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New tags: AutoWikiBrowser (AWB) and File renamed on Commons, and new edit filter

I would like to suggest the creation of two tags:

• AutoWikiBrowser or AWB, to mark edits like these: [1], [2]; edits made using AWB can then be filtered in recent changes.
  • I don't know if it can be directly added to Special:Tags. If not, please create MediaWiki:Tag-AWB (see en:MediaWiki:Tag-AWB, commons:MediaWiki:Tag-AWB: [3]).
• File renamed on Commons (or Renamed file on Commons, or better text), to mark files that have been renamed on Commons; see Wikispecies:Village Pump/Archive 65#Track renamed images on Commons and these examples: [4], [5].
  • The tag could be at MediaWiki:Tag-commons-filename-change (like pl:MediaWiki:Tag-commons-filename-change), with the text "File renamed on Commons" (or "Renamed file on Commons" or a better one).

Please also create a new edit filter (or abuse filter) for tracking files renamed on Commons, as suggested at Wikispecies:Village Pump/Archive 65#Track renamed images on Commons. pl:Specjalna:Filtr_nadużyć/46 can be imported or copied. Thanks, Korg (talk) 20:19, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

If no one else responds in two weeks, you can ping me and I'll try to implement —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 10:02, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm all for this. Good initiative @Korg, and yes @Justin, please do (imo). –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 15:31, 24 November 2023 (UTC).

I also agree to both proposals. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 01:13, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

I've created the AWB tag and it seems to be working. The Commons ditto still needs some tinkering. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 16:22, 4 January 2024 (UTC).

┌──────────┘ @Justin: Please have a look at the Commons file rename change mentioned above, if you find the time. I can't seem to get it to work. Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 18:38, 11 January 2024 (UTC).

Hm, I can't figure out the issue. :/ —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:42, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

┌──┘ Hello again, @Korg: Do you have any insights that might help us figure out why the "File renamed on Commons" tag doesn't show up? –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 19:53, 16 May 2024 (UTC).

Hello Tommy, hello everyone, sorry for the late reply.

Thank you for having enabled the AWB tag!

For the "File renamed on Commons" tag, a new edit filter must be created, via the Abuse Filter management interface. Please see w:Wikipedia:Edit filter for more information about the filter and this discussion about its name ("abuse filter" vs. "edit filter").

Filter #46 on the Polish Wikipedia can be copied: pl:Specjalna:Filtr_nadużyć/46.

"summary rlike" performs a pattern match for "([[c:GR|GR]])" in the edit summary; edits such as the following will be filtered: [6], [7], [8]. But edits made by User:CommonsDelinker (e.g. [9]) will not be filtered, as their edit summaries do not contain the text "([[c:GR|GR]])": Special:Contributions/CommonsDelinker. Perhaps we should add a condition to match them.

The conditions may need to be tweaked, especially for user groups, but we should see how that works first. Thanks! (Also pinging Koavf, who has offered to do the implementation.) Korg (talk) 11:31, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

User's javascript file

Hello fellow admins, and Happy New Year! Does any one now what the User:Cookai1205/timeless.js javascript file is all about? It seems to be a list of IPs and a few URLs, but what do you think might be the purpose? For reference, the user is a (Taiwanese) member of the abusefilter-helper user group in Chinese Wikipedia. So far, editing this file is their only contribution to Wikispecies, except for creating their user talk page back in 2022. Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 19:27, 2 January 2024 (UTC).

These aren't IP addresses, they are using the data: scheme to make an image. The fact that it's called "Timeless" makes me think that it's some script hack to change the appearance of the Timeless skin. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:45, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Ah, of course – thanks, Justin! I first just had a quick glance and the link to W3.org (i.e. the the World Wide Web Consortium) sort of threw me off. After a closer look I now see that the code string http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg is of course equal to http://www.w3.org/2000/svg about "SVG in HTML" in the XML namespace, which makes sense in regards to images within data URLs and such. By the way, the user have now also created a similar file for their Vector 2022 skin. Case closed, I guess. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 13:56, 4 January 2024 (UTC).

I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. DannyS712 (talk) 19:50, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

Spam blacklist

Do we have our own blacklist on this project? I wish to add two top-level URLs and all pages below them. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:25, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

@Andy: We do. It can be found at MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist however I believe that these old types of blacklists are soon to be deprecated, in favour of Special:BlockedExternalDomains which is a lot easier to edit for users unfamiliar with editing wiki code in text-only mode.

Note however that this new feature doesn't support regex (for complex cases) nor URL paths matching – hence in your particular case you may prefer the blacklist. Also it doesn't currently support bypass by whitelists which I think is another reasons why we still keep the blacklist file, even though our spam whitelist is currently empty. You can find more information about all this in task T337431 at Phabricator if you want. It's an open Phabricator task, yet to be finalized. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 14:29, 4 January 2024 (UTC).

Thank you. Is there any reason that list is currently empty? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:31, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Not to my knowledge, but I have a very vague memory of a discussion several years ago mentioning that most of the URLs would be moved to the global spam blacklist. Not sure though.

As a complement to the above we also have the MediaWiki:Email-blacklist (also empty) and an External links search feature (sometimes very useful!) –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 16:56, 4 January 2024 (UTC).

Special:Contributions/2001:EE0:4CCC:AC40:315A:116A:6A0B:D0B

Dear Wikispecies admins, the user is repeating unexplained removals at Scorpiones, please have a look at their edits. MathXplore (talk) 02:59, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

MathXplore (talk • contribs • block log • all projects) I have restored the previous complete version, rolled back 6 edits. Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 03:15, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Also applied a 24 hour block for page blanking, they need to explain themselves. Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 03:17, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

I've extended the block up to two weeks (residential IP, not a school of equivalent). –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 15:28, 11 January 2024 (UTC).

I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. DannyS712 (talk) 07:23, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

User:Babies are mine

• Babies are mine (talk • contribs • block log • all projects)

Vandalism-only account. --Leonidlednev (talk) 04:45, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Blocked Indef as per other wikis. -- Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 05:55, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

​​​I've changed the local block from indefinite (account creation disabled) to indefinite (account creation disabled, email disabled, cannot edit own talk page)

Please note that the account is also globally locked. Some of their edits here at Wikispecies lead me to believe that perhaps we should contact a Steward?

–Tommy Kronkvist (talk) 16:17, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

I also think a Steward could be involved, as I suspect we could be finding sock-puppets appearing in due course. Andyboorman (talk) 18:40, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't think we need stewards since we have local checkusers - @Koavf @Faendalimas @Dan Koehl FYI --DannyS712 (talk) 18:57, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Correct: we could do sockpuppet-related CheckUser requests locally if need be. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:26, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

┌────────────┘ I was referring to the death threats, rather than the risk of future sock-puppetry. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 19:46, 28 January 2024 (UTC).

Violent threats need to be escalated to legal@. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:47, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Absolutely refer to legal. Andyboorman (talk) 20:01, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Technically this user has not done anything that would require CheckUser Actions, however, threats can be refered to legal@. Cannot use the CheckUser Tools to control for this its a matter for legal. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 22:08, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. DannyS712 (talk) 07:23, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Speedy Deletes

Could a fellow admin please look through the current list of speedy delete requests. I am not sure how valid they are. Thanks Andyboorman (talk) 17:46, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

 Done Link for convenience: Category:Candidates for speedy deletion. Checking just now, it was empty. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:48, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

The speedy deletion category is still empty. Details can be found via the above link handed by Justin, plus the log at Special:Log/delete. Unfortunately we've seen quite lot of vandalism and out of scope edits the last few days. As a result, I took the liberty to add edit protection to pages such as "Godzilla" and "Category:Dinosaur" plus a few more. (Those pages were of course deleted first, but the edit protection still sticks. It was set for one year, during which time only administrators are allowed to edit them.) –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 06:45, 9 February 2024 (UTC).

I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. DannyS712 (talk) 07:23, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Special:Contributions/129.63.22.25

Could somebody take a look at this user's contributions? They are making out of scope pages and removing deletion tags placed on them. Thanks! Fehufanga (talk) 01:20, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

 Done by someone else —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:58, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. DannyS712 (talk) 07:23, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Nominations for autopatrolled

Fellow admins, I'd like to suggest that a few users be considered for autopatrolled permissions to reduce the burden of patrolling recent changes. I have not granted the rights myself since I don't actually know that much about taxonomy and cannot judge the accuracy of the edits; I defer to my more knowledgeable collogues. Looking through recent changes, the following users seem to be fairly active and established:

• Special:Contributions/Helko Peters
• Special:Contributions/Great Wall of Text
• Special:Contributions/Junglenut
• Special:Contributions/Maxscheller
• Special:Contributions/Alfa-ketosav

This is not an exhaustive list, just a few names I saw in recent changes. Keep up the good work! Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 16:35, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

 Done -- gave all autopatrol. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 07:39, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. DannyS712 (talk) 12:11, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Wikispecies:Administrators/Inactivity Section

Hi, this is just a friendly reminder that according to Wikispecies:Administrators/Inactivity Section the next run of the Activity Review should take place this month. I would appreciate if one of the Admins or Bureaucrats could start this review. Thanks, --Ameisenigel (talk) 10:25, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Doing a quick review over our admins:

• this seems to be <5 "admin actions" in 12 months.
• this is <5 edits (didn't check logs).
• this is <5 "admin actions".
• this is <5 "admin actions".
• this is <5 edits (didn't check logs).
• this is <5 "admin actions".
• this is <5 "admin actions".

Some logs were way too extensive to bother (e.g.), but I assume that there are enough admin actions in there. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 10:48, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

And for those keeping score at home, that is seven of 27 admins, including bots. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:44, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

@Koavf: Last time this was run, which I did, AlvaroMolina was one who barely scraped through, ie given benefit of the doubt so that will be a discussion again. From memory Circeus has essentially left editing for some time now so probably should be removed per the policy. We need to discuss the others too, remember that Dan_Koehl is also a Beaurocrat and CheckUser and if we remove admin we should remove all three. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 14:55, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Good point. I'm not a bureaucrat, tho, so I can't do the removals. I was just trying to do a quick scan. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 14:56, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

None of us can, as a crat when I need the admin flag removed I have to make a Steward Request. I am checking on CU among the OC as I am a member but I think it would be a cascade for Dan, iff we remove admin he has to loose crat and with no admin flags he cannot really have CU so I am checking on that right now. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 15:07, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Only guidence on this would be this RFC. Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 15:13, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

@Dan Koehl: we are going to need you to comment here on what you would like to do. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 15:22, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

@Tommy Kronkvist:, @Keith Edkins:, @Dan Koehl:, @MPF:, @OhanaUnited:: I have set up the review page here please add any comments under discussions. Will send out email template soon. Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 16:36, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

@Faendalimas: As I recall, {{Ping}} only works when you use it with a signature, so going back to add it to a comment will not ping the person. You need to re-sign your comment, I believe. (I didn't ping all those other guys in to avoid double-pinging them, in case I'm misremembering). —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:32, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

thanks sorry I do this on so many wikis these days I forget which wiki has which template. Bureaucrat is the one word in English I can never spell, do not know why. Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 16:39, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

With all due respect to my franco friends, it is a terrible, terrible word and we should never have picked it for our super-admin group. :/ —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:43, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

I understand, and I know I have not been very active lately. WS is running smoothly, with few problems, and IM happy for that. Fighting for high democrazy on WikiSpecies, I humbly accept any decision from the WS community, having my admin rights removed. But if possible, maybe it can wait until 31 March, so I made 10 clean years? Dan Koehl (talk) 09:42, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

I have to give 30 days notice per policy and can leave the removals to do as a lot at the end of this, so if thats the decision it can all wait till then which would take it all to beginning of April in all liklihood so yes we can accomodate your request I believe. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 14:00, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

All Bureaucrats and Admins and anyone else who wishes please assist with this vote -- Wikispecies:Administrators/Inactivity_Section/February_2024#User:Dan_Koehl. Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 14:26, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Please note that despite inactivity on this discussion it must not be archived until after 27 March for the review period. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 23:06, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Humbly greatful for the positive comments, and the confidence shown, it kind of warmed my old heart, and for many reasons, I will be happy to remain "on post" if its the wish of the community, and I hope I may futurewise increase my activity on WS. Dan Koehl (talk) 11:44, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

[username redacted]

• ImmaFucYou (talk • contribs • block log • all projects)

x-wiki vandalism-only account. --SHB2000 (talk) 08:19, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Never mind, the user is now locked the second I make this request. --SHB2000 (talk) 08:19, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

 Done Great minds think alike: I had already posted to the Stewards on m:. Thanks. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 10:33, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. DannyS712 (talk) 12:11, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Request

Please block 135.26.120.92. Thanks, --Mtarch11 (talk) 02:53, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

 Done globally. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:06, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. DannyS712 (talk) 12:11, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Request

Please block 39.50.198.206, out of project scope & nonsense edits. ChasingAir (talk) 12:58, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

(Note) Already deleted and blocked. MathXplore (talk) 13:07, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

According to w:Wikipedia:Blocking_IP_addresses#Block_lengths, IP addresses should not be indefinitely blocked. This IP has been blocked indefinitely. What would be the optimal block length here? MathXplore (talk) 13:09, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Agreed @Andyboorman: —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 14:16, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Apologies  Done Andyboorman (talk) 14:52, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

I went ahead and changed a bunch of other blocks, accordingly. This includes some IPs that are also globally blocked. Please see Log of blocks by Tommy Kronkvist (prior to March 20, 2024) for details. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 19:46, 19 March 2024 (UTC).

I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. DannyS712 (talk) 12:11, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Recent barrage of IP edits

Attention fellow administrators: 1234qwer1234qwer4—Andyboorman—Burmeister—Dan Koehl—DannyS712—EncycloPetey—Faendalimas– Floscuculi—Hector Bottai—Keith Edkins—Koavf—MKOliver—MPF—Mariusm—Neferkheperre– OhanaUnited—PeterR—Pigsonthewing—RLJ—Thiotrix.

We've recently had a lot of edits and page creations made by what can only be described as a small army of "new" IPv6 users. Most of the edits looks to be well intentioned, but there's also been a lot of gibberish and nonsense added in together with the taxonomy, and the pages are often poorly "wikified". Here are some examples, with links to their respective contributions:

• Special:Contributions/2607:FEA8:2462:6900:5DB0:F888:DA67:9B
• Special:Contributions/2607:FEA8:2462:6900:83A:31F:59BC:1C29
• Special:Contributions/2607:FEA8:2462:6900:4F6D:D014:7D20:5FA0
• Special:Contributions/2607:FEA8:2462:6900:B8AA:C344:3C68:8595
• Special:Contributions/2607:FEA8:2462:6900:F911:2472:2823:A5AD
• Special:Contributions/2607:FEA8:2462:6900:80F8:A589:DE77:AE13

Please note that the above list is very far from compete: unfortunately there are many, many more.

Preferably we need to very quickly mass-educate the user(s) behind these IP addresses, or I'm afraid we will need to start banning them. (A few have already been banned, primarily by Burmeister and myself.)

Any ideas on how we should best proceed? –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 19:09, 13 April 2024 (UTC).

Are we sure this isn't the same person (or a couple of people), IP hopping? If so, it will be extremely difficult to communicate anything to them. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:19, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

They are all in the same /64 range, which generally means it's at least the same local network. 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 10:35, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this up - might be useful to add an abuse filter for excessive uses of <br/> which seems to be common among the edits. Unfortunately since I know basically nothing about taxonomy I cannot really help with whether edits are proper or not if they look correct --DannyS712 (talk) 19:21, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Looks to me they are all the same person, same pages are edited by different IPs. The few pages I followed were taxonomy wise correct, but totally lacking any quality respect. I sent a message trying to educate on some points, with no response, yet.--Hector Bottai (talk) 19:28, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Checking, it looks like these have been undone or otherwise fixed, correct? If there is cleanup to do, let me know. I would support a rangeblock if you made one. That may cause this person to slow down. You could even put a link to this conversation in the notes. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:18, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Heya sorry I have been on a couple of weeks leave due to illness. I will be back in a day. From what I can quickly tell I would support Koavf with a rangeblock. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 12:17, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

@Tommy Kronkvist, EncycloPetey, DannyS712, Hector Bottai, and Koavf: Sounds to me like a school class project by some well-intentioned teacher, tasking their kids "Start a new page on Wikispecies" - I've seen similar activities happen on iNaturalist. Good idea in principle, but tends not to work very well in practice, schoolkids aren't serious enough for this sort of work unfortunately . . . - MPF (talk) 20:29, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

@MPF: Yes, that was my initial thought as well. It's of course great that the kids learn about taxonomy, nomenclature and biological systematics, but it takes time and effort to truly understand how all those pieces are fitted together, so to speak. And to be frank Wikispecies' many conventions regarding content, format, citations etc. aren't the easiest to master... On top of that we also have a huge number of templates: I think we use about 1,000 different templates—not including their respective template documentation templates (977), Taxonavigation templates (+100,000), and reference templates (+125,000). –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 00:35, 14 April 2024 (UTC).

@Justin: Many are corrected, yes, but certainly not all of them. See for example the version of Stagmomantis carolina from 16:43, April 13. Furthermore some of the pages are more or less blank. See for example the version of Megalopyge opercularis from 17:12, April 13.
–Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 00:35, 14 April 2024 (UTC).

Ugh. I'll go thru Special:RecentChanges and see unmarked ones by unregistered users. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:13, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

I checked several from the perspective of a non-taxonomist and deleted a few that were quite literally just {{Image}} and cleaning up some obvious noise. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:24, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. Note that some of the "unpatrolled" edits might have actually been corrected, however some of them haven't yet been marked as patrolled. I've tried to mark all of the pages that I've fixed so far, but may have missed a few. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 01:30, 14 April 2024 (UTC).

Pobody's nefrect and teamwork makes the dream work, etc. Thanks for all you do, T. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:03, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

@LiAnna (Wiki Ed): and @Ian (Wiki Ed): Looks like we have a class editing Wikispecies (which is great and expanding beyond Wikipedia!) But there are some issues with the edits from the students in the class. I don't mind stepping in to help, whether remotely or going to the classroom in-person since the IP addresses stated that they're from Toronto (where I live). Are you aware of any Canadian instructors running an education program on Wikispecies? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 04:11, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

Now see Diapheromera femorata. This was recently created by one of these entities. It looks legit, but seems to have installed a
and string of H's while creating. There also has been some correction and adjustment of the entries. It does not appear to be alone. Also somewhere earlier today, someone made a large number of redirects shifting author names to taxon pages. These are now far downlist on Recent Changes. The majority of the edits I looked at involve holding down a key so it repeats. Neferkheperre (talk) 13:44, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

Yeah that is really weird. The string or repeated characters is obviously undesirable on the page and should be discouraged, but why would they go through such an effort in creating an otherwise-perfectly fine page just to insert some obvious vandalism? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 20:37, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited I don't think these are coming from any class we're working with. I looked through the classes we're supporting who could be editing in topics related to organismal biology, and none of them appear to be anywhere near Toronto. (The closest I can find is in Montreal, and it's being run by an experienced instructor who's very unlikely to have their students make edits like these.) I also looked at several of the species articles on en.wp and I don't see recent student edits (which is what I'd expect if students were being encouraged to edit Wikispecies items related to the Wikipedia articles they're working on. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:54, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

Has anyone left a message on any of the IP talk pages asking them to explain, and/or to modify their behaviour? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:54, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

@Andy Mabbett: Not to my knowledge, no. The closest we've got is these two messages at User talk:2607:FEA8:2462:6900:83A:31F:59BC:1C29, entered by Maculosae tegmine lyncis and Hector Bottai. They only mention taxonomy though. Please (any admin) go ahead and ask the IP users about their edits, preferably with information on how they should proceed. Simply adding the {{subst:Welcome-anon}} template might be a good start.

I don't know how many of these IPs we've had problems with, but I would guess it's about 15–20. This version of the "Recent changes" page can be helpful in finding that out. It only shows IP edits for the past 25 days, without listing edits by registered accounts.

Personally I'm logging off for a while. It's a long day tomorrow, and I've been coding at work for +14 hours today. :-)

—Tommy Kronkvist (talk) 17:22, 15 April 2024 (UTC).

This problem seems to be ongoing. Has anyone taken any action, or does anyone plan to? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:49, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

I don't think so. I've been otherwise occupied (IRL) and as for the IP edits I've mainly been busy fixing their malformed edits. For the past weeks I haven't been as active as I usually am, and in all honesty I don't have a full picture regarding the most recent contributions from these IPs. Sorry about that. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 11:28, 5 May 2024 (UTC).

@Andy Mabbett, FYI. Yesterday our co-administrator @Burmeister went ahead and blocked these three Toronto-based IPs:

• 2605:8D80:1397:C4BB:9D81:F63D:F01F:207D
• 2605:8D80:1397:C4BB:B1C8:950D:9DDD:5AF3
• 2607:FEA8:2462:6900:78CF:CAE0:9AB6:1ED3

He also reverted the very last edit by each one of them, and then I mopped up whatever oddities that where still left behind from their earlier edits.

Together, they had edited these pages:

• Aotus nancymae
• Aotus zonalis
• Chiropotes utahicki
• Pseudemys concinna
• Terrapene nelsoni
• Terrapene nelsoni klauberi
• Terrapene nelsoni nelsoni

• Terrapene ornata luteola
• Terrapene ornata ornata
• Trachemys scripta troostii
• Trachemys stejnegeri malonei
• Trachemys stejnegeri stejnegeri
• Trachemys stejnegeri vicina

Out of these 13 pages 11 were recently created by other unregistered Toronto-based IPs. (The remaining 2 were created many years ago by "regular" Wikispecies users.)

Blocking doesn't seem to help. I blocked a few last week, but new IP editors from the same Toronto based ISP seems to pop up every few days or so (including one yesterday night). Just like before almost all of the new contributions looks legit, except for the "LLLLL…" or "RRRRR…" etc. nonsense in the Reference sections. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 07:15, 8 May 2024 (UTC).

Is it possible to perform a rangeblock? Burmeister (talk) 23:58, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Burmeister. It is, but I think we would need three or four different range blocks. Their edits can be found here. (Please be aware that the list may also include other IPs, unrelated to the Toronto based ones we are discussing here. If you haven't already, ticking the "IP Information" box in the "Beta features" section of you account Preferences might be helpful.)

It's worth noting that most of their page creations and edits are okay: it's almost exclusively the Reference sections that are malformed. Moreover, those Reference sections doesn't include false citations or references: they only include nonsense (for example a row of arbitrary characters or digits, such as "KKKKKKK" etc.) That's of course quite annoying, but in my opinion the good information they contribute is more important than the "nonsense references". I'm therefore reluctant to ban them all, or to administer several range blocks.
–Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 17:58, 11 May 2024 (UTC).

The talk pages of all three blocked IP addresses are red links. The block summary in each case is "Inserting Nonsense/Gibberish or out of scope material into Pages, WS:BP". the first point in WS:BP is "Warning: This is not mandatory, but usually the first step to politely remind editors to behave properly. An initial warning may be followed up by another if the editor persists in not following Wikispecies policies and guidelines.". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:44, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Report concerning 2607:FEA8:2462:6900:D99E:589F:2B71:3594

• 2607:FEA8:2462:6900:D99E:589F:2B71:3594 (talk • contribs • block log • all projects)

Vandalism. See also /64 XReport --Leonidlednev (talk) 22:24, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Can you give an example? Looking at edits via Special:Contributions/2607:FEA8:2462:6900:D99E:589F:2B71:3594/64, my non-taxonomist eyes don't see any vandalism, just some thoroughly bizarre formatting on the references sections. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:34, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

@Koavf: The user keeps creating pages with a single character repeated as references. --Leonidlednev (talk) 15:04, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, that is super-weird and I deleted those, but what do you want me to do? Should that person be blocked and not make the actual good entries? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:13, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

"Recent barrage of IP edits", continued

These IP activities are now less frequent, but still a problem. Hence, I've recently started to add a two week block to those IPs that only add "nonsense references" (e.g. a single string of meaningless letters) or in the relatively few cases where IPs only add nonsense references together with one or two vernacular names. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 06:57, 5 June 2024 (UTC).

Thank you. They are now switching over to actively overwriting corrections that others performed on the page. This crosses the bridge from lack of competence into actual vandalism. But has anyone talked to this individual and tell him/her about proper reference format? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 15:49, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited: No, but our other actions seems to have taken effect. I've blocked quite a few, and a good portion of their former edits have been cleaned up (mainly by Koavf, but also by you and others, and to a much lesser degree by me). –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 12:01, 15 June 2024 (UTC).

Is it possible to implement an edit filter to stop this behaviour? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 16:38, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

Ongoing

I have left a warning at User talk:2607:FEA8:2462:6900:A2DA:56B5:351E:C21C#References. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 07:43, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

They seem to hop around different IPv6 addresses on mobile network, and may not see your warning message. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 21:26, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Indeed - so we need to keep leaving warnings on each IP's talk page (as I have just done on User talk:2607:FEA8:2462:6900:7B79:B6CE:D57B:A147), and may need to start making blocks, until the message hits home. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:17, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

And now User talk:2607:FEA8:2462:6900:EF12:3AD6:54F8:24F. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:34, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

I have now blocked User:2607:FEA8:2462:6900:F10:69B5:B9E4:F6C6 and User:2607:FEA8:2462:6900:5801:9C85:BA2E:5101 and left explanations on their talk pages. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:19, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

And now User:2607:FEA8:2462:6900:C5B9:369F:262:5CFF and User:2607:FEA8:2462:6900:A92A:4962:688:A6. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:48, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

Now User:99.252.78.15 (a different range, but the same Canadian ISP). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:19, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Adding User:2607:FEA8:2462:6900:D695:BB50:FCAB:6A95. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:11, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

And User:2607:FEA8:2462:6900:340E:893F:A035:C4C7. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:33, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

It's frustrating that this is still ongoing. I just did a /64 rangeblock that I think will stop a lot of this in the immediate term.

As I mentioned above and from looking at some edits made by IPs identified by Andy above, it seems like the edits themselves are 99% fine, but this person(s) keeps on inserting "YYYYYYYYYY" or "GGGGGGGGGGGGGGG" as references. Am I correct here? The pages are otherwise good entries minus that? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 12:46, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Yes @Justin, that's my opinion as well. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 14:12, 24 August 2024 (UTC).

They are using other such stings, also. In one recent edit they wrote "Please add references for me" - I see that Tommy K. did so. They have also edit-warred to remove {{Unreferenced}} templates, but that seems to have stopped. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:23, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

So maybe this person(s) is getting better? Very odd editing and disappointing because it's got such a bizarre mix of seemingly quality and gibberish content. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:08, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Latest: User:2605:8D80:1397:BCAB:1A0:5043:C6E5:A18. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:26, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

And now User:2605:8D80:1393:2F5:A4D3:7557:4920:A81D, reverting the addition of {{Unreferenced}} and restoring strings of letters. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:11, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Now User:2605:8D80:1394:14B4:3952:F10D:BBE8:3D49; which is odd, because thy had earlier started to add better (if not great) references [10]. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:57, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the recent blocks, Andy. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 10:25, 7 September 2024 (UTC).

Another: User:2607:FEA8:2462:6900:6058:2B05:CD78:CE05. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:16, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Then there are edits like this. They appear to be copy & pasting the rendered reference text from Wikipedia pages (as opposed to markup from page sources). I somehow doubt they really accessed one of the cited works in 2016. In this particular case, they also removed an existing reference template. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:02, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

+ User:2607:FEA8:2462:6900:5904:C5A3:E984:25A5. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:13, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Still at it: User:2607:FEA8:245F:F800:91E2:1A4E:A20:F437. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:13, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for blocking that last one, @Andy. I made some changes to the last page they edited, since prior IP editors had entered the wrong author names for the primary references. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 14:01, 29 September 2024 (UTC).

+ User:2607:FEA8:245F:F800:6431:3FD6:EB4B:CA52. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:06, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Lengthening blocks

The latest instance is User:2607:FEA8:245F:F800:C01E:FA1A:E3D4:710A. As we have now been issuing blocks since July, apparently without effect, I am now blocking for 6 months rather than three. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:05, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: For IPv6 addresses, blocking a single address won't be really effective, because it changes frequently. Please see the following essay for advice on dealing with disruption by users on IPv6 addresses: en:User:TonyBallioni/Just block the /64.

Also, I would recommend creating a new edit/abuse filter, as suggested by DannyS712 and OhanaUnited: [11], [12]. Korg (talk) 15:37, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. I have been meaning to figure out how to do range blocks; and have now - with sadness - blocked this one for six months.

I agree also about the edit filter, but that remains outside my skill-set. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:56, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Complex history merge needed

Hi, could an admin perform history merge on all three of Wai-Chun George Ho, Wai-Chun Ho and George Wai-Chun Ho? These all refer to the same person, and I feel that this taxon author's page should be George Wai-Chun Ho, to be consistent with most of his publications in English. (It's complex because this is a Hong Kong name: as far as I can tell, Ho is his surname, Wai-Chun his Cantonese given name, and George his English given name; "Ho Wai-Chun George" and "George Ho Wai-Chun" also are possible orderings of his names I believe) Monster Iestyn (talk) 19:02, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

I don't think a history merge is appropriate, since the pages all evolved independently - we should just do a normal merge --DannyS712 (talk) 12:11, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

@DannyS712 Thanks for responding. To be honest I was suggesting history merge mainly so I wouldn't have to copy the contents of Wai-Chun George Ho to George Wai-Chun Ho (currently a redirect but formerly a page of its own) since that seemed messy. But if history merge is not a good idea, then I'll have to go ahead and do a copy+paste after all. Monster Iestyn (talk) 13:32, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

@Monster Iestyn you can do a copy-paste with a summary that provides attribution, and then we should keep the other pages around as redirects --DannyS712 (talk) 14:06, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

@DannyS712 Ah okay then, thanks! Monster Iestyn (talk) 14:18, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

┌──────────┘ I've added a short note about the page history to the redirect pages, lest they will most certainly be deleted (they're unused, other than mentioned here). –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 17:04, 23 May 2024 (UTC).

I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. DannyS712 (talk) 19:50, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

Please block an user

Please block I dont know if im sean 2 because of the vandalism--Tmv (talk) 06:05, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

 Done —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:31, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. DannyS712 (talk) 12:11, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

JavaScript in common.js user files

A JavaScript called "InPageEdit" is being used in a few common.js user setting files. The source code: https://unpkg.com/mediawiki-inpageedit
Almost all of the documentation is written in Chinese, but here's a brief description in English:

InPageEdit is a MediaWiki multi-function plug-in written by Xiaoyujun. It's mainly based on the jQuery JavaScript library. It has good mobile device support and a colorful design. The main function is designed to enable many MediaWiki functions to be completed without opening a new tab (including but not limited to editing), greatly speeding up the maintenance of the wiki. The plug-in adopts a modular design and provides many APIs that can be freely called.

For details, see API – InPageEdit Documentations. (Chinese)

The script is licensed under GNU General Public License 3.0, and also available as a GitHub project: github.com/inpageedit/inpageedit-v2
JavaScript- and jQuery-savvy administrators might want to have a look. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 08:39, 24 May 2024 (UTC).

Report concerning 2604:3D09:AF84:5900:4D55:1291:268E:1538

• 2604:3D09:AF84:5900:4D55:1291:268E:1538 (talk • contribs • block log • all projects)

Vandalism. See also Special:Contributions/2604:3D09:AF84:5900:0:0:0:0/64 and w:WP:64 XReport --Leonidlednev (talk) 23:51, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

 Done —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:15, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Checkuser on a spambot

Just wanted to note here that a made a request to stewards for a checkuser on User:GeniusGuppy102 based on their deleted edits - I sent this to stewards instead of asking locally since I was comparing them to User:SharpShark102 who has only edited on wikifunctions (I deleted the edits there too) and so local CUs wouldn't have been able to process the request. Figured I should leave a note here - anyway, the accounts were confirmed to each other and some other spambots and all locked. --DannyS712 (talk) 10:18, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

DannyS712 (talk • contribs • block log • all projects) thanks for the heads up, could you link the Steward request please. Technically I can see CU data from all wikis as an Ombud, however, that role does not permit me to do cross wiki SPI's unless related to an ombud request. So yes Stewards was the right call on this but I would like to see what this person was up to if I can. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 17:20, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

@Faendalimas see m:Steward requests/Checkuser/2024-06#Google ads spammers --DannyS712 (talk) 19:49, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

Please block 2604:3D09:A984:F000:7DD0:2506:57A7:1732

Nothing but trouble Me Da Wikipedian (talk) 15:40, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

 Done —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 15:47, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. @Koavf Me Da Wikipedian (talk) 15:47, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

special:contributions/2605:8D80:524:EEA5:0:0:0:0/64

Vandalism at Chromista. MathXplore (talk) 05:10, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

This IP was blocked by administrator Pigsonthewing at 10:13, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

–Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 02:14, 26 August 2024 (UTC).

24.89.232.123

• 24.89.232.123 (talk • contribs • block log • all projects)

Reason: Inserting nonsense/gibberish into pages. Syunsyunminmin (talk) 05:37, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

@Syunsyunminmin: The IP is now blocked. It's the second time this year, and now for a somewhat longer time period. Not indefinitely though, since that would contravene our blocking policy. Kind regards, Tommy Kronkvist (talk) 08:44, 13 August 2024 (UTC).

Stephen E. Thorpe

I wish to inform my fellow administrators that the English-born New Zealand entomologist Stephen E. Thorpe passed away in August 24, 2024.
–Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 02:01, 26 August 2024 (UTC).

Good Lord, that's awful. I will always be grateful for what he added to free knowledge, even if his legacy here is not all positive. In case any of his loved ones are reading this, we send our most sincere condolences. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:07, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

We had our differences, but so sad. With respect. Andyboorman (talk) 15:08, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

His dedication to taxonomy was absolute. An awful tragedy. Mariusm (talk) 07:45, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

My condolences to his family. Any idea what happened? He was 54, and born the year I graduated high school. Neferkheperre (talk) 12:14, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

There is a link in the pump to a newspaper article about it, unfortunately it was a homicide. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 13:22, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Stephen and I was born in the same year. You will find more information (CV, etc) in the references to his Wikidata: Stephen Thorpe (Q25674067).

–Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 08:50, 28 August 2024 (UTC).

Malformed user page

User:Atlas Þə Biologist has objected to me fixing the broken image rendering on their user page, and reverted my fixes. I leave it to other admins to decide whether the page is acceptable as it stands. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:47, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

This seems fairly harmless, if a bit silly. At the very least, he removed the message at the bottom of the page. This user purports to be nine years old (!), so unless the page is really causing any harm, I'm personally going to make sure to be very conservative about intervening and in the off chance that anyone here is not familiar with the terms of service (no allegations implicit), please make sure to be very careful if you are considering soliciting personal information from this user. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:05, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

The user has also uploaded seven media files to Commons (so far), all of which have been deleted due to copyright violations.
–Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 11:47, 9 September 2024 (UTC).

Note that viewed with my mobile phone the user page seems correctly rendered. Christian Ferrer (talk) 18:44, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Also correctly rendered in "MinervaNeue" appearance within user preferences seeting, so maybe the user is simply unable to see a potential issue. Personaly I see no harm to let it as it is, as the content seems acceptable (e.g. no promotional links, nothing rude in the texts, ect..). Christian Ferrer (talk) 18:56, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

I agree with both Justin and Christian Ferrer, however please also see the user's block log at Wikipedia. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 07:41, 10 September 2024 (UTC).

We have received a RfCU regarding this user Wikispecies:Requests_for_checkuser#Requests and it does check out to be two users and several IPs involved. @Koavf: how sure are you regarding the age of this person? As @Tommy Kronkvist: has noted there are also blocks on ENWP and uploads to Commons, @Lemonaka: has stated they are an LTA. Anyway we need to decide what to do the Check between:

• user:Atlas Þə Biologist and user:Atlas Þə Biologist (number 2)  Confirmed There are a number of IPs involved also.
• As we alread had a discussion going here I thought I would continue the discussion here rather than on the RfCU page. Justin and @Dan Koehl: please confirm

Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 07:33, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

How sure? Not at all and in fact, highly doubt it. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 11:08, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm a little bit suspect this is a sockpuppet of Risto hot sir, anyway, just per their edit summary. However if CU result is still against it, then they maybe not. Lemonaka (talk) 07:21, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm not against it, just waiting for a more positive consensus for it. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:07, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

┌────────────────────┘ The user seems to have stopped editing at Wikispecies. For completeness: please note that there is also a Wikimedia account User:Atlas Þə Biologist 2.5 that has been active on Wikiquote.^{(User page)} I don't know whether this is the same person, but it seems likely. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 15:12, 2 October 2024 (UTC).

This user has two similarly-named accounts on Commons, too. Or did. Who knows. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 15:16, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

True. Apart from Wikispecies, Commons and English Wikiquote they also have accounts on the Dutch, English, Japanese, Spanish and Waray language versions of Wikipedia, the English versions of Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wikiversity and Wiktionary, as well as a Wikidata and Incubator account. Here are links to their global account information @ MetaWiki:

• Atlas Þə Biologist (registered on August 20, 2024)
• Atlas Þə Biologist (number 2) (registered on September 13, 2024)
• Atlas Þə Biologist 2.5 (registered on September 17, 2024)

Only one of them is blocked, and then only on one wiki, namely User:Atlas Þə Biologist (number 2) here on Wikispecies (block log).

Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 17:32, 2 October 2024 (UTC).

Deleted pages created by user

Earlier today user "Atlas Þə Biologist (number 2)" also created the out of project scope pages Superregnum, Regnum, Talk:Regum [sic], Subregnum, Domain, Domains, Phylum, Subphylum, Classis, Ordo, Subordo, Familia, Subfamilia, Genus (taxonomy), Species (taxonomy) and Cladus, which have all been deleted by @Andy Mabbett and myself.
–Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 11:18, 14 September 2024 (UTC).

I also deleted Regum, which was explicitly noted as being a misspelling (of "regnum") on said page and Wild RNA and indefinitely blocked this account per WS:BP. Of course, users could have legitimate reasons for multiple accounts, but it's not obvious that this is the case here. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 11:28, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Report concerning 79.54.123.103

• 79.54.123.103 (talk • contribs • block log • all projects)

Vandalism XReport --Ternera (talk) 14:40, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

 Done —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 14:43, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Pain bot and Painbot made by Special:Contributions/186.96.215.221

These pages are out of scope, but the author is repeating SD tag removal. Please take care of the pages. MathXplore (talk) 02:09, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

 Done —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:35, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Bot approvals

Attention fellow administrators 1234qwer1234qwer4—Andyboorman—Burmeister—Christian Ferrer—Dan Koehl—DannyS712—EncycloPetey– Faendalimas—Floscuculi—Hector Bottai—Keith Edkins—Koavf—MKOliver—MPF—Mariusm– Neferkheperre—OhanaUnited—PeterR—Pigsonthewing—RLJ—Thiotrix Heya there are two new bot approval requests for people to look at on the Bot approval page. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 17:18, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the information. I've added a note about it in the "Recent changes" header, as well as the ping to all admins above.
–Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 17:38, 21 September 2024 (UTC).

Can someone please close the voting, approve and change the bot flags for these bot's requests for approval – preferably an admin that didn't participate in the voting? Thank you! –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 14:14, 3 October 2024 (UTC).

I will deal with them on the weekend if no one else does, I was thinking though that you @Tommy Kronkvist: should handle the second application as it requires translation admin access. I can deal with Leaderboard's if needed. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 08:07, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you @Scott. I've now approved the request for Leaderbot, and elevated their user rights to include bot status. DannyS712 bot is approved for a 7 day trial period, including translation administrator rights. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 10:16, 5 October 2024 (UTC).

I've also added them to Wikispecies:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 10:17, 5 October 2024 (UTC).

@Tommy Kronkvist: Please add them to Wikispecies:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPageJSON (this is now the proper check page to use, see [13]). Wikispecies:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPageJSON could possibly be transcluded into Wikispecies:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage for convenience ({{Wikispecies:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPageJSON}}, {{msgnw:Wikispecies:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPageJSON}}). Korg (talk) 11:42, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

┌────────────┘ Thank you, @Korg: they're now included in the JSON page, which I had forgotten about. I'll leave the transclusion to someone else. :-)
–Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 11:53, 5 October 2024 (UTC).

Special:Contributions/129.63.91.8

The IP is making pages outside the scope, please delete the pages. MathXplore (talk) 06:39, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

 Done —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:48, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

Special:Contributions/103.249.22.75

Possible vandalism, please consider blocks to the IP. MathXplore (talk) 04:57, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

 Done —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:41, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

Special:Contributions/2605:8D80:1392:A874:16:FE37:8546:374

Vandalism, please stop their edits. MathXplore (talk) 13:16, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

 Done. Note that there is a similar situation with IP editors adding repeating characters to entries. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 13:36, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

@Koavf: Please note the block logs (typically, for three months) and talk page of those in the section above. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:21, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: Terribly sorry if I'm not understanding (I've had a lot of trouble sleeping lately :/). Are you trying to say that there's something inadequate with the action I took re: 2605:8D80:1392:A874:16:FE37:8546:374? If you feel like you need to extend a block that I made to short or something, I trust your judgement to do it. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:32, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Bot needed please

Can anybody provide a bot to automatically change == Links == into === Links ===. The problem with the first iteration is that is also gives an unnecessary section break. Links are part of the Reference Section and not a separate stand alone section surely? There are hundreds of these mistakes. Thanks in advance. Andyboorman (talk) 09:45, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

​ I'll try to fix it later this week. If anyone else starts before me (which is of course welcome!) then please remember to check that there is always a level 2 "References" section above the level 3 "Links" section, i.e. the code should look like this:

=={{int:References}}==
==={{int:Primary references}}===
==={{int:Additional references}}===
==={{int:Links}}===

The {{int:…}} tags are important in order for the automatic localization/translation to take part. However, the "Primary references" and "Additional references" sections are of course optional, depending on which type of references that are used on each particular page.
–Happy editing! Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 15:50, 28 October 2024 (UTC).

Use of Wikidata

Several times I have reverted User:RLJ's addition of data values to existing instances of {{IPNI standard form}} (example), which are otherwise automatically populated with the same values from Wikidata.

In July, I asked them to desist from such actions. Their response was that:

Wikispecies is no front-end of Wikidata; content (the standard form is important content, no facultative content as that delivered by Taxonbar or Authority control) should stand word by word in the article. It should be taken from the original source and not from another wiki

and the edits continue.

AIUI, there is consensus to use Wikidata for this and similar purposes. Ignoring consensus is discourteous to other editors, wilfully damaging to the project, and is behaviour unbecoming of an admin (which RLJ is, and which is why I have not summarily blocked them).

Am I right in my understanding of the previously agreed consensus, and if so should RJL abide by it? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:29, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

I do not recall an explicit conversation on this, but my perspective is that it is not helpful to add local values and if editors here are concerned about the data integrity at Wikidata, you can easily watch Wikidata changes on your watchlist locally. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:49, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

I thought consensus was not to treat WD as an authoritative source - I would need to dig to find the discussion. Many editors, myself included, do not contribute to WD, but try to use external authoritative sources for WS. IPNI is authoritative, but I have had to send corrections to them, when and if required. If WD is automatically harvesting from IPNI or other sources, where are the cross checks? There are similar issues with {{Image}}, where Commons has not kept up with even fairly historic nomenclatural changes. Andyboorman (talk) 21:31, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

There is no consensus at all that Wikispecies is obliged to use content from Wikidata! I fully support User RLJ, that the IPNI form is a taxonomically important info for botanists, and it should be included from original source in Wikispecies (like a taxon name and its parent taxon, that we do not import from another wiki). I always add IPNI form manually to author pages. The import from Wikidata is indeed helpful for botanical author pages that are not yet in IPNI, because phycologists and mycologists get author pages on IPNI with a long time-lag, (sometimes decades). As soon as there exists an IPNI author page and Wikidata is updated, the IPNI form will be displayed on Wikispecies.

The same applies for images: The import from Wikidata is useful for taxa with 0-1 image: if there is an image on Wikidata, it will be displayed here. But if there are several images available, I want to make my own choice according to taxonomical reasons and do not like to automatically use the image chosen on Wikidata. Thiotrix (talk) 11:37, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Indeed I use the image template to alert me that there are images available to be screened. Andyboorman (talk) 11:49, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

What is the advantage to fetch essential, stable content from outside every time you consult an author article? What if the property P428 "botanist author abbreviation" is removed from Wikidata, by vandalism or by consensus? I think it is in the interest of both sides to build up dependences between Wikidata and other projects sparingly, where necessary, not wherever possible. --RLJ (talk) 16:43, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

• In the past I have considered Wikidata as a secondary source. We are largely responsible for synthesising the Primary sources for any given taxon and presenting it in a usable format. Wikidata takes that information and then further provides it to the rest of the Wikimedia Projects. As such considering Wikidata as a primary resource would be circular. This does not mean that we cannot use Wikidata, just that it is secondary to the primary sources. Unlike the Wikipedia's who focus on secondary or review sources for their articles we do not Wikipedia is presenting encyclopaedic information, this type of information is generally sourced from review articles, that is the norm. We are presenting the taxa and their metadata and as far as is possible this should be sourced from the original primary literature relevant to each taxon and also from globally recognised checklists. Wikidata is not a checklist it is a database, Wikispecies is a global checklist and has to avoid circularity. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 17:04, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

---

Oh dear. I did deliberately word my post to ask about previously agreed consensus, in the hope of avoiding re-litigation of the point. Any discussion of changing that consensus (if there is one) should be on the wider village pump.

Nonetheless I would make the following observations;

• Nobody is suggesting that "Wikidata is an authoritative source". It is simply a repository in which to store 'what authoritative sources say, from which we can easily transclude them here. That is no less authoritative than storing them in wiki-markup on a Wikispecies page, from which markup they are transcluded into pages served to user's browser; or storing authoritative data in a template about a genus, and transcluding it into a species' page.
• Nobody is suggesting that "Wikidata is obliged [by whom?] to use content from Wikidata"; it is for the community to decide whether to do so, and we unambiguously have done, if not in this case then in others. It would be foolhardy to not do so.
• Storing data on Wikidata and transcluding it here means that data is reused automatically by 100s of Wikipedias, and third parties. Storing it directly in Wikispecies does not make it available automatically to anyone, and we know of no-one who is scraping it from Wikispecies in any other way.
• Wikidata will store such data anyway. Storing it locally means we have the data twice, independently, instead of once. No system analyst worth their salt will design a system deliberately to do this (backups not withstanding).
• Storing data on Wikidata means that there more eyes watching for errors, conflations and vandalism; and that we befit from automatic updates when conflations are resolved.
• Wikidata is not "outside". Wikidata, Wikispecies and a number of other of wikis - not least Wikimedia Commons - are all part of a wider "Wikimedia" project.
• Wikidata takes no information from Wikispecies; not least because on Wikispecies data remains largely unstructured.
• There is no "circularity" in transcluding data from Wikidata rather than storing it in Wikispecies.
• Whether data on a Wikispecies page is encoded in wikimarkup on Wikispecies or displayed by a Wikispecies template that transcludes if from Wikidata is invisible to the reader and makes no difference to the reader's perception of the Wikispecies page.
• Making as much use of Wikidata as possible reduces the workload for the Wikispecies community, freeing up its members to make more pages about more taxons, papers and authors rather than fiddling with redundant updates to existing pages.

-- Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:17, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Wikidata takes no information from Wikispecies; not least because on Wikispecies data remains largely unstructured.

• if that were so why do we get a notification of page creation on Wikidata whenever we add a new taxon.

There is no "circularity" in transcluding data from Wikidata rather than storing it in Wikispecies.

• using data as authoritative that originates from us then is added to Wikidata, then reused here is the definition of scientific circulatrity.

Storing data on Wikidata and transcluding it here means that data is reused automatically by 100s of Wikipedias,

• I have no issue with this, not my point. It should be on Wikidata for use in 100s of other wikis. I supported the Taxonbar, for this reason. Though I do not agree with it being in alphabetical order, and I felt that at least one authoritative source should be a requirement along with Wikidata. Eg ZooBank and Wikidata for an animal, IPNI and Wikidata for a plant etc. Either of those could be replaced with CoL. For your 100s of other wikis to use it does not require it to be here too.

Nobody is suggesting that "Wikidata is an authoritative source

• Yet you complained when in my publications on International Species lists and Global Metrics of Checklists Wikispecies was listed as one of 2 Global Checklists (the other CoL) but we did not include Wikidata in this.

Storing data on Wikidata means that there more eyes watching for errors, conflations and vandalism; and that we befit from automatic updates when conflations are resolved.

• I agree on vandalism but what they do not do is Check the data with an understanding of the relevant codes, keep up to date with nomenclatural decisions on all taxa etc. The information (the metadata) on wikidata is sometimes out of date or misinformed. Here we have specialists in nomenclatural metadata examining issues and fixing them in real time. The editors in Wikidata do a good job under the circumstances, but it is a storage system and not enough editors there understand the intricacies of Nomenclatural Taxonomy.

Nobody is suggesting that "Wikidata is an authoritative source

• I am aware of this, but its also about the optics. Also the scientific community needs an interface that they can understand without knowing sparsql. The scientific community see Wikidata as a database and sites like Wikispecies as a front end. I would like to see a better interaction between Wikidata and Wikispecies but it needs a few things discussed. I am happy to revisit the issue of Publication Templates make them better for machine reading. But it all needs a sensible flow chart. That is Wikispecies creates the species data it is stored by Wikidata (who start giving credit) and then distribute it as needed to other wikis. The two red flags on Wikidata is Zero Credit for the compilers of the data, and second its a black box. In the metrics system for checklists under development Wikidata would score zero for both these, giving it a huge red flag.

Anyway we do use Wikidata, more now with the Taxonbar which is finally being implimented properly. Other discussions need to be had when people are ready to do so. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 20:06, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Special:Contributions/2A02:3037:313:B4C3:9486:4A6E:A5FB:6753

Vandalism, please revert their edits. MathXplore (talk) 23:49, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

 Done —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:54, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

Report concerning Donatedeorg

• Donatedeorg (talk • contribs • block log • all projects)

Spam XReport --Ternera (talk) 19:51, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

 Done by someone else. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:26, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

Create Redirect

Logged on this morning and found the appearance had radically changed. Unfortunately, my Create Redirect gadget link has been deleted. Can anybody help? Andyboorman (talk) 09:54, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean. Which skin do you use? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 10:13, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Not sure but it has randomly changed. I have found the tools, but they have migrated. Not important just curious. Andyboorman (talk) 10:25, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

The change was announced at Wikispecies:Village Pump#Switching to the Vector 2022 skin: the final date. You will notice the total disregard for the issues raised there, and previously. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:01, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Please nuke Special:Contributions/173.76.103.74

Cross-wiki spammer who has created completely out-of-scope pages. — JJPMaster (talk) 17:55, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

 Done I hope Andyboorman (talk) 18:51, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Bot request

Just letting all know there is a new Bot request to vote on this oione is related to the discussion on Taxonbar. Also the bot owner I have pre-emptively set their user flags to confirmed and autopatrol, so we do not end up with thousands of new unpatrolled edits. He is a very well known user on ENWP so I do not think its an issue just granting these Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 17:29, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Speedily Approved. See Bots; Requests for approval: Tom.Bot

–Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 10:48, 5 December 2024 (UTC).

Please import Template:Projectname from Wikimedia Commons

was: Please import Template:Projectname from c:Template:Projectname

As the title says. Currently, the redlinking of that template prevents {{interwiki redirect}} from working properly. JJP_Master (she/they) 01:19, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

@JJP:   Done. The template has been imported by Wikispecies admin Andy Mabbett.

–Best regards, Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 01:31, 9 December 2024 (UTC).

Report concerning Fishblasterassblaster2

• Fishblasterassblaster2 (talk • contribs • block log • all projects)

Vandalism XReport --Leonidlednev (talk) 19:35, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

@Leonidlednev: Earlier today the user account you are referring to was blocked for one week by our administrator @Andy Boorman. I have since prolonged that to an indefinite block, due to the amount and severity of the vandalism.

To our other administrators: The above user account Fishblasterassblaster2 (talk • contribs • block log • all projects) is registered both here at Wikispecies and at Meta-Wiki. There is a similarly named user account Fishblasterassblaster (talk • contribs • block log • all projects) registered at the English Wiktionary (where their actions has triggered the abuse filter 10 times) and at Meta-Wiki.

The two accounts may very well be unrelated, however they were registered through the Wikimedia log-in API only ten minutes apart.
–Vigilant regards, Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 22:02, 10 December 2024 (UTC).

​ Please also see Barboach333 (talk • contribs • block log • all projects) (indefinetly blocked).
–Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 20:09, 11 December 2024 (UTC).

these are socks, checked. Positive result. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 21:08, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

Localization for Bengali

Hello, I have made a request for the Bengali localization of terms here. Kindly have a look. Thank you. Asked42 (talk) 14:47, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. This page is the Administrator's Noticeboard, and only four of our 23 administrators are Translation Administrators as well (including me). Hence, I suggest we keep future messages exclusively to the Wikispecies Localization talk page (per your link above) in order to avoid a "fragmented" discussion. –Best regards, Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 17:32, 11 December 2024 (UTC).

Sure. Thank you for your response. Asked42 (talk) 18:51, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

┌────┘ Resolved. All necessary actions regarding the above issue are now finalized. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 13:40, 16 December 2024 (UTC).

Special:Contributions/2A02:A03F:6A97:E201:D1C5:5AD4:9F71:D435

This IP made Zguègue (actor), an out-of-scope page, but they are removing SD tags from the page. Please take care of this page. MathXplore (talk) 14:23, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for your note, @MathXplore. I deleted the "Zguègue (actor)" page two days ago, but it was soon recreated by the same IP. Earlier today the IP was blocked for two weeks by our administrator @Pigsonthewing, i.e. Andy Mabbett. At the same time he also deleted the "Zguègue (actor)" page one more time. I've since write protected it so that the page can't be recreated or edited by new or unregistered users.
–Best regards, Tommy Kronkvist (talk),21:50, 17 December 2024 (UTC).