Stewards' noticeboard/Archives/2016-06

Request for revising of admin rights and getting unblocked

Respected Authorities,

I hereby want to ask for a way I can get unblocked on .bs Wikipedia project. [I did send this to arbcom and was redirected here as they work only within English Wikipedia.]

I was blocked indefinitely there by an administrator who has user name C3r4 on December 23, 2015 with reason: "Incorrect information" (Bosnian: "Netačne informacije").

However, I consider this a big misuse of administrator privileges and an abuse of admin rights to personally disable an user that C3r4 doesn’t share same opinion with.

Block happened after I changed page "Konvertibilna marka" (https://bs.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Konvertibilna_marka&type=revision&diff=2675350&oldid=2600140), inputting some references and expanding an article a bit.

NOTE: Same changes I made to English Wikipedia article "Bosnia and Herzegovina convertible mark" and I my edit was not reverted and I was not obviously blocked (indefinite block for such edit would be ridiculous).

So, I consider this edit cannot be reason for indefinite block by any means.

Hope you can help me because I cannot edit my talk page, my user page, e-mail messaging is blocked etc.

I guess you can talk to administrator C3r4 or check his contributions around time he blocked me (and other as well), and my contributions too.

• Previously, when I started editing .bs Wikipedia and Wikipedia generally, I’ve translated English Wikipedia article "Bosniaks" to Bosnian language, and after insisting on keeping that translation in article "Bošnjaci" – C3r4 blocked me. That is telling you there’s something wrong on .bs Wikipedia because it’s impossible that English article couldn’t have been accepted to the extent of getting blocked several days later due to insisting on keeping that .en version...

• Previously, when I edited a TALK PAGE for article "Tomislavgrad" (https://bs.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Razgovor%3ATomislavgrad&type=revision&diff=2602626&oldid=1041937) to warn it has a wrong name because Bosnian spelling should be Tomislav-Grad by official Ortography (Senad Halilović), C3r4 reverted that edit (https://bs.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Razgovor:Tomislavgrad&diff=next&oldid=2602626) with comment "... hvala kralju, Allahimanet!!!" (English: ...thanks king, good bye [ironically]).

PS I am NOT a vandal (I edit .sr and .en project sometimes, and .hr as well, but due to nationalist users on .hr [problem around .hr is well known and has reached even to the J. Wales several years ago] I’ve been blocked there too last year, and several weeks ago I was blocked on .sr because of sending allegedly copyrighted images, even if many admins there have been completely opposed to giving me a 4 day block because I’m every-day-active user; please, DO NOT MAKE THESE AFFECT YOU while trying to help me with C3r4’s misuse of adminship on .bs).

I hope you can help. Please consider my case only and only related to .bs Wikipedia and C3r4 and my contributions only on .bs Wikipedia. Thank you in advance! --Obsuser (talk) 23:59, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Anybody? --Obsuser (talk) 09:17, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

@Obsuser:For this case you can merged to SN AYST201 (talk) 08:10, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

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I was redirected here. Thank you in advance. --Obsuser (talk) 12:59, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Could someone check this? It has been over three months since posting original request. --Obsuser (talk) 19:07, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Stewards don't really have any mandate for reviewing sysop actions on our own. You could open an RfC instead, or ideally try and resolve the issue at the lowest (local) level. Ajraddatz (talk) 19:11, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Vandalism on Wikispecies

Hello, @OhanaUnited: @Dan Koehl: @Tommy Kronkvist: @Ajraddatz: Over on Wikispecies (where the community have banned me for no apparent reason), contributor @PeterR: has deleted this reference template which links to a very large number of articles! I created the reference template, and he has presumably deleted it because he dislikes me and/or objects to the name of the template (which is a dummy name that does not display on articles!) Nobody on WS seems to have noticed this act of vandalism, or else they don't care. Since I am blocked from even my own talk page, I cannot alert WS to the problem. Please can a steward see to it that the reference template gets undeleted? Petty acts of cyberbullying like this, against me, by PeterR and others at WS should not be let ruin WS for everybody. Thanks, Stephen Thorpe Stho002 (talk) 01:53, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

@PEarley (WMF): Some intervention really is required here. The WS project just isn't working if needlessly destructive deletions like this one, involving large numbers of articles, are perpetrated by, and then simply ignored by sysops - deletions motivated by hatred, to the disadvantage of the project. Stho002 (talk) 03:57, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

Hello @Stho002: and thank you for your heads up. The template you refer to is a duplicate of the template Lord & Leschen, 2014. I have "resurrected" the template created by you: it is now a redirect to the Lord & Leschen template. Best regards, Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 10:50, 17 June 2016 (UTC).

This section was archived on a request by: —MarcoAurelio 11:05, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Addition for Special:AbuseFilter/69

Would someone be so kind to update filter /69 to add the domain weheartit.com . Thanks.  — billinghurst sDrewth 23:46, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

Done. —MarcoAurelio 14:55, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: —MarcoAurelio 11:05, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

AAR15

Hello. In light of the very slow speed the process is being handled, mainly because just one or maybe two of us are processing things there, I'd like to propose to appoint some delegates to perform the notification job. The appointment of stewards' delegates is allowed by policy. I'd like to propose Rschen7754 and Billinghurst, both former stewards and very hard-working people with knowledge of the process. We badly need help there so also if anybody else is interested if they could please list their name here that'd be good. Best regards. —MarcoAurelio 18:49, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

I would like to add that if anyone has some ideas how to make this process technically easier, that would also be a great help, as the current way of doing it is rather tedious and off-putting (certainly to me, and I kind of invented it). --MF-W 22:14, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

+1; maybe the possibility to bot-message the users and the pumps would help a lot? —MarcoAurelio 22:17, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

@MarcoAurelio: I am never sure that I was particularly active with the original set of notifications, let alone the follow-up. I am aware that there is the need for a systematic process for the components, and the use of bots and tools to get the process function. It would be useful to identify the mechanics of the parts that are being undertaken, and where you are wishing to have assistance, ie. what is/are the bottleneck/s?

Further what have stewards done to investigate streamlining the process? For example, has use of stewardbots been considered? What about mediawiki message delivery? Have you a process to have the pertinent messages available in recipient languages? These sorts of initiatives should improve compliance and involvement of the relevant communities.  — billinghurst sDrewth 09:52, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

I'm not sure that I will have much if any time to contribute, but I suppose it does no harm to leave me as a delegate, just in case.

I copied and pasted the most used translations into a file, and had that on hand instead of having to manually copy and paste from the translations page. It may be possible to use MediaWiki message delivery or streamline the process as suggested above. --Rschen7754 08:09, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

Also, I think the new "activity log" that was added this year is unnecessary and just adds extra paperwork. --Rschen7754 08:19, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

A few additional thoughts:

1. There is some inconsistency in notifying users on other wikis apart from the one where the rights would be removed. Do we need to do this? I did out of a courtesy, but it is not required per policy.

   Also, there are crosswiki notifications, something I didn't have when I did AAR14.

2. MassMessage could be used to speed up things if there are a lot of users at one wiki: we could set up a list of users, and then message them all. The messages could probably be left as "Your admin/bureaucrat status on the Chinese Wikipedia" and then we could assume that crats could figure out that they have the crat bit too.

   Or, we could batch it up and say "Your admin/bureaucrat status on this wiki", but it would require the messages to be re-translated.

   As far as languages, we could either just use English and add a link to other translations, or do all the English language ones, the Spanish ones, etc.

   Speaking of which, for the smaller languages, I often had to figure out what language to use, by looking at Wikipedia and figuring out what "czb" or whatever was, then going back to Wikipedia and figuring out what major language that was closest to, then if we had a translation for that, or if not, just falling back to English. Having a conversion table for that would help so we didn't have to reinvent the wheel every year.

3. Unfortunately, I can't figure out a way to streamline the village pump notifications, beyond the hope that doing the individual notifications would cause some folks to resign and save us some of the work. Unless using MassMessage would at least keep us out of having to go to the individual wiki and navigating the edit window, or we could instead of listing the individual users, say "go to this page on Meta and see who is listed under your wiki" but that's a mess and might not fly. --Rschen7754 02:27, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

The problem I see with MassMessage is that only allows a specific message to be delivered on one single language, so we would need to build a list of users by language and message them all. Also, since the messages on the village pumps have to contain the names of the affected users, that makes it un-massmessageable. Maybe for last year we could ask if somebody would be willing to program a bot that, parsing data from the /Data page, could reach village pumps and users on that project with the appropriate messages; but I'm not sure if that'll be easy to do or not. —MarcoAurelio 11:09, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

I suppose administrators on Zulu language Wikipedia are able to comprehend Zulu etc. And sending messages by wiki is what has been done all the time, as far as I am aware. Or is your point that most wikis are smallish ones with only 2-3 affected users each at max.? --Vogone (talk) 12:40, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Hmph, what? I mean that we should use a bot which, parsing the names from /Data, picks the translated messages for the language of the project then post them to the village pumps and user talk pages.—MarcoAurelio 16:50, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Even if there was such a thing as cross-wiki preloading of edit pages, it would make things easier. Or if not, even a link to a "new section" for the user talk page, and to CentralAuth. --Rschen7754 03:22, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Stewards

1. You have a shared bot (StewardBot) [and you should look to reclaim and merge the versions of that bot fwiw. [1] ]
   1. You may wish to consider granting rights to the bot to trusted non-stewards to assist as it has no special person data access
2. It has access to pywikibot that can be set to deliver messages
3. You have ready access to Wikidata to identify each of the village pumps, and you know the user accounts
4. You have access to translation tools that can have a text or wikitext version of an English message and other languages can be generated here at meta by volunteers.

So I think that much of the notification components can be managed within the group, or under the direct ægis of stewards.  — billinghurst sDrewth 07:29, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Update

Well, I had the time, so I just went ahead and did the rest of the notifications. Removals should start around August 5th. --Rschen7754 03:22, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

I can't thank you enough. THANK YOU. —MarcoAurelio 10:44, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Just a reminder that the removals can now start for some of the wikis, since it has now been 1 month. Just in time for the Olympics. --Rschen7754 00:36, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

Latin Vicipaedia

Thank you for your work on this, and I'm sorry that we at Vicipaedia were slow to reply. In fact we do have a policy of our own -- this is it in English -- but we hadn't got round to applying it in the case of la:Usor:Myces, hoping he would show up again. You've meanwhile notified him, and I guess you may as well continue with your process in his case. However, in future, we'll keep an eye on this issue and notify inactive admins ourselves. OK? Andrew Dalby (talk) 15:02, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

@Andrew Dalby: In this case the global policy cannot be applied - you will need to request this at SRP if you want their rights to be removed. --Rschen7754 00:25, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

Noted. Thanks for your reply. Andrew Dalby (talk) 16:12, 28 July 2016 (UTC)