User talk:TheSandDoctor/Archives/2019/November

Latest comment: 4 years ago by TheSandDoctor in topic SPI soft redirects


Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Goldemold

You missed a step: check the account name in {{SPI archive notice}}. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 15:57, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

@Ivanvector: Fixed. Thanks for reaching out - that was my first more complicated split.   The rest of it looked good to you? --TheSandDoctor Talk 15:58, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
Yep, all looked good except for that one thing. Personally I would have just copied the text over to a new page, but I guess splitting the history is the "right" way to do it. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 17:07, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

TheNiceuser

Hi! Can you revoke his TPA? It's a cross-wiki vandal. Thank you! —Hasley 18:46, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

Hi Hasley. Embarrassingly, I never saw this until just now. The account is locked, so there is no need now. Sorry about that! --TheSandDoctor Talk 21:42, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

New Page Review newsletter November 2019

 

Hello TheSandDoctor/Archives/2019,

This newsletter comes a little earlier than usual because the backlog is rising again and the holidays are coming very soon.

Getting the queue to 0

There are now 806 holders of the New Page Reviewer flag! Most of you requested the user right to be able to do something about the huge backlog but it's still roughly less than 10% doing 90% of the work. Now it's time for action.
Exactly one year ago there were 'only' 3,650 unreviewed articles, now we will soon be approaching 7,000 despite the growing number of requests for the NPR user right. If each reviewer soon does only 2 reviews a day over five days, the backlog will be down to zero and the daily input can then be processed by every reviewer doing only 1 review every 2 days - that's only a few minutes work on the bus on the way to the office or to class! Let's get this over and done with in time to relax for the holidays.
Want to join? Consider adding the NPP Pledge userbox.
Our next newsletter will announce the winners of some really cool awards.

Coordinator

Admin Barkeep49 has been officially invested as NPP/NPR coordinator by a unanimous consensus of the community. This is a complex role and he will need all the help he can get from other experienced reviewers.

This month's refresher course

Paid editing is still causing headaches for even our most experienced reviewers: This official Wikipedia article will be an eye-opener to anyone who joined Wikipedia or obtained the NPR right since 2015. See The Hallmarks to know exactly what to look for and take time to examine all the sources.

Tools
  • It is now possible to select new pages by date range. This was requested by reviewers who want to patrol from the middle of the list.
  • It is now also possible for accredited reviewers to put any article back into the New Pages Feed for re-review. The link is under 'Tools' in the side bar.
Reviewer Feedback

Would you like feedback on your reviews? Are you an experienced reviewer who can give feedback to other reviewers? If so there are two new feedback pilot programs. New Reviewer mentorship will match newer reviewers with an experienced reviewer with a new reviewer. The other program will be an occasional peer review cohort for moderate or experienced reviewers to give feedback to each other. The first cohort will launch November 13.

Second set of eyes
  • Not only are New Page Reviewers the guardians of quality of new articles, they are also in a position to ensure that pages are being correctly tagged for deletion and maintenance and that new authors are not being bitten. This is an important feature of your work, especially while some routine tagging for deletion can still be carried out by non NPR holders and inexperienced users. Read about it at the Monitoring the system section in the tutorial. If you come across such editors doing good work, don't hesitate to encourage them to apply for NPR.
  • Do be sure to have our talk page on your watchlist. There are often items that require reviewers' special attention, such as to watch out for pages by known socks or disruptive editors, technical issues and new developments, and of course to provide advice for other reviewers.
Arbitration Committee

The annual ArbCom election will be coming up soon. All eligible users will be invited to vote. While not directly concerned with NPR, Arbcom cases often lead back to notability and deletion issues and/or actions by holders of advanced user rights.

Community Wish list

There is to be no wish list for WMF encyclopedias this year. We thank Community Tech for their hard work addressing our long list of requirements which somewhat overwhelmed them last year, and we look forward to a successful completion.


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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:33, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2019).

  Guideline and policy news

  • A related RfC is seeking the community's sentiment for a binding desysop procedure.

  Arbitration


Quack?

As you were one of the blocking admins who reviewed behavioural evidence at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Claíomh Solais/Archive, I thought I'd ask for your input here. This one is really bringing to mind what I recall of the sockmaster account of this sockdrawer. @Grayfell:, you also reviewed a lot of the behavioural patterns of the sockmaster. Is this one quacking for you, too? - CorbieVreccan 01:08, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

Hi @CorbieVreccan:, this edit (perhaps not used to images??) and general behaviour does strike me as kind of strange, but I'm not sure it's megaphone quacking. What makes you suspicious? --TheSandDoctor Talk 01:30, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
The same type of edits defending "alt-right" and neo-Nazi figures and their politics, on a lot of the same articles. Edit-warring, aggressive, condescending speech patterns and WP:BATTLE attitude, particular focus on kings of the same regions of Ireland and genealogical connections to these historical figures and regions. - CorbieVreccan 01:36, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
Hello. Since I was asked, I looked into it, and it's quacking loudly to me.
There are a lot of close similarities I could point to, but as an example, both have included petty trivia about "homosexuals" in the far-right, apparently based on first-party gossip: Compare this to this behemoth most recently, and others. Combine this with the very specific focus on the same obscure Irish history and genealogy articles and it's very unlikely this is a coincidence.
Based on this, I looked into edit history, and now think that Claíomh Solais was also a sock.
Edits overlap with Rí Lughaid who was blocked, appealed and then blocked again for "sneaky racist vandalism" in 2012, per Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive740#Antisemitic, sneaky vandalism and Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive742#Sneaky racist vandalism. This is almost certainly the same editor based on behavior and article overlap. Claoimh Solais was created a few days later, and shares the same nasty attitude (slightly toned-down), extreme political agenda, and was editing many of the exact same obscure articles in similar ways.
One example I found which also includes Blight55 is Dalcassians, which these three editors are mostly responsible for. That's how I found Rí Lughaid, but specific diffs won't be too hard to find.
This older account would be irrelevant, but I think Blight55 was likely created as a backup in 2016, since the editor correctly predicted they would eventually be blocked again. If I'm right, this behavior has spanned years, and there are probably more, as well. As the old ANI discussions mention, Rí Lughaid came out swinging and was precocious, so it's probably not that editor's first account. Grayfell (talk) 23:04, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

16:48, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

22:04, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

20:17, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

ArbCom 2019 election voter message

 Hello! Voting in the 2019 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 on Monday, 2 December 2019. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

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Google Code-In 2019 is coming - please mentor some documentation tasks!

Hello,

Google Code-In, Google-organized contest in which the Wikimedia Foundation participates, starts in a few weeks. This contest is about taking high school students into the world of opensource. I'm sending you this message because you recently edited a documentation page at the English Wikipedia.

I would like to ask you to take part in Google Code-In as a mentor. That would mean to prepare at least one task (it can be documentation related, or something else - the other categories are Code, Design, Quality Assurance and Outreach) for the participants, and help the student to complete it. Please sign up at the contest page and send us your Google account address to google-code-in-admins@lists.wikimedia.org, so we can invite you in!

From my own experience, Google Code-In can be fun, you can make several new friends, attract new people to your wiki and make them part of your community.

If you have any questions, please let us know at google-code-in-admins@lists.wikimedia.org.

Thank you!

--User:Martin Urbanec (talk) 21:58, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

16:52, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

SPI soft redirects

Hey TheSandDoctor, thanks for merging the SPI case Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Ranjan Mistry. In the future, I would leave {{SPIarchive notice|newcasename}} in place at the source page—in this case Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/ManishSharma14—because it generates a soft redirect to the new SPI page: you can see it now says, Please note that a case was originally opened under ManishSharma14 (talk · contribs) but has been moved to Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Ranjan Mistry. This is especially useful in order to keep it a blue link when there are inbound links to the old SPI case page on Wikipedia; in this case, I had linked to the old title in the reason field when blocking the socks involved. Thanks, Mz7 (talk) 22:44, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

Will do, Mz7! Thanks for reaching out. --TheSandDoctor Talk 16:09, 29 November 2019 (UTC)