Talk:Title blacklist

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Title blacklist

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The associated page is used by the Mediawiki Title Blacklist extension, and lists strings of text that may not be used as page titles for any Wikimedia Foundation projects (as well as many external wikis). Any meta administrator can edit the title blacklist. For more information on what the title blacklist is for, and the processes used here, please see Title blacklist/About. Please post comments to the appropriate section below: Proposed additions, Proposed removals, or Troubleshooting and problems, read the messageboxes at the top of each section for an explanation. Also, please check back some time after submitting, there could be questions regarding your request. In addition to that, please sign your posts with ~~~~ after your comment. Completed requests are archived, additions and removal are logged.

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modify

snippet for logging: {{tbl-log|3785753#{{subst:anchorencode:SectionNameHere}}}}

Proposed additions

This section is for proposing that a page title be blacklisted; add new entries at the bottom of the section. Provide links demonstrating widespread creation by multiple users or IP's. Completed requests will be marked as done or denied and archived.

/Print subpages

I am an admin at the English Wikipedia. Today I learnt about "/Print" subpages. I realised they are a security problem since they let anyone edit any template, no matter if the template is protected or not. As a test I used it to change the main page of the English Wikipedia, only using a non-admin account. It only affected printed versions of the main page, but that is bad enough. So I have blocked creation and editing of /Print subpages on the English Wikipedia. I suggest the same block is added here to protect all the other projects. For reference, here's the code I used at w:MediaWiki:Titleblacklist:

# /Print versions of templates. ("Templates" can be created in any namespace, so blocking in all namespaces.)
.*\/Print <noedit>

/Print subpages also have a number of other problems. And we don't need such subpages, since we already have a better solution that has none of the problems. See Template talk:Documentation#/Print for the details.

--David Göthberg 10:48, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

I note there's a couple wikis using this (google search is: site:wikipedia.org -site:en.wikipedia.org inurl:"/print") but not many. Is it acceptable to require that admins perform edits to print subpages? Kylu 20:28, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Happy Birthday lyrics

Please add “.*Birthday.*Birthday.*” to the global title blacklist! --84.61.146.104 10:00, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

why? -- seth 13:24, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Is it legal to use the lyrics of the song “Happy Birthday” as a page title? --84.61.146.104 16:05, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Are there any cases of misuse yet? -- seth 01:04, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Sure, at least in the US; see s:Happy Birthday to You.--Prosfilaes 23:07, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Personal attacks on zhwiki

Please add the following to the blacklist:

.*沈彥良.* <newaccountonly>
.*[陈陳]霆.* <newaccountonly>
.*[许許]瑜真.* <newaccountonly>

These are names of some zhwiki sysops and currently some bad guy is making fun with their names and maybe sexual orientation. Already in the title blacklist of zhwiki. Thanks.--Jimmy Xu 14:43, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't know this script - have you assessed these for potential false positives?  — mikelifeguard@meta:~$  20:40, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

These are very unlikely to cause false-positives. Already in local blacklist for years and there is no troubles. After all, I can't get a reason why someone would use other's name in their user name.--Jimmy Xu 11:55, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

FYI, this should fit in the section "#影武者 (from zh:) - well-known targets of serial vandalism".--Jimmy Xu 12:06, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

User:84.61.153.119

Please add the following entries to the global title blacklist:

# Titles used by User:84.61.153.119 for vandalism

# German elevator company, not notable enough for Wikimedia projects
.*kni(sj|zi)a.*(streh?lo[vw]|wertlos).* <autoconfirmed>
# "Szar" is the Hungarian word for "shit"
szar <autoconfirmed>

--84.61.183.12 13:49, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

See also here, here, here, here, here, and here. --84.61.183.12 19:36, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Forex/Currency spam bots

# Forex/Currency bots using Rumer
.*[Ff]orex.*|.*[Cc]urrency <newaccountonly>
[Ff]orex Trading.*|[Cc]urrency) Trading.* <autoconfirmed>

Suggestion. (Possibly also noedit for the latter?) Link to deleted page log: [1] Links to blocked bot-created accounts log: [2] - Amgine/^{meta wikt wnews blog wmf-blog goog news} 23:53, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Fakes of Wikimedia Deutschland (WMDE) staff

Please add the following to the blacklist (pls check the syntax, I hate regex):

.*(WMDE).* <newaccountonly>

(WMDE) is the usual suffix for accounts used by staff of Wikimedia Deutschland (WMDE). Misuse like in User:Gang Bang (WMDE), User:Schwell Körper (WMDE) and User:Freies Wissen (WMDE) is very missleading. Thanks. Raymond 10:47, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

hmm, shouldn't that regex be specific to german projects (or even the german wikipedia is it's the only affected project) ? Are there known use of such nick on any other wikis ? DarkoNeko 21:33, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Account created on meta. --WizardOfOz ^talk 21:35, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Okay then. DarkoNeko 21:36, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Hi!

Done:

.*\(WMDE\).* <newaccountonly>

-- seth 09:07, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks a lot :-) Raymond 09:08, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

1. Please re-introduce (undone by DerHexer)
2. It might be also useful to prevent (WMF):

.*\(WMF\).* <newaccountonly>

I am just aware of one case so far: User:Nn Wei (WMF) but the names should be reserved for WMF-staff-members. What do you if someone is name-grabbing: You can't use the account then. -- Rillke 16:44, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

 Done. Trijnstel 19:13, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I reverted it. A user who was created on one wiki (legitimately) with the restricted string was not able to be auto-created on login to another wiki because of the restriction. Philippe (WMF) 01:24, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

That's indeed a problem... because I already came over that before, I just submitted a bug: bugzilla:33429 - Hoo man (talk) 02:13, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

I gave the right permissions to the staff group and restored the blacklist's entry, it should work fine now. --Vituzzu 02:15, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Is this going to work really? Ruslik 11:06, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Ok, seems like a good workaround, but doesn't work for WMDE staff and WMF staff not being in the staff group (some AFAIK aren't, are they?) - Hoo man (talk) 03:27, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

The consequence will be that WM* accounts must be added to a specific globalgroup. --Vituzzu 21:23, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Kitties, cats on fire etc.

See en:Special:Contributions/MyCatJustCaughtOnFire. This is just the latest in a spree of "cats/kitties on fire" accounts on enwp (though there is a bit of CWA I notice from the globalauth log), mainly used to harass Favonian and MuZemike. Might be helpful if someone implemented regex to prevent the creation of accounts with cat/kitty followed by fire later in a username. Hurricanefan25 21:05, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment Known sock|trouble maker, and the regex will just mean they use a variation in the pattern, not stop the account creation. billinghurst sDrewth 23:31, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Username length restriction

Some local projects have restrictions on the length of usernames in their local titleblacklist (see eg en.wp and Commons, both currently 40 characters including the "user:" prefix). Differences between restrictions can break SUL. If a restriction is needed, it should be global. Rd232 (talk) 15:45, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

I am not sure that this is anything that stewards would be doing without a broad community consultation. At this current time, all I believe that we could do is to issue a warning that when choosing a username to note that long usernames may not work at all sites due to policy restrictions at some sites. One could reverse the conversation and ask why those two wikis have a introspective policy about username length and have not taken the conversation to a wider forum. In fact, I am unaware that either of the two domains that you mention clearly identify that they have such restrictions w:en:Wikipedia:Username_policy and Commons:Commons:Username policy and such would seem to be problematic. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:25, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes. What's the best way to organise a discussion on this? Rd232 (talk) 12:52, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

I do not think that Titleblacklist affects automatic account creation. Ruslik (talk) 12:29, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

It does. Just a couple of days ago there was an issue at en:WP:VPT where a user couldn't log into Commons until I increased Commons' titleblacklist length restriction from 30 to 40. Rd232 (talk) 19:13, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

I fully concur that it does interrupt as Rd232 states. I have previously had to modify that filter at Commons. My preference would be for Commons to remove that restriction as it is both an old restriction, and one that I do not really find purposeful in the entirety of WMF. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:10, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Well, it would be easier to make the case for removal if we knew why it was added in the first place... But it's not just Commons: en.wp and de.wp also have such restrictions, and it's quite likely other projects do too. That's why we need a wider discussion about the point of this, and if there is one, apply it via Meta, and if not, get rid of the restriction everywhere. Rd232 (talk) 11:22, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Please notice, that applying it from meta wouldn't be the perfect solution as well, because user names get tested against the title blacklist in the following form Namespace 2 alias:User name. So eg. on enwiki this would be User:Username, but on dewiki it's Benutzer:Username, which has more chars. Maybe the following can bypass that: ^[^:]+:[^$]{1,X}$ where X is the max length of the actual user name - Hoo man (talk) 20:52, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Modify an entry

Please replace plays?\s*with <newaccountonly> with [pṕ]lays?\s*with <newaccountonly>, because there are new entries with this name in the global account log. Thanks. Francisco (talk) 17:11, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

 Done. Trijnstel_talk 17:46, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Proposed removals

This section is for proposing that a title be unlisted; please add new entries at the bottom of the section. Remember to provide the specific title or regex blacklisted, links to the articles they are used in or useful to, and arguments in favour of unlisting. Completed requests will be marked as done or denied and archived. The addition or removal of a title is not a vote, please do not bold the first words in statements.

Troubleshooting and problems

This section is for comments related to problems with the blacklist (such as incorrect syntax or entries not being blocked), or problems saving a page because of a blacklisted title. This is not the section to request that an entry be unlisted (see Proposed removals above).

Log

I think we should make the log a single page (or at least one-per-year), since additions there are pretty rare and it should not be big. vvv^t 22:27, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree. -- seth 13:34, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

index.php spam

I note that not all pages ending in index.php, which have been created by spambots, are blacklisted. For the syntax (?:[^\/]+[\/:])?(index\.php|w\/wiki)(?:\/.+)?, the page Example/index.php is blacklisted, but Example/w/index.php is not. I suggest that you change this syntax to (?:.*?\/)?(index\.php|w\/wiki)(?:\/.*)?, in order to blacklist all pages with index.php and /w/wiki. In 2009, two pages ending in index.php were deleted: \"/w/index.php, on June 10, and Talk:Board elections/2007/w/index.php, on November 16. --Francisco 19:13, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

not matching?

How could the account [removed] (see [removed]) be created? The TBL entry

.*H.R.LD.*K(?:R|[|!ɨᎥ1iIÍÌĬîÎǏÏĨįĮĪıİlľŀłļḷΙιіІЇ丨])+CH[ΕÉÈËEĘĚĔĖẺẸẾỀỄễỂểȨȩḜḝĒḖḗȄȅȆȇỆệḘḙḚḛ3eēėèéëẽĕęəẻếềẹ]L.* <newaccountonly>

should have blocked that creation. -- seth 14:27, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

 Fixed, the used "e" was missing - Hoo man (talk) 14:50, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

oops, you're right. 'ȇ' (0x0207) and 'ê' (0x00ea) looked same to me. -- seth 15:34, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Please avoid writting those insulting usernames publicy. They're oversighted globally for a reason. Thanks, --dferg ^{☎ talk} 15:38, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

*Com[bp][1Il]ex.* <newaccountonly>

Resolved.

User:Kylu added that line (*Com[bp][1Il]ex.* <newaccountonly>) in February 2009 with the edit summary: (+Complex/Comblex (temp)).

I'm a member of the English Account creator team and have a request which is blocked because it contains complex. I have two questions now:

• what means "temp" in the edit summary? Can it be removed since this more than 2 years old?
• why was this regex added? Any valid reasons? I didn't found any at meta and enwp.

Mabdul 14:10, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Cross-wiki abuse. There's a good reason despite good users being affected as we had hundreds of attack accounts created with that expresion. I suggest not to delist as the vandal is still active. Regards, -- Dferg ^{☎ talk} 16:17, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Bad that I didn't find any real comment. Account was already created (as "AGF") so fixed. Mabdul 15:08, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

(?: syntax

What does (?: mean? I have read this but can't see how it is relevant to the Title blacklist. 81.227.149.200 19:38, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

If I remember correctly, the edit summary says it was done to improve performance a little. I guess backreferences come at a cost. Nemo 23:12, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Broken entry

The entry "*(?:a(cl|d)min|sysop).*" is broken (see for example [3]). It appears the leading '.' was lost in this edit. Anomie 16:52, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

It has been almost two months now. Please change the mentioned entry to .*(?:a(cl|d)min|sysop).*, i.e. add a period character before the first * to make the regex non-broken. Or just delete the entry, if you'd rather, since it hasn't been effective since August 2010. Anomie (talk) 18:24, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Done. Sorry to say, unlike the spam blacklist, this one needs the edit protected template to draw attention, it seems. Courcelles (talk) 19:48, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

.*Dri\.?n+i.* <newaccountonly>

A user on commons wanted to choose the user name WoderTeedrinis. The request was refused with some error message like unwanted user name. I think this was caused by the rule
.*Dri\.?n+i.* <newaccountonly>
here on meta. But I might be totally wrong. Would it be possible to allow this rather harmless name? I really don't have an idea what names should be refused by that rule. regards --Herzi Pinki 20:18, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

The regex is there to catch look-alikes for a steward's user account. Vandals think it clever to create narrative user names that encapsulate stewards' names. Is it possible to get another username, as modifying the regex for the suggested name will be difficult. It might be possible to go to Steward requests/Username changes and ask, though I still think that it is going to be problematic every time the user moves to another wiki as it will hit the title block. billinghurst sDrewth 23:29, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the answer, that's how I understood it anyhow (it is commented that way), but I didn't find the name of the steward who is afraid of this kind of name similarity vandalism. But I think that WoderTeedrinis will be quite different from the name of the steward, so my opinion is, that the regex is much too prohibitive. That's why I was asking. The user already has chosen another name, so the problem is not really a problem. Maybe it still would be possible to relax the strength of the regex, e.g. by just making it case sensitive? I will clarify with the user who wanted that name. cheers --Herzi Pinki 07:35, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Steward's username is Drini, so no, at this stage it is not too restrictive. There is an election process about to occur, so it is probably worth flagging this set of titles for review following that process. billinghurst sDrewth 12:24, 6 February 2012 (UTC)