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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Muscat Hoe (talk | contribs) at 01:47, 16 December 2014 (→Torga's block: new section). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Admins: If one of my admin actions is clearly a mistake or is actively harming the encyclopaedia, please reverse it. Don't wait for me if I'm not around or the case is obvious.

This talk page is archived regularly by a bot so I can focus on the freshest discussions. If your thread was archived but you had more to say, feel free to rescue it from the archive.

2001:1680:101:5:0:0:0:2

Maybe oversight the edits or edit summaries? --NeilN 15:36, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Personally, I don't think most of those edits meet a strict reading of the criteria, but another admin has already RevDel'd them all. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:19, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Btw, NeilN: If you want something Oversighted, you should NEVER post related information onwiki, but personally, by email to oversighters. (and see the editnotice of this page...) — Revi 16:24, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Well, yes, that too. Nice to know somebody reads the bright red text! HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:27, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

I do that if the material has personally identifying information or is otherwise sensitive (e.g., a suicide threat). If it's just grossly offensive, dropping a note to an active admin usually does the trick. --NeilN 16:31, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

I see no reason for oversight either, it's exactly the sort of thing revdel was originally established for (thanks to Jeremy). Acroterion (talk) 16:39, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, I can never keep track of which is the proper term to use so I use them interchangeably to mean, "remove the edit summary". Guess I shouldn't. --NeilN 16:52, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

RevDel (WP:REVDEL) is a revision delete, performed by sysops. It can be viewed or restored by any sysops (or Stewards). Oversight (WP:Oversight) is a complete hide from the DB, performed by Ocersighters. It can be viewed by Oversighters only. — Revi 01:54, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Actually, the 'complete hide from the database' method id deprecated, as I understand it (and was nigh impossible to reverse). "Suppression" is the latest bit of newspeak, which is basically RevDel, but oversigthers have an option labelled "hide from administrators", which ... does what it says on the tin. And can be viewed or restored/downgraded to admin RevDel by any oversighter at any time. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 02:20, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm just going to stick with "hide the edit summary" from now on :-) --NeilN 02:29, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Oh, yeah. Oversight extension is deprecated, and is uninstalled on all wmfwikis except enwiki. — Revi 02:34, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, "hide edit summary" works just fine. Any admin worth their salt will know what you mean! HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 02:47, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

To anybody without the admin bit, an edit that is REVDELled and an edit that is suppressed look identical in page history, watchlists and contribs (the middle edit of these three was suppressed); there is no indication as to which of the two was used. If you look at the page's deletion log, you'll find that REVDELs are logged in there, but suppressions are not; if an edit is REVDELled and then suppressed, the log shows the first action and not the second (like this).

To an admin, the two methods are clearly different when viewing the history, etc.: the REVDELled edit has the usual diff links (cur/prev/whatever), a suppressed edit hasn't; and in a page history, the pair of radio buttons for the "Compare selected revisions" feature are selectable for a REVDELled edit, but greyed out for a suppressed edit.

If you need an edit to be suppressed, there's a link in the first box at the top of WP:OVERSIGHT, it goes to Special:EmailUser/Oversight - bash off an email, there's somebody on duty around the clock; and you'll get a reply inside a couple of hours either letting you know that your wish has been granted, or explaining why it's not going to be done. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:01, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, and a question

Thanks for blocking those three socks at Manuel Uribe. I had suspected all three came from the same person. Not being an admin (and not seeking to become one in the near future), how can I be more proactive in such cases? It appears I must file at WP:SPI, but aside from asking to become a CheckUser, do I have other options? Thanks again, and best wishes, Jusdafax 02:09, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

In cases like that, where it's that obvious and the accounts are all vandals anyway, you can just report them all to AIV and explain that they're all related. As long as you make the connection clear, and make it clear that they're vandals as well as socks—as a rule of thumb, if it takes more than a minute to analyse an AIV report, either it's too complex for AIV or the reporter hasn't provided enough information. For less obvious cases, SPI is the place to go to get the socking properly investigated. And you can always file a request at RfPP; you might get a brief protection as a stopgap or the admin might look into it and block the accounts. The trouble is that the SPI can potentially take days and RfPP is likely to take several hours, so the only thing I can suggest for attracting admin eyes is to drop a note on AN or ANI or to drop me a note here—if I'm asleep (as I should be now!), a few hundred people watch this page and many of them will be admins, so they might be willing to look into it. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 02:46, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Much obliged! Jusdafax 13:20, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Please post this message to Mr. Wales' talk page

Hello Mr. Mitchell. I have attempted to post to Mr. Wales talk page but I was unable to because I didn't have an account. I now have an account, and am still unable to. I asked on the IRC help channel and it was suggested for me to ask you post this message to Mr. Wales talk page on my behalf because you are a moderator on English Misplaced Pages. Could you please post the message on my behalf in the sub-section which is discussing the United Arab Emirates. Thank you very much M.al-A.UAE (talk) 04:19, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Dear Mr. Wales,

I am a graduate of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at United Arab Emirates University in Al Ain, and have a BA in Mass Communications (i.e. journalism). Your acceptance of the $500,000 in Dubai is the subject of discussion among Emiratis who are not in agreeance with the current state of affairs in the UAE as it relates to human rights and freedom of speech.

The Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Award which came with the $500,000 prize is named after Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the "ruler" of Dubai and Vice President of the UAE. From the positions he holds in the UAE, he is partly responsible for the current state of human rights in my country. I see that posters above are bringing to your attention the abysmal human rights record in this country. They, and you, are likely well versed in the state of labor rights in the UAE. They have not, however, brought up the situation in the UAE on freedom of speech, and therefore the ability of those in the UAE to freely disseminate knowledge, and this goes to the core in showing how absurd the award is.

Mr. Wales, please consider the following cases:

1. In 2012, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation was forced to close its office in Abu Dhabi. Their mission is the promotion of “promotion of freedom and liberty, peace, and justice”. The National Democratic Institute for International Affairs also had its Dubai office closed by the authorities. No legitimate reason was given for the closure. See: http://edition.cnn.com/2012/04/06/world/meast/uae-organizations/
2. In 2012, Assistant Professor of Communication Matt J. Duffy had his contract at Zayed University cancelled and he was deported from the country. Mr. Duffy helped to found a campus chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and attempted to teach students journalistic ethics and standards. Mr. Duffy wrote about this at http://mattjduffy.com/2012/08/ive-been-kicked-out-of-the-united-arab-emirates/. Mr. Duffy also offers reasons for the termination of his employment and deportation at http://mattjduffy.com/2012/08/top-18-things-that-may-have-gotten-me-booted-from-the-uae/.
3. In 2014, Yasin Kakande was fired from The National and deported from the country for writing the autobiographical book The Ambitious Struggle: An African Journalist's Journey of Hope and Identity in a Land of Migrants (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ambitious-Struggle-Journalists-Identity-Migrants/dp/189035743X/ref=la_B00GU54WOO_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1418300730&sr=1-1). Mr. Wales, please take the time to read this book, which is banned in the UAE (http://www.migrant-rights.org/research/uae-censors-author-of-book-criticizing-migrant-race-issues/).

There is another case you may not be familiar with. The UAE 94 is a group of 94 lawyers, judges, human rights activists and others, who have spoken out in favour of democracy in my country. The dissidents are members of Al Islah, a non-violent political group, and do have an affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood. I do not agree with the politics of this group, I am myself an atheist (a capital offense in my country). However, I do agree with their non-violent stance, and I do believe in their rights to call for democracy in this country. This group has been subjected to arbitrary detention, torture and trials which have been deemed to be unfair by the international community (http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/19106). On March 17, Osama Najjar was arrested (http://twitmail.com/email/533078805/901/533078805) because he spoke out on Twitter (https://twitter.com/O_Hussain_) about these abuses. One week prior to your visit to the UAE, Osama was imprisoned for 3 years and fined 500,000 dirhams for speaking out. (http://en.rsf.org/emirats-arabes-unis-online-activist-gets-three-years-02-12-2014,47327.html)

There is no freedom in the UAE Mr. Wales.

I appreciate greatly that you have committed yourself to ensuring that the $500,000 which was awarded to you in the name of Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum will go toward advancing human rights in the Arab world. I also appreciate that you have committed part of your cause to include open data access, but sincerely Mr. Wales, what good is pushing for open data in this region, when the region is not open in terms of freedom of the press and human rights. There are many groups which are fighting for basic human rights in the UAE and some of them, as noted above, do have some links to some unsavoury groups. My suggestion to you Mr. Wales is to make contact with Mr. Duffy and Mr. Kakande and ask for their advice and guidance.

I do have one simple request for you Mr. Wales. When you donate the $500,000 please do so openly by putting out press releases on these donations. There is no stronger message that you can send to the regime in my country, and others in Arab world, than publicly declaring that you stand with the people who do not enjoy basic human rights. This will send a strong message to governments that they can not place a price on human rights and for the silence of the West.

We, the people, of the United Arab Emirates, thank you Mr. Wales for your commitment to helping us gain basic human rights and we trust the organisations you will donate the $500,000 to will put the money to good use.

Thank you for your time. M.al-A.UAE (talk) 04:19, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

I've copied it over for you. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:18, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

pls

hi here there was vandalism. user lollo123 wrote vulgar words, instead I wrote to explain him do no that in an asian language. So, please can you delete permanently those contribution from history, so that only administator can see that? Thnaks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.154.1.254 (talk) 12:14, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

We don't delete edit summaries just because they contain vulgar words, and even if we did, I'm not convinced those are vulgar—lol seems more likely to refer to "laugh out loud". HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:25, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

i did not say that. I am not talking about "lol". I am talking about the contributions, where he wrote vulgar words like here "murshed k. p", which means son of the b.... Please delete them for ever. None, except admins can click in cur or prev, something called "delete the revision text". I think you understood.

Hi @HJ Mitchell, I believe that the Ip is talking about WP:REVDEL. Those stuffs are really considered as swear words and all of them should be deleted. Best regards. --115ash 12:37, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Topic ban

I don't know how long ago that you gave me a topic ban regarding to parishes in County Clare. It never showed up in the official list so I do not have a clue when that topic ban will end. Can you enlighten me? The Banner talk 12:39, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

It was back in April (we discussed it here; I found that from your block log). So ... talk to me. You haven't had any major issues since then, have you? At least not that I've seen. I can see myself vacating the topic ban, but I'd need you to assure me that you wouldn't get back into trouble if I did... HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:14, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

I have learned something more about parishes and civil parishes. I have also learned that I am powerless against teamwork and that it is better to make a runner in those cases. The Banner talk 17:23, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Temperate language

Well said. You hereby win the admin calmness award. Thanks, EdJohnston (talk) 16:45, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. They didn't appreciate it, but I'm getting sick of the bickering there and it constantly spilling over into noticeboards and other areas. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:53, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

User:MusikAnimal/requestHelper

Thanks for the email, very informative, and inspirational! I laughed out loud to "Azerbaijani Wikibooks". Maybe stewardship isn't so desirable! Anyway, I wanted to say this on-wiki: I have made a rewrite of the protection.js that excludes the tagging, which Twinkle offers for us. The script also adds similar functionality for WP:AIV and WP:PERM/R, where administrator notation templates are used. Meanwhile it is less than half the size of protection.js! Thought I'd let you know :) Cheers — MusikAnimal 23:00, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Ooh, that is handy! I miss the sidebar link to RfPP (but that's a minor quibble; I'm sure you or somebody else could write a bit of javascript or CSS to replace that. In fact, a sidebar link to AIV would be lovely while I'm thinking about it). More seriously, though, it's not actually doing anything—I've tried it on AIV, RfPP, and PERM/R. The options all appear in the sidebar, so I click the one I want and it fills in the edit summary, but it doesn't actually add the notation template. :( (@MusikAnimal:) HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 23:40, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Btw, I should probably apologise to any stewards who are watching for implying that they spent all their dealing with spam on the Azerbaijani Wikibooks (and to anybody from the Azerbaijani Wikibooks for suggesting that that's not a worthy place for stewards to spend their time!)! HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 23:39, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Uh oh! I tested this out on Vector and MonoBook using Chrome and Firefox. What browser are you using? The script is pretty straightforward, I'm trying to think what wouldn't work in older browsers. Just so you know, on AIV it inserts the template where your cursor is, but you probably figured that much. Putting it at the end would not be very useful. I can add links to RFPP, AIV and PERM if you'd like, very easy. Also I made the order of the links match that of the list of templates in the show/hide thing on each page. I thought about sorting alphabetically, maybe that would be better? Thanks — MusikAnimal 00:56, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Another anomaly: I did not receive that ping you made above. Not in my notifications. Weird! — MusikAnimal 01:03, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm in Chrome; just updated to make sure I'm using the latest version (39.0.2171.95). Also tried it in Firefox (30.0, a bit out of date but I don't use it much) and I'm getting the same problem. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 01:20, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

I just tried monobook, using Windows 7 / Chrome 39, importing User:HJ Mitchell/monobook.js in my JS and everything worked as expected. I don't see anything in your metawiki global.js, so I don't think it's a conflict with another script. The operating system shouldn't matter, but I assume you're using either Windows or Mac?I just changed the selector for the wikieditor to be the same as protection.js, maybe you have a gadget enabled that changes the markup or something. Does it work now? — MusikAnimal 01:54, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Fantastic! It works now! Great work! :) HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 02:06, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Thank you! Glad we got that figured out, now I know to use that selector in other scripts. Cheers — MusikAnimal 02:19, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

@MusikAnimal: It's not weird; you did not receive that ping because HJ didn't get it right first time and went back to correct it - corrections don't retrigger a failed notification. The notification feature is delicate, and easily broken: they are not sent when links or sigs are amended, only when new valid links and sigs are added simultaneously. Various threads at WT:Echo cover this. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:30, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Good to know! — MusikAnimal 15:45, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Voting for the Military historian and Military newcomer of the year now open!

Nominations for the military historian of the year and military newcomer of the year have now closed, and voting for the candidates has officially opened. All project members are invited to cast there votes for the Military historian and Military newcomer of the year candidates before the elections close at 23:59 December 21st. For the coordinators, TomStar81

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:33, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Please do not refactor other editors' comments

"I don't like it" is not a reason for you to delete my (or anyone else's comments). Here is the applicable policy since you don't seem to be familiar with it. https://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Refactoring_talk_pages --Adam in MO Talk 01:46, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

DungeonSiegeAddict510

I support your indefinite block of this user, but now I note that he's promising to quietly edit other articles and is asking to be banned from the arbitration case. In view of his record, this seems to me like a workable solution. Would you consider that? --TS 04:11, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm a little sceptical, but I'm not dismissing the idea out of hand; I've left a query on his talk page. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:30, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Man Haron Monis

Any chance you could attend to this edit request to record the death of the gunman in the Sydney siege, as no other admins are responding. It's a high profile article so being out of date makes Misplaced Pages look woeful. Thanks! —sroc 💬 20:15, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

I'll do you one better. I've lowered it to semi, put an editnotice up, and watchlisted it. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:29, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Thank you! finishes heart attack —sroc 💬 20:38, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Thomas W

Hi, Kumioko/Reguyla has raised a concern (which is probably valid) that you're perhaps getting too involved taking administrative action regarding Thomas.W and his departure. I understand (and share) your frustration at the way he has been treated by the community and the way he has been baited since his departure, but please don't get yourself into trouble dealing with people who are only out to stir up shit and cause trouble. There's plenty of uninvolved admins who would be more than happy to deal with users like User:Adamfinmo. I say this out of concern for you, rather than in any administrative capacity, btw. Nick (talk) 20:58, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

I appreciate the concern, and I can see the line of thought, but I think this falls under the "any reasonable admin" exception even if we disregard common sense, and I was confident that the block would sand up to scrutiny, as indeed it did. Best, HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 21:15, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Torga's block

Since Torga's behavior was brought up in WP:GGE I added your block under the Gamergate general sanctions admin log at WP:GS/GrG. I also included Salvadrim! who was listed on Torga's block log. Feel free to modify/delete as necessary. Cheers. Muscat Hoe (talk) 01:47, 16 December 2014 (UTC)