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Reverse rename

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This user wasn’t in a good condition, there’s a open SPI case in enwiki: en:Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/ThedetectivePiash1, and reported in bnwiki for block evation. Thanks, 🪶-TΛNBIRUZZΛMΛN (💬) 13:30, 28 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Renaming reversed by @MdsShakil, I've unlocked the account. --Johannnes89 (talk) 13:44, 28 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Johannnes89: This is a LTA's account, we have to lock it. @A09: Please let the local users handle requests from their own projects. There’s no need to rush these matters, and local language renamers are best suited for such cases. This also helps avoid potential misunderstandings. Thanks. —MdsShakil (talk) 13:47, 28 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
@MdsShakil no issues with re-locking the account with the correct reason, it just shouldn't be the automatic vanishing lock. This request was about reversing vanishing, not about steward action against the account (which hasn't been CU confirmed if I'm not mistaken), that's why I just unlocked. Feel free to lock if you took a closer look. Johannnes89 (talk) 13:53, 28 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
To be fair, most of GRENs who are also enwiki sysops or above aren't that active and the request would very likely get picked by someone who isn't part of neither enwiki nor bnwiki. If we were to limit renames only to wikis someone has them as a homewiki it would cause huge backlogs on every GREN front – which is probably something none of us is striving for. I consider myself an enwiki regular but didn't see anything too harsh to not pass the vanishing request but didn't oppose when I was pinged about this matter. I am happy this resolved quickly and without hassle. A09|(pogovor) 13:59, 28 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
As I mentioned above, there’s no need to rush with these requests and my advice is meant generally, not just for this case. Helal ahmed129 submitted their vanishing request at 13:04, 28 September 2025, and it was approved by you at 13:08. Just before that, they had started vandalizing on bnwiki (12:56) and enwiki (12:22), on top of earlier disruptive edits. Before approving, it’s part of a renamer’s responsibility to review the requester’s contributions. Personally, I would not have approved this, since vanishing requires the user to be in good standing. I understand that language can be a barrier, but that’s also a key reason why such requests are often better handled by the local team, especially in cases like this. That doesn’t mean restricting renames only to homewikis, but being mindful of the context helps avoid problems. —MdsShakil (talk) 14:21, 28 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
  • This seems like a lot of wasted button pushing. Re-reanaming and unlocking an account that is already locked, because it is the subject of a discussion that may lead to it being blocked and locked - how is this making the project better? — xaosflux Talk 18:23, 28 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
    This was primarily for the CU's investigation into the SPI case, which was open at that time. 🪶-TΛNBIRUZZΛMΛN (💬) 19:39, 28 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
    CU data would be same regardless of whether the account was vanished or not. A09|(pogovor) 19:44, 28 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
    How Checkusers gonna find it from the SPI page when there's no account with the username! I know there's a public log kept, but users already asking about it to be reversed, I prevented the discussion from escalating earlier by requesting the reverse. Otherwise, the question could have been raised about why the vanish did not follow their local vanish policy. 🪶-TΛNBIRUZZΛMΛN (💬) 20:03, 28 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
    Vanishing (and accounts in general) are global, especially with a majority of vanishing being automatic now - one project making a local rule is not going to hold up action on hundreds of other projects. Also, redirects are cheap. — xaosflux Talk 21:00, 28 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
    Now I got it. 🪶-TΛNBIRUZZΛMΛN (💬) 21:18, 28 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
    The misunderstanding was made from the !global policy page, as it’s encouraging to see the Wikipedia's vanishing guidelines. 🪶-TΛNBIRUZZΛMΛN (💬) 21:23, 28 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
    Since the vanish involved a LTA, it makes sense to reverse it, as already done in the past. But I understand it requires a bit of (seemingly pointless) work. I'd like to point out that all of this could be avoided by waiting a little longer and avoiding renames without thorough review. As I've said several times in ML, we've gone from periods where renames took days to complete (and the queue had 6-7 pages), but they were processed with quality, to renames being done too hastily, and honestly, I've noticed some bad renames. There is no problem if a rename takes even 3-4 days since we are all volunteers and there is no ETA required by the guidelines, furthermore this doesn't hurt anyone unless it's an urgent matter, instead the important thing is to do it correctly and with the utmost quality, I don't see where the problem is in having a bit of backlog, which by the way has never been so huge in renames! Superpes15 (talk) 14:35, 30 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Another reversed vanishing: SRG#Unlock and unrename Renamed user 6ae9384e99894f567d6f34f0d62fe444. I'm in favour of waiting at least 24 hours before vanishing accounts, similar to resigning admins, although we probably need to check with Legal if there's an expectation to implement vanish requests in a certain time frame? --Johannnes89 (talk) 08:37, 8 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

We don't have an obligation to do them under 24 hours. Note for accounts without edits vanishes are done automatically. — xaosflux Talk 10:11, 8 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
For the record: In this case, the account in question did have an edit, so it must have been manual. Otherwise… if the account did not have an edit, it would have been autoApproved, and then it could not have an edit and local ANI report for being a DUCK. — regards, Revi 15:20, 9 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Permalink: Special:GoToComment. — regards, Revi 08:11, 9 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Yet another: Special:GoToComment/c-Revi_C.-20251019214500-Unlock_Renamed_user_5de0a4e8f3cf9340d1cb8e49c94c2379 (log entry 2025-10-17)
PSA: Account created within the past month + homewiki: kowiki should be a red flag for processing S/GRN. They use the AccountVanish when they are found and reported, so this is not automatic approval. — regards, Revi 02:04, 20 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

pi.wiki

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Pages created by pi:Special:Contributions/EukeshBot are of subpar content, containing only headings, a stub template, categories, and a single line of "XXXX is a year of the Georgian calendar" (approximate translation according to Google). Clicked on about 100 pages and none seem to have any useful content that was added to the page in the last 18 years. Pages listed in pi:Special:ShortPages, up to those of 44 bytes, are also "useless" pages, containing a template and a stub template. If all ~2200 pages are nuked, ~80% of the wiki's content will be deleted. Should I proceed with the deletion? --Min☠︎rax«¦talk¦» 13:18, 30 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

 Weak keep year articles. I think one sentence qualifies as "some useful content". NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 13:26, 30 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
While I do understand the these pages are almost 2 decades old, my question is why should treat such articles created by bots differently to those created by LTAs such as this? --Min☠︎rax«¦talk¦» 13:31, 30 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
Good question. Three apparent differences:
  • Articles created by local editors (using bots or otherwise) are backed with local consensus of some kind, whether it is by a group of people or just one who cared enough about the wiki to do so.
  • Considering Decker's disruptive behaviour, we assume bad faith and that their articles, if not link-only or similar, are machine translations or LLM-generated.
  • Existing, nicely formatted articles are more likely to attract good edits.
NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 13:44, 30 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
Also pinging @CX Zoom as a former local sysop. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 13:27, 30 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
I am opposed as a general principle to the global sysops declaring they know better than the local community, as I feel deleting these would be. * Pppery * it has begun 00:24, 4 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
  • For background: I have not worked at Pali Wikipedia but I have a fair knowledge of Pali, and I frequently work on Pali and related dictionary entries at English Wiktionary. I've just deleted a large number of bad articles on Pali Wikipedia (and those deletions have included all the pages created by EukeshBot as well) because all those were extremely useless and subpar and the "content" on them (usually a single line) was usually broken, distorted and ungrammatical Sanskrit, not Pali as I've pointed out in the deletion reasons. While many of these were indeed created by apparent piwiki regulars (or by their bots), I'm sure that it's clear to anyone who is versed in Pali that these were all completely nonsensical. For anyone interested: all these had Sanskrit words like वर्ष (year), तत्त्व (element), राष्ट्र (nation/country), etc. instead of their Pali descendants like वस्स, तत्त and रट्ठ. A common pattern I also used to track down most of these was the use of Sanskrit imperative अस्तु where the indicative present verb (such as 'is') would be grammatical to use, for which Sanskrit is अस्ति and the Pali is अत्थि. Another pattern of mistakes was the excessive use of genitive case for एक (meaning 'a, one') along with no application of (nominative) inflection for the following noun (year, element, country, etc.). I've previously done another batch-deletion of similar bad articles in June and have also thought about proposing the closure of piwiki. – Svārtava (tɕ) 09:47, 13 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

RfC

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FYI I opened Requests for comment/Improve quality of renames and posted a link to the RfC on relevant page, as per policy. Since stewards also carry out global renames, I'm notifying here too. Thanks! — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Superpes15 (talk) 08:16, 9 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

New RfC non-personally involving stewards

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Please see Requests for comment/Minimum voting requirements and proper conduct to discuss any opposition as it will involve how stewards may face potentially unfriendly "full discussions". Thanks.--WEBridge (talk) 02:13, 16 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Enwiki ArbCom election scrutineer request

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Hello stewards, the English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee elections are coming up (running from 02 November 2025 to 01 December 2025), and we are looking for non-enwiki stewards to act as our election scrutineers. A list of scrutineer duties can be found here. Please feel free to let me or another member of the electoral commission know if you have any questions. Dr vulpes (talk) 20:17, 17 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Dr vulpes: I'd be willing to volunteer. EPIC (talk) 20:25, 17 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Dr vulpes: happy to help :). -- XXBlackburnXx (talk) 20:57, 17 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Let's do it again :). --Mykola 01:47, 18 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Thank you for volunteering! I will email our Arbitration Committee to ask them to appoint you as local checkusers. Giraffer (talk) 14:20, 18 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
If you need more, I am also happy to help:) AramilFeraxa (talk) 15:22, 18 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
@AramilFeraxa thanks -- we have our main three for now, but if any issues arise we will consider you the reserve :) Giraffer (talk) 14:21, 19 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Closing the RfC on the Welcoming policy, now that we've notified affected Wikis for a month

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Requests for comment/Welcoming policy has been open for over 10 months and should be closed; the lack of notification that denied previous requests has been addressed in mid-September at Meta:Requests for help from a sysop or bureaucrat/Archives/2025-09#Request MassMessage-ing wikis affected by Requests for comment/Welcoming policy.

Pings: @Pppery, @User:Johannnes89, @A smart kitten, @DreamRimmer, @Xaosflux. Aaron Liu (talk) 14:34, 20 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

There are much older RFC's open someone will get to it eventually. I participated in that RfC, so am recusing from closing it. — xaosflux Talk 14:37, 20 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
I have not participated in this RfC and would have closed it, but given its global scope and in line with policy, it is best for the stewards to handle the closure. – DreamRimmer 16:43, 20 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Don't know the status of the RfC, but can you please ping me if it will be closed as successful? This requires also a technical change, so, in case the policy is approved, it can be enforced as soon as possible :) Superpes15 (talk) 11:27, 21 October 2025 (UTC)Reply