:05, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
Nope, not blocked. Mlpearc (open channel) 21:09, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
Are you sure? There's a rangeblock. — Earwig talk 21:22, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
I was watching the "marked blocked" script I use, which is proven not to show rangeblocks. Cheers, Mlpearc (open channel) 21:28, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
Mmmm, yeah, I've had the same issue before with that script. It's annoying. — Earwig talk 21:29, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Happy New Year, The Earwig!

Happy New Year!

The Earwig,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia. North America1000 22:50, 2 January 2016 (UTC)


Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year fireworks}} to user talk pages.
Thanks, NA1000! Same to you. — Earwig talk 22:53, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Quick question

I noticed that you jumped on this mass spamming pretty fast. I caught it on Huggle; what tool do you use to patrol these kinds of edits? I'm curious if there's a tool that I'm not aware of. Thanks :-) ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 21:07, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

@Oshwah: No tool; I noticed the first IP since they left a message here, and I just checked over their edits and noticed nearby IPs doing the same thing in some of the page histories. There's an IP range contributions script in gadgets somewhere, but I didn't use it this time. Special:Nuke is super helpful for deleting the pages, but that's admin-only. — Earwig talk 21:28, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
Ah, cool. Good catch, Earwig. I rolled back what I could, but obviously I couldn't clean all of it up ;-). Oh yes, I know all about the Special:Nuke tool; It's super convenient when it's needed. Thanks for responding. It's good to shake hands with you again :-) ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 00:30, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

COI

It's hard to avoid noting COI issues without some indication of ID. I'm trying to limit it, but in order to prove COI this is extremely hard to do. Hope you understand. KrazyKlimber (talk) 22:34, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 06 January 2016

Thanks for taking care of those sneaky hoaxes

Allthefoxes has given you a ferret! Ferrets promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day much better. Spread the WikiLove by giving someone else a ferret, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend.

Give someone a ferret by adding {{subst:Ferret}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

--allthefoxes (Talk) 03:11, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll take good care of it. — Earwig talk 03:13, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 13 January 2016

copyvio: exlcude vebidoo.de

Hi, please add www.vebidoo.de to blacklist. This is a vertical search engine for persons showing excerpts also from wikipedia articles. This results in false positive matches like [3] (87%) [4] (78%) [5] (79%). Thanks. Merlissimo 10:00, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Done. — Earwig talk 05:12, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 20 January 2016

The Signpost: 27 January 2016

copyvio: exclude mapyourinfo.com

Please put mapyourinfo.com on your exclusion list! The best solution would be to exclude those pages that contain the word wikipedia, but if that's too complicated, please exclude it completely, because de:Benutzer:Merlissimo's de:Benutzer:MerlBot is flooding the de:WP:Qualitätssicherung with false positives. -- Olaf Studt (talk) 16:16, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

I added http://mapyourinfo.com/wiki, which seems to be good enough; let me know if it needs to be broader. You can do add these yourself in the future—the link is on the tool page. — Earwig talk 02:49, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for granting me auto patrolled rights. It is certainly motivating to the extent that it reinforces within me the need to provide high quality articles to Wikipedia, those that can add to the value of this website. Thank you for the trust. Xender Lourdes (talk) 05:07, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 03 February 2016

Your copyvio tool

I just used your copyvio tool on my first DYK review. Thought I'll stop by to thank you. It's really wonderful and makes works quite simple. Thank you. Xender Lourdes (talk) 08:42, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

The Technical Barnstar
I suspect you may have received many such barnstars earlier for the tool. But am sending this one your way for the amount of time you have saved for so many editors like me by creating the copyvio tool. Thank you. Xender Lourdes (talk) 08:44, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
Well, thank you very much. — Earwig talk 19:03, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 10 February 2016

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:29, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 17 February 2016

Discontinuation of Yahoo BOSS

[6] Expect your copyvio detector to break at the end of March. :( jcgoble3 (talk) 08:35, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, unfortunately; I've previously poked Coren about it (my former WMF contact), and phab:T125459 is currently open. Only time will tell... — Earwig talk 08:37, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 February 2016

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Atlantic Airlines page deletion

Hi, How could I make the Atlantic Airlines (United States) a better page to fit the standards? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jackpaylor (talk • contribs) 03:15, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi Jackpaylor—that's a broad question. You can start by giving the notability guideline for corporations a read-through, which I linked before. This outlines what we expect to see in an article about a company (or really, any article): strong, independent, reliable sources giving the company significant coverage. You'll need to do some research to find them before you can start writing the article. After that, you can begin the article as a "draft" (see the article wizard), which makes it much less likely to be deleted. When you're satisfied with the draft, you can submit it for review by other editors, who will give feedback or publish it if it's good enough. There is another help page, your first article, which explains this in much more detail. Hope this helps. — Earwig talk 04:03, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Afrocandy

Hello, the page Afrocandy does not meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines. I put a speedy deletion tag and it was removed by the user Oshwah many times and now he's saying something very strange that a person doesn't have to be proven notable to be on Wikipedia, please see his comments on my talk page. I'm bringing this to the attention of an admin because this page needs to be deleted. The sources quoted are blogs and she has made no impact on the Nigerian music industry, has won no awards and is not known even in Nigeria. Do your own research please and see for yourself, all she has are small mentions. Please advise. Thanks PaulAshford (talk) 23:30, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi PaulAshford; sorry, but I don't really have time to "do [my] own research" at the moment, but if you truly want the article deleted despite other people disagreeing, articles for deletion is the way. PROD is intended for uncontroversial deletions (which this one apparently isn't), and Oshwah was likely talking about the difference between a credible claim of significance and notability in response to the speedy. A claim of significance is a lower standard; an article can claim that the subject is significant without proving that they are notable; we use the lower standard for CSD because notability can often be more nuanced and really requires a full discussion to determine in unclear cases—hence, AfD. — Earwig talk 07:44, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

New message

Hello, The Earwig. 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.

--Urbanecm (talk) 20:25, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Responded. — Earwig talk 07:44, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
Thank you. --Urbanecm (talk) 16:42, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Exclusion

Dear friend; while checking my page at copyvio detector; one website is just copying the whole Wikipedia page!

This is the URL of the same; http://subtitle.clubfilm.ir/index.php?q=uggcf%3A%2F%2Fra.jvxvcrqvn.bet%2Fjvxv%2FNouvanl_Onaxre

Can you please help me out with this issue? I have created the page named Abhinay Banker.

Thank you

Palavernier (talk) 07:59, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

It's just a web proxy... I added it to the exclusion list, but you can simply ignore it when doing checks. — Earwig talk 08:03, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 02 March 2016

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The Signpost: 09 March 2016

The Signpost: 16 March 2016

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Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Submissions/List

The bot run that produces this is an extremely tool for those of us working at AfC, but it does not seem to have run since 19 March — Preceding unsigned comment added by DGG (talk • contribs)

Hi DGG, thanks. Are you sure it's not updating? Maybe try refreshing/purging the page? From my end, I see recent updates. — Earwig talk 23:56, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
The problem seems to be that the items at Template:AFC statistics are not being transcluded onto Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Submissions/List, which is a little puzzling. DGG' ( talk ) 03:38, 26 March 2016 (UTC) DGG ( talk ) 04:18, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
I guess it might need to be purged more often. Maybe best to use the Template:AFC statistics page directly. — Earwig talk 04:24, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 23 March 2016

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Turnitin

Just tried running this for the first time [7]. I can't make any sense of the results. They all seem to relate to different articles from the one I was searching for copyvio on. SpinningSpark 14:04, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

No kidding, that looks completely wrong. I have no idea what's going on, and it seems the user who implemented Turnitin support is not around at the moment... Kaldari, any idea? — Earwig talk 08:00, 21 February 2016 (UTC)
Spinning , Earwig please tag me if there is issue with my bot. Earwig - what is the query for the plagiabot API in this case? (doing it myself result with http://tools.wmflabs.org/eranbot/plagiabot/api.py?action=suspected_diffs&lang=en&page_title=Zimbabwe_First_Party ). Eran (talk) 06:14, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
Looks like it was building the wrong URL. Fixed. Not your fault, though you can reproduce it with http://tools.wmflabs.org/eranbot/plagiabot/api.py?action=suspected_diffs&lang=en&page_title=. — Ǝɐɹʍıƃ ʇɐlʞ 06:21, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
Thanks :) Eran (talk) 07:34, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 1 April 2016

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:12, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Your Copyvio detector

Do you actually "earn" the copyright to use the Turntin? And yahoo is much faster than bing, though. 333-blue 09:28, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

I'm not sure what earning the copyright for Turnitin means, but they are collaborating with the WMF (see Wikipedia:Turnitin) so I'm not just scraping their site or whatever. As for your second point, it doesn't seem that way based on my testing? I do have a bugfix to make soon that will speed things up once I'm confident the new engine is working properly, but Yahoo would've worked the same way. — Earwig talk 16:10, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

BRFA header

Hi! I conducted a straw poll on the Wikipedia IRC channel last night and nobody expressed the opinion that the version with the box was too prominent. I'll remove the border on the box, so that the only thing setting it apart from the rest of the page is the background color; given that, would you be okay with me re-adding the box to the header? APerson (talk!) 17:34, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Sure, I guess. — Earwig talk 17:41, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Page content models

Special:ChangeContentModel - use with care! In user: space .js pages are protected by the system to admins+username only - this is actually done by the content model, not by the pagename. — xaosflux Talk 11:01, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Funky. — Earwig talk 16:12, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 14 April 2016

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:46, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

WaybackMedic

Hi Earwig, I just finished doing a detailed analysis, however I may be confused. You said "That's all I've reviewed so far (stopping at Henry Fox Talbot)". I assumed you worked backwards checking from "List of accidents and incidents involving military aircraft (1940–44)" -> "Henry Fox Talbot". But maybe you started at "Bhutanese Americans" up to Talbot? -- GreenC 13:45, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

@Green Cardamom: You're right, I went backwards from "Bhutanese Americans". Sorry for being unclear! — Earwig talk 21:24, 15 April 2016 (UTC)
OK that means we verified the same set of 22 articles. I (and user North America) found additional problems in that set.. this is a hard thing to verify. I'll continue with the remainder, that way you (or anyone) can verify the verification which should make life easier. -- GreenC 21:42, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Comments

Regarding this edit I'm curious about the use of the template {{text}} because this does not seem to be produced by Template:Substituted comment/subst. Did you enter this manually? Where did it come from? What is the benefit of using it in this situation? Thanks! — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:21, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Hey Martin. When I was playing around with the template, I noticed that particular page had a pipe (in the user's signature), so the transclusion was cutting off after it. {{text}} is a... hack, but I wasn't sure of any other obvious ways to do it. — Earwig talk 16:11, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
Interesting! That {{text}} works for this seems to be coincidence - if there had been two pipes then it would not have worked so well! Anyway I guess this problem is unlikely to recur. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:38, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
PS I still can't fathom how you do that in one edit though, without changing the template. (You can't substitute without saving, can you?) — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:39, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
No, I cheated. Didn't use the wrapper. — Earwig talk 23:28, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
(talk page stalker) The better way to do this is to replace the literal pipe with {{!}}. This used to be a template, but in MediaWiki 1.24, it became a magic word. jcgoble3 (talk) 01:27, 16 April 2016 (UTC)
@Jcgoble3: Yes, but MediaWiki doesn't let you make that replacement while substituting a page, as far as I can tell, so you'd have to copy its content manually... — Earwig talk 18:31, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

User:The Earwig/Sandbox/Orphaned archives

I've fixed a bunch of these. Some (many?) of the orphan pages can be 'adopted' by adding the talk header template to the parent talk page. Is it possible to automatically add the template to all the parent talk pages that (a) exist, (b) are not redirects, and (c) do not have the template already? Could you also update your list of orphan pages to remove the ones that are no longer orphans? Thanks--76.14.40.2 (talk) 18:26, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, that was the original plan when I created the list, but I hadn't gotten around to writing a bot for it; the whole thing is fairly low-priority. I'll run an update tonight. — Earwig talk 20:13, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
Done. — Earwig talk 02:00, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 April 2016

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Merry Christmas and happy new year

Merry Christmas and happy new year. (:

--Pine✉

01:00, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

JJMC89 BRFA

Hi, any chance we could get a decision on Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/JJMC89 bot 4 please? There's been no comment for a week. Thanks — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:29, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Okay, done. — Earwig talk 16:44, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 2 May 2016

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:09, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 17 May 2016

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:34, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

Question on protection

Hello. Since you protected Module:College color/data back in December, I was wondering what it would take for it to be completely protected (only template editors allowed to edit) since we have started using this in college athletics infoboxes? It will be in thousands of more articles once finished and I don't think we can risk edit wars, sock puppets, and some - although auto confirmed - editors who could vandalize. There is the talk page for those to request an update to the colors. There is another user (Dirtlawyer1, not active for almost a month) who also would agree it should be protected. Please let me know your thoughts on this. Thanks, 🍀 Corkythehornetfan 🍀 03:34, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

(talk page watcher) 63,480 transclusions Mlpearc (open channel) 03:38, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
Thanks, Mlpearc! There will be a lot more, when completely finished. 🍀 Corkythehornetfan 🍀 04:03, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
It had a few tens of thousands of transclusions when I looked at it then, too. The potential for abuse with this type of module is lower than normal templates (that's completely unscientific and unproven—just a conjecture). Since it attracts very frequent, legitimate contributions from non-TE/admin users, I'm very uncomfortable about pre-emptive protection. — Earwig talk 04:18, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
That's fine... I just thought I would ask! 🍀 Corkythehornetfan 🍀 04:34, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
Well, I'll keep an eye out. Let me know if stuff goes south. — Earwig talk 04:38, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
Will do. I think I've finally got the other user on board... It took awhile, but he's gotten there! 🍀 Corkythehornetfan 🍀 05:00, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Question... what do I need to do to become a template editor? Before I do that, do you think I'd pass to become an editor? I only edit one module (Module:College color/data), and since we've converted the module into infoboxes, I'm still asking Frietjes to add the codes to Module:College color so that they can be used in the infoboxes. I can do everything else to include the colors module into the infoboxes except add that code to the actual module. I would only plan to edit this module and I hate having to bug others to keep doing it. Thanks, 🎓 Corkythehornetfan 🎓 00:38, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
    @Corkythehornetfan: Guidelines at WP:TPEGRANT, apply at WP:PERM/TE. You have enough edits, but you'll also need to show that you've made significant contributions to several protected templates. See if you can meet that. — Earwig talk 00:43, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
Looks like I'll have to do some more editing on protected templates. Thanks! 🎓 Corkythehornetfan 🎓 00:54, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 28 May 2016

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Yandex.XML

Hi Ben, we are getting an error message with the copy vio detection tool. "An error occurred while using the search engine (Yandex Error: ). Try reloading the page". I wonder if you could look into this when you have a minute? Thanks, — Diannaa (talk) 17:31, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Hi, I can confirm this error. I tried several pages in cswiki, every check failed with "An error occurred while using the search engine (Yandex XML parse error: Opening and ending tag mismatch: meta line 39 and head, line 70, column 8). Try reloading the page. If the error persists, repeat the check without using the search engine.". Can you fix it soon please? Thanks. --Martin Urbanec (talk) 19:33, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

I don't have any ideas without looking into it. But we're about to switch to Google, so let's just wait for that... — Earwig talk 21:19, 3 June 2016 (UTC)
Actually, I figured it out. Fixed now. — Earwig talk 21:53, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 05 June 2016

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:13, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

bot does not update measuring (I tried to "reload" or to repeat action - failed)

Hello, it is about https://tools.wmflabs.org/copyvios/?lang=en&project=wikipedia&title=&oldid=724320691&use_engine=0&use_engine=1&use_links=0&use_links=1&turnitin=0&action=compare&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.oysters.ru%2Fen%2Fabout_us%2F which has worked initaially fine and detected properly copy-cut, but has not updated (cache?) after it was removed, so it constantly shows previous state and has not shown actual. Very nice and usefool tool. I have noticed you as you requested in header of that site. Related to article Oysters LCC. Thx in advance, your replay is not necessery, that is only and just info to pay your attention to eventual problem in bot behaviour or not clear description hot to ask bot to re-examine article in its the list (not updating on user, logged in wikipedia one, request) Ocexyz (talk) 08:17, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Hi Ocexyz; since you are comparing the URL against a fixed revision (724320691), it won't update when you make edits to the page. You can see the live comparison by using a page title instead of a revision ID, as in this example. — Earwig talk 08:25, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
Hi again, I've finally figured that out, it works fine. Anyway it is not quite clear at first use.
Proposal: (1) to add in description something like "Note: to compare/check with the latest version of wikipedia article mentioned in its history of edits just put Wikipedia article name without [ [ and ] ] into field ... and leave "revision ID" field empty, then press submit. (2) add in the UI a button [check with latest site version] just doing the same.
Bot engine is OK, a bit more stupid-proof UI against users in rush, like me, could help. Thx in advance, and thx for your good work - appreciated very much :) Ocexyz (talk) 08:51, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Technical Barnstar
Your toll is brilliant - respect for great excellence and usefulness. thx from and in the name of other Wikipedia contributors :-) Ocexyz (talk) 08:55, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 15 June 2016

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Copyvio detector

So I found Rapport congruency on http://www.gutenberg.us/articles/rapport_congruency (I need to show the link to explain), but it's apparently excluded as a copyvio source as a result of gutenberg.org being excluded. gutenberg.us is the Gutenberg self-pub, and is under a CC-BY-SA 3.0, which requires attribution. Now, the page does not say it mirrors WP, so I'd guess it doesn't, and it was copied to here, and thus I think the copyvio tester shouldn't be excluding that domain. Am I correct? MSJapan (talk) 06:15, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

Hi, MSJapan. Looking at the source, assuming I understand you right, it says "Help to improve this article, make contributions at the Citational Source" with a link back to the Wikipedia article's history. It definitely looks like a mirror to me. — Earwig talk 06:21, 17 June 2016 (UTC)
Ah, I see. I thought that was just the color of the link, but it's because I had followed it already. Is it supposed ot point at the history page, though, to be correct? Anyhow, thanks! MSJapan (talk) 06:33, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

Rich Farmbrough arbitration amendment request

The Arbitration Committee respectfully requests your attention, as an active member of the Bot Approvals Group, at this arbitration amendment request, which seeks to remove bot-related restrictions from Rich Farmbrough. Any comments would be appreciated. For the Arbitration Committee, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 18:53, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

Please also see WT:BAG. Thank you, — xaosflux Talk 21:57, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

Deleted template

Hi there. I was reviewing some old templates I created and noticed you deleted {{Board games}} based on this discussion. I don't think you properly reviewed the situation, as an IP editor changed the original version of the template to this before nominating it for deletion. Moreover, I was never notified of this nomination. The consensus was to delete, but that was based on the template after it was significantly reduced. Can you quickly inspect this and let me know what you think? Mindmatrix 18:06, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

@Mindmatrix: Hmm. I don't have any strong opinions here; it was a while ago and I don't remember my exact reasoning, but a navbox of categories seems tricky (especially given recent discussions over bidirectionality). Is there much precedent for that? Either way, you're welcome to DRV it. — Earwig talk 19:28, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 04 July 2016

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EarwigBot and Facebook

Hi EW, I don't know if this is a bot-specific thing, or an artifact of the new search engine, but it is no longer picking up Facebook copyvios. When comparing the article with FB content, the FB side of the window gives the below.

Extended content

Facebook logo Email or Phone Password Forgot account? Sign Up Security Check

Please enter the text below

Can't read the text above?

Try another text

Text in the box:

What's this? Security Check

This is a standard security test that we use to prevent spammers from creating fake accounts and spamming users.

Submit English (US) Español Français (France) 中文(简体) العربية Português (Brasil) Italiano 한국어 Deutsch हिन्दी 日本語 Sign Up Log In Messenger Facebook Lite Mobile Find Friends Badges People Pages Places Games Locations Celebrities Groups About Create Ad Create Page Developers Careers Privacy Cookies Ad Choices Terms Help Settings Activity Log Facebook © 2016

No login was needed to get to the page in question, so the signup page should have been unneccessary, unless FB is just detecting excessive google traffic. The exact comparison throwing this is: [8] (source article tagged for Copyvio, as it is a match to the target page, so you may need to use adminny sorcery to see that content).

Thanks, CrowCaw 18:23, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi Crow. Not related to the search engine change, since it's Labs's own computers who are talking to Facebook in this case, not Google's. Unfortunately I don't think there's much I can do about this. It seems Facebook finds the tool's IP suspicious, so we get that message even though Facebook gives a valid response if I try to do the comparison locally. A possible solution would be proxying the requests through another server, but I'd need to set that up, and I suspect Facebook might just blacklist us again. The good news is that these sorts of blacklistings aren't usually permanent, so it might work in the future. — Earwig talk 22:46, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Meaning of copyvio detector result

Apologies if this is already explained somewhere, but if it is I can't find it... What is the meaning of the % result of your copyvio detector? EEng 20:26, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi EEng. In simple terms, it's just a measure of how much content is shared between the article and suspected source. The math is a bit complicated, but higher percentages mean that a larger amount of the text is the same (either absolutely or relative to the size of the article). To be clear, it's not a direct proportion, so 50% doesn't mean half the article is copied. Usually anything below 50% is likely to be a false positive, or just a couple sentences in common. — Earwig talk 21:12, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
I've got a degree in applied math, computer science, and statistics, so I'd appreciate a not-simple explanation. What, exactly, is the % a proportion of? How can this possibly be interpreted as a "confidence" of a copyvio? EEng 21:22, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
EEng: Sure. Before going into it, I want to be clear that the goal isn't to assess the likelihood of a copyvio at a high level (e.g. with concern for the copyright license of a source, presence of quotes, or whether the content in question surpasses some creative threshold). Calling it a measurement of plagiarism likelihood may be more accurate. Effectively, we're interested in how similar two sequences of text are, where similarity is defined as the shared occurrence of substrings of text.
In the tool's current form, it looks at the number of word-level 5-grams that are common in both data sets. First, we strip the article and suspected source of markup and punctuation, and then build a set of the 5-grams found in the article (a) and the source (s). Then we examine the intersection of these sets, which I'll call Δ. We define the size of an n-gram set to be the sum of the original-text occurrences of each n-gram within the set, and in this case the size of Δ depends on the minimum of the number of occurrences of each common n-gram in the two original texts. So, we now have |a|, |s|, and |Δ|.
If the ratio of |Δ| to |a| is close to 1, then that's an strong indication that copying is likely, because it means a large percentage of the phrases in the article are also found in the suspected source. The simplest version of the copyvio detector would return this ratio as its confidence value, but things are more complicated because we want to catch very large articles that only copy a single paragraph, which leads to a small ratio but an (absolutely) large |Δ|. So, we have a function that looks something like |Δ|/(|Δ| + 100); i.e. we have 0.5 confidence of a copyvio when 100 5-grams are in common, and confidence asymptotically approaches 1 as the number of 5-grams in common increases. The final confidence percentage is then the larger of these two values.
In practice, things are fudged a bit. We don't use the raw ratio as the first value, but something more sigmoid, which lowers the confidence for articles that have only a few phrases in common (false positives) and raises it for articles that have many phrases in common—if half the article is copied, the confidence is closer to 75%. The actual numbers were experimentally derived and seem to work well in my experience. Ideally, I would train this on a large corpus of known copyvios and their source texts, but such a set is hard to procure. So this admittedly rather wonky method is what we use. — Earwig talk 22:59, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
OK, good, thanks. Now while I digest that, can you tell me what the "source" is in what they seem to be doing at DYK i.e. as seen here Template:Did_you_know_nominations/Jane_Hamilton_Hall? EEng 23:48, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
Ah, I see the problem here. They're calling this the "probability" of a violation, but that's misleading; as I explained it's a fairly arbitrary measurement of how much content is in common. I'll let the bot operator know. Anyway, to answer your question, in this case the tool breaks the article up into sentences and sticks several of them into Google, and runs the comparison I described above against each result Google returns. Whichever URL yields the highest confidence value is considered the source. — Earwig talk 23:55, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/DYKReviewBot#Copyvio language misleading. — Earwig talk 00:28, 18 July 2016 (UTC)
  • Sounds like you see why I came here. I'll chew over what you wrote above over the next few days, between luxury dinners, massages, and laps in the pool. (I'm on vacation, you see.) EEng 00:50, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 21 July 2016

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:19, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Fluxbot 6

Would you mind looking at this again (it's the one BRFA I can't do :D ). Thank you, — xaosflux Talk 11:37, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

All set. — Earwig talk 18:59, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Mistake?

No, I don't make those. But since you reverted me, let the Wikiworld decide what to with the draft and the mainspace article. Meanwhile, its server bogs down due to this. — Wyliepedia 23:27, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 04 August 2016

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BAG News

BAG News August 2016

Greetings Bot Approvals Group member!

  • Please take a moment to review and update your status at the membership page. If you have been semi-inactive, we would love to have you back in action!
  • If you have not already, you may want to consider adding Wikipedia:BAG/Status to your watchlist, it is a bot generated list of all in progress requests.

Thank you! — xaosflux Talk 23:32, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

(You can unsubscribe from future BAG Spam by removing your name from this list.)

Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BU RoBOT 25

Just answering your question: It originally wasn't considered, but subsequently someone messaged me on my talk page about it, so I'm now accounting for this with a very simple regex skip criteria. Thanks for the speedy approval. ~ Rob13Talk 23:26, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Good to know. Thanks. — Earwig [alt] talk 23:54, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 18 August 2016

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The Signpost: 06 September 2016

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Intermittent HTTP Error 500: Internal Server Error

Hi Ben, I have been getting HTTP Error 500: Internal Server Error intermittently today on the copyvio tool. I don't know if there's any remedies you can try, but I thought I would let you know. Regards, — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 02:32, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Kaldari? — Earwig talk 02:35, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
@Diannaa: When do you get the error? Just loading https://tools.wmflabs.org/copyvios/? Probably an issue with Tool Labs in that case. Kaldari (talk) 02:56, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
I get the error when attempting to use the search engine. The initial page load is happening readily. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 03:00, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
I don't see any obvious indications of a problem from the logs. Next time it happens, let me know the exact URL it failed on and I'll take a look. — Earwig talk 04:18, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
I wonder if phab:T141673#2633432 is related? — Earwig talk 22:16, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
Here are two examples from today: Jeremy Miles, Heiko Bleher. Both of these worked ok on the second attempt. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 00:24, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
I am also experiencing this. This resulted in a 500 but worked the second time. — JJMC89 (T·C) 15:39, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Extended confirmed protection

Hello, The Earwig. This message is intended to notify administrators of important changes to the protection policy.

Extended confirmed protection (also known as "30/500 protection") is a new level of page protection that only allows edits from accounts at least 30 days old and with 500 edits. The automatically assigned "extended confirmed" user right was created for this purpose. The protection level was created following this community discussion with the primary intention of enforcing various arbitration remedies that prohibited editors under the "30 days/500 edits" threshold to edit certain topic areas.

In July and August 2016, a request for comment established consensus for community use of the new protection level. Administrators are authorized to apply extended confirmed protection to combat any form of disruption (e.g. vandalism, sock puppetry, edit warring, etc.) on any topic, subject to the following conditions:

  • Extended confirmed protection may only be used in cases where semi-protection has proven ineffective. It should not be used as a first resort.
  • A bot will post a notification at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard of each use. MusikBot currently does this by updating a report, which is transcluded onto the noticeboard.

Please review the protection policy carefully before using this new level of protection on pages. Thank you.
This message was sent to the administrators' mass message list. To opt-out of future messages, please remove yourself from the list. 17:49, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 September 2016

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Invite to the African Destubathon

Hi. You may be interested in participating in the African Destubathon which starts on October 15. Africa currently has over 37,000 stubs and badly needs a quality improvement editathon/contest to flesh out basic stubs. There are proposed substantial prizes to give to editors who do the most geography, wildlife and women articles, and planned smaller prizes for doing to most destubs for each of the 55 African countries, so should be enjoyable! Even if contests aren't your thing we would be grateful if you could consider destubbing a few African wildlife articles during the drive to help the cause and help reduce the massive 37,000 + stub count, of which many are rated high importance. If you're interested in competing or just loosely contributing any article related to a topic you often work on, please add your name to the Contestants/participants section. Might be a good way to work on fleshing out articles you've long been meaning to target and get rewarded for it! Diversity of work from a lot of people will make this that bit more special. Thanks. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 04:58, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 14 October 2016

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The Signpost: 4 November 2016

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:52, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

Two-Factor Authentication now available for admins

Hello,

Please note that TOTP based two-factor authentication is now available for all administrators. In light of the recent compromised accounts, you are encouraged to add this additional layer of security to your account. It may be enabled on your preferences page in the "User profile" tab under the "Basic information" section. For basic instructions on how to enable two-factor authentication, please see the developing help page for additional information. Important: Be sure to record the two-factor authentication key and the single use keys. If you lose your two factor authentication and do not have the keys, it's possible that your account will not be recoverable. Furthermore, you are encouraged to utilize a unique password and two-factor authentication for the email account associated with your Wikimedia account. This measure will assist in safeguarding your account from malicious password resets. Comments, questions, and concerns may be directed to the thread on the administrators' noticeboard. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:34, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

Copyvio detector is down

(cross-posting from email) Hi Ben, just a note to let you know that the copyvio detector is not working. Here's the error message I am getting:


Traceback (most recent call last): 

 File "/data/project/copyvios/www/python/src/app.py", line 38, in inner
   return func(*args, **kwargs)
 File "/data/project/copyvios/www/python/src/app.py", line 104, in index
   query = do_check()
 File "./copyvios/checker.py", line 36, in do_check
   query.site = get_site(query)
 File "./copyvios/sites.py", line 26, in get_site
   return wiki.get_site(lang=lang, project=project)
 File "/data/project/copyvios/git/earwigbot/earwigbot/wiki/sitesdb.py", line 349, in get_site
   name = self._get_site_name_from_sitesdb(project, lang)
 File "/data/project/copyvios/git/earwigbot/earwigbot/wiki/sitesdb.py", line 236, in _get_site_name_from_sitesdb
   with sqlite.connect(self._sitesdb) as conn:

OperationalError: unable to open database file


Thanks,— Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 00:30, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) @Diannaa: Tool Labs is undergoing some maintenance today ([9], [10]). According to IRC, it just needs a kick-start once web services can be brought up. ~ Matthewrbowker Drop me a note 00:49, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
Thanks. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 00:55, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know, as always. Unfortunately looks like unavoidable maintenance. Fixed now. — Earwig talk 08:34, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

A new user right for New Page Patrollers

Hi The Earwig.

A new user group, New Page Reviewer, has been created in a move to greatly improve the standard of new page patrolling. The user right can be granted by any admin at PERM. It is highly recommended that admins look beyond the simple numerical threshold and satisfy themselves that the candidates have the required skills of communication and an advanced knowledge of notability and deletion. Admins are automatically included in this user right.

It is anticipated that this user right will significantly reduce the work load of admins who patrol the performance of the patrollers. However,due to the complexity of the rollout, some rights may have been accorded that may later need to be withdrawn, so some help will still be needed to some extent when discovering wrongly applied deletion tags or inappropriate pages that escape the attention of less experienced reviewers, and above all, hasty and bitey tagging for maintenance. User warnings are available here but very often a friendly custom message works best.

If you have any questions about this user right, don't hesitate to join us at WT:NPR. (Sent to all admins).MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:48, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

New Page Review needs your help

Hi The Earwig,

As an AfC reviewer you're probably aware that a new user right has been created for patrolling new pages (you might even have been granted the right already, and admins have it automatically).

Since July there has been a very serious backlog at Special:NewPagesFeed of over 14,000 pages, by far the worst since 2011, and we need an all out drive to get this back down to just a few hundred that can be easily maintained in the future. Unlike AfC, these pages are already in mainspace, and the thought of what might be there is quite scary. There are also many good faith article creators who need a simple, gentle push to the Tea House or their pages converted to Draft rather than being deleted.

Although New Page Reviewing can occasionally be somewhat more challenging than AfC, the criteria for obtaining the right are roughly the same. The Page Curation tool is even easier to use than the Helper Script, so it's likely that most AfC reviewers already have more than enough knowledge for the task of New Page Review.

It is hoped that AfC reviewers will apply for this right at WP:PERM and lend a hand. You'll need to have read the page at WP:NPR and the new tutorial.

(Sent to all active AfC reviewers) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:33, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

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