Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Carcharoth (talk | contribs) at 03:05, 30 December 2006 (Making sure the admins on the list are active and the bot is working). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

DYK update check

Would it be possible for the bot to search Template:Did you know/Next update and see if there are any unprotected templates in the text? Not the page itself, which is supposed to be unprotected. - BanyanTree 00:25, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Also it appears that something odd is going on with the bot. - BanyanTree 00:27, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Me again. Can the bot give a more descriptive edit summary, so admins know if there's a page in need of protection? Thanks, BanyanTree 01:13, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to bring up again the idea of emailing this list to certain whitelisted administrators whenever a template is found unprotected. Today, there was an unprotected template transcluded on to DYK, and I have a strong suspicion that the vandal (who placed a shock image) checked here to find out that there was an unprotected template. (The template name was extremely small and at the end of DYK, leading to my inclination and feeling that s/he looked at this page to find the vulnerability. In addition, this page has been widely "advertised", and I'm sure some clever vandals have already found it.) With emailing a certain number of whitelisted administrators (perhaps 10 or more?), multiple administrators who are familiar with Main Page images/templates would be alerted immediately and confidentially, and vandals would not be able to simply keep on checking this page to see when we've missed something. Would changing the bot to this implementation (emailing certain users through the emailuser function) be possible? If so, I would suggest changing it immediately. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 04:33, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I'll second this. I actually had the same suspicion as Flcelloguy. I'd be happy to get these. Other likely candidates are the regulars at WP:ERRORS. If we create a protected subpage, would the bot be able to read usernames (let's say in bulletform) as a whitelist? I prefer it to be on wiki so admins can add or remove themselves as the fancy strikes them. Emails only when there is a problem, of course; it would be a pain to get 24 emails a day saying that nothing is happening. - BanyanTree 04:44, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

It would be very easy to do this sort of thing, and I suggested it in the first place because I was afraid something like this would happen. I'll start working on it straight away. Shadow1 (talk) 14:26, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Update: see User:Shadowbot2/Mailing list. Thanks again, Shadow1! Flcelloguy (A note?) 17:10, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

No problem, glad I can help own some vandals! I should have the DYK scan before the next Main Page update. Shadow1 (talk) 17:19, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

E-mailing may be too slow.

I'm on the E-mailing list, but I'm concerned that E-mailing may be too slow. Is it possible to notify any logged-in admins with an orange fluorescent pink box as if a new msg has been posted on the usertalk ? The link in the box can go to the template in need of protection. (I don't know any programming. Sorry if this is not do-able.) --PFHLai 17:43, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

No, that's not possible to do, unless I were to have the bot post a note on each admin's talk page stating that it's sent them an email. Shadow1 (talk) 00:12, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

That would seem to negate the benefits of the email system, as a vandal could just watch admins' pages and see when the bot makes an edit, turning it back into a race on who can react quicker. - BanyanTree 00:16, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Contributions list

Wow. The contributions list has been cleared out. I guess it only ever wrote to the report page, which judging from the above has been deleted. Yup. E-mail only now, I guess? Carcharoth 18:54, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the bot is email-only now, since the vandal(s) seemed to use the report page for one of their attacks. Shadow1 (talk) 21:28, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Making sure the admins on the list are active and the bot is working

Is there a way to make sure that the admins on the mailing list for this bot are active? It would be the ultimate irony if in two years time, with everyone assuming the bot and signed up admins were dealing with things, that it was discovered that all the signed-up admins were inactive or had left. I suggest getting admins to renew their subscription (somehow) every few months or so. Maybe even getting the bot to look at their contributions list to see if they are still active and editing? Is this too difficult to implement? After that, the only thing that would go wrong is if the bot stopped working. That is now, to my mind, the most likely thing to happen. Anyway to get alerts mailed if the bot stops working? Or is that going just a tad too far? Carcharoth 03:05, 30 December 2006 (UTC)