User talk:WritingSnowman/Archive 1

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User discussion for WritingSnowman.

thanks!

Wow. Good work reverting that vandal. Feel free to email me if I don't see a note on my user talk page. Geo Swan (talk) 23:43, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

greetings

I saw you left your email address. I tried sending you an email, and it didn't work!

Thanks

My gratitude for reverting the vandal Sprinterere1s edits. Is there any option to block him or he might start vandalizing again? Popol (talk) 19:13, 18 September 2022 (UTC)


my email would have been

What is up with this 5+ day outage?

I looked at https://en.wikialpha.org/wiki/Kalashnikova_Show. You are interested in weapons trade shows? Did you see https://en.wikialpha.org/wiki/XM1204_(HEAB-T) ?

https://en.wikialpha.org/wiki/File:Anna_Knishenko_OSCE.jpg

I was always careful, on WMF projects, to only use properly licensed images. On wikialpha I use images, for which I claim fair use, that I know would trigger a fair use challenge on the wikipedia, because there are a handful of people who are ultra strict there.

If you didn't take the photo of Anna, yourself, but you think "no free equivalent is reasonably available" should you claim "fair use"? I think it is worth considering.

As you know, it is not up to me as to whether you get trusted with administrator authority on wikialpha. But, so far, you seem to have been completely trustworthy. You are doing good work.

You can quote me!

Cheers!

Did you see this?

One of my email addresses is [email protected]
I am going to test to see if I can remove a single revision, with this one here, as soon as you use it. Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 17:21, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
Can I draw your attention to this note, again? Geo Swan (talk) 03:28, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
I just sent you a direct email several days ago, but I still got this error message when I clicked email this user: "Unknown error in PHP's mail() function." WritingSnowman (talk) 18:22, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
  • You mean that, you got that error message when you clicked on [email protected]? Hmmm. Could you try just copying that email address, and going to your regular email app, and pasting that into the To: field?
I have uploaded images from booledozer's flickr gallery, so it is not really a secret that I use that ID.
Thanks!
  • Yeah, the email user feature isn't working. I think it may have been broken for a while. I don't know where to look to fix something like that. Even if I knew how, I don't feel authorized to try to fix internals.
Do you know how this feature works? It preserves the privacy of the receipient. The person sending the email doesn't know the receipient's email address. But, as soon as it is received, the receipient learns the sender's address.
Receipients then have the option of leaving a public reply, on the sender's talk page, or sending an email reply, where the other party will learn their email address.
If you are reluctant to use your mail app to send an email directly to the email address I offered you, in the clear, because you want to keep your email address a secret... well, that wouldn't work.
Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 04:08, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

My Page is mark as spam

My Wiki Alpha Page has been marked as Spam now it's okay. Bot Google still show me Atiqur Koushik Its a Spam profile Do you have any way to remove the spam mark on Google? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Koushik (talk • contribs) 2022-09-21T12:58:57

I have just moved the redirect. -- WritingSnowman 18:04, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
Google especially adapted it algorithms to monitor wikipedia's recent changes log, so changes to wikipedia pages show up right away. Wikialpha is much less popular than wikipedia. So the search robots that crawl internet content visit our pages much less frequently.
User:Koushik, eventually google's robots will visit that page again. I don't know of any way to rush this process. Sorry. Geo Swan (talk) 16:23, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Finding and reversing vandalism

Recently I noticed a huge upturn in the rate at which wikialpha is being vandalized.

I really appreciate that you and User:SilvaFox have been noticing this vandalism, and reverting some, and drawing others to my attention.

The fact that none of these new people, neither the vandals or the good faith people, uses edit summaries, makes it easy to mistake routine maintenance from vandalism

Please keep advising me of vandalism you see.

Please let me know if you think I made a mistake, and blocked a non-vandal.

I've decided to block people who only committed one act of vandalism for one month. I leave them a standard note on their talk page.

The funny thing is that some of these vandals consider themselves super hackers, when they clearly aren't. I certainly hope I don't meet a genuine super hacker.

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 16:30, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks Geo Swan. Good decisions. Inevitably these are the kinds of issues that we have to deal with as wikis expand. Please ask Richard if we can get a few more sysops to deal with this influx. WritingSnowman (talk) 13:13, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

your opinion please...

Yours is the 2nd edit in this list

What a mess.

Are you okay with me not bothering to determine if there was a single good version of this page - one not created by a vandal?

Oh. Have you considered keeping a log, of diffs of every time you reverted vandalism? I've told you I would endorse your bid to join M and I as an administrator. I think that list of diffs would be long, and would show your dedication.

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 02:43, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

Sure Geo Swan, I'll keep a list of diffs then. WritingSnowman (talk) 14:06, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

thanks!

Thanks for this and all your other recent vandal fighting! Geo Swan (talk) 15:15, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

You're most welcome as always! All the best, WritingSnowman (talk) 14:06, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks

You found instances where good faith newbies created duplicate articles, and you left one good copies, and redirects to the good copy.

Thanks for your efforts! Geo Swan (talk) 16:16, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Geo Swan Yes, and there were hundreds of these. A lot of grunt work but worth it to keep our free open encyclopedia tidy. WritingSnowman (talk) 22:09, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

your assistance please...

If you see any articles, where

  1. the original article somehow got moved to a new title, by a vandal, or by accident...
  2. and then an article was recreated under the original title, so two very similaar articles appear in parallel...

Those pair of articles are good candidates for having their histories merged.

I didn't know how to do this, for a long time, although I knew administrators could do it. You may be entrusted with administrator bits sometime, so I will tell you how to do it.

  1. If original title is the article title you want to keep, but there is a more or less duplicate at duplicated title...
  2. Look at the latest versions of the two different pages. If original title seems superior to duplicated title copy and paste the last version of original title over top of the last version at duplicated title
  3. delete original title
  4. move duplicated title, so it is renamed original title...
  5. now delete original title, again
    • At this point the deleted revisions under original title contain both the revisions from before the move to duplicated title, and the revisions after
  6. then, the last step, restore all the revisions for original title

The result is a merged history. And that is important, as there may have been people who only contributed to the history before the vandal move.

There is also a link under Special pages, specifically for merging two pages. I know how to do it now, the more complicated way, so I may stick with that, and only try the expedited method when I am confident it won't matter if I screwed up.

I know it is possible to restore some but not all the revisions of a page. But, when I tried that, it didn't work as I expected.

As I think I have said before, if it were up to me I would entrust you with the administrator bits.

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 21:54, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the detailed instructions Geo Swan! I'll definitely keep this in mind when I get tasked with maintenance/adminship responsibilities. Oh and by the way, Template:Ping isn't working. WritingSnowman (talk) 15:56, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Wikigems - The Free Gemstone Encyclopedia

If you wanna be an admin on my wiki, let me know! https://editthis.info/wikigems --SilvaFoxx (talk) 05:55, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

A heads up

User:MerajulIslam has been porting a lot of Wikipedia articles, without crediting the original contributors.

If you come across an article like that, feel free to do what I did... I put a __NOINDEX__ {{db-copyright}} at the top of the article.

It is pretty easy to tell most improperly copied articles. They have a redlinked talk page, and lots of broken templates.

Something without broken templates might still be a copyright violation. If a google search for a unique looking sentence hits the Wikipedia version, it is almost certainly a copyright violation.

Thanks for all your hard work! Geo Swan (talk) 04:26, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Geo Swan Thanks for the heads up! WritingSnowman (talk) 14:52, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

fighting vandalism is hard

I took a look at Ebadat Akram Dunia.

Recent edits made it look like spam...

But, older revisions look like it was started by yet another guy claiming to the greatest rapper in his country. I reverted bak to User:Mathewignash's revertion, but then decided he missed this vandalism.

So, I reverted again, to the last version by the original author.

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 05:14, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

If I missed any of the 100 articles you thought merited deletion, a couple of days ago, please let me know.

Here is a new request. I didn't always do this, but I am going to do it from now on... I am going to link to the specific {{db}} template I add, in my edit summary, so it shines out in the article's revision history. Going forward, would you consider following this example? Thanks!

Thanks for all your hard work!

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 05:14, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks Geo Swan! Yes I'll copy and paste the template code into my edit summary too. WritingSnowman (talk) 20:53, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

About Copyright - NileshK321

My Contributors are not harmful and copyright, It's written by self and some are Chat-Gpt. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nilesh k321 (talk • contribs) 2023-07-10T11:47:03‎

Thanks !

Can you rewrite that? How can contributors be copyright? You mean contributions and copyrighted. WritingSnowman (talk) 20:34, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Help needed (emergency)

Recently I saw lot of pages were removed/blanked from my id... I dont know how this was happened. Is my id hacked? or someone has my login credentials?

Please help me, or guide me what to do next. Please reply as soon as possible something isn't right on my account. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ArtistZ World (talk • contribs) 2023-08-12T11:28:45

templates can be tricky

Please see Template_talk:Copyright_warning.

You can see I got tricked [1] [2]... Lol. Geo Swan (talk) 08:53, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

signature request

I have a request... Most of the newbies here don't sign their talk page comments. They are newbies, and don't know any better. But I would like to request you sign all your comments. I came across several excellent warnings you left people, but, because you didn't sign them, I didn't know if they were very recent, in which case I should continue to give them a grace period, to comply, or if I should consider their grace period expired.

Thanks! Geo Swan (talk) 08:53, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

I did sign all of them with four tildes. The newbies don't sign though. WritingSnowman (talk) 16:55, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

your opinion please...

WRT grace periods, how long do you think they should be?

You have seen that in Template:not authorized I apply a three month block. If I were a wikipedia administrator that would probably be a one week block. I use three months here because contributors come here much more intermittently, and an expired block is not going to get anyone's attention.

By that reasoning, a one week grace period... do you think it is too short? In particular, do you think it is too short a grace period for asking a newbie to figure out how to bring an article ported from the wikipedia into proper compliance with the IP rights of the contributors?

Maybe, to be equitable, and given the intermittency, it should be 3 months? On the other hand, many newbies give up, and don't return, in 3 months or 3 years.

I try to remember to put both a template:db-copyright and a __NOINDEX__. Forgive me if you already know this, in theory, the __NOINDEX__ tells search engines not to index the page. Google treats wikipedia articles in a special way, so the placement of removal of a __NOINDEX__ gets paid attention to right away.

I don't know how frequently google's content robots crawl the wikialpha pages. Months. So, when we create a draft, with a __NOINDEX__, and google crawls it, and then we remove it when it is actually ready, google may not crawl it for months, so it doesn't show up in google search results for months. That has been a big frustration for me with a number of articles I created. It is a strong argument for creating drafts in user space, and only moving them to article space when they are really ready.

But, even if bad ports do show up in google search results, we could offer a diff of the placement of the __NOINDEX__ to any hyper legalistic critics. It is not our fault if google's robots don't check us regularly.

Anyhow, grace period, how long do you think is fair?

Thanks for all your hard work!

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 09:13, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

I'd go with 3 months. 1 week and they'll be back to do more disruptive editing. We don't have the human resources that Wikipedia does, so let's make it longer. WritingSnowman (talk) 16:55, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
  • Oh yeah, I think I am going to stick with 3 month blocks. My question was about warnings. Should people who port wikipedia articles, without attribution, get one week, or three months, to figure out how to:
  1. add the {{wp-cca}} template;
  2. add the list of wikipedia contributors to the talk page;
  3. upload the images the article uses, or delete them from the text;
  4. delete wikipedia templates not available here.
It is a lot to figure out.
I just indefinitely blocked a guy who ignored my warning contributions had to be in English, even though the warning was only a couple of days old. Geo Swan (talk) 10:27, 16 August 2023 (UTC)
I'd go with their behavior rather than what they actually did. 3 months if they are really stubborn and ignore messages and look like mass spammers/vandals; 1 week if they have very few contributions and look like they won't do much damage to the project if left unblocked. WritingSnowman (talk) 09:26, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Multiple pages with complete vandalism and illegal address doxxing of an individual

There is both illegal and immoral activity happening including outright bot vandalism on these pages: https://en.wikialpha.org/wiki/Bryan_Legend https://en.wikialpha.org/wiki/Bryan_King https://en.wikialpha.org/wiki/Bryan_legend https://en.wikialpha.org/wiki/BryanLegend https://en.wikialpha.org/wiki/Bryan_Seiler https://en.wikialpha.org/wiki/Bryan_Mark_Seiler

I have marked them as spam on multiple occasions but the content just reappears within seconds.

REQUEST: For a the above pages to be shutdown, content 100% removed and public editorial access revoked indefinitely.

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