User talk:Beetstra/Archive 18

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Two-Factor Authentication now available for admins

Hello,

Please note that TOTP based two-factor authentication is now available for all administrators. In light of the recent compromised accounts, you are encouraged to add this additional layer of security to your account. It may be enabled on your preferences page in the "User profile" tab under the "Basic information" section. For basic instructions on how to enable two-factor authentication, please see the developing help page for additional information. Important: Be sure to record the two-factor authentication key and the single use keys. If you lose your two factor authentication and do not have the keys, it's possible that your account will not be recoverable. Furthermore, you are encouraged to utilize a unique password and two-factor authentication for the email account associated with your Wikimedia account. This measure will assist in safeguarding your account from malicious password resets. Comments, questions, and concerns may be directed to the thread on the administrators' noticeboard. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:32, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

A new user right for New Page Patrollers

Hi Beetstra.

A new user group, New Page Reviewer, has been created in a move to greatly improve the standard of new page patrolling. The user right can be granted by any admin at PERM. It is highly recommended that admins look beyond the simple numerical threshold and satisfy themselves that the candidates have the required skills of communication and an advanced knowledge of notability and deletion. Admins are automatically included in this user right.

It is anticipated that this user right will significantly reduce the work load of admins who patrol the performance of the patrollers. However,due to the complexity of the rollout, some rights may have been accorded that may later need to be withdrawn, so some help will still be needed to some extent when discovering wrongly applied deletion tags or inappropriate pages that escape the attention of less experienced reviewers, and above all, hasty and bitey tagging for maintenance. User warnings are available here but very often a friendly custom message works best.

If you have any questions about this user right, don't hesitate to join us at WT:NPR. (Sent to all admins).MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:47, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

I am author of the Spaceman book

Hi sir,

      I edited a page about my upcoming book. I didn't promote my book by any means apart from just giving the vital information. May i know on what grounds was my page deleted? I am expecting for your reply.

Thank you, Hari Prasath — Preceding unsigned comment added by Spacemanhari (talk • contribs) 13:07, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

@Spacemanhari: The page has been repeatedly deleted as it was just a mention of an upcoming book, without any mention of significance (e.g. references from independent secondary sources). As such, the article by itself is merely promotional - a way to make the (upcoming) existence of the book known to the world. If you want to write the article, please do so through here: Wikipedia:Articles_for_creation, and wait for assessment before it is moved to mainspace. You will be helped there with assessment as to what is needed to improve the article. Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:15, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!

Hello, Beetstra. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2016 election, please review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:08, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Request Advice

• pv-magazine.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

Hi Beetstra, I notice that you have edited on blacklist and whitelist issues, and I wonder if you can offer me some advice. I have added a new page on James Oakley (judge) where I used a reference from PV magazine which deals with photvoltaics. It was only for a point about the Pedernales Electric Cooperative and I could likely find an alternative source. I was surprised to be unable to save an edit because pv-magazine.com is blacklisted. I found the reference on a google search and know nothing about the magazine beyond that it appeared reliable to me. I tried but didn't succeed in finding why it is blacklisted, and wonder if you can advise whether I should try for its removal from the list, the specific pages addition to the whitelist, modify the reference to remove the wikilink, or seek an alternative source. Many Thanks. EdChem (talk) 01:14, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

@Edchem: This was blacklisted after quite persistent spamming (including socking, different domains, etc.) by site owners. It was since also deemed to be not a reliable source. Though I am in for the argument that the spamming stopped (the spammers promised way back that their spamming was a mistake), I do know that the involved editors were here in 2016 (5 years after the spamming), and since it is not a reliable source anyway I don't think a de-listing experiment is wise/needed (I often find that unreliable sites are spammed .. I wonder if there is a connection .. ). I presume that whitelisting is the way forward for the few links that are needed. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:59, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

With Wikidata in Chembox, what to do with CheMoBot?

Hi. I am preparing to use Wikidata data into {{Chembox}} and {{Infobox drug}}. So, the CAS number will be read from WD and shown. Useful tracking categories will be added, especially one that says: "CAS registry number: Wikidata value does not match local value". Also, some overruling might be needed ("Chembox, use different QID for this compound", and "local CAS number should be shown, wikidata issue"). All this is Wikidata-related.

My question here is: what to do with CheMoBot? I'd say:

Note 1: The bot does not 'see' a WD value, and so can not check it. This is a design-effect: use Wikidata data where possible. (It is not the design to make the bot blind though ;-). )

Note 2: I prefer not to have the logic between WD and CheMoBot interacting. My WD code does not use CheMoBot input.

Note 3: Earlier talk about this: /Archive 17.

• Initially, when we switch over to use d:CAS registry number

1. Let it run, do not change anything in the settings.
2. Do not show the {{cascite}} markings tick/cross with CAS number (template change)
3. Do not categorise CAS nr any more for CheMoBot categories (template change). These categories are getting incomplete and maybe incorrect.

• Then, when stable and editors can work

1. We can consider to switch off the bot wrt this CAS number following. (but removing parameter |CASNo_Ref= would be trivial=not desireable)

• In the end, this for each bot-tracked parameter. So, for each detail the bot is switched off afterwards, when stable.

What do you think? -DePiep (talk) 09:09, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

I'll have to come back to this - I guess it is time then to slowly shut down certain parts as they disappear locally. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:27, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

OK, take your time. The linked archive talk also mentions (in its 2nd half) the 'quality' of WD data. Might be relevant too. -DePiep (talk) 12:51, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

• TL;DR (IMO): we both understand that fetching 'CAS number' from Wikidata should be supported. It may take preference over local input (tbd at the Chebox talk). And the template, in code, can cancel CheMoBots {{citedate}} template. The bot, per settings, can be switched of months afterwards. -DePiep (talk) 20:34, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi

Hi,

I'm a New York Times bestselling author and my page was deleted recently by you I believe. I didn't create my page, in fact I was surprised to see it, but I wondered why you deleted it? My first book THE RESIDENCE was a #1 New York Times bestseller and there's an entry for Zephyr Wright, a character in my book, and the Wikipedia entry only mentions my book. My last book FIRST WOMEN is being developed into a TV series along with my first book. In any case, I was curious why my page was deleted and if you would wonder consider putting it back up.. I appreciate it.

For more info on my work please see: katebrower.com and you can google my name to see interviews, articles, etc.

Thanks so much,

Kate Andersen Brower — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.140.149.24 (talk) 19:05, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

@69.140.149.24: Hi! I had to look up what I deleted and why. The deletion had nothing to do with the content, anything personal regarding to you, or similar. The problem with that page was that it was created by someone who we deny editing at the moment. We deny any form of 'trophy' to this person, so pages created by this person are deleted, his edits reverted and his accounts blocked.

If someone else would recreate the page, it would likely stay. I will however not undelete the page, as that would mean that we give credit to the person who originally created it. I hope you understand. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 03:18, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Citation revert list

Hi Dirk. I am pretty sure there was a reference to a bot list to monitor use of domains in citations (only). Is that still a thing or am I misremebering? Guy (Help!) 12:01, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

@JzG: Hi Guy, do you mean User:XLinkBot/RevertReferencesList - those are the links that are reverted by XLinkBot if they are in references. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:28, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Bingo, thanks. Guy (Help!) 14:37, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

There is a handy list on the top of the different RevertLists pointing to all RevertLists in use by XLinkBot (more can be added in the settings, will require an off-wiki poke of the bot to activate though). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:38, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

If I add shopgroom.com to XLinkbot's watchlist, will it work, or am I not in the right group? Guy (Help!) 13:23, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

@JzG: 'XLinkBot's watchlist' - XLinkBot only has revertlists. If you add something to that, it will work, those are admin-only edit pages, not by 'group'. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 03:11, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

@Beetstra:, thanks. I was possibly thinking of COIbot. The instructions mention specific groups, but if admins are in the list then we're good. Guy (Help!) 09:48, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Joseph Michael Linsner

This is my page: Joseph Michael Linsner. I am trying to include my official Facebook fan page. You removed it. is this not allowed? Thanks, JML — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joseph Michael Linsner (talk • contribs) 11:56, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

@Joseph Michael Linsner: Can you please first familiarize yourself with our policies and guidelines. See WP:OWN, WP:NOT, WP:EL, WP:ADVERT, etc. etc. Indeed, official facebooks are not allowed, official facebooks of fans are even less allowed. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:14, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I read: "Except for a link to an official page of the article's subject,[5] one should generally avoid providing external links to" I am the article's subject, and it is my official page. I thought that it was ok to do. I just would like a LITTLE bit of control over how my wikipedia is portrayed. For instance, the photo. I removed the photo (it's from 2007 and was never authorized by me for usage. I am having trouble uploading a new one. Could you assist? Thanks, JML — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joseph Michael Linsner (talk • contribs) 12:19, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

@Joseph Michael Linsner: - yes, the official homepage is already there. See WP:ELMINOFFICIAL - we do not link to every online presence of a subject. Please read the whole guideline. I also noticed that there are NO independent references in the article - the only reference is a reference that you control. We need to have references outside of your control, what others are saying about you, and those references are the most important to have. Without that, we cannot assess whether you should have a page in the first place. And I pointed you to WP:OWN - you do NOT have control over your own page. No control whatsoever.

I am sorry, I am not very versed in uploading images. Please see Wikipedia:File_Upload_Wizard for help on that. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:32, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Actually, I have not put ANYTHING on this page. Except to correct my name, a few errors and vandalizations over the years. The contributions are all from outside sources. So PEACOCK? I think not.

I am aware now that I cannot place my official fan page in the links. Thanks for that info. However the wording: "Except for a link to an official page of the article's subject,[5] one should generally avoid providing external links to" should be changed to read more clearly. - Joseph Michael Linsner — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joseph Michael Linsner (talk • contribs) 12:40, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

@Joseph Michael Linsner: Maybe not by you, but a) it is peacock, and b) it is not independently referenced.

Regarding the second official link, the guideline clearly reads "Normally, only one official link is included. ...". Guess that is quite clear. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:59, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

diff. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:01, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Wow. Editing off my link to my page on DAWN. My character? Which I created, and which is featured in that link? You seriously have it out for me. JML

That message was for Beetstra by the way, not Guy.

JML — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joseph Michael Linsner (talk • contribs) 

@Joseph Michael Linsner: Did you actually READ WP:EL and WP:OWN. I don't think so. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:32, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Beetstra - Nope. I don't have time to either. too busy drawing and creating for that. I will call whatever Wikipedia representative I have to to get this straightened out. it is MY character discussed on the page, and features my copyright and ™ character. -JML — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joseph Michael Linsner (talk • contribs) 13:39, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

@Joseph Michael Linsner: I do not have time to walk all the time behind you and having to clean up after you. You are clearly unwilling to consider Wikipedia policies. I'll give you another one: our conflict of interest guideline. You are now engaging in spamming activities. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 03:18, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Link

I will keep the link removed FOR NOW. I do not think it is spam as it features a gallery of Dawn images. You do. The link was up there for years. We should leave it at that. As I said I will talk to a Wikipedia representative to have all this straightened out. And no one is asking you to "CLEAN" up anything behind me. You are doing that of your own accord. Thanks by the way for making my novice experience on here so special. (sarcasm) - JML — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joseph Michael Linsner (talk • contribs) 04:04, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

@Joseph Michael Linsner: I have never said that the link was spam. It fails our inclusion standards. Either it is your personal website (in which case it belongs on Joseph Michael Linsner and is indirect everywhere else), or it is the official website of Dawn (in which case it does not belong there, but is indirect everywhere else).

No-one is asking me to clean up behind you, but the community has given me the trust, years ago, to uphold the policies and guidelines that govern this website. I will protect/clean/maintain/tag/update/adapt/improve everything that needs to be brought in line with said policies and guidelines. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:09, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Link

"Either it is your personal website (in which case it belongs on Joseph Michael Linsner and is indirect everywhere else), or it is the official website of Dawn (in which case it does not belong there, but is indirect everywhere else)."

But it IS the official site for DAWN © & ™ and also, it is of course used FOR my work. They are one in the same. As for example, the word "DAWN" is already taken in web form. (www.dawn.com is owned by a news source and .net, .etc, is taken.) I ASSURE you there is no other usage of her "Official" page site anywhere else on the web as I am her creator, and I would have something to say about that. And probably, a proper DMCA notice would be filed.

Really, it's ok. I thought I could do some simple maintenance on my Wikipedia page. It's clearly an extensive world, which I thought I familiarized myself enough with to do a simple edit. After the EXTENSIVE amount of links you provided that I went and read I see that Wikipedia is NOT for everybody. Quite obviously. I am just going to have my LAWYER contact the correct representative at WIkipedia. Your services are no longer needed by me. Continue to protect the community at large. Thank you. -JML — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joseph Michael Linsner (talk • contribs) 07:39, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

I guess that is a legal threat. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:23, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

And, an official webpage for two subjects that hasn't been updated in 3 years. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:30, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Citation bot

I added this: [1]

Please review and feel free to remove if you think it's inappropriate. Guy (Help!) 13:00, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Looks fine. Not sure about reverting youtube references though - BBC, CNN channels ARE reliable. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:31, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

The issue is that virtually all YouTube references are either "X said Y on YouTube, source, YouTube link with X saying Y" or they are redundant to better links - BBC, for example, should be linked to the BBC website as a rule. The issue is non-Wikipedia-savvy people watching YouTube vids and thinking they are sources, when in virtually all cases they aren't. But as I say, feel free to review and remove. Guy (Help!) 10:01, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

@JzG: I will agree that most of the newbies will use anything on youtube as a reference, and I also agree that it is better to link to the bbc-holder page where the YouTube is embedded than to the YouTube itself ... It will have a bit of false positives due to the official news-channels on YouTube. We can review after some time, see how many are real false-positives. If it is 1-2 in a hundred reverts .. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:42, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

User:XLinkBot/RevertReferencesList

Does the revert bot only pick up urls, or could it match DOI patterns? Every week we have a handful of references added to well known predatory open access publishers, which I then have to remove. Guy (Help!) 10:12, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

It regexes against the whole url. What you suggest should work. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:39, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

The DOI refs are not in URLs though, they are a separate parameter in the citation templates. Can you point me to the code? I'll have a look and see if it would work. Guy (Help!) 11:02, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

@JzG: You have no idea how smart the linkwatchers are .. they parse the urls out of the parsed wikitext. All templates are then expanded to the fullest. It sees everything.... --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:42, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Bit more complete: they take the parsed text of the two revids, parse out ALL external links of each, toss them into a list. Then they diff the two lists against each other. It is heavy, but at least you are sure that you also catch {{YouTube}}, infoboxes, {{official website}}, etc. etc. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:00, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Clever! Guy (Help!) 12:45, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:58, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

OK, I am trying to work out the rules here.

• [2] is in a ref section and is a legitimate reversion on numerous grounds, but not in a ref tag?
• [3] is a possibly legitimate addition of an official facebook to an article, not in a ref tag.

Is this the list at User:XLinkBot/RevertReferencesList or another list? I'd be interested to watch the logs to check which rule is being invoked, which I presume are on IRC? My concern is to control abuse of references without causing drama. Reverting all Facebook links is likely to cause a massive storm! Guy (Help!) 13:08, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

No, the list User:XLinkBot/RevertList is the list of domains that are not within <ref>-tags (hence, the domains in the two diffs). USer:XLinkBot/RevertReferencesList is for edits like diff. Blogspot is on both, so will always be reverted, if a link is only on the former, it is not reverted when used as a (proper) reference, if the link is only on the latter, it will not be reverted as an external link, but always as a reference (I don't know if we currently have such cases). Note the edit-summaries that XLinkBot gives for the reversions, it tells that it reverts references. I hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:22, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

D'oh! On both lists. Riiiight! Guy (Help!) 15:42, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

In related news: Special:Contributions/XLinkBot is a great place for a bored admin to find things to admin at. Guy (Help!) 15:42, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Before I start programming...

Do you have a tool or script that I can feed a list of (hundreds of) domains and it spits out a count of links to those domains on en-WP? This is related to predatory open access journals. Most ave no links at all, but some have hundreds, mostly in unregarded areas of the project where problems like this tend to remain out of sight for years. Guy (Help!) 00:11, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

No, I don't have that. I would just make a page with the domains in {{LinkSummary}} templates. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 02:47, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

@JzG: why not blacklist them ... and then wipe. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 02:51, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Added to the ref revert list for now - there are 1,000 domains and that's a big addition. Any chance of a tag to say which revert list is used? That would make it easier to track this versus generic Facebook spamming. Guy (Help!) 13:35, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

That's going to be difficult to do, I think. All regexes are pooled. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:08, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

And this did not include the doi-patterns yet .. ouch. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:09, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

@Guy: I have done things like that while chasing a very ugly spammer and for working out how some resources in WP:The Wikipedia Library are used (example). My script works from a downloaded dump of the external links table. If it were useful, I could do an analysis. Johnuniq (talk) 00:59, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, I have another offer of help via email. I tried AWB but it's not doign what I want, so I will come up with a plan. Guy (Help!) 14:28, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Please use gender-neutral language

When discussing with other contributors, please try to avoid making assumptions regarding their gender and try instead to use a Wikipedia:Gender-neutral language. Happy editing, Lklundin (talk) 07:28, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

@Lklundin: You got me there, and that for someone who is using singular they .. my apologies! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:47, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

WP:ELMINOFFICIAL

Before removing links like this [4], you must check if the sites you want to remove are prominently linked from the official site. That is what WP:ELMINOFFICIAL says. --Moscow Connection (talk) 23:11, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

On some pages the links to the official websites weren't even working. Look what you did: [5], [6]. And here too, to some extent, cause the websites were moved: [7], [8]. You basically just deleted links without checking anything. --Moscow Connection (talk) 23:50, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

@Moscow Connection: SEE ABOVE conversation under "Please do NOT remove twitter links." This post could probably be moved there. Fyunck(click) (talk) 00:05, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Nope, you seem to misinterpret the guideline. See WP:ANI. The existence of an official website has no influence on the appropriateness of social media links. He is not required to check if there is an official website, and if it contains links to social media profiles, prominent or not. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 09:48, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

They do not need to be linked from the official website. The official website does not even need to be there, or have content. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:08, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

WP:ELNO #10

Thanks for removing those silly Twitter links! Keep up the good work. You may want to change your editsummary so that it (also) links to WP:ELNO #10. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 02:25, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Note that ELNO says: Except for a link to an official page of the article's subject. If you click that link you see this:

An official link is a link to a website or other Internet service that meets both of the following criteria:

1. The linked content is controlled by the subject (organization or individual person) of the Wikipedia article.
2. The linked content primarily covers the area for which the subject of the article is notable.

Basically none of the Twitter links primarily cover the area for which the subject of the article is notable. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 02:35, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Men roept vanalles, maar jouw interpretatie van de guidelines klopt, ookal is een vocal minority het er niet mee eens. In dit soort gevallen is het volgende zinnetje nuttig: "If you disagree with the guidelines then it is up to you to get consensus to change them; I am going to continue following the consensus." (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 02:54, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for the support! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:11, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Brilliant Idea Barnstar
	Thanks for cleaning up those spammy social media links. Unfortunately you've run in to some people who misinterpret the guideline. I have explained the situation in detail at WP:ANI. Keep up the good work! (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 08:15, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks! I put this next to the thank yous I got on individual link removals! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:11, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Op een gegeven moment moet de situatie gewoon duidelijk zijn, ook voor degenen die het er niet mee eens zijn, en dan mag je ze gerust negeren. Ik heb ervaring met het voeren van lange onzinnige discussies en ik vond dat je oneerlijk behandeld werd dus ik ben er maar even ingesprongen. Sommige mensen zijn zo koppig dat ze hier weken later nog over mopperen. Gelukkig ben ik ook ontzettend koppig! (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 12:03, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Ik ook, en ik denk dus nog steeds dat ik niks verkeerd heb gedaan :-). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:51, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Editor of the Week seeking nominations (and a new facilitator)

The Editor of the Week initiative has been recognizing editors since 2013 for their hard work and dedication. Editing Wikipedia can be disheartening and tedious at times; the weekly Editor of the Week award lets its recipients know that their positive behaviour and collaborative spirit is appreciated. The response from the honorees has been enthusiastic and thankful.

The list of nominees is running short, and so new nominations are needed for consideration. Have you come across someone in your editing circle who deserves a pat on the back for improving article prose regularly, making it easier to understand? Or perhaps someone has stepped in to mediate a contentious dispute, and did an excellent job. Do you know someone who hasn't received many accolades and is deserving of greater renown? Is there an editor who does lots of little tasks well, such as cleaning up citations?

Please help us thank editors who display sustained patterns of excellence, working tirelessly in the background out of the spotlight, by submitting your nomination for Editor of the Week today!

In addition, the WikiProject is seeking a new facilitator/coordinator to handle the logistics of the award. Please contact L235 if you are interested in helping with the logistics of running the award in any capacity. Remove your name from here to unsubscribe from further EotW-related messages. Thanks, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:19, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Blacklist removal requests

Hi. I do understand that you're a busy individual. But I would adore you if you managed to attend to the two outstanding blacklist removal requests, one of them mine. Mine is a "modification" request, and I made some observations on the other (hopefully not tl:dr length). Both good faith, as I see it. Not many admins active in that area. Thanks :) Eliyohub (talk) 14:51, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Please do NOT remove twitter links

Twitter links are not against WP:ELMINOFFICIAL. It does not say to remove them. What it says is official websites are far better and all that is needed, especially if the official website has it's own links to twitter and facebook, etc. But you are removing twitter links when there are no official websites or when the official websites have been removed (causing a dead link). Please be more careful and don't just remove all twitter links. Thanks. Fyunck(click) (talk) 04:21, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

@Fyunck(click): You are right. However, one of the cases did have a (defunc) official website listed, one of the other ones does have an official website that is prominently linking to twitter (but was not in the Wikipedia page), and the third one has also an official website listed, though that one is derailing to something that is not their official website (parked domain or similar). And then, twitter feeds hardly count as an official website of a subject, there are better networking sites (facebook) that at least give some more information on the subject. (I see you edited a fourth one, also that one had an official website listed, also defunct - 4 pages, 3 defunct websites ...). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 04:29, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

One had no official website at all. But yes... the ones I corrected had dead official sites. I would say facebook would be better than twitter, but to eliminate all social sites when the official site is not listed or dead is not kosher. I'm saying check to make sure. You did what looks like 100s of removals and I only checked a dozen (half of those it was wrong to remove the twitter feed , unless you also list the facebook feed or double check the official website). The same with the ice skating duo I just fixed. Fyunck(click) (talk) 04:34, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

@Fyunck(click): I have become a bit more careful, but no, I am not going to check whether the official site actually functions (just as you don't check whether there is actually an official website elsewhere - if there is an official site listed then the social networking sites are all violating inclusion standards. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 04:42, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Actually no they are not. It even gives an example of: "For example, if the main page of the official website for an author contains a link to the author's blog and Twitter feed, then it is not appropriate to provide links to all three. Instead, provide only the main page of the official website in this situation." However if the official website does not contain a twitter link it is not against any rules to include one. I happen to agree with you that all that is needed is the main official webpage (even if it does not link to twitter or facebook). One is all that is needed. However if that one link is dead you should never remove the facebook or twitter link. Before deleting you must check. To not do so is disruptive and a "uw-delete1 removal of content" violation. I have a thousand tennis players on watchlist and they just started popping up left and right. That's a lot of time to correct your content removal. All I'm asking is if you remove something make sure it is warranted. Thanks. Fyunck(click) (talk) 04:55, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

@Fyunck(click): That example is straight after another sentence, and straight after another paragraph. If the twitter is not linked from the official homepage of a subject, it still fails the inclusion standard. The Twitter must be of extreme importance to be listed NEXT to the official homepage. On the thousands of reversals I have done I have just seen 2 or 3 really wrong removals until now, and we are 13 hours in (switching to a bit more conservative checking halfway), encompassing most of the US daytime and EU evening. Those are editing peak-times. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:06, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps it's because the tennis pages were not patrolled properly to remove dead websites. From my side of things, I see 1/3 to 1/2 the tennis bios were removal mistakes. That's an incredibly high percentage of errors. I checked a couple of others and the figure skating pair was another error. Maybe I just fell into the only errors but I doubt it. Fyunck(click) (talk) 05:59, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Ok, I simply scrolled back randomly 1500 or so of your edits. The very first one I clicked on was Hype Williams (director). No official website yet you removed his official twitter page. That is wrong. He had no official page except that twitter account. Are you using a bot, because it's broken if that's the case. Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:07, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

@Fyunck(click): Hype Williams is the same problem, he has a defunc official website. As I said, I have made my removal more strict (more thorough checking whether an official site is listed) at some point, these are now skipped (as are the pages where the official website is not readily recognisable). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:06, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I see no official website listed in the external links at all. There was nothing defunct. The only thing there was the twitter page which you deleted. Fyunck(click) (talk) 08:23, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Wait... I see it buried in the references section that no one looks at. It must be in the external links to make a difference, not the references. Fyunck(click) (talk) 08:28, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

@Fyunck(click): I detected the official site, I just should have noticed that it was already there mentioned as defunct. {{Official website}} does return the defunct website. Anyway, that you don't see it listed does not mean that it does not exist, and that that one should be used over any social networking site in by far most of the cases (that may be the case on quite some of the 2/3 of the edits I currently ignore completely). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:32, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

By the way, for the now-defunct official websites it would be better to link to an archived version of it (webarchive or similar). Twitters are very random and hardly giving any information to readers, even if they are one of the web presences of a subject. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:08, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

This I agree with. Fyunck(click) (talk) 08:26, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I was talking about becoming more strict, I was checking whether an article was using 'official webpage' (after the template {{official webpage}}) in the text; I did at that time not check for the template specifically, as I also then regularly caught [http://example.org Official webpage]-sequences in the external links sections (which still meant there was an official webpage listed, right). However, I noticed one case where those words were not in the external links section as provided by the AWB-diff, but used as prose in the text and not for the subject (there still was an official homepage listed). That is also how Hype Williams (director) was parsed. I have since shifted to the mandatory transclusion of the {{Official webpage}}.

I do note that the current situation is a mess. I may have made a few mistakes (through de-funct webpages, and an occasional case where there really is no other official website), but of the diffs I check really many have the official homepages listed. There are complete utter linkfarms listing ALL possible social networking sites (including sometimes a handful of subject-maintained YouTube channels (and additionally, videos out of the channels), twitters of indirect-though-linked subjects, etc. etc.; [9], [10], [11], [12]). And then I do not remove them currently from pages where the listing of the official homepage is not quickly recognizable but still there. And now with WikiData, it is only getting easier to make a mess. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:03, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

The very next person I looked at Brian Lara... same error. External links had no official page. It had a facebook foundation and it had a personal twitter. The foundation was garbage, the twitter was not. I try to heavily watch tennis articles so please do not remove any more websites unless you are sure. If the cricket project doesn't care I guess I'll leave it to them... I can't check on everything. But as a Tennis Project member I don't want our player articles compromised like that. If you see two personal links like a facebook and a twitter, sure, go ahead and remove the twitter as overkill. All I'm asking is to be careful so I don't have to clean up any more content removal on tennis players. Thanks. Fyunck(click) (talk) 08:41, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

@Fyunck(click): No. I am asking you to be careful. Brian Lara did have his official website listed on the page, hence the twitter/facebook (whatever I removed) was superfluous per WP:ELMINOFFICIAL (it anyway is, there is an official homepage, even if it was not listed in the external links section). And I am still unsure whether a defunct official site is a official site or not - that it is empty does not mean that it is the official homepage of the subject, so I do not see those as errors (you've removed another one where the homepage seems just to have moved on the site .. ). So until now, in 4 1/2 hours, you have found, what, 1 or 2 real cases (making the total I am aware of 2-3). That is a very low error rate, and as I said, I already shifted to a more careful system. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:16, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I've also reverted the other one. It was not a shift on the site, but there is another official website available. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:48, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Adding to the chorus ...

It appears I am adding to a list of people saying this, but it appears that you have misinterpreted, intentially or otherwise, the link that you are using for justification of the removal of social media links. I will simply add to the chorus, as reading just a few of the comments they appear to have clocked enough reasons for you to stop immediately.Theanonymousentry (talk) 14:22, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

@Theanonymousentry: Can you show me those? As far as I see, I have no comments against the removal at all. The thread here is completely about pages where there is no official site, and that is about it. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:24, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

@Theanonymousentry: About 2.500 removals, about 5-10 reverted/contested. 2-3 rightfully so, 4-5 heavily discussed and removed as fully complying with:

Normally, only one official link is included. If the subject of the article has more than one official website, then more than one link may be appropriate, under a very few limited circumstances. However, Wikipedia does not provide a comprehensive web directory to every official website. Wikipedia does not attempt to document or provide links to every part of the subject's web presence or provide readers with a handy list of all social networking sites. Complete directories lead to clutter and to placing undue emphasis on what the subject says.

More than one official link should be provided only when the additional links provide the reader with significant unique content and are not prominently linked from other official websites. For example, if the main page of the official website for an author contains a link to the author's blog and Twitter feed, then it is not appropriate to provide links to all three. Instead, provide only the main page of the official website in this situation. In other situations, it may sometimes be appropriate to provide more than one link, such as when a business has one website for the corporate headquarters and another for consumer information. Choose the minimum number of links that provide readers with the maximum amount of information. Links that provide consistent information are strongly preferred to social networking and communication services where the content changes rapidly and may not comply with this guideline at any given moment in time. Wikipedia does not exist to facilitate corporate "communication strategies" or other forms of marketing.

References

(from WP:ELMINOFFICIAL). To cut it short Normally, only one official link is included. ALL these articles contain 2-10 official links, where only one is normally included. In most of the cases these links are also available from the official website that is, in all cases but a very, very few, already linked on the pages where I remove them from. These links should not have been there to begin with, and removing them is fully in compliance with what WP:ELMINOFFICIAL subscribes. I am awaiting your answer soon, otherwise I will continue removal. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:53, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I forgot to say, that besides the 10-or-so reversions that I have seen (of the last 500 edits I have performed yesterday (my time), 471 are still the top edit (19 hours later); of the 28 about 5 were reverted, most of them with reason that the official website, albeit listed, is defunct), I have also received several notifications about people thanking me for my edits. I am still awaiting your reply to my questions above. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:09, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I have waited for more than an hour for a reply. You have performed 3 edits since my first ping requesting a reply, I will continue editing. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:43, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Seconded: please stop. These mass removals - at a rate which suggests you have not reviewed the articles and external sites involved - are disruptive. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:48, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Nope, you seem to misinterpret the guideline. I assume the reason is that you do not agree with that guideline. You can try to get consensus to change the guideline. But you shouldn't falsely accuse others of being disruptive. Beetstra is totally allowed to do what he does. Being very vocal doesn't hide the fact that you are in the minority. Please read the guideline again, you misinterpret it. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 08:21, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

WP:ELMINOFFICIAL perfectly prohibits this, as does WP:ELNO, as does WP:NOT#REPOSITORY, as does the template instructions (even before I updated it further), see {{twitter}}. They are utterly superfluous, linkfarming, etc. etc. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 19:51, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Regarding Philip Mould, the twitter IS prominently on the homepage, as are the other social networking sites. Anyway, time to go. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 19:52, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

And even if it is not, User:Pigsonthewing, we only link to one, the main official site, per WP:ELMINOFFICIAL. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 19:55, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

And now you are misquoting a guideline (note: "guideline", not "policy"); ELMINOFFICIAL prohibits nothing, and it's advice' allows for multiple links in certain cases. There is clearly no consensus for your edits. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:59, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: see our pillar WP:NOT#REPOSITORY. Keep it minimal, as further explained in 3 more places. They still don't add anythimg. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 21:13, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

The actual wording at WP:EL does not say "perfectly prohibit," it says, "generally avoid" -- context is, "Except for a link to an official page of the article's subject,[5] one should generally avoid..." In short, there can be times where a social networking link is appropriate, particularly where an official page may have content that is different from a person's paid site. Also, to the extent that IAR is appropriate, many prominent people's social networking pages are worth an EL. Montanabw^(talk) 21:14, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

See my comments below. There may be a handful of useful links to Twitter (out of thousands), you can discuss those cases individually here. Beetstra is following the rules. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 02:37, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

very few limited circumstances .. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 22:53, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I think the bottom line here is, if a person has a good working official website and it's listed in the external links, there is usually very little reason to have links on wikipedia to twitter and facebook. Good websites have easily accessible links to those. Of course many musicians websites, and others, are poorly maintained because their facebook accounts have pretty much replaced their official website account. That has to be taken into consideration. But it would be the exception to need a twitter/facebook link if the official website is in good shape, and extremely rare to need both a twitter and facebook external link. Archived websites would also be a poor substitute for a well maintained facebook/twitter link because the archive is out of date and not maintained. So we have to look at each bio to decide if it has become an overkill repository of social sources. We certainly can't simply start removing items without context or without double checking... so bots and automation are out! There is a lot of social overlink out there, so it's a good deed to see some of these bios cleaned up of their repository bloat. But we have to be careful not to use a chalk board eraser for a job that needs tweezers. Fyunck(click) (talk) 23:28, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Nope, you misinterpret the guideline. The existence of an official website has no influence on the appropriateness of social media links. See WP:ANI. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 08:16, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

@Fyunck(click): No, this needs a chainsaw, not a pair of tweezers. No-one used tweezers to insert them, despite policies and guidelines discouraging them/linkfarms. Even if there is no official website and the twitter is the only webpresence it hardly adds to the article. Even with the very focal people screaming hell, less than 1% is readded. They are useless, they should not be there, that Britney Spears is having cake with her father and tweets that is UTTERLY unencyclopedic. Wipe them out, and put the few that belong back with tweezers. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 17:04, 23 December 2016 (UTC) @Fyunck(click): --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 17:06, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Then we may very likely run into problems again if I see mass errors. I hope not. Fyunck(click) (talk) 20:07, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

@Fryunck(click): you haven't seen mass errors, you reported at most 1. And that after being more lenient than what policy, guideline and the templates describe. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:05, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

adding my voice to this one. Logged on to find social media links deleted from articles ive done and then see the user is mass deleting hundreds of social media links. The sheer volume of them and the pace of edits means there is NO WAY that the user checked each one to see if it is applicable to the article. He/She has just been mass deleting without any consideration. Pour example. Two articles of mine. Sibiu Cycling Tour. The official website is in Romanian, and does not link to the english language twitter. The english language twitter offers unique content (and is the only race comms in english), and is not linked from the main homepage of the Turul Cyclista Sibiu so 100% fits within what is permitted. (ie. that you are allowed social media if it offers unique content, and/or if it is not linked from the main company/person/product homepage). Second one, Team Soignuer Copenhagen. If the user had actually checked the links they would have found again, it is not linked from the main team homepage and offers unique content, so again, is a valid link based on at least two qualifying criteria.

The point is, there are criteria on which social media links are perfectly acceptable, and the rate of deletion is such that there is no way that user is checking validity of all links. Has totally misinterpreted how the rules be applied and is just deleting on mass. Dimspace (talk) 21:58, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

@Dimspace: And none of the criteria you use are inclusion standards. They are, in muliple places, discouraged. Please read the applicable pillars, policies and gudelines. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:53, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Technical

I am replacing the regex \*\s?\{\{([Bb]logger|[Tt]witter|[Ff]lickr-inline2|[Ff]acebook\s[Pp]age|[Ff]acebook\s[Uu]ser|[Gg]oogle\+|[Ff]lickr\simage\sinline\slink||[Ff]acebook|[Ii]nstagram|[Tt]umblr|[Pp]interest|[Vv]imeo|[Yy]ou[Tt]ube)\s*?(\|.*?\}|\})(\}|\}.*?)\n on all pages where there is a {{Official webpage}} transcluded. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 19:44, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

ANI

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is Beetstra and Twitter/ Facebook. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 00:04, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

It is nice that you bring my work to follow the guidelines to a wider attention. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:09, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

On a related note...

...Are your twitter deletions in any way impacting on Wikidata? Are the templates being used drawing their content from wikidata? Only in death does duty end (talk) 11:45, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

No, what WikiData carries is fine, we just don't need to transclude it. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:56, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

After many many arguments over this, it became clear to me that the driving force behind quite a lot of the wikidata gnomes was making sure that data was transcluded into Wikipedia in as many places as possible, hence my question. I was getting the same smell here. Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:39, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

@Only in death: see the discussion about {{official website}} .. I think on WT:EL. Another attempt of WMF to railroad? What do you think user:Fram? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:57, 23 December 2016 (UTC) @Fram: --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:58, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Ah yes. Thats exactly what I suspected to find.

• Changes made to large amounts of articles to use info from wikidata without prior conversation on Wikipedia beyond (if one exists) a bot-request.
• ENWP editors complaining about it.
• Wikidata-gnomes insisting its for the good of the project.
• Fram (just kidding Fram)
• More problems become apparant, such as the data being transcluded being completely unsuitable and in some cases a violation of ENWP's internal rules.

I really dont see why a template needs to exist for what is a one-line inclusion anyway. It just adds another vector to potentially vandalise BLP's. I would support TFD'ing the twitter etc templates as in the vast majority of cases they just wont be used. And even in the few cases where you would use one (a 'twitter celebrity' for example) its a minor effort to just link it directly. Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:08, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Question is how many mistakes we import, but you can subst the #invoke, and you save the wikidata here, losing the link to Wikidata (yes, I tried). I have considered it, but I do think that a) standardizing Twitter ELs is good, and b) it gives a good way of screening them. But most should go.

Can we have an independent close of that thread, I read that there is nothing against me continuing to remove, and over 99% of the removals still stand. I follow the guidelines, even if some think I did not. I would also welcome a review of the reinsertions, some do not comply (only very few).

Andy said I edit warred, the links he put back were next to the official website of the subject, which carried the links. Also those reinstertions need a second look. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:46, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

I also want to note that I stopped for an hour after an unclear complaint that received no follow up. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 17:08, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

My reading of EL is that you could justify his official website and the journalisted links, but not the twitter (although from a strict reading, his 'official' website is his company website, not a personal one). As the journalisted link covers a different aspect of his career than his art dealings, it is probably covered under the ELMIN exceptions. But the twitter one is clearly and explicitly against guidelines as we already have two official sites. His twitter doings are completely irrelevant to his notability (unlike his art dealing and journalism respectively). The NPR piece is a different fish, its certainly further useful information that does add to an understanding of the subject - but I would expect that to be used as a source for the article rather than as an EL. Only in death does duty end (talk) 17:58, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

great. I wonder how many real reverts I have. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 20:06, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

There was another like that today, and another thankyou. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:06, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Only partly related to the above, but I have to prove the "whatever happens, Fram" statement above :-) I'm thinking of starting a (long) RfC on Wikidata next month, to decide on a policy or at least guideline on how to deal with Wikidata. Probably in some phases, first a discussion to list all current types of uses of Wikidata on Wikipedia, and to list all advantages and disadvantages per type: and then a second RfC to decide what is allowed (or encouraged) and what isn't. There are currently countless Wikidata-related discussions all over the place, with a few fanatic supporters, a few fanatic opponents, and one recurring theme: there is no consensus to base any discussion on (sometimes they point to an approved bot to claim consensus, or some template talk page discussion, but these aren't evidence of consensus, and one could equally point to discussion at e.g. Wikiproject Cycling which are clearly against too much use of Wikidata here). All opinions on such an RfC / policy are welcome (whatever your opinion on Wikidata). Fram (talk) 10:43, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

I have/had serious BLP concerns with articles importing data from a project that does not have the same policies, eyes-on, or basic editorial motivation. I aint the only one... With that being my last message for the Christmas period until at least next wednesday. Merry Christmas all! Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:47, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

@Fram: Have you seen Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Wikidata_Phase_2? Nikkimaria (talk) 20:08, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

so .. this is not having consensus? That edit anyway puts some context ... --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 20:43, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Sigh, I give up sometimes. Clear EL violations on a different page and blatant lies from the people promoting them. 'Its unique content', no its her youtube channel thats already linked from her website. Bah. Only in death does duty end (talk) 22:02, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Blacklist remove request-Sanbot

We received your reminding email about the external links problem last week.

We didn’t intentionally to add external links as we just wanted to put our brand to your platform for more exposure. You platform Wikipedia is full of knowledge that We hadn’t got the external links policy very clearly until receiving your notice. Can you please remote the Sanbot, Qihan and Marshell from your spam list?

And we have got that our website links (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spam/LinkReports/en.sanbot.com) is in blacklist in your platform. Can you please remove from your blacklist as we have delete all the external links from your platform?

We’ll add proper information about our brand without external links before we build the brand article on your platform. Is it OK for your policy?

We expect your understanding and support. Thanks a lot. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jason kwok7837 (talk • contribs) 06:47, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

@Jason kwok7837: Your site is not blacklisted as far as I can see, nor can I see any emails (messages) from me to you. The report is just stating facts which are public anyway, just represented differently.

I think you have been pointed to the respective policies and guidelines, and you would do wise to first read through all of that. Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:45, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

New Wikiproject!

Hello, Beetstra! I saw you recently edited a page related to the Green party and green politics. There is a new WikiProject that has been formed - WikiProject Green Politics and I thought this might be something you'd be interested in joining! So please head on over to the project page and take a look! Thanks for your time. Me-123567-Me (talk) 18:30, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

@Me-123567-Me: Thanks for the notification. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 03:10, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Black List remove request Jonathan629 (talk) 13:06, 30 January 2017 (UTC)Jonathan629

Hello,

I'm very new in editing. And i've drafted my first page about Gokul Shrinivas, 3 National award holder in the field of Inventions. There are lot of media profiles was available, so I thought of collecting it all and write a page about him and thus I'm the first editor to write about him

A month before, REJI KUMAR PILLAI, President of India Smart Grid forum wrote an article about Gokul Shrinivas, I tried to include that link in the page, but there's some problem reflecting as blacklisted. Could you please unblock this link which would be really helpful for me

yourstory.com/2016/11/66cba04624-smart-city-expert-meet-the-young-leader-from-india-gokul-shrinivas-made-his-way-innovations/

I really don't have much idea that posting here will unblock or not. If someone sees this article, please unblock it. Thanks Jonathan629 (talk) 13:06, 30 January 2017 (UTC)jonathan629

Jonathan629, that's not going to happen. Please stop canvassing for opinions. yourstory.com is just paid advertising, and will not be whitelisted. Primefac (talk) 13:39, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter - February 2017

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2017). This first issue is being sent out to all administrators, if you wish to keep receiving it please subscribe. Your feedback is welcomed.

Administrator changes

NinjaRobotPirate • Schwede66 • K6ka • Ealdgyth • Ferret • Cyberpower678 • Mz7 • Primefac • Dodger67

Briangotts • JeremyA • BU Rob13

Guideline and policy news

• A discussion to workshop proposals to amend the administrator inactivity policy at Wikipedia talk:Administrators has been in process since late December 2016.
• Wikipedia:Pending changes/Request for Comment 2016 closed with no consensus for implementing Pending changes level 2 with new criteria for use.
• Following an RfC, an activity requirement is now in place for bots and bot operators.

Technical news

• When performing some administrative actions the reason field briefly gave suggestions as text was typed. This change has since been reverted so that issues with the implementation can be addressed. (T34950)
• Following the latest RfC concluding that Pending Changes 2 should not be used on the English Wikipedia, an RfC closed with consensus to remove the options for using it from the page protection interface, a change which has now been made. (T156448)
• The Foundation has announced a new community health initiative to combat harassment. This should bring numerous improvements to tools for admins and CheckUsers in 2017.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee released a response to the Wikimedia Foundation's statement on paid editing and outing.

Obituaries

• JohnCD (John Cameron Deas) passed away on 30 December 2016. John began editing Wikipedia seriously during 2007 and became an administrator in November 2009.

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Discuss this newsletter • Subscribe • Archive

13:37, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Edit war at Beacham Theater

user choses only to insult, collapse. --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:12, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Please discuss your concern(s) on the article talk page or you are edit warring.Sites that contain neutral and accurate material that is relevant to an encyclopedic understanding of the subject and cannot be integrated into the Wikipedia article due to copyright issues,...), or other reasons. WP:ELYES Johnvr4 (talk) 17:33, 4 February 2017 (UTC) @Johnvr4: I will take it to WP:ELN as I suggested, you have selective reading, and not read anything of what I have pointed to you. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:07, 5 February 2017 (UTC) Here's the thing: I didn't see any parts of of ELN that disallowed those links. So, which part of ELNO are you pointing at? Notice boards are for disputes that cannot be settled on talk pages and you have not raised the issue there. Johnvr4 (talk) 13:13, 5 February 2017 (UTC) @Johnvr4: - the inclusion standard for official links is WP:ELMINOFFICIAL - we only list one except for some very rare exceptions which I do not believe are met here (the subject is not known specifically for any of their social networking), moreover, they should not be included per WP:ELNO, #10 "to be avoided" are "Social networking sites (such as Myspace, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram), chat or discussion forums/groups (such as Yahoo! Groups), Twitter feeds, Usenet newsgroups or email lists." (diff, instagram and twitter are both mentioned in my quote of WP:ELNO). The excessive linkfarm at the end is similar. The subject of the page is Beacham Theater, not of The Social, not of The History Center, not of the Central Florida Memorial Project, etc. etc. See WP:ELNO #13; those are the links I removed in diff. It may be that there are specific links, or directories, on those servers that have a lot to tell about Beacham Theater (but there will be a lot of other information as well if you link to the whole of the site containing the information). Specific links to the directly linked material may be a reason for inclusion, but I doubt that on an article of this size (with 84 references) there is much on these that is either not already included (or which can be included), or where there is significant overlap between the different external links. Not to say that several of these external links are to blogs, which are also to be avoided (WP:ELNO, #11). Moreover, parts of the links are wrongly characterised: The mentioned twitter and instagram are in a box which calls them "external media" - see Beacham_Theatre#Cultural_impact. Twitter is not 'media'. I also disagree with the second link in every line in the 'external images' box in [[13]], those should be to the respective Wikipedia articles of those collections, see WP:ELPOINTS #2 and the reference in that sentence. On my second revert, I suggest to take it to the talkpage or to WP:ELN - 'The burden of providing [this] justification is on the person who wants to include an external link', not on the one who wants to exclude it (it is the task of the person who wants to include it, for every single link, to have a rationale like 'this link is bringing this unique information to the subject', and therefore it should be included. I am not going to start discussions on any talkpage where my removals are contested, I'll take it straight to an advisory/notice board to get second opinions (on a talkpage it is mostly going to be a diatribe mainly with interested parties of the subject, and that local 'consensus' does not necessarily trump our policies and guidelines). --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:51, 5 February 2017 (UTC) I'm no policy expert but it appears that you are leaving out every one of the exceptions to the ELNO polices in which each of these links fit such as WP:ELOFFICIAL for example. They have a alot of social media that didn't add anything and was not included WP:ELMINOFFICIAL. Social media with newer copyrighted images was included as external media. Blogs...except those written by a recognized authority. (This exception for blogs, etc., controlled by recognized authorities is meant to be very limited; as a minimum standard, recognized authorities who are individuals always meet Wikipedia's notability criteria for people.) Please review each of the policies and exceptions. Next you are generalizing each link collection instead of discussing them which would give you an insight into understanding why each link was put there. The Social for example is in the Beacham building and operated in parnership with The Beacham and connected though a hallway. Those orgs have a section or specific collection in one place devoted to the Beacham. It's not like an item is here or there or only somewhat related to the subject. These org's (both collections and members themselves) are a unique resource. These entities have a specific Beacham Theatre historical collection that is unique to that organization where only a very small fraction has ever been digitized or put online. If there is an online presence it is deep-linked however some of the deep-linked items are already cited references in the body. I appreciate the additional explanation for the edits but at this time there is no point explaining it here. The articles talk page would have been appropriate. Your point about using wiki links was valid but would only generate confusion about abbreviations unless they linked to a Wikipedia page. Johnvr4 (talk) 18:08, 5 February 2017 (UTC) @Johnvr4: You cannot read just little parts of the guideline, not the guideline in full. WP:ELMINOFFICIAL is a part of WP:ELOFFICIAL. WP:ELOFFICIAL is saying that the we include official sites, WP:ELMINOFFICIAL is stating that we normally only include one. And that has very, very few exceptions. There you say it yourself, "the Social is in the Beacham building" .. it hence is not the Beacham Theatre, it is a separate subject. Moreover, it is information that is already captured in the document: "Since 2011 "The Beacham" nightclub has operated in partnership with "The Social," a smaller venue next door at 54 North Orange Avenue. The venues, are connected via a passage and door." What you are arguing for is to write linkfarms and linking every remotely related subject on this page. 'The orgs have a section or specific collection in one place devoted to the Beacham', you are not linking to that section. If a website has one single document relevant to a subject, we do not link to the top-level of that website, we link to the specific document: "Sites that are only indirectly related to the article's subject: the link should be directly related to the subject of the article. A general site that has information about a variety of subjects should usually not be linked from an article on a more specific subject. Similarly, a website on a specific subject should usually not be linked from an article about a general subject. If a section of a general website is devoted to the subject of the article, and meets the other criteria for linking, then that part of the site could be deep linked." 'If there is an online presence it is deep-linked however some of the deep-linked items are already cited references in the body'. If it is already cited, you don't need to reproduce the link in the external links sections - the information is already incorporated in the Wikipedia article. You state that it makes sense to link to the appropriate Wikipages, it is not my task to find the appropriate wikipages, and if they do not exist, then you should be more descriptive. And also here, you link it in that infobox, and it is linked in the external links section. It is not in Wikipedia's goals to send people to anything that is remotely related to a subject, it is Wikipeda's goal to incorporate the information. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:27, 6 February 2017 (UTC) WP:LISTEN I'm not trying to be uncivil or yell but please hear this clearly as I do not want to keep repeating it. THE BEACHAM THEATRE IS IN THE BEACHAM BUILDING AS ARE MANY BUSINESSES -JUST AS IT SAYS IN THE BODY. IT IS THE SAME BUILDING AND BOTH WERE OWNED and RUN TOGETHER (off and on). Valentyne's Celebrity Dinner Theater was inside the Beacham Theatre. Valentyne's restaurant was adjacent and is now the Social! The Social is physically and financially and in every other way connected and run jointly. My understanding in that acts that don't fill up the Beacham play on that stage. You have only quoted or read a little part of the policy. Please read the entire guidelines that starts out with the word NORMALLY and also has the phrase Each link should be considered on its merits . That is the policy. I've explained the unique circumstance requiring more than one link! The onus is now on you to support a position that each individual link does not add anything to the entry that may force a reader to ask why there are no recent images in this entry. I am not linking any somewhat related subjects. Each link is directly linked to a unique source about this subject. Last, Regarding your statement that "It is not in Wikipedia's goals to send people to anything that is remotely related to a subject" As I affirmed, these links are directly related. IT IS A WIKIPEDIDA GOAL to provide useful articles for readers and each of those links do exactly that. WP:RF The social media are officially controlled and exempt from the rule you are citing. "Official links (if any) are provided to give the reader the opportunity to see what the subject says about itself. These links are normally exempt from the links normally to be avoided. The wikilink "issue" was fixed yesterday. Why are you still harping on it? I again reverted that deletion this morning. Johnvr4 (talk) 13:36, 6 February 2017 (UTC) @Johnvr4: So, who is now edit warring. You keep on including these links against two editors who say they do not merit inclusion. I have re-reverted, and will not hesitate to bring the page to WP:RFPP to have it protected, as you are enforcing your preferred version while we are discussing whether there is merit on inclusion. 'The beacham theatre is in the Beacham Building as are many businesses', 'They are in every way connected' .. You say that the Beacham Theater is in the Beacham Building, as is The social. In other words, there should be an article on the Beacham Building, listing that both the Beacham Theater is in there, as is the Social (and the many other businesses). The subject of the page is NOT the social, the subject of the page is Beacham Theater. That hence means that the official link of the Beacham theater is to be included, and that the link for social is not to be included. You are free to write an article on The Social, there there should be a link to the homepage of the social (and, obviously, not to the Beacham theater, as that is there not the subject). We do consider every link on its merits, and again, the link of the beacham theater is to be included, that one has merit. The one about the social does not. And the onus is on the person that wants to include the links - they are in contrast to our inclusion standards. That the official media are officially controlled is fine, subjects now generally have a plethora of official links, yet we also say that we normally include only one, with very few exceptions. Those exceptions generally boil down to 'the subject is specifically known for their <social networking site> use'. The official website gives the opportunity to see what the subject says about itself (and in this case, it shows prominently the social networking sites), the section that you quote (bolded) continues with "Minimize the number of links ... Normally, only one official link is included. If the subject of the article has more than one official website, then more than one link may be appropriate, under a very few limited circumstances...". Look, I have now removed social networking and linkfarming sites on more than 3000 pages (and still ongoing), and the number of cases where there is substantiated resistance is minimal - these links simply do not belong, they fail our inclusion standards. --Dirk Beetstra T C 14:41, 6 February 2017 (UTC) Look. I pointed you to the policy and rubbed your face in it. These are WP:OFFICIAL links and are exempt from your interpretations!! Just keep edit warring then until you grasp it. Johnvr4 (talk) 14:49, 6 February 2017 (UTC) Rub whatever you want - see WP:ELMINOFFICIAL, which is part of the very section you rub with. They are not excempt. --Dirk Beetstra T C 14:59, 6 February 2017 (UTC) It sounds very much as if you have applied your own interpretation to over 3000 individual pages without ever evaluating the merits of each link. Now you want to do that to that to the Beacham entry too. You've said officially controlled links are NOT exempt?? External links#Official links An official link is a link to a website or other Internet service that meets both of the following criteria: 1. The linked content is controlled by the subject (organization or individual person) of the Wikipedia article. 2. The linked content primarily covers the area for which the subject of the article is notable. Official links (if any) are provided to give the reader the opportunity to see what the subject says about itself. These links are normally exempt from the links normally to be avoided, but they are not exempt from the restrictions on linking. Johnvr4 (talk) 15:12, 6 February 2017 (UTC) @Johnvr4: OK, and what about the sentence that I have now so often referred to: "Normally, only one official link is included. If the subject of the article has more than one official website, then more than one link may be appropriate, under a very few limited circumstances." .. I have been through these discussions a handful of times now, and that is the interpretation that we have consensus for. That is what I tell you, and what Ronz is telling you. Only one. --Dirk Beetstra T C 15:15, 6 February 2017 (UTC) When you have referred to that phrase, it seems that you always leave out the word "normally" and insert an interpretation of "always" which is likely evident in your 3000 plus pages of doing the exact same thing. I explained and it is very evident in the article that this Subject has had and still has many names. Alternate names are notable, still in use, are officially used and have pages with information about themselves to link in the entry about that subject. I used OFFICIAL twitter and Instagram links only because they have NEW PROFESSIONAL IMAGES of THE BEACHAM unavailable elsewhere. Other more relevant officially social media pages are even more in use (in the case of AAHZ) but a link to FB etc. would add nothing to the entry that would be important to the reader. I understand the policy may have been abused elsewhere but please understand that this case is a unique circumstance (and it may well be that AAHZ or the Social will someday have its own WP entry if it gets too big). I modified the majority of the concerned links per your explanation. Please review them and discuss the concern about each one if you still want to delete them. Johnvr4 (talk) 15:36, 6 February 2017 (UTC) @Johnvr4: I did not, ever, leave out the 'normally', and I included the "very few limited circumstances." .. this is not one. --Dirk Beetstra T C 16:16, 6 February 2017 (UTC) I was getting a bit heated and walked away and in doing so I did not fully answer your question about whether "normally, only one official link is included" under ELMINOFFICIAL. WP:ELMINOFFICIAL: If the subject of the article has more than one official website, then more than one link may be appropriate, under a very few limited circumstances.[6] 6. Situations in which multiple official links are typically provided include: [examples:]... A retailer may have separate websites for the corporate office and for consumers (see, e.g., Walmart, J. C. Penney). A person [or subject, business etc.] who is notable for more than one thing might maintain separate websites for each notable activity, (e.g., one website for music and another website for writing). "The Beacham Theatre" (AKA "AAHZ") and "Late Night at the Beacham Theatre" (also AKA "AAHZ") are just such a situation. The Beacham and The Social links are similar to the first example. Johnvr4 (talk) 16:48, 6 February 2017 (UTC) @Johnvr4: No, they are not, and there are at least two people who disagree with you. Revert your edits and get consensus on the talkpage. --Dirk Beetstra T C 17:17, 6 February 2017 (UTC) @Johnvr4: by the way, you've just done this for a mere 2 links for which you might have been able to get said consensus. You're including WAY more than 2. I'll check these two further, though. --Dirk Beetstra T C 17:21, 6 February 2017 (UTC) Do you mean the talk page section that you never opened?? Talk:Beacham_Theatre Johnvr4 (talk) 17:23, 6 February 2017 (UTC) @Johnvr4: I don't need to for the removals, the burden to provide justification for inclusion is on the person that wants to include them. --Dirk Beetstra T C 17:25, 6 February 2017 (UTC) @Johnvr4: Moreover I chose to discuss the merit on a noticeboard that is "for reporting possible breaches of the external links guideline. Post questions here regarding whether particular external links are appropriate or compliant with Wikipedia's guidelines for external links." All I have seen from you is some reasoning, but it is clear from this and that discussion that we did not achieve consensus on inclusion. --Dirk Beetstra T C 17:35, 6 February 2017 (UTC) If you are not explaining your reverts on the articles talk page then you are edit warring. WP:EW. I never said my links were perfection. The links are needed even if they were initially improperly executed. Let's make them compliant if they aren't already. You deleted and reverted and you opened the noticeboard because you did not follow the discussion rules. You don't acknowledge or seem no to understand that the policy you are citing has exceptions which you would have understood if you had discussed the concern first. I gave you the WP policies and spelled out the relevant exceptions in plain, italicized, and bold text! What else do you want to discuss? I sure hope that it is merit of an individual link! I reverted because I believe that you are mistaken. It is your turn to explain why the above exceptions do not fit your interpretation of WP:ELMINOFFICIAL so that it can be discussed on the noticeboard too. If you must insist, shall I copy/paste all this stuff over to the noticeboard discussion that you prematurely started but is still not in the place it is supposed to be (at the article's talk page)? Ridiculous! Johnvr4 (talk) 18:03, 6 February 2017 (UTC) After your last remark/insult, I think I will just ignore your arguments. --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:12, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Barking up the wrong ELNO

Check out Grace VanderWaal and its talkpage. Where despite WP:ELNO, ELMINOFFICIAL etc having very clear guidelines, I ran into a wall of 'this doesnt apply here' where we have an official webpage that directly links to her youtube channels. Madness. I gave up in the end. Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:58, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

That is number 3 .. WP:OWN issues. Clear violations, see probably by now archived WP:ELN discussion. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:26, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

... I didnt even know we had a noticeboard for that. Only in death does duty end (talk) 14:43, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

@Only in death: .. see Wikipedia:External_links/Noticeboard/Archive_18#Grace_VanderWaal. There are a couple of other discussions active that get the same stubbornness. I have removed thousands of them (still active) and I get hardly any resistance, except for some who indeed tend to bark very hard and selectively read. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:45, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

I've been tempted to un-archive that thread now it is freshly archived, and ask for independent admin closure on the consensus. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:46, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Ping me if you do. I would have contributed had I known it existed (and its obvious from my comments on the talkpage my opinion on it) Only in death does duty end (talk) 14:50, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Nah, not worth it. Will keep on doing it on other pages, and bring them to the noticeboard when opposed, hoping that they will get some constructive discussion there (often not). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:28, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

I requested closure Jan 26th. I was wondering if it should be unarchived to help the process. Is that the standard approach? --Ronz (talk) 18:50, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

@Ronz: I guess so, archiving does not end a discussion necessarily. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 19:17, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Why can not find the article in Wikipedia

Dear Beetstra, I added a new article Sanbot (robot) about our brand in Wikipedia yesterday, but till now, I can't find this article when searching in search engines like Google, Bing, etc. May I know what's wrong? Is our brand Sanbot or Qihan marked spam in Wikipedia? Or something else? If no, how long will it take that we can find this article in search engines? Expecting your guidance and thanks in advance.--Jason —Preceding undated comment added 09:46, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

@Jason kwok7837: Eh, is that your interest? Finding the Wikipedia article with Google, Bing, etc.? You should really have a look at m:Terms of use, WP:SPAM and WP:NOT. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:02, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Hi Beetstra, of course that is not my desire. I was careful to add the article in wikipedia and I just wrote to make sure everything going well, because something bad occurred because of my mis-operation before. Thanks for your guidance and I'll try to improve this article as soon as possible. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jason kwok7837 (talk • contribs) 11:34, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

@Jason kwok7837: I have moved the article to Draft:Sanbot_(robot), seen your history I'd prefer that someone first looks through it properly before it moves into mainspace. The article has many issues. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:33, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Sorry I was just editing it when you moved the article, I'll check it. thanks— Preceding unsigned comment added by Jason kwok7837 (talk • contribs)

I have deleted the copy. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:39, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

I came to your talk page seeking feedback as to why Sanbot (robot) was moved. I now see why...

@Jason kwok7837: I also suggest you read through WP:COI. I'd be happy to help in any way I can to incorporate the article into the mainspace given your conflict of interest (i.e. "I added a new article Sanbot (robot) about our brand in Wikipedia yesterday"). Meatsgains (talk) 13:44, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

@Meatsgains:Morning! Yes, Beetstra is right, the article in Wikipedia requires to be totally objective, and I haven't paid much attention. But objectively, Sanbot should be in Wikipedia. The important now is how to improve the article as Beetstra told me there were more issues. Can you help to share more advice on it?— Preceding unsigned comment added by Jason kwok7837 (talk • contribs)

@Jason kwok7837: you have a conflict of interest, and were in violation of our m:Terms of use, and you cannot objectively say that Sanbot should be in Wikipedia - your interest is to have your product found. My advice is: let independent, objective people write the article, or re-write the article, the language is now inappropriate. That is why it is now in draft (and that was actually a mild solution, I should have downright deleted it, as in the current form (taking into account the intention) it is plain spam). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 03:50, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

@Beetstra:Thanks a lot for your kind explanation and operation on the article. Yes, what I am doing now is to re-write the article to meet all the policies in Wikipedia. --User:Jason_kwok7837

@Jason kwok78378: I would still like an independent editor to rewrite it .. m:Terms of use is more than just a policy. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:31, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Assistance needed

Hi Beetstra I noticed that you remove External links that do not follow wikipedia's policies. Can you please check out Wizkid— Preceding unsigned comment added by MassiveYR (talk • contribs)

@MassiveYR: That is correct, one external link is fine: we tend to link to what the subject regards as their main official website, which could be a myspace, twitter or facebook. Generally, if there is a dedicated website (<subject>.com-like) we remove all other (official) social networking sites. If there are only social networking sites, I generally tend to choose one and wipe the rest.

Do note that there are some cases where a second official site is appropriate, though that is rather limited. One typical case is Donald Trump - he has an official website that links to social networking profiles, but his tweets tend to hit the headlines every so many days. There the choice is made to link both the <subject>.com-type website AND the twitter (I haven't heard about his facebook use, so that one is not included, e.g.).

Hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:31, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

@Beetstra: Noted

Why does Wikipedia encourage external links to social networks with templates, if they're not undesirable or not allowed. --User:kstern999

@Kstern999: We use templates to make editing easier and to 'enforce' the same format throughout. That a template exists does not mean that it has to be plastered everywhere around on every page. Moreover, if you read the documentation of Template:Twitter, you will see that it is not encouraged to be used.

The same thing is true for WikiData - that we have WikiData, and that WikiData has a lot of data, does not mean that we have to transclude all that they have here. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 03:13, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Appropriate link

• techved.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

Dear Bistra,if you check the link (replace techved in place of domain) http://www.domain.com/blog/6-Tips-for-Designing-an-Optimal-User-Interface-for-Your-Digital-Event. It is the real content which was present on http://web.inxpo.com/casting-calls/bid/105506/6-Tips-for-Designing-an-Optimal-User-Interface-for-Your-Digital-Event.I have researched the article and published it on techved's website.But Kuru has marked us as spam,so we are not able to save the link.You tell me are we spammers if we publish the original content which was present on wikipedia's link, which is now a 404 error page. If you think that we are contributing the web and not spamming then please remove techved's website from wikipedia's blacklist.I will be very happy and would appreciate your help.Our Goal is to contribute to UX industry.So,Please help us. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Roshan060 (talk • contribs) 13:42, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

@Roshan060: "I have researched the article and published it on techved's website" .. that is nice, but we should then use the original article, not your copy of it. If you have any unique content to share, then we can talk. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:01, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Your bot removed legitimate content

Slavic speakers of Hellenic Macedonia also call their language "our own (language)" according to statements by the Slavic speakers themselves: [14]. However, your bot removed this legitimate content and the citation, discriminating against it solely on my status as a new user and the domain name where the statement appears: [15]. You may need to adjust the bot's settings to ensure it doesn't delete legitimate content. Առմենիե (talk) 05:03, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

@Առմենիե: I see you reverted the edit without understanding the issue. Blogspots are not a reliable source, as has been recognised as well here. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:55, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Restricting Google book links from a specific publisher

Hey there. I would love to know what do you think of this: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Restricting_Google_book_links_from_a_specific_publisher? Ugog Nizdast (talk) 12:48, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

I commented there. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:43, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Replied as well. Thanks indeed for your time. Let's continue there. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 01:30, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Techved.com BlackList Removal

Dear Beetstra ,kuru removed us from the black list.This is his reply "I'm glad to hear that. You should not be impacted by the blacklist, then".But still we are on the Blacklist.Please remove us from the blacklist. And about the content on the link http://web.inxpo.com/casting-calls/bid/105506/6-Tips-for-Designing-an-Optimal-User-Interface-for-Your-Digital-Event which is a 404 error page now.I researched the original content on archive.org.Then Grabbed that original article and posted on Techved's website.This way when visitors click on http://web.inxpo.com/casting-calls/bid/105506/6-Tips-for-Designing-an-Optimal-User-Interface-for-Your-Digital-Event will not go to a 404 error page but a page with the original content.

If you think we are wrong then i have said that i will not link in any shape or form from wikipedia even if i have unique data to share.But have mercy and please remove our techved.com from blacklist. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Roshan060 (talk • contribs) 14:15, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

@Roshan060: lut us keep the discussion in one place, on the spam blacklist talkpage. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:15, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

For the record, Kuru had no intention of removing that entry from the blacklist. Kuru (talk) 00:08, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

• techved.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

Dear Beetstra, where is the question of Spamming.Does checking that we got removed from wikipedia's blacklist is called spamming.I told you my friend reverted the link to original link http://web.inxpo.com/casting-calls/bid/105506/6-Tips-for-Designing-an-Optimal-User-Interface-for-Your-Digital-Event so as to confirm whether we indeed are removed from wikipedia's black list.If we were spammer's then we would have kept the link to techved's website but we reverted to the original link which is actually a 404 error page.I went to archive.org and put the link http://web.inxpo.com/casting-calls/bid/105506/6-Tips-for-Designing-an-Optimal-User-Interface-for-Your-Digital-Event and found the original content.That content is now published on techved's blog.Even though we have the original content we are fine that we don't get a link from wikipedia.But Please understand us.Please be kind.You can monitor that page for the entire year and if you find us linking then you can tag us a spam.If we were spam then how we are listed on this relevant sites http://uxmovement.com/resources/choosing-the-right-tool-for-remote-user-testing/ ,check at the end of the article we have a link to techved's website.Check one more link on a very authority site https://uxmag.com/contributors/techved ,we are listed there.We are also listed on Colorado university's website.Check this link http://www.siliconindia.com/ux-ui-companies/Techved-catid-50-cid-648.html where we are listed as top 5 UX Companies. How much more evidence can i give that we indeed are a UX agency and have worked with fortune 500 clients like Dell.So,Please be kind to us and remove us from the blacklist.If you find any of us or any team member trying to get a link from wikipedia,then surely you can tag us a spammer.But please for now have mercy on us and remove us from blacklist.You also know our ip address.If someone is found creating an account with this ip address then also tag us as spam but for now please remove us from the blacklist.I hope this explains all.Please be kind.Regards,Roshan — Preceding unsigned comment added by Roshan060 (talk • contribs) 07:10, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

There are at least 10 accounts who do practically nothing else than replace documents on other websites with the same document on your website, and they have been doing this for years. There are fairer solutions than what these, obvious sock/meat puppets, were doing. Stop that behaviour, as has been asked of these accounts over and over. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:49, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Dear Beestra,after giving so much evidence also you are counting as a spammers.One More evidence https://medium.com/@Techved/iphone-7-a-giant-leap-towards-technologically-augmented-future-6ca1729a1812#.s4f4ecgo9. Techved has been since 10 years and no body has blacklisted us till now.We contribute to the web for user experience design topic.Here is one more list on Dmoz.https://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Human-Computer_Interaction/Companies_and_Consultants/Usability_Testing/. After giving so much evidence,you are still doubting us.We do not require a link from wikipedia.But atleast remove techved's website from the blacklist.I assure you that you monitor the user interface design page for one year and if you find us linking from wikipedia then blacklist US.But please remove us from the blacklist as of now.Also please tell me how to test whether we have been indeed removed from the blacklist.Also giving list of evidences of our genuineness http://www.siliconindia.com/ux-ui-companies/Techved-catid-50-cid-648.html, http://www.businessinsider.in/Indian-Mothers-Who-Work-And-Have-Made-It-Big/Neha-Modgil-Techved-Consulting/slideshow/34911642.cms, http://www.finduxevents.com/organizer/techved-consulting/, http://www.theuxploration.com/, https://biz.prlog.org/usability-technology/. Link from One of the reputed UX design sites :http://usabilitygeek.com/7-user-interface-guidelines-for-designing-watch-apps/. How much more evidence can i give you.Please remove us from the blacklist.I assure you that i or any of my team member will not link from wikipedia.You also know our ipaddress.I hope that you show kindness to our website and remove us from the blacklist.For the mistake of one person entire website should not suffer.Please be kind.I hope this explains all. Regards, Roshan— Preceding unsigned comment added by Roshan060 (talk • contribs)

'For the mistake of one person entire website should not suffer' - I count something like 10 accounts. One person, if you ask me to doubt that I know where I have to go next? 'I assure you that i or any of my team member will not link from wikipedia' ... correct, you can't, it is blacklisted, and will remain so until we see use for the site. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:26, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Revert blacklisting?

Hallo, I left a request at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Spam_blacklist#volpaia.info but was advised that as you'd blacklisted the site I should check with you. PamD 11:30, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

@PamD:, part of a large spam campaign - m:Talk:Spam_blacklist/Archives/2011-07a#Ammonet_spam_on_Wikipedia, as suggested there, I would suggest to whitelist it if you only need it for one page (especially since the page may not stay ..). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:40, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks - have now re-added the ref to Girolamo della Volpaia , and the system has allowed me to save it. PamD 13:58, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

External links change

I don't know if you've seen but DMOZ is being shut down by AOL. There are a lot of links in a lot of WMF projects leading there. I have made a template here to track them and a request at m:Talk:Interwiki map to redirect them once the community is successfully forked but there will probably be a lot of wikis with stray links to ://*.dmoz.org/* all over the place (DMOZ was published in 90 languages). I'm trying to do what I can to make sure these links don't simultaneously break in one week but I think that it would be helpful to get your insight. As far as I can see, the wisest thing is to convert all free links to interwiki-style ones so that they can be changed at the Interwiki map. Thoughts? (If you respond here, please use {{Ping}}). Thanks. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:51, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

@Koavf: The best thing to do is to convert all these links (globally) into a template, and then it is a matter of changing the template. However, even when templated, it may be difficult to link to the correct 'categories' on the new fork of dmoz, unless we get a true forking of the ocntent. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:47, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

The good thing is that the ontology and content are all open--the community are planning on continuing with all of the same content as before. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:35, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

@Koavf: then the first priority should be to convert as much as possible into templates. BRFA? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:48, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

What does "BRFA?" mean? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 09:04, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

@Koavf: eeeeh, me bad .. WP:BRFA, but that is the wrong one, it should have been WP:BOTREQ. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:55, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your help

Hi Beestra. Thanks for your comments at Talk:Opinion polling for the French presidential election, 2017. I wasn't doing a very good job explaining things, and your suggestion is pretty much what I had in mind. -- Marchjuly (talk) 06:29, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

@Marchjuly: You're welcome. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:49, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

It seems I spoke too soon since the changes made were self reverted. I don't feel the preference of a particular WikiProject should take precedence over established community guidelines. WikiProjects often do their own thing regardless of community guidelines and the guidelines against embedding external links seem quite clear on this type of thing. I'm assuming you came to the article via WP:ELN so I'm wondering if you are aware if something similar to this has been discussed before. Was anything resolved if it has? Do you feel there's any point in pressing this matter further if it hasn't? -- Marchjuly (talk) 05:35, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

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11 years of editing!

Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 03:10, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Invitation to join the Ten Year Society

Dear Beetstra/Archive 18,

I'd like to extend a cordial invitation to you to join the Ten Year Society, an informal group for editors who've been participating in the Wikipedia project for ten years or more.

Best regards, Chris Troutman (talk) 23:41, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

@Chris troutman: What do we do, we sit with sigars and old whisky? Thanks for the invitation! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 03:11, 20 March 2017 (UTC)(re-ping: @Chris troutman: --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 03:36, 20 March 2017 (UTC))

Yay chemistry longtime-editors:) If it weren't for {{tps}}, I wouldn't have even known about this party! DMacks (talk) 03:25, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

We can share the bottle of whisky .. my enforced lack of alcohol would probably take me out after a glass or two. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 03:35, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

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SiriDB

Hi,

I was wondering why you removed SiriDB from the time series databases list? SiriDB is an open source database and therefore I think it should be on this list. Could you elaborate why you did this?

Thank you, Kind regards Lillly22 (talk) 15:01, 3 April 2017 (UTC)Lillly22

@Lillly22: if you think it is notable, please write an own article for the subject. Nowadays anyone can write certain pieces of software for certain goals, that does not mean that that piece of software deserves a place on Wikipedia to be mentioned/advertised. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 03:10, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

External Links to bybriar.com

Hello!

Thanks for your reply, but I must disagree with you on the matter.

The reasons for this are:

• Every link leads to a page with unique content, that is not offered on Wkikpedia.
• Every link leads to a page with encyclopedic text that doesn't contain any promotional information of any particular product.
• Every link leads to a page with additional information on the topic presented.
• Every link leads to page with unique text that does not violate copyright laws.
• Every link is simular to the links already present on Wikipedia.

If I understand correctly all the links may be put to a discussion to decide if they should be deleted.

I would be glad to correct the links provided if you could give me the instructions on how to do so.

Thanks in advance.

Den Williamson (talk) 08:08, 12 April 2017 (UTC) Den Williamson

@Den Williamson: I am sorry, I am disagreeing with you. Simply per WP:NOT#REPOSITORY - we are not writing a linkfarm, our goal is to include information. If you feel that Wikipedia is not complete in this information, then there is something to expand. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:28, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply, but I am disagreeing with you too. The reasons for this are:

• Some acceptable links include those that contain further research that is accurate and on-topic, information that could not be added to the article for reasons such as copyright or amount of detail, or other meaningful, relevant content that is not suitable for inclusion in an article for reasons unrelated to its accuracy.

My external link:

• Contain further research that is accurate and on-topic (for example, information about summary candle), information that could not be added to the article for reasons such as copyright or amount of detail (ByBriar copyright), or other meaningful, relevant content that is not suitable for inclusion in an article for reasons unrelated to its accuracy.

Den Williamson (talk) 08:50, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

@Den Williamson:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hammer_(candlestick_pattern)&oldid=774960354 - 6 links there, you add number 7. Linkfarming. Article is unreferenced.
• The content you link to: hardly any text, just images. Does not add ANYTHING over the 4 paragraphs that are already there. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:56, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

@Dirk Beetstra: Thanks for your reply. You have selected the most non-indicative page but i am agree with your argument. Ok.

• And what about link to Morning Star from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_star_(candlestick_pattern) ?

Den Williamson (talk) 09:41, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

@Den Williamson: I chose one, if that one is non-indicative then why did you add the link there. Your arguments above are, and I quote: :* Every link leads to a page with unique content, that is not offered on Wkikpedia.

• Every link leads to a page with encyclopedic text that doesn't contain any promotional information of any particular product.
• Every Every link leads to a page with additional information on the topic presented.
• Every Every link is simular to the links already present on Wikipedia. (my bolding/selection)

The one link that I now cherry picked contains no information that is not offered on Wikipedia, there is hardly any 'encyclopedic text' on the page (there is hardly any text on the page), the page is not leading to additional information, the Wikipedia page tells WAY more than what your link at the moment adds (and actually I doubt that there is even more), and if it is similar to links already present then it disqualifies itself just by that. (I removed the no-copyright-violation argument, if that would have been the case we would not be discussing here anyway).

The link you added to Morning star (candlestick pattern) fails for exactly the same reasons, just that there is no linkfarming (yet; though see WP:ELPOINTS: A lack of external links or a small number of external links is not a reason to add external links). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:21, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

@Dirk Beetstra: Thanks for your reply. And were is summary candle description of morning star pattern? My argument is:

• Contain further research that is accurate and on-topic (for example, information about summary candle).

Your argument:

• There is hardly any 'encyclopedic text' on the page (there is hardly any text on the page), the page is not leading to additional information, the Wikipedia page tells WAY more than what your link at the moment adds.

Thanks in advance. Den Williamson (talk) 10:41, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Good point .. see WP:EL: "If the website or page to which you want to link includes information that is not yet a part of the article, consider using it as a source for the article, and citing it ..." Again, your aim seems to be to have the link included, not to expand Wikipedia. If that is the case, you're here for the wrong reasons. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:06, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

@Den Williamson: (forgot to ping you). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:06, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

@Dirk Beetstra: Thanks for your reply.

• No, not this case ;)
• Is writing an article "Summary Candle" a solution to this question? If ok, can I hope for your help in editing this article?

Thanks in advance. Den Williamson (talk) 14:30, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

You're the specialist ... --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 17:19, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Can you update my IRC cloak on COIBot's trusted list?

Hi. Some time ago I have changed my nickname (confirmation). My new cloak is wikimedia/Zabshk. Can you update it on meta:User:COIBot/Settings.css. Thanks. --Zabshk ^(query) 18:53, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Done! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 03:13, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Reverted flag edit

Hello, you reverted my flag edit on Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam. I would like to explain why I chose that and not the shutdown button. The flag is used almost everywhere as a method to report something. This is my argument for why we should use the flag. UpsandDowns1234 (Talk to me) (My Contribs) 03:42, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

@UpsandDowns1234: I'll copy this discussion to the talkpage of the page in question. Can you provide me examples of where that is the case? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 03:45, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

@Beetstra: YouTube, Gmail, many other sites. UpsandDowns1234 (Talk to me) (My Contribs) 03:49, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

We are not YouTube, Gmail or other sites. I was considering the situation here on Wikipedia. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:30, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Space 1999 external link

External Link to Youtube Page with the relevant video.

I disagree with your views on this matter as it furthers both the interest in Space 1999 as well as the relevance of the page. Your personal feelings on if links should be added should not come in to play here!

The link is relevant and valid. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jadedromeo (talk • contribs) 12:37, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

@Jadedromeo: It is fine to disagree, that is why we have talkpages to discuss. This has nothing to do with personal feelings, I suggest that you start reading the policies and guidelines of this site as they have been pointed out to you. I have blocked you for edit warring. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:44, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

thank you

Dear Dirk Beetstra,

Thank you for reverting my changes to the Cloisters Apocalypse article. I am still not entirely sure what I did to set off the bot: I think the Youtube link, though appropriate, because it was Youtube,triggered the reaction of the bot. Since you have reverted the changes (again I thank you) I assume they were done in proper format.

I work with illuminated manuscripts and art restoration, and hope to help with the Wikipedia project, especially in the area of early Renaissance text and illustration. Your help in restoring my work was a kind encouragement. I will undertake to learn better the Wikipedia protocols.Xuan Pin (talk) 07:46, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

@Xuan Pin: You are welcome! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:28, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Econlib still on Blacklist

Last month you said you were removing econlib.org from the Blacklist. Looking just now, I see \beconlib\.org\b listed. Lots of discussion took place here about the merits of the resource and many editors said it was valuable. The nay-sayers could only assert that the links had been spammed. Coming off your WikiBreak, could you please take a look. Thanks. – S. Rich (talk) 00:04, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

@Srich32977: I have temporarily removed it, it was re-added pending the discussion. I will now wait for independent closure as I do have commented quite heavily on this. I am more inclined to go with the suggestion to whitelist the encyclopedia part, even though I even think that that part is unnecessary (ISBN will suffice). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:30, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

I'm confused by your answer. Can't we just leave it off the blacklist entirely? IMO Guy's arguments about using ISBNs is hardly valid. I do not think many of the econlib links actually went to stand-alone books available via ISBNs. I'd like to get unique econlib works linked as relevant, useful works for readers to find, which they can do only via the Econlib website. Also, I'm willing to go through the "book" links in various articles to make sure that ISBNs and OCLCs are the only templates used for finding the works. The requirements involved with linking specific items through the whitelist are onerous. Especially when the links (e.g., not ISBN-books) are worthwhile. (Tomorrow, perhaps, I can ask a non-involved Admin to take a look and close the Blacklist discussion.) Thanks. – S. Rich (talk) 06:14, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

@Srich32977: I would like to see independent closure of the thread. Either the admin then removes it, or I act according to the decision. I feel myself too involved now to decide. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:12, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

YouTube Links

Hey Dirk, you never got back to me last April 3 Re: April 2017 on the XLinkBot talk page. When is the line REALLY drawn in adding YouTube Links? Based from what I understood (and from you not replying back means you're not objecting), posting YouTube Links, no matter how official they are, are NOT allowed, yet other users insist otherwise. What IS official, and what IS not Re: YouTube Links, because you argued to have my edit on Love Somebody (Maroon 5 song) with the YouTube Link removed. Please respond because CLEARLY this isn't a topic that's going to sit well with other users. - 124.106.206.103 (talk) 09:40, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

@ User:Luke Stark 96 and User:Ss112 Please read all the dialogues in the aforementioned Bot's talk page and the recent revision histories of the aforementioned song articles so that you're up to speed. Thank you. - 124.106.206.103 (talk) 09:50, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

@124.106.206.103: I stand with my points of earlier - seen that they are 'hacked' into the music boxes (the box does not have a dedicated field for music video's), ánd the fact that the onus is on the person who wants to include them (and again, there is no shown consensus for that), means to me that these links are not supposed to be there. Removal of such links is hence in line with the guidelines. Edits like ".. If it's the official upload, it's fine." is not an inclusion standard, we do not link to everything that is 'official' regarding the subject. I therefore agree with these removals.

I'll bring this to WP:EL/N, lets discuss this on a 'specialised' global forum. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:33, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

@User:Beetstra Thanks for getting back to me this time, Dirk. By the way, you might want to look up another song article with the same issue. Lastly, where's this 'specialised' global forum'? Hope to hear from you again soon. - 124.106.206.103 (talk) 11:02, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

@124.106.206.103: see WP:EL/N - the external links noticeboard.

My apologies for not getting back earlier, but I found the subject sufficiently answered there, and I don't think this is (as I said there) the worst of linking that I encounter. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:21, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

@User:Beetstra Ok, gotcha. Went ahead and removed the link myself and referenced this thread. Thanks. Now, for another topic that I never got to discuss... (will create a new discussion) - 124.106.206.103 (talk) 11:31, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Sara Del Rey Name

(From the Sara Del Rey talk page) This has been bothering me ever since Sara Amato has been using her real name in the WWE, but shouldn't the name of this page be "Sara Amato" instead of "Sara Del Rey"? I know she's mainly known as "Sara Del Rey", but WWE has been referencing her with her real name ever since at least the first episode of Breaking Ground (2015); hell, even Matt Bloom has been using his real name while in the WWE! Might I add that people who use their ring names in the WWE had their page names changed (i.e. El Generico to Sami Zayn and Kevin Steen to Kevin Owens). PLEASE tell me this is up for discussion. No disrespect and thank you. - 124.106.206.103 (talk) 11:34, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

@124.106.206.103: You'll have to do that through Requested moves, instructions there. I could (technically) make the move for you, but since it is outside of my comfort zone (I know nothing about the person or wrestling in general), I'd rather see a determined consensus etc. etc. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:18, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

@User:Beetstra I understand the limits of your comfort zone, but I do appreciate your offer. I tried skimming through the Requested moves, namely the Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(people)#Self-published_name_changes, but I still don't know how to bring this up at least for discussion (apologies for not understanding the steps). Would greatly appreciate your help on requesting for a name change (renaming) on the aforementioned article at the very least; you don't even need to make the move for me for your understandable reason/s, just tell me specifically how. I would like to apologize too for my last comment on the Sara Del Rey talk page - I'll be more than happy to delete that comment, if I'm allowed to (apparently the system reads a different IP address, but I admit that I'm the same user who posted that - I just felt frustrated that no admin even bothered to look on that talk page, and since you're the only one who got back to me on my previous messages, I figured that I could reach out to you again). Thanks for understanding and hope to hear from you again soon. - 124.106.206.103 (talk) 13:10, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

@User:Beetstra Yeah... I reread the first topic of the Requested moves page, and I don't see any instructions on how to request to and how to rename the whole article... maybe renaming categories, but no renaming articles... Would greatly appreciate it if you could get back to me again. - 124.106.206.103 (talk) 13:20, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

@User:Beetstra After minutes of trying to understand the instructions, I came up with the following. Is this correct? Please let me know ASAP. - 124.106.206.103 (talk) 13:32, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

@User:Beetstra Follow-up on this please. In addition, if this request goes unopposed/uncommented for a long time, what's the protocol on the renaming update, because the Sara Del Rey talk page has apparently been abandoned for a long time. - 124.106.206.103 (talk) 03:32, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

That looks right. If needed I'll close it for you when the period is over. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 03:41, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for being patient with me: I understand that may be tedious to you. I'll be keeping in touch. - 124.106.206.103 (talk) 03:52, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

FoodFacts.com Whitelisted/Blocked

• foodfacts.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

Hi Beetstra,

Just wanted to reach out and see if you could help and/or give some guidance. A former employee was using FoodFacts.com inappropriately on Wikipedia and purely for marketing purposes. Subsequently FoodFacts.com was then whitelisted/blocked. I want to now submit a FoodFacts.com page that is in no way marketing...just explanatory. I use Wikipedia for everything (just looked up all the hospitals in NJ) and I think it's just such a great site for information. I see other companies similar to FoodFacts.com (like MyFitnessPal, even Apple Health) have pages for reference and think it would be great to add information on allergies. Can you please direct me on what steps to take next? Thank you!

Mmahon22 (talk) 16:08, 26 April 2017 (UTC)Mmahon22

@MMahon22: see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam#Asking_to_be_taken_off_your_spam_list, MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/April_2013#FoodFacts, Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/TheEatery/Archive. Especially diff, and diff, in combination with the mentioned discussion here are of interest to your first statement about a 'former employee'. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 03:25, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

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SiriDB Blocked

Hi Beetstra, I'm trying to create a wiki page for SiriDB which is an open source time series database. The database is free to use so there is no commercial purpose. Can you explain what part in the text I need to change so it will not be marked as being commercial? I would like to create the wiki for informational purpose only. Thanks Joente (talk) 11:28, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

@Joente: You were told over and over that the current text was too promotional, yet you recreate with the same content over and over. I indeed had to block recreation of this page - we are not staying busy deleting the same promotional content. I suggest that you go to Wikipedia:Articles for Creation, and go through the wizard. When you reach the end, make sure that you chose the DRAFT namespace for the article to be created (article space, as you observed, will not work). I suggest that you remove all puffery, promotion, etc. etc., and that you have proper independent, secondary sourcing for the article. When you are finished you can submit it for review, and editors who do that type of reviewing will come at some point (it may take some time). Good luck. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:35, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Small request if I may

Hi there Beetstra, one of your reverts came up on my watchlist (Veronica Chambers)--I was wondering if you wouldn't mind in the future putting a note in the edit summary explaining the revert was related to SPI. I eventually figured it out but had to spend a while digging, since the edits themselves had seemed constructive. Would be great to know from the top there was a reason for the revert. Thanks so much! Innisfree987 (talk) 18:41, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

@Innisfree987: I can try, but there is a lot to clean up. Rollback makes it easy to do, otherwise I need to copy-paste a summary. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 18:49, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

Ah, I see. Understood. I leave it to your judgment then--copy-paste seems like a reasonable solution to save you getting messages from people like me (I did eventually make my way to the SPI case but I nearly pinged you to inquire about the problem), but, whatever you think is most expedient. Thanks for the work on the SPI case and cleanup! Innisfree987 (talk) 18:51, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

@Innisfree987: that cost me an hour, with rollback. They is coming bck over and over. I guess that I will hear morebut WP:DENY is the best. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 19:24, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

About this revert

About this revert [16], I hope you understand that few means 2 or 3. LK (talk) 05:02, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

I believe that the number applies to the number of times those 3 exceptions apply, not to the 3 exceptions. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:28, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

In that case, that statement is still inaccurate, since there are more than 3 occurrences of those exceptions on WIkipedia. Won't it be more accurate to change that to: "under very uncommon limited circumstances". Are you OK with that? LK (talk) 23:46, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

No. The statement is chosen to be extremely restrictive. Try the talkpage of the guideline. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 03:15, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

Relevant External Links vs Advertisements?

Mr Beetstra, Would you please elaborate what are your criteria that you use to decide whether a link (i.g., external link) for a mathematical subject is considered to be an ad and not a relevant link which adds to the value of a page and that its absence makes a Wikipedia page seem lacking adequate substance. Please be objective and provide information in your own words (not just links to other pages). If you use links please explain its relevancy to your answer.

Thanks in advance for your response.

Former Mathematics Lecturer, University of Oklahoma

(MathZi (talk) 12:03, 17 May 2017 (UTC))

@MathZi: Rather simple, we are writing content, not just provide links except if there is significant merit for it. The article explains, the article has images, at a certain point there is no need for external links. Not having external links is not a reason to add more. That is codified in our policies and guidelines, see WP:NOT and WP:EL. Anyway, the burden on showing that some external link adds (signficant) to a subject is on the person who wishes to add the link, not on the person that wants to remove the link, and that is being done on the talkpage.

Anyway, as I said, our focus is on content, not on linking externally. And I expect that you, as a former lecturer, can contribute significant to the content of pages, not just external links. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:35, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Note that remarking on the perceived knowledge of an editor may very well be misplaced, and/or can be perceived as a personal attack. You may know my professional status, you may know what I stand for here on Wikipedia, you may not know what I do in my spare time, or what educational background I have that may be relevant. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:37, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Regarding a remark on your talkpage, you may also want to read WP:OWN. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:37, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Mr Beetstra, please answer the question as was asked above. The question is about relevancy of a (external) link vs advertisement regarding the Butterfly curve (transcendental) page. You had stated that the external link was advertisement. What is your reason? Before that, on my talk page you said it was probably(???) pointing to a non-existing page (and it was not). How on earth you claim that? Didn't you visit the link? Moreover you said the link was a spam, a false claim. There are no merits whatsoever in your statements. Furthermore, your personal attack link is clearly irrelevant to the question asked and so are your other links.

MathZi (talk) 16:20, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

1) I indeed didn't answer it, the link is relevant, advertising on the page linked to, unless in objectable amounts, is not really a problem; it is however a question that is not very relevant to the problem at hand. Relevancy Is just part of the reason to include a link.

2) I did not state the link was an advertisement, I asserted that the pushy insertion was spammy. I have not said that your link was not working, I have said that it was superfluous.

3) again, the pushy insertion is spammy, it is not necessarily an assertion about what is on the external site.

4) There is no personal attack towards you, I have commented on the attempts to push the link, and on the inclusion of the link. However the assertion "directed to those who have mathematical knowledge" is making an assertion about the person who you are talking to. You may want to read through the policy you cited.

The buden to show that the link adds to the page, especially after having been challenged is on the person who wants to include the link, i.e. you. Please head to the talkpage of the page where you want to include the link, and gain consensus. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 17:20, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

I double checked, I did visit at the site. I clean up so many external links that I was unsure. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 17:29, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

You had indeed stated the linked pages were advertisements as your reason to block the undersigned (I have screenshots of all pages). Now you say the linked pages were "superfluous". So, you are asserting there are other materials on the current Wikipedia Butterfly curve (transcendental) page that made the links I had added redundant. You also stated above that the links I had added were "spammy". If so, you are actually asserting, as it can be inferred, that the other material on the current Butterfly curve (transcendental) page is spammy. So, you are not only being economical with the truth, but your assertion is also self-contradictory. To remind you, questioning one's knowledge about the subject under discussion is not a personal attack. I also would like to point out that The burden to show that the link adds to the page, especially after having been challenged is on the person who wants to include the link does not mean that you arbitrarily delete materials from a Wikipedia page and fail to give legitimate reasons to justify it. It is certainly against common sense as defined:

"Common sense is a basic ability to perceive, understand, and judge things that are shared by ("common to") nearly all people and can reasonably be expected of nearly all people without need for debate."

Common sense also dictates one must have adequate knowledge of the subject before he/she attempts to get involve in an argument in a constructive way.

The links I had added were utterly "significant" to the topic of the related page. It would not have been significant if the graphs were for "functions" using the Cartesian coordinate" system. If you know the reason why it is so, then you would immediately know the tremendous significance (and not just the relevancy) of the links that were deleted by you, namely animation of the graphs.

Would you please explain why a Cartesian graph of a function does not need to be animated?

Again, if you provide a correct answer, it will be obvious that animating a polar graph of a function or a parametric graph (using either coordinate system) is essential for providing insight on how these kind of graphs are constructed. So, the links I had added provide valuable and required information that improve the page significantly. MathZi (talk) 10:50, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

However, the legitimate reason is WP:ELNO #1 .. I do not believe it adds. Make your case on the talkpage of the page where you want to add. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:17, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

Again you did not answer the question asked. Furthermore, WP:ELNO #1 is NOT applicable to the links that I included. They are the most significant links available on the given Butterfly curve (transcendental) page that provide insight into how the curves are constructed, a major contribution, as explained in my previous talk. The other links (probably all the others) are the ones that should be considered for removal for not providing any additional information. They are merely repeating what are already on the page and what are on the page are not accurate either. MathZi Contribution

MathZi (talk) 18:58, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

Sigh, yes I did, it does not add. That the others (which others?) don't add is NOT a reason to include another link, it is a reason to remove the other links as well. This material is, or can be, incorporated in the article. Again, this is not the place, the place is on the article talkpage, get consensus there. Or just contribute content. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 19:26, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

10 years of adminship, today

Wishing Beetstra a very happy adminship anniversary on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! Mz7 (talk) 03:52, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 04:36, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Why the reverts?

Hello Beetstra, I'm a new user and I made some worthy contributions to some wikipedia articles this morning, only to have all of them reverted without explanations. I would've appreciated the reason for the reverts so that I make amends where necessary. This is so unfair to the the time and effort I've put in trying to make wikipedia a better reference material.Lordie1 (talk) 12:51, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

@Lordie1: Hi, thanks for your question. It was pointed out in some of the links, I have undone indeed more. This way of linking (with inline links) is inappropriate, and I very much doubt that this is a suitable reference (as in, being a reliable source) for the information. As it involves biographies of living people, I prefer to err on the save side. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:57, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

@Beetstra:Thanks for the response, Beetra. Ok, I will remove the inline links. Didn't know that was not permitted. As per reliability of source, I understand your belief of 'preference to err on the safe side', but the contents are from a reliable news media with a verifiable address and contacts. You can see example here (http://www.concisenews.global/news/catholics-walk-for-holy-mary-fatima-apparition-anniversary-in-lagos-video/) for confirmation. There is a live video in that report that was captured by no other news agency in Nigeria which gives more credibility to the Marian Apparition section of the Virgin Mary article on Wiki.

@Lordie1: No, that does not give credibility, also a blog can report information that is not caught by any other organisation. Credibility is gained by editorial oversight, etc. See our guideline on reliable sources. I still don't believe this is something that we should link to. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:26, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

@Beetstra: It's not immediately clear what you mean by editorial oversight, as Wikis guideline on reliable sources did not frown at upcoming news site with verifiable addresses and 'about us' page. In the digital age, nobody has monopoly over news. For the avoidance of doubt, google 'Mbanefo Concise News', look at the result on page 1-10 and ask yourself if 'reliable news source' like Punch, NAN, NTA, Pulse etc. should be quoting 'unreliable news source' like Concise News. In the digital age, your understanding of reliable news source seems questionable. Thanks for your time all the same.

@Beetstra:The mistake you guys at Wiki are making is equating BIG to RELIABLE. That's a fallacy in the digital age. Reliability should be determined on a report-by-report basis and not by the perceived size of the media house. If you guys continue this way, you may, ignorantly, end up being swept aside like Yahoo mail and Nokia.

@Lordie1: No, WP:RS does not say that. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 04:38, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Whitelist request

... for your consideration. —ATS 🖖 talk 22:22, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

The edit won't save; does it take time to register? Thanks again. —ATS 🖖 talk 03:23, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

@ATS: Not that I am aware of, but I see your blacklist hits. I just did this edit, where it saves. So maybe there is a short lag? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 03:38, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Works now. Much thanks! —ATS 🖖 talk 03:40, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Dubbele bron bij Ming dynasty coinage.

De reden dat ik dezelfde specifieke bron onder bij "bronnen" had vermeld ondanks het feit dat deze boek 📚 al in de tekst was benoemd was omdat het in de tekst maar naar een specifieke pagina verwijst terwijl het onder bij "bronnen" naar de ganse boek 📚 verwijst, maar sinds het nu al beter in het lichaam van de artikel is verwerkt zet ik het niet maar daar onder terug.

Sent from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱.

--58.187.168.230 (talk) 13:30, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

De edit mengt twee citatiestijlen, iets wat we hier proberen niet te doen. Het is in dit geval het beste om de originele citatiestijl te volgen. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:31, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Learn your programing

Your programing has 1,178 erors! 83.24.22.30 (talk) 09:15, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

@83.24.22.30: .. show me one. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:16, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

I want to remove my site from blacklist of Wikepedia ?

--Mobeenmunna (talk) 06:25, 4 July 2017 (UTC)I want to remove my site from blacklist list of Wikipedia. My site data is == goldcup2017live.us ==

goldcup2017live.us: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

I noticed this link is being added as a reference to several football-related articles (for instance, Supercopa de España, GOL TV, 2015 CONCACAF Gold Cup) by different newly-registered editors. Seems to be a streaming website. What is the best way to approach this? Normally, when I see an editor adding spam links, I revert and report to AIV, but since the links are being added by different editors in this case, I don't know if there is an easier way to revert. Thank you! –FlyingAce^✈hello 19:32, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

@FlyingAce: This is plain spamming

I don't know that my this activity will be added in spamming. so please remove my site from spam blacklist list. This activity is not for spamming purpose. this is my first attempt on wikipedia. But now i have read rules and regulation so kindly give me a chance to show a good performance. i want to work with Wekipedia. I will be thankful to you.--Mobeenmunna (talk) 06:25, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

@Mobeenmunma: .. You use, what, 15 accounts that all do one link addition and that is all. Are you here to add links or are you here to build an encyclopedia? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:32, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

@Beetstra: .. I had already told you that i don't know that my this activity will be count in spamming. i am not a spammer and of course i had to build an enclopedia. Now i have read rules and regulation so now not any kind of mistake can be come from my side. I will be thankful to you.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Mobeenmunna (talk • contribs)

You can show that by editing and adding information. Your link is not needed/wanted at the moment. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 03:37, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

@Mobeenmunna: No, you did not read the rules and regulations. Stop your activity. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 03:44, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Links beginning with double colon no longer work

A recent change to the MediaWiki software means that links of the form [[::Foo]] have stopped working. There's a thread about this at VPT. I've scanned a recent database dump for links of this form, and have found about 50 of the pages maintained by COIBot (talk · contribs), for example 1, 2, 3. It might be worth adding some code to catch this. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:36, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

@John of Reading: I will see if I can add some code for this, should not be too difficult to do a s/\[\[::/[[:/sig on a page before a safe. I don't think that the bots do this with the recent diffs, but there may be old misparsed links in the db that COIBot is using. Thanks for the heads up. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:47, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Non-registered accounts in poke report

Hey Dirk, I'm confused about some of the accounts listed in the poke report as they appear unregistered. Why are they there?

As an aside, some of us are now using a new script which shows enhanced information in SPI reports such as account creation date, last edit date, and whether the account is stale for CU purposes. That script very quickly identified the accounts as not registered when I added here so I removed them. If you want to try it, the instructions are at the bottom of this archived thread under my signature. Once installed, you would be able to see what I saw in the link to the case above.

This leads me to wonder whether there are scripts like this for any of the spam reports. I looked at your monobook.js to find out but you don't have any scripts there. My scripts are in my modern.js.
 — Berean Hunter (talk) 14:06, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

@Berean Hunter: Oi. I did not look at that carefully. This is cross-wiki. They are on Wikinews and on Wikisource. The pages I checked are already gone. I'll defer it to meta.

That sounds interesting, I'll have a look at that (though I don't have the checkuser rights - it may give me extra information on spammers as well). Thanks!! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:46, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

No checkuser rights needed to use the script. I had checked global contibs thinking that must have been the reason for the accounts being listed but the few that I checked didn't have any. I now assume that their pages must have been deleted before I checked. That would explain it. Cheers,
 — Berean Hunter (talk) 14:53, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
	For your tireless efforts against spamming on Wikipedia, and your patient and cooperative attitude during disputes and complaints. Thank you for all your hard work. GermanJoe (talk) 13:36, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

@GermanJoe: Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:38, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

Case opened

You were recently listed as a party to or recently offered a statement in a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Maglioladitis 2. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Maglioladitis 2/Evidence. Please add your evidence by August 6, 2017, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Maglioladitis 2/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, Miniapolis 16:54, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

@Miniapolis: Thanks! I already started. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:58, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

Arbitration case scope

Regarding the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Responding to evidence in an arbitration case: nice to be able to resume a conversation from your comments on this proposal long ago :-) isaacl (talk) 19:11, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

@Isaacl: they are issues that keep coming up every so many years. I always hope that when the majority of ArbCom refreshes that things change for the better - they don't. Case naming has been mentioned for long, presumptions in case accepting (with lack of determination of scope - they just assume one as what seems to happen now). And editors have gone down on it - people have been railroaded (some editors simply do not accept that the case is partially accepted before they are allowed to comment), cases keep repeating with the same name until the person goes down .. don't worry, it will bleed to death soon and in 3 years we will be back here. But maybe, if we try? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 19:16, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

IP edits at ccTLD articles

I'm looking for an admin with enough knowledge of ccTLD to assess some intense IP activity at related articles. If you like, I'll try WP:ANI but the situation needs some insight and I'm concerned that a general discussion might get sidetracked with observations about how adding {{citation needed}} is great, and so on. I put an outline in my sandbox (permalink). Would you be able to give an opinion on what should happen? Thanks. Johnuniq (talk) 10:49, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

@Johnuniq: I don't know what to make of this. Note that this is cross-wiki, they are everywhere. Hovering between 'good faith' and 'vandalism' (or even maybe spam). Maybe it is an idea to throw it in the general direction of AN/I .. with a question in the line of 'I don't know what to make of this - does someone know what this is?' --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:58, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for looking at the strange case. Jmccormac provided more evidence which I wrote up at User:Johnuniq/ccTLD. See ANI. Johnuniq (talk) 05:51, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

@Johnuniq and Jmccormac: If there is anything that needs blacklisting, it may be worth to immediately report it to meta ( Defer to Global blacklist), as the IPs are everywhere. Feel free to use COIBot's functionality by requesting reports through WT:WPSPAM (investigation records) or User:COIBot/Poke (just curiosity), or directly on the meta spam blacklist (and obviously the local blacklist, but I don't think that is where this should be). The bot will update the reports on every diff that has {{LinkSummary}} with new content on the positive side of a diff (wipe and revert yourself is a good trick after a couple of days)

Note that there are links in the list that have been used by named accounts of which I think they are not related (also by one 'User:Johnuniq'... ;-) ).

The following IRC exchange with COIBot may be useful:

<Beetstra> whatadded 81.135.204.201
<COIBot> 121 records; Top 10 domains added by 81.135.204.201: nic.net.co (14), isoc.org.tr (12), nic.al (12), nic.tn (11), nic.net.br (10), tsk.tr (9), nic.net.dz (8), nic.net.in (6), nic.ro (6), whois.ati.tn (6).
<Beetstra> whatadded 86.134.240.162
<COIBot> 39 records; Top 10 domains added by 86.134.240.162: bilgem.tubitak.gov.tr (9), sadat.com.tr (9), nic.net.il (4), nic.net.co (3), nic.net.in (3), nic.net.id (2), nic.al (2), mknic.mk (2), nic.net.br (2), ugnic.or.ug (1).
<Beetstra> whatadded 86.174.198.166
<COIBot> 2 records; Domains added by 86.174.198.166: isoc.org.tr (2).
<Beetstra> whereadded user 81.135.204.201
<COIBot> 121 records; Wikis where [[user:81.135.204.201]] added links: w:en (109), w:th (11), w:sco (1).
<Beetstra> whereadded user 86.134.240.162
<COIBot> 39 records; Wikis where [[user:86.134.240.162]] added links: w:en (21), w:tr (18).
<Beetstra> whereadded user 86174.198.166
<COIBot> Sorry, No records on 86174.198.166.
<Beetstra> whereadded user 86.174.198.166
<COIBot> 2 records; Wikis where [[user:86.174.198.166]] added links: w:en (2).

You could chose to develop a report on WT:WPSPAM and get input of others, then use a permanent link to the discussion as reason to request global blacklisting (you can use above IRC exchange to show the cross-wiki, though that will come out of the COIBot reports). I remain that this looks a bit iffy. Is it still ongoing? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:17, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

(And also that breaks .. as I said, I need to be reprogrammed, WMF: @Johnuniq: --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:19, 26 July 2017 (UTC))

Thanks but I have not noticed what I would regard as spamming. The person likes adding standard stuff (with fanciful values), and they often add URLs like nic.net.co, but that is either a parked domain (where the IP used a URL that might have worked) or is a relevant URL for the topic. I don't think they are doing promotion. I think it is someone who likes editing Wikipedia, but who has no skill and no interest in an encyclopedia. Some disruptive editors have the attitude that if we didn't want them to add garbage, we wouldn't have anyone can edit—that's a bit hard to argue with! Johnuniq (talk) 08:09, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

I see what you mean. But I tend to get curious when multiple, seemingly unrelated, IPs are adding the same stuff in many places, and do not seem to be doing anything else. But it does have the same fallacy as the m:User:LiWa3 spam detection algorithm: a new user adding a new link that no-one else ever used, and who never used another link, can mean that that new user hit a jackpot, it can mean that the user is a spammer .. (however, there almost always is a reason why that user suddenly pops up. Either it is related to their daily job, material a friend is involved with .. it hardly ever is something out-of-the-blue. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:58, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

The IP addresses seem to be from an ISP and may be dynamically assigned. Once the lease on the IP address expires, the ISP allocates a new IP. This ccTLD article issue seemed to be ongoing and I spent a few hours going back through the edits and checking the ccTLD registry pages, the IANA database pages (provides the start date for a TLD and any subsequent redelegation) and registry policy pages on subdomains. The ISPs tend to have different times for the IP address leases with some expiring leases in a few days or when a modem/router is rebooted and others a few weeks. Business users on ISPs often have static/fixed IP addresses but home users don't as ISPs generally charge for these IP addresses. Jmccormac (talk) 14:27, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

Advice

Hello again Beetstra. I noticed some possibly suspect COI behavior but am not sure, your advice would be appreciated. This is not link spam, but maybe book spam... I noticed the editor Garrapata recently add a DeBuys book to multiple articles (and checking the history shows that this was done on more articles). However, it is not completely unambiguious, as the editor also worked on two seemingly unrelated articles... Maybe I'm wrong. Thanks, —PaleoNeonate - 00:52, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

@PaleoNeonate: This may be COI .. but also maybe not. Maybe you can try to engage in very careful discussion .. or just monitor it a bit. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:00, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

I was away for a few days, but now noticed that another editor also reverted those promotional edits and warned the user. I took a note to check Garrapata's contributions again later on. Thanks, —PaleoNeonate - 15:26, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

I'll have a second look. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:53, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

Evidence length

The Arbitration Committee has asked that evidence presentations be kept to around 500 words and 50 diffs. Your presentation is over 800 words. Please edit your section to focus on the most relevant evidence. If you wish to submit over-length evidence, you must first obtain the agreement of the arbitrators by posting a request on the /Evidence talk page. For the Arbitration Committee, Miniapolis 17:01, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

@Miniapolis: What does actually count as text - headers, quotes, everything? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 17:05, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

AFAIK everything but a final signature, which is not relevant here. Miniapolis 17:12, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

@Miniapolis: AFAIK? Aren't you supposed to know? That was unnecessary - my apologies. Can you point me to where this is expand in the procedures? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 17:13, 29 July 2017 (UTC) (adapted --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 17:17, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

I couldn't find any exceptions other than a final signature. Words are words. Miniapolis 17:23, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

@Miniapolis: Thanks. I have shortened, would you mind to re-count? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 17:40, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

I get 595 with the word-count tool, which is close enough. Thanks and all the best, Miniapolis 17:53, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks. Even PhDs can be a bit dumb sometimes. LK (talk) 16:03, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

@Lawrencekhoo: tell me about it!  :-D --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:25, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Fei-Yue Wang is up for AFD

I have nominated the article on Fei-Yue Wang for consideration in the Articles For Deletion forum [17]. Unfortunately, you protected the article to the point that I am not able to add the tag alerting editors that the AFD discussion has begun. Can you please readjust the setting and add the template for this AFD? Thank you. And Adoil Descended (talk) 17:03, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

@And Adoil Descended: I have lowered the protection .. I hope the persistent editor does not return. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 18:18, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Thank you! And Adoil Descended (talk) 00:59, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Correlation

• This sock case matches to this report...I didn't leave a link in the summary like usual. Not a traditional spammer but the report certainly helped. You may be able to check his nl.wiki contribs as I can't. :) Cheers,
   — Berean Hunter (talk) 13:06, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Precious three years!

Precious

Three years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:06, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:09, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

Block on FuzzyCatPotato for disruption

Is there anyway we can block him for a couple of weeks for being childish here, here, here, and here without starting a discussion at WP:AN/I? The edit to my talk page was weird, but I just noticed the edit he made to his own talk page I don't think there's any excuse for the blatantly disruptive posts on two pages, or his inflammatory edit summary telling someone (presumably Wikipedians he disagrees with) to "fuck off." I would like to wait until the external link discussion is over (regardless of the outcome) before pursuing a more permanent preventative measure (which I fully intend to do), but the childishness needs to cease immediately. PCHS-NJROTC ^{(Messages)Have a blessed day.} 15:00, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Not really .. though there are things like WP:NOTHERE etc. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 19:47, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

FuzzyCatPotato ANI

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. PCHS-NJROTC ^{(Messages)Have a blessed day.} 01:35, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Tom Aditya

Hi Beetstra, Why are you deleting the external links of the biographical page of Tom Aditya, which I have created? Amal — Preceding unsigned comment added by Amaljyothi1 (talk • contribs) 03:32, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

@Amaljyothi1: Because that is not how we write .. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 03:42, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

WikiProject Investment

Hey there! I just re-launched the WikiProject Investment.

The site has been fully revamped and updated and I would like to invite you the project.

Feel free to check out the project and ping me if you have any questions.

I'd like to invite you to join the Investment WikiProject. There are a lot of Investment related articles on Wikipedia that could use a little attention, and I hope this project can help organize an effort to improve them. So please, take a look and if you like what you see, help get this project off the ground and a few Investment pages into the front ranks of Wikipedia articles. Thanks!

Cheers! WikiEditCrunch (talk) 00:40, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

Magioladitis 2 proposed decisions posted

Hi Beetstra, in the open Magioladitis_2 arbitration case, a remedy or finding of fact has been proposed which relates to you.  Please review this decision and draw the arbitrators' attention to any relevant material or statements. Comments may be brought to the attention of the committee on the proposed decision talk page. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, Mdann52 (talk) 09:28, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

Invitation to Admin confidence survey

Hello,

Beginning in September 2017, the Wikimedia Foundation Anti-harassment tool team will be conducting a survey to gauge how well tools, training, and information exists to assist English Wikipedia administrators in recognizing and mitigating things like sockpuppetry, vandalism, and harassment.

The survey should only take 5 minutes, and your individual response will not be made public. This survey will be integral for our team to determine how to better support administrators.

To take the survey sign up here and we will send you a link to the form.

We really appreciate your input!

Please let us know if you wish to opt-out of all massmessage mailings from the Anti-harassment tools team.

For the Anti-harassment tools team, SPoore (WMF), Community Advocate, Community health initiative (talk) 19:52, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

List of museums in Ohio

Hi Beetstra. Since you're always helping out at WP:ELN, I'm wondering if you wouldn't mind watching List of museums in Ohio for a bit. It's another one of those list articles which pretty much had an embedded external link for each entry (and there's quite alot of entries). I removed them once, they were re-added and I removed them again. I left edit sums, but quite a number of editors simply aren't familiar with what WP:EL allows and doesn't allow. Anyway, another set of eyes on the article would be appreciated. The article seems to have other issues as well per WP:LSC, but resolving that probably will take quite a bit of time. -- Marchjuly (talk) 13:57, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

@Marchjuly: I see it is now reasonably referenced after a bit of a dispute. It seems fine now, I've watchlisted it.

Problem with these lists is that they are often not properly referenced, or are 'complete' beyond what they should be. Either every item in the list is notable (i.e. it has an own Wikipedia article), or every item in the list appears in an 'official list'. Anything beyond that needs an independent reliable source that they actually belong in the list (the source should state that they are a notable example of being in the list). For museums it is not that much of a problem (they are not too spammy), for many other subjects you very fast run towards WP:SPAMHOLE. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:50, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for taking a look at this. As you pointed out, someone has been working on improving the article and converting the embedded links to proper citations since my original post, so I have not really needed to do any further cleaning up on the article. FWIW, I also asked for help at WT:WPLIST#List of museums in Ohio, but the response given there seems imply that embedding links into such article may actually be preferred in some cases. As for SPAMHOLE, List of hot sauces seems to be a prime example of that. I did ask about that article at WT:FOOD#List of hot sauces, but never got a response. -- Marchjuly (talk) 07:01, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

Adobe Character Animator

Hi Beetra,

You recently removed some links from the "See also" section of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Character_Animator

I read the policies, and think you misinterpreted the information content of the removed links. They are all examples of different types of usage of Character Animator. This is extremely useful information for someone trying to understand what Character Animator is. If it would help, I could add more content to describe each use case...

-DaveS

David P Simons (talk) 23:25, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

@David P Simons: First of all, they are external links in a see also section. The first link is the link to the official site, the second two, I agree, give examples but are on the official site and hence accessible through the first link. That makes them unneccesary, people who want to know more will go to the official site and encounter those examples in the official site context. The other examples are all superfluous to that - we already gave access to company provided examples. Moreover, such example lists become ‘spamhole’-like, attracting only more examples that do not add anything significant over earlier examples. Ihope this explains. —Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 03:36, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

Removing Twitter links

Hello Beetstra. I'm increasingly concerned about your removal of Twitter links using WP:ELMINOFFICIAL as a justification. WP:ELMINOFFICIAL states that "More than one official link should be provided only when the additional links provide the reader with significant unique content and are not prominently linked from other official websites." In the case of Abbey Rangers F.C., the club's Twitter account is not prominently linked from the website and also provides unique contents (e.g. match commentary).

In several other cases you have removed the Twitter account in cases when the club website is moribund.

Given the speed at which you are removing these links, I'd be interested to know whether you actually bother checking the websites beforehand. If not, I'd like to request that you do. If you're not willing to, then I will probably be raising this at ANI or some other suitable venue. Cheers, Number 57 15:51, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

@Number 57: That section starts with "Normally, only one official link is included. If the subject of the article has more than one official website, then more than one link may be appropriate, under a very few limited circumstances". We list only one, I do not need to check whether it is (prominently) linked, that is not an inclusion criterion.

Anyway, in the case of the football club at hand, it is linked together with their facebook and others. If a twitter is of interest to the people interested in the subject, the official homepage is the place where it is listed. If it is not listed on the official homepage, then why should we list it.

We can take it to AN/I (again), or we can take it to WP:ELN. Conclusion has always been the same: my removals follow the applicable policies and guidelines. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:55, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

FYI, this was the bold edit, and my BRD follows 'The burden of providing this justification is on the person who wants to include an external link.' (per WP:EL. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:57, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

(a) Please tell me where the club's Twitter (and Facebook) account is linked on the main page of the club's website and (b) You can't claim an edit over a year ago is part of the WP:BRD cycle – that's really poor. Number 57 15:59, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

@Number 57: Right on the front page, 4 icons: blog - facebook - twitter - (dead) blog. Not that it matters, not being linked from the frontpage would make it even worse, the twitter is not important for the club, so we have to link to it? So can you now, per our guidelines, remove the link and give criteria why we should actually link to it? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:03, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I thought that might be what you were looking at. Have a second look, and try clicking through to the Twitter account (and here's a clue: Pitchero is a web hosting service for football club websites). Number 57 16:05, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Oh, you're right. So we are at the second. Apparently the club does not find the twitter account important, then we do not need to link either. And in any case, it is not an inclusion criterion, we link to only one official link except in very few limited circumstances. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:08, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

@Number 57: Forgot to ping. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:10, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) It's so unimportant that they've only tweeted 4,612 times in three years? The more likely explanation is that the club is run by volunteers who don't entirely understand the complexities of the website and haven't worked out how to link it to their Twitter account, which clearly is being used quite prominently. Number 57 16:12, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

@Number 57: First, I started a discussion on WP:ELN regarding this.

You don't believe that yourself, do you? Someone has a website and does not know how to make links out? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:14, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

I appreciate you're not familiar with the world of non-league football in England, but many clubs are run by volunteers, and in many cases, quite an old set of volunteers. This is one of the reasons organisations like Pitchero or clubwebsite exist - to provide templated versions of websites. I read them on a regular basis as I'm currently working to improve several hundred articles on non-league clubs, and there is a wide range of abilities – some clubs use these websites to their full potential, others barely get beyond actually creating the website with simply the club's name in the title, let alone entering any text or match details. It's entirely unsurprising that some club officials wouldn't manage to work out how to add a Twitter widget to their sites. You really need to stop making assumptions here. Number 57 16:21, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

@Number 57: And now you are the one who is making assumptions: UK is not that strange to me. Anyway, I will repeat it again, it is still not an inclusion argument. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:24, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

I didn't say the UK, I said non-League football in England. Continuing this is not a productive use of my time, so I will comment at WP:ELN from now on. Number 57 16:28, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Regarding your claim that "links are out until reason to include is found", I've given you a very clear reason to include. Based on our respective positions, I could have made the opposite edit with the reasoning reversed. If you revert in violation of WP:BRD again, then I'm afraid that this, and the wider issue of your removing links without bothering to check the alternatives are still functioning, will be appearing at ANI. In the meantime, let the discussion play out at WP:ELN. Number 57 16:44, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

@Number 57: you clearly do not have consensus for inclusion, multiple editors remove and inclusion is in contrast with our policies and guidelines. Your reason is not valid, we are not the yellow pages or a news service. —Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 18:09, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

And for your info, you arree opposing three editors that say the link is to be out. —Dirk Beetstra ^{T C}

As I've pointed out, inclusion is in line with our policies and guidelines, so I would therefore argue that your reason is invalid. You are aware that I've made these points, so you really need to up your debating game. Number 57 18:23, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

No, it is not in line with our policies and guidelines, twitter feeds, or social media in general, do not add encyclopedic value. —Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 03:05, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Good to see Beetstra still on his one man quest to remove social media links from wikipedia. For your information dude, a cycling race website, that has a dedicated twitter acount that provides english language, live commentary of every single stage of the race, is 1) offering significant and unique content and 2) isnt obviously linked from main website falls perfectly well within what is allowed under WP:ELMINOFFICIAL. And further, your comment in the edit that you were removing "blogs and fansites" when removing official social media accounts just further proves that you are not actually researching social media accounts prior to mass deletion. If you are going to delete vast swathes of links you HAVE TO investigate each one and make certain that it does not fall under WP:ELMINOFFICIAL. You cant just mass delete without checking, it is totally irresponsible. Dimspace (talk) 21:13, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

@Dimspace: .. wrong (see diff). It is not a one-man-quest. Regarding the remark, please read the guidelines (and our policies) properly. I have removed it, again. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:55, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

Are you investigating all links, the content of those social media feeds and the websites prior to deletion, the simple answer to that is NO, and if you arent investigating links prior to deletion you simply shouldnt be deleting. Dimspace (talk) 18:04, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

@Dimspace: the links should not be there in the first place. You have NO consensus for inclusion. Go to WT:EL to change that consensus first. —Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 18:14, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

Again! "More than one official link should be provided only when the additional links provide the reader with significant unique content and are not prominently linked from other official websites." - Now will you PLEASE ANSWER THE QUESTION - Are you investigating links, viewing websites, checking the content of these links prior to deleting them? Or are you going to continue to dodge the question?Dimspace (talk) 17:13, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

@Dimspace: and again, now you have three editors removing them. I do not have to research, they do not belong. Read the policies, read the guidelines. If you disagree with them, then you know where to go, I have already pointed you there. Stop adding them again without getting consensus for inclusion. —Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 19:02, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

Of course you have to research prior to deleting, other wise how do you know they dont fulfill the "significantly different content" that makes the acceptable. As ive already stated, an english language social media account offering live coverage is totally different to a romanian language website offering something different. Whatever dude, clearly it fullfils your little power trip going round deleting things on wikipedia. Im not the first one to raise this and I wont be the last. You carry on deleting stuff, without first checking if it satisfies criteria, without first checking if it is significantly different, im sure it makes you feel incredibly important. Dimspace (talk) 21:35, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

@Dimspace: you keep continuing to personalize this to me, where in this particular incident there are now three editors doing the same thing. In ‘kall’k previous cases the decision to remove has been upheld. It is not my power trip, they do not belong.

I do my research, they are linked from the official site. That alone is enough (actually, more than enough, even if they are not linked from there there is no reason to include them ..,). Whatever there is in the twitter feeds does then not matter, they are linked from the official site. A second official site does not satisfy criteria in any but a very few cases (I say 5 in a 1000 above, I am actually only aware of 2 real cases in the thousandS I have removed, with one being very thin and likely would not survive a second discussion). And I have already been reported to AN/I about these removals, where was shown that the removals is consensual. Again, feel free to re-establish the consensus on WT:EL, WP:ELN or higher if you like. —Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:47, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

As I said on my own talk page, i have never once been contacted by another editor regarding this so please stop lying. And no, you dont do your research, the amount of deletions you do is simply too fast to have individually checked every single instance. You delete them and then if nobody says anything its all good, if someone questions only then do you bother looking at them on a case by case basis. You carry on saving the world dude. When you are gone im sure they will write epitaphs about your contributions. unless someone deletes them of course without bothering to look at them ;) Dimspace (talk) 17:59, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

@Dimspace: Ever heard of edit summaries? And again, I don’t need to follow, we list only one. The burden is on you. Want to ask others at WT:EL or WP:ELN whether they pass? —Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 18:21, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Persistent use of fansites at snooker player articles

Hi Dirk. Did you say that CueTracker is now blacklisted? I see that it's still being used to update the Mark Williams (snooker player) article, e.g. this recent edit. Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:12, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

@Martinevans: You cannot add new links, old ones do not affect editing. —Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 17:32, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

I see. Is that slightly inconsistent? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 18:32, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

@Martinevans123: Yes and no. It is however highly annoying if a page cannot be saved if you just repair an unrelated typo (and newbies might not understand). With regard to the really bad stuff, the links should be removed/disabled at the earliest. Then there is sometimes (well, actually almost always) good use of a link (e.g. the official link of a subject on the subject’s wikipedia article). And whether that is done before or after pulling the trigger, removal (at least from content namespaces), disabling (outside of content namespaces to facilitate e.g. archiving), and where needed whitelisting needs to be performed at some point. In this case, all external links and secondary references of cuetracker should be removed, and the primary ones and the official link on the wikipedia article about the blog (if it exists) should be reconsidered and/or whitelisted. —Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 04:13, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, Dirk. So if I try to edit Mark Williams (snooker player) that CueTracker won't be bounced unless I add it afresh? But it's fine to replace all such instances with a "cn" tag? Martinevans123 (talk) 08:49, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Regarding Ai Nonaka

The reason why the YouTube channel link is needed is because she's also a prominent YouTuber who streams both her daily life and Let's Play gaming videos. Mhazard (talk) 02:59, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

@Mhazard: and so do many people. Consensus is however to link to only one official site of the subject, with very few limited exceptions. Reading the article, I don't feel that this article rises to that level. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:36, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Removal of external links

Hello. As a user before me, I'm very concerned about you removal of external links. You don't even care to check if the only link that you leave there works. When I reverted you and was doing a research to find some link that works, you reverted me immediately and the link that you left in the article the second time, didn't work either. --Moscow Connection (talk) 12:05, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

@Moscow Connection: And again, it works. It works perfectly. I only did not notice that it was actually a fanpage, and that it hence just does not belong. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:15, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

The YouTube link doesn't. (The second time you decided to leave only the link to their YouTube channel: [18].) Cause their YouTube channel has been shut down. (By the way, the link in the infobox wouldn't have worked even if the channel still worked. Cause it is incorrectky formatted. Please check before saving.) --Moscow Connection (talk) 12:48, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

@Moscow Connection: By the way, I'll be happy to take your concerns to WT:EL (again). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:21, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

• I will just copy-paste/rephrase from another user's comment.
  WP:ELMINOFFICIAL states that "More than one official link should be provided only when the additional links provide the reader with significant unique content and are not prominently linked from other official websites." In the case of Otome Shinto the band's Twitter account is not prominently linked from the website [especially since the website is now shut down] and is the only official link that still works.
  By the way, the Twitter account is neither prominently linked in the archived version of the website (the version I have now added to the "External links" section). So please just leave both links there. --Moscow Connection (talk) 12:34, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
  • @Moscow Connection: Wonderful, the same selective reading, and I will repeat the same reply: the number of times that a Twitter feed provides 'significant unique content' is nearly zero. This band dissolved a year ago, how are birthday wishes 'significant unique content' regarding the subject. How is this twitter feed representing the subject if there is no 'existing' subject anymore. You're sure that you can defend that this Twitter feed contains significant unique content?

When I removed it first, the twitter feed was not linked, there were only an official site and a youtube linked (already for 4 months). I checked, the official site existed so I removed the other two. You revert back to the same broken situation, stating 'The official website link doesn't even work' (which it does, it is just not the official website).

I challenge any statement that a Twitter feed is 'significant unique content' (especially the significant part of that), and have recently clarified that with WP:EL (and I still disagree that any Twitter feed provides 'significant unique content', you are free to challenge it again). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:59, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

There are 6,549 tweets written over a period of 5 years. Their content is significant. And the content is unique cause it's not available anywhere else. --Moscow Connection (talk) 13:15, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

@Moscow Connection: 'Their content is significant' .. that needs a citation I guess. We disagree, I'll bring this to WT:EL. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:17, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

"That needs a citation" — You're confusing article content with a personal opinion. A personal opinion doesn't need a citation. If it is that important to you, you can bring it to WP:EL. What I know is that the Twitter link is the only working official link in existence. And every article needs an official link if it exists. --Moscow Connection (talk) 13:27, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

But the official link of the subject is there .. the Twitter is not currently the official link of the subject, as the subject does not exist anymore. What I meant was, that if the content of a twitter feed is significant, then you can show that the world thinks it is significant. For now, only you think it is significant, and I challenge that it is significant. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:38, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

What I could agree to, is that there are signicant tweets there, but that is not what we link to - we link to the whole lot, including many that do not represent the subject anymore (as the subject does not exist). You dodged the question: "how are birthday wishes 'significant unique content regarding the subject"? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:20, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

I didn't dodge any question. There are 6,549 tweets, many contain news about the group, etc. --Moscow Connection (talk) 13:30, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Yes, many are news about the group, but if that news is significant it is also covered by mainstream media. Currently, what I see in the Twitter feed has nothing to do with news .. Birthday wishes ... --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:38, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

I've brought this to Wikipedia talk:External links#Twitter (again). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:41, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Actually, the Twitter account doesn't look like it is connected to the group anymore. It can be that it, too, was overtaken by some fan. So I deleted the link. --Moscow Connection (talk) 15:57, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

BLP violation removal

I have removed a BLP violation visible here. I'm letting you know because you are active now, so that it can be considered for revdel. Cheers, Tazerdadog (talk) 05:59, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

@Tazerdadog: I guess I removed all needed ones, can you please check? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:12, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Looks good, thank you. Tazerdadog (talk) 06:20, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Double colon error

COIbot makes edits like this one which are causing the Special:LintErrors/multi-colon-escape. Can this be fixed? --Izno (talk) 23:02, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

@Izno: Yes, that can be repaired. When I have non-mobile access to the code, I will hit it. I guess these are db-mistakes (my db), I will post-process them before saving, most seem to be related to links to meta’s blacklist. Thanks! —Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 04:02, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! --Izno (talk) 12:40, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Vanessa Koutouan

I was planning to translate Vanessa Koutouan from ca:Vanessa Koutouan, as part of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/The World Contest, but noticed that you deleted an article with that name three days ago, citing WP:DENY. Would it be okay for me to start such an article, and is there anything I need to know please? Edwardx (talk) 20:11, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

@Edwardx: you are free to start it. The sock that created the article originally is thriving on showing he wins prizes, and was using it to participate in the Women in Red competitions. You’ll have to start it from scratch, though, no credits to the original author. —Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:11, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, Dirk Beetstra. I have started a new article from scratch. Edwardx (talk) 11:30, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Lint errors: Multi colon escape

In:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam/LinkReports/loanswayer.com
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam/LinkReports/chinahighlights.com
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam/LinkReports/myshoesguide.com
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam/LinkReports/knightstemplarcards.com

you (COIBot) are generating a Multi colon escape lint error. Please change

[[::Talk:Spam blacklist]] to [[:Talk:Spam blacklist]]

and

[[::Spam blacklist]] to [[:Spam blacklist]]

—Anomalocaris (talk) 22:08, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

@Anomalocaris: kindly see three discussions up. I know it is annoying, but it is a low priority task for me. —Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:13, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! (Izno: obviously I missed your message above. Thanks for flagging this!) —Anomalocaris 05:33, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

@Anomalocaris and Izno:, I think actually that the correct repair is to change it to ':m:' (linking to meta). I am working on the workaround hack, though would prefer to find where this code is generated (it is my code .. eh ..). Will work on it. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:18, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

this seems to apply the hack I applied. It should now solve that on the cases that are there when the report gets regenerated, and not create new reports with this. Feel free to change all that are there at the moment, otherwise they may stay forever (as COIBot is not regenerating reports unless 'requested'). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:52, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Yes, it did look like it was missing an interwiki prefix. Thanks for the fix. --Izno (talk) 14:26, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Community wishlist survey

As a reminder, the annual survey is pretty much the only opportunity to lobby for improvements to spam fighting tools; the tickets will languish indefinitely in Phabricator otherwise. You should lodge a proposal for the usual spam blacklist overhaul. I'd also like to see machine readable diffs via the API, but I'm out of proposals for this year's Community Tech wishlist due to their arbitrary and stupid three proposal limit. For the record, I proposed http+https linksearch, multiple watchlists and large improvements to Special:Undelete. It doesn't particularly matter if you're unsuccessful, I've had development work done via backchannels, or by volunteers or other means in the past. However, if you don't put it out there, I can guarantee nothing will happen as a result. MER-C 08:30, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

OK, I will try to spend time on the spam-blacklist overhaul proposal. After that it is a simple regurgitation of the same every year if it is not successful. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:49, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

@MER-C: see m:2017_Community_Wishlist_Survey/Miscellaneous/Overhaul_spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:37, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

I left a few comments. The major upside is that if we put all the pure spam in one place, Google would then be able to summarily and automatically delist those domains. MER-C 12:18, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

@MER-C: That is the only downside on an 'abusefilter' based approach, the list would be split into many small lists. As I said there, COIBot/LiWa3 at the moment collect the lists in off-wiki files which they use to parse reports (e.g. the 'wherelisted' command on IRC greps the blacklist and whitelist files in the storage directory, getting the files from 800 wikis and then parsing them would cost way more time). As I would need to do that with the AbuseFilters as well, I could easily post those on-wiki. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:36, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

COIBot poke page vs WT:WPSPAM

Hello again. I was wondering: is the poke page designed to only obtain a COIBot report without needing to add reports immediately at WT:WPSPAM or MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist? If so, I noticed a note on that page about a restricted list of users. If I would like a report for a domain I suspect only ambiguously, is it then still appropriate to add entries at WT:WPSPAM? I did this a few times before and noone complained so far. Thanks, —PaleoNeonate – 22:18, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

@PaleoNeonate: Yes, the poke page is for obtaining reports without generating official records, or to just force renewal of a report. Do you have any 'given' rights (i.e. other rights than the automatically assigned 'autoconfirmed')? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:11, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

You are a rollbacker, you should be fine. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:11, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

I also needed to request for pending-changes reviewer. Thanks for the details, I'll try the poke page and see if that works. If so, should I leave new entries there or should I remove them once I consulted the COIBot report? Thanks again, —PaleoNeonate – 08:17, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

The bot only looks at the addition part of the diff, so what happens after that is not important. You could even make an own section for things you look at, whatever suits you.  :-) .. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:20, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks again. So it seems that I did not have to worry about this particular domain. Its main page appeared promotional, but the only two links are to direct documents replacing previously dead links (with the same documents). —PaleoNeonate – 09:59, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

@PaleoNeonate:: It worked! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:20, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

Super, thanks, I wasn't sure because of the (expected) delay. —PaleoNeonate – 07:24, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

Hello again, is it possible that poke reports are less detailed than WT:WPSPAM ones? Or that unless users are also manually listed it doesn't report users who inserted the link? iphonespyapps.net for instance was found from Majidmec's contributions (i.e. [19]), but the report still says no users. My previous impression was that the history was queried allowing to detect which user(s) inserted the link. Or maybe there's a limit going back in time? I also noticed that no report was generated for islamicfinder.org so am wondering if it'll eventually show up or if there was some problem. —PaleoNeonate – 14:00, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

@PaleoNeonate: The records go only back for a couple of years (5-6), and there are gaps. The bot is quite heavy on the servers it is running on, and sometimes things break (*thinks of WikiData bots and rolls eyes*).

Not sure about islamicfinder.org .. let me try again. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:21, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

I'll file a WT:WPSPAM entry for this one for you and others to assess. The other domains in my poke have no existing instances and can probably be ignored if they weren't spammed recently... Thanks again, —PaleoNeonate – 00:21, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Kay LTA

Hello again. I've been wondering if an edit filter or blacklist entry could possibly help against this peculiar case. These usually contain some links which could be blacklisted, but one more obvious feature is the email address (a related recent discussion is at my talk page with more information). Suggestions/help welcome. Thanks, —PaleoNeonate – 10:45, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

Generally we just revert, or we remove contact information (as there are spambots that parse it, possibly unknowingly exposing the editor). As it is a talkpage, I am not too worried. If they repeat after warning (as it is spam), a block may be needed. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:31, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

Many socking IP addresses were blocked, but more always come back. —PaleoNeonate – 01:01, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Good external links

Beetstra, since you've had so much experience with external links, there must be some that you think are good ones. Can you point me to some examples of good external links that aren't templates so I have a better idea of what is allowable (in your personal opinion)? - Mnnlaxer | talk | stalk 14:07, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

@Mnnlaxer: it is not my personal opinion. WP:EL is the guide. And I don’t think that it is our goal to include external links, but to write an encyclopedia. —Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 17:28, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

Your interpretation then. You have an amazing ability to avoid answering direct questions. What are the best examples of good EL that aren’t templates? - Mnnlaxer | talk | stalk 18:31, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

@Mnnlaxer: I answered that, our priority is not including links. Good links are those as described by our policies and guidelines. I am not going to engage in the opposite of WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS type of arguments. —Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 04:26, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

1. Yes, now the "our" comes out. Who are you speaking for besides yourself?
2. How do you jibe the statement the "priority is not including links" with the policy "Some external links are welcome, but it is not Wikipedia's purpose to include a lengthy or comprehensive list of external links related to each topic." Because some links are allowed on any particular page and the purpose is to prevent a lengthy or comprehensive list of ELs, not two links in an article. As EL says, "As the number of external links in an article grows longer, assessment should become stricter." Which means that EL assessment should be looser if there is only one official link on an article.
3. Policies and guidelines are to be interpreted, they do not decide individual cases all by themselves. The issue is how the policies and guidelines apply to a particular example. You can't argue any case in the abstract with a hand wave to "policies and guidelines". So, I am honestly asking what specific external links besides templates you think are good additions to a particular article. Surely you have allowed some non-official and other common template external links to stay in an article. So, I want to know what some of these are, so I can actually understand what you think is allowed under the policies and guidelines. This has nothing to do with other crap exists. - Mnnlaxer | talk | stalk 04:42, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

1) Our = the people who established the consensus of WP:EL, WP:NOT and the other policies and guidelines.

2) "A lack of external links or a small number of external links is not a reason to add external links."

3) Yes, and you did that. You asked for advice, we interpreted your specific case. I know what you want to know, but you will have to decide that on a case-by-case basis. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:52, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

2. I didn't say it was a reason to include a link, I gave you my reason, ELYES #3 and you agreed. I clearly said that: A. "some external links are welcome", B. that there is no general priority to exclude links, just to avoid lots of links, and C. mentioned with only one link in EL, there is no reason to be so strict. Do you disagree with A, B or C? 3. I am not talking about my link in regards to this request. Do you really think I expect to change your mind about my case? I think you have never met an external link you liked, your "tunneling away from Wikipedia" comment is bizarre. Like a link could have an ultimate purpose at all, let alone a nefarious one. And in any case, have you ever heard of the back button? The idea of denying the opportunity of readers to learn something - even if it not on Wikipedia (gasp!) - is complete anathma to the whole intellectual purpose of an encyclopedia. So again, please show me an example of an allowable external link that is not a template. Or do you think they do not exist, all EL's are dreaded tunnels? - Mnnlaxer | talk | stalk 06:27, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

No, Read through my contributions and look at my link removals. There are many that I leave. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:14, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

So just show me one. How hard is that? - Mnnlaxer | talk | stalk 08:15, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

No, I am not going to single out one. That is not representative. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:06, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Your whitelisting sci-hub doesn't seem to have 'taken'

Hi, Dirk, I'm an occasional editor, and can usually avoid the more arcane details, but not this time: I revised the Sci-Hub article, in light of the latest domain shut-downs. You approved for whitelisting the two active domains (.cc & .bz), but I cannot change the "official website" in the Sci-Hub article; I get a "blacklisted!" message. (I only felt the need to explicitly state the URL, because wikipedia was taking the wrong one from wikidata.)

Thanks! Netpog (talk) 19:09, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

• http://sci-hub.bz
• http://sci-hub.cc
• http://sci-hub.ac

@Netpog: These three should work? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:08, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

You had a '/' at the end of the domainname - it is currently hard-ended at the domain with nothing behind it. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:10, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

@Beetstra: Thanks, Dirk. Now I know! While I'm surprised that my trailing slash broke the link, because that restriction seems to contradict the usual practice , I'll remember this glitch. And yes it now does look right: the .cc version is now the "official" one, and both the .cc and .bz links now deliver. (The .ac and .io links work, too. It's just that sci-hub is no longer registered at those domains. But this sort of thing has changed before, so there might be reappearances.) Thanks again for the fix, and for the lesson. -- Netpog (talk) 19:58, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

References

COIBot overload

• theconversation.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

Hi Dirk, This addition leads to this report with no listings because it's over the max whatever that may be. It is being spammed however. Any ideas on how I might look at this differently? Cheers,
 — Berean Hunter (talk) 01:43, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

(talk page gnome) This appears to be The Conversation (website) (a related WP:RSN thread). —PaleoNeonate – 01:53, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

@Berean Hunter and PaleoNeonate: I see almost 5000 additions being mentioned in the report (there is a maximum that I make COIBot parse, otherwise it may take hours before it saves a report, halting everything else) - even with a full list it is very likely that a very significant part of the additions is by 'regulars' (through reverting links back in), or that it has quite a bit of 'good' use (I see it being used in references). Even a database dump likely will not have a lot of use here.

Are there more spammers? Is most of the current use actually wrong or spam? (I know, the former may be difficult to find, you'll have to check the history of pages where it is currently used to find the editor who added it, and then check if that editor was spamming the link). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:22, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

Fruzina Szalay

Please, restore the Fruzina Szalay article. She was a notable female poet in 19th-century Hungary. --Norden1990 (talk) 20:32, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

No, see WP:DENY. Article created by a sock, in violation of ban. You’ll have to write it yourself. —Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 03:25, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

You misunderstood that rule. Never mind. --Norden1990 (talk) 08:15, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

No, I don't. Do you know why this editor created this article in violation of a block? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:16, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

I don't know (or care), but that article contained reliable, valid and sourced info. --Norden1990 (talk) 21:06, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

@Norden1990: fine, and I know. But this is a valid deletion, unless you are willing to feed the troll. —Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:50, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

A user, who create valid and notable articles, is not a troll. --Norden1990 (talk) 19:55, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

@Norden1990: A user who continuously edits in violation of their block, editing solely for getting trophies and thriving on that, is, unfortunately. The only way to stop this is to DENY anything they create. I am leaving no trophies. —Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:06, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

You are however free to create your wn article, but it better not paraphrase the deleted edits too closely. —Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:09, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

confused about deletion of Bridge_Foundry page

Hello! It seems like Bridge_Foundry page got swept up in a mass deletion. I don't really know about that and am I bit lost in trying to understand what happened (still reading many links). I hope you can point me in the right directly. I had added some content to its talk page with more detail. Is there any way for me to find that, as well as the original page content? I should have saved a copy, but I didn't. It looked like a legit effort to document the non-profit group: https://bridgefoundry.org/ Ultrasaurus (talk) 16:22, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

@Ultrasaurus: That page was created and solely edited by a sockpuppet, editing/creating articles in violation of a block. They thrive on making trophies by making articles and participating in contests with them. Albeit not for this article per sé, this sock was the second sock that was participating in a current contest. I remove all of that per WP:RBI/WP:DENY (revert (or delete), block and ignore/remove all possible trophies for DENY). I am sorry, I will not let any of their edits stand, and you'll have to create the article yourself in your own wording and with your own data. (and I agree, the article looked like a non-serious effort anyway, loose sentences at best). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 17:56, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

@Beetstra: I understand the policy and certainly want any Bridge Foundry page to be good and genuine. I did spent a bit of time digging up articles... is there any way for me to find the deleted content? If needed, I can re-do the work, but would be nice to have a reference. Thank you!— Preceding unsigned comment added by Ultrasaurus (talk • contribs)

@Ultrasaurus: I’d prefer not to give any content in this case (most is about Sarah Allen and Sarah Mei, in a description of history, and with minimal prose). I could give the 5 references. —Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 04:07, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

@Beetstra: yep, I was just looking for the links. If it is a hassle, I can just do the searches again and find them. Thanks!

@Ultrasaurus: these were the 5: [20][21][22][23][24]. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:11, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

jamamasjiddharamshala.in

not sure why, but COIBot has added some mangled parameters in Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam/LinkReports/jamamasjiddharamshala.in which put the page in Category:Pages using duplicate arguments in template calls. it looks like SporkBot tried to fix it (possibly incorrectly), but the changes were overwritten. Frietjes (talk) 18:52, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

@Frietjes: thanks for notifying. I guess I know why this happens: 1) a user adds a mangled link that gets wrongly parsed by LiWa3. 2) that mangled link gets in my db. 3) coibot saves a report for the domain, and because of the mangled link records it again. 4) next save of the report gets bad data and templates get mangled. Very annoying, and I am not sure if I know a propper way around this. I will try to implement some things, but I am afraid this is almost impossible to avoid. —Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:30, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

would it be possible to replace the offending characters with the "urlencoded" equivalent? Frietjes (talk) 12:46, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

@Frietjes: possibly .. mabe worth a try. Makes the template even heavier though, which may give problems elsewhere). —Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:52, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

my thought was to have COIBot perform the replacements, not the template. the problem is that duplicate parameters are being passed to the template, so you would need to fix the template invokation being generated by COIBot. Frietjes (talk) 12:53, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

@Frietjes: it is indeed better that COIBot repairs, but it does not know what is garbled and what not. Having the code in te parameter will lead to other problems I think (one test: [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam/LinkReports/Whatever you did went wrong: you transcluded Template:Urlencode instead of the magic word {{URLENCODE}}.)]]. —Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:58, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

(by the way, the duplicate parameters are not duplicates, the first are part of the garbled link). —Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:00, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

is the garbling coming from pipes and braces in the url? what if you just replace any pipes braces in the url with %7C %7B %7D etc? for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%7C is the same as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%7C. Frietjes (talk) 13:06, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

for example, like this. if you look elsewhere in the report, these pipes are urlencoded. another improvement would be to include a 1= for the LinkSummary for links with = in the link. would that work? Frietjes (talk) 13:23, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

Wikidea

Granted, the personal attack could have been skipped, but what was wrong with the link he was adding? It went directly to the paragraph in question, instead of making people count paragraphs, as in the PDF. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 14:24, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

@SarekOfVulcan: WP:POINT. This was not the first abusivelanguage and abusive behaviour. You want to link directly, the document is freely available, no need to link to partisan websites. —Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:42, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

this was the start. After 3 declines and me ‘’solving’’ the problem for him, he repeats with this, exactly the same link request. And then This and this ... guess it adds all up. Granted, a month may be long, but certainly not much less than a week. —Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:57, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

AbuseLog in Template:Usersummary

• Example: Meet Mahuvakar (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · blacklist hits · AbuseLog · what links to user page · count · COIBot · Spamcheck · user page logs · x-wiki · status · Edit filter search · Google · StopForumSpam)

Hello Beetstra, I just noticed a small bug in your latest addition of an AbuseLog link to this template. Apparently usernames with blanks (and possibly other special chars?) are not handled correctly - see above. The username is broken up and partially used in the label instead of the actual username parameter. As you have most likely a lot more experience with this template I won't fiddle with it myself :) (should be a relatively easy fix nonetheless). Hope that helps a bit - thank you for your continuous efforts with all these spam-related issues. GermanJoe (talk) 07:02, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

PS: the same bug occurs later again with the "Edit filter search" link (just saw that). GermanJoe (talk) 07:07, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

@GermanJoe: two urlencode additions and everything is solved! Thanks! —Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:17, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

COIBot poking

Hello Beetstra, following your advice to look for COIBot results, I tried a poke for jodilogik.com but it seems like the bot isn't taking up the request. I thought I would be OK with having template editor rights (as a "given" right?), but maybe I misunderstood the help text on top of the bot page. When you got a bit of time, could you take a look at the entry and my user rights please?. GermanJoe (talk) 11:23, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

@GermanJoe: I just manually added you to the list. It should work somewhere soon (the bot re-reads settings regularly). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:09, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

@GermanJoe: that was you (see the edit summary: 'Report for jodilogik.com (Poke )'). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:41, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice, Beetstra. It looks like I had to re-enter the request first (at 14:05 on the poke page), but it works fine now :). Jodilogik.com doesn't seem ripe for a blacklist (yet), just 1 major incident for now. GermanJoe (talk) 15:12, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

Yes, you needed to make a diff where you add the link (it has to be in the 'positive' side of the diff) while being allowed to use it - which is what you did this afternoon. Indeed, didn't seem too bad. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:16, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

Merry X-mas

Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2018!

Hello Beetstra, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you a heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2018. Happy editing, Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:29, 26 December 2017 (UTC) Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages.

Thans Doc! A belated to you as well! —Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 20:40, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

HNY

I can spam too:

Happy New Year! Best wishes for 2018, —PaleoNeonate – 01:56, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

CheMoBot

This bot seems to only validate pages with a {{Chembox}} or {{Infobox_drug}} once every 3 months or so. Is this bot supposed to be constantly parsing/checking changes to pages with those infoboxes, or does it require manual activation to validate infoboxes? The bot's userpage doesn't seem to indicate how frequently the bot is designed to run (assuming it's automated) or (if it's not) if/how it's manually activated. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 03:27, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

@Seppi333: it is fully automated, it only updates about 10 minutes after an edit that changed something it monitors, or else completely random (and on most pages it may not actually perform an edit then, as there is no change since last time). I hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 21:16, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

Hmm, that makes sense based upon the bot's more recent edit history, but I'm not sure why there are a few 2–4-month gaps between some groups of edits (e.g., July, September, and January). Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 08:06, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

On an unrelated note, I noticed that some of the more recent revisions by the bot marked identifiers which were correct as changed; so, I went ahead and updated the associated revids for a few of these pages in the chembox index (glucose) and drugbox index (several pages), then made a dummy edit to the |verifiedrevid= parameter (NB: I appended whitespace) in the chembox or drugbox on 3 of the pages for which I updated the revid in the corresponding index.
Validation test edits:

• Glucose's index revid update – Glucose's chembox test edit; subsequent revisions relative to the index revid: Special:diff/818842877/current
• Bupropion's index revid update – Bupropion's drugbox test edit; subsequent revisions relative to the index revid: Special:diff/803294341/current
• HMB's index revid update – HMB's drugbox test edit; subsequent revisions relative to the index revid: Special:diff/818874406/current

The bot only validated the chembox for glucose following those 3 test edits; there were no intervening edits between my test edit to glucose's chembox and the bot's validation edit to explain why the bot didn't also update the 2 pages with a drugbox. Am I missing something, or is that a bug? Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 07:56, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

@Seppi333: I'll try to have a look at this one of these days, thanks for the test-edits, I will have logs to look at. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:10, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

Alright, thanks for looking into it! Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 08:11, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

In the event it might help, I've added the diff of the corresponding drugbox/chembox index revid updates for each of the 3 articles above; I've also linked the diff between the revid which was added to the index and current page revision for each article. That should make it easier to compare the time of the index update and corresponding test edit and look at subsequent article revisions relative to the revid in the index. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 08:38, 7 January 2018 (UTC)