The Sims Wiki talk:Admin Portal

Digimon spam
Original article from development portal talk:

I found this http://sims.wikia.com/index.php?title=Pleasant_family&diff=155672&oldid=155669 and reverted it of course. I did not warn or ban since the user has made no other contributions, I'll keep an eye on it of course. I can remember removing the same spam from another article some days ago from another IP. I asked some of the VSTF staff if we could watch for these keywords somehow, without any luck. Just a quick reminder: Keep a lookout for spam like this. Duskey ( talk ) 14:25, July 22, 2010 (UTC)
 * No, I have found the same text in thousands (not literally) pages today. I didn't check if it was from the same person.- JEA13  [ iTalk  ] 19:20, July 22, 2010 (UTC)
 * I say we block if it happens twice from the same IP, though I'm almost sure it's just some proxy servers from all over the world. The one in my example is from Indonesia. Duskey ( talk ) 00:32, July 23, 2010 (UTC)
 * I think the best we can do is use google to search for 'digimon' with the 'site:http://sims.wikia.com' paremeter. It only shows this page atm, but it appears the spanish sims wiki has had the same problems. Duskey ( talk ) 07:20, July 31, 2010 (UTC)
 * I blocked 118.137.68.185 for a month. The IP's seem to be from 118.137.x.x range, but we sadly also have legitimate IP users posting from that range so we cannot ban them all. Duskey ( talk ) 07:26, August 1, 2010 (UTC)
 * Previously blocked 118.137.20.48 as well. Duskey ( talk ) 07:53, August 1, 2010 (UTC)
 * Moved article to admin portal talk. Duskey ( talk ) 14:55, August 5, 2010 (UTC)
 * If we see more of this Digimon spam from the 118.137.x.x range, I suggest we block IP users from that range for a month, as a test. Normal contributors can from that range will still be able to register and then contribute as normal, but IP's from that range will not be able to edit. What do you think? Duskey ( talk ) 14:55, August 5, 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't think vandalism even of this type or magnitude warrants potentially blocking several people who have done nothing wrong, just because they coincidentally have an IP address that falls within a certain range. If this continues, though, it might be best to send a message to someone on the VSTF, since maybe they have an idea that will stop it, without possibly barring innocent users. Plus, to be honest, while this sort of thing is a nuisance, it doesn't do any real or permanent harm, since it's revertible and those users can be blocked. -- Patrick (LostInRiverview) (talk)(blog)(random page) 15:48, August 5, 2010 (UTC)
 * Just for the record: The range block of IP users were the advice given by folk from VSTF. Duskey ( talk ) 20:36, August 8, 2010 (UTC)
 * Since I just caught another, I'm doing some investigation into this: Duskey ( talk ) 08:29, August 22, 2010 (UTC)

Facts

 * Common factors:
 * 118.137.x.x IP's
 * So far not twice from the same IP.
 * It seems they save the old article from previous visits and then add the spam resulting in parts of an old article show up in the edit as well.


 * Ways to prevent:
 * {|class="wikitable heading-blue"

!Action||Pros||Cons Maybe 118.137.20-68.x||Will probably stop it||A very large range, though people can still register and edit
 * Range block 118.137.x.x anon users only
 * Range block 118.137.x.x anon users only
 * Semi-Protect affected pages||Might stop it||No immidiate pattern of pages chosen, Will affect all anon users instead of just the ones in the range block
 * }
 * }


 * What to do now:
 * Discuss the issue and come up with countermeasures.
 * Check history and try to find more incidents for comparison.
 * Admins follow targeted pages.

Continued discussion
Thoughts, questions, ideas? As mentioned above I've asked some people from VSTF and they suggested the range block. Duskey ( talk ) 08:29, August 22, 2010 (UTC)
 * I did a whois on all of them . They all return the same information, they're all from Indonesia and owned by some ISP called Firstmedia there. This means that either the spammer is their customer or he's using their server as a proxy. The company doesn't have a "Report abuse" button or anything like that so they probably won't react in any way if we contact them. Duskey ( talk ) 14:41, August 23, 2010 (UTC)
 * Though I was hesitant, I say that a range block may be in order. My only concern, however, is a question of numbers; if we block all IPs starting with 118.137, how many people could that potentially block from the wiki?-- Patrick (LostInRiverview) (talk)(blog)(random page) 14:47, August 23, 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not an expert, but my guess would be everyone from Indonesia using Firstmedia and who isn't registered. Unfortunately there is no way we can search for IP users, but I have seen legit edits from that range. We could contact wikia to see if they have an alternate solution and maybe request an estimate of the amount of traffic from that range. If we implement the range block I imagine we make a news post and a site notice about it. Think of unregistered editing as a luxury, it's not something users can demand. Duskey ( talk ) 03:09, August 24, 2010 (UTC)
 * That might be a good option... if I recall, you can set a separate site notice for IP users... you could make a message there that says basically "if you can't edit, your ip may be blocked - please register in order to edit articles." Then it would be important that the block is set so that the blocked ips aren't prohibited from creating a new username. Registered users are altogether easier to handle, vandalism-wise. -- Patrick (LostInRiverview) (talk)(blog)(random page) 03:19, August 24, 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't think there's any reason to add a message for all IP users. As I wrote earlier we'll do a blog news post, a quick sitenotice and then adding a note to the block message people get. It's at MediaWiki:Blockedtext. I'll send an email to Wikia today asking for help/solutions. Duskey ( talk ) 16:53, August 24, 2010 (UTC)
 * I forgot to add: I suggest we do the range block as a test at first in a 3 month period and then see if we catch any more of them. Duskey ( talk ) 17:00, August 24, 2010 (UTC)
 * Mail to Wikia sent. Duskey ( talk ) 10:40, August 25, 2010 (UTC)
 * Another one caught. I added it to the tables above. Duskey ( talk ) 11:33, August 25, 2010 (UTC)

Fixed
I finally convinced VSTF to add some stuff to the global block filter and we shouldn't be bothered by Digimon spam any more. If you spot some, don't hesitate to report it here though. Duskey ( talk ) 19:40, August 27, 2010 (UTC)

Site Notice
''No longer relevant, as 5,000 article milestone has come and passed. Similar discussion regarding the site notice should occur in a new section.'' -- Patrick (LostInRiverview) (talk)(blog)(random page) 20:08, August 27, 2010 (UTC)

I've temporarily pulled the Site Notice, since we've had a drop in the number of articles, and best practices suggests keeping messages only on a temporary basis. If you disagree, or notice the article count start to climb again (to within 10, probably), please feel free to revert my edit and reintroduce the countdown. -- Patrick (LostInRiverview) (talk)(blog)(random page) 16:35, August 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * If you do not change the sitenotice ID aswell it doesn't make much sense to clear the sitenotice unless the information gets outdated or invalid. If people dismissed the message they obviously won't see it. If people did not dismiss it, they probably don't mind it or like to keep it in order to keep up with the article count. LIR has re-enabled it already btw. Duskey ( talk ) 20:35, August 8, 2010 (UTC)

Warnings
I'd like to make a few changes to the way we handle warnings, and specifically the warning and templates. Presently, we really only have two types of warnings; one for unconstructive edits, and another for negative behavior. I think it would be better to get rid of Warning2 and combine both into the Warning template, with the addition of another parameter. So, entering a warning would look something like this:

~ or ~ or ~

It could be set up to where there is a preset list of types which will produce a warning with different text, images and/or colors.

On a related note, Wikipedia has a policy adopted about removing comments from user talk pages; it says that messages on talk pages shouldn't be re-added if removed, as doing so would force a user to keep a badge of shame. I think this is reasonable, so I'd also like to remove any requirement to keep warnings on user talk pages. Since everything is still kept in edit history, it wouldn't be difficult to determine whether someone has already been warned. -- Patrick (LostInRiverview) (talk)(blog)(random page) 17:27, August 10, 2010 (UTC)


 * It sounds good to me, thumbs up. I also support the idea of scrapping the 1 week rule of not deleting the warning. As long as people issueing the warning put 'warning' in the edit summary, we can always spot it if need be. Duskey ( talk ) 22:53, August 10, 2010 (UTC)


 * I would suggest something like:

I mean just the colors, I haven't changed the wording of the final warning. Duskey ( talk ) 14:19, August 23, 2010 (UTC)


 * One suggestion; on the temp block template, include in the 2nd parameter a spot for time... so instead of it saying something like August 27, 2010, it will give the exact time when a block expires (August 27, 2010 at 12:37:00) -- 00:37, August 27, 2010 (UTC)


 * I can easily do that, but it'll be harder for North Americans since the times listed on the block list is in local time and we should output time in UTC. Duskey ( talk ) 16:10, August 27, 2010 (UTC)

TSW on other sites
Moved from the community portal talk

Discussion
Should we register TSW on other sites? I'm thinking facebook and twitter and all that. I'm gonna list some pros and cons:
 * Pros:
 * Might attract more visitors.
 * Can help relay info without people visiting the site.


 * Cons:
 * Shared password.
 * Abuse/vandalism.
 * Inter-admin drama for not gaining access to accounts.


 * Suggested sites
 * Google Groups (for sharing passwords between admins)
 * Twitter
 * Facebook
 * Youtube

Personally I'm not a facebook man so I can't comment much on that, but I am beginning to see the advantages of Twitter. We could use it to post whenver we put up a blog post which goes in 'The Sims Wiki News' window, this means people following us on Twitter would get an update without having to check the site. It also means people can follow us vis RSS. At the moment our RSS feed is a standard 'recent changes' enabled by default by Wikia. Additionally we can use it for more general Sims 3 news as well, such as 'The Sims 3: Late Night announced, info available on the wiki' or something like that. I'd certainly be up for it. I already registered a Twitter account with our name in my email. If we do go ahead and adopt this idea, we'll probably need a joint email as well. Duskey ( talk ) 21:30, July 28, 2010 (UTC)
 * Comments:

The problem with all this is that is encourages stuff going on behind closed doors, which is really against the whole wiki concept, but I can see where it will come in handy. So far for affiliates I've been using my own email, but we could use a joint on as well. Another problem is, who do we give access to those servies? I mean the email and the twitter. Who should get the password? And I can already foresee the complaints about there being a 'club' within the administrator ranks which new admins might feel excluded from since they do not have access to the same tools as other admins do. Duskey ( talk ) 21:30, July 28, 2010 (UTC)

Yet another hurdle is vandalism or abuse. We need administrators to keep on eye on these external services to prevent abuse and how do we handle it if an admin with password for the stuff goes rogue. I'm quite sure we would be unable to retrieve the accounts. Duskey ( talk ) 21:30, July 28, 2010 (UTC)

Another thing: We'll need a place where we can share the passwords of these accounts. Nicmavr has suggested Google groups, so all you need a is a google account to join. Duskey ( talk ) 14:54, July 29, 2010 (UTC)

I added 'suggested sites' above. Duskey ( talk ) 12:57, July 31, 2010 (UTC)

I've made a Twitter so you can preview it: http://twitter.com/thesimswiki I even pimped it out in our colors etc. Duskey ( talk ) 08:18, August 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * Twitter page looks good. I have been posting to Facebook with Wikia's Facebook Connect. --a_morris (talk) 19:05, August 8, 2010 (UTC)


 * Cool. I'm not a FB user, so I can't really help there. How do you like Google Groups for password sharing among admins with access to the stuff? Unless anyone has any crazy objections I'd like to fire off the Twitter page in the coming days. Duskey ( talk ) 19:27, August 8, 2010 (UTC)


 * Moved from the community portal discussion. Duskey ( talk ) 14:35, August 14, 2010 (UTC)
 * Created The Sims Wiki:Admin Portal/sites. Duskey ( talk ) 15:31, August 14, 2010 (UTC)

The next step
What's the next step? The way I see it we just use Twitter to announce our news posting which go on the main page. Remember to include links directly to the post in Bit.ly format. Facebook should probably contain similar postings, I have no idea how that works though (Facebook that is).

The Google group is only used so all invited admins have the passwords. The Gmail is only used since all these sites (Twitter, Bit.ly etc) required an email to register. It should only be used for affiliation emails. It should not be used as a contact email, we have the wiki for that.

Personally I would hold off announcing all this until we get it on the right tracks, meaning all active 'crats control the google group and we make some userboxes like "I'm following TSW on Twitter" etc. Duskey ( talk ) 15:50, August 14, 2010 (UTC)


 * I've created a Facebook page for The Sims Wiki and linked (export Facebook posts to Twitter) it to our Twitter account. I am the admin of the page but I can add others through Facebook friends or email. --a_morris (talk) 18:46, August 14, 2010 (UTC)


 * A toddler informed me that there's now two FB pages on our Wiki, is this intentional? What do you mean you linked it to our twitter? Does this mean twitter posts will show up on facebook? Duskey ( talk ) 20:19, August 14, 2010 (UTC)


 * The page that was linked here before was not "owned" by anyone and therefore could not be posted to or administered in anyway. The second one is administered by me so far. I'm not positive if twitter posts will show up on facebook. It is either facebook -> twitter or facebook <-> twitter. --a_morris (talk) 21:30, August 14, 2010 (UTC)


 * Clarifying: The link only goes facebook to twitter. The Twitter app on facebook can make posts only to personal profiles not pages but other applications can. --a_morris (talk) 17:14, August 15, 2010 (UTC)


 * I've made Template:Top area. I figure we'll use this on the main page when we decide to launch these sites. Duskey ( talk ) 16:11, August 27, 2010 (UTC)

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RIPBrandibroke
Since this persons 1 month block was up, they tried to provoke a response from administrators by posting about their previous vandalism. When that didn't work they started trolling Monster, including a threat to "ban" him. RIPBrandibroke was blocked on June 7 2010 for 1 week for vandalising articles with "fanon" and on July 5 2010, this time for 1 month, for the same thing. Monster has as of today blocked them for 1 year, but I would like to suggest a permanent block based on that I do not think this user has any interest in redeeming themself. I would also suggest that the vandal bragging on the user page and blog be deleted. Duskey ( talk ) 11:57, August 23, 2010 (UTC) I already perma. blocked him.-- Danny (Monster2821) (talk)(random page) 12:00, August 23, 2010 (UTC) i think he has a sock puppet to.-- Danny (Monster2821) (talk)(random page) 12:09, August 23, 2010 (UTC)


 * I noticed an auto-block triggering after their block, which means they have another account. Bleeh pointed out that here they sign their name with Iesha. Bleeh remembered that name as a former vandal and sure enough User:Iesha Parsons, blocked for 3 days on July 13, 2010. If you see their user pages   the writing is almost identical. Iesha's contributions also reveal that they've been editing RIPBrandibroke's talk page as if it was their own . I'm fully convinced that it is the same person, I'm just looking for some backup before blocking it as well. As long the RIPBrandibroke's block is up, they will only be able to edit from the other account if they switch IP's somehow so we don't need to rush this decision, but I'd sleep better at night knowing all their sockpuppets were gone. Duskey ( talk ) 16:41, August 24, 2010 (UTC)
 * I see Monster blocked that account as well. Duskey ( talk ) 10:01, August 25, 2010 (UTC)

Decomission the 1 week rule for warnings
Resolved: Seeing no opposition, Warning'' has been modified to remove the one-week requirement. An explanation has been placed in the description space explaining the change.'' -- Patrick (LostInRiverview) (talk)(blog)(random page) 00:32, August 27, 2010 (UTC)

Based on LIR's comment in an earlier discussion and the WP guideline Don't restore removed comments; I think we should get rid of the rule. A 'Badge of Shame' is a bad thing and if they remove it, it's safe to assume they've seen it. As for keeping track of when a block is due after a warning, admins simply need to enter 'warning' in the edit summary and it'll be easy to find in the history. Duskey ( talk ) 14:12, August 23, 2010 (UTC)


 * My only concern for placing warnings in the history is that they may be just a little hard to find. Might I suggest something like adding a wiki-link in the summary, perhaps to Template:Warning, and also perhaps to The Sims Wiki:Policy page to cite a specific rule-breakage. For example:


 * Warned for violation of no-spam policy.


 * Since it's in the history, it will automatically place the username and date, so a signature isn't needed. This could be considered a "badge of shame" but I don't think so; the edit history isn't something everyone sees, and the user isn't forced to look at the warning every time they visit their page, plus it makes it known when a warning was given, who gave it, and under what circumstances. I would suggest bolding the word 'warning' but, alas, that doesn't work in edit summaries. Another alternative would be to place 'warning' in all caps, but that might be too "loud." Failing all these options, perhaps it might be a decent idea to keep a Warned Log, which would record who has been warned, when they were warned, and for what they were warned. I know that I've been hesitant towards this (some vandals might see it as a "badge of honor" - we're stuck talking about badges, apparently), but if it could be done in a way where it's not readily visible to most people (like restricted special pages), or in a place not likely to be visited, it might be a good way to keep track of these things. Of course, any warning log that is generally visible would need to have full sysop protections. -- Patrick (LostInRiverview) (talk)(blog)(random page) 14:44, August 23, 2010 (UTC)


 * I think the whole point of having a warning before a block is that warnings are temporary and they're meant to be "forgotten", in my opinion it's enough that we have a block log, if we remove the 1 week rule there's no need to keep track of warnings. An admin spotting a warnable/bannable affair just has to check the recent history of the user's talk page to check if a warning was given recently. If yes, then a ban should probably be issued. Adding a simple 'warning' in the edit summary is enough in my opinion, you can always quickly search the window in your browser if you're in doubt. Adding the reason however might be a good idea.
 * So in short: Dislike warning logging, dislike "decorating" warning edit summaries, dislike 1 week non-removal rule of warnings. Duskey ( talk ) 16:49, August 24, 2010 (UTC)

Assume Good Faith
I've created The Sims Wiki:Assume good faith. It borrows heavily from those policies by the same name on Wikipedia, but it has been changed substantially to fit TSW more readily. Now we don't have to type out assume good faith whenever we want to cite that guideline. Please feel free to contribute to it and make improvements. The layout of it roughly follows Wikipedia's (though most section headers have been removed), but if you can think of a more logical way to lay it out, please do so. I'd prefer, as a show of good faith, that we leave it unprotected, so that any user will be able to make a meaningful improvement to it. Which is, after all, what that policy is all about. -- Patrick (LostInRiverview) (talk)(blog)(random page) 22:10, August 23, 2010 (UTC)
 * Good idea. Duskey ( talk ) 16:42, August 24, 2010 (UTC)