RationalWiki:Requests for user rights/Archive3

This is an archive page, last updated 19 May 2024. Please do not make edits to this page.

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Ninja: IdiosyncraticLawyer

@Cosmikdebris I'm doing some stub template sorting by classifying the subjectless stubs and am likely to take up more of these kinds of projects in the future. Ninja would be quite useful for such projects. Also two quick questions: when will I automatically get "Eligible user," and where can you find the user identification templates for user pages? IdiosyncraticLawyer (talk) 14:04, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

I added you to the ninja user group. Please ensure you're turning bot on only to make edits no reasonable person would disagree should be marked "minor" and remember to turn it off when you're done. The switch is at special/user rights management. I'm sure someone will let you know if you need to do something differently. Have fun. You'll get "eligible user" around February 19th. Learn more about userboxes here Nutty Roux (talk) 17:31, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Sysop: IdiosyncraticLawyer

@Nutty Roux I've been here for almost three months, have over 500 edits and a GOAT award for categorization, being both autoconfirmed and eligible for voting, and am already autopatrolled and a ninja. I'm pretty sure I deserve my mop. IdiosyncraticLawyer (talk) 04:54, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Demoted, as per Cosmikdebris. Bongolian (talk) 16:31, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Ninja: Plutocow

Keeps flooding recent changes with the spam blocking. 2600:387:1:817:0:0:0:2E (talk) 00:58, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

I've dropped a message in the talk page. I don't want to mess user rights without a sort of notification. --It's-a me, LeftyGreenMario! 01:03, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Already have them. Plutocow (talk) 01:29, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Additionally, I'm not typically a fan of blocking people under Ninja where there isn't community oversight, which is something I only do when we're dealing with TOR account spammers. Plutocow (talk) 01:59, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Sysop: Darrelljon

@LeftyGreenMario I'm hoping my contributions have been useful enough to be made sysop and I can help improve rw further in future, including help pages.--Darrelljon (talk) 04:29, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Sure. --It's-a me, LeftyGreenMario! 06:00, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Sysop: Rabbitseatcarrots

I've been here for a while, technically a little more than a 1 year, though I was inactive for almost a full year(!). While most of my edits are just reverting wandalism, adding small things here and there and "maintenance" (fixing links, fixing small mistakes, stuff like that), I'm getting more comfortable with editing on this site. I want the Sysop right mostly so I can move pages once I end a draft. Rabbitseatcarrots (talk) 22:40, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Good enough for me. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 01:01, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

Nevermind, Cosmik did it first. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 01:02, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

Tech: Rabbitseatcarrots

Hi RW, I'd like to request the tech user right.

Technical knowledge:

• Coding isn't really my thing. I can try to write up some simple scripts, but anything else more complex than that is kinda out of my depth.
• I do have some sysadmin-like experience, not professionally but as a hobby.
  • I administer some linux servers, on one of which I recently installed MediaWiki for some stuff, so I do have some knowledge of how this wiki software works (in fact, installing MediaWiki is what prompted me to write the Fun:MediaWiki on the blockchain page).
• As a Linux user myself, I am used to reading more techy-like documentation, and I'm an expert at googling.

Disclaimer: You may have seen that I have the notamod in my userpage. I will run for this year's mod elections. I promise to the RW community that I'm not trying to become a tech to act as a pseudo-moderator, and understand that such behavior from a tech is out of place. Rabbitseatcarrots (talk) 13:10, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

@Cosmikdebris It has now been 2 weeks, not many people cared all that much about this but I do have a vouch and approval from a majority vote. Rabbitseatcarrots (talk) 13:42, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

Tech has been granted to you by Cosmikdebris. Bongolian (talk) 15:37, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

Endorsements

• Willing to vouch. Edits display technical competence, no indication of major complaints. -- Techpriest (talk) 13:28, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
• I have no objection to this request. Thank you for volunteering to help. —cosmikdebris ^talk stalk 14:25, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
• Has been a frequent and competent editor. Bongolian (talk) 15:27, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Ninja: Rabbitseatcarrots

Will be engaging in WIGO archival, and like with talkpage archives done by Inferno bot, I would like for those edits to not show up in recent changes. Rabbitseatcarrots (talk) 11:42, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

@Rabbitseatcarrots Done. —cosmikdebris ^talk stalk 19:47, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

Tech: Plutocow

Eh, decided that I might as well gun for this. My main interest is looking into the edit filter, as there are plenty of spam accounts that can go past it nowadays and I'd like to see the reasons why. I have 10+ years of on and off experience with MediaWiki, a decent amount of experience with Python and Linux, as well as some very basic HTML (at least enough to make a webpage that looks like it came from the 90s), and I can Google anything I don't know. I understand that this does not give me the authority of the moderators and I won't mess with user rights without permission. I also won't make sweeping changes to the edit filter without permission, I may create experimental filters but I will set them to "tag" until it is reasonably certain that they will work as intended. Plutocow (talk) 17:49, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

The required 2 week period has now passed. The candidate has a vouch and a majority, thus they have been demoted to tech. Rabbitseatcarrots (talk) 17:42, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Endorsements

• I have no objection to this request, especially to help with the filters. —cosmikdebris ^talk stalk 18:11, 28 September 2022 (UTC)
• Yes. Bongolian (talk) 20:36, 28 September 2022 (UTC)
• Willing to be the voucher here. This editor is dedicated to the cause of blocking for pi*infinity spambots, has seen many a spam edits, will for sure be able to recognize some common patterns of spambots that dodge the current filters. I cannot verify that they have technical knowledge, but given that two established editors have endorsed them, and I see no major or noteworthy complaints (almost all of these are related to known trolls, and no-one is perfect anyway, has been a long time with no complaints against them) in the Chicken Coop or ATIM, I trust in their ability to learn about writing edit filters. If Plutocow abuses tech rights, I'll assume responsibility, as noted in the Community Standards. Rabbitseatcarrots (talk) 13:45, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

  FWIW, vouching is usually not that big of a deal; it really just is "if we ever have a trust problem with a tech, knowing who approved them in the first place is a good idea". It's mostly just to avoid cabals. -- Techpriest (talk) 21:32, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

• Long overdue. Rockford the Roe ^{boop my snoot}_{praise Oscar Wilde} 14:02, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
• I thought they were already a tech. GeeJayK (talk) 14:23, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
• Yeah sure. Just remember that being a zealot with tech tools is inadvisable (given some older ATIM & Coop Cases filed by you, it's worth as a short minder). -- Techpriest (talk) 21:32, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

Ninja: Vee

With the amount of times I repeatedly make minor adjustments to my own edits (plus minor trimming of dead growth in articles) I would like to request "Ninja" status so my edits don't clog recent changes. Vee (talk) 23:51, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps I’m just misunderstanding you, but that doesn’t sound like the sort of thing you use ninja rights for. Christopher (talk) 23:57, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

I make a lot of minor edits. Isn't that what ninja is about? Hiding minor edits so they don't "clog recent changes"? Vee (talk) 00:17, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

Ninja is more for repetitive edits, like adding a new category to a bunch of pages or delinking a deleted article from a bunch of pages. It's not used for typical minor edits. Plutocow (talk) 00:21, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

Tech: King Bowser K. Rool

I have been a lurker and wikignome on various wikis more than a decade, and I have even set up my own publicly accessible (but now disabled) MediaWiki server in Ubuntu just for the heck of it. I would create more content, but the reality is I don’t really enjoy doing that as I’m much more interested in the technical aspects of wikis. I don’t profess myself to be an expert in MediaWiki, but I know my way around. I am primarily interested in having renaming rights as there has been more than one instance in which I have observed usernames that deserve to be renamed (such as one in recent logs that is the domain of a spam site, and in the past when I’ve seen vile things like “cheerleaders deserve to die”). I am also interested in learning the edit filter, but understand the importance of knowing what I am doing before making changes. I believe I have demonstrated myself to be trustworthy enough to use these tools. @Plutocow King Bowser K. Rool (talk) 13:47, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Let me back in Saloon bar first! --It's-a me, LeftyGreenMario! 16:43, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

😂 King Bowser K. Rool (talk) 10:17, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Go ahead. You could just ask "I wanna rename some accounts" and you'll be good to go. --It's-a me, LeftyGreenMario! 03:09, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

@LeftyGreenMario I thought there was protocol needed to get tech. You should just add "rename account" tools to sysop. Vee (talk) 04:25, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Yes, there should be a vote (RationalWiki:Techs#Request rights). Bongolian (talk) 04:43, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Yeah sorry I thought it was similar to renaming people in that they ask and there's some evaluation and then there's a mod doing a demotion. Not necessarily a formal vote. Felt a little bad that there has been no response beyond me. --It's-a me, LeftyGreenMario! 19:17, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Renaming accounts is one thing I'm interested in, but I'm also interested in learning the edit filter. It is a powerful tool that can save us a lot of grief if managed properly, but it can create a lot of problems if mismanaged. For example, I recall seeing a troll somewhat recently that was vandalizing pages with the names of dead people, had I been active at that time and had tech rights I would have set the edit filter to block posts with those names since there is no reason for anyone to mention those people on RationalWiki unless they at some point become the center of some noteworthy conspiracy theory or someone with the same name rises as some alt right maniac. On the other hand, I recall running into issues as an IP when techs would set the edit filter to block words that have legitimate reason to be added to RationalWiki articles because some troll was using those words. @LeftyGreenMario I greatly appreciate the gesture, you're a nice person, but I have to say I agree with following the process since there have been cases in which trolls have had tech rights, therefore I understand the nay votes and I am not offended by them. That said, it would be nice to have an idea as to what the expectations are for one to receive such rights. As I've said from day 1, I've always been more of a gnome and have only more recently taken interest in contributing any content, but even then, writing articles and making major contributions isn't really my thing. King Bowser K. Rool (talk) 21:49, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Opening the vote, then. Bongolian (talk) 19:24, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Vote on tech rights for King Bowser K. Rool

No

• It's pretty easy to not have a record of doing trouble when you've only got ~300 edits - even then, King Bowser has made some strange choices, eg bringing up old drama re: DMorris and Dysklyver, then further relitigating re: Dysklyver in the coop. I'm sure lots of sysops want to rename accounts, but we can't give everyone tech rights; deleting log entries is usually good enough. Christopher (talk) 20:00, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
  • Just to clarify the record, that wasn't so much an attempt to re-litigate whatever happened as much not realizing it was "litigated" at all due to suppression (I did search before starting that). I remember having the gut feeling that Dyskliver was bad news several years ago, so nothing surprises me there. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't stepping out of line in blocking sockpuppets that were overlooked. I honestly don't know why people make such a big deal over the coop nowadays (i.e. you should have asked instead of starting a coop case). The whole purpose of the coop is to have a centralized place to discuss such matters rather than having multiple threads on multiple pages (such as people's user talk pages) discussing the same issue. King Bowser K. Rool (talk) 21:37, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
• Sorry would like to see a few more edits. To be clear, none of the IPs listed on King Bowsers userpage have more than 50 edits each (most have way less and I doubt the total there would even exceed one page). Also yeah not too keen on the re-litigation of one of the most aggravating coop cases the site has had to deal with in recent memory. -- Techpriest (talk) 20:08, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
• Nutty Roux (talk) 20:35, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
  • I take being worthy enough for Nutty to comment as a compliment. I wish Nutty were in the running for mod, lol. King Bowser K. Rool (talk) 22:12, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
• Why do they need tech? Not enough edits, and they seem to have a weird obsession with long gone users. Either way, they haven't demonstrated why they need tech, merely that they want to rename users. I don't think they're established enough for this. Vee (talk) 22:21, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
  • It's not a matter of needing it. Nobody needs anything on RationalWiki, and if they think they do, what they really need is sysoprevoke because that kind of obsession is dangerous. I just feel I could be useful, but I understand if you think I need to be here longer. I'll never be a full time editor because, well, I have a job. King Bowser K. Rool (talk) 23:48, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
• I am going to align myself with the common "weirdly obsessed with old drama" objection.-Flandres (talk) 15:28, 17 December 2022 (UTC)
• Per above. Andrew5 (talk) 19:45, 17 December 2022 (UTC)
• Hell no. I've been tipped to some suspicious activity on this account and now I feel bad about being taken advantage of like that. --It's-a me, LeftyGreenMario! 00:05, 18 December 2022 (UTC)
• Will add my name to the chorus based on Lefty's changed vote. Bongolian (talk) 00:20, 18 December 2022 (UTC)
• Per all. Plutocow (talk) 00:24, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

Goat

• I don't really have strong feelings either way. Historically, tech did turn out to have internal political aspects, hence the vote. I expect that most of us have other things going on in our lives, including jobs. Bongolian (talk) 02:42, 17 December 2022 (UTC)
• To be honest, I didn't think this was this big of a deal, considering there have been people that really shouldn't have had tech that managed to get tech, and considering there are other accounts that have been around only about as long as my account has. To be honest, I don't think the request is worth sowing this kind of discord on the site, so I'd like to withdraw the request. Knowing how Dyskliver operates (and has done so on multiple sites), I have a burning feeling he has something to do with the "tipping" of LeftyGreenMario to "suspicious" activity, specifically I suspect he is mad that I blocked two of his sockpuppets that were overlooked, and furthermore I suspect he is behind some of the recent doxxing attempts (trying to dox me as some person named Rachel) and possibly even some of the recent Grawp-like vandalism, alas there is insufficient evidence to say that for sure. King Bowser K. Rool (talk) 01:01, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

  If that's happening, it's a serious issue that needs an ATIM. Andrew5 (talk) 12:34, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

  An ATIM regarding who? A bunch of BONs and swiftly banned vandal accounts? Spud (talk) 12:47, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

  What is ATM going to do? Dysk is already banned, there's no hard evidence as of yet that Dysk is the one "tipping" LGM (although if she is working in cahoots with a banned user in any way I do regret voting for her in the election), the best thing is to revert, block, and ignore. I only brought it up because it's concerning to me when someone switches her vote from support to "hell no" based on something the mob has no access to, and for off-site reasons I don't desire to get into, Dysk is the most likely suspect, but this is hardly worth a round at ATM. King Bowser K. Rool (talk) 13:04, 18 December 2022 (UTC) Edit: Actually, it's not an off-site reason, it's the very reason he was banned: he has a history of doxxing people, sometimes with accurate information, sometimes with inaccurate or fabricated information. I know, from off-site experience, that Dysk likes to talk shit behind people's backs via email, and a lot of that trash talking involves doxxing. In this case, I suspect he has some kind of dirt on whoever this Rachel person is and is trying to tie her to me, which is funny because I'm not even female. King Bowser K. Rool (talk) 13:21, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

  No. I mean if LGM is doing the stuff to Bowser. As an aside Bowser, LGM goes by "she" not "he". Andrew5 (talk) 14:49, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

  I know that LGM is a she, did I leave the "s" off somewhere? I'm not accusing LGM of anything directly per se. However, thinking about it she does need to come clean as to what she means by being "tipped" about "suspicious activity," because if she is talking to a banned doxxer, whether it is Dysk or someone else who is banned (Grawp? DMorris? Abd?) and changing votes based on these discussions, she is effectively editing on behalf of a banned user, which is at least worthy of losing the mod hat. But lets not get hasty about starting ATMs or coop cases, lets let her respond. King Bowser K. Rool (talk) 14:57, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

  I got information from staff discussion on our Discord channel, particularly by Christopher. According to Special:BlockList, King Bowser K. Rool briefly ran afoul of autoblock (autoblock #194177, in December 17, 2022; it has expired since, so it's why you can't see it currently in the list). Basically, his IP address was shared with that of a vandal "Queen Mario DK". Also, apparently, activity between the wave of cheerleader vandalism and this account and the cheerleader accounts also suspiciously switched on and off. He also knows an unusual amount of RationalWiki for an account whose activity dates only around 2020 or so, to the point he tried to litigate old conflict surrounding long-banned RationalWiki users. Finally, these IP addresses listed on the user page, they're based on Florida. The evidence is, again, circumstantial, so there can be a severe misunderstanding, but I cannot risk supporting someone whose activity has concerningly coincided with a known harasser. --It's-a me, LeftyGreenMario! 18:37, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

  Minor correction on the autoblock thing: the issue is that King Bowser didn't trigger an autoblock, which could only happen if his IP was already blocked. See File:No_autoblock.png. You'd expect to see a second blocklist entry similar to the one for Queen Mario DK. If you tried to reproduce this now I imagine you would see an autoblock, as he may have switched IPs a couple times (and certainly will when he sees this). Christopher (talk) 18:44, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

  Interesting. I’ve made no secret about living in Florida (I once told you I live in Naples), not sure why that is relevant. My ISPs are CenturyLink and T-Mobile, and because T-Mobile uses carrier grade NATing, I frequently run into issues in which I get IPs that were recently used by email spammers, hackers, and now presumably wiki vandals. Of course, I can understand you changing your vote now because I can see the autoblock issue looking peculiar (people have been CheckUser banned from Wikipedia over this kind of thing), I just don’t understand why you weren’t more transparent. At any rate, I have better things to do than sit around blocking my own socks and harassing myself. King Bowser K. Rool (talk) 18:55, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

  Perhaps you do, but (as you yourself once noted) the troll who you're suspected of being has done this type of thing before. Christopher (talk) 19:06, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

  Are you sure you didn’t uncheck the autoblock when you did the joke block? I usually do that when I do joke blocks. I just blocked myself out of curiosity, and granted that doesn’t prove anything for the outside world, but it auto locked me when I blocked myself. King Bowser K. Rool (talk) 19:10, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

  ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘I'm positive Christopher (talk) 19:17, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

  Well I’m just as positive that I haven’t created any socks, so there you have it. This is the kind of bullshit that is the reason RationalWiki opposes CheckUser. King Bowser K. Rool (talk) 19:22, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

  If you were to end up on a more generic banlist, you'd end up on the DNSBLs we use, which wouldn't permit you to edit to begin with. This block not generating any autoblocks is highly suspicious and would mean your most recently used IP matches that of another blocked user. See here for the technical details on how autoblock works. For some reason I highly doubt that this is just a coincidental match several times in a row. -- Techpriest (talk) 19:26, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

  They've now LANCB'd with a "Self block, do not reinstate". Should we seal the deal like we did with Oxy, or just leave them alone? Plutocow (talk) 19:34, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

  I know how autoblock works, now that I think of it years ago I ran into this on Wikipedia; blocked by an autoblock intended for someone else. I’m not going to sit here and be accused of this though when I’ve done nothing but positive contributions to the wiki. 2607:FB91:1926:2529:9D03:9CD6:6D0E:62F7 (talk) 19:38, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

  [EC]Not at all comparable to Oxy, just leave it. Christopher (talk) 19:39, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

• A question (this isn't an accusation at anyone, just wondering) has DMorris or any troll of a similar caliber ever had tech rights here? I find it suspicious how the cheerleader troll always manages to stay one step ahead of the edit filter. Whenever I add something to a filter to catch gorilla moron for instance, he will always get caught by the filter a few times before moving on to doing something different. But with the cheerleader person, despite their edits being just as repetitive whenever I add something to catch them it seems they already move on to something else. Many variants of "cheerleader" have been added to the filter, but iirc the cheerleader person has evaded all of them. Note: I am not suggesting direct collusion. It's likely someone who is just familiar with how RW's filter, or filters in general, work. But I've always found that odd about the cheerleader troll compared to others. Plutocow (talk) 20:59, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

  @Plutocow It's not like it's hard to stay ahead. The edit filters here are meant pretty much in it's entirety meant to deal with spam more than anything, the anti-vandalism filters are meant to stop the most obvious, zero-effort vandalism. If you try to stop more dedicated vandals, you quickly run into issues, just ask Special:AbuseFilter/73, which worked the first day or so before being figured out, if I remember. Stopping dedicated vandals requires complicated filters that are very easy to evade at the end of the day. AbuseFilter just isn't very good at this. Rabbitseatcarrots (talk) 15:47, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

  I think what he is trying to say here is that he suspects one of the existing techs of being involved, or at least someone who REALLY knows the ins and outs of what techs do because this particular troll never even triggers the filters set up to stop him/her. It’s a good point, to be honest. 2607:FB91:192C:85C1:6409:1B97:C4E4:225B (talk) 16:05, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

  In all honesty though, I think having the filters try to block every synonym of you know what is a poor approach. The shit head will just think of something else as a place holder meanwhile if an innocent person legitimately references you know what it negatively affects them (and RatiomalWiki as a whole). Not that you care what I think since you think I’m the person advocating child abuse. 😡. 2607:FB91:192C:85C1:6409:1B97:C4E4:225B (talk) 16:10, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

  You said it yourself, "In all honesty though, I think having the filters try to block every synonym of you know what is a poor approach". That's exactly why edit filters aren't good at dealing with persistent vandals. Yes that approach is bad, but it's the only option if you're going to write a filter meant to stop dedicated vandals. If you try to make it more specific, you run into the same issues as filter 73, making the filter easier to evade. If you try to make it more generic, you catch false-positives, which you absolutely want to avoid doing in edit filters. Rabbitseatcarrots (talk) 16:15, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

  Yes, and what I mean to say is that I at least partially agree with you: using the edit filter to try to stop people like the shithead is a bad idea. On the other hand, you can use it to stop image abuse and (to an extent) doxxing. For example, if Jjjaynnne Doe lives at 123 Main Street in Boston, MA and has phone number 123-456-7890, you can safely block “Jjaynne Doe” “123 Main Street” and “123-456-7890” and variants without problems because Jjaynne is an uncommon name, unlikely to ever be missional unless that person becomes missional. You definitely would NOT want to block “Boston”, “Boston, MA”, “Doe”, or even probably “Jjaynne” by itself because that will create false positives. The idea shouldn’t be to stop the shithead entirely as that would be futile, but to stop the doxxing, or make them alter the material to the extent it’s practically useless as a doxx. This is why I thought I might have something to offer as a tech, but in the long run it wasn’t worth pursuing it. 2607:FB91:192C:85C1:6409:1B97:C4E4:225B (talk) 16:40, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

  I also think trying to block every synonym of that sport I won’t name is bad. For one thing, doing that probably makes shit-for-brains feel important, for another thing there is a high probability of someone having a missional reason for referencing the sport, considering it is an extremely popular sport in some parts of the world (almost every high school in the US has a team for it), so there’s a high probability that someone worth covering participated in it at some point (including George W. Bush of all people), and tons of potential for woo. I mean, if we can determine that dolls are missional, I’m sure there’s plenty of material to have an entire article on the sport that shit-for-brains is obsessed with. 2607:FB91:192C:85C1:6409:1B97:C4E4:225B (talk) 16:52, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

  D used to be a tech (and a board member 🤦🏼‍♂️). I don’t know what you guys want me to say, other than apparently a troll used the same IP address I was using in very recent history. Is it possible that a dynamic IP had a long-term block on it and that’s why the autoblock didn’t kick in? Is IP spoofing a possibility, if some how, some way, someone with a bone to pick somehow knew my IP and spoofed it? I could lie if you’d like. We can pretend I was using the internet at the Miami International Airport if you’d like, and apparently a blocked user was too. Reality is much more boring: I have know fucking idea what happened. For what it’s worth, it wouldn’t be the first time I got caught up in an autoblock, the difference here is I was an admin and had no idea I was even autoblocked. If the troll of the day is using the same range as me, why not softblock this /32 range for a month? Just do me a favor and forget I was ever part of this silly, mismanaged wiki. 2607:FB91:192C:85C1:6409:1B97:C4E4:225B (talk) 15:33, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Going back to the topic of the autoblock

All of this talk about the edit filter brought me to a theory about the autoblock: with all of the spam and bullshit that comes from T-Mobile IPs, what if it wasn’t a matter of sharing an IP with a troll at all, but rather sharing it with one of these SEO spammers? I know for a fact that I have shared IPs with email spammers, so it’s not a strectch by any means. Not every compromised IP ends up on SpamHaus or other blacklists. There are arguably more SEO bots blocked than troll socks blocked. 2607:FB91:192C:85C1:6409:1B97:C4E4:225B (talk) 16:57, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm going to be honest, I don't think there's anything you can do that can change the opinion of people here. It could be what you're saying, but without CheckUser we can't prove that this is the case. Even CheckUser itself doesn't reveal with 100% certainty sockpuppet accounts, which is why there's a human doing these investigations, to make a judgement about CheckUser data. Relying on autoblocks as pseudo-CheckUser can end up marking someone as a sockpuppet when this isn't the case (particularly if CGNAT is involved), in which case we don't even have access to the raw data in order to judge if an account is a sockpuppet or not. But this site will never accept CheckUser (and to be honest, I think it's a good idea, I don't think RW will ever have make the systemic changes required to use CheckUser correctly), so there's that. Instead, they must rely on what autoblock says, and they won't change their opinion on this because autoblock is the only "objective" source in all this mess. Rabbitseatcarrots (talk) 18:33, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Remove Ninja: Monet

@Bongolian @Christopher @Cosmikdebris Since I'm quite inactive and I barely used my Ninja rights, could someone please remove it? Monet ^Ye 14:40, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

@Monet Done. Spud (talk) 14:46, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Tech: ApooftGnegiol

I've been torn on getting more involved with RW for a year or so, and technical things are what I have the most ideas for (and I've been doing some little things from time to time not requiring actually being a tech through much of my time here, including testing before the upgrade which was done). The main thing techs do here which stands out / requires the role seems to be to maintain edit filters, and I could take part in that (as I do on Illogicopedia).

I've also been thinking about wiki software configuration (and mentioned ideas for fixing and improving it, and maybe eventually another upgrade, on the current board campaigning). Low-hanging fruit if I get the role of actually tweaking the wiki installation, which I guess techs generally don't have here, could include:

1. One small annoyance is, hovering over references and notes only shows tooltips on mainspace pages, not in e.g. funspace and essays; this can be changed with a small config tweak.
2. The Google CAPTCHA for anonymous and new users has been noted by others to suck and I'd test disabling it and keeping it gone if spam doesn't increase.
3. Trying to fix math rendering so it doesn't break on some pages, @Christopher already suggested a fix on the tech support page.

Roughly a decade ago I worked on a wiki which no longer exists, and if any tech emails me, I'll reply and point to my presence on MediaWiki.org (from where you'll be able to verify I've done some small-scale MediaWiki software development, which I did during that project back then). I won't link that directly on RW now, though, because I don't yet feel like linking my name here. Other than that, I've not done web development recently (other than maintaining my simple static websites), and I mainly write other things in C. I use Linux and sometimes one or another BSD, and have toyed with a local MediaWiki installation too a decade ago, but I've never had any kind of real server admin role (i.e. rather than just limited access to files for a wiki).

@Cosmikdebris --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 17:14, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

You're right, unfortunately this stuff is out of scope for techs, of the 17 techs (soon to be 16 since one of them is about to reach the 2-years-inactive mark), only 2 are sysadmins. It's not really all that clear what Techs do, but I've come to see it as a combination of Wikipedia's bureaucrats, since we add and remove moderator and staff during elections, and Oversighters, since we, along with the mods, can suppress/oversight stuff, and edit filter editors, but we don't have any community authority. If you're interested on those 3 things you mentioned, it would be better to put pressure to appoint new sysadmins as a board member, though no promises. If you're instead interested in joining the tech cabal, though, I can consider it. Rabbitseatcarrots (talk) 17:40, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

@ApooftGnegiol I have no problem with granting you tech permissions, but I'd like to see some of the other mods and techs chime in first. Your experience with the wiki software and software engineering is very close to mine (I professionally wrote C/C++ on a project 35 years ago but have since moved on to all kinds of other projects).

This page describes what additional permissions are granted to Techs here. This is not the same as server-side access. Once the new board gets in place the issue of server maintenance is at the top of my list of issues to discuss when we convene. —cosmikdebris ^talk stalk 18:04, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

@Rabbitseatcarrots, yeah, it seems like two very different levels of technical involvement. I may be able to help out a little with edit filters, etc., though I don't see any great need for more people to do that (others seem to handle spam quite well, though I've been wondering why there's the situation of lots of spambots registering without getting any edits through and then usually Plutocow having to pick off the accounts manually, instead of them being blocked automatically as IPs before registering). I can join in, though I don't really expect to make much of a difference that way (unless there's a simple fix for what I mentioned).

On top of that, I also thought that if I'm pitching more, as with the board, then if I'm going to personally be involved in doing any of it later (though it's also fine with me if others do it), then being trusted to be Tech seemed like a prerequisite. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 18:23, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

All the supports are pretty good, but one of the techs or a mod needs to be a voucher to satisfy da rulez. Without the vouch, tech is not granted regardless of the vote. The 2 weeks period that this vote is supposed to last is set to end on Thursday 10. Rabbitseatcarrots (talk) 18:16, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Bongolian is a mod and Cosmik is a tech. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 18:56, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Endorsements

• —cosmikdebris ^talk stalk 18:05, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
• —Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 18:11, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
• —Bongolian (talk) 19:59, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
• —Plutocow (talk) 20:14, 27 July 2023 (UTC)