Stewards' noticeboard/Archives/2012-04

Toolserver lag

My "Global Contributions" count has been constant for several days even though I've made several edits. I've made 369 contributions in 7 projects, but my "User Contributions" total has failed to advance beyond 342. This "User Contributions" page reports 312 contributions to "en.wikipedia.org" with the last one dated 2012-03-19. "My preferences" on "en.wikipedia.org" lists 339 edits, including 27 since 2012-03-19. This looks like something that should be reported, but I don't know where; I hope this is close enough. Thanks. DavidMCEddy (talk) 21:51, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

The edit counters rely on the replicated copies of the databases. The replication lag is currently several days, especially for the English Wikipedia, meaning the edit counters are several days behind. Why the replication is lagging I don't know... QU ^TalkQu 21:59, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

[1] Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 22:02, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

And there are also issues with the counts on the individual wikis. Once you get an elevated count you will see that count (note net lag statement) vs. sulutil:DavidMCEddy vs. w:en:MyPreferences don't align. Best we can say is that all counts are indicative. billinghurst sDrewth 02:05, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Fixing HTTPS on Wikimedia wikis

Tracked in Phabricator:
Bug 34670

Hi. I was just editing a few smaller projects and I noticed that Google Chrome was throwing a warning about loading insecure content. This is likely due to sites not maintaining their local JavaScript and CSS pages. These pages need to be updated to use protocol-relative URLs (//foo.example.com rather than http://foo.example.com). Is this something that the stewards or global sysops could take care of, please? --MZMcBride 01:27, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Sounds like a job these guys could help with. Why not stewards as well, of course. Jafeluv 12:31, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

It's possible only by bot, to be run on all wikis (except the very big ones), so that we help them fix it and explain the situation (many won't even know the new HTTPS system); onviously, with link to documentation and discussion. Even my silly script should suffice, it doesn't break anything, although it can't fix every edge case and can (at present) remove some legitimate links from code comments. Nemo 08:52, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Nemo Bis that it should be done globally except on big wikis where a notice should at least be put locally first. But I don't know if we should do something before replacing massively by bot or not. -- Quentinv57 ^(talk) 09:01, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm going to do that starting today ;) - Hoo man (talk) 17:31, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Hoo man for fixing this :) Siddhartha Ghai 01:44, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Are you planning to do locked wikis? Ruslik 08:57, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

No, I've excluded them. (I can't edit them anyway, I think). Is there a reason why they should get done? - Hoo man (talk) 13:52, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

The same reason as with all others. That you can not edit them is, I hope, a solvable problem. Ruslik 14:27, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Ok, if someone would grant the edit right to the editinterface group, I'm going to do them after the open wikis (shouldn't be that much work, cause most of them don't have much JS/CSS) - Hoo man (talk) 14:35, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Done by PeterSymonds The Helpful One 14:38, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Seems we don't need to add "r'http://[^@:/]+\.m\.wikipedia\.org'," as an exception as mobile sites now support HTTPS. Liangent 18:09, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Hi guys, I'm not sure how far along you are with this or how helpful the following will be, but for what it's worth, I browsed Wikimedia sites more or less at random and found Catalan Wikiquote to be red, German Wikiquote orange, German Wikipedia green, Yiddish Wikipedia red, Yiddish Wiktionary changed from yellow to green, Korean Wiktionary green, Korean Wikiquote green. It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 16:11, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

As far as I can see, Hoo has completed the first (and perhaps last) step of cleanup, also with a lot of serious fixes besides most obvious ones, on all projects, a couple weeks ago. I overheard that chrismcmahon today could make a quick check on all wikis to see if any still loads HTTP content on HTTPS. Nemo 09:33, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I've indeed just finished fixing http links on all open wikis (except the few I skipped due to there size). The next step will be to leave a message on the Administrators' noticeboards of the skipped wikis, after that I'm going to do the closed wikis. Sadly there still can be problems with non https content being loaded, cause some wikis include scripts from the user space or out of other projects, which include http only links. But I can't automatically check (and mostly not even edit) those. If one could check the wikis back and give me a list I can take a deeper look at that ;) - Hoo man (talk) 21:30, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Ok, informed all wikis I didn't do now (except enwiki where I found someone who takes that over on IRC). Maybe I can start with the closed wikis tomorrow, depends on how hard it is to make pywikipedia run on closed wikis - Hoo man (talk) 02:01, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your work. Ruslik (talk) 11:14, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Ok, to give an update: First of all, pywikipedia doesn't work on closed wmf wikis (even through I hacked the self.obsoletes in it's family files), I need to find another solution for this. Second, what about the special wikis (those listed under special over here), I think they should get fixed as well, no? Finally, most of the big wikis I contacted already resolved the http links, only the following are left (If someone of the local community is here, he/ she might push an admin towards it): dewiki (Only minor stuff left), ptwiki, ruwiki, enwikt - Hoo man (talk) 19:20, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Another update: I wrote a Javascript snippet which is able to find pages including http links on all wikis, even closed ones. With that I today fixed all "special wikis" except commons, the testwikis, all private wikis and all fishbowl wikis (as I can't edit those). Furthermore I skipped meta on which I'll take a look in a few days. From the big wikis mentioned above ptwiki, ruwiki and enwikt still haven't fixed the links, on ptwiki my suggestion already got archived. It would be great if someone could take care of those!

Within the coming week I plan to fix all closed wikis ;) - Hoo man (talk) 22:50, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Dunno if anyone still follows this, but finally I can put a Done under all this! After weeks of work and probably several thousand edits, ALL wikis should have protocol relative urls (except of ruwiki, ptwiki and enwikt as mentioned above). Feel free to contact me if you still see problems with http only urls or get error messages from your browsers - Hoo man (talk) 00:00, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks again! Ruslik (talk) 16:27, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Comment currently getting a red HTTPS sign at ml: (not logged in). It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 09:28, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Should be fixed now, If I didn't overlook smth. (1) - Hoo man (talk) 13:45, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, still red for me, both logged out and logged in (I clicked on Random Page a couple of times, so see e.g. this). It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 17:59, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Have you cleared your cache before trying again? With Firefox and IE I can't see any non https connection being established (logged out, logged in my global.js loads over http) - Hoo man (talk) 11:56, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, you're right, it became green after clearing the cache. It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 10:38, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Banned on Ukrainian Wikipedia

The following discussion is closed: complainant has started a RFC. billinghurst sDrewth 15:10, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

I would like to draw attention of the Stewards to the Ukrainian Wikipedia. I was banned by local bureaucrat for life for statement that it can not be stated as a fact that a particular person has committed an offence before there is a court verdict.

I investigated my channels for appealing. I have been withdrawn all access so can not even raise an appeal. I looked at contacting other bureaucrats' profiles to initiate arbitration by some means. I was shocked by what I saw.

The first bureaucrat’s (Gutsul) page in my view contains race hate material. Namely on the top of his page there is a poem “ТИ ЗРІКСЯ МОВИ РІДНОЇ” which is basically a poem of curses to those Ukrainians who choose not to speak Ukrainian. (I translated the poem well below)

Another bureaucrat is on vacation currently.

This leaves only one bureaucrat that I could reasonably try to contact – but there are no contact details (like email) on his page and in any case his view would not be sufficient to resolve matter by arbitration.

The bureaucrat that banned me (Yakudza) has cited Larry Sanger but what he chose to cite (rather then many other statements that founder made) as his headline probably sums up the frame of mind and state of prejudice with which he carries out his actions and in particular his decision to ban me. His headline citation on his user page is “Show the door to trolls, vandals, and anarchists”.

Ukraine is a divided country with about 50/50 split between Ukrainian and Russian Language speakers. Political and historical views generally divide considerably based on language. Articles on contentious topics on the Ukrainian wiki generally do not give sufficient weight to views predominant in the Eastern part of Ukraine. Open racism expressed by some bureaucrats and intolerance to different views demonstrated by others might explain why this is the case.

I therefore ask Stewardship to exercise more governance and guidance over Ukrainian wiki. Oxy20 (talk) 17:06, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

(It's amazing how easily people throw around the word "racism" these days... Seb az86556 (talk) 17:06, 7 April 2012 (UTC))

I translated the poem that I find offensive into English below. It is worth remember that Ukraine is a divided country language-wise and abuse between the sections is unfortunately common. I understand that poem to be direced at the Russian speaking Ukrainians with the intention of offending them. Oxy20 (talk) 17:49, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Yeah. And you need to understand that not everything that might be offensive is "racist." Just as it is not "fascist," "Nazi," "socialist," or any of the other buzzwords people scream at each without knowing their meaning. You are discrediting yourself. Seb az86556 (talk) 23:13, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Your view on what is "racist" and what is not might depend on the particular country you live in. In some it is purely black skin colour vs white. In others it encompasses much wider spectrum of hatred including same colour, same nationality but nevertherless different ethnic groups (even if slf-identified) within a single country. I see this poem as an attack on the Eastern Ukrainian ethnic group. The definition of racism you subscribe to might influence whether you view the poem as racist, but I do hope that regardless of that you see that it does bring wikipedia into disrepute for senior people to display such hate material.Oxy20 (talk) 23:30, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

I even disagree on that. There's nothing wrong with having this poem on your userpage. Seb az86556 (talk) 23:56, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

So you think it has not meant to cause an offence to anyone and is unlikly to be perceived offensive? Are you aware of any bureaucrats or even admins on English Wiki (where even senior members are under greater scrutiny due to a much larger number of bureaucrats and existence of a number of stewarts who undstand the language) that display something even remotely similar on their profile?Oxy20 (talk) 00:09, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

I just don't find it particularly offensive. It's a poem. Seb az86556 (talk) 00:42, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

The offensive poem on bureaucrat Gutsul profile page reads along the lines (translated from Ukrainian to English):

You abandoned your language.

You abandoned your language. The soil will not bear any fruits for you. Green branches of trees will die if you touch them. (Implication that you are so taimeted, dirty and cursed that whatever you touch dies)

You abandoned your language. Shame will meet you on a narrow road. Sadness will fall onto you just like snow and you will not be able to pass it to anyone else. (Cursing, and by that I mean wishing a missfotune rather then swearing)

You abandoned your language. You now have neither family nor nation. You will seek respect of foreigners – but to no avail as they will lough at you. (Some more cursing and expression of disrespect for foreigners and those who associate with them.) Oxy20 (talk) 01:09, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

I do not see that there is anything for which stewards could or should intervene. Best I can do is to point this matter to another bureaucrat at ukWP and ask for them to have that conversation. It is not a steward's role to stick their nose into local matters or local blocks where the community is able and has the resources to manage their own processes and practices. If you have a valid concern to bring to the attention of the Wikimedia community then it may be something that belongs as a Request for comment. billinghurst sDrewth 01:52, 8 April 2012 (UTC)