Difference between revisions of "Help talk:Spam"

Revision as of 20:50, 16 February 2007

Good work keeping track of these, Ducon -- it looks like we may need to double-check the block list. -- 128.240.229.65 10:08, 9 Jan 2006 (UTC)

When an IP address (or range) is blocked, does that also prevent edits by logged in users from those machines?    Ryan W 03:58, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure it does. Is this an issue at the moment? Bloodshedder 04:09, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Not that I know of.  (If I need to stop posting about crises that haven't happened yet, please tell me.  :D      It suddenly occurs to me, however, that:

• Blocking a single IP address blocks everyone else who is using that machine — which could be a lot of people if the machine is in a university classroom, for instance, or in a library.
• Blocking a range of IP addresses may blacklist an entire office, dorm, or neighborhood for years due to the actions of one user.  That seems a bit harsh.

If a Wikipedia user feels that he has been blocked unfairly, he can contact an admin easily (by e-mail), but that is not the case here — if I can't edit, I can't ask a question on a talk page, and most people don't have IRC and aren't going to get it just for us.  (Wikipedia's other suggestion for a dynamic IP address is to change it in a controlled way, which is virtually impossible unless the relevant ISP employee is a personal friend.)    Ryan W 04:56, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

"Soy Candles" Deletion

So much for the captcha.

• Delete.    Ryan W 01:16, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
• What the hell? Delete, oh Jesus Christ, delete. 58.178.12.85 02:09, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Deleted, spam blacklisted, and earth salted. Don't blame the captcha, blame the monkeys typing in confirmation codes for a living. --Splarka (talk) 08:56, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

"For a living?" I was about to say.  Then I remembered that I had seen a spam commercial during the Super Bowl, which costs US$2,600,000.  Ouch.  I'm glad you folks are doing what you're doing; I'm not sure my stomach would hold up.    Ryan W 05:45, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Sadly, in some countries it can be a high paying job to manually spam. --Splarka (talk) 08:25, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't think we need go through a formal deletion process for articles which are obviously spam. -- Jdowland 13:09, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I usually wouldn't delete as it is a sysop duty rather than staff (we are discouraged from performing sysop duties when local sysops are active, here I am mostly just a contributor), but spam is something staff often will jump in and delete immediately. --Splarka (talk) 23:59, 12 February 2007 (UTC) P.S. Someone sysop Ryan W already.

I was in the neighborhood, and I figured I'd tag it just in case no one else noticed (certain people have told me that every single edit is examined by least one admin each, but I'm not sure I believe it).    Ryan W 05:45, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I'd second that (setting Ryan W admin) -- I don't have the userrights priviledge, though. If Ryan W is interested, I'll chase Fredrik to get it. -- Jdowland 09:49, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Jdowland, please see here for my initial reaction.  However, whereas Splarka is an admin in the much grittier world of the central wikia, and whereas he has seen me in the full splendor of my incomprehensibility, and he still makes that remark, maybe there's something to it (and maybe I'm taking the whole question much too seriously and overanalyzing it).  Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but "steward"/"bureaucrat" seems to be the opposite of what I said: you can sysop/desysop other users, but not do any other admin stuff like protecting or deleting.    Ryan W 18:39, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

In a default MediaWiki install (see m:Help:User_rights#Defaults), there are generally 4 access "levels":

• * (everyone, including anonymous users) can: createaccount, read, edit, createpage, createtalk
• user (logged in user) can also: move, upload, reupload, reupload-shared, minoredit
• sysop (admin): block, delete, deletehistory (see deleted pages and images), editinterface (MediaWiki: namespace), import, importupload, patrol, autopatrol, protect, proxyunbannable, trackback, unwatchedpages (Special:Unwatchedpages), upload_by_url, ipblock-exempt
• bureaucrat: userrights (can edit the rights of any users)

There are also some other applied user groups:

• autoconfirmed (logged in user of a certain tenure or number of edits): often moves are restricted to autoconfirmed
• emailconfirmed (users with confirmed email addresses): not used for much
• bot (edits hidden from Special:Recentchanges by default): automatically autoconfirmed, and do not trigger 'you have new messages' if doing a minor edit on a talk page (for things like removing closed categories).

However, on Wikia and Wikimedia, bureaucrats are given different intermediary roles, and the Userrights permission is given to Stewards (on Wikimedia) and Staff (on Wikia). A bureaucrat here can only use Special:Makesysop to make anyone a sysop, and that is the only function they currently have on Wikia beyond a normal sysop (future features will include ability to add and remove bot flags). On Wikia therefor, the Bureaucrat is still the 4th access level above sysop, and staff the 5th.

More on Staff: Staff on Wikia (limited to paid part-time, full-time, and consulting employees and only) are given every permission possible. As we are employees, we use them only when we are required to (the Community Team of which I am part are the only ones who really go out and actively use them, often in the role of sysop or bureaucrat when needed, especially on new and low-activity Wikia that may suffer vandalism... on a self-sufficient wiki like this, I am just a minor contributor and arguer ^_^). The logic is that we can be trusted with every right because our jobs are on the line if we abuse them. Anyway, both "Staff" and "Steward" are custom user groups to Wikia and Wikimedia respectively, which can easily be created by modification of LocalSettings.php on any wiki.

Just to complicate things, we also have several sysops on Central with custom user rights to extensions that only need to exist there (as they are globally applied), such as the Spam Blacklist, global contribs lookup, and global username blocking. We also hope to have at some point a 6th intermediary group, that would be about equal to sysop or bureaucrat, but globally applied to certain trusted multi-wikia users (such as w:User:GHe).

Anyway, to answer Ryan W's question, the rank goes: anon user, user, sysop, bureaucrat, staff. There is nothing between user and sysop, so you might as well just accept sysophood from the local bureaucrat, and if you require it I can (upon request) remove it. A Staff member can do anything like banning/protecting/deleting, but we shouldn't. A bureaucrat who wasn't a sysop technically couldn't do anything special but make sysops, but they could then just make themself a sysop.

Phew! --Splarka (talk) 08:25, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Wow!  Very interesting.

Among other things, this is an informative and reasoned way of saying, "Ryan W has once again misread something in a wikipedia AfD or the listserv, then looked at the wrong help page on central for a clarification."  :>   I thought that my original interpretation made sense because it allowed editors to be given "mop and bucket" privileges without the political baggage, but of course no backend programmer would set it up that way: userrights is disassociated from the enhanced editing procedures because that gives us the most flexibility.  (In fact, I have heard that all wikia sysops were once made bureaucrats by default, but then sysops started demoting other sysops in order to block them.)

Anyway, dodging the question again perhaps.

When I see things like this and this, I want to be a sysop, so I can just fix them instead of pestering a sysop to do so (who, unlike me, has actual technical content to contribute and might not find the time).  On the other hand, when I see things like this, I don't want to be a sysop — it does something strange to one's brain, unless one already has exceptional mental fortitude, and there is no evidence that I do.

So my question is really whether the "mop and bucket" part of sysophood is meant to outweigh the political part.  The answer is different on different wikia.  Here, AFAICT, the answer is "yes" because 99.8 percent of the disruptions are dumb, obvious things (like uploading photographs of penises) which are easy to fix, rather than trolling or other more complex behavior, but that's just my own opinion.  If our founding editors agree, then I want to be a sysop; otherwise I do not.    Ryan W 21:13, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

That is a very astute observation. You are correct that it isn't possible to really separate the two; if someone has a privilege on a wiki they get an equal amount of responsibility to use it and account for their actions when using it. This becomes much more noticeable on larger wikis (smaller ones have a sort of "Frontier Law", but this is not a permanent state for a successful wiki).

Parallel to this (bit of a tangent), one can observe that (for large wiki projects, like Wikimedia, and certain older wikia) the more userrights one has, the less choice one has in how to use them. For example, a sysop on Wikipedia has to abide by all the rules and restrictions of sysophood or risk desysopping, but otherwise are given some free reign in their decisions (such as interpretation of consensus on an AFD). The bureaucrats can not arbitrarily rename, +sysop or +bot whoever they want, but are merely the executioners of the will of the community, performing tasks that should be left to those that know how. The stewards, who have the power over literally millions of users, do very little with that power unless specifically asked.

Anyway, this wiki is probably a very long way from the intense things en.wikipedia is suffering (like arbitrations). Arbitrations (and their general lack of actual effectiveness) are what made me semi-retire from Wikipedia in 2005 and come to Uncyclopedia/Wikia. --Splarka (talk) 01:50, 17 February 2007 (UTC)