UDWiki:Administration/Discussion

This page is used for sysop-to-sysop communication. For example, if System operators A wanted to get the attention of all other system operators, discuss a policy issue, request assistance from a number of other system operators, etc., he or she could do so by posting under the appropriate section on this page instead of having to write on several different talk pages. Additionally, since this page is intended for system operators use only, it is locked so that non-sysops cannot edit it. The talk page, however, is to be kept unlocked so that other users of the wiki can comment as well if necessary.

Page Guidelines

When starting a new discussion, please do so by placing it under a new ===Level Three Header=== at the top of one of the sections below. If an appropriate section doesn't exist, either place it under the Other section, or create a new section. After the discussions are concluded, they can be moved to the Archive.

Policies

Expansion of Crit 6

I wanted to get a general consensus before I started a policy on this (if needed). Is this something we should watch out for and address now ? I would like the guidelines for A/SD and A/D to include something like this:

Requests for page or image deletions that are denied by the tending sysop can only be placed on the deletion queue by another sysop. This is in order to prevent meat puppeting deletions or vandalism by proxy.

Actually, the other sysop would just go ahead and delete it if they thought the action taken was inappropriate. What I am trying to stop is Group A putting up images and PK lists etc. and getting them voted through deletions. We need a system to deal with that or add to the policy that a deletion vote can be overturned by a majority of the sysops.

The Amberwaves image is a perfect example. Yeah, it sucks, but that's TZH's gimmick. It doesn't meet the speedy criteria so they forum shopped it. Attack images did not pass the scheduling vote only pages. I see this as the same as not getting a page undeleted so they recreated it themselves. You don't get a page SD'd you put it up for a vote and meat puppet it.

Can you imagine the headache if the 2 umbrella's started this? Not to mention it isn't "vandalism" technically. It might be time to consider a harassment (not civility) policy.

We should probably look into adding more criteria for requesting a page move (especially of an active group or author), too. I don't want to make everything a sysop vote (oh hell no), but having a sysop have to go back and either "fix" or comply with requests already handled is ridiculous. --– Nubis ^NWO 13:16, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

The system is flawed and full of holes. We have a policy that says we are not moderators, yet the admin guidelines say we can do anything that is not covered in a policy. That's why things should not be ruled by the letter here, cuz the letter is poorly written. Anyway, agree with you that if a sysop refuses to delete a page/image, only another sysop should be able to allow the deletion request to carry on being voted on. I think move requests, undeletions and protections too should be covered in this. Heh. I remembered how we (sysops) used to have veto power in suggestions and suggestions rules change --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{talk mod} 02:39, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Crit 6 is deletion of already deleted things, 'nuff said. If they want it to stay they need to undergo the same requirements as an undelete request, which is to say they need a very good reason. Claimed holes in the rules is never a good enough reason.--Judge Karke, self-proclaimed Decider of Everything and Ruler of All 05:52, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I think you missed the point I was trying to make with the name. It was referring to the "workaround" part not the actual action. With images requesting an undeletion doesn't work. --– Nubis ^NWO 13:50, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

It doesn't but, they do still need a reason for reuploading a crit 6 image or it will get deleted. I understand that the issue is trying to meat puppet through deletion votes but, such things only work if the sysop that is deleting isn't paying attention to both pages like they should be. Abusing the system is in bad faith and we shouldn't be serving such deletion requests.--Judge Karke, self-proclaimed Decider of Everything and Ruler of All 23:48, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Promotions and Demotions

Deletions

Deleting single contributions

Related to my own case recently here, I want to leave a quick note on how we can delete single contributions on this wiki's software, which will be necessary in the future if a user complains about personal information being spread without his/her permission.

Make an edit to the page removing personal information/censoring related links or comments
Delete the page
Restore the newest revision you made with the censoring, and all the revisions under the contribution that the first personal information breach was made
Wait for the job queue to reach 0 while it re-adds the revisions to the wiki

And eureka, the histories with personal information will only be viewable by sysops via Deleted Pages. --

11:35, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Copyrights

I'm just gonna leave this here for a bit.--Karek^maps?! 21:35, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

If we need to start a search and destroy mission on all copyrighted images I can tell you we are in for a big project. When Ross and I cleaned up the uncategorized list there were tons of them. That's just the blatant ones like say video game shots or album covers or logos. But if we think we should go through and do it I'll help out. --– Nubis ^NWO 02:18, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

We have the {{copyright}} template that should be added to such images. Sadly, few people use it :| --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{talk mod} 02:31, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

So, do we delete them or template them? Either way it's a big project. Karek, where are you going with this? --– Nubis ^NWO 13:34, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

i'd rather template 'em, and remove only when asked. copyright material will always be submited, and this is a service --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{talk mod} 15:39, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Just pointing out some of the bigger and more obvious "offenders", someone should be watching that list to get those under either deletion or categorization at least.--Karek^maps?! 17:08, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

The main thing that link pointed out to me is that people upload duplicates way too often. I left notes on all the talk pages about the dupes I saw on there. That's another thing we need to get after.--– Nubis ^NWO 14:20, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Pretty much, I usually use that link to check for dupes and porn myself but there was a recent splurge of uploading obvious copyright violations and I know some people worked out a sort of compromise on how we deal with those.--Karek^maps?! 16:06, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Vote counting

Ok I was digging through the Deletion archives and noticed a few voting and results discrepancies. In cases where there is an equal number of deletes as keeps as well as one vote to merge the rules say the page is suppose to be deleted but there seem to be cases that this hasn't happened. This has left me with a few questions that I would like some more input on. First off what should be done with pages that were improperly kept? Speedy delete? resubmittal through deletions? kill om sight? just keep them? Also is keeping despite the verdict a misconductable offense? I'm think no unless one op has been habitually doing it (not sure if thats the case yet, still digging deeper) - Vantar 10:20, 18 May 2008 (BST)

There were some cases where people were using move as a merge w/ keep that I can think of, but it's probably best to just put them to a vote later and in future cases of the same lead in to a misconduct case.--Karek^maps?! 10:55, 19 May 2008 (BST)

I'm curious if we can start counting delete as speedy delete in the event of no one voting keep. Doesn't it clearly say that merge is an assumed delete vote? If it is misconduct to delete before time it should be misconduct to not delete it when the vote is for deletion. That's the old "forcing your will with your sysop powers". I think we should delete the ones that have enough delete votes unless they have been edited since then. Then they can be reconsidered.--– Nubis ^NWO 02:22, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Probably not in most cases. Delete means they either don't see that it qualifies or aren't completely definite in their vote and are willing to be persuaded to change it if a reasonable argument arises. However examples like that last case where it's been a week or more and all votes are delete without any even close to keep I do believe it qualifies. Sort of our own version of Wikipedia:Snowball Clause via the UDWiki judgement clause.--Karek^maps?! 16:18, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Monumental Fuck up Workarounds

When a user creates a page titled [Everyman], this fucks up the entire page making it very difficult to delete as the software actually takes you to a page titled Http:/wiki.urbandead.com/index.php/User:Dan Everyman dude to the double slash. I've managed (completely by accident) to find a way to delete them.

When you reach the page in question click the edit tab. From there, insert an extra slash (/) into the address bar and you'll be taken to the edit tab of the page you want to delete. From there, just hit delete, and the screwed up page is gone. :) -- C h e e s e 23:59, 15 May 2008 (BST)

Nice work, that page has been pissing me off for ages. Die you bastard >:) -- boxy ^{talk • i} 15:07 16 May 2008 (BST)

*stabs the corpse of Http://wiki.urbandead.com/index.php/User:Dan Everyman relentlessly* That was an incredibly annoying page. Yay.-- AHLG T G THE END IS NIGH! 18:33, 16 May 2008 (BST)

You can say goodbye to Template:Click here http://wiki.urbandead.com/index.php/Category:User too now >:D --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[cloned] [mod]} 19:12, 16 May 2008 (BST)

Lol. That is a monumental fuck up of a page. :P -- C h e e s e 00:31, 17 May 2008 (BST)

Inactive Group Images

Look, conn not only deleted mine and several other groups that were listed for speedy deleetions, but he also deleted every images associated with these groups. While, yeah, it seams logical that we should delete this unused images, what if the page is undeleted ? Look at my group now, it had a cool picture that i took from the Modern Drunkard Magazine, and that i cant recover now :\ My group now looks all shitty with that groupbox whitout a picture... And that would have happened with any other group... The Mongolian Horde page was deleted a few weeks ago, later undeleted. Luckily the one who deleted the page didnt delelted the images also, or else the mongolians horde page would have lost a lot of it charm.

So, i think that when a group page is deleted, all images listed in the page should be listed for deletions only after 30 days passes, thus giving the group a chance to undelete its page without losses. We could create a subsection for the deletions page, whre mods could post the links for these images then. --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[cloned] [mod]} 04:39, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

We have no way to track which images were associated with a deleted group. We only see that they are over a month old and unused. You could keep a link to your favorite images on a user suppage to keep them off the togo list. --Max Grivas ^{JG / M.F.T.} 04:47, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

That's what i am talking about max, a way to avoid this. We could list the images and then erase the group page. More work, but atleast we wouldnt lose some part of the wiki once a mistake was fixed. --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[cloned] [mod]} 04:49, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

If we are just talking about one image in the group box I would probably play along. Some wacky groups have dozens of little images that would be a terrible mess to try and sort out. Its kind of a work around but downloading the image and uploading it over the top of the old one should reset the date. I really don't want to do that for several images per group but it would not be too hard for one. --Max Grivas ^{JG / M.F.T.} 05:40, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Yipes! I Dont think that would be the better way to solve this. --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[cloned] [mod]} 16:04, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Make a template like the {{notorphan}} one and whack it on the image. Oh yeah, and convince Kevan to update MediaWiki. Again. Then we could undelete images (only ones deleted after the upgrade though, if I'm not mistaken). –Xoid ^M•T•FU! 15:37, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Copyrighted Images

Should we delete them if their owners didnt contact Kevan or the moderation team asking them to be deleted? Should we contact them once someone points that the image is copyrighted ? Should we kick akule in the nuts for being a moron and tear apart our fun in the wiki ? --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[cloned] [mod]} 03:17, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I contacted Kevan on this, and he's replied. I'm waiting for another email in response, but at the moment it looks like he's interested in embracing fair-use in a similiar fashion to Wikipedia — even if the owner doesn't want them here, if it's fair-use they can get buggered. Good to hear. –Xoid ^M•T•FU! 03:36, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Speedy Deletion -> Deletion

Is transferring stuff from the speedy delete queue to the regular deletion queue as needed meant to be handled only by sysops or can anyone do it? The guidelines can be interpreted both ways. - Vantar 23:46, 28 August 2007 (BST)

If it can be interpreted both ways then it can be done both ways. There's no harm done in a normal user helping on Administrational pages, archiving, moving unrelated discussions to talk pages and more. I did it in the past and I was a pain in the ass, but not a vandal. --Matthew Fahrenheit ^YRC☺T☺+1 00:18, 29 August 2007 (BST)

Ok because what I had in mind was asking a few of the users that routinely keep everything if they would mind cycling those pages to deletion but I want to make sure they would be allowed to first - Vantar 00:22, 29 August 2007 (BST)

Vandalism

Just to make everything clearer on M/VB, should we bold all official rulings so that they're easy to pick out whenever the page gets larger? --Darth Sensitive ^W! 22:43, 25 September 2006 (BST)

I am somehow responsable for what happened there. Jjames followed my advice to move his arb cases against several people to vandal banning. No matter how stupid this cases might be, arb was not the place to solve personal disputes of "he called me this and that". The problem is that some people started to create vandal cases in his name, most of them only for fun (gage even reported Amazing). I still hold my point that M/VB should be a serious place, not the place to make joke vandal reports, place funny templates, or post any kind of stuff that could further drama. --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[cloned] [mod]} 22:49, 25 September 2006 (BST)

Not messing with that at all - it falls under vandalism in my book too. It isn't helping the wiki in anyway. But I'm just wondering if it should be policy to bold the rulings. That way, nothing gets missed or done twice. --Darth Sensitive

^W! 22:53, 25 September 2006 (BST)

Iscariot's Vandal Data

Change the vandal data to match Aichon's suggestion or leave it as is. Sysops, vote now!--User:Yonnua Koponen/signature2 21:44, 4 August 2010 (BST)

Dang, guess I was too slow. I was just posting to ask for more discussion before going to vote, but I guess this works since I got edit conflicted. —Aich on— 21:48, 4 August 2010 (BST)

For reference, the changes are detailed here. —Aich on— 20:28, 9 August 2010 (BST)

I feel a need to bump this issue. The only two sysops remaining are Red and Cheese, and I see abstentions as reasonable likelihoods. It's been a week since this vote was started, but I see no reason to put a deadline on it, because VD isn't going anywhere. I'll bump Cheese and red.--User:Yonnua Koponen/signature2 00:06, 12 August 2010 (BST)

Change

It's the right thing to do, even if it doesn't make a difference. —Aich on— 21:48, 4 August 2010 (BST)
Reading the brief discussion on A/M, I have to agree with Aichon. If something is broken and can be fixed, we shouldn't delay on it simply because Iscariot doesn't want us to. We've fulfilled our obligation through A/M and such, but if we can make things how they should actually be, we should. Also, as Mis.--User:Yonnua Koponen/signature2 21:50, 4 August 2010 (BST)

Keep

Not going to make a single lick of difference. 21:46, 4 August 2010 (BST)
I just had a look at Iscariot's normal A/VD and now I think the "change" option is even dumber than I did before. At first I thought you'd actually done some work on it in the same way Boxy did and added de-escalations, but it seems you just struck his escalations all the times you should have and that was it. Currently, just keeping Iscariot's A/VD the same as before but modifying the records so he got de-escalations where he should have gotten is just ludicrous, my long answer why is here, but now I realise the descalations are the only change you're offering, I have even more problems with it. Firstly, since Nubis has been banned it's hit the point where we've actually equalled out what made the A/VD so bad in the first place, and respect for Aichon for finally having him brought to A/M for it. But now it's sending the balance in the other direction, when imo it's right where it is now; the wrong bans have been evened out etc. Secondly, this is so unnecessary it seems like you're just appeasing to him, and if there's one person I know who is immune to appeasement it's Iscariot. Thirdly, This undermines ban time that he's served and will now mean his A/VD is treated (if he were say, escalated or de-escalated from here on) in a different manner to what it should. So, ironically, Iscariot most likely wouldn't like this change at all. Lastly, you are going against precedent and practice that has had this happen to over 50 users on this wiki since its creation, and your proactivity over this and lack over others (for example, what about thad? We gonna go tamper with his too?) is, for lack of a better word, appalling. Again, it happens, but that's just how it is. --

02:40, 5 August 2010 (BST)
I would advise you to re-read my summary if you're having trouble understanding where I got the data I proffered. I explain it step-by-step and in a method that should be simple to refute if there are any errors present, yet aside from simply saying it's wrong in your third point, you offer nothing direct. Instead, you attack it on the grounds that it's not following precedent, which is fair enough, but then also with another argument that can be distilled down to, "We've already done enough nice things for Iscariot."
There is no scale with "good things for Iscariot" on one side and "bad things for Iscariot" on the other, as you imply, nor should we try to balance it if there were. There's simply "what's right to do" and "what actually happened", and the scale needs to be tipped towards the former. That it tips in his favor is immaterial, and I'm more than willing to investigate other cases when I become aware of them (as I likely will with Thad's now, thank you). Your insinuations to the contrary are patently false, and I'm downright offended that you would even consider suggesting such things of me.
And as far as precedent goes, you used to care about making sure this sort of thing didn't happen, but, perhaps as a result of the conversation that sprung from that comment, you stopped at some point. Ignoring your own waffling on the subject however, even if the precedent you cite is current for these issues, it should be broken since it's not fair for everyone. That misdeeds occurred and were forgotten does not excuse them. And you yourself said, "we strike [escalations] when a user is facing a higher punishment like a ban." THAT'S the true precedent, and it's what didn't happen for Iscariot (hint: every single one of his de-escalations after Nubis' initial mistake should have come when he was facing a ban. Every. Single. One.). Anything else is an excuse for past misdeeds and laziness on our own part, and you know it. —Aich on— 06:15, 5 August 2010 (BST)
I didn't mean anything personal by my comments, I was rather attacking the logic of redoing the bans, even though it didn't sound that way. The reason I believe we are going beyond what is right by Iscariot and the VD is because what we have now is the right vandal data. The wrongfully made bans have been paid by the users involved, the escalations themselves added, and the idea that we should be just go back and tamper with them will, IMO, make the vandal data more construed, hard to follow, and most importantly, wrong, than what they are now, which is as close as we are gonna get. And I don't think you know about either a) precedent or b) my laziness and misdeeds on this part, as I was the specific user who brought this whole clusterfuck into light and I've been rightfully punished for any wrongness I did to Iscariot's vandal data. We've done the necessary pulling to get the A/VD to the point where it could be considered a bit more fair and admirable, this isn't what I had in mind of getting it "right". And that doesn't make me lazy, or defensive, or unfair. Nubis needed to be banned. ATM you're trying to tell us what we're doing, thinking, and even worse, what we were doing when it all happened, when you weren't even there. And I don't think you have a good perspective on exactly how much I care about this situation. You think I used to care about this, then stopped caring, or whatever, well look at this vote, look at the amount of sysops we have compared to the amount that have voted either here or on nubis' recent case. Don't tell me I don't care. None of you cunts had to go through shit like this on a weekly basis just to progress through this annoying event, and I am one of the three sysops who have bothered going through every one of Iscariot's escalations to find out what should have happened. Again, should people be de-escalated when they are escalated to, say, a ban? Yeah, but if it doesn't (and especially if they didn't want to be and specifically asked not to be), then that shit just happens. It warns at the top of A/VD that users are responsible for their own descalations, and I've never been much of a battler for the ever so precious rights of vandals. You won't change my opinion on this, and you haven't convinced me that my above vote was said in any wrong light. I was just saying how it looked and how I felt. I still do, and for the most part, it's still how it looks. --

11:35, 5 August 2010 (BST)

Abstain

For the moment. As I see it, things started going wrong at 5 because Nubis was misconducted. It was misconduct, but only because he gave a week instead of the 48hrs. He wasn't required to search out a deescalation, and we shouldn't retroactively apply them this long after the fact -- boxy ^{talk • teh rulz} 22:26 9 August 2010 (BST)
As Boxy. I never feel we will get a consensus. --Ross less ne s s^{Want a Location Image?} 18:44, 10 August 2010 (BST)

Protections

Signatures

Yay, use for this page! Anyway, after what 3pwv did with his alt's Lakeside's signature (deleted now, was same as Jedaz's Evil Text) I wonder if we should just plainly protect all sig templates. Yeah, the policy isn't even in voting yet, but still. In practical terms sig template vandalism is Denial-of-service attack and I believe Kevan wants to keep the wiki running. Any thoughts? --Brizth ^{M T} 20:54, 22 September 2006 (BST)

Definitely. I think it's pretty uncommon for most people to revise their signatures very frequently, and they could easily be abused as a method of taking down the wiki or mass-vandalizing pages, as you pointed out. It would fly in the face of all of our red tape, of course, but that would only matter if anyone bothered to enforce any misconduct case spawned by that ;) –Bob Hammero ^{Mod•B'crat•T•A} 01:14, 23 September 2006 (BST)

The policy is already on voting. Lets hope now that it passes. --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[cloned] [mod]} 19:37, 24 September 2006 (BST)

Just make it a scheduled protection. Two weeks voting on a page nobody even bothers to look at. It's almost a certainty that it'll pass. –Xoid ^S•T•FU! 04:28, 16 October 2006 (BST)

Arbitration and Misconduct

Arbitration thingymajig

Regardless of people's options of his actions I feel that Grim has made a good point about the lack of appeal in Arbitration. Do other think that a appeals system is worth developing?- Vantar 03:38, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

It seems like a good idea, but there should be a limit to how many appeals can be made. You can start a policy discussion and see how it goes. --Z. slay3r • Talk 03:57, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

How about an arbitration committe appointed from among the sysops. People present their casdes, the sysops convene, judge, and then render collective judgement. Make time limits on verdicts mandatory. --The Grimch ^{U! E! WAT!} 03:58, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Why does this need to be discussed here? It's not a sysops issue -- boxy • talk • 23:23 1 December 2007 (BST)

Requests for Assistance

Help Plz

I was working on this the other day and it seemed to be fine until Gnome pointed out that it clashed with the Custom Title template. I think its something to do with the coding of it making it the first thing on the page and can't think of anything that might be able to fix this. Anyone have any ideas? -- C h e e s e 23:27, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

CustomTitle is simply a div overlay so unless it's coded to be longer for all instances, you won't get what you're looking for. You could always change CustomTitle to accommodate when the MediaWiki:Sitenotice is in effect and then undo the change once the sitenotice is wiped again, but other than that, I don't like your chances. --

11:39, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Other

Communal accounts

This came up today, on a user talk page. Although it doesn't look like the account is being used by multiple users (as yet), I just thought we should discuss it's potential implications in case it does happen. I can't remember any precedent. Such an account would be a nightmare to handle if one of the users accessing it started vandalising -- boxy ^{talk • teh rulz} 04:18 3 January 2009 (BST)

Pretty sure there is some from in the past, check for the bigbash account stuff and old DPHD stuff. If it happens the account gets blocked and the user who performed the vandalism gets escalated. Seems pretty straight forward really considering we can see edits by IP.--Karek^maps?! 05:41, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

I can see no good reason for more than one person to access any account. It isn't as though you have to pay for an account here. On SA, if your account shows 2 IPs that aren't in a reasonable distant to each other the account is banned and you (and your buddies) are out $10. The DHPD stuff you are talking about is the Desk Sgt. controversy. I thought it was in-game only, but I don't know for sure.--– Nubis ^NWO 08:08, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

We've had mutli-accounts other than that in the past. Generally they're good wikizens and don't break the rules, even if the users using it aren't always. There really wouldn't be much point to us preemptively banning them, they haven't committed any vandalism. The users of them should probably be advised that they should make it public knowledge it's accessed by multiple users though, just to cover their own asses.--Karek^maps?! 17:49, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

On whose talk page did this issue appear? --Zs L 22:54, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Reworking the Move Template

I'm putting this here incase someone thinks of something I don't.

It seems to be about time we started on making the Move template include a list of links for sysops and other users to monitor, much like {{Vndl}}. _{[[Special:Whatlinkshere/{{{1}}}|links]]} Is an obvious link that's needed. Probably also Logs. What else? And how should we work around the headers(We would need Pagename as a variable for this to be possible)? Anyone is welcome to comment, although normal users will obviously have to on the talk page as this one is protected.--Karek^maps?! 15:09, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that sounds useful. I attempting to stick some of the more useful ones on MediaWiki:Pagemovedtext. However I can't get a delete link to work from this page similar to the Wikipedia one. I'll keep at it though, I'll hit it eventually. =p (Unless someone has a really helpful insight that would save me some time?) -- C h e e s e 15:14, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't think we need any more than links on the MediaWiki page. Anything else encourages not checking.--Karek^maps?! 15:43, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Okie doke. It was beginning to annoy me anyway. -- C h e e s e 15:45, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Here's a quick mocked up code and here's what it would look link if used for the Main Page. -- C h e e s e 15:37, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Looks good but it's only part of what's needed unless the idea is to make this match the A/VB system. As far as what's there though, it looks pretty complete link wise.--Karek^maps?! 15:43, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Should be easy enough to join it with the current template. I'll have a fiddle. -- C h e e s e 15:45, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

How's that? -- C h e e s e 15:55, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Templated signatures

I hereby move to ban templated sigs under this policy. To be specific, point 2 in what wouldnt be allowed, reprinted here for lazy people:

Signatures which generally break the wiki in some way either through formatting or other means.

Templated signatures are the only reason any page ever experiences a template overload that renders the page completely broken. And its not once or twice, but it happens all the fucking time. I have also noticed that a large number of them also increase page load times. My talk page archives are a good example of some pretty ridiculous load times generated by these things (And one of the reasons i have banned such sigs from my talk page).

There is no doubt whatsoever that these signatures do indeed fall under the above point in what should not be allowed. I propose we enforce it. Give everyone a month to switch over, then prohibit their use. --The Grimch ^{U! E!} 15:14, 25 September 2008 (BST)

I never notice any increased page load times, except Sonny's userpage for some reason. I am for this, but I think a separate policy defining on how long a signature (code wise) should be would be great. My signature is stupid long. AHLG T H 18:30, 25 September 2008 (BST)

I am going to take continued lack of comments as agreement to do this, and issue the notice in three days. --The Grimch ^{U! E!} 01:22, 28 September 2008 (BST)

Don't just assume a lack of comments to be an agreement. Some people have stuff to do IRL. Like Gnome, I've never noticed any problems. The only major concern is the suggestions talk page. All it means is that we just need to move stuff to overflow more often. And any change like this would need to be discussed with the community as a whole. Just because you got made 'crat does not make you Grand High Emperor of the wiki. That's Kevan's job. Stop acting like you run the place, Grim. It's getting old, very fast. -- C h e e s e 20:47, 29 September 2008 (BST)

I wasnt assuming a lack of comments to be agreement. I was, on the contrary, utilising a psychological ploy to draw more people into this discussion because i had seen a considerable number of other sysops active and ignoring this discussion, and i wanted full discussion. You can call me a bastard if you like, but the fact i didnt go through with it when my deadline expired on the first is pretty clear evidence that i had no intention of going through with it in the first place. Also, the fact that such an action would be fucking stupid should have clued you in, but i digress.
Templated sigs do break pages. the suggestions talk page is one example. Now their effects are most obvious on longer pages, where they increase the load times by over 100%. My arcghive pages are a good example of this effect, as are some of the recent and long administrative archives. Its not all that noticeable on good connections, but as this is a simple browser game, accessable to those with even low end connections and browsers, its better to err on the side of caution.
In any case, there is no need for a new policy specifically to remove them because under existing policy they are explicitely illegal. Break the page in any way includes overloading the pages template quota through sheer numbers, which is a sad fact of life when you stuick templates in something as commonly used as signatures. Its happened quite a lot. Just because we have turned a blind eye to their use doesnt mean its allowed, it only means that we havent cared enough to do anything, and it doesnt result in the need for new policy. --The Grimch ^{U! E!} 11:06, 3 October 2008 (BST)

Eh, I just find that templated signatures cause overload problems on the suggestions talk page, and users' talk pages that are overly long. Other than that, I see no other difficulties generated by them. --Zs L 11:18, 3 October 2008 (BST)

I won't support your interpretation of the 'sigs that break the wiki' policy in this case, Grim. It was clearly written with individual sigs in mind, not the cumulative effect of hundreds of templated sigs on a page, overloading the system (as happens on Talk:Suggestions). That is a result of the settings of the wiki, limiting the number/data size of sigs that can be called on any individual page. That said, templated sigs do suck, mightily, but it requires a policy for them to be banned across the wiki, IMO -- boxy ^{talk • i} 14:23 4 October 2008 (BST)

Revisions

There are too many on the main administration pages. We need to work out a method that will reduce them significantly in the case of future cases needing deletions of select history revisions. As rare as it is.

There are a few ways to do this, all of them mean more work for us. Probably the best one is to turn the real page, A/VB for example, into a redirect that consists of #REDIRECT [[UDWiki:Administration/Vandalism/Archive/{{CURRENTYEAR}}_{{CURRENTMONTH}}]] This will keep with the current Archive naming convention, keep each month's revision histories seperate and unique, and save us the time/effort of manually archiving every month. However, we lose the month's cases the moment the month ends, or rather, they are archived immediately regardless of when they are completed and we will have to create the months new page then(although that can be done before hand). This can, and probably should, be done with all Administrative Request pages.--Karek^maps?! 03:13, 12 August 2008 (BST)

It'll also prevent things like what happened to A/Vb in '05/'06 from happening in the future.--Karek^maps?! 03:13, 12 August 2008 (BST)

I'm not following on the '05/'06 part. -- AHLG T G THE END IS NIGH! 03:31, 12 August 2008 (BST)

In '05/'06 A/VB was deleted. There were so many revisions that they couldn't be restored. It's why users like Amazing don't have complete vandalism logs that match up with the archives(see the big gap in their coverage).--Karek^maps?! 03:34, 12 August 2008 (BST)

If we have to create the month's new page manually anyway, why not just have a section that gives links to the "undecided" cases that were left on the old page? For example, at the top of the August page there is a section of just links to July cases. That way we aren't clogging up the new month with bleed over discussion or having a case appear on two months/pages. Keep the discussion on the archived month (leave the talk page unlocked if there are non op users that need to comment) and upon completion just add a summary to the Undecided section of the outcome. --– Nubis ^NWO 03:47, 12 August 2008 (BST)

You'd have to manually move them as as soon as the month changes the redirect changes too. Although it's certainly possible, to copy them over and archive cases by when they are closed instead of when they are opened. I'd have no problem doing that.--Karek^maps?! 04:26, 12 August 2008 (BST)

If there's no more questions and no objections I'm going to start this soon.--Karek^maps?! 01:26, 19 August 2008 (BST)

I think the best way to do it is to include the archives on the main A/VB via placing {{:UDWiki:Administration/Vandalism/Archive/2008_08}} in the Vandalism Report Space. That way everything will be on the main A/VB page, but all the editing will be done to the archive page -- boxy ^{talk • i} 03:12 19 August 2008 (BST)

This way is easier to have the latest VB cases on the one page during monthly changeovers -- boxy ^{talk • i} 03:14 19 August 2008 (BST)

There are call size limits, I severely doubt we would be able to call a full month's full of A/VB without reaching that limit, especially in the more drama filled months. It is possible to check though. . .--Karek^maps?! 04:38, 19 August 2008 (BST)

We can throw in a <noinclude> somewhere on the archives to shorten the inclusion if needed, or does it depend on the total size of the included page, rather than just the included part of it? (Sorry about that A/SD stuff up... twice :-/) -- boxy ^{talk • i} 04:42 19 August 2008 (BST)

Noincludes are counted against the file size limits.--Karek^maps?! 04:48, 19 August 2008 (BST)

I tried this in my sandbox, June seemed to be fine, but May was a bit long. Funnily, the templates at the top of the page still worked, and the inclusion of the archived text, but the ones at the bottom (including those inside the archive) stopped working, presumably when the limit was reached. We could make this work, as long as it only affects those at the bottom of the page (those that have already been dealt with), I think -- boxy ^{talk • i} 02:20 20 August 2008 (BST)

I've just done that with A/VB. Hopefully the fact that it puts them on the archive page after filing a report won't be a big problem.--Karek^maps?! 03:48, 20 August 2008 (BST)

~~I'm going to use the Redirect method on A/SD, it'll give us something to compare later.--Karek^maps?! 03:57, 20 August 2008 (BST)~~

The redirect didn't want to work.--Karek^maps?! 04:05, 20 August 2008 (BST)

Well it seems to be working on A/VB for now, however, the way you've got it set up now, as soon as the month ticks over, all the cases from the month before will automatically disappear from A/VB, regardless of whether they have been dealt with or not. I think we need to put in the full links by hand, and only cycle them once all cases in the old month have been dealt with (a couple of days usually covers that). It will mean that for a day or two, we have two archive inclusions on the page, but given that the new months one should be small, it shouldn't cause too much of a problem.
We will need to be a bit more ruthless at removing commentary to the talk page, I suspect, to keep the size of the inclusion down -- boxy ^{talk • i} 09:13 20 August 2008 (BST)

Definitely. And this whole protection thing brings up a seperate can of worms, the Mass Revision main page will need to be Moved to an archive and a new pages set up. Otherwise you still have the problem of the editable 2000+ diff page and while new revisions are limited it still allows for possible abuse.--Karek^maps?! 13:45, 21 August 2008 (BST)

Are we planning on adding the intro templates to the current "archives"? Because right now, they're quite empty. -- AHLG T G THE END IS NIGH! 23:47, 21 August 2008 (BST)

Mobius187

I think it is high time that we had a look at him. I have recieved several complaints about him in the last month or so on IRC, and recently took the opportunity to probe a little deeper into this mysterious individual that appears to be a sysop.

It seems like since he has been promoted, he has taken exactly no interest in maintaining the wiki and the community. Below i shall list the entirety of his eedits in the UDwiki:Administration namespace:

In his promotions bid, included merely to demonstrate the massive gulf between this and his first edit on an admin page. 31 July 2007

in Bureaucrat promotions 4 September 2007
A spelling correction in a policy discussion 10 September 2007
Reporting a vandalism case 2 November 2007
Crat promotions again, retracting candidacy 19 November 2007
Editing this page 8 December 2007

Unless i am dramatically worse at counting than i think i am, this count adds up to a grand total of 5 edits in the administration area of the wiki since he was promoted 5 months ago. The contents table of my misconduct page for the same period is longer (100% not guilty).

It seems that all Mobius has been doing with his power is moving pages within his own little side project around. Oh, and 11 deletions he performed without going through either A/D or A/SD.

He also skirted on impersonation on at least on occasion recently, editing and rewording signed posts

Im not asking for him to be demoted. Im just asking for opinions, and im asking him to explain his lack of interest in maintaining the wiki, and just what he intends to do to rectify the situation. --The Grimch ^{U! E! WAT!} 03:24, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

As you have asked I would be more than happy to drop by and explain myself, if explaining truly needs to be done here. I should point out that I was originally nominated by boxy after he deemed that I performed tasks befitting "janitorial work" here around the UD Wiki. I have never had any interest in Wiki litigation, a pursuit shared by most of the hands-on Sysops (along with the more common wikidrama). As such, most of my work has been as Grim pointed out, clean-up (content edits/archiving old news/fixing links) and moving wikipages.

On the matter of deletions, that involved my work on NecroWatch. Simply put, I inquired originally with boxy as to whether I was required to go through any process to delete redirected wikipages. At the time I assumed that included images, as all of the images listed there were uploaded by yours truly. After Grim popped by and told me to stop deleting, as the required red tape had not been spooled out I stopped and desisted further action along these lines.

On the topic of rewording posts, I agree I did skirt that one. My philosophy is that a signed post is not God's absolute will, as suburb news is public news and we all read it, and as a public wikipage we all contribute to it. No one user should have final say over anything on them. In the past I've always taken a hand to correcting spelling, grammar, and adding links. I don't blame people for being lazy or making simple mistakes. I make them myself from time to time. Also, I never change the meaning of a post. Of course if anyone ever has an issue with what I've done they are free to undo it, and I never step in again as I assume they've made a willing choice to phrase their news post in the "creative fashion" they selected. I even sometimes invite them to my Talk wikipage to discuss the matter further if they have a particular problem with my edits.

In summation, my interest in the UD Wiki revolves around the contents on the suburb and location wikipages. It has and always will. The most Sysop-related work you can expect from me will likely be vandal reports or again, moving wikipages as required (to date, other than my own, I have moved one group wikipage). If you have anymore direct questions feel free to send them my way. --Mobius187 05:17, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, actually, I think you've moved a few suburb archive pages around... but that was all in the name of conformity of treatment of suburb archives. It seems you've stopped doing the one major thing I had qualms about (deleting pages, made by you, without going through A/SD), when confronted about it. The suburb news report isn't actually anything to do with sysops powers... it's a straight edit conflict issue. Grim sites complaints given via the back door... this is a wiki... complaints go here (seeing as the community has made it clear that syspops don't get reviewed unless they do something clearly wrong) -- boxy ^{talk • i} 12:12 22 December 2007 (BST)

Correct, I did Move the suburb news archive wikipages in order to conform them under the same name. That was earlier this year not long after I became a Sysop, as it was something that always bothered me... that lack of conformity in such a standard wikipage (i.e. used by every suburb). Personally I would hope that should someone take issue with anything I've done that they would come to me first to discuss the matter like gentlemen. I certainly would do no less. Public complaints should really be a last resort after a clear resolution, or possible concessions by both sides, have not made any headway due to an inability to work out the reason for the misunderstanding or where ill-will (i.e. vandalism) has been proven. When there is no malice of intent, then there is simply a misunderstanding of purpose. --Mobius187 14:36, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Thats why i came here boxy. I dont want to toss him out on his arse. That would be silly. What i want is for him to start pulling his weight on admin tasks, especially considering his activity on this wiki. I felt that a public calling out here would be more effective than a private consultation on his talk page. It takes all of five minutes to do a sweep of all the admin pages, far less (As long as it takes the page to load) if you have them on your watchlist like i do, and not much longer to climb up off your arse and cycle a few of the things. Take myself for example: Im underactive at the moment (By my standards). I get, on work days of late, about three hours online (Bout half of which i spend here off an on) and yet i still find the time to do my part, live the dream, do the damned job i was promoted to do. It irks me to see others entrusted with that responsibility to shirk it as thoroughly as you have Mobius. Also, the part about other peoples signed posts being sacrosanct. Thats not subject to opinion, thats subject to policy and precedent on this wiki, and you would do well to remember that in future. The only reason i took no action on the matter when it was brought to my attention is because it was three weeks ago, which according to this assuredly accurate time-comparographer is almost definately larger than my cutoff of two weeks for a case. Keep in mind that future occurances will be treated as vandalism, and strive to ensure that there will be no such occurances. --The Grimch ^{U! E! WAT!} 14:47, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Shirking duties? I don't recall shirking anything I never agreed to in the first place when I accepted boxy's nomination. And I quote, myself, "Long story short, my goal, if made Sysop would be to simply keep doing what I'm doing right now, working on wiki-projects and sorting things out in hopes of improving the UD Wiki". Now if there is a problem with my complete lack on interest in performing other Admin duties here on the UD Wiki, then let me know and I will respectfully step down from the position. I would hate to think of all the harm my inactivity was doing to the role of Admin. The implication that I simply do not take the time to perform my duties is erroneous, as I prefer to spend my time working on wiki projects which consume most of my time here, as I'm sure my Contributions will attest. On the matter of news posts, if Wiki policy forbids editing another user's post, on the single merit that they have signed it, and to do so is deemed as "impersonation", may I inquire as to what you would recommend as the best course of action to resolve poor spelling/grammar here on the wiki when it is posted on public wikipages? If the conflict here is simply one of impersonation, then would one solution be to delete/replace their signature with your own after editing the news post? Of course in doing so it implies you posted the news item, but at the very least everyone would know who was behind the current version. Or would you suggest that the corrected version be posted below the original news item. Of course that may be viewed as belittling the original user's post. I could do that, but that goes against my standards as I prefer not to publicly point out others mistakes in that manner (no more so then I would like the same done to me). Or was perhaps some other solution has already been reached in this matter to which I am unaware. If so, please feel free to inform me, as knowledge is power. --Mobius187 17:27, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

To be blunt, you dont require sysop abilities to do anything you are already doing (Jorm pointed this out in your promotions bid). If anything needs moving, we have the lovely move requests page. If anything needs deleting, theres A/SD. Being a sysop carries certain powers, true, but it also carries the attendant responsibilities. You, as a sysop, have a responsibility to help in the upkeep of this wiki in an administrative role. I would vastly prefer it if you decided to take up this responsibility instead of avoiding it, or even withdrawing your status as a sysop. If you dont want the responsibility, then i fail to see why you need to keep the abilities and status you have. As for editing signed posts: Typo correction is fine, as is fixing existing links if broken. As for everything else, do not change it. They are their words. If you dislike the wording, leave it or, if it seriously irks you, take it up with them on their talk page. Removing a persons signature and signing your own is also not kosher. How would you feel if you typed a wonderfully eloquent post clearly and irrefutably rebutting a major sticking point, and then i came around, fixed a few small parts of wording, then deleted your sig and replaced it with my own. You would be miffed (At the least, and probably report me for vandalism), especially since you wouldnt get the credit for your intellectual work. Your lack of information on this subject is alarming, to say the least. All this should be plain common sense. --The Grimch ^{U! E! WAT!} 02:49, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Alarming? You sir sound like an "alarmist". ;) In your above example you imply that the only purpose this would serve is taking credit for another user's hard-earned news post, when in fact what I speculated was a possible solution for a situation wherein a user posted news that showed a particularily poor grasp of the English language, so much so, that it would be better for someone to step in, reword it, but rather than "impersonate" the original poster, use their own signature. I would hate to think this is a lose/lose scenario. Either one edits the post, but leaves the original poster's signature only to be blamed for vandalism and/or impersonation, or one claims it for their own after the edits and is accused of stealing the original poster's (albeit poorly worded) work. Perhaps you might suggest a percentage of total content requiring replacement within a post prior to such a claim of new ownership being made? Perhaps 51% or more? Regardless, I am glad to see that it's not against the UD Wiki to correct typos or broken links. What about capitalization? If a user consistently uses lower-case throughout their news post, would I have permission to capitalize appropriate words? On the flip side, what if a user misused capitalization in their news post? Also, on the matter of links, what if a user references a location or group, and neither location has previously been linked to in that day's news post, would I have permission to turn the text into a link (i.e. "The BAR defeated the zombies." to "The BAR defeated the zombies.")? On the more important issue of Sysop duties, I would need to take some time to mull this over. Even so, I certainly cannot disagree with your analysis, or simply put, I certainly do not need Sysop powers in order to perform my current work on the UD Wiki. --Mobius187 04:18, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Admin IRC

We now have an IRC channel, #udwiki on irc.nexuswar.com . Also, at the time of writing, there is a matter that needs discussion there. Please sign in. --The Grimch ^{U! E! WAT!} 03:34, 20 October 2007 (BST)

Real life dragged me offline, and Thari took off a minute after i did for other reasons, leaving no one to fill everyone in on the situation. Im back online now. --The Grimch ^{U! E! WAT!} 07:45, 20 October 2007 (BST)

Rebuild

I just rebuilt the archive pages for both protections and move requests (As well as a massive amount of other maintenance tasks, which, all together took me just over two hours to do). Anyone have any particular suggestions for improvement to these new archives, or are they fine as is? Any objections? --The Grimch ^{U! E!} 18:02, 1 October 2007 (BST)

It looks good, nice work - Vantar 18:53, 1 October 2007 (BST)

You have done such a nice job in these archives. I know another page that could do a little of archiving, care to work on it ? --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[cloned] [mod]} 19:25, 1 October 2007 (BST)

Not a chance in hell. My talk page shall never be archived, for it is in itself a living archive. --The Grimch ^{U! E!} 21:40, 1 October 2007 (BST)

but.. but... you know it want it. --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[cloned] [mod]} 21:58, 1 October 2007 (BST)

Unfortunately i underestimated the amount of posting thyat would be happening on my talk page when i set up the system. Originally it was intended to be a single style to keep everyones comments bunched up nice and neat, but when creating it i neglected to factor into this the impossibility of archiving such a system while retaining the elements for which i chose it. As a result, it has become something of a living archive, and people who read it can walk back in time 17 months, and see the exchanges, for good or for ill, that i had with other users of those eras. Also, it cements me in place as a living fossil, i like that factor as well ;) Anyhow, back on topic: Any suggestions for improvement to what ive done, or anger that i acted without consulting you lot? --The Grimch ^{U! E! WAT!} 00:54, 2 October 2007 (BST)

Rounded corners in templates

I've noticed that a large number of the templates we have here now use the -moz-border-radius property to create rounded corners in Mozilla-based browsers. I personally preferred the way most of these templates looked with square corners. Any other thoughts? –Bob Hammero ^{Mod•B'crat•T•A} 01:16, 23 September 2006 (BST)

Not all templates have round corners. Not only because it would be dumb to make all of them round, and the long work it would need to have it done, but also because pointy corners look better sometimes. I have only added the rounded border tag to those templates i found that could do good use of it, like navigational and moderational templates. They should stand solo where they are, and call for attention. IMO, this just adds to the wiki. --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[cloned] [mod]} 19:41, 24 September 2006 (BST)

Suggestions

New template in place makes it redundant to include the bolded keep/kill/dupe/spam. Can we get away with just changing the rules at the top to make these unnessecary? Because there are currently a bunch of votes that are illegal as written. --Darth Sensitive ^W! 22:45, 25 September 2006 (BST)

Since it's under the "keep/kill/dupe/spam" heading, the first word is "keep/kill/dupe/spam". Creative interpretation, Darth. It's a huge timesaver. ;-) –Xoid ^S•T•FU! 04:52, 16 October 2006 (BST)

Knew that - wasn't going to go all jackbooted - but I was hoping to get a mini-consensus that changing it without a vote would be OK. --Darth Sensitive

^W! 22:35, 16 October 2006 (BST)

User:DangerReport and User:NTstatus

Recently, Kevan installed a extension called "Keep Your Hands to Yourself" which prevents users from editing other users' main pages. This conflicted with the pages in the title above and the danger reports for suburbs, malls, and other places. I wanted to get everybody's thoughts on whether we should just leave the extension uninstalled, or should we move all the Danger Reports to subpages of Category:Danger Reports? --^T 16:29, 6 April 2007 (BST)

I'd say move them, eliminating a whole category of possible vandalism is a mighty fine thing. No more proctection needed on sig-pages as well. There are probably more reasons as well. I'm not sure why these pages are in the User namespace anyway.--Vista 16:59, 6 April 2007 (BST)

Wow... one incident of User page vandalism on the current A/VB page... and that was in February. Is it really worth the effort, given the low incidence of user-page vandalism? (But yeah, why the hell were they put there in the first place... what's wrong with Template:DangerReport? -- boxy ^{T L ZS Nuts2U DA} 17:12, 6 April 2007 (BST)

Seeing as they aren't supposed to be on a user page in the first place, should we move them to a template or somewhere else? --

^T 17:57, 6 April 2007 (BST)

It used to come up a lot in early 2006. But then again we used to have 3 to 5 vandal reports in one day, not one report in 3 to 5 days. We should ask hagnat why it is in User:Dangerreport, It's his editing alt I believe--Vista 18:12, 6 April 2007 (BST)

a discussion from early april and only now i see it... darn. Anyway, back in teh good ole days, where we lacked a lot of this neat features the new mediawiki have and amazing was running amock, there was little knoweledge about the whole exploit in pages as templates. Most of us though you could only exploit the User namespace and were quite happy about that. And, the older mediawikis had a bonus, that made me abuse the exploit... by using the exploit that page wasnt linked while editing as a used template like they are now. So, a page like Suburbs wouldnt be filled with a crapload of more than 200 or more templates, but only a few that were in the template: namespace. Thats the main reason why User:DangerReport was created... --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[cloned] [mod]} 01:59, 11 May 2007 (BST)

Was this issue ever resolved? I ask because I recently created something (read: a whole lot of subpages) along these very same lines, by using DangerReport as an example of how I assumed that it was supposed to be done. As I'm all about conformity I thought it best to use the same method. If it has been decided that User wikipages shouldn't be used to house subpages in this manner, let me know and I'll move them to however they should be grouped (i.e. sub-page of the location wikipage?). --Mobius187 21:12, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, the "keep your hands to yourself" extension was turned off, so that isn't a problem, however the template namespace is the place for templates (like dangerreports and the like)... it's just that it's not worth the trouble to move every danger report template over, and fix all the links to them. If I was starting a new project from scratch though, that would be where I'd put them. Oh, and Hagnat, don't template calls from the user namespace also break pages when they hit the 200 (300?) template limit? I thought sigs (in the user namespace) were the main problem -- boxy ^{talk • i} 23:41 8 December 2007 (BST)

Its template calls in general, not just userspace templates. Its just that the userspace templates are by far the most often used, and on really long pages they can build up to critical mass. --The Grimch ^{U! E! WAT!} 10:45, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Really Anal page titling

Discussion moved to Template talk:SuburbInformationCenterMap, because this should be open to community discussion, rather than being limited to sysops -- boxy ^{talk • teh rulz} 11:37 16 May 2010 (BST)