RationalWiki:Technical support/Archive26

This is an archive page, last updated 4 February 2024. Please do not make edits to this page.

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Bots and sysopship

This is more a suggestion for the users who have root access to the server: please give bots the user right to edit sysop-protected pages. It is the only sysop right that most bots besides the edit filter would need, and granting them that right would mean that we don't have to make most bots sysop which could be a potential security issue. Speaking of which, there are a bunch of long inactive bots that still have sysop, while they're unlikely to cause an issue should we desysop them to be safe? Plutocow (talk) 19:17, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

Fusion of accounts

I would like to fusion my current account with my two previous ones: Student and Tneduts. I know it's technically possible because I've seen it done on other wikis. However, I don't know if I'm entitled to it since I lost all access to them (as their long passwords were stored on my old defective HDD), so I can't prove that they are mine besides the fact that they are inactive. And no, I will not lose this third account because I have its password well backed up now. - Dropix (talk) 18:44, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

Warning: This action has been automatically identified as harmful.

Got this while trying to clean up the Stalin article. The edit filter gave the reason "Suspicious, massive change to article". Making multiple smaller edits in sections works but I'd rather avoid the warning altogether. JohnDo (talk) 22:16, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

I've added you to the autopatrolled user group, which should prevent that edit filter from triggering. Cheers. Blue (is useful) 22:49, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Thank you! JohnDo (talk) 22:51, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Modern science in the Bible

The article "Modern Science in the Bible" (Modern Science in the Bible) does not open. The page never loads, and at best will give a 503 error (tested with two different browsers). Panzerfaust (talk) 08:19, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

Legit news site freezes RW

In editing the Ron DeSantis page and cross-checking citations therein, I've noticed that opening some Florida news websites (e.g., https://www.wfla.com/news/hillsborough-county/warren-says-florida-anti-riot-bill-tears-a-couple-corners-off-the-constitution/) has the effect of freezing the page that I'm editing. It doesn't unfreeze until I'm either able to close the Florida website or force-quit the browser. I'm running Firefox 113.0.2 on Mac OS 12.6.5. Opening the Florida webpage in a different browser than the RW page seems to fix the problem). Bongolian (talk) 20:03, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

My first guess would be a Firefox bug rather than a problem at RW's end. Maybe the Javascript on the news websites is doing something weird and it glitches out the browser in combination with some things. Does the same thing happens in another browser too, with both pages there? In any case, I can't check it -- wfla.com says, "This content is not available in your country/region." --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 07:37, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Since it’s a nonprofit open-source browser, as a user of it to type this very comment I am aware that despite the better privacy, cross-platform password storage and pleasing interface, Firefox has been known to have bugs and optimization issues. My PC that can handle most video games without the FPS going below 55 (except Stellaris after year 120) sounds like a fighter jet whenever I open more than 3 firefox tabs on it and their profile feature (which I use a lot to quickly switch between school and personal inboxes) is implemented in very weird ways that glitch very often after certain actions. --Goatspeed. _{Fossil evidence of my evolution}CircularRasoning^{My experiments} 03:55, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

I lost access to my account

Can the name of this account be changed to Carthage? Carthage2 (talk) 12:59, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

Done. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 15:25, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. Carthage (talk) 15:28, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

Joke block options

Not a big deal, but did we get rid of them? GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 19:53, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

@GeeJayK I deleted all the really silly ones back in February. The giant drop down list was making it a pain when using a phone, and I hadn't seen anyone using them in quite some time. —cosmikdebris ^talk stalk 20:37, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, it was the right thing to do. I was just curious to know what happened to them. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 21:03, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Fine

If you want to allow egregious vandalism to happen to the Alt-right glossary and ban anyone who tries to revert said vandalism, go for it. But it makes you look really shitty.^{— Unsigned, by: 2600:4040:1185:1900:65C5:32C5:297B:D636 / talk}

Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about? Carthage (talk) 03:46, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Said IP was not banned, but the filter kept him from reverting some vandalism before a registered member did some minutes later.[1] That's the same filter that prevents some types of big bad edits to articles, unfortunately it's impossible to have the filter be "smarter" in this regard. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 11:45, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Renames and their re-usability

I've often wondered about renaming vandals etc: when an idiot name e.g. "The Pederastic Penis" is renamed to "The Petulant Poot" does the old name "The Pederastic Penis" become reusable? if so is there any way to autoblock it? Scream!! (talk) 20:07, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

They're all reusable, unless I edit the filter to specifically prevent accounts with that particular string from being reused. Plutocow (talk) 20:30, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

...And a problem with such blocking is that vandals can make a new, similar but not identical name anyway, unless the blocking pattern is more general/restrictive, in which case it may cramp the style of non-vandals. Still, on some wikis -- both Uncyclopedia and Illogicopedia (where I'm admin) -- we block patterns in all of names, page titles, and content additions for a very few, remarkably repetitive, highly predictable, and super-stubborn vandals. (RW's vandals are usually more flexible than those.) --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 21:22, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Of course, it doesn't matter how many times "The Pederastic Penis" recreates an account with that name, as they will be blocked swiftly every time; nevertheless, I have added "penis" to the username filter to block that particular rereg. This problem is more annoying when dealing with good-faith users changing names, but there are no rules against sockpuppetry here (as long as it's not being used to evade a ban) and so they can create an account with their old name if they wish to prevent trolls from using it. Plutocow (talk) 21:48, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

What about people from Penistone? ^{— Unsigned, by: Duncan from Teflpedia / talk / contribs}

Notifications not working

It seems like the process that sends email notifications for followed pages is no longer working. Bongolian (talk) 18:12, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

@David Gerard, this probably calls for taking a look at the server. Remember the trouble prior to the last upgrade? May not be the same issue (Tim apparently later fixed a problem in a software extension that had resulted in a disk partition being filled), but could possibly be something that gets messier over time. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 20:29, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

Also, it looks like there's something wrong with the updating of site indexes. For example the autocomplete feature in the search box does not work for articles created after about July 15. Bongolian (talk) 20:35, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Notifications seem to have started up again. There's still a problem with the autocomplete. Bongolian (talk) 00:55, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Autocomplete is now also working for new pages. Bongolian (talk) 07:49, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

I haven't touched anything, so this is clearly evidence of God - David Gerard (talk) 12:22, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Allow Tor (for some)

If I remember correctly, Tor here is blocked via a DNSBL. Could it be possible to change to the TorBlock extension instead so that at least some users (autopatrolled? sysops only?) can have permission to edit through Tor? Rabbitseatcarrots (talk) 14:07, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

It's inconsistent. Some Tor nodes are indeed blocked, but others are allowed for some reason. DNSBL must not be caught up to all of them. Plutocow (talk) 17:58, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Saloon bar

Someone has put a particularly nasty background in the saloon bar of what seems a dead baby and "something". I'm glad to have the screen in black and white as I'm writing at night and not be able to see more. Panzerfaust (talk) 21:10, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Eugh. Luigifan18 (talk) 03:59, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Odd behavior with username redirect

So User:Metamorphosis apparently changed their name to User:Evolution and Metamorphosis in 2017, leaving behind a redirect. Someone was still able to create a new account on 23:28, 1 August 2023 with the same user name as the redirect (User:Metamorphosis). They posted some Nazi spam[2] and I banned the account. User:Evolution and Metamorphosis is still unblocked. Bongolian (talk) 07:10, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, an existing userpage doesn't prevent registration or anything. That's all correct. The only way to prevent a username from being registered is with the edit filter or to have a dummy account "park" the username (and then banning it for good measure if it ever gets compromised). -- Techpriest (talk) 20:47, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

See Technical_support#Renames_and_their_re-usability above. Scream!! (talk) 21:47, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

AfD technical difficulties

I added the rationale for why the article should be deleted but it got changed to {{{text}}}. Why?? Carthage (talk) 20:44, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

I don't see any problem in your latest AfD. Is it some other? --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 20:52, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

@ApooftGnegiol This is late but it was probably a cache issue. Carthage (talk) 04:20, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Notifications not working again

The email notifications of watchlist pages has stopped again, this time since August 7. The autocomplete also has not been updated for new pages since that time. Bongolian (talk) 19:20, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Notifications appear to be working again since yesterday. Bongolian (talk) 00:07, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Spambots

So it seems the spambots have abandoned the Latin script entirely. Is this gonna become a problem? Carthage (talk) 10:14, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

Shouldn't be an issue, our spamfilter extension includes a Unicode normalizer; stuff in the overlapping character sets will just be normalized to Latin-A. -- Techpriest (talk) 19:38, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

I believe it used to work that way but broke in a MediaWiki update. Plutocow (talk) 20:43, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

@Techpriest There was a fucking swarm of bot accounts with names in Chinese characters back in August, which is why I asked this. Carthage (talk) 21:23, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Notifications again

The notifications are not working again. The last one received was on September 16. Bongolian (talk) 02:01, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

We should probably document this on RW itself but err, do you have a diff to the one that failed? Kinda curious because the notification system has a few hard conditions for it to trigger. Specifically, if you're using a template signature, you will not be able to send notifications. Here are the official mediawiki docs on the matter and here is the technical explanation. tl;dr for the second: it only works if your message diff-adds newlines (aka can't retro-ping people by editing a talkpage post), your signature must match the default username markup (three tildes), can't be on a new section that's deeper than heading 2, the notif may be in templates (aka ping template works) and you can't ping more than 50 users at once. -- Techpriest (talk) 19:57, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

I haven't gotten any notifications of failure. They just stopped. I also don't use a template signature. Has anyone else gotten notifications of page changes since September 16? I did get a notification that my talk page changed today, but none of the pages that I follow. Bongolian (talk) 03:46, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Also the indexing of new pages has not been working for a while. This seems to go hand-in-hand with the cessation of notification emails. Bongolian (talk) 03:06, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

I've noticed that my article on Jack Idema wasn't featured in the new page index either. I found that odd. Carthage (talk) 21:24, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Either someone fixed this or it fixed itself today. Maybe it was RW outage yesterday that caused the processes to reboot? Bongolian (talk) 16:21, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

'Suspicious, massive change to artice'

I was looking at the article on Papal infallibility, and the 'Criticisms' section is completely irrelevant to the definition of papal infallibility, as defined by the Church, and stated in the article's lede. But the 'Criticism' section contains a litany of irrelevant points, and is triggering an error when I try to delete most of the section. AleaIactaEst (talk) 16:41, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

As far as I can see there's nothing wrong with the page. I suggest that you use the talk page to note any incorrect statements. Scream!! (talk) 17:12, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Just did so. It appears that a back in 2009 another user had a similar criticism and others recommended they make an edit, but nothing was changed at that point. AleaIactaEst (talk) 05:43, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Its an edit filter applied to new accounts; it's meant to stop people from just replacing the contents of entire paragraphs with slurs or spam. Be a bit more active and you'll be able to do the change you want. -- Techpriest (talk) 19:36, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

problems making edits to Macedonia Article

The article is mostly a bunch trolling by extreme nationalist from North Macedonia who now claim to be apparently antihellenic founders of the Hellenistic period. Tried to do some edits but was blocked. If someone wants to do the edits themselves that's fine but for goodness sake someone edit this ridiculous article. Some intellectual gems from the article..

"Nice flag, though. Hopefully the Greeks can shut up about it"

"They're really bad at the Eurovision Song Contest".

"Of course, with the Greece issue out of the way, it was Bulgaria's turn to raise a big stink about the country. Bulgaria has accused Macedonia of supposedly trying to erase its historical ties to Bulgaria, and they refuse to see the Macedonian language as being separate from Bulgarian.[note 2] As a result, Bulgaria has been holding up North Macedonia's negotiations with the EU, because obviously that is the most important issue facing these countries.[9]"

"Whiny Greek right-wingers nearly stopped it, because clearly it's the most important issue facing an impoverished, debt-ridden, and corrupt nation.[6] But eventually everyone got bored and the Republic of North Macedonia got a new name and now everybody can ignore it for ever more." ^{— Unsigned, by: 86.48.15.41 / talk / contribs}

You may not know about our snarky point of view. Spud (talk) 14:19, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

WIGOCP template

I edited the [[template:WIGOCP]] template, but for some reason, it didn't appear on the WIGOCP page. Does anyone have any idea of what happened? GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 00:23, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

@GeeJayK The page cache needed to be purged. I edited the source page, made no changes, and saved it, and then the updated template appeared. —cosmikdebris ^talk stalk 00:25, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Got it. Thanks. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 00:27, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Server ups and downs

Is there a reason why the server keeps crashing at a roughly specific time of the day twice in a row? The wiki has also been slower to load than usual during those times. Carthage (talk) 16:28, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

yeah we been getting DDOSed. Just caught the little darlings at it and blocked their IPs. I'll monitor for a bit too - David Gerard (talk) 20:39, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

4chan op? Carthage (talk) 20:41, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

It went down yesterday while I was doing a revision to an article. Was worried I somehow broke something from doing a lot of page previews. Hope the measures taken help thwart future attacks. Thanks for everything you do! Noodles (talk) 20:49, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

4chan tends to be nonchalant towards RW's existence, although some of them certainly don't tend to like us. Everyone and their mother can manage a DDoS these days, could be anybody. Chillpilled (talk) 20:54, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

DOSing MediaWiki ain't that hard, you just send it unique complex queries that are unlikely to be cached. Could be any individual dickhead - David Gerard (talk) 00:58, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Numbering system when voting

The numbering system while voting seems to be broken (as seen here). It could be, in this instance, because Ariel neglected to follow up his responses with a hashtag, but I'm not completely sure that's the reason. Does anyone know for certain why the numbering system seems to be broken? Carthage (talk) 16:55, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

I've fixed it. For the numbering to work correctly with #, each line needs to start with a # (no blank lines, lines that start with ":" or block quotes). Bongolian (talk) 17:56, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

So no spaces between paragraphs? Carthage (talk) 18:50, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

That's right:

1. one

1. two

1. one
2. two

Bongolian (talk) 19:07, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

I see. That's very counterintuitive. Thank you for providing the proper syntax. Carthage (talk) 19:09, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Request to batch-rename the Mr. Poot socks (goat I miss doing this myself)

Hi,

Recently a certain banned user (hint: his name rhymes with "Pike, hi kev") has created a shitload of socks proudly trumpeting the fact that they were that user, referencing racial slurs and depraved fantasies towards the ethnicity he's obsessed with at the moment around which his two remaining braincells orbit and apparently thinking we're still in danger of dying. Suggestions: Rename the k-slur ones to "Mr. Poot upset because a Jewish girl broke his heart in high school", "I treat every bike in my collection as one of my children", "I love potassium and going for hikes" or something similar, and the "Bald" ones to "Poot number 1, 2, 3, etc."; it clogs up RecentChanges and we don't need such stupid usernames polluting it. Thank you. --Goatspeed. _{Fossil evidence of my evolution}CircularRasoning^{My experiments} 06:25, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

Time loves a hero. —cosmikdebris ^talk stalk 17:02, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

A BoN in some difficulty, apparently?

Well Techs, what's the craic? If ye have the time, take a look at this. What could be the issue here? (Also am I still meant to ping a Tech or a Mod if I write here? Wasn't that a thing a few years ago? Been away for too long...) I'll summon @Techpriest, I guess, idfk. - Rairyu75 (Talk) 01:01, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

You can check the abuse log. Carthage (talk) 01:03, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Assuming this guy was "LGMR" and not one of the obvious bad-faith usernames that were blocked from registering. "LGM" was banned by the filter due to a bunch of abusive usernames from Ken/DMorris/whoever referring to the former RationalWiki moderator LeftyGreenMario. Since that hasn't been an issue in a while and "LGM" has multiple referrals ("Little Green Men" for instance) I have removed it from the blacklist for now. Plutocow (talk) 05:22, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

I feel so honored someone tried to create “TriangularReasoning” to mock me, lol ”triangular reasoning isn’t even a logical fallacy. Is it a reference to a love triangle or something? --Goatspeed. _{Fossil evidence of my evolution}CircularRasoning^{My experiments} 08:33, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Bizarre claims of plagiarism

This discussion was moved to RationalWiki_talk:All_things_in_moderation.

Can we add a "THANK YOU" site notice for our donors?

Just to let them know that we are grateful for their help in paying our bills. I'd shake hands with every one of them if I could - alas, I'm here in the back pages, and they would never know of my existence.

So could we have a big thank you banner? It'd feel a bit odd, asking for their money and then suddenly yoink! Radio silence. Something cheerful? - Rairyu75 (Talk) 11:31, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

That's got my vote. Spud (talk) 12:00, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

cc @Stabby the Misanthrope. -- Techpriest (talk) 13:43, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

We definitely should, without them we would not still have this site to edit. --Goatspeed. _{Fossil evidence of my evolution}CircularRasoning^{My experiments} 13:45, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Done. Radioactive afikomen ^{Please ignore all my awful pre-2014 comments.} 20:03, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Server issues

Are we being hit by a DDoS or something? That was like three times in a row the server stopped responding today Plutocow (talk) 08:29, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

It happened again, what's the deal? Plutocow (talk) 20:33, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Yep, we’re being DDoSed I think; some coward must have a chip on their shoulder. We must be making a difference! --Goatspeed. _{Fossil evidence of my evolution}CircularRasoning^{My experiments} 07:48, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Flagged by spam Filter

So I got a warning that I was flagged by the spam filter. I don't know if it had to do with my text being super long and needing to be collapsed (It's a very long quote and I can't directly link to the page). Any way around this?47.5.66.54 (talk) 05:40, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

It's a filter that blocks new users from creating articles with long titles, as in over 95% of cases it's just spam or trolling. However, there are a few good-faith articles that have convoluted titles, like the challenge articles. In any case, I have unblocked your account and given it autopatrolled so you won't be affected by the filters (and thus you are free to post the article). The text of the article is here, in case you lost it:

Plutocow (talk) 06:47, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

It still keeps saying I'm blocked by the spam filter. Do I have to register for it to work out? Also I'm not sure what that text is, my post had nothing to do with same sex marriage.47.5.66.54 (talk) 07:43, 11 January 2024 (UTC)