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The following discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.



acagastya (talk · contribs) — adminship

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[Self nomination] I have been editing enwn for more than four years, and I know the dynamic and of project fairly well. I have been a reviewer for more than two years, and I am also a an accredited reporter. For what it is worth, I am a license reviewer on Commons (where I have to check for copyright status and licensing-related activities); which happened earlier this year in February.

I want to take up the categorisation process, wikification of old articles, occasional counter-vandalism and spam actions; and maybe improving filters. I am confident I have the inside insight for the mop and the bucket. (Basically working on all the tasks that I mentioned in the admin dashboard) -- •–• 18:44, 9 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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Questions and comments

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Thanks for volunteering. Someone just pointed me to this request today and I am amazed at how old it is. Just a quick question, do you have prior experience working with filters? Many thanks. Regards, --Gryllida (talk) 22:43, 11 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, @Gryllida:. Filters is something that has often caused trouble to me personally, getting triggered at the wrong time even for the genuinely good actions or heading titles. I remember when I had to write an article, and I guess it was the fifth article for the day, or maybe sixth, and the Abuse Filter triggered and decided to take away my privileges. While I could not get into the details why it happened, as I asked -revi and Pi zero, and maybe even Green Giant looked into this matter, I think Pi zero suggested it was because I created an article which had "poo" in it. That title was about "Liverpool". I think it was a bad regex pattern. Such annoying incidents had lead me to try the AbuseFilter extension on my local wiki, when I was trying things on the home wiki. It has been a long time now, since then, and I don't remember it at the top of my head, and so, yes I have very basic idea of filters. However, it has been so long that I don't remember any of it at the top of my head.
•–• 18:00, 12 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, the Scunthorpe problem. Plaguing people who live in Penistone, Liverpool or Scunthorpe since swear checkers were a thing. Seemplez 09:15, 18 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Acagastya (t · c · b), thanks. As I understand that wiki is sitting on unstable Internet and is not available for experimenting? Just checking as I had a wiki at localhost once but the Australian Internet upload speeds and stability are quite miserable.
(I would perhaps also invite @Green Giant, Blood Red Sandman, Mikemoral, Bddpaux, Microchip08, Tyrol5, Pathoschild, TUFKAAP, SVTCobra:, sysops who have been active in the last year, to comment or vote at their discretion.) Gryllida (talk) 02:16, 19 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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@Acagastya: Apologies for not commenting earlier. I know you don’t like being pinged unless it is important but this is important. Before I cast my !vote, could you please provide brief answers to the following questions?

  • This is your third nomination for administrator. Could you outline how you have changed and improved since your previous nominations, with reference to a concern raised at a previous nomination e.g. you were accused of not having the right temperament for an administrator?
  • You requested a block on your account about this time last year because of security concerns. Without giving details of the security concern, are you confident your account is secure? Have you taken additional measures to secure your account?
  • You have mentioned several admin actions which you want to carry out. Which one will be your priority and why?
  • An upset user leaves a foul-mouthed message on your talk page because you deleted their unpublished article, which had been abandoned for five days. Without going into too much detail, how will you respond to the user?
  • You have recently deleted a Userpage that was tagged as a spam/advertising page; you’ve also blocked the user for good measure. They send you an email and it seems they misunderstood what to put on a Userpage. What is your response and why?
  • Wikinews is being plagued by fake articles promoting casinos and online gambling. You feel that the user accounts are probably linked to each other. What actions can you take to try to stem this onslaught, apart from blocking users and deleting pages?
  • How many administrators does it take to change a light bulb? This is a rhetorical question! Cheers. --Green Giant (talk) 00:27, 26 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Green Giant: Hi. I would sequentially answer your questions.
  1. "not having the right temperament for an administrator" -- well, that time I was interacting with another veteran with their strong opinions of how things should or should not happen. I can go on explaining that situation and how it has improved, or I can, in a timely manner say one grows on-wiki, they learn new things. Experience, working with others even if they disagree with you: that leads to developing new skills. Certain things are learned passively. One of them is this. Now I know better to peacefully resolve the situation by proper communication channel.
  2. Regarding my blocked account, it is important to explain the situation. That time, I was unable to login to my account. If you notice, I choose to write my username in lowercase. And while signing in, when I typed "acagastya", it would just not let me login. It was just a few days after many people received a spurious notification and many people pushed for changing passwords + requesting 2FA. That time I could not figure out why I could not log in, but I did not want to take any chances. If my account was compromised (which I was later to learn was not the case, else I would have received notifications about it, and nor was my 40+ characters long password compromised) it could have been misused. I requested Pi zero to block it, I requested off-wiki, an indefinite block until I figure out why I could not log in. Cleared the cache of the system, restarted the computer, updated the browser, and voila! The login worked. But only when I used "Acagastya" instead of "acagastya". I never faced that issue again, but it is scary. If it were my Flickr account, I would not be panicked to that level. But I really understand how one can abuse the rights they get with holding the reviewer bit, so it was best to have a block than to have anyone potentially abuse the account. It was not the case and FWIW, my credentials is well above 55 characters long, which would make it extremely difficult to break. For curious heads, Birthday problem.
  3. Admin actions that I wanted to carry out...It has changed over time based on the context. At one time, enwn had heavy spamming and trolling happening. That time, I would have wanted to block the malicious accounts and nuke/revert/delete their edits. Later on, I went on to make {{testing}}. Right now, I would focus on populating categories, and creating new ones. Fixing the categorisation of the old articles. It was well established back in 2018 during the FIFA World Cup that we need to have a better categorisation process. So right now, that is what I would start with. And then, I will take up the rest of the entries of that template.
  4. Losing an article is always terrible. But it is important to respond anyone nicely, in a way they can comprehend. Sometimes people have high expectations with some article. I had. And often I have lost many good articles. I was never foul-mouth for losing the article, but I know that time what worked for me. We are volunteers and we try to do as much as we can. Sometimes it is not enough. But that does not mean we should give up. This wiki is not into being because editors gave up. Sometimes we don't get what we expected. But we should move on quickly. If you are married to an article, you are yet to realise it is better to not think much about the article after it is either published or gone stale. Once a mentor told me: "I learned from my father, always leave things better than you found them." Yeah, so I would not use these things, I was lost in the moment, but I would feel sorry for their shattered expectations, and quietly explain them how they could have improved, and tell them: "sometimes even with the best efforts of all people, we lose some really good articles. But we should not forget we are a team. And the team needs you, as much as they need anyone else."
  5. If I find an userpage which is tagged as spam/advertising, I would make sure that is the case before making any decision. If it is the case I would first delete the page, and leave a talk page message to the user about it. If I could hide edits and keep the recent most non-spamy page, I would do that. I would explain to them what is or is not allowed. If I had to block them, I would explain they why I had done that. And if they were to send me an email, I would first say I had informed them on their talk what is and is not allowed. Looking at the contributor's history, if there is no other fishy activity, I would grant them one chance. I would tell them about it, and also to be very careful from the next time. If I am not sure about the account, I would discuss with them and tell them I am not convinced if I can trust them yet. And then, I would see how they respond.
  6. I am not sure about this, but I have discussed about this with other admins. I think the term for this is "range block" where a range of IP addresses are blocked. I don't know how to do it, but I can ask other admin how to do it. Learn it and remember for the upcoming times. Also, I would see if it would be helpful to CU that account, and request someone with CU rights. Cirt had released themselves from that role, so I would have to find someone else. Perhaps Bawolff?
  7. While it looks like a trivial question at first, however it is not a wise thing to make the decision without properly understanding the deeper meaning. When a bulb at your home is dysfunctional, it has to be replaced. It may or may not be the most pressing issue. There could be other things happening which are higher on the priority queue. And when a bulb is to be changed, one does not want to go out to buy just a single bulb. So it is also important to know how urgently we need to replace it. Just because it is boring is no reason to neglect it. And then, when a bulb is to be replaced, it is to be done with great care. Not only choosing the right bulb -- because on-wiki, this metaphorical bulb may prove to be very costly -- but to install it properly is to be taken care of. You don't want to electrocute yourself. In other words, one should know what they are doing. Do only if you know you can. Else call the expert rather than burning the house down. It takes 1 admin to do that. If they know how to. Else it would take an infinite number of admins, and it still would not be done, if all of them are clueless about it.
    •–• 11:19, 26 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Excellent answers. You have numbered your responses so I will give me reaction in like manner.
No.1 was about personal reflection. If an admin had been criticised by other users, they should not become combative. We see the worst of this type of behaviour very occasionally on ENWP, where an admin blocks a user they are in dispute with.
No.2 was about being careful with your account because you will have access to sensitive tools. You’ve demonstrated this is the case and I applaud the lengths you’ve gone to.
No.3 and 4 were about a bread-and-butter issue for admins - the "wronged user". Whether or not they have been wronged and no matter how many swear words they use about you, a good admin is responsive to such contact and tried to calm things down.
No.5 was about recognising that there are limits to what we can do in the face of such concerted efforts by spammers. Being unsure about what to do beyond blocking and deleting is absolutely fine. What I was looking for is the recognition that sometimes you need to ask for help and you shouldn’t be hesitant about it. By the way, there are indeed no users with CU or oversight on ENWN currently, so don’t hesitate to go to m:Steward requests whenever the need arises.
No.6 really was just to lighten the mood but I do like how you’ve deconstructed it. :)
--Green Giant (talk) 14:41, 26 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Gryllida: Every reviewer is aware of the policy of not making any substantial edits after 24 hours of publication. That is because of the archiving policy. The same applies for the archived articles. The cases like: fixing the links, inserting missing image credit, marking a broken source url, adding or removing categories, adding wikilinks to the articles, removing hard redirects where not necessary in favour of {{w}} template are some of the scenarios where editing an archived article is appropriate. Necessary? Depends on case to case. Some are on the high priority basis: some are not.
•–• 16:18, 25 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Acagastya (t · c · b), I do not have any substantial experience with category creation. Just to make sure we are on the same page (someone correct me if I am wrong):
  • I have seen some reviewers edit archives to correct wikilinks after they have created a new category. For example, if a volunteer were to create Category:India, they would go through the archives and correct links to India and replace them with India, which is a redirect to the category.
  • I have seen categories be created only if a new article has been published recently which needs a category which does not yet exist, and can be populated with at least five members.
Would you say this is an accurate description of how things are currently done?
How do these observations correspond to your principles? Do they agree?
Thank you a lot for your responses. Gryllida (talk) 10:11, 26 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Gryllida: I would not be answering sequentially, but breaking the response in smaller points.
  • There was a time when {{w}} didn't exist and volunteers would link to en.wp by typing [[w:India]] (I call it as a hard local link). This is called a hard link and had its disadvantages.
  • Part of the work is to convert them to {{w}} links which is smart enough to see if the page exists locally or not. It can also handle suppressing foreign redirects or forcing foreign redirects.
  • The conversion of {{w}} to hard-local-link is something I used to do, yes. But it is not because a local category of India (for example) exists. It is the category exists (which should also contain a threshold articles in it) plus that scenario must warrant local link.
  • There are some cases, which I can't recall right now, which require foreign links. For them, local hard links should not be used. Instead, {{w}} should be used with forced foreign link. One must keep in mind if a local link is necessary or not. And then proceed with the change of links.
  • Creation of category is not dependent on how recent is an article published(which is directly related to the category). At least I have never seen anyone enforce that.
  • Category Creation warrants a threshold number of candidate articles which can populate the category. It was five articles, but I have seen sometimes the number is relaxed to three articles.
  • For example, Category:Ed Sheeran just has four articles.
  • If you were to create a category (assuming you did not have admin bits), the procedure I recommend is to find at least five articles (good if you can find all the articles), create the category page using the required template, go to talk page and list all the candidate articles. You should then place {{Fill this category}} template for an admin to take care of it. After that, please make a list of all the mainspace redirects, that are to be created. (In case of the example: India, India and Republic of India are candidates to be redirected to Cat:India). Make sure you explain why those articles should belong to that category, and why that redirect should exist. Have a look at Category talk:Felix Brych for the example.
    •–• 11:53, 26 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
My take on some of this, fwiw.
  • In recent years, three published articles is the category-creation threshold we've aspired to; it used to be a bit higher, before {{w}} made new categories easier to wrangle. Occasionally I've set up a category thinking there were at least three, only to come up short because, on closer inspection, some of those mentions weren't really categorizable. When that happens, sometimes I delete the category, or sometimes (one would think, with two articles) I just let it stand. Once or twice, I've created a category for a person knowing there were just two articles; in the case I recall, the second article was their obituary, there was realistically no chance there'd ever be a third article, it seemed really desirable to have a category for them, and there seemed nothing to be gained from not having one.
  • Once a new category has been fully populated, I would create one or more mainspace redirects to it. I'd wait till it's fully populated so we don't send readers to an incomplete category. A recent example has proven quite complicated, in this regard; I feel I haven't yet fully populated Category:Executive Office of the President of the United States (as noted on its talk page). The creation of mainspace redirects instantly causes {{w}} to those targets to link locally (unless the calls have parameter foreign=force). Sometimes, some of those links to a redirect are articles that maybe should be categorized after all; so, whenever converting a {{w}} call to a hard local link, I'll pause to consider categorization.
--Pi zero (talk) 14:22, 26 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
(Btw: we usually create categories for things mentioned in current news because (a) we're reminded of those topics and (b) we figure readers are especially likely to have an interest in those topics, but we do sometimes create categories for stuff that has nothing recent; e.g., yesterday I set up Category:Kathmandu.) --Pi zero (talk) 15:01, 26 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Acagastya:, thank you. I agree that recently published article is not relevant for category creation. You mention editing archives to correct links like w:India to {{W|India}}, for categories which do not exist. Is this correct? Do you intend to actively clean archives like this in cases when no other edits to the archive are needed? This may require millions of edits... --Gryllida (talk) 21:19, 26 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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@Gryllida: part of the job, when you are given the mop and the bucket is to clean it. It might be an ever increasing impossible task, but someone has to do it. Might not be the most important thing to do, but it is surely something we can't ignore.
•–• 01:51, 27 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Votes

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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