Meta:Requests for help from a sysop or bureaucrat

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Meta has a small active community. When a normal user requires the assistance of a sysop or bureaucrat for some particular task, it is not always easy to find one. This page helps users find one when they need one; asking specific admins directly via their talk pages is one way to elicit a fast response. See also: Stewards' noticeboard, Identification noticeboard, Category:Meta-Wiki policies, Category:Global policies

Requests for: permissions (global) — bot status — CheckUser information (local) — deletion (speedy deletions: local | multilingual) — translation — logos — URL blacklisting — username changes (local) — SUL problem solving — new languages — adminship on Meta — comments — interwiki map — an account on WMF wiki — help from a Meta sysop or bureaucrat

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Please find answered requests in the archives (this month).

Contents


CentralNotice for Wiki Loves Public Art [edit]

Hi,

In May, the Wiki Loves Public Art photo contest will take place for the first time and we would like to have a Central Notice banner active in the language versions that will have lists for the contest or where most of the participants are expected to come from. I am hoping that a Central Notice Administrator can give us a hand with this.

I have added the event to the CentralNotice/Calendar and you can find a couple of mock-ups on wmse:Projekt:Europeana Awareness/Wiki Loves Public Art/CentralNotice. Please let me know if you have any suggestions or comments as this is my first request of this kind.

Thank you,

John Andersson (WMSE) (talk) 12:47, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

I think a month is too long (per #CentralNotice_for_Contribution_month_in_Canada). However, nothing else is scheduled yet. πr2 (t • c) 12:58, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Well, the contest is structured the same way as WLM, and from Nemo's comment it sounds like that was accepted ("the only precedent would probably be WLM."). I hope it will be considered okay with WLPA, as well as the idea is to get beginners to start contributing, and they might not see it the first week(s). Perhaps it could be the first two-three weeks for logged in users but the whole month for anonymous users? John Andersson (WMSE) (talk) 13:15, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
How does the banner look? πr2 (t • c) 15:37, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Swedish version. πr2 (t • c) 17:08, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Do you prefer WLPA_alt or WLPA_2013? πr2 (t • c) 13:53, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Awesome! I definitely prefer WLPA_alt. Thank you! John Andersson (WMSE) (talk) 12:54, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
Campaign. πr2 (t • c) 13:56, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
You wanted to enable it in Spanish, German, and Finnish too. Will you provide translations? πr2 (t • c) 22:05, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
You can just use the Translate extension and set the status to published when done. πr2 (t • c) 12:43, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
Hi, translations will be provided. But I should have written Catalan, not Spanish. I have changed it now. Thank you for your help! John Andersson (WMSE) (talk) 12:29, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi! All translations for the CentralNotice can now be found here. Could you please help activate it on the first of May?

We would like it activated geographically, based on the five participating countries: Austria (German), Israel (Hebrew), Finland (Finnish and Swedish), Spain (Spanish and Catalan) and Sweden (Swedish). Is it possible so that the template shown is visible based on their own language preferences of the user or is it looked to the geographical location of the user? The English version should be shown for all users on Wikimedia Commons independent of geography. John Andersson (WMSE) (talk) 13:54, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Urgent need of help [edit]

Hi everybody,

User:PiRSquared17 was planning to help us activating a CentralNotice on the first of May regarding the photo contest Wiki Loves Public Art, but he just told me that he was busy IRL. I was hoping that someone else could help us.

The CentralNotice is since a few weeks in the calendar. We would like it to be activated based on the country, with the main language of the country as the standard (i.e. German for anyone accessing with an IP from Austria). In the case of Spain: if the users in Spain have Spanish as their setting that translation should be shown, if they have Catalan that version should be shown. So only for Spain the language should change depending on the settings (if this can be done). It should be worldwide on Commons.

All translations for the CentralNotice can now be found here. Could you please help activate it on the first of May?

If possible it would be great if we could change the message after half the time to say that there is not much time left to upload the pictures! Would that be possible? Translations will be provided of course :).

We would be very grateful! Best, John Andersson (WMSE) (talk) 11:35, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Since nobody else seems interested, I'll help, but I wish we'd done this before the last day (or the last week ;)). I'll see what I can do, but I'd appreciate help from other admins. PiRSquared17 (talk) 13:52, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
I can try to help if it's needed. Although I'm having busy days right now. -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 13:58, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
I think it's done. The campaign is set to start on 1 May. Users from commons and the following wikipedias (ca, de, en, es, fi, he and sv) will see the message. I'm not sure if geotargeting is a good idea. Thoughts PiRSquared17? Anything missing?
I had the banner created above, but I don't know how we can do geotargeting without creating a campaign for each region/country, and a separate one for commons. PiRSquared17 (talk) 14:15, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
I have geotargeted the banner to the following countries: Austria, Finland (+ Åland Islands), Israel, Spain (+ Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla) and Sweeden. If I understood correctly, geotargeting just prevent people outside those countries to see the banner. If you are in one of the territories listed in the geotargeted list you'll get the banner in the language you have set in the preferences. But I'll check that and poke Jalexander, which knows about CN more than me. -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 14:33, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
The requester wanted it worldwide on commons too. Do we need a separate campaign for this? PiRSquared17 (talk) 14:34, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
Note: it really varies by country as well as by language, so a Finn reading svwiki should have it link to the Finnish info, but a Swede reading fiwiki should have it link to the .se version. PiRSquared17 (talk) 14:36, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
User_talk:Jalexander#Urgent_CentralNotice_issue. -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 14:37, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
Hmmm, yup, sadly one of the things we steer people away from is trying to make a 'language = country' assumption partially because of reasons like this. What language is shown is completely dependent on what language they have set (generally what wiki they are on but obviously not always) and there is no way to 'only show language 1' to one wiki. Are we ok with someone from Sweden reading catalan wiki being linked to the catalan link? Is there a way they could find the other countries information (or could one be added)? The easiest thing is going to be if we ca do that which will allow the vast majority of people to get the right link (there aren't 'that' many people reading the wrong wiki except for English where there are always a lot of users from around the world). Otherwise we will have to have separate banners (1 for each country which ONLY has the translations for that country set) and separate campaigns for each country. Sadly that's the only way to do that :(. If we have to do that, where was english supposed to target? Jalexander (talk) 20:16, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
Creating a different banner and campaign for each language/country looks totally overkill to me. Will the campaign work with the current settings? -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 22:01, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
I think so, but it needs to be worldwide on commons (need a separate campaign ...). @Jalexander: can you comment on this? PiRSquared17 (talk) 22:03, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
Yup, we'll need to have another campaign if we want it world wide commons. It's going to be relatively low weight there too because the election banners (when up) take precedence and I promise you Philippe and the election team will force me to do that. Jalexander (talk) 22:50, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
Hi, I was just informed that this was not done during WLM, so I would like to change the request accordingly. Can you activate the banner on Commons for people from the same countries as the other banners? Best, John Andersson (WMSE) (talk) 15:07, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
@Jalexander: If you click the logotype there will be a link to a page where you can find information about all of the countries. Most of the websites of the participating teams already have links to the others as well, and I will push for the remaining ones to add it as soon as possible. John Andersson (WMSE) (talk) 07:41, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
Perfect, that sounds good. If we can think of the timing it would be good too, a whole month for the banner is a very very long time. Are you tied to the whole month? Trying to do it for a week or two (or some time now at the start and then maybe a bit later?) would be much better. Jalexander (talk) 22:50, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
Hi! The contest have the same structure as WLM and will last the entire month. How have you done it with WLM in the past? Best, John Andersson (WMSE) (talk) 18:05, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Dear Meta admins,

Jalexander raised the question of what time period the CentralNotice for Wiki Loves Public Art should be active. I have informed and discussed this with the organizing teams and they have responded that they are firm in their belief that the CN should be up the entire time of the contest (the month of May 2013). The main argument is that the experience from Wiki Loves Monuments, and the WLM 2012 survey, show that more than half of participants were not active users and most of them discovered the contest through the sitenotice. In line with these findings we think it's important to keep active promotion throughout the month. Especially for the users that are not logged in. A central goal of events such as this is after all to get more people to become active in our projects.

For a new contest like this the CentralNotice is also central in creating brand awareness for the contest, an issue that is not important for the fundraiser for example, but central for a yearly contest that we hope will grow significantly next year. We also want to stress that there has been no complaints about the banners within our communities.

But based on James' insights about the risk of potentially annoying readers the discussion lead to the conclusion that you could turn off the CentralNotice on Spanish Wikipedia and open it again the last week, i.e. we would like the Spanish one restarted on the 24th (this is because a large number of Spanish volunteers might feel they have little chance of participating in Barcelona). However, we would like the geolocated CentralNotice banners to be active on cawp, fiwp, swwp, enwp, dewp the entire time. We sincerely hope that this can be agreed on.

Also, now it seem like the banners are not on for anonymous users on dewp and svwp (I am unsure about the other countries). Can you see if you missed putting a cross in those boxes?

The final thing we would like to bring up is that we hope that an admin would be willing to help us change the text in the banners until the end of the contest. We have listed the new texts that we would like to be added here.

Thank you for all your help!

Kind regards,

John Andersson (WMSE) (talk) 20:48, 14 May 2013 (UTC) and the WLPA teams

Ruben from AT checked the Piwiki, and it seem like the CN banner hasn't been visible for user that are not logged in (i.e. anonymous users) at any point! Could someone please activate the CentralNotice banner for anonymous users? We would be very grateful! Best, John Andersson (WMSE) (talk) 08:18, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
Done. Sorry for not helping before. I thought more experienced people were looking at this. PiRSquared17 (talk) 22:03, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
Hi! Could you change to the new texts as well? We have listed the new texts that we would like to be added here. Best, John Andersson (WMSE) (talk) 00:00, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
Yes check.svg Done PiRSquared17 (talk) 01:40, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
Great! Thanks! John Andersson (WMSE) (talk) 14:29, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

IP block exemptions flag request [edit]

Moved from WM:RFA [1] -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 13:57, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Please, give me IP block exemptions flag because I run Tor node. I already have this flag in ruWikipedia and ruWikiquote. Caesarion (talk) 09:15, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Before accepting or rejecting the request, on which account do you want the flag set? User:Caesarion or on User:Steinbach (which redirects from User:Caesarion)? Best regards. -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 14:39, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
User:Steinbach is unrelated to Caesarion (Caesarion was renamed to Steinbach & Caesarion was later created by this ruwiki user). See also ticket:2013050110003998. Trijnsteltalk 12:11, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
Hmm. We will need to change all this links (also talkpage links) to avoid confusion between the old Caesarion and Steinbach. Is there a bot we can use for this. As for OTRS, I do not have access. -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 13:33, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Special:Contributions/Jigarrynorea [edit]

I've blocked him on Wikidata; please review his actions. --Ricordisamoa 12:52, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

He was locked. Seems to be the same one as Special:CentralAuth/Distrikkarubaga. --MF-W 12:59, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
"Locked"?!? --Ricordisamoa 13:32, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
Yes, locked[2]. Regards, Vogone talk 13:38, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
Wanna try? :P New acount btw Special:Centralauth/Kondaga. --MF-W 14:08, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Fix link in SUL CentralNotice [edit]

In [3], replace <a href="//meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Single_User_Login_finalisation_announcement"> with <a href="//meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Single_User_Login_finalisation_announcement"> . --Nemo 13:13, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes check.svg Done PiRSquared17 (talk) 13:28, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

User:Timonik [edit]

This user was registered at May 7 and immediately began to actively translate complex and important texts. But this user creates translations into Russian, consisting of little meaningful set of words (often with broken wiki-markup). It's even worse than just a machine translation by Google. I gave him two warnings, and if it continues, I ask you to block for him to use translation tool. --Kaganer (talk) 20:42, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

It seems that the user has stopped (doesn't edit since May, 8). However if he continues to post bad translations we can consider blocking him for some time. Last time I checked there was not a tool to just block an user from doing translations. -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 14:47, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
personal restrictions via Abuse filter could be used, i think. --Base (talk) 15:23, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Tony1 and Wikinews [edit]

I would like to request an administrator to encourage tony1 to desist from commenting on anything related to Wikinews on meta. this is not helpful and disrupts an aff-comm related process. It continues a history of going after Wikinews, which includes an attempt to close English Wikinews and then a number of attacks here. He has used the Signpost as a bully pulpit to attack the project. (Signpost was informed of attempts to close Wikinews before a single Wikinews language project.) He wished death on at least one wikinews contributor, and has been requested to avoid interacting with another on English Wikipedia because of his harassment. It would be ideal to not have him disrupting a discussion with aff-comm about bylaws by having him disrupt the process. --LauraHale (talk) 06:33, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

To be transparent I am not a fan of Wikinews, but I have read his comments and they seem like fair game. His criticism is quite strong but none of it is of a personal nature, and what he criticizes is relevant to the pursuit taken by some to start a nonprofit organization dedicated to Wikinews. Unless he was enjoined against participating in affiliations committee-related discussions the comment should stand. harej (talk) 06:49, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
Laura, I appreciate that you might find my comments a bit plain-spoken, but if you believe in WN as a viable WMF project, please stand up for it and address my critique directly. I encourage you and your fellow editors to do so—it's in the interests of productive debate to assess the viability and practicality of the bylaws that have been put up as a precursor for a formal application for thematic organisation status with AffComm. Community members are allowed to comment, as long as they're civil. I look forward to substantive rebuttals of what I've posted. Thank you. Tony (talk) 06:55, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
Tony1, I appreciate that you believe that English Wikinews should be closed, and if that does not work, all of Wikinews. I appreciate the fact that you have no problems leaking privileged communications to English Wikipedia to score points. tony1, I appreciate your plain spoken manner where you wished death upon Brian McNeil. I appreciate your threats of plain spoken legal threats to people via e-mail when you do not get your way. I appreciate your plain spoken goal of trying to interfere with the formation of The Wikinewsie Group as part of your goal to close Wikinews. And your comments have no substance because they had nothing to do with the bylaws, but start of with an attack one English Wikinews content. Plain spoken, misinformed tony1 with an axe to grind does not understand the money issue, so there is nothing to do. People ignored plain spoken, axe grinding, legal threat, bully pulpit tony1 in the proposals thing because really? Why argue with a fool? If you have an issue with the bylaws, please act through a mediator as your accumulated reputation and your previous behavior suggests you are not acting in good faith. You can spell out your specific concerns about the BYLAWS in a plain spoken manner and a meta admin can take your plain spoken BYLAWS comments.--LauraHale (talk) 07:08, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
(Edit conflict.) Hi. I'm the editor of the Signpost. I have no opinion on the actions Tony takes outside of his Signpost role (nor do I partake in them), though I did happen to be pre-planning next week's issue with him via Skype when this was posted.
Having said all that, I wish to unequivocally state, for the record, that the various vitriolic claims made by Wikinews editors against the Signpost, including these and others, are entirely baseless. The Signpost is not a bully pulpit, nor would I ever allow someone to use it as such. The story about the closure proposal was found by a different individual and was written up by only me, as I have previously pointed out on the talk page of the article. To continue to paint the Signpost—and, by association, Tony—with such a brush are frightful overstatements. Ed [talk] [en] 06:57, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
The comments are completely spot on. When was the last time that the Signpost talked to an editor in good standing before writing negative news about the project? How about the fairness of having tony1 have a byline but the MASSIVE NPOV violation by not declaring the COI that tony1 was actively trying to shut down English Wikinews? Or that the Signpost posted about the closure proposal for English Wikinews before the community on Wikinews was even informed? So yeah. I guess that is the signpost being great and fantastic. Continue deluding yourself that you follow BLP and NPOV when it comes to the Signpost, but your treatment of Wikinews has been awful, biased and a failure to declare COI is offensive in the extreme. Show a backbone, go back and publish FREAKING CORRECTIONS stating the COI and Tony1's repeated attempts to shut down the project, with a link to tony1's death wish on Brian McNeil. --LauraHale (talk) 07:13, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
No, they are not. We've done exactly one story about Wikinews in the last year. It was very short, and we were short of time, so I went ahead and wrote it without private comments. It's certainly not the Signpost's fault that no Wikinews editors were informed of the discussion beforehand.
As for Tony, may I emphasize again that he had no role in drafting the story. As I have previously stated on the article's talk page: "We agreed that Tony wouldn't even copyedit the piece off-wiki, so that any changes he made would be transparent. Tony is listed as an author because he wrote the bulk of the Gardner story." Attempting to tar Tony by painting the Signpost with a baseless, fact-less brush will get you nowhere. Ed [talk] [en] 07:32, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
The "history" here is not so problematic given the context of each of these situations. In his most recent post he makes a cogent argument. As an admin, I think you're barking up the wrong tree. Killiondude (talk) 07:44, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
Since one of the two users repeatedly attacked another one and his project many times in the past over at various Wikimedia projects at least three years, an over-reaction to the latest post is undesirable, but understandable. I might suggest that a discussion is raised at the user's talk page before escalating it here.. Gryllida 10:04, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
Left a note on the user talk. Hope it helps. --Gryllida 10:34, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

translation necessary: Single User Login finalisation announcement [edit]

Can anyone mark these changes for translation, please? The date in May isn’t correct anymore. --– Geitost diskusjon 13:24, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes check.svg Done --Kaganer (talk) 13:28, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

173.242.119.30 [edit]

This IP is an open proxy used for vandalism. Please block it. Defender (talk) 22:09, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes check.svg Blocked PiRSquared17 (talk) 22:39, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
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