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The Signpost: 26 September 2021

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:58, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

SPI Sairg

Thank you for overseeing Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Sairg. Is there a way you could look at it anew? To me, it is a WP:DUCK. Unfortunately, other admins and users, who have followed these puppets—Berean Hunter, JzG, etc.—have become inactive and I am finding it difficult preventing single purpose accounts from doing their thing. These are long term socks and they are relentless. By not identifying them, I am afraid we have made life easier for them. In this regards, I invite you to please keep a close watch on Chutia kingdom and Chutia people.

One of the main problems I see is that there are actually three masters associated with Sairg. The original master (who looks inactive now) was a SPA for the Ahom people. The other master is a SPA for the Chutia people and they used to edit war against each other using multiple accounts, and that is how they were snagged as masters. But since they are closely related, at least geographically, one of them got associated with Sairg. I invite you to look at the edit patterns of the latest case not with Sairg, but with the immediate preceding socks, listed in the SPI.

There is a third sock that SPAs Boro people, which also got included in Sairg, for some reason. I am aware that sock is currently active as well.

So, please advise me what I should do next?

Chaipau (talk) 15:16, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

@Chaipau Thank you for your note, but I don't see that I can do anything else with the evidence that's been presented so far. The SPI process is not perfect, and sometimes the socks win. The best I can recommend is that you keep watching these accounts and when you have better evidence, open a new report. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:29, 21 September 2021 (UTC)
I am not sure whether better evidence than this can be obtained: [1] and [2]. Thank you. Chaipau (talk) 23:55, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Hello,

What could be the best possible way to get the Sairg master sorted out so that the three different masters are differentiated? I ask because I see two of the masters still active and I seem to have exhausted pathways to address this. I have also left a note on the SPI where I think I miscommunicated.


Chaipau (talk) 12:52, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Please also note, that one of the evidence, the map, has been deleted at commons: [3]. Chaipau (talk) 12:58, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-39

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • iOS 15 has a new function called Private Relay (Apple website). This can hide the user's IP when they use Safari browser. This is like using a VPN in that we see another IP address instead. It is opt-in and only for those who pay extra for iCloud. It will come to Safari users on OSX later. There is a technical discussion about what this means for the Wikimedia wikis.

Problems

  • Advanced item Some gadgets and user-scripts add items to the portlets (article tools) part of the skin. A recent change to the HTML may have made those links a different font-size. This can be fixed by adding the CSS class .vector-menu-dropdown-noicon. [4]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 September. It will be on all wikis from 30 September (calendar).
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22:20, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

September 29: ONLINE WikiWednesday Salon + Annual Members' Meeting NYC

September 29, 7pm: ONLINE WikiWednesday Salon + Annual Members' Meeting NYC
Welcome to Wikimedia New York City!

You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for our monthly "WikiWednesday" evening salon (7-8pm) and knowledge-sharing workshop. To join the meeting from your computer or smartphone, just visit this link. More information about how to connect is available on the meetup page.

We look forward to seeing local Wikimedians, but would also like to invite folks from the greater New York metropolitan area (and beyond!) who might not typically be able to join us in person!

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--Wikimedia New York City Team 04:42, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Consolidation request (Dereck Camacho to Lucifer2000)

Hi, I filled the SPI 'tag request' for Dereck Camacho now at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Lucifer2000, and really appreciate that it was actually moved to the original master of Lucifer2000 as in Spanish, however when I filled the SPI, I added the accounts not yet tagged, and many that were are still under Dereck Camacho (Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Lucifer2000/Archive#11 August 2021), could it be possible to consolidate all of them under the Lucifer2000 case? My intention was just as User:Cabayi said, to lay the groundwork for when another sockpuppet comes so it is easier to report. Thanks! --Roqz (talk) 15:48, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Done. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:54, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

SPI report discussion

Hello! I would like to add that I provided some pretty interesting evidence in my SPI, however I'm not replying to your discussion with the other admin because, as you can see, I'm not an admin myself and that section if for admins and those with CU perms. ― Blaze The WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 15:49, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

@Blaze The Wolf Which SPI are we talking about? -- RoySmith (talk) 15:53, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
The one on Andlol17 (which I had completely forgotten about until you requested a CU on it). ― Blaze The WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 16:56, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
(talk page watcher) @Blaze The Wolf: You can just comment in your own section and ping the person you're responding to – we handle WP:AE reports and arbcom cases in a similar way. --Blablubbs (talk) 16:58, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
Ah, thanks. Yeah, the "clerk vs other" split can be kind of awkward. If you want to add something, just feel free to add it to top section. We'll figure it out :-) -- RoySmith (talk) 16:58, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
Alright thank you! I was just like "I want to give them my thoughts but it'll be weird if it weren't in the same section" ― Blaze The WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 17:01, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
It will be weird. But we're used to weird. Really, it's not a problem, happens all the time. -- RoySmith (talk) 17:02, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

G12

Hello @RoySmith, I noted this tag. Kindly take a look at the contested deletion rationale here. Thank you. Princess of Ara 23:22, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

You've got mail

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Administrators' newsletter – October 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2021).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

  • A motion has standardised the 500/30 (extended confirmed) restrictions placed by the Arbitration Committee. The standardised restriction is now listed in the Arbitration Committee's procedures.
  • Following the closure of the Iranian politics case, standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to, post-1978 Iranian politics, broadly construed.
  • The Arbitration Committee encourages uninvolved administrators to use the discretionary sanctions procedure in topic areas where it is authorised to facilitate consensus in RfCs. This includes, but is not limited to, enforcing sectioned comments, word/diff limits and moratoriums on a particular topic from being brought in an RfC for up to a year.

Miscellaneous

  • Editors have approved expanding the trial of Growth Features from 2% of new accounts to 25%, and the share of newcomers getting mentorship from 2% to 5%. Experienced editors are invited to add themselves to the mentor list.
  • The community consultation phase of the 2021 CheckUser and Oversight appointments process is open for editors to provide comments and ask questions to candidates.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:05, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-40

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • A more efficient way of sending changes from Wikidata to Wikimedia wikis that show them has been enabled for the following 10 wikis: mediawiki.org, the Italian, Catalan, Hebrew and Vietnamese Wikipedias, French Wikisource, and English Wikivoygage, Wikibooks, Wiktionary and Wikinews. If you notice anything strange about how changes from Wikidata appear in recent changes or your watchlist on those wikis you can let the developers know.

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 October. It will be on all wikis from 7 October (calendar).
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  • A more efficient way of sending changes from Wikidata to Wikimedia wikis that show them will be enabled for all production wikis. If you notice anything strange about how changes from Wikidata appear in recent changes or your watchlist you can let the developers know.

Future changes

  • You can soon get cross-wiki notifications in the iOS Wikipedia app. You can also get notifications as push notifications. More notification updates will follow in later versions. [8]
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16:29, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Sunday: Wiki-Pavilion Picnic NYC (part of WikiConference NA, Oct 8-10)

Sunday October 10, 12-5pm: Wiki-Pavilion Picnic NYC
(part of WikiConference North America 2021, Oct 8-10)
WikiConference NA, October 8-10
Welcome to Wikimedia New York City!

You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for a planned socially-distanced Wiknic ("the picnic anyone can edit") in Brooklyn's Prospect Park, being held at the historic Concert Grove Pavilion to coincide with WikiConference North America 2021, which will run virtually from Friday to Sunday.

For this occasion, and to allow more space as desired, we have individually packed lunches provided by the chapter, and attendees are encouraged to RSVP at Eventbrite and give sandwich/entree orders.

12:00pm - 5:00 pm at the Concert Grove Pavilion 40°39′34″N 73°57′51″W / 40.65934°N 73.96414°W / 40.65934; -73.96414
(Prospect Park, Brooklyn)
Concert Grove Pavilion

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--Wikimedia New York City Team 17:23, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Machine translated plots and such

Should I go through the likely sock's contribs and revert the machine translations? Or should I wait until there's word from a checkuser? Thanks. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 22:15, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

We're talking about Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/ConsumersDistributingonline, yes? I'd wait until CU does their thing, but I see that it's being worked on right now, so we shouldn't have long to wait. -- RoySmith (talk) 22:26, 5 October 2021 (UTC)
Sounds good, thanks. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 22:27, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Review Draft

Hello RoySmith, Please review my draft Kumbharacha Ganpati once. Thank You Rajmama (talk) 16:55, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Regarding finding the most important category

Hey RoySmith -- I missed your ping on Village Pump and just now catching up but page has since been archived so I didn't want to reply directly there: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_192#Finding_the_most_important_category?. In short, you raise a huge research challenge of how to navigate the category network to reach a reasonable conclusion about a high-level topic for an article. Some pointers: there's an overview of this challenge from 2018 in the Research Showcase that might contain some useful snippets; category trees can be useful for identifying high-level topics if you're willing to accept multiple answers and more general topics than the example you gave -- I know people use the Main topic classifications as stopping points and analogously I've also done this with the occupation ontology on Wikidata and manual stopping points (code); Wikidata instance-of certainly would also make sense as pointed out by another editor but I think you'd have a lot of work to manually define all of those root nodes and restrict your outcome to a single answer (I've briefly tried and quickly given up on this in the past). Hope that helps! --Isaac (WMF) (talk) 18:12, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

@Isaac (WMF) Thanks for the reply. I'm watching the Research Showcase video as I type this. -- RoySmith (talk) 23:15, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

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Message added 17:18, 9 October 2021 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

TrangaBellam (talk) 17:18, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-41

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 October. It will be on all wikis from 14 October (calendar).

Meetings

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15:29, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

2021 CheckUser and Oversight appointments: candidates appointed

The Arbitration Committee is pleased to welcome the following editors to the functionary team:

The committee thanks all members of the community who participated and helped bring this process to a successful conclusion.

Katietalk 04:44, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#2021 CheckUser and Oversight appointments: candidates appointed

Congratulations

Congrats my dear friend and colleague. I know you shall do well with your new appointments and the tools that come with it. Congratulations once more you, & a major thank you for all the hard work you have put in towards bettering the collaborative project. Celestina007 (talk) 16:39, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Wow, thanks. I hope I can live up to your expectations! -- RoySmith (talk) 16:41, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-42

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • Toolhub is a catalogue to make it easier to find software tools that can be used for working on the Wikimedia projects. You can read more.

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 October. It will be on all wikis from 21 October (calendar).

Future changes

  • The developers of the Wikipedia Android app are working on communication in the app. You can now answer questions in survey to help the development.
  • 3–5% of editors may be blocked in the next few months. This is because of a new service in Safari, which is similar to a proxy or a VPN. It is called iCloud Private Relay. There is a discussion about this on Meta. The goal is to learn what iCloud Private Relay could mean for the communities.
  • Wikimedia Enterprise is a new API for those who use a lot of information from the Wikimedia projects on other sites. It is a way to get big commercial users to pay for the data. There will soon be a copy of the Wikimedia Enterprise dataset. You can read more. You can also ask the team questions on Zoom on 22 October 15:00 UTC.

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20:52, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Feetloaf

Hello! Your submission of Feetloaf at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) at your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Pamzeis (talk) 05:10, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

Behavioural evidence needs evaluation?

Hi, I am not really familiar with the sockpuppet investigations and I would like to ask you what is going to happen with this one. What does it mean that the behavioural evidence needs evaluation? By whom? And where? Thank you, --Martin Mystère (talk) 20:50, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

@Martin Mystère Hi, and thanks for your question. There's basically two types of investigations, which are often called (in SPI jargon) technical vs behavioral. A technical investigation is done by a CheckUser, and involves accessing logs with non-public information in them. That's what I did, but the result of my investigation wasn't conclusive. I'm not allowed to divulge the details of the log data I looked at, but the gist is that there were enough similarities that I couldn't rule out that these two accounts are socks, but at the same time, there wasn't enough for me to say for sure that they are. So, basically I'm tossing it back to the SPI clerks and saying, "Sorry guys, I can't tell what's up. You guys figure it out based on the publicly available information".
But, actually, I'm glad you asked about this, but I see that I accidentally marked the case closed. What I meant to do was mark it "checked", which is what tosses it back on the queue for somebody else to look at. It'll fix that right now. Please feel free to ask additional questions if anything still doesn't make sense. -- RoySmith (talk) 21:21, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
Ok, thank you for the fix. --Martin Mystère (talk) 08:09, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

GOCE request

Don't know if you get pings, but I suggested an alternate phrasing. Nice article! All the best, Miniapolis 15:08, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

@Miniapolis Yup, got the pings, but thanks for the talk page note too. I think I like your idea, but I'm in a rush at the moment and will get back to that hopefully this evening. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:10, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
Good luck with DYK; I'm a vegetarian, and the article properly horrifies me (although my mom made a wonderful meatloaf) . All the best, Miniapolis 15:13, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Congrats

Glad to see you appointed. If there's anything I can help with, feel free to reach out. IRC or email tend to be better currently, but if I'm on-wiki I'll see a ping :) TonyBallioni (talk) 06:35, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Should we carry over Commons sock findings to enwiki?

Hi Roy. I'm trying to finish up some CU results to post in WP:Sockpuppet investigations/Xavier 500.30.10. As it happens, this sockmaster has a Commons sockpuppet category at commons:Category:Sockpuppets of MohammedShanooj03. The blocking Commons admin (and checkuser) is often User:Elcobbola. Most of these accounts are indef blocked at Commons but not always on enwiki. Would this evidence be enough to tag the corresponding enwiki accounts as socks of MohammedShanooj03? Thanks, EdJohnston (talk) 02:52, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

@EdJohnston I'm sure I'm not the best person to ask about this. The way it was described to me was that each project is supposed to do their own investigations and not count on CU results from other projects, but the CUs on commons are generally considered a bit more higher class than most other projects so we tend to listen to them a bit more than CUs on other projects. But, given a choice between taking my advice on CU policy and asking on the CU mailing list, I'd go with the mailing list :-) -- RoySmith (talk) 14:25, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-43

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 October. It will be on all wikis from 28 October (calendar).

Future changes

  • Diff pages will have an improved copy and pasting experience. The changes will allow the text in the diff for before and after to be treated as separate columns and will remove any unwanted syntax. [11]
  • The version of the Liberation fonts used in SVG files will be upgraded. Only new thumbnails will be affected. Liberation Sans Narrow will not change. [12]

Meetings

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20:07, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

DYK for Givans Creek Woods

On 27 October 2021, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Givans Creek Woods, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Givans Creek Woods was once used to dump construction fill? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Givans Creek Woods. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, Givans Creek Woods), and if they received a combined total of at least 416.7 views per hour (i.e., 5,000 views in 12 hours or 10,000 in 24), the hook may be added to the statistics page. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

—valereee (talk) 12:03, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

In regards to this block against this user:

I had a feeling this whole time that it was likely MariaJaydHicky, mainly due to that revert they made, reverting back to Jadeyxxx's earlier edit, as I do watch the block logs here on Wikipedia, even though I can't really do much of anything regarding SPIs at this time. DarkMatterMan4500 (talk) (contribs) 10:32, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Rack unit conversion template

Is this the sort of thing you had in mind?

  • {{racku|4}} produces 4U (7 in, 17.8 cm)
  • 42U (73.5 in, 186.7 cm)

It would need to be refined of course. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:55, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman Yup, that would be exactly what I had in mind, but despite the examples in Rack unit, I'd probably report it to the whole mm or 1/10th of a cm. Just for some background, it's often written as a descriptive term, i.e. "2U server" as in https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/lp/2u-servers, which wouldn't use {{convert}}. You would however want {{convert}} when phrasing it as "... took up 12U (x inch, y cm) of space". -- RoySmith (talk) 16:08, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
PS, I see I neglected to add Template talk:Convert to my watchlist the first time. I've corrected that now, so we can pick this up there. Thanks for pinging me. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:11, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
I thought it best to run it past you first rather than expose it to the icy blast of comment on such a high profile article, :-D So it is only here atm.
I have changed the " and mm notation to explicit inches and cm: I see that that the test cases above have already been changed. So in your example,
"took up {{racku|12}} of space"
produces
"took up 12U (21 in, 53.3 cm) of space".
This is the first time I've used the expr function, so I don't know how clever I can be. But assuming I can, how many decimal places of cm are conventional? Half-rounding? Feet and inches? (yeuch).
(I have no idea why "of space" has gone onto a new line, now investigating). (fixed) --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:31, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
You might want to take these awkward test cases
  • 9U (15.75 in, 40 cm)
  • 10U (17.5 in, 44.5 cm)
  • 11U (19.25 in, 48.9 cm)
into account when considering rounding. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:44, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
I'm not sure what is "conventional" in this context. People in the industry just use U as a fundamental unit. "We've got a 42U rack, and 16 2U servers to put in it, so that leaves us 10U left over for expansion". The conversion to inches or cm is purely for the benefit of wikipedia readers who might not be familiar with rack units. My hunch is that 1 digit after the decimal point for cm would be the right thing, but two digits would probably also be fine. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:53, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
Yes, that makes sense. Inches are always going to be a multiple of .25, so best make that one two decimal places. The centimetres figure is already more precise than the inches figure, so I'll go with one dp.  Done: see the "awkward test cases". --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:18, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Name

Is "racku" a good name or would "rackU" be better? or just cause too many typos?--John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:18, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

How about {{rackunit}}? -- RoySmith (talk) 17:21, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
Fine by me. I'll need to check first if an ordinary move is ok and get back later. Probably tomorrow now. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:42, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
 Done Simple move worked, just waiting for a bot to move the doc page so I can update it. Then I'll add a note on the the convert template talk page discussion and dive into the nearest foxhole when the experts tear it apart. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 18:00, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
Hmmm, I've only done the most trivial template work. What's the alternative to a "simple move"? Is there some kind of complex move? -- RoySmith (talk) 18:05, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
There isn't one. I thought it would be complicated: it wasn't. Though the doc hasn't moved automatically, I'll just have to do it manually. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:29, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

DYK for Feetloaf

On 31 October 2021, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Feetloaf, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that parsnips serve as sawed-off tibiae in feetloaf (pictured)? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Feetloaf. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, Feetloaf), and if they received a combined total of at least 416.7 views per hour (i.e., 5,000 views in 12 hours or 10,000 in 24), the hook may be added to the statistics page. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

 — Amakuru (talk) 12:02, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

Sock disenganglement

Hi Roy, I'm afraid I might have mixed up two sockfarms, JesusJohnson7 and Betteruser. The issue is due to the report of Menninte, who someone else reported to the JesusJohnson7 SPI, but who edited on pages common to both. SPI there was inconclusive, but it was duck blocked. So, unsure which farm that was. Anyway, the issue is two subsequent reports (one by me one by someone else) were placed on the JesusJohnson7 page due to similarity with Menninte, however I think they are almost certainly BetterUser. What needs to be done here? And my apologies, CMD (talk) 05:35, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

@Chipmunkdavis My apologies for not replying sooner. The sad truth is that socks sometimes get mis-identified. I wouldn't sweat it too much. I've added an alternate tag to Menninte which should at least give future investigators a clue about the uncertainty. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:09, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
And, I just saw Special:Diff/1052868396 which may actually be a better answer. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:18, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
Hi, no problem, this was not a late reply and you were probably monitoring your featloaf. I mostly am sweating it because I want to have things as clear as possible when laying out reports. Sometimes it seems hard to get traction even when things are clear. That said, those CU results really surprise me. The Manfoodie behaviour is very classic INTSF. I am quite sure that all three of those cases are different people, so I suspect one of them is taking on the cause of the others. CMD (talk) 16:58, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 October 2021

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A cheeseburger for you!

For creating Feetloaf. Scorpions13256 (talk) 22:52, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2021).

Guideline and policy news

  • Phase 2 of the 2021 RfA review has commenced which will discuss potential solutions to address the 8 issues found in Phase 1. Proposed solutions that achieve consensus will be implemented and you may propose solutions till 07 November 2021.

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:44, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-44

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • There is a limit on the amount of emails a user can send each day. This limit is now global instead of per-wiki. This change is to prevent abuse. [13]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 November. It will be on all wikis from 4 November (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

20:27, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Question about a sock

Hello, just came across into another Zigmund sock and it has been blocked for disruptive editing, but a notice on the investigation reads A clerk or checkuser recommends that new socks in this case not receive tags per WP:DENY. As the last involved admin in this case, what does this mean? -Gouleg🛋️ harass/hound 14:16, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

@Gouleg thanks for your note; that's an excellent question! You may have noticed that many (if not most) sock accounts get a template on their user page: "This account has been confirmed by a CheckUser as a sockpuppet of ...", or some variation on that. That's what we call a "tag". There is some feeling among the sock-hunting community that some socks treat these tags as badges of honor, and that tagging their accounts just encourages them. So, there's a flag we can set in the header on each SPI case which says not to tag future socks. There's no hard and fast rule for when to set this flag, and it's not even obligatory that SPI clerks follow that suggestion, but they generally do. See WP:DENY for more on this. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:32, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
PS, if you've found another one, please open a new SPI report. Thanks. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:34, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for your reponse, I get the idea of not encouraging trolls but I wasn't sure if this meant I shouldn't open a new SPI report; so I'm still encouraged to file new reports, just that sockpuppet header will not be added to future socks, right? -Gouleg🛋️ harass/hound 15:08, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
Yup, exactly. Please keep opening reports as you see new sock suspects. The SPI team will then handle the tagging or not tagging with the user-page templates as they see fit. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:14, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Potential changes to {{checkuser}}

Previous discussion: Special:Diff/1053637120/1053703387.

So, re your query, template markup doesn't allow for any sort of page-existence-like check for socks having been filed against in the past. There are two ways to approximate it:

  • Do a prefix-based search of SPI-space for the person's name. Downsides: False positives for cases they contributed to or were innocently mentioned in, plus if their username happens to also be a word that might come up in conversation.
  • Do an insource regex search of SPI-space, looking for their name appearing in calls to {{checkuser}}, {{noping}}, etc. Downside: False negatives if someone was mentioned outside of the context of one of these templates.
  • Downside for both: Neither checks for past usernames. Then again, neither does checking for an existing SPI, and we don't have a rule for creating redirect SPIs post-rename, like we do for RfAs.

So the "Is there an SPI in this name?" part is quite easy, using the markup I mentioned. To do a sock search... well what would be really nifty is an "SPI search" tool that would track mentions at SPI and rank them by likelihood to be an accusation of socking ({{checkuser|username}} = highest likelihood, something resembling a signature = lowest). Bonus points if it can catch renames. (Although catching renames is hard. I've been meaning to take a stab at a Python script that'll do it, but my understanding is that others have tried and failed.)

So, just a thought for any tool maintainers who happen to be reading this. ;) Meantime, at some point soon I'll propose the {{#ifexist}}-based SPI link addition to {{checkuser}}. I'm guessing that if I proposed a further "SPI search" link that just linked to Special:Search, though, someone would object to it making the template even longer than it already is. If it were linking to a tool though, perhaps easier to justify. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she/they) 16:55, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

I have no idea if I'll ever get to it (and I certainly don't want to discourage anybody else from getting there first), but https://github.com/roysmith/spi-tools/issues/199 -- RoySmith (talk) 17:22, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

Apt

This is a good call. In hindsight, I believe this is an advertised job. I’d keep an eye on the title Ahem Rochas and for other (possible) iterations which may be created in future. Thank you for your time Roy. Celestina007 (talk) 18:17, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Glad I could help, and I do appreciate the kind words. -- RoySmith (talk) 18:19, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Sockpuppet still at it

Hi Roysmith, sorry for bothering you, wasn't sure where else to take this issue [14]. Even though I have literally told the user twice that he is not allowed to edit through several accounts, he is still at it [15] [16]. Most of his edits are disruptive. --HistoryofIran (talk) 17:36, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

@HistoryofIran, thanks for your note, I'll take a look. -- RoySmith (talk) 17:50, 2 November 2021 (UTC)
They are using this IP now as well to pursue the same disruptive edits. Same geo-location, same pro-Armenian stance, etc. - LouisAragon (talk) 18:36, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Too concise

Hi RoySmith! I generally try to adhere to the principle of being as little verbose as possible on a SPI report, but perhaps at the last SheryOfficial one I was a little too concise. I actually have more behavioral evidence, some of it really of the clinching kind, but I like to give out as few as possible to not spill the beans. Would you like me to send you the evidence through e-mail the next time a similar situation pops up? Thanks for the great work at SPI by the way, since the new CU team arrived it's been really rocking! ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 00:21, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

I think all us new CUs are still running on adrenaline. Better get the most out of us while it lasts :-)
I'm all for not spilling beans. I'd hard to tell how much stuff to put in and how much to leave out. I guess a good compromise is to put in the essentials, state that you've got more, and offer to share it off-wiki if somebody needs to see it. On that particular SPI, I see Bbb23 already did the G5 thing, which is fine. If you've still got more and want to email it to me, I'll take a look. But I can't promise I'll do anything specific with it.
I didn't mean to blow you off, I'm just trying to stay focused. As I'm sure you've seen, over the last bunch of months, SPI got badly behind and I'm trying to dig out from that. It's not a good scene when people open reports and they sit in the queue for weeks before anybody gets to them. -- RoySmith (talk) 00:42, 7 November 2021 (UTC)
Doing a proper WP:BEFORE for an AfD is quite a bit of work, and then the thing drags on for a week or more ... you'll understand I wouldn't have gone through all that just to clean up after a sockpuppet (I've actually already done too much of that in the past). So a G5 really is worth keeping a case open for a bit longer, from that perspective. But next time, I'll e-mail you the evidence for sure! ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 01:18, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Impersonator

@RoySmith: Mohmood20 is not my account but someone impersonating me. I believe its the user Aj Indiana [17] who was reported by me for Edit warring and was blocked on 5 November 2021. Seems like he created a new account impersonating me in trying to jeopardize my account. [18]. Please block account of Mohmood20 indefinitely before he continues to vandalize again. MehmoodS (talk) 07:58, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

And the fact that Mohmood20 went as far as redirecting his page to mine is a clear violation [19]. This user has no good intention. Should be blocked indefinitely. I have also submitted request on Wikipedia Sockpuppet investigations [20]

MehmoodS (talk) 09:58, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

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