User talk:Beetstra/Archive 14

Reid Stowe
FYI - I have upgraded the Reid Stowe article to temporary full protection due to continued content dispute as noted in this request. -- Tom N (tcncv) talk/contrib 03:59, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Fine with me. Something needed to be done there, and I did warn the editors upon semiprotection to stop edit warring and get to consensus first.  If I would have noticed, I might have gone for blocks on the editors, though ... --Dirk Beetstra T  C 07:36, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
 * In case you were not following the article for Reid Stowe, I can tell you exactly why the page now has a full block. It has nothing to do with me. I left the following note at Talk:Reid Stowe.
 * As you can see from the page history for Reid Stowe, I updated the Anne's geographical location a couple of times over 2 days (21,22 May) and also fixed a reference that needed to have a more permanent address (same reference, different URL). (Note: these were totally uncontroversial edits- no consensus needed.) Two days later, Regatta dog decided to unilaterally lop off nearly 2000 bytes of text, with references included, simply because they were not linked to a specific event or were directly a result of an interview with Reid Stowe. I did not engage in a war with him over this, because I knew that would cause a block of the editors, including me, rather than of the page itself. Fortunately for him, that did not happen.
 * I suggest you be more careful threatening block of editors without justification. :)
 * Skol fir (talk) 23:48, 31 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't think I threatened to block you, I did that with Regetta dog. I was strongly suggesting (and I did the similar to Regetta dog, but there with warning) that you discuss and/or get external input, even if there is then a wrong version that is missing information (both of you would be excused if the information that is there is plainly wrong and defaming).  Both of you did not reach consensus, I was hoping that semi-protecting the page would give rise to discussion.  Unfortunately the only way to get discussion to finish was to fully protect it (I think you requested that?).  I hope this explains.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 06:53, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you for explaining that. I understand now. I was mainly referring to the latest incident where Regatta Dog deleted 2000 bytes of material on 24 May, without consulting anyone. His behavior showed that he had no respect for the process here, and that is why I asked for the full block. I did not want to engage in another edit war, because I saw the futility of that.
 * Skol fir (talk) 16:28, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Red linked pokes


don't want to be poked for some reason. We've tried three times and have received a red link each time. MER-C 13:51, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Sigh, there is still something wrong in the communication in the inside of the bot. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 15:50, 29 May 2010 (UTC)


 * No, this must be something else .. maybe something it tries to save is blacklisted? --Dirk Beetstra T  C 15:51, 29 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't seem to have records on these anyway .. ?? --Dirk Beetstra T  C 15:52, 29 May 2010 (UTC)


 * It refuses to save them in any form. Need to have a better look at this later, but I did not see any records for these links on IRC.  Hope that helps at least a bit ..  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 17:07, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Please I need to be removed from spam request

 * Hi.
 * I wish you are feeling good.
 * After we had a good discussion at User talk:MER-C I wish that you would remove 3rbsat.com from MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist & Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam, as I now well understand wikipedia rules & won't try any thing you may consider spam from now, I'm introducing that request now as that spam request may affect 3rbsat.com reputition while I ensure that it's now non-spamming site if you considered it a spam before



—Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.152.127.96 (talk • contribs)
 * There is no need to remove the discussions. There are many links discussed throughout the history, and discussions have gone any way.  I would ask you to respond to both threads in a way that shows understanding etc., then I, or another admin, will close the discussion accordingly (I will for sure not blacklist the domain, other admins may do that before that).  I hope you will choose the way of communication from now when your edits get challenged.  Thanks!  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 07:06, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

leaksallday
Hello Beetstra. I am the editor of leaksallday.com. I noticed there has been some questions as to the reliability of the information posted. I would like to ensure you that I do all of the research myself and actually listen to each album that is "leaked" before posting news. I am not sure what else could be done to make a site like this more valid as a source. Is there anything that comes to mind? Also, I respect your right to edit wikipedia content as you see fit. I noticed the reference was added again to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champ_(album): 19:35, 3 June 2010 Ldud (talk | contribs) (1,566 bytes) (Undid revision 365170430 by Beetstra (talk) Important piece of information had been removed.) (undo) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.27.243.180 (talk)
 * I have removed it again, spam and not reliable. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 15:21, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

ref on Champ (album)
Yes, I've run into problems with reffing bad sites in the past. Having said that, I did not add the reference. You might wanna try talking to the person who added it. Also, regardless of whether or not this is a trustworthy source, the album was leaked to the internet. What we might wanna try doing is keep the ref in there till we find a better one with the same information. Thanks - Ldud CRAP (Ldud) talk some CRAP wit' me! 19:50, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
 * No, then please reinstate the sentence with a fact. The edits that are going on are bordering on disruption (discussion does not seem to go towards understanding, and they are blanking said discussions as well), which does not .. make me more positive, or less inclined to actually blacklist it (in which case it is also better removed).  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 10:40, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Re:Unblock Alhajowaisrazaqadri.com
As i said
 * 1) Alhajowaisqadri.com is Official website of Muhammad Owais Raza Qadri,according to Guidelines,official websites are the most preferable sources of info.
 * 2) The content on the site are free and the site a 'Non-profit site.
 * 3) I have about 18 references for the article.Out of 17 are from deferent pages from The website.So it'll take alot of time to unblock all 18 links on the site.
 * 4) It seems that,Acc. To you,biggest reason for blocking reason Is That This troll spammed wikipedia with that link.So what's the wrong with the link?WHY DON'T YOU BLOCK THAT VANDALISER???.Please Block him instead of blocking the website.

 Coercorash Talk Contr. 15:03, 7 June 2010 (UTC)


 * A) I did not blacklist it.
 * 1) I did not dispute that it was not. And that guideline does not say that the official site of the subject is the preferred source of info.
 * 2) So what, the content was spammed, whether it is commercial or not is totally irrelevant, someone found it necessary to inappropriately promote that site, and that is why it was blocked.
 * 3) 'I have about 18 references for the article', IF you reference information about Muhammad Owais Raza Qadri with 18 references to his own site, then I suggest that you read the reliable sources guideline. We need independent sources from the subject.
 * 4) No, there were already three editors spamming it. And we would have to block some 60.000 IP addresses.  The editor was sufficiently warned, editors were blocked for it.  To no avail.
 * If you put those 18 links up in one request (as you have them all ready, apparently), then there is no problem. That could go quick.  Yelling to me is not going to help.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 15:12, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

COIBot churning out empty reports
Are these supposed to be empty?


 * WikiProject Spam/LinkReports/comune.cavenagobrianza.mb.it
 * WikiProject Spam/LinkReports/mp3classicalmusic.net
 * WikiProject Spam/LinkReports/ilovepai.com
 * WikiProject Spam/LinkReports/mysteries24.com
 * see


 * WikiProject Spam/LinkReports/all4ut.ucoz.com
 * WikiProject Spam/LinkReports/chatroulettecite.com
 * see


 * WikiProject Spam/LinkReports/biovisi.com
 * WikiProject Spam/LinkReports/imugla.com
 * see

Edit summaries here indicate that records exist in the database. MER-C 12:23, 9 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I am running the linkwatchers and COIBot from a new, empty table (which now gradually fills). I am repairing the old tables in the meantime.  When tables are repaired, I will make them available to COIBot ASAP.  Until then we don't have any old data, and that is why these are all empty (as will all the ones that you requested in User:COIBot/Poke).  I have made sections, I suggest we do not blank them when finished (but do if blacklisted or if you know enough), I will simply repoke them when more data becomes available, and at the end when all tables are available again.
 * I am afraid that this will take days ..
 * Every poke and auto-report that is now waiting, is what was in the list when the system crashed. The linkwatchers tell COIBot not only which link is spammed, also which editors they caught doing so, so that is where COIBot knows which editors were involved.  That autocatching of spammers may produce some false positives in the beginning (as it may not know regular links at the moment).
 * I hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:30, 9 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I'll store the empty automatic local/XWiki reports now being churned out somewhere for regeneration later. As you can see, prior on-wiki records are being blanked. MER-C 12:35, 9 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, that I saw. COIBot can't access those records :-(
 * The editors named in the generation of the XWiki and Local reports however will be correct, might give you some extra help for the moment. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:37, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm a newbie and have a question about a link...
There's a page I've taken a little bit of interest in from a history-viewpoint and I noticed that the link: Link GA|de (which apparently is part of a BOT you created?), appears on the page-code when one hits "Edit page". I am not that techno-literate and am trying to understand exactly *what* that link actually is and what it does. Any clarification would be appreciated.

Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Shearonink (talk • contribs) 21:14, 10 June 2010 (UTC)


 * [[Image:Signature button.png|right]]When you leave messages, please remember to "sign" your name, by putting ~ (four tilde signs) at the end. This will add your name, and the date and time. You can also do this by clicking the 'sign' button, pictured here.


 * The code  (which I assume you saw on Isoroku Yamamoto) puts a good article symbol [[Image:Symbol_support_vote.svg|15px]] on the inter-language links, listed under "Languages" on the left of the article; the "DE" being the code for the German Wikipedia (Deutsch), where it is classed as their equivalent of  Good Article, "Lesenswerten Artikel" (article worth reading) - de:Yamamoto Isoroku.


 * It is a template, called "Link GA", and has the parameter "de". For all such templates, you can find the source by putting "Template:Whatever it is called" into the Wikipedia search box, Template:Link GA.  Chzz  ► 22:55, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for the clarification. I know about templates somewhat but couldn't quite figure out what the bits of 'code' within the double parens meant... And sorry for leaving my original question above signatureless.Shearonink (talk) 04:14, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Removal of all external links from 'Soundmap' entry
I would be grateful if you would reconsider restoring the external links to the Soundmap entry. I make no claims for my own, and don't mind if that isn't restored, but several of the others are initiatives by bona fide cultural organisations and archives. Their inclusion would be wholly relevant to the subject.

I see from the history of the page that you spent some time mulling this over. I appreciate the links to the relevant guidelines by way of explanation, but they do not dispel the sense of the removal of all links as punitive rather than dispassionate. IMR (talk) 10:40, 11 June 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by IMR (talk • contribs) 10:29, 11 June 2010 (UTC)


 * The point is not that they are or are not bona fide, the problem is that such lists violate our external links guidelines, and parts of 'What Wikipedia is not'. You could consider to go to dmoz, as that is a linkfarm, and a proper dmoz might be a good external link on Wikipedia.  I hope this explains.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 10:43, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply. I understand the guidelines with regard to excessive numbers of links. Would it be acceptable to provide a single link to a blog post attempting to define a typology of different sound maps, describing and listing individual projects? dmoz doesn't appear to have a single category of 'soundmap', those that are listed on dmoz are scattered among many regional categories. IMR (talk) 11:19, 11 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Hmm, blog links are generally not suitable either (and I think much could be incorporated in the article). I would suggest that a proper category could be created on dmoz, and then linked from Wikipedia.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 11:29, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

The Acoustic Ecology Institute also has a list of sound map projects on one of its site pages, and perhaps might be better? I will investigate how new categories are created on dmoz, but I don't know anyone who's an editor. IMR (talk) 11:49, 11 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't know if it is in Wikipedia's interest to provide that information, I mean, if people are looking for sound map projects, then it makes sense to use Google, not Wikipedia. If someone wants to know what a sound map project is, then one would use Wikipedia, not Google.  I hope this explains.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:07, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

I will see about expanding the article's content first. It may become apparent that such a link has illustrative validity as a note or reference, rather than as a disembedded external link. Eg the statement 'the majority of soundmaps listed by the Acoustic Ecology Institute[1] use the Google Maps API, with others featuring map interfaces of their own devising'. IMR (talk) 12:25, 11 June 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by IMR (talk • contribs) 12:23, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

COIbot
Hi. May I ask why your bot is tracking me when I use the website paralympic.org as a source in articles? I'm currently creating articles on nations' and athletes' participation in the Paralympic Games, and paralympic.org is an official International Paralympic Committee website which contains a searchable, categorised database of Paralympic Games results. For obvious reasons, it's my main source for such articles, so I reference it in numerous articles, but your bot seems to think I'm spamming. Just to let you know. Thank you for your bot's good work on other issues, though. Aridd (talk) 10:41, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I think that is the 'problem' .. so I have whitelisted the link. The bot does not think you are spamming, the bots just notice that there is an editor with a strong preference for a link, which says, of course, nothing about the link, the editor, or any intentions.  I'm sorry for the inconvenience!  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 10:46, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * No problem. Thanks for the explanation, and for fixing it so quickly! Aridd (talk) 13:53, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

LTA reply
Hello, I wasn't sure if you were watching the discussion page, so I thought I'd just drop by and tell you that I replied. Netalarm talk 13:08, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I do, but since I am watching so many pages, this one scrolled of the bottom .. Thanks!!  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 13:20, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Sammy Hagar
In this, you removed sourced info and added unsourced info. If there is a source, provide it - per WP:BURDEN. The source that the user provided appears to be verifiable and reliable, assuming good faith. If you do have good reason to doubt it, then you should remove the information completely, not put something unsourced. It is not the duty of the contributor to provide their source online; as far as I can tell, it is publicly available.

Additionally, please take into consideration the sad tale documented here.

Thanks,  Chzz  ►  10:49, 2 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Was working on that, tried to find at least an independent source, most info seems scraped, though it is very widely distributed (both birthplace and name). I'd like the birth certificate to be actually verified, not just like this.
 * I have seen it. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 11:02, 2 June 2010 (UTC)


 * So, you either consider that thebiofile.com is a more reliable source than Monterey County Courthouse, or, you think that the new editor is lying. Do you have any reason to believe that they would be so adamant in their declaration to somehow besmirch the subject in altering their birthname?


 * I'll bet you tuppence that some of your "several internet sources" have obtained their 'facts' from...that well-known online Encyclopaedia thingy.  Chzz  ►  11:47, 2 June 2010 (UTC)


 * The latter is basically what I said, indeed. And no, I am not thinking that she is lying, as I don't have any reason for that, there is however not a single primary or secondary source out there linking Sammy Hagar to Salinas .. However, there are (primary) sources online for Monterey.  But if we want to err on the save side, make it Monterey County, which covers both Monterey ánd Salinas.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:10, 2 June 2010 (UTC)


 * The county name might resolve one issue, but what about the birth name? The new user, in good faith, wished to correct it. They have provided what appears to be a reliable source. The information that you added does not have a source.  Chzz  ►  17:18, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I guess we need someone to actually verify the information, then. What we do have are many conflicting sources for it (most of them hardly reliable), and one primary source left saying 'Monterey' and a primary source right saying 'Salinas' and 'Sam' .. if the latter primary source is (clearly) conflicting with the former primary source, then the only way forward is to discuss, either with the editor who is using one of the primary sources, or on Talk:Sammy Hagar to see if one of the 'subject specialist at work there' can dig up better info.
 * As a note, the unreliable source 'the internet' seems to disagree as well about 'Sam' and 'Samuel', even pages which say 'Samuel' reference to pages that say 'Sam' and vice versa, and making even secondary sources there totally unreliable through that. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 07:17, 3 June 2010 (UTC)


 * A birth certificate is not a primary source. The subject was not involved in its creation!


 * Some pages may disagree, because - according to - his birth-name was Sam, but the name he commonly used was Sammy. Hence, they tried to make the change to his birth-name only - in the infobox.   Chzz  ►  13:33, 3 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Hmm, that is a good point, however, that is also true for the Van Halen website.
 * No, the disagreement is between 'Sam' and 'Samuel', he is commonly called 'Sammy'. That is the contradiction I mention.  And still, the birth certificate disagrees with the Van Halen source.  I think the discrepancy needs someone to actually check it .. It's unfortunate that RedJeanette is gone, I expect her to be close to the source, but I have attempted to ask others.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 13:37, 3 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry; it would appear I have not made myself clear.


 * The user made no attempt to change the common name 'Sammy', the title of the article. They only changed the 'birth name' in the infobox (and the place of birth). They declared a specific, verifiable source for that fact.


 * You inserted this 'fact', that his birth name was Samuel, when you reverted their edit.. You have not provided a verifiable reliable source to support this specific fact that you inserted.  Chzz  ► 07:21, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Chzz, I said that I am disputing half of the information in the reference that they gave, and what has not been verified. I am disputing her reference, half of it is contradicting an online source, what, there is no online source that states 'Salinas', whether or not scraped, they all say 'Monterey'. You say it is a good source, I have asked that it be verified. As that half seems plainly wrong, I do not trust the information that the birth name is correct. Go discuss with them, they did not provide a reliable source (again, as it contradicts another reliable, verifiable source), so I am asking, and have asked, for the verification. --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:33, 9 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Re. birthname - forget about Salinas, for now: As stated above, they declared a specific, verifiable source for that fact, when asked for one. You have not provided a source for that fact. You added the fact that their birthname is Samuel, rather than Sam, when you reverted. You have not provided any reference for it. And I cannot ask the user, because they left, after being bitten.  Chzz  ►  22:32, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

You don't get it, do you? I don't trust that source, if the birthplace is disputed, then why do you trust the birthname from the same source ... I am disputing that reference until it is verified (if someone says that they read a reference which says that grass is blue when it grows, and it says that it is eaten by insects, and you know that grass is actually green, and not blue, and every other, (unreliable) source on the internet says that it is eaten by cows, then do you still believe that it is eaten by insects?). You can't ask the user (their account is nicely renamed, so even if they would return they is unlikely to find it), but at least I tried to ask others to actually verify the data. And there is biting and being bitten. My .., the first editor that warned left a first level warning, which are written to be in good faith, and XLinkBot did not even leave a warning. If I am not allowed to say to an editor 'hey, I am sorry, but that is not according to guideline, I have reverted it, could you check again', and then that is 'biting', then you are taking things a step too far. Sigh. --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:35, 11 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, I get it. You do not accept their reference. That's fine. However, you added the fact that his birthname is "Samuel", and you have not provided a reference for that fact. So please, remove it - that's all I was asking, in the very first line of this entire discussion.  Chzz  ► 18:37, 11 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Go ahead, I hope you are writing this to all editors who have inserted unsourced information. Maybe you might want to spend your time actually getting the sources, or verifying them, seems more productive to me, you know where you can find it.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 18:56, 12 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Oh, by the way, I see you are still active here. Just a heads up (I did not realize earlier), but did you realize that here you also inserted unreferenced information regarding the birthplace?  Happy editing!  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 19:47, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

From Abmin
I moving this comment from a user from your User:Beetstra page to User_talk:Beetstra. Traxs   7   01:40, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

I have made no disruptive edits. You are attacking me. Stop hand nuvola.svg This is the only warning you will receive regarding your disruptive edits. Your placement of a vallid company with referances on the spam list is simply a mob attack. I request User:Beetstra to be sanctioned. discussion, User_talk:Abmin


 * It seems that the user has left another reply to you on his talk page, but let me offer some more context for this. The user in question is a persistent spammer using multiple IP addresses to force his promotional link upon the vaporizer page. Besides this he had some fun mangling an old AFD today, removing or changing delete votes.


 * The Unblock-en-l also received multiple messages from him, detailing himself as an "expert" in vaporizers who was being unfairly harassed trough link deletion. At least that was the core message, as the e-mail's were incredibly hard to understand as they were an inconsistent mixture of conspiracy theories against him, promotions of his own product and demands that we treat him fairly by adding his own brand (Read: by adding it everywhere in the article). Either way he equally identified himself as the founder of American Smokeless and the creator of the Ubie.


 * I gave him a final warning, though seeing the history i doubt that this will change anything at all. As the rules have been explained over and over to him, i would advice dealing with this trough WP:RBI. Excirial ( Contact me, Contribs ) 13:47, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, no discussion, so indeed apply WP:RBI, Wikipedia is not a place to promote information like this. Also please immediately blacklist every link used by this user (true redirect sites go immediately on meta). This has been going on too long. --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:18, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Please don't list my website as spam
Hi

This is a message requesting removal of my links from the wiki spam page. I am a new internet user and have had no experience with promoting websites. I thought that useful non commercial websites could be promoted and so entered the website details into wiki. I realize that I made a grave error, but I did not receive any prior warnings except that I see my website in the spam page.

The websites in question are humangrowthhormonesideeffects.org hghbenefits.net viagrainindia.com

I request your kind consideration and request you to kindly remove those links from the wiki spam report. I promise you that none of my links will ever get put in wiki even if they are non commercial websites. Please forgive me for the last time and kindly remove my links from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam

Praying for a reprieve. I have learnt my lesson. Mercy please... Pl help!

Warm Regards Vijayjoys (talk) 13:15, 14 June 2010 (UTC)vijayjoys


 * I answered on User talk:COIBot. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 13:18, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Whitelisting of links
Hi

This is a message requesting removal of my links from the wiki spam page. I am a new internet user and have had no experience with promoting websites. I thought that useful non commercial websites could be promoted and so entered the website details into wiki. I realize that I made a grave error, but I did not receive any warnings except that I see my website in the spam page.

The websites in question are

I request your kind consideration and request you to kindly remove the links from the wiki spam report. I promise you that none of my links will ever get put in wiki even if they are non commercial websites. Please forgive me for the last time and kindly remove my links from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam

Praying for a reprieve. I have learnt my lesson. Mercy please...

Warm Regards Vijayjoys (talk) 13:07, 14 June 2010 (UTC)Vij


 * Commercial or not is not the point, the links fail our policies and guidelines. I will lift the protection, and ask you to make your point at the bottom of the sections.  You might first want to read through the external links guideline, the spam guideline, the conflict of interest guideline, and 'What Wikipedia is not'-policy.  I'll drop you a welcome template with more links to important documents on this site.  Please keep those in mind when expanding the section.  Thanks.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 13:15, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick reply Dirk. I understand what you are saying. I made the mistake and I will not repeat it ever. Is there no way of removing my links from wiki spam. I will never repeat this mate. I have learnt my lesson. Pl consider removing those links from the wiki spam page. Is there no way?

Warm Regards Vijayjoys (talk) 13:56, 14 June 2010 (UTC)vijayjoys


 * First consider discussing, maybe it will then just end there. I am not the only person deciding here.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 13:59, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Internationalized domain names
I poked



which is equivalent to



LinkSaver doesn't like the former. Can the linkwatchers cope with, say, http://παράδειγμα.δοκιμή or http://правительство.рф (links are safe and register in MW's linksearch)? It's only a matter of time until IDNs get spammed. MER-C 07:14, 10 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Pff .. good point. I will have a look at that, in theory they should not care .. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 07:57, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I yesterday saw one of the linkwatchers spew out one of these links added to en.wikipedia. So that part works.  If it becomes a real problem, I will need to have a look at the ways the systems communicate, because the encoding might break somewhere inbetween (well, it should not).  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 10:22, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

XLinkBot
Hi. I had a question about the XLinkBot. I see where admins can edit the RevertList for the bot to add a site to be reverted. Can this be done at an admin's discretion? Or should a request be filed first? I've never spent a lot of time cleaning up spam, but today I've found myself going through and cleaning up a bunch of junk from patch.com. Thanks. TN X Man 23:30, 15 June 2010 (UTC)


 * It is at admins discretion, just like the Spam blacklist. My general thing with both the blacklist and with the revertlist is: when it is plainly spam, list it and provide as much proof as you can get.  If you're not sure .. list it for discussion.  You have to find an optimum between 'let the disruption go on while we discuss it', and 'stop the disruption and maybe annoy some established editors who disagree with a blacklisting'.  Some links do have quite a bit of proper use (see the whitelist requests for e.g. examiner.com), but leaving it off the blacklist will give a steady influx of disruption in the form of spam.  Those are the edge-cases.  If you blacklist viagra/cialis/tramadol-spam or sextoys/porn-spam, no one cares and you will get at the very most only friendly discussions from regulars to whitelist one specific link (and the usual abuse of the spammers themselves), on the other hand, blacklisting youtube/myspace will get you a lot of yelling of everybody.  If you are unsure, ask if COIBot will create you a report, do a count of 'good' vs. 'bad', if 'bad' insertions are >99% (by new editors), then RevertList, if it is >95% then discuss, if it is below .. then consider discussing or keeping an eye yourself.  If no established editors use it, and >99% is crap, consider blacklisting .. etc.  XLinkBot should be >99% of the cases right, though I never did hard statistics (I only did once 30 myspace.com reversions of XLinkBot, and I found only one where I could say 'hmm .. I would not have reverted, but well, really necessary, no').  XLinkBot makes mistakes, and that is why it is set to be extremely soft (only revert once, don't revert undo's, etc.), the first reversion gets a remark, not a warning, it takes 6 reversions to be brought to AIV for review .. I hope this explains.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 08:40, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It certainly does. Thanks for the pointers. I'm going to read up on it more before taking any action. From what I could find, it seems the site is/was gearing up for some sort of rollout within the next few weeks, so maybe the worst has passed. If I find another wave of spam, I'll consider upping the protection. Thanks again. TN X Man  11:52, 16 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Maybe you want to start a report at WT:WPSPAM .. just to have others to evaluate as well. From there it can go any way.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:20, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Old IP talk pages
Hi Beetstra. Hope everything is well. I don't mean to nag or anything, but as the user who initiated and implemented a restriction on CSD criterion G6 with regards to old IP talk pages, I would like to ask for your opinion. For pages such as User talk:64.174.166.78, User talk:82.36.24.14, and User talk:80.45.176.115, what should be done, if at all? As administrators, I feel it is our duty maintain the site, keeping it clean of pages that serve no apparent purpose and have no inherent value. Please let me know what you think. Regards,  F ASTILYsock (T ALK ) 19:20, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I think I made my point clear in the discussion. You are right, by far most of these pages could be deleted as non-controversial. The point that I tried to make was, that when the IP has been used in any form of long term abuse (strong POV pushing, spamming) or there has been a significant discussion on the page (about whatever subject), then thát deletion is not controversial. I have, and others, in the past, pushed to get that point through. Do NOT delete the pages just on the basis of their current content, do not delete them because they are blank, delete them only after having a look at the contributions of the editor, and (old) warnings or discussions that have been found on the talkpage. These pages were all blanked, in good faith, but it is all to easy for a spammer to blank all the talkpages where his warnings were on, and then they get deleted. If we want a CSD for user talkpages, then there should be a handful of strict criteria (which there were and are, but which are completely ignored through and through):


 * 1) Do not delete when the editor, in the past, has been warned for any form of systematic vandalism (e.g. POV-pushing or spamming)
 * 2) Do not delete when the editor has, in the past, had significant content discussions on the talkpage.
 * 3) Do not delete when the editor has been blocked, for whatever reason

I know that the things then don't go towards CSD criteria anymore, and that every deletion is more work, but if there is no check for #2 here, the deletion would 'destroy' valuable information. And I am sorry to say, but to me all admins who engaged in mass-deletion of user talkpages always failed to consider that, when I noticed I have always contacted the editors and complained, but it is just a matter of time and it repeats. Note, that an earlier CSD discussion excluded user talk pages from G6, G6 is not a criterium there.

So, for the above three, they do not fall in any of the three points I stated here, they were not warned for 'systematic vandalism', also did not do anything related to that (even if they were not warned for that), they were not engaged on their talkpage in long discussions about a subject, and all three have never been blocked .. so these could indeed go. I hope this clarifies my point. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:20, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
 * If I were to start a proposal at WT:CSD for say, CSD U4, using everything you just told me, would you be willing to support it? -  F ASTILYsock (T ALK ) 18:32, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

hmm .. yes, I would support it, though I think that it is not unambiguous enough for a CSD, and that will be the dispute. U4 along such lines has existed before, and .. well, it has been my only time I blocked an admin over it, and it did result in a ArbCom and deadmin (and note, I am a supporter of said admin!). We will get questions 'what is systematic vandalism', which is something which is not easy to spot, and what seems simple vandalism, may actually be part of a long term case (WP:LTA is full of them). --Dirk Beetstra T C 19:04, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Alright then, I've drafted a sample below. Please feel free to make any comments/changes. Regards,  F ASTILYsock (T ALK ) 01:46, 13 June 2010 (UTC)


 * U4. Outdated/Obsolete IP talk pages
 * An IP talk page where the owner has not been warned for any form of disruptive editing, not engaged in significant discussions related to content on the talkpage, and not been blocked for any reason.
 * db-u4, db-iptalk, db-oldiptalk

Sorry, did not get back to this, yet.

I am afraid that this will get problems, which I lined out above or in the discussion on WT:CSD:
 * 1) 'has not been warned for any form of disruptive editing' .. no, a) it is fine if they are warned for, say, 'poop'-vandalism.  That is disruptive, but (generally) not systematic vandalism; b) some editors are systematic disrupting (e.g. spamming using multile IPs).  However, it happens often that the editor has been warned using a, say, uw-vandalism1 (while the revert the warning was handed out for was actually spamming).  Those are discrepancies that need to be checked.  In this example, the spammer was warned that he was doing something which was not in line with our policies and guidelines.  Blacklisting is generally not done if the editor is not warned (preferably even blocked), deleting that talkpage deletes that track
 * 2) define 'significant discussion', it might just be a remark, it might be some explanation.  Way to loosely defined.
 * 3) blocks should even be 'even when expired', if the editor got blocked anywhere back in time, do not delete.

The problem in the end is, you will have to go through every single edit the editor has done, see if they engaged in spamming (which would need a research if other editors have used the same link, which is quite a nice task if the editor is spamming a youtube.com (yes, it can be spammed!)), and check if the editor was warned for that. And even, maybe the editor was welcomed, but not warned, which could mean that the editor could have known a bit about our policies and guidelines. i hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:12, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Agreed. I could go ahead and write all of that into the criteria above, but honestly, do you think this would stand a chance of being anywhere close to marginally successful, even rewritten?  -  F ASTILY  (T ALK ) 06:28, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

I know the problem. No-one will have problems with deletion of talkpages of simple vandals, or those who did one edit and only got a welcome template on their talkpage. Oh, to the above you can add that also deleted contributions should be checked. Some of the spammers make a spam-page, which then gets deleted, still the editor was a spammer.

When I go through some old IP talkpages, finding the uncontroversial ones is quite easy. No edits to any talk-space page, one or two edits to mainspace, no deleted contributions, no blocks (OK, seeing if the vandalism was of another 'systematic' form than spamming is more difficult). When the list of edits gets longer, it is better to leave it alone. I think that a bot would be able to filter a lot of the not-so-controversial ones, which then could be checked by hand quite quickly. But if that ends up to be a CSD, I don't know. Maybe we need to shift this discussion back to WT:CSD, and see what others think. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:29, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Ok. I'll start a discussion at WT:CSD.  I'm going to be out of town this weekend, so I probably won't get around to doing that until next week sometime.  I'll let you know when I start a discussion.  -  F ASTILY  (T ALK ) 21:08, 18 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I will not be much around for a week of three from tomorrow. I will try to say something in the proposal when I see it.  Thanks!  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 21:45, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Indian Alcohol Policy Alliance
This is an automated message from CorenSearchBot. I have performed a web search with the contents of Indian Alcohol Policy Alliance, and it appears to include a substantial copy of http://www.indianalcoholpolicy.org/aboutiapa.html. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions will be deleted. You may use external websites as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences. See our copyright policy for further details. (If you own the copyright to the previously published content and wish to donate it, see Donating copyrighted materials for the procedure.)

This message was placed automatically, and it is possible that the bot is confused and found similarity where none actually exists. If that is the case, you can remove the tag from the article and it would be appreciated if you could drop a note on the maintainer's talk page. CorenSearchBot (talk) 09:28, 17 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Wow, I didn't even finish writing up my note to you about the article... You're fast. VernoWhitney (talk) 14:56, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

It was an article copied onto another page, I copied it there, and gave notice to the creator. They did not do anything about it (I changed a bit), but was hoping someone could do something with it, or review it. Maybe this is better. Thanks!! --Dirk Beetstra T C 15:00, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

WP:LTA inactive reports
Hey, the main work is now finished, but there are a lot of reports on the main page that I think are inactive. Some of them possibly don't even belong there. Can you think of an easy way to figure out which reports should stay at LTA (active, long-term vandals)? The only way I've come up with is to review each on individually, but that's risky since we're not familiar with every entry. Netalarm talk 21:53, 18 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Hmm, difficult. I would not take away the 'inactive' ones.  They may be inactive for the moment, or try to stay low for some time to avoid being found.  I have seen long-term vandals return days after a one-year block, days after a year-long page protection was lifted, or happy start creating socks again to continue spamming after some admin removes a rule from the blacklist (half a year after the blacklisting) since 'I don't think it is necessary to block this'.  Some seem away ...  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 22:07, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
 * So I guess the LTA remvamp is pretty much complete. Any other suggestions? Netalarm talk 22:37, 18 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I'll have a look one of these days. Now bedtime .. and .. (see next edit).  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 22:50, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

McClatchyDC website
Hi, I just noticed your COIBot is reporting mcclatchydc.com as a spam link. It is a well-known and legitimate US news service that posts recent articles written by its journalists that also appear in US newspapers. Would you take a quick look at the site; its legitimacy is immediately obvious. I have no idea who to contact about delisting this site, but perhaps you do since you run the bot? If so, would you ask to have it removed from the spam noticeboard or which ever blacklist it is on ? Thanks. KeptSouth (talk) 08:25, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I think someone requested a report on the link. The bot is not saying it is a spamlink, but it may hence have been that someone does have concerns.  I don't see anything linking to the report, so it is a bit difficult to find why that report is there.  Just as a side remark, that a site is an official site of a newspaper, or otherwise of a renown organisation does not mean that it can not be spammed, we've had big organisations spamming wikipedia with their links to improve their rankings etc. (I am not saying that that is the case here).
 * Hmm, second look, the bots seem to catch it by themselves. I have whitelisted the link, will delete the report.  Curious case, I don't see why this happens.  I hope this helps.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 14:15, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Nobel controversies
Re your deletion of my picture on Nobel Prize Controversies:

1. It is, after all " Nobel Controversies ". This controversy is unique because it does not involve the usual second-guessing the subjective judgement of the Nobel committee. Face it, they missed an entire field. Or do you maintain that the 2000 Nobel prize winners really "discovered" conductive polymers ? If so, you seem to be the only person who still does. There are just too many papers.

2. Wonder if you read the caption, which reads "The last" conductive polymer before the Nobel assignment of discovery credit. Labels such as "the last" and "merely the last" hardly claim priority. The picture is to show how badly the Nobel committee messed up, missing a gadget that is now in the Smithsonian,  generally considered the foremost institution re the history of discovery.

The point being that the 2000 Nobel prize committee apparently missed the entire field of conductive polymers previous to their 1977 rediscovery. This is hardly pushing some Nobel claim, which I emphasize belongs to the 1963 Australian paper. Just where do you get this ? 3. There is plenty of support for the fact that the Nobel committee missed the entire previous body of work in conductive and semiconductive polymers. I even have a 1964 textbook entitled "Organic Semiconductors"--- Perhaps I should post a picture of the cover. In particular, Inzelt's recent textbook "Conductive Polymers" devotes an entire chapter to this issue. Tellingly, this chapter is entitled "There is Nothing New Under the Sun". BTW, Inzelt does not mention the gadget in the picture -- it was far too late.

4. I only post occasionally. This is hardly WP:ownership. Similarly, there also seems to be only one person who objects to the picture. 20:11, 18 June 2010 (UTC)


 * 1. Yes, but that is explained in the text, the image is not helping that, the image is somewhere else, and we discussed that before.  The image is removed over and over ..
 * 2. Yes, I did, again, it does not belong there, the image is removed over and over.  The image is not necessary there, it does not support the claim made in the text.  It should be on Conductive polymer .. oh wait, it is, with its misformed caption (which I also explained over and over, that is NOT in line with our WP:MOS)
 * 3. Yes, I know, it is in the text, is it not?
 * 4. Yes, occasionally you reinsert again and again all the things that others remove.  'there also seems to be only one person who objects to the picture' .. hmm .. you might want to consider that statement again
 * I hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 20:30, 18 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Uh, we were in the process of arriving at a "concensus" when you reverted.  I would change things and then wait for comment,  just like "the rules" say I am supposed to do.  I suggest you reread wp:concensus.   Other matters aside,  given proper sources,  NOR, etc.  you cannot just revert items that you personally happen to disagree with and then threaten an editor acting in good faith.  Your edit summary is also a clear violation of wp:civility and "assume good faith".   Perhaps you were just having a bad day.


 * Similarly, argumentum by assertion aside,  upon closer examination the wikipedia rules,  etc. you cite do not appear to support many ( most ? ) of your present (er) original interpretations.  I can give examples ad nauseum.  Perhaps you can enlighten us all. Pproctor (talk) 19:16, 24 June 2010 (UTC)


 * We were in the process of arriving at a "consensus" .... a) where, on the talkpage, b) so you were not there yet? Get that consensus first on the talkpage, and I don't think that you should be the one who determines whether consensus has been reached (read our conflict of interest guideline again.  I am aware of what constitutes consensus, and see that it has been removed by several editors, and inserted only by those who have a strong conflict of interest in this case.  This has nothing to do anymore with civility and assuming good faith, you have been warned before, it has been removed before, you are aware of these, we passed the assuming part by far.
 * I am not sure if I understand your last sentence. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 16:06, 26 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Only one other editor (materialscientist) has reverted it and he appears to have a strong conflict of interest. In fact,  in one place,  he expressed his feeling that it was bad to question the nobel prize winners,  whom he may know.   Given his username,  he is apparently in the field.  The same editor fooled editors on OLEDs into consenting to have this issue taken off that page on the ground that it was already on the conductive polymer page.  He then proceeded to remove it from the conductive polymer page.  When confronted with this,  he restored the material.   There is also an episode on Nobel prize.  You can see the details of this on user:materialscientist.  All prima facia evidence of tendentious editing and POV-pushing.


 * You must understand that this is an extremely controversial matter, all documented in Inzelt's major textbook on conductive polymers,  and supported by Duic, naturally.   Allegedly the Australians ( who discovered essentially the same thing 14 years before the Nobel winners ) were livid.  Similarly, the winners get questioned at scientific meetings.


 * Anyway, wikipedia is wp:not a democracy.  With two good secondary sources,  nobody can really justify exclusion of this matter under the Wikipedia rules,  no matter how controversial it is.   I will be happy to quote the relevant wikirules to you.  But I assume you know them already.


 * As for my alleged "conflict of interest". As a graduate student,  by chance I was involved in the last paper published on highly conductive polymers before its alleged "discovery" by the Nobel prize winners.   This means I know the field well.    I have always made the point that we were very far from the first.   In fact,  I have a 1964 text-book entitled "organic semiconductors".


 * BTW, when I first started on wikipedia roughly five years ago,  I got into a dispute with another POV-pushing admin (duncharris,  IIRC ) over another Nobel prize ( for MRI ).  Again, I had no particular personal interest,  except that I was a wittness to events and saw what really happened.  Again,  as far as wikipedia is concenred, this only meant that I knew the sources.   Interestingly,  because of our little discussion there,  I got interviewed for a documentary on the history of MRI.   Wikipedia is not the real world.


 * Anyway, this is not like the usual Nobel controversy,  which generally involves questioning the subjective opinon of the Nobel committee about why they chose one candidate over another.   Rather,  here the Nobel committee missed an entire rather substantial body of prior research,  which the eventual winners had mostly neglected to cite.


 * Anyway, many decades ago, seeing the handwriting,  I abandoned this area for the fleshpots,  social standing, security, and greater material rewards of medical practice.   No regrets,  BTW.    What could I possibly gain ?


 * As for concensus-- materialscientist evidently realized he had documentably breached enough boundries to potentially endanger his position as an admin and backed off the tricks. Every few days,  when I got tired of " saving lives " and came back to wikipedia to persue my interest in the history of science,  I would do an edit.  The last one he had let stand.  All this was just like things are supposed to happen to reach wp:concensus. Pproctor (talk) 20:11, 28 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, now you have at least two people disagreeing that that image should be there, it hardly tells anything on that page. Still, you are amongst a few of very focused editors who insist in inserting that type of info, and on other places others have also disagreed with the way you formulate and edit.  See the posts on your talkpage.  That an opponent at a certain point lets it stand is NOT consensus.  I ask you to find consensus on the talkpage, not by reinsertion.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 11:53, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Other issues aside, you are incorerct about how concensus works:  E.g., from wp:concensus

" Someone makes a change to a page (any page other than a talk page), then everyone who reads the page has an opportunity to leave it as it is, or change it. When two or more editors cannot reach an agreement by editing, consensus is sought on talk pages.

This is the simplest form of consensus, and it is used in everyday editing on the vast majority of Wikipedia's non-talk pages. It begins with an editor boldly changing an article or other page. In response, the viewers of the page have three options:
 * accepting the change,
 * trying to improve the change, or
 * reverting the change.

If your changes have been edited or removed, you may wish to try to improve on them. If other editors do not immediately accept your ideas, think of a reasonable change that might integrate your ideas with other editors' ideas, and make an edit. You can also discuss the changes at the talk page, in an edit summary, or as a note to others at a user talk page or other widely read pages, such as the Village Pump or a relevant WikiProject.

Articles normally go through many iterations of this form of consensus editing to achieve a neutral and readable product.

If other editors accept your changes, then this silent acceptance is, itself, sufficient proof that your changes have consensus at this time. Consensus does not require either that you get prior "permission" to make changes or that the acceptance of your changes afterwards be formally documented. Edits that are neither changed nor removed are always presumed to have consensus until someone actually challenges them..... " (emphasis-added ).

Which is exactly what I was doing. I can give numerous other examples of where you flatly "get things wrong". Perhaps this is because you don't know better. Alternately, you simply may not care. E.g., accusing me of wp:ownership when I have posted rarely is only one example. Have you actually read wp:ownership or do you just not care how wikipedia defines this term ? Either is not acceptible behavior.

True, most editors accept this kind of bullying and just go away. Better thing$ to do. However, such behavior on the part of admins spoils wikipedia for everyone and drives off expert editors, of which wikipedia is in sore need. Worse, bad behavior drives off potential donors as word gets out of admin misconduct. If you demand that everyone else here follows the rules, you should follow them yourself. In any case, aquaint yourself with them better.

BTW, I note you dodged the other issues I raised. Pproctor (talk) 16:58, 30 June 2010 (UTC)


 * True, all true. But your edits get removed, over and over, they are not there.  You say "When two or more editors cannot reach an agreement by editing, consensus is sought on talk pages.", and that that is the simplest form of consensus.  Which you seem to avoid, but you repeat the edits and change small things.  But what you fail to see, is that the basis of the edit, the inclusion of the image, is the problem, and that is not something you change.  Now two editors are challenging it, quite fast after your edits.  Maybe it is time for you, with your, even when small, conflict of interest, to go to the talkpage, as required per WP:COI.
 * Your assumption of me not interpreting policy is a pot-kettle problem. I have asked you to discuss on talkpages (which is actually what we are doing here, but you do not give any arguments for inclusion of the image in the first place .., yet you try to drive away other editors (and/or admins, who, by the way, get elected on partly on basis of their knowledge and interpretation of policy and guidelines ..) by calling them involved, or for others.  Could you please explain me the merit of the inclusion?
 * No, I did not dodge them anywhere more than that you dodge the merits of inclusion of the image, yet you mention many other things, including assuming conflicts of interests by others, and mentioning that others don't know policy. Yet you give yourself proof that you dodge the simplest form of finding a consensus, even where other policies and guidelines strengthen the view that you should be on the talkpage, and try by insisting.
 * Regarding ownership. Your past, and current edits all focus on either promoting your business (long time ago) and on the Nobel controversy.  While other editors remove your edits, or bring them in line with the policies and guidelines of this site, you reinsert when they get removed.
 * I find it quite interesting that you suggest, as an occasional editor, that two long term editors are less knowledgeable in policy and guideline than you, which I think is .. chilling the discussion. Could you please tell me why that image needs to be on that page.  I think it is appropriate on the organic semiconductor page, but here I really don't see the use.  Thanks!  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 17:50, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Uh, if you look at the history of the page, I did have some support and many of my edits have stayed for years.  But editors come here to edit,  not to get into fights over trivial matters.  So wisely,  everyone bugged out.   This sort of thing is why wikipedia will eventualy run out of the expert editors who really make it work.


 * Anyway, you again miscite "the rules".  E.g., WP:OWN states pretty clearly what "ownership" is.   It is quite definitely not the occasional rare edit.  You need to stop makng up stuff just because you can generally get away with it.  It spoils the wikipedia process for everyone.   Most importantly, admin misbehavior is one reason expert editors don't stay here very long and, if the article I read are any indication, is sorely needed.


 * Alternately, go over to WP:concensus, WP:OWN, and all the all the other policy pages you cite incorrectly and attempt to change them to correspond to your views.   Perhaps I can do this for you,  just to test the waters.  I doubt you will get far with this.  But it is definitely worth a try. Pproctor (talk) 19:45, 21 July 2010 (UTC)


 * 'If you look at the history of the page, I did have some support and many of my edits have stayed for years', yes, but WP:CCC, WP:WAX etc. At the moment you do not have consensus for the inclusion of the image, for which you still do not have given a proper argument why that image should be on that page, with whatever caption you want to give it.
 * And still, even if I am wrong with WP:OWN, still you are trying to push your POV on these articles, being it part of a controversy where you are (or were) an active participant in the situation (even if that role was minor). I asked you, to get consensus on the talkpage, in line with the applicable policies and guidelines.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 07:52, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Robot Arena 2
You reverted my edit to Robot Arena 2: Design and Destroy deleting the. Please can you explain where these issues are present? 84.92.140.217 (talk) 15:04, 25 July 2010 (UTC)


 * 1) it is not wikified, it is largely even not conform our WP:MOS and many other guidelines/policies (WP:EL to name one)
 * 2) 1 reference .. hardly an independent one .. so yes, I call it still 'unreferenced'
 * 3) Some statements are not neutral.
 * Moreover, if you delete such tags, please explain why. I hope this explains.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 16:17, 25 July 2010 (UTC)


 * The problem with the references is that there is nothing else to reference. I think I understand your other points. Helloher (talk) 21:45, 25 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Nothing else to reference??? Hmmm .. does this pass WP:N in that case, maybe this should actually be put up for deletion, and all the original research be deleted.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 06:51, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

External Link In Turbo Pascal Website.
Hi Dirk, I'm responding to your following message:

'''I'm Sorry, but I'm slightly confused why my Updated Link ( http://turpas3.angelfire.com/ ) to my website was refused. Having read a lot about what's acceptable and what's not I can only assume that because my website is a hobbyist page which is on a Free Provider it's not allowed. If so I'm confused because my previous page was on a Free Webpage, though had to be closed down due to Geocities closing down! :( Could you please advise why this was reverted?'''

--Cpm22 user (talk) 07:29, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

''Well, I guess you should read WP:NOT#REPOSITORY, WP:NOT#DIRECTORY, WP:EL, and then decide whether the page really adds to the page you added it to. As the policies and guidelines say, we are not a linkfarm, not the yellow pages, etc. May I point you also to our conflict of interest guideline. If you have further questions, please don't hesitate to contact me. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:16, 25 July 2010 (UTC)''

I've had a read of those pages you suggested and while I feel my website isn't in violation with Wikipedia, it's perhaps not the most suitable site given the links on my website are to direct Turbo Pascal Files which offer no advise on how the program works and some of them are Machine Specific programs which won't help anyone who isn't familiar with that Machine.

Originally I offered my site to Wikipedia which was accepted and still present as the old link to Collection of Generic and Amstrad CPC programs written in Turbo Pascal 3 under CP/M. on your Turbo Pascal article. If that could be deleted it will save people from going to a Dead Link as I had to move it due to Geocities closing. Originally my intention was to provide a site which is the only site (that I'm aware of) to gather a collection of Turbo Pascal 3 programs I had written. While as I mentioned earlier my website has some Machine Specific code which was all done in Turbo Pascal 3 for my particular CP/M Computer, it also has a collection of Generic Code which would be completely compilable on other Platforms and while my website makes every effort to explain what's Specific and what's portable between computers, it has perhaps got to a stage where more of the Specific shows than the Generic code, though haven't been able to add anything recent to it in a while due to the amount of time I spend in other activities and the website itself is connected to the community for which it's specific to and that community also has their own little Wiki page related to that Machine and for which my page has a home in there as well.

Just a thought that if there was some thought's about having some program examples from different versions of Turbo Pascal on Wikipedia then your more than welcomed to grab something generic from my website, though I'm suspecting that's not allowed either.

--Cpm22 user (talk) 09:41, 26 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, what I mean is that the page should add, we are not writing a linkfarm or whatever. There are so many pages out there that are fitting, we can't list them all.  You say this is a personal page, what adds this page what all other official pages, the wikipedia text itself, and all the references on the page don't already tell?  If there is really a significant addition to what was there, then by all means, revert the bot.  And that the link was there for a long time does not mean that it is still appropriate, consensus changes all the time, and maybe there is more superfluous material there.  I'll have a second look.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 09:48, 26 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I removed the link, and more. It is too specific (examples for a specific computer?), it might be suitable to include the link on a dmoz, and the dmoz might have a (good) place here.  I hope this explains.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 09:51, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

List of category for local structural formulas
Hi Dirk. I contact you directly since you are participant of the WikiProject Chemicals and do run bots.

Could you put all local images (files not on Commons) inside the Chembox (i.e. structural formulas or crystal structures) into a list or a maintenance category? I would like to move the ones with a good quality to Commons, in order to enable categorization and usage by other WPs. The low quality images are intended to be replaced by existing alternatives or new structures. In de-WP, I have already completed this task (but including other images in chemistry articles, see history of de:Wikipedia:Redaktion Chemie/Wartungsseite lokale Bilder). --Leyo 14:05, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Would that be possible with a little tweak of the chembox? "ifexists:file: " on the image names?  Otherwise it would really need a bot-run on all of them, which is quite a task.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 14:28, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
 * should work, but it would categorize articles instead of files. I am not allowed to edit the chembox anyway. --Leyo 14:47, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Hmm .. I have to see if I can script this. Should not be too difficult, I think.  I will have a look one of these days.  I could use my scripts for CheMoBot, extracting the boxes and from that the filenames, and then do a check if the files exist on WP.  Writing that to a file is a first go.  Then anyone with an AWB account could quite fast tag all the images (or we ask Rifleman to run it through his Chem-AWB-bot-account).  Let me first have a look at the first half.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 14:53, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
 * There is no hurry. A list (instead of a category) would also be OK. Like in the list linked above, the usage of a template would allow images to disappear from the list as soon as they are on Commons and deleted locally. --Leyo 15:06, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

If it is too complicated or if you find it too time consuming, just make the changes to the Chembox. :-) --Leyo 12:35, 3 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I am running a script at the moment .. still have to see if I can adapt it to this function. Need to do a sweep soon, anyway.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:37, 3 August 2010 (UTC)
 * OK, good. I just wanted to get sure, you do not spend too much time for this. I could also work with the alternative. --Leyo 12:43, 3 August 2010 (UTC)


 * see Category:Chemical_pages_containing_a_local_image, if all is right, they should appear there .. but .. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:56, 3 August 2010 (UTC)
 * is missing. --Leyo 13:12, 3 August 2010 (UTC)
 * heh, :-) --Dirk Beetstra T  C 13:14, 3 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, that part was not too hard. Hope this helps.  If you need another list, I'll be here.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 13:19, 3 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I will work on those images first. That might take a while (includes re-drawing of bad structural formulae). --Leyo 13:22, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I Don't Wanna Miss A Thing
Why do you delete the part of Regine Velasquez in this song, she has a single of that song. THAT'S THE PROOF THAT FOREIGNERS HAVE NO TRUST TO FILIPINOS especially Regine (REGINE VELASQUEZ IS THE ASIA's SONGBIRD!) --121.54.15.166 (talk) 10:18, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Have you addressed the concerns? Youtube is NOT a reliable source.  Please stop edit warring, and find a proper source, it must have been mentioned in newspapers or something similar.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 10:44, 27 July 2010 (UTC)


 * IT IS ALREADY RELEASED BEFORE 2000's. SORRY.--121.54.15.166 (talk) 11:05, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

'Many people have praised' .. where is that written (and as I said, YouTube is not a proper source for that)? And please don't shout. --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:08, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Zissil link removal


WG"H

Please tell me why you have removed the 5 links that I have put up from the site Zissil.com

http://zissil.com/topics/na-nach/ http://zissil.com/topics/petek/ http://zissil.com/topics/na-nach-nachma-nachman-meuman/ http://zissil.com/topics/avtalyon/ http://zissil.com/topics/shmaya-nasi/

I did not put these pages up in an attempt to spam wikipedia. These pages have a lot more information about the subject then the current Wiki page have or ever will have. They are extremely useful to readers and provides them with a far greater insight to the subject then by reading the wiki pages alone. I do not consider it spam in any way and it is only beneficial for readers. My friend has worked very hard on these pages and I think his work should be accessible to people researching these subjects.

I would appreciate it if you would tell me why you chose to treat these quality pages like spam.

Moshe —Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.186.150.89 (talk • contribs)
 * The page fails our external links guideline, and accounts that are adding it do nothing else than adding this. This is clearly a site that is in startup, it is incomplete, and the data on it is totally unreferenced and user contributed (it is basically a wiki).  Sorry.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:08, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

WG"H —Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.116.65.199 (talk) 11:27, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

It is very debatable if the page fails the guidelines.

Regarding the accounts adding the links, this is irrelevant. If the linked pages are productive and help users, what difference does it make who added the link.

Regarding the start-up issue; all the links given were to very complete and ready pages that cover their topics in detail. What difference does it make if the site contains some other incomplete pages, no one linked to them. Again if we are trying to help the user read more about the topic then he is being led to a very ready page.

Lets say the site is like a Wiki so therefore what? If the goal of Wikipedia is some kind of web domination, that anyone searching for information must go through them, then it is understandable what you are saying. However if the goal of Wikipedia is to help people find useful and productive information, then why wouldn't they link to pages that contain double, triple or a dozen times the information that their pages contain on the same topic.

Dirk, did you even read the pages, did you compare them to see how much better they are then the parallel Wikipedia pages? Or did you just give a fast glance and then pull off all the links.

How come the editors that built the Na Nach pages and have removed and canceled dozens of edits, why did they choose to leave the links up, why did they not pull them down when they saw them added. Because they know the subject and saw how much value the Zissil pages were adding for site viewers.

Lets even say in theory that a person created a wiki like site with thousands of topic pages, each superior to the parallel Wikipedia page. What exactly would be the problem in linking all thousand pages each on their corresponding page. Is some how the mass thing an issue, is it an issue that someone is doing a better job then Wikipedia. Again it comes down to the question of whether Wikipedia is trying to help people find information or whether they are trying to monopolize the web.

Moshe —Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.116.65.199 (talk) 11:26, 5 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, it is debatable, and that is what WP:EL says. And yes, I did look, and if the info is superior to Wikipedia, then you should, again, read WP:EL, and otherwise, it is still a wiki, which, again, is mentioned in WP:EL.  And, OK, lets say that a person did create those .. see [WP:NOT#LINKFARM]].  We are writing an encyclopedia here.  Thanks.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 11:31, 5 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Regarding "However if the goal of Wikipedia is to help people find useful and productive information, then why wouldn't they link to pages that contain double, triple or a dozen times the information that their pages contain on the same topic.", no, that is not Wikipedia's goal, Wikipedia's goal is to be an encyclopedia, not a search engine. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 11:35, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

COIBot/Linksave sluggish
COIBot is struggling to keep up with existing spam:


 * Today: 510 waiting, 167 local
 * Yesterday: 470 waiting, 141 local
 * 2 August: 448 waiting, 129 local
 * 1 August: 423 waiting, 130 local
 * 31 July: 362 waiting, 89 local

The linkwatchers have caught up, but COIBot's various functions are still 39 hours behind. I've noticed that the reports aren't coming out at the usual speed too. Unfortunately, at this rate we won't see any pokes. Is this a temporary thing? MER-C 10:21, 4 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I've noticed. I think that the backlog of the linkwatchers (which is not completely gone, it still has a list of 'lesser important edits' to parse - non-mainspace and whitelisted users; some 10.000 left (note, it was in the beginning of last week > 110.000 ... ) has given COIBot too much too munch lately, and it is going up and up.  I really hope that it will go down again when the linkwatchers have caught up (then those have less to do, giving also more time to the rest).  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 10:33, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
 * In the hour I've just spent online, I noticed that the userspace queue was being consumed at twice real time. It'll get there, but I guess it's another week. :( MER-C 13:45, 4 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Userspace queue .. ?? Where did you see that?  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 13:57, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah, I think I know what you mean. Yes, that might be about it, indeed.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 13:58, 4 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Hmm .. the backlogs on the linkwatcher are gone now, but still we are hovering at a high number of records waiting to be saved.
 * Today 541 (141 local). Lets see how it progresses from here.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 09:23, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Hi
Hi Beetstra, I came over to say thanks for your input on the WT RFA threads that have been provoked by the stats I posted, then I noticed your Dutch origins and so I thought I'd ask for your help re meta:Death_anomalies_table. I need a Dutch speaker to tell me what the NL:Wiki equivalent is for Category:Dead people so we can identify "living" people on EN and other wikis who have a year of death on NL wiki.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  13:11, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi! Thanks, I'm curious how the WT:RFA discussion goes on .. I haven't seen the realisation 'oh, maybe we have some notorious backlogs .. ' yet.
 * I'm not very active on nl.wikipedia. But my guesses nl:Category:Levende mensen and nl:Category:Dode mensen, nl:Overleden mensen don't exist.  Also some people who are typically not living anymore (Albert Einstein, Lenin) do not seem to be categorised in such categories.  Maybe nl.wikipedia does not do this?  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 13:27, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Problem with WP:LTA/Full
Hello, I've checked the full list again (I tend to stay away from it since it takes forever to load) and I've found a major problem that basically renders the list useless. As the list is too large, MW only displays the first few reports, leaving the ones at the bottom as links. Think we should just scratch the full list? Netalarm talk 03:25, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Sigh .. but I still think that such pages are useful. I am having a look, but for now I would say, split them up.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 06:52, 4 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I have split the page in two. I think it would be best to create a couple (2 or 3) pages with the 'active' ones, and to archive all the others (the presumably inactive ones) into 'as big as possible' archives'.  Going through 40 on one page still goes faster than having to go through 40 on 40 pages....  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 07:12, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually, we might be able to create a search box that searches everything in Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/ for matches. This would allow people to also search inactive reports. What do you think? Netalarm talk 20:13, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
 * That also helps, but still I think that the full pages are useful, searching does, just like the shortlist, depend on the choice of search terms, and as I said earlier, you sometimes get those editors where you know that they have really been here before (early editing of AN/I e.g.). Remember, these dedicated 'vandals' will try to circumvent being recognised, and when they have been a 'regular' then they know of the existence of these lists, and the easiest thing to circumvent is just try to stay away from the keywords that are entered.  It is much more difficult to stay away from the full list.  Some of these sub-pages have huge lists of articles they seem to be targetting (that would be caught by the search engine), but the human brain is based on that capable of making links that you can't do binary (see e.g. Grawp, who still manages to find ways of adding 'haggar' which are not caught by our filter .. the human brain however does see the connection).  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 06:53, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Awesome, I've got no problem with it. Do you think there are more things (procedural wise) that we need to change for a more effective long-term abuse? Oh and, a lot of us at abuse response have been discussing the revamping of long-term abuse at #wikipedia-en-abuse on irc.freenode.net, you're welcome to join us there. Netalarm talk 16:43, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

User:Olekp
Just to let you know that I had to block User:Olekp for attempting to revoke CC-BY-SA contributions over what seems to be a site which you said is unreliable and spam. Could you clarify on that a bit more so I know what is going on here? –MuZemike 18:50, 5 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Olekp added 'references' which were not attributing the text (generally the caption), like diff (ref links to mainpage), diff (link to forum, has nothing to do with the pic). IMHO, the pic itself if he uploads it, should have the link, the ref here does not attribute what was added.  I removed all of them, in the end returning one back which was the only one that was appropriate (diff for addition, in the end I reverted myself on removing that).  I had a talk with the editor, telling them that they should reference the text to a page that attributes.  They were going to work on that.  It looks like the editor owns the copyright, but that does IMHO mean that that should be stated on the image description page, but that does not belong in the mainspace text.
 * I have not followed the actions since. I see now that they were removing content because it is copyrighted .. I am confused.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 18:56, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Data transclusion from external databases
Beetstra - you may be interested in this "blog" post and this related discussion, where Daniel mentioned the DataTransclusion extension. Hope you enjoy your holiday. Walkerma (talk) 13:03, 6 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Interesting, I'll have a look. Thanks!  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 09:15, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Spam???????????/
'''First off how is seonek preps.com a SPAM LINK? It is no different than yappi sports and it is allowed.Secondly the link was provided that had the football history of Portsmouth high school,I THOUGHT THAT WAS WHAT WIKI WAS ALL ABOUT????'''  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vanceburg (talk • contribs) 06:22, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I've replied on your talkpage. I forgot to say there, please also read this, thanks.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 09:15, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

comment not attack
You can talk to me you don't just have to give silly templates, it is a constructive comment not an attack,. Off2riorob (talk) 11:49, 19 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I suggest you retract the message. It is not a comment on the content or argument of an editor, it is about himself.  Hence, a personal attack.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 11:51, 19 August 2010 (UTC)
 * its a constructive suggestion. Off2riorob (talk) 11:53, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Boilerplate questions at RFA
There are three open RFA's at this moment, and they all have the same question from you in them. I'm wondering if you honestly believe that this is a question that need be asked of every candidate. I ask because quite frankly this does not strike me as a question that will be a "magic bullet" that will give us some deep insight into the candidate, especially if they have no interest in this area of admin work. I have always felt that it is more useful to ask candidate-specific questions to test knowledge in areas the candidate has expressed an interest in, or situations they are likely to actually find themselves in, such as when they would block or speedy delete. Beeblebrox (talk) 15:40, 12 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I expect editors to have a knowledge of our core policies and guidelines. Getting the bit means getting certain possibilities.  It is not whether they intend to use it: they can use it, can they handle it?  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 15:43, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I guess that is the crux of it, I don't see the spam blacklist as being a "core policy." In a full year now of admin work I have never touched it, and would not be able to answer the question you are asking without looking up the policy, and it has never been brought up as a problem. I expect most candidates would do the same, just look it up and regurgitate the correct answer. It's your prerogative if you want to keep asking it, I just don't see a lot of value in asking candidates generic questions. Beeblebrox (talk) 15:49, 12 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I know, it is even worse, most people don't even know it exists .. The spam blacklist is not a core policy, it is used to uphold some of our core policies .. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 15:52, 12 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Sorry, parts of our core policies. And regurgitating the correct answer .. hmm .. a) by then I will stop asking it for sure, as it is not telling anything, and b) I expect editors to understand policy, not regurgitate them.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 15:54, 12 August 2010 (UTC)


 * The answers that I now got, by the way, are great examples of regurgitation, by the way. How is that with questions regarding blocking, or deletion?  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 16:23, 12 August 2010 (UTC)


 * And continuing on that .. you answer "just look it up and regurgitate the correct answer" .. until now I have not even seen anything close to a 'correct'(whatever that is) answer. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 11:34, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

About the issue on Regine Velasquez Single
I saw one ip address that clarifies the role of Regine Velasquez in the song I Don't Wanna Miss A Thing. Now, I will clarify the issue of that with 2 sources. I hope you understand why that user is clarifying. --EternityInThePast (talk) 07:44, 14 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the remark. I don't see the IP in question, I have blocked one (did I do it) who added information in a poor and very badly referenced way.  I see now that it was re-added by you with proper references.  I have however cleared up the language.  Please also note that wikipedia articles itself can NOT be used as a reference, I have removed that 'reference', but made a link to the article.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 08:00, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Sodium Hydroxide
Do you have questions about the isolation of sodium paragraph that I added? Usually I don't add information to the main body of an article, I only make it more accurate. I want to make my edits clear and complete without leaving the reader with more questions. So if you have any suggestions, I woud be glad to consider them.--Plasmic Physics (talk) 08:15, 14 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Not really, though maybe it is a bit too manual like (but then, that describes the problems in the synthesis..). I did note the changes to the chembox, I do think that the main CASNo should be the one in CASNo, and that CASNo1 .. x should be other CASNo's (and since CheMoBot only verifies on the first at the moment .. ).  But good work!!  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 08:19, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Disturbed by your false, personally directed attacks
Beetstra, I am very disturbed by your repeated personally directed attacks,  and especially by you latest, entirely false and groundless accusation on the Gary Ellenbogen that I likely had a COI. If you had any grounds for such an accusation, please present them. If you feel your assault to my integrety as an editor here was justified by any wikipedia guideline, please say what it was. YSWT (talk) 14:18, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
 * YSWT, I may be mistaken (and that is why I said 'likely', but both you and Gary Ellenbogen are involved in the Ecco Pro forum. I will rethink the message I wrote.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 14:25, 16 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I have redacted the comment. Now, if you do the same with your remarks in that regarding me and Cameron Scott, where you falsely interpret Cameron Scott's and my edits here on Wikipedia, and all other similar remarks that you have, in the past here on Wikipedia, made about my person, then we are both happy.  Yes, I am very disturbed by your false, personally directed attacks about involvement with Compusol, for which you have not a single shred of proof.  If you feel that tour assault to my integrity as an editor here was justified by any wikipedia guideline, then please also say what that was.  Thanks.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 14:39, 16 August 2010 (UTC)


 * My comments have been directed to the facts and article history, eg., for a period of months your edits only occured in conjunction with and in support of insertion of links to the compusol pay-to-access site. You have elsewhere admitted the 'coincidence' of your edits, over a period of months, being made at the same time, and basically only the same time, as one particular editor sharing the same editing pattern.  I could go on but seems unhelpful.   YSWT (talk) 00:42, 17 August 2010 (UTC)


 * OK, so you think you have the right to spread baseless false accusations. YSWT, that is not what I 'admitted' to, you are misinterpreting remarks here, and I am shocked by your comments.  Again, your accusations are baseless, your accusations are false. and you don't even have a shred of proof that they are even close to the truth.
 * Retract all your false and baseless allegations, do your research, and stop misinterpreting others' remarks and stop making such allegations. Thanks.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 05:37, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

About the issue on Regine Velasquez Single (Part 2)
hello again. Can I put the infobox single in the article I Don't Wanna Miss A Thing? I put it but if not, you remove it. thanks. --EternityInThePast (talk) 12:00, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I would even consider removing all of them .. they a) don't belong in a section somewhere in a page, they would belong on a page on the single itself (if notable enough), or not, and b) they now disturb the page completely. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:03, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

ok if you want. thanks --EternityInThePast (talk) 12:17, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Protection of page.
I understand why you put reported the edit war. I do not blame you for that, it was the right thing to do. But I am disappointed, that the full reception of Kane & Lynch 2 cannot be reported on wikipedia. The point was brought up that www.media-cows.com is a blog; that is true, so is Destructoid. Wikipedia should not be devoted, like Metacritic and Gamestats, to IGN, Gamespot, 1UP, etc.. Because reviews are opinion there cannot be a stated authority on the opinion of Kane & Lynch 2. I would request that this be addressed and Media Cows be included in the reception section. I was determined to include them because they were one of the first to review the game, one of the first to express a negative opinion, and should not excluded from the reception section because two reviewers find them unreliable.

Cheers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Xxpreaditorxx (talk • contribs) 19:53, 17 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I presume that you are the same editor as the talkpage. We are NOT including thins because one editor wants it included, we here build consensus on the talkpage.  The onus of proving that is is worth inserting is on your, and you do that on the talkpage.  You both were edit warring, which is in NO way constructive.  Please consider your methods of editing.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 19:58, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

My apologies, I will bring it up on the respective talk page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Xxpreaditorxx (talk • contribs) 20:01, 17 August 2010 (UTC)


 * You might want to check the request for mediation that you filed. First: Thank you for not notifying me, secondly, I am not really a party, and thirdly, you missed at least 2 other editors ...  And I don't think that mediation will have any chance before at least giving it a decent try on the talkpage.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 20:05, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

I did try to delete the mediation but there was an error, so I will try again later. I posted on the video game sources talk page, if and when the site get added to the situational sources section will the protection be lifted or do you plan on just leaving it protected until it runs out. Cheers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Xxpreaditorxx (talk • contribs) 20:01, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Your remark suggests that you want to add the source yourself. I would ask you to strictly consider to let others add it, and that you stay in the talkpages.  To give you time to discuss, I will leave the protection on.  Thanks.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 20:42, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

About the issue on Regine Velasquez Single (Part 3)
I have a file that I uploaded mthe Regine Velasquez version of the song I Don't want to miss a thing. Please consult me if this file has problems. thanks!--EternityInThePast (talk) 12:16, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't have too much knowledge about files here on Wikipedia. If there are problems, you will receive a notice on your talkpage which will explain any issues there may be.  I hope this helps.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 13:53, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Subject content
We are trying to include factual information about Parasol unit, as a charity and include a history of artists and shows shown here. We don't want this page to serve as any commerical value for the organisation, so please could you perhaps give me some feedback as to what we can only include?

Many thanks,

(Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art 13:46, 18 August 2010 (UTC)) —Preceding unsigned comment added by CJ2783 (talk • contribs)
 * Thank you for your question. The article should contain neutral information, properly (independently) referenced, which is not promotional or advertising in nature (that you do not intend any commercial value is not the point, the point was the promotional language.
 * I would suggest you have a look at our manual of style, and at our other policies and guidelines (e.g. WP:V, WP:RS, WP:NOT, etc. etc. Most are linked from the top of your talkpage (here).  I hope this explains.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 13:52, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
 * The userpage material was restored with an improper redirect to the mainspace as Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art (note the talk page is actually CJ2783's talk page).  freshacconci  talk talk  16:44, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

No, the article was rewritten in userspace, and then moved to mainspace. That article could use some work, and references, but it is not too promotional in tone). I'll have a look at the redirects.  Thanks!  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 16:47, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Re: Your Edits
I don't see why, as that was originally written by me anyway off my website. Nothing on that site is copied from anywhere. I write all the articles myself. For that reason I have replaced the information, although I have changed the links so that they point directly to the article relating to the watervole. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wrnicholls (talk • contribs) 12:49, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Wrnicholls (talk) 12:49, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Talkback

 * Ah. Now I see it.  I would think that you should make your case there (or is there a place for such requests), and then wait for comments from others.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 15:23, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Hm? On here it says:
 * Requests for access to the Edit filter manager group should be made at Wikipedia talk:Edit filter. Requests may take up to seven days to process.
 * So is that right where I posted it? Endofskull (talk) 15:37, 18 August 2010 (UTC)


 * OK, but then I'd still think that you should make a bit of an explanation, why do you want it, what do you intend to do with it, why do you need it, why do you think that you can use it responsibly, that type of things. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 15:39, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
 * So should I delete my current request, and restart? Or just edit that one? Thanks! Endofskull (talk) 15:41, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh, you can edit this one. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 15:42, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Here it is! Sound good? Endofskull (talk) 15:47, 18 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Better, but I'd still like to see a more. You can savely use 2-3 paragraphs, explaining in detail more about it.  Good at coding?  Many around here are.  Fight vandalism, well, we don't really use the edit-filter too much for that (too much strain on the system).  I hope this explains.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 15:51, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Hmm, updated it. Here it is. Sound good now? Endofskull (talk) 16:19, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh yeah, by the way, would you comment on the request, please? Endofskull (talk) 16:55, 18 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm following it, don't worry. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 17:11, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay. I answered again. Thanks so much for all of the help! Endofskull (talk) 17:20, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Did I answer right? Endofskull (talk) 21:00, 18 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I did see the comment, but I am waiting for input from other users. I still think that you do not see the power and problems with the edit filter.  It is not a 'toy' to play with, it is not something to just make filters for anything that you like.  The new example, e.g., is something that anyone can see in their watchlist already (see the 'm', and notice the size of the edit.  I am still waiting for a real vandal case that you think should be 'filtered'.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 21:18, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Hm, I see what you're saying, I'll work on improving it. Sound good? Endofskull (talk) 22:19, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Done. Endofskull (talk) 22:21, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm not getting any replies on that page, is that a bad thing? Endofskull (talk) 23:34, 18 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Patience, Endofskull. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 05:26, 19 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I've only gotten one thing other than you have, and it's an oppose. Ahhh. Endofskull (talk) 23:36, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Others might comment. Try to give a response (if you can ..). --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:21, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Still waiting for a reply to my reply... Endofskull (talk) 17:04, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

CP/CPPS
I noticed you own a broom. Can you help here? This is the CP/CPPS article, in which a WP:SPA is repeatedly inserting unsourced info and speculation. The evil doer is also known as  also known as IP 188.223.57.163. Can you please adjust the article so that only well established users can edit it? Thanks. TickleMeister (talk) 00:00, 25 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I blocked 4 accounts, which are likely sock/meat puppets. If you feel that it might help to weed out some sleepers etc., I would suggest to file a WP:SPI.  I also watchlisted the page.  If new ones pop up, then for sure file an SPI, tag the account, and ask for it to be blocked (e.g. WP:AIV) ASAP.  I hope this helps.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 07:36, 25 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Note, this is also going on on es.wikipedia (see the link-reports ("COIBot") in the linksummaries on the talkpages of the involved users). Maybe a case should be made to blacklist some of the spammed domains on meta.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 07:59, 25 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Excellent work, thanks Dirk! TickleMeister (talk) 23:07, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Interesting study of outbound links from en.wiki
[http://inkdroid.org/journal/2010/08/25/top-hosts-referenced-in-wikipedia-part-2/ I saw this on the wikiresearch mailing list, thought you might find it interesting. ]

-- Versa geek  00:04, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Nice, And funny. I see geocities still in the top 100 (which is on XLinkBot since a long, long time, and now defunct!).  I do notice that a lot of these are at least whitelisted on the linkwatcher, and some are on 'no count'.  I should check whether they are all like there, as these are likely also the ones that get added the most.  When we have a new db running on Mike's box, we should do there a query doing the same for the link additions, and see if these two match up.  Thanks for this, an enjoyable read.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 07:29, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Chemical sources
Hi Dirk. I have marked the page Chemical sources with historical and blanking most of the content. I feel the page is not currently serving any useful purpose for Wikipedia, and seems to be just a spam magnet at the moment. Anything useful can still be found in the page's history. I'm letting you know because you had a hand in creating the page. If you object to this, please feel free to revert (WP:BRD...) -- Ed (Edgar181) 12:43, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I actually was considering deleting the stuff .... But thanks.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:47, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

pan uk
Hi, I noticed you are removing links to http://www.pan-uk.org in various articles and just wanted to know why? I've noticed the links you are removing are dead, but they are archived at http://www.archive.org/ so we can still link to them. If the articles first appeared in Pesticide News then I can't personally see the problem with having links so to pan-uk so that people can read them. Smartse (talk) 11:57, 26 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I have reformatted most links to actually point to the article. There seem to be some problems with spamming of the links (note, most links are just that, incomplete references.  Indeed, quite some were 404s as well.
 * I am actually tempted to remove all of them. I am afraid that none of these links pass WP:RS, these are publications of an organisation, self published, none peer-reviewed.  We should be very careful with these references.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:14, 26 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I had a second look, indeed, there seems to be a bit of a spamming campaign here and there. Inappropriate placing.  The references were not necessarily spammed (some where with the info), but as I said, I don't think this is WP:RS, so probably this needs better references.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:21, 26 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree that there should be better sources, but don't think that's not necessarily a reason to remove the references altogether. Tagging them with Verify credibility is a better idea - the links cite sources themselves, and the organisation is clearly more reliable than a blog, so it's not a clear cut case. Dead links shouldn't be removed either per WP:LINKROT they should be tagged with deadlink so that people can find an alternative. Even if they remain dead AFAIK they should be kept, rather than removed as it still shows that the information came from somewhere, even if it can no longer be verified from that url. I've tried searching for links here but either there aren't any left or I'm doing it wrong. Could you show where the links remain? Smartse (talk) 12:52, 26 August 2010 (UTC)


 * There were hardly any, and I removed some plain spammy ones as well (see WP:REFSPAM. References which are plainly unsuitable can be removed at will, and in principle even with the information they are supposed to assert.
 * The pages cite links, indeed, and those would be the proper sources, citing references does not make something reliable, this is hardly more reliable than a blogpost. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 13:02, 26 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Despite warnings, the spammer continued. I have blocked the editor in question.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:18, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Shoemaking
Why do you remove continuously the shoemaking video? Why it is less relevant than the thehcc.org or some other shoemakers, like a cobbler in washington??? This is the real, living craft and not the one you let the links and illustrations on. —Preceding unsigned comment added by MarcellHUN (talk • contribs) 20:28, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
 * WP:EL, WP:OTHERLINKS. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 20:47, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
 * In this case WP:COI and WP:SOAP apply as well. --Ronz (talk) 20:57, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

An odd permutation of the numbers 3, 4 and 5
I would suggest you drop the autoconfirmed requirement, I've seen spam from autoconfirmed accounts (often reposted). Also:


 * "your website of businesses" → "your website"
 * drop "band from", "official website" and "free server"

I believe the filter uses short-circuit evaluation, so it may be a good idea to move article_text=username as the first condition. MER-C 08:47, 25 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Adapted. If you would like, you could ask for permission to edit the filters, I am sure that there are things there that you could help catching easier in this way.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 09:14, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Please also drop "the company", "the firm", "a company" as they are producing false positives. MER-C 03:07, 26 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I've dropped these three, and reinserted the user-group sorting, but now so that the 'assigned rights' (like sysop, rollbacker) are ignored. Any user who is not in those usergroups now gets tagged.  It is a bit embarrassing that sysops get caught by the filter.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 07:23, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Im just adding this; it looks like youve already made changes that would have prevented him from being tagged but I wonder if it would be easier to just use an edit count?  —  Soap  —  21:48, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

What's wrong with these links?
Hi there, what's wrong with these links you've removed from: - 'kielbasa' (http://www.tastingpoland.com/food/kielbasa_polish_sausage.html) - 'pierogi' (http://www.tastingpoland.com/food/pierogi.html) - 5 pages articles about Polish pierogi - 'list of polish cuisine dishes' (http://www.tastingpoland.com/food/list_of_polish_food.html) - 5 pages of detailed descriptions of Polish food, nothing like that anywhere else in the Internet?

Of course it's my website. Articles are unique and cost me some work. TP still gains popularity (see our FB page) and people find it informative. I'm happy with that. IMHO my activity on Wikipedia is not spamming but sharing. If all links I had (9 or 10) was too much - than OK, but at least leave those three, that are the most useful.

Regards, Mat —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.135.37.112 (talk) 06:05, 30 August 2010 (UTC)


 * We are writing an encyclopedia here, not a linkfarm. Our links are prone to our external links guideline, you have a conflict of interest, and you are spamming the site.  Please discuss further additions on talkpages.
 * But if you want a more personal answer regarding the links. Links to recipes are original research, and there are thousands of recipe sites out there.  A site with Polish recipes does not tell about the polish cuisine, it tells about the recipes, there is no direct link, when they are on the page of the dish itself, then the link at least is direct, but as I said, there are thousands out there.  Then a dmoz (which either exists, or can easily be created there) is more appropriate.  Moreover, Wikipedia has cookbook where recipes (and maybe even links to recipes, I'm not familiar with the policies and guidelines there) are appropriate.  I hope this explains.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 07:02, 30 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I did not add any links to recipes, nor I've ever thought about that. This is a site _with_ Polis recipes, as you've noticed but _and_ about Polish cuisine and food. What I've provided are links to articles about Polish cuisine that expand the information Wikipedia publishes, not to recipes (that there are thousands out there). There's no other website where you can find so many information about this regional cuisine - not only recipes. If it's otherwise we would not get over 160 facebook fans in 6 weeks with a website that is new and yet not so visible in Google.
 * Also I do not understand your reflection about COI. Citing oneself - no. Financial - not directly (website contains ads, but both links in 'Kielbasa' article do the same and you seem to consider it OK). Legal antagonists, Autobiography,Self-promotion,Campaigning,Close relationships - obviously not. Promotional article production on behalf of clients - of course some articles contain few names of especially important market products, but I do not have benefits of any kind 'cause of that; moreover it is in fact _necessary_ since the whole websites is dedicated among others to these products. It would be wrong within Wikipedia article itself, is it so in the external link?
 * Mat —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.135.38.30 (talk) 07:59, 30 August 2010 (UTC)


 * It is not in Wikipedia's purpose to link to everything that is there. We are not a linkfarm.  If there is more info, by all means, incorporate it, that is what WP:EL suggests as well.
 * Regarding the COI, it is not only about commercial or financial interest, it is about linking to information that one is involved in themselves. Please consider asking on talkpages, consider discussing with others.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 08:10, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Ensemble of protective bots
Hi, I have seen XLinkBot do some interesting reverts. There seem to be other protective bots around too, I do not have a list. Is there a Category called Wikipedia protective bots? I think there should be. The end of the story: I am thinking of an ensemble type blackboard model scenario where bots act as an ensemble with very high accuracy. I think this type of system would be interesting and very effective against vandalism, by having weights that are combined in the decision making process. A list of protective bots would be a good start. And the bots should provide "automatic explanations" for the revert, so you and versageek, etc. do not need to respond to user queries. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 08:30, 30 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure where you want to go here. You'd like XLinkBot to connect to the ClueBot (e.g.)?  I am afraid that what XLinkBot is looking it is in most cases significantly different from ClueBot.  Spammers try not to vandalise .. they try to stay under the radars, doing nice, neat edits.  Unlike common believe, I don't believe that spam and vandalism are very related - many of the additions that XLinkBot is reverting is not vandalism, but a genuine edit where the editor, generally oblivious of our inclusion policies and guidelines, is adding a link they think is useful.  Those are good-faith additions (and not vandalism, and although they often need reversion, they should be met with a bit of care; the bot hence does not warn on first addition and does not re-revert).  Then you have real spam, where editors are NOT acting in good faith, but, as I said, these editors try to keep under the radar (XLinkBot should here warn more and quicker, and actually should also re-revert; which is a possibility the bot technically has; but then there is always the blacklist).
 * The user queries will always need an answer. Those are often the editors in the first group of adders 'why did you revert my MySpace fan page ... '.  The additions were in good faith and not vandalism, just not in line with our policies and guidelines.
 * Having a category for it is fine with me, might be good so we know what we have. I hope this explains a bit.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 08:42, 30 August 2010 (UTC)


 * No, the idea of an ensemble is a group of systems that can not talk to each other - exactly like this case. Getting these bots to talk to each other will be the opposite approach. But let us leave that aside. Let us make a list, then I will write a document/proposal. You mentioned ClueBot. What else do you know of? Are these the only 2? And where should the category go? A list will help as a start. By the way, adding the language the bots are written in will help. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 16:35, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Festipedia
Thank you for your message. Please note that I did not create the links to Festipedia. They were created at least 2 years ago by other users, linking to our old address as part of the Festiniog Railway Heritage Group website. I merely updated them to point to the correct URL as we (the FR Heritage Group - a voluntary group) have now given Festipedia its own website. The lecture is therefore inappropriate, nor am I going to engage in a discussion as to whether or not your interpretation of Wikipedia policy is correct, although I strongly object to your classification of these links as spam. We are not a commercial organisation and are not attempting to sell anything. I note that you have also rendered Template:Festiniog Railway Company ridiculous by changing the links in the line "Company web sites" so that they no longer point to the relevant websites and, less controversially, removing the links to the various support groups. I shall, however, leave the original authors of this template to argue with you over that. Do you intend to go through Wikipedia and remove the other 200+ links to Festipedia? Prh47bridge (talk) 13:00, 31 August 2010 (UTC)




 * Hey, I did not notice that. Wow, another 200 inappropriate wikilinks.  I am sorry, and the first I checked, should also go.  Wikis are inappropriate external links, and the way the template was formatted was even less appropriate.  It does not matter whether the original editors added them, they were also wrong.  I see I have to cleanup to do, indeed.  Regards.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 13:06, 31 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Reading this again, I don't think accused you of spamming, or that I called the link 'spam'. The links are in violation of our policies and guidelines.  The 200+ seem by the way way less, a lot are due to template transclusions, not due to direct linking.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 13:30, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Festiniog Railway and associated files.
I have reverted Template:Festiniog Railway Company on the grounds that it does actually comply with WP:EL and was created to satisfy other complaints at the time (now exactly 2 years ago). The edits you made, by removing external links made the panel look foolish in having lines such as:

Header "Company WebSites" then directing them to WP sites Header "External Wiki sites" then directing them to WP sites Header "Support Groups" then directing them to non existant WP sites.

I have noted you have gone through the stations, but have not looked at what the edits consist of.

--Keith 14:02, 31 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I disagree, this is in violation of our WP:MOS, no external links in text etc. These should all point to documents on Wikipedia, not to some external wiki, where there is no control.  I'm sorry.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 14:04, 31 August 2010 (UTC)


 * 14 active users!! It is not even something that is remotely stable as a wiki.  Really, that one should go.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 14:08, 31 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I've brought the situation here, IMHO these links all violate a handful of our policies and guidelines, and should go. But lets hear a second opinion.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 14:17, 31 August 2010 (UTC)


 * the template is used within the section "see also", or "extenrl links", and as such seems to comply with the relevant [WP:MOS] section on external links

Why has this now become a problem, after the initial setup was after taking it to dispute resolution (cannot remember the exact term - see comment on first edit 2 years ago)   As for 14 active users, this is an extremely limited and dedicated wiki, and is advertised within related websites. For reference it usees "mediawiki" software --Keith 14:20, 31 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, maybe the consensus has changed, and maybe others did not see it yet. But in my cleanup there are several concerns that I encountered:
 * Linkfarming, there are on all of these articles a handful of external links. Most of them similar or the same in content as here.
 * A lot of wiki links, Wikis are 'to be avoided' per our external links guideline, especially if they are not big, widely edited wikis. There can be everything there.  And anyone can edit it (I just created a test account).  And Wikis are by nature vandalised.  OK, a small wiki is easier to keep clean, but when a vandal comes in at 12:00, and someone from Wikipedia comes in at 12:02 .. it may still be there, a completely wrong page.
 * I have removed quite some links from the body of the wikitext. Those are really not in line with our WP:MOS.


 * Then, e.g. on Rhyd Ddu railway station, I find external links to the homepage of the wiki (in the template). Links should be directly related to the page, now I have to, from the homepage, find the information I may be looking for.  So yet another reason why these links should be avoided.
 * The company that keeps the track, that one can have a wiki article (and they all do), and that wiki article can have a reference to the homepage of the company. There it is direct.  Not on Rhyd Ddu railway station
 * On the other template, quite some of the villages or remarkable points have Wiki articles. Yet they were all pointing outward to the external wiki.  That just does not make sense.
 * Now, I did not touch references, but Wikis are by definition an unreliable source (maybe a totally closed wiki with editorial oversight might be, but then it is not really a wiki .. and this one is not one, I just made an account). Those references should be replaced, all of them, with something reliable.
 * Then See also / External links sections were mixed up.
 * All in all, a handful of concerns left and right. I'm sorry, but I think the links should be used with care.  Some here and there may be useful, but most are not.  I hope this explains.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 14:38, 31 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I have to agree with Keith here - what you have done is removed a prime source of information. In fact it could even be considered that you are attempting to remove reference to what has become as reference site. As for being stable, the main contributors to the Wikipedia pages on FR/WHR are equally as limited as those you claim within FestWiki (especially when you removed MoS edits). I have considered your comments and they are not a cleanup, rather a wholesale deletion of links. A cleanup would have resolved the issues you raised, not just deleted them. I think you should reconsider your response to Keith and allow your removal of the FestWiki links to be reinstated. --Stewart  ( talk |  edits ) 17:08, 31 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Further responses at External_links/Noticeboard --Stewart  ( talk |  edits ) 21:35, 31 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Those are not the point, please read WP:EL, WP:MOS, WP:NOT, etc. etc. The link violate multiple points.  We don't even consider Wikipedia a stable and reliable source .. no, I stand by my points here, multiple concerns.  I'll go to the noticeboard now.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 07:01, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Harassed by IPs
My talk page is the target of harassment by IPs over issues that have nothing to do with Wikipedia. Is it possible to have the page locked against edits by non-registered users?

Run Amok (talk) 20:00, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I've semi-ed it for a month. I will be away much of the time from now, you can ask any other administrator to unprotect when you think it is fine (it does cause collateral damage, other non-abusive IPs can not contact you now either; some editors now set up a sub-talkpage for that, which you just ignore, but every now and then scan for genuine posts).  I hope this helps.  I think we are getting closer to considering blacklisting some stuff here ...  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 07:33, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Much appreciated - thank you. Run Amok (talk) 16:39, 1 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I have not abused him. He abused me, reverted an informative message, and has told lies about the wiki I used to work, because they copied his combat robot hall of fame, and he forced them to remove it even though their republication was acceptable, as it was non commercial ( He claims it is not, as wiki has ads, but it is a non commercial republication, as Wikia is not for profit). The admins, who he calls fanboys, tried to compromise with him, but he abused them, yet even though he was only banned for 3 days- and could still edit his talk page- he abused the admins further and contributed as an IP. They explained their points, to end the dispute, which happened just before last christmas. He then politely came up with a compromise, to remove battlebots robots from the hall of fame, in april, but the admins explained politely it couldnt be done due to lots if connections between battlebots and Rw. He since has called the admins "hooligans". Can you take this message on board, and tell Run Amok to forget the dispute and admit he was wrong. 81.159.253.243 (talk) 16:59, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Keep it on your wiki, IP. Does not belong here. --Dirk Beetstra T C 20:19, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Whats Wrong with my written page?
Sir would you like to tell me whats problem with my written page? its was created to help students regarding their homework and assignments solutions. it was not an promotion or advertisement. It’s my humble request to republish this page as soon as posible please. I’ll be thankful to you--Billal mirza (talk) 05:14, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
 * The tone is way too promotional, and would need a complete rewite, it is better to write it from scratch. Please see the relevant policies and guidelines.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 13:11, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Notification
Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. --Keith 14:52, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the notice. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 13:13, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Health coaching
Hoi Dirk, just a note to let you know that I reinstated one of your edits (you were very right). I think the article is a bit of a mess and I have the feeling that one or more editors isn't exactly neutral and might insert all that jazz again. Take it easy, Drmies (talk) 16:44, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the heads up! --Dirk Beetstra T  C 19:10, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

thanks for your informative discussion concerning literateur.com
i really learned a lot from your comments on the discussion of blacklisting literateur.com. I left a note for the journal's editor encouraging a close reading of your remarks, and warning that even one more new account or IP that seems to be spamming their site would probably mean a permanent blacklist status, which would be regrettable, in my opinion, although not so regrettable as having to waste wiki-time tracking down persistent spammers. Questionic (talk) 14:02, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, we have our eyes on them, and I will revisit the issue in some time. Spam situations are complicated, often.  Just as a side example, I had quite some time ago a brand new huge cross-country organisation spam wikipedia, just to get their name known.  We have had SEO's here hired to promote very good sites, they know what they do.  I think the main account here might even be able to truthfully say 'I did not add links', but someone very close did (and possibly themselves).  Some of use there (A. B., Hu12, MER-C, I, to name a couple), do know what we do there, and though we might make mistakes (and we should be pointed to that!), I've not seen too many of that ..  but thanks for the heads up!  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 19:15, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Help with something
Hi Dirk, I know you're probably inundated with these requests, but could you take a look at MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist/Archives/2023/05? The admin previously attending to the request, Stifle, has gone on indefinite wikibreak. Being an admin myself, I would jump in, but I don't have the foggiest idea how to deal with whitelist requests. Thanks in advance, Dabomb87 (talk) 23:29, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I've whitelisted the link. Examiner.com is often a problem, there is some good info there, but a lot of it is scraped, self-published, written to make money (for which it was spammed to Wikipedia, and for which even whitelisting requests were made), etc. etc.  And there is no editorial overview.  Generally, it has no use, and the rest should be used with due care anyway.
 * Stifle on an indefinite wikibreak .. that is a problem, we already are low on knowledgeable admins there (and one does need to know the tricks of the trade to be able to know what to do and what not to do there .. it is not all obvious, simple or clear-cut). Thanks for being careful there!  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 09:11, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Wikio blacklisted due to activity of a blogger who wanted to promote his UGC content
Hi, I'm working with Wikio company and I have seen that your bot has detected an anormal activity that has conducted the website wikio.com to be blacklisted on wikipedia. Wikio is a news agregator service with elaborated algorythm to classify information, the service allow users to publish content if they consider that this content can interest other people. As all User Generated Content, the content is subject to spammers, so our service is moderated post publication.

All UGC content is publish under www.wikio.com/article/ directory.

It seems that someone has publish articles on Wikio and tried to promote their article pages by making a massive linking from wikipedia pages, if I understand well all the actions that have been listed here. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:COIBot/LinkReports/wikio.com

The user has the same pseudo on wikio and wikipedia : matucana It can be seen on wikio com on the url /article/56367203

It seems that this guy has something against Berlusconi : http://matucana.wordpress.com/ So here, we have the case of a content on Wikio that is not Spam, but a guy that has tried to put a big number of backlinks on Wikipedia to promote his content on Wikio. The result is that Wikio has been blacklisted due to operations done by a third person with no relations with the website.

How can we fix that situation ?

Thanks, Christophe ODIN Kristoguy (talk) 15:26, 8 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Oh boy .. that guy is obnoxious, I think. IIRC, this is not the first 'Silvio Berlusconi' spammer ... I think there are more domains blacklisted due to this guy.  I have to answer quick, I am on holiday and don't have time for a full analysis.  So if my thoughts are incomplete ... blame Sicily.


 * First, the spam blacklist is to stop domains that are spammed uncontrollably (like this). It does not necessarily say anything about what the link is pointing to, we did have cases of respectable organisations that nonetheless push their domain in such a way that we run into problems.  This is such a case.  I'm putting a linksummary here, that gives me some links to check out what has been going on.  It links e.g. to the bot report:
 * Now the difficult part. Please correct me if I am wrong.  This guy is apparently capable of publishing information on Wikio, which is unchecked, etc.  That means, that there is no significant editorial oversight, which would make this site totally unsuitable for sourcing on Wikipedia (on en, one would say that it fails WP:RS and WP:V in most cases).  Furthermore, I am afraid that most information will then also be unsuitable as an external link (see WP:EL .. am I right in this?  Could you elaborate on that.
 * Solutions:
 * if, generally, the information on the domain is not really useful, then locally whitelisting specific stuff might be one solution.
 * use more specific blacklisting rules, just blacklist the specific pages this guy is adding
 * or you have to positively to solve everything on your side (get rid of this guy, and of this type of abuse), and then just have the domain de-listed.
 * There might be other solutions, but that needs to be discussed. I would advice you to open a de-listing request on the meta blacklist page (m:talk:Spam blacklist), explaining the situation.  You'll probably get a response that will mention that you are a site owner, and that the site is problematic, but I also think it is clear that someone is misusing your site and that maybe other solutions might be in order.  You can link to this discussion here.  Thanks.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 21:39, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
 * There might be other solutions, but that needs to be discussed. I would advice you to open a de-listing request on the meta blacklist page (m:talk:Spam blacklist), explaining the situation.  You'll probably get a response that will mention that you are a site owner, and that the site is problematic, but I also think it is clear that someone is misusing your site and that maybe other solutions might be in order.  You can link to this discussion here.  Thanks.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 21:39, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

I notice that I added it here, it may be that this was the case I thought I saw earlier. See here for the listing-discussion (you might want to link that in the de-listing request as well). --Dirk Beetstra T C 21:42, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your answer, there would be an easy way to fix that is to use a regular expression to blacklist only all urls starting with www.wikio.com/article, because the UGC content is only under this directory, so then it should fix the problem. I have not seen on the page that you link how to submit a de-listing request. Can you explain more exactly how to proceed Thanks Kristoguy (talk) 14:06, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Rock magnetism spam?
Hello, Dirk. I see your bot keeps flagging me as a potential spammer. Apparently it's a bad sign when my user name nearly matches the name of the page (why is that?). Let me introduce myself. I am a geophysics professor, specializing in rock magnetism. I recently discovered that, if I Googled important subjects in geophysics, one of two things was likely to happen. Either a Wikipedia page would be the top hit, or there would be no Wikipedia page on the subject. And many of the existing pages need a lot of love. I realized that adding to Wikipedia would be a very effective form of outreach. RockMagnetist (talk) 03:38, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Hey, thanks for adding the content! Yes, the bot will add you on the list because your name closely matches the topics you are editing - that's to keep track of editors that spam Wikipedia with their promotional content. For example, if an user was named Company A and he started to edit articles related to Company A, he would be flagged by the bot. There's nothing to worry about. By the way, I'm not Beetstra, I just saw this post and thought I'll comment on it (I hang around the conflict of interest noticeboard a lot). Netalarm talk 03:48, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi, Netalarm. Thanks for your comments. RockMagnetist (talk) 13:06, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Hi RockMagnetist. Welcome to Wikipedia. It is indeed as Netalarm states, the bot, a computer program designed to do tedious tasks on Wikipedia, or other forms of analysis, is designed to see overlap between usernames and added external links, or usernames and pages edited. When there is significant overlap, there often is a conflict of interest. Now, that does not have to be a problem, but in a lot of cases, there is reason for concern. Of course, there are false positives, and this is a clear case of that. I have therefore whitelisted you on the bot, it will from now totally ignore you. Happy editing. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:44, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Glad to hear it! Thanks for whitelisting me. RockMagnetist (talk) 13:06, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Banning Of gCaptain
I would like to discuss the blacklisting of our site gCaptain.com. We are very interested in the quality of our links and have no interest in distracting the conversation here at wikipedia. We are all mariners and consider the work you have done to promote maritime issues on wikipedia important. I very much wish to talk to you both about the blacklisting and about how we can help promote your goals here on wikipedia. Thanks, John Konrad - coFounder - --Gcaptain (talk) 20:50, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, such discussions will have to take place here on Wikipedia, on the relevant talkpages. I'm sorry.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 21:39, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

The problem is I do not understand the system. All I know is a report from one of our users that the site was blacklisted. I'm trying to get myself quickly up to speed on wikipedia policy and procedure but, as I am sure you can remember from your early days on this site, this is a bit of a challenge. Any help would be greatly appreciated. --66.215.124.171 (talk) 04:09, 15 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I see you found the whitelist page, that is indeed one of the proper venues for this. I can understand that it may be difficult to get up to speed with this site, but I do think that you persisted in using your domain, despite warnings.  You could have asked earlier.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 07:46, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

OK, this is it. You really don't understand what this site is about, do you. STOP your blatant self promotion. --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:48, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

You are right, I am being reactive when I should have been proactive in learning wikipedia's policy before jumping in. While I am still learning the policies I do understand the problems of spam and I apologize for any infractions done by myself and by others in the name of gCaptain. I also apologize for making my appeal here on your talk page, which now seems obvious to me as the wrong place to discuss this. gCaptain is committed to doing the right thing and I appreciate your help guiding us down that path.--Gcaptain (talk) 18:30, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Pending changes/Straw poll on interim usage
Hi. As you recently commented in the straw poll regarding the ongoing usage and trial of Pending changes, this is to notify you that there is an interim straw poll with regard to keeping the tool switched on or switching it off while improvements are worked on and due for release on November 9, 2010. This new poll is only in regard to this issue and sets no precedent for any future usage. Your input on this issue is greatly appreciated. Off2riorob (talk) 23:28, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Web presence
Template:Web presence has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. 68.35.13.81 (talk) 23:38, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

User lying about the wiki
The User: Joerger has been lying about Wikipedia, saying "The website can say what it likes, but the fact remains that the site is filled with commercial adverisements. Someone is making a profit from the site. If it isn't the fanboys, they're being played for chumps.

Either way, the non-profit arguement is only a distraction. Their actions go far beyond any possible 'fair use' exemption. Theft and republication of trademarked and copyrighted material is criminal and not excuseable at commercial or non-profit sites.

I've said enough. The offense is clear."

This is untrue. All wikis are non-profit and their republication was fair, as wikis are reference sites, and require republication of certain tables, like his material in question. Please can you be fair to me, and tell him his behavior is not acceptable, and the people who were polite and leniant to him, as he is a robeteer, are not fanboys. 86.174.172.139 (talk) 16:28, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, I don't care about your problems with Joerger, the wiki should simply not be linked here. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 14:44, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


 * This remark applies to all wikis and to Wikipedia. He cannot keep abusing rational people. Also, there should be no boundaries on what is to be included on a wikipedia page. Please can you be swayed by my argument to take my side.86.174.172.139 (talk) 15:30, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


 * That quote has never been added to wikipedia according to this search. Please keep any disputes that aren't about wikipedia elsewhere. If you think that "there should be no boundaries on what is to be included on a wikipedia page" you have some serious persuading to do and it should be discussed at the village pump, not here. Smartse (talk) 15:52, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

This quote, on his site, is untrue, and about Wikia in general.86.174.172.139 (talk) 17:01, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


 * There are boundaries what can be included, and, again, keep your dispute on your wiki. Thanks.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 17:28, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I No longer want to work on the wiki I USED to work on, as I no longer have the time. Please can you listen to my advice, which also applies to Wikipedia as well as its wikis, and it MUST be looked at.81.159.251.236 (talk) 20:10, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Naxos.com spam
Thanks so much for your help on this. Much appreciated! Best, Voceditenore (talk) 08:53, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra T  C 08:54, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

User:COIBot/Poke
COIBot is getting a bit behind. I haven't helped it much having dumped >100 on it recently; nevertheless I don't think it's been processing anything on that page recently.

If you get a chance, can you look into it? If you're too busy, don't worry about it. -- A. B. (talk • contribs) 12:00, 28 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I've had some bot problems the last couple of days, so it build up a bit of a lag (I had to re-add a good handful yesterday as the bot missed them). It is munching away the poked items slowly, I see on IRC that there are still 367 poked records waiting to be saved (the first so many are all bag-stuff ..) .. there are no XWiki or Local reports waiting, so it will be mainly busy with the poked ones now (and just save XWiki or Local when they are being detected).  I hope this explains.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:04, 28 September 2010 (UTC)


 * If you have some emergency ones .. poke me, I can make sure they will come higher in the list. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:07, 28 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks. None of my stuff is urgent. -- A. B. (talk • contribs) 14:49, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

P-Anisic acid
This is an automated message from CorenSearchBot. I have performed a search with the contents of P-Anisic acid, and it appears to be very similar to another Wikipedia page: Anisic acid. It is possible that you have accidentally duplicated contents, or made an error while creating the page&mdash; you might want to look at the pages and see if that is the case. If you are intentionally trying to rename an article, please see Help:Moving a page for instructions on how to do this without copying and pasting. If you are trying to move or copy content from one article to a different one, please see Copying within Wikipedia and be sure you have acknowledged the duplication of material in an edit summary to preserve attribution history.

It is possible that the bot is confused and found similarity where none actually exists. If that is the case, you can remove the tag from the article. CorenSearchBot (talk) 13:31, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

O-Anisic acid
This is an automated message from CorenSearchBot. I have performed a search with the contents of O-Anisic acid, and it appears to be very similar to another Wikipedia page: Anisic acid. It is possible that you have accidentally duplicated contents, or made an error while creating the page&mdash; you might want to look at the pages and see if that is the case. If you are intentionally trying to rename an article, please see Help:Moving a page for instructions on how to do this without copying and pasting. If you are trying to move or copy content from one article to a different one, please see Copying within Wikipedia and be sure you have acknowledged the duplication of material in an edit summary to preserve attribution history.

It is possible that the bot is confused and found similarity where none actually exists. If that is the case, you can remove the tag from the article. CorenSearchBot (talk) 13:31, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Jeffrey J. Varab
Looks like he's back:

Perhaps a shortish SP? Half Shadow  20:30, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Has been handled, I think. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 09:22, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Block
The bot created WikiProject Spam/LinkReports/biointernational.ru., ie. not in the Wikipedia: namespace. Probably will only take a moment to fix. &mdash; RHaworth 16:34, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

I have unblocked it since other reports went to the right place. What went wrong in this case? &mdash; RHaworth 16:39, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
 * That is curious .. the bot, here on Wikipedia, uses 'i18n.linksaver.basepath' (see User:COIBot/Settings), which is set to 'Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam'. IF for one stupid reason that parameter is not set properly, it would either save in mainspace the article /LinkReports/biointernational.ru or LinkReports/biointernational.ru, or, when it would have failed to use the correct settings, it might have used the meta settings here (so then it would have saved in User:COIBOT/LinkReports/biointernational.ru).  I think that this is a MediaWiki glitch, and not a bot glitch (or there must still be something strange in my coding .. but I don't see where this could have gone wrong).  Thanks for keeping an eye, and for quickly unblocking!  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 13:51, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

DrMotley & COIBot
I have been identified by COIBot on the spam reports, as my username and edited pages overlap. I chose my username based on the band Motley Crue as I am a fan, and therefore I do edit their page. I would like to be whitelisted on this. Regards, DrMotley (talk) 11:07, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Sure, ✅! Thanks for the understanding, and happy editing!!  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 11:11, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Andre Geim article correction
Hello,

It seems people either don't read the sources they use, or simply don't care. In the article on Andre Geim, an individual constantly edits the bio to say he is ethnically German. That is not correct, he is Jewish, and thus can not be ethnically German, his family had roots in Germany, but that's not the same as being ethnically German. All this information is in the article "http://www.scientific-computing.com/features/feature.php?feature_id=1", see information under the heading "Top Grades in School". The article is actually cited, but not used properly.

I tried to edit the article to reflect reality, but someone kept changing it back until the article was locked, and only registered users could edit it.

Thank you —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.34.85.53 (talk) 16:56, 11 October 2010 (UTC)


 * As goes for others, it goes also for you: take it to the talkpage and discuss. That is why I decided to protect the page, and not to block individual editors .. so that you have a chance to discuss and get to consensus before the edit is made (not that I am not willing to block editors who edit war ..).  this type of back and forth changing is NOT the way forward.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 17:09, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

CheMoBot
Hi Dirk. I just wanted to point out to you this edit by CheMoBot that broke the chembox. Thanks for all the work you're doing to validate chembox data, despite the fact that you are clogging up my watchlist. ;) -- Ed (Edgar181) 12:04, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi Ed. Yep, that was a bug.  Someone found a similar edit yesterday (noted on the bot talkpage), I patched the bot already.
 * Yeah, I know that one. I see my watchlist also filling up with all the edits I do (just told the script to do a next one).  We're doing well, we have quite some pages verified, and it is increasing as well (my current update round has done 5426 (47.3%) out of 11462 pages).  I think that soon we will add a handful of identifiers to the list of verified identifiers, so CheMoBot will track more of them.  Still a lot that needs to be done, though (2541 (37.5%) of 6767 chembox pages done, 1219 (26%) of 4695 drugbox pages done).
 * Thanks for keeping an eye on us!! --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:20, 13 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Remark: I have adapted the InChI-template for displaying the InChI, so it now adds the 'InChI=' to each InChI, which seems to be standard practice. I saw you added it somewhere, and I think that you are right that it needs to be displayed, but I think it is confusing to see 'InChI=InChI=1S///' everywhere.  Likely that some editors will strip out one of the two.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:48, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
 * If you a referring to disilyne, any change or deletion I made to InChI was unintentional. -- Ed (Edgar181) 13:51, 13 October 2010 (UTC)


 * P.S. I see you adding CASNo's. I presume you verify them somewhere, could you add, next to the CASNo, a parameter 'CASNo_Ref', with as value '', where you replace 'source' with a code for the source (I have used 'CAS' for commonchemistry.org, NIST for the nist website, and ESIS for now.  I think we should also do ChemSpider for one), and then add the saved revid with the pagename to the appropriate index.  We are desperately looking for more verified identifiers (and when we have them, we can start sourcing for other data to be added and to keep track off.  Thanks!  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:52, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I get all CAS#s that I add from CAS through SciFinder. I kind of assumed that the verification process was something that should be done by someone else to double check me because it is possible to mis-copy or mis-type the number.  But if you think I should add CASNo_Ref, etc, I can do that.  -- Ed (Edgar181) 13:51, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
 * At the moment I am more interested in getting a high yield than getting 100% purity (there are always a few mistakes, even if I would check them and I don't think that a copy-paste will make many mistakes). From CAS via SciFinder .. Maybe we should tag them differently then, just to avoid confusion with commonchemistry checked CASNo's, 'SciFinder'?.  Thanks for all the work!  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 14:06, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Add me to COIBots trusted user list
It would be fine if you could add me to COIBots trusted user list, so that I could use it's cloak protected comments. I'm active in the SWMT and my IRC nick is "hoo" (Cloak: wikipedia/Hoo-man) - Hoo man (talk) 13:22, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Done. Thanks for helping out!  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 13:24, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks :) - Hoo man (talk) 11:44, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Wikio.com
Hi, Nobody answered me about wikio.com being blacklisted, I have made a proposal to disallow UGC pages of wikio to not be included into wikipedia. Could you please answer. Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kristoguy (talk • contribs) 13:19, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Just poke that discussion again. I may drop by as well.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 13:25, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

We have also removed from wikio the account and pages produced by the user matucana, this user is blacklisted on our side. Then he will have no more reason to put again links on wikipedia, as his pages are no more existing. Kristoguy (talk) 16:39, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi, is it possible to whitelist wikio.com now that we have cleaned the situation, or if your prefer just filter on wikipedia links starting with www.wikio.com/article/, the fact to be blacklisted on wikipedia give a bad reputation to the company due to third party people and we need to fix that. Thanks for your reply Kristoguy (talk) 09:41, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Movie Review Intelligence
Hello, regarding MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist and moviereviewintelligence.com, you commented on the discussion about the site last August. Another editor and I would like to follow up on a whitelist request for the site's "about" page to include in its Wikipedia article. Could you please share your thoughts at the discussion here? Thanks, Erik (talk &#124; contribs) 21:43, 20 October 2010 (UTC)


 * I've whitelisted it. Thanks for the patience!  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 07:05, 21 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you very much. Happy editing! Erik (talk &#124; contribs) 11:27, 21 October 2010 (UTC)


 * You're welcome, and happy editing too! --Dirk Beetstra T  C 14:17, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Russian.science sockpuppet
Hello, sorry to bother you with this, but it seems to be getting out of hand. Historian.X1 is another sockpuppet and now he is posting on random users talk pages trying to convince them to edit the article in his own way. Is there now way of preventing these kinds of malicious activites? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Historian.X1

Regards, --Therexbanner (talk) 15:16, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Never mind. Another admin has already dealt with this case. Russian.science socks are now canvassing various users trying to gather support for unsourced editing.--90.192.240.115 (talk) 17:49, 23 October 2010 (UTC) That was me.--Therexbanner (talk) 17:50, 23 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Apply WP:RBI, and report all as sockpuppets (I would even consider to do that on talkpages ..). At a certain point they will start to understand that it is futile (I considered semi-ing the talkpage as well, but was already afraid that then user talkpages would be targetted.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 07:05, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Real discussion, with insult thrown in
On this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Primerica I added to the discussion, but also threw in a derogatory comment which amused me in my then inebriated state and you rightfully undid my edit. Wanting my comment to be seen however, I have revised my previous edit so as to remove the unnecessary insult. Please let it stand, as I have removed the questionable material. I would also like to thank you for calling me out on my sophomoric antics 71.84.126.174 (talk) 05:01, 24 October 2010 (UTC)


 * It looked a bit strange between other edits, and even within this edit. But IPs move around.  But you are welcome.  Please try to refrain from such remarks / changes of username - others might block on sight ...  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 07:22, 25 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Will do, thanks 71.84.126.174 (talk) 10:12, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Other Structures
Giorgiogp2! I appreciate you efforts to build the mycotoxin structures. I'd like to use them in a piece we're writing. I also need a couple of other sturctures built. Do you know where I could get other structures? --Tec8854 (talk) 03:28, 26 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks, but I am not sure what you are asking. I am not drawing structures here, and I am not sure what you are looking for anyway.  Could you be more specific?  Are you looking for structures of compounds for which we do not have a Wikipedia page?  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 06:52, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

-cis-2-Aminomethylcyclopropane carboxylic acid
This is an automated message from CorenSearchBot. I have performed a search with the contents of -cis-2-Aminomethylcyclopropane carboxylic acid, and it appears to be very similar to another Wikipedia page: (+)-cis-2-Aminomethylcyclopropane carboxylic acid. It is possible that you have accidentally duplicated contents, or made an error while creating the page&mdash; you might want to look at the pages and see if that is the case. If you are intentionally trying to rename an article, please see Help:Moving a page for instructions on how to do this without copying and pasting. If you are trying to move or copy content from one article to a different one, please see Copying within Wikipedia and be sure you have acknowledged the duplication of material in an edit summary to preserve attribution history.

It is possible that the bot is confused and found similarity where none actually exists. If that is the case, you can remove the tag from the article. CorenSearchBot (talk) 07:48, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Resolved. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 07:49, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

The box is back
I started up the linkwatchers, coibot, unblockbot & chemobot - but xlinkbot won't compile. Turns out that reworking my home network was very overdue, between rewiring, replacing the old router and fixing some settings on my DSL modem - I think you'll see a huge improvement in network throughput. -- Versa geek  01:26, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Great, I'll have a look at XLinkBot. Thanks!!  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 06:50, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Forgot to say, I added some code which I stole from another bot (more feature adding - not important enough for an immediate restart of the bot) .. but the code was not directly compatible .. now solved!  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 09:10, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Heads up about an RfC
Please note that there's a new discussion at Requests for comment/2010 ArbCom election voting procedure in which you may wish to comment. It is expected to close in about a week. You have received this message because you participated in a similar discussion (2009 AC2 RfC) last year. Roger talk 05:27, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks, will have a look again on Friday or next week. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 09:09, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

user Russian.science again
Sorry to bother you but user:Russian.science has resurrected again. And this is his new attempt of canvasing. Närking (talk) 22:05, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
 * File a sockpuppet investigation please. And apply WP:RBI further.  They will return over and over... --Dirk Beetstra T  C 09:06, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Script Assisted Identifier Updates
There is a problem, a correct identifier were replaced by incorrect ones. Please look at Revision history of Glucose for an example, the racemic identifiers were replaced by stereoisomer identifiers, which was already present. Plasmic Physics (talk) 02:49, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Hmm .. that can happen sometimes .. The script will not update that one again, I'll try and keep an eye on that from now on. Probably that is due to mistakes in the files I have from ChemSpiderMan (links between pagename and ChemSpiderID).  That sucks, but I may be able to catch it for some ...  Thanks for letting me know.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 09:09, 31 October 2010 (UTC)


 * I changed the code .. it will at the moment not update already existing ChemSpiderIDs. I will have another script making a list of those where there are conflicting ChemSpiderIDs and recheck those then .. Thanks for letting me know.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 08:07, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Russian.science
Hi,

62.109.11.180 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/62.109.11.180

He/She is back (I guess, per WP:DUCK). This IP was used before (a few days ago) to evade blocks, so it's not a temporary IP. Same article b.s. Is there anyway of blocking it? --Therexbanner (talk) 14:18, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Blocked and reverted; please do at least the R and I part of RBI ASAP. The rest will come where necessary.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 14:39, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I will next time (if there will be a next time). Thank you.--Therexbanner (talk) 17:30, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, there will be .. unfortunately. There are numerous IPs and accounts blocked, but it still persists.  Happy reverting ..  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 18:08, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Namespace vios
Why does the COIBot sometimes forget to put Wikipedia: at the start of titles? See Special:DeletedContributions/COIBot. &mdash; RHaworth 11:53, 5 November 2010 (UTC)


 * I have no clue. In the settings there is 'i18n.linksaver.basepath=Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spam' (on meta it is 'i18n.linksaver.basepath=User:COIBot'; which is the root for the data on meta) - now I can understand that if for some obscure reason that variable is blanked, or it takes the wrong one .. but only 'Wikipedia:' missing is for now completely beyond me.  I'll have another look through the logs, there might be something somewhere.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:06, 5 November 2010 (UTC)


 * I added some extra debug-lines around the saving code and reading of settings code, lets wait until it goes wrong again (or maybe I figure it out earlier ..). I don't get a real clue what is going on.  It is behaving utterly normal except for this very rare mistake?  Maybe it is a Mediawiki glitch of some kind, or I am overseeing something strange.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:19, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Rhodocene edit
Hi... I refer to this edit that you made to the article rhodocene. The edit has added an InChI to the article, but it appears to me that consequently there are now two different InChI's listed. My understanding is that there should be a unique InChI for any substance. The InChI's listed are: Would you please stop by the article and remove the one that is incorrect? I am unsure of exactly what to change. Thanks. EdChem (talk) 06:09, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
 * 1/2C5H5.Rh/c2*1-2-4-5-3-1;/h2*1-5H;
 * 1/2C5H5.Rh/c2*1-2-4-5-3-1;/h2*1-5H;/q2*-1;+2
 * Yes, I know there are more cases like that. I am taking the InChI's from ChemSpider, but since there are apparently different 'flavours' of InChI (the Std.InChI is also not always the same as the InChI) it sometimes leads to some strange duplication.  I think that an InChI uniquely defines a compound, but that a compound can have multiple InChI's.  The script tries to check whether the InChI it wants to add is the same as what is in 'InChI' on Wikipedia, otherwise it will add an InChI to the field 'InChI1' (leaving either the InChI that is there, in principle leaving place for a standard InChI; though there is also a field StdInChI which can hold that one).  At the moment I do not have Std InChI's available, that will be a next run.
 * I do not check which InChI is correct - the script only presents me the new ChemBox/DrugBox, and if all looks fine then I update the page (I actually hardly ever press 'n' .. not many which break). I will try and think of some smart categorisation to see where strange things occur (when there will be a InChI and an InChI1 at first, see how many have duplicates .. it may also show us some cases where the choice of ChemSpiderID (from manual curation and from a list from ChemSpiderMan) is not optimal - some compounds have multiple ChemSpiderIDs).
 * I hope this explains. Almost at 85% in this run, we will have a lot of new data in a bit .. and a good access to a lot of information via CommonChemistry, ChemSpider and the FDA with one one click per identifier.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 11:29, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Ok, thanks for the explanation, and for going to the effort of systematically adding InChI's. EdChem (talk) 14:01, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Now that you've gotten past Z ...

 * You're welcome. Not exactly finished, though.  These are only the ones where I know the ChemSpiderID is correct.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:54, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Linkless spam


Hi Dirk, titaniumwf.com has been added to the metaspamlist: but spamming has continued, but with them not using a link, instead adding just www.titaniumwf.com. Do you know to set up a filter to automatically revert these edits? Thanks SmartSE (talk) 15:56, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for reporting this, I'll have a look tomorrow. I can try to set up a filter for some time  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 16:00, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Ehm, can you point me to some cases or users performing the spamming after blacklisting? Thanks!  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 16:04, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Yep, it was (already blocked). Cheers SmartSE (talk) 17:48, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Did anything come of this? has spammed the same website again. Thanks SmartSE (talk) 09:46, 15 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Sorry, forgot. Now there is a filter for it, 374.  Thanks!  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 10:20, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
 * No problem, thanks for sorting it now. SmartSE (talk) 12:20, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Cluebot has a new username
User:ClueBot NG. Please whitelist on the linkwatchers. Thanks. MER-C 10:33, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Done, thanks. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 10:35, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Alice in Wonderland
You made this change to the Alice in Wonderland article. I think it was fine to remove the link, but addition of the link was a legitimate attempt to improve the article and should not have been reverted as vandalism. It justified a real edit summary and should not have been marked as minor. Matchups 15:22, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
 * You're right, I should have reverted it, describing the addition as the addition of an inappropriate external link. Quite some cleanup left, though.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 15:27, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Antisemitism in Turkey
Beetstra, I have seen your recent changes in History of the Jews in Turkey, which I found very professional and balanced. I wonder, if you could help me with my article Antisemitism in Turkey, more specifically, it would be very great if you could go through the article and make your comments or edits. thanks!--  Jim Fitzgerald   post  15:56, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you, but I don't think I recently edited that article. I'll have a look anyway as soon as I can spare the time.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 15:58, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Fluoronium
Heya Dirk

Just wondering. I thought we weren't using chemboxes for ions? --Rifleman 82 (talk) 18:01, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Funny .. Interestingly, it has a verified ChemSpiderID (may have blindly verified that one myself, not realising that it was a cation/functional group). Maybe remove it .. or replace it with another type of box?  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 18:50, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Well enough people have been asking for an ionbox... can we make one? Perhaps with a different color scheme? --Rifleman 82 (talk) 15:51, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I would say, just a matter of cloning chembox and the 7 modules (chembox identifiers), change the colour scheme in all of them, they can further just use the sub-sub-templates of the chembox (we don't need to clone chembox_InChI, e.g.). And if there is a need for another module, that is easy enough to set up from there as well.  Basically, the info in them is almost always the same, some vars simply don't exist (mp, refractive index, etc. (hence basically all of the properties box), CASNo), others clearly do (molecular weight, chemspider ...).  I would say, 'make it so'!  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 15:57, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Ions have CASRNs. This is a perennial proposal that we've never quite got round to doing, partly because so many of our articles on ions are, well, pants! Physchim62 (talk) 17:25, 12 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Pants? --Rifleman 82 (talk) 17:31, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah, sorry, British English! If you say something is pants, you are saying that it is really not very good at all (and yes, that is British understatement!) Physchim62 (talk) 18:27, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

OK, leave the CASRN ... lets just copy-paste the templates and be over with it? Let the articles be pants, having a decent box may give input in expanding them. --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:59, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

I think you already have lots of CAS RNs. We can populate the CAS# ... no reason to leave it out. I was thinking of things like donor number, Drago-Wayland parameters, and pKb as important information in these boxes. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 19:39, 12 November 2010 (UTC) Then again, perhaps not of interest to non-inorganic chemists...


 * We have all the space for it. If I have time, I will copy them (if you guys are too afraid of modern technology).  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 20:22, 12 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Look at all that scary syntax! --Rifleman 82 (talk) 22:16, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Phone number spam
We have a spammer on WP:ANI who repeatedly inserts a phone number into articles. I've been seeing phone number insertions in #wikipedia-en-spam, hence I would like to ask whether XLinkBot can handle such things. Thanks. MER-C 13:14, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, in principle it can. However, that rule does make mistakes.  Is it the same telephone number (and so, which one?)
 * You are in #wikipedia-en-spam???? If you don't want to discuss on Wiki, please poke me in #wikipedia-spam-t.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 15:51, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
 * You found me. I'll remember #wikipedia-spam-t, it might be useful. MER-C 11:32, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * If you have time, we need to talk on-IRC. Unleash more power of COIBot to you.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 13:20, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

24.29.92.238
Dirk, you reblocked IP 24.29.92.238, apparently so that logged-in edits are allowed. However, it looks to me as if you did the exact opposite of what you intended. I am not that familiar with IP blocks and these settings, so I may well be mistaken, but could you perhaps check your block settings just to be sure? Apart from that, I have no problem with anyone changing a block I make to correct such problems, so thanks! Fram (talk) 12:34, 25 November 2010 (UTC)


 * This was intended - if the bot logs in it can edit as it should (if there are other bots on the same IP, they would otherwise also be blocked). Notwithstanding that the bot should be fixed that this does not happen anymore.  You beat me, I was on my way to your talkpage (though I expected that you would have seen it already on ANI).  Thanks for the notice.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:37, 25 November 2010 (UTC)


 * OK, thanks. Fram (talk) 12:41, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Non-Roman Redirects and DABs
Due to your participation in a discussion on foreign language re-directs on the same talk page in late July 2010, you may be interested in joining the discussion on the usage of non-Roman languages in re-directs and DABs. Your input will be appreciated. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 23:25, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I'll have a look later. I think my concerns were otherwise related to the issue and not really the subject here.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 08:50, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

MediaWiki talk:Spamwhitelist
As one of two admins who commented on my request to get my Reliable Sources Search Engine white-listed, I am asking if you could take another look at it. The discussion is here. Thank you. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 15:32, 26 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Sorry it took this long (I can again start moaning that we need more admins active here, but well, noone apparently wants to take it up on a regular basis, and this is what happens if one of the more active ones recuses on a certain decision). Anyway, it is whitelisted now.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 15:43, 26 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Oh no problem. I know how overworked the admins are.  This wasn't an urgent matter.  Thanks, again! A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 16:10, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Chembox questions
1. On the basis of the recent edits of the ChemMoBot, am I right in thinking that Chemboxes are now including both InChI and StdInChI (and the corresponding InChI keys)? And if so, where I find ChemBoxes without this info should I be adding it or leaving these to be bot processed?

2. Verification of data (specifically CSIDs) I tried reading the info in this page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Chemicals/Chembox_validation) - but it is still not clear to me what CSIDs (or infact other data) are being being verified against when they are assessed by the bot. Would it be more correct to say that the bot is actually watching for changes?

3. I assume that it is considered inappropriate to verify your own additions or changes, but is there an list generated of 'records with outstanding verification1? I'd be happy to do a bit of verification on other users Chembox edits. The chemistds (talk) 23:57, 25 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Hi, thanks for the questions. Let me answer them in order.


 * 1) The chembox can now contain StdInChI's (which are for us the more important, standard ones) ánd "other InChI's" (different flavours are there. The reason to have all those InChI's is twofold, first, where they are displayed in a page, they get indexed by Google, so one could toss (a part of) an InChI in Google, and have a Wikipedia page as a search result (and that is also why different tastes of InChI's are there ..).  On the other side, having correct, verified StdInChI's there might enable for us automated or semi-automated checking of the image files on Wikipedia - if there is a correct StdInChI on the wikipedia page (i.e., a StdInChI that is the InChI of the named compound), then you could automagically generate the correct image on the page, or indirect, generate the image separately and check it against the displayed image to see if it is correct - this is what we are going to do in the future.


 * 2) Verification of the identifiers (CSID, CASNo and UNII at the moment; StdInChI's are connected directly to the CSID at the moment) means that we, manually, a) load the Wikipedia page, b) find the same compound on chemspider, commonchemistry, or on verified lists of the FDA (UNII), c) when we have the same compounds, we put those CSID, CASNo and UNII in the chembox. Then (d) we take the revid of that page, and record that in the verified index.  From that point, we can say that those are verified data.  CheMoBot then checks the current value against the value in the verified revid, and changes the box to reflect if they are the same or changed.  If they are changed, a human will have to go there and check why they are changed.  It might be an idea at some point to make CheMoBot 'repair' changed CSID's, CASNo's and UNII's, but that might run into problems with the free editing spirit of Wikipedia; it will need careful thinking.
 * That being said, the bot indeed in a way checks for changes, and makes sure that the reader knows whether or not the current version of the verified identifiers is (deemed) to be correct or not. It in that way helps readers also to check the other data in the chembox with the data in other databases to see (one would see a boiling point of 100 &deg;C here, you go to ChemSpider (see 100 &deg;C there), and from ChemSpider go to some literature (and find 100 &deg;C there ..) - so one can quicker verifiy that).


 * 3) I do not consider that really inappropriate, I do it all the time in a way. If you do it yourself or someone else, there will always be a small chance of mistakes, and they will get noted when a third person changes an already verified identifier - then either the index needs to be upgraded, or the identifier needs to be reset.  It 'cleans' itself in the end.  But I think that of the verified CASNo's >99.5% is correct (a handful of mistakes on the thousands we have done), of CSID it may be a bit higher (there are sometimes more CSID's which are 'of the same compound' - not always the most optimal one is used, I think about 99.5% is correct, but 2-5% of that might have a more optimal one).  UNIIs are done from an offline verified list of CASNo vs. UNII - I only add them to pages for which I have a verified CASNo.
 * A list with 'unverified pages' (that is, CheMoBot did not add a verified revid to the page, which generally means that there is no revid in one of the indices - it may mean that the top level of the page is indexed and that CheMoBot did not notice a change to the page and hence did not have a reason to follow up with adding the tags yet) is in Category:Articles containing unverified chemical infoboxes. Help with those would be very much appreciated.  Just take the page, check (and where necessary add or repair) the CASNo, CSID and UNII, and add the revid to the appropriate index (if you do at least a 0-edit to the page (e.g. swap the place of two parameters in the box), then CheMoBot will follow up about 10 minutes later by adding the appropriate tags).  I am running on a regular basis a script (I am running it now) which follows up and adds UNII, StdInChI's.  Of course you can add them yourself as well already.
 * A note for verifying CASNo's - the bot uses a parameter 'CASNo_Ref = ' in its verification - most there are verified against commonchemistry ('&lt;source>' = 'CAS'), but if you use another source, please add this line yourself, and change '&lt;source>' with the source you used. You can even put in there (include the ref-tags otherwise it does not work) - if there is not a known keyword in that field, the bot just displays the content.


 * Thanks already, all help is welcome here. I'll keep an eye on the bots and run the scripts on a regular basis to keep the data as good as possible.  I also run check-scripts where there are conflicts and repair them (it are often only a couple anyway, ran it yesterday evening, it found only one conflicting CSID in the 3998 pages that are verified, and that was because my off-wiki list of CSID's contained an error).  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 08:49, 26 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the information Dirk. I have one follow up question on this topic. Could you just clarify what you mean by 'add the revid to the appropriate index'? I think I might find it easier to understand if you could supply an example (even if this is just a pointer to before and after revisions in the history of a page). --The chemistds (talk) 11:44, 26 November 2010 (UTC)


 * I provided a bit of a manual at WikiProject Chemicals/Index (for pages with a chembox) and WikiProject Pharmacology/Index (for pages with a drugbox) - in short, if you save a page, it gets a 'revid' - a unique number for that version of the page. You put that number with the pagename in the appropriate index (see other lines for format), and when CheMoBot comes along, he knows that in thát revid certain data is correct, and compares the data of the page with the data in that revid, and records accordingly.  I hope this explains.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 11:49, 26 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Quick follow-up question(s):
 * 1. Is there any guidance about verifying Chem and Drug boxes? For example, a checklist of all the things that should be checked before adding the revid to the appropriate index, or other guidelines.
 * 2. Is there any way to verify only certain aspects of a Chembox? So for instance if there is no way to confirm a CAS number but other data is correct?
 * 3. Is there a list of Chemicals Wikiproject appproved sources for verifying CAS nos? (I personally through my ChemSpider work believe that only CAS can provide verified CAS nos - which means the only verifiable source is Common Chemistry - unless one has access to paid for CAS products. But I am happy to apply a less strict policy on Wikipedia if the project has a more pragmatic approach to the verification issue) --The chemistds (talk) 10:01, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Quick follow up answer(s):

1) At the moment, CASNo, UNII and CSID are verified, if all three are correct, that page can be added to the index. I do off-wiki statistics and when another parameter reaches 100% (of the verified pages) I will add it and notify others (StdInChI and StdInChIKey are going to be the next two I think).

2) No, not at the moment. I'll have a discussion with the others, maybe it is time to (at least for now) drop verification of the CASNo until we have more.  The data is not lost, but we have problems sourcing them all to the commonchemistry website.  I am in any way helped with having correct CSIDs in the page, it makes the rest of the checks much easier.

3) CASNo's are a problem .. there are many places where they can be verified and found, problem is that some have restrictions on their use (so I can't encourage anyone to use them ...).  Also for this reason .. maybe we have to drop CASNo's....

I hope this helps. --Dirk Beetstra T C 17:26, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Update - we are likely going to drop CASNo's ... just CSID and UNII, and then soon StdInChI and StdInChIKey (need to run my script on all of them for the latter two). --Dirk Beetstra T C 17:42, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Ignore CASNo's from now (the bot will). I am updating CSIDs, UNIIs, StdInChIs and StdInChIKeys now (and well, also CASNo's if I have them available, but not for the verification). Would be great if you could help where we do not have CSIDs. --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:38, 27 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Cool thanks for the info. One point I might make is that it is possible that at the moment standard InChIs might have been added to the InChI field - certainly the Wikibox output generated by ChemSpider at the moment actually supplies the standard InChI ie "| InChI = InChI=1S/..." though this can be changed. You might want the bot to look out for this situation and flag/correct such cases.
 * FYI I have started a thread on Wikipedia_talk:Chemical_infobox about the way InChIs are stored Chemboxes which may be of interest to you. --The chemistds (talk) 19:36, 28 November 2010 (UTC)


 * My script run takes care of that. It moves InChI's around (for as far as it detects the different cases, sometimes it mistakes itself - generally the result is that the StdInChI is going into the StdInChI-field, and other InChI's get promoted/demoted.  There are some where the situation is massively mixed up, but they will come in time.
 * I'll go there. There is a reason why things are as they are - and all situations give their own problems.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 08:00, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

why did COIBot edit in mainspace?

 * WikiProject Spam/LinkReports/lugworld.org. Seems strange that is in mainspace. tedder (talk) 05:18, 27 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Aargh. Every now and then it does that, and I have no clue why.  The parameter is 'Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam' .. so why get rid of the 'Wikipedia'??  Will have a next look at it.  Thanks for notifying me.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 14:38, 27 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. I have a bot that occasionally would blank articles- took me a while to figure out why on that one, too. tedder (talk) 17:01, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

PlasmaPhysics and cats
Hi there, At Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chemicals fellow editor PlasmaPhysics is asking for resolution on the many discussions and reversions etc. concerning his recent and intermittently ongoing categorizations. It would be helpful if you and some other administrator helped resolve this case. It seems that there is little support for his recent work involving categories for As and Si (and probably other elements). My recommendation would to ask him to cease work on categories within the Chemistry project, period. I am going to send this note to DMacks who is also experienced in such disputes. But the main thing is that Plasma deserves some response. --Smokefoot (talk) 01:25, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I'll go there in a bit. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 08:01, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Disappointing response. PlasmaPhysics' categories are worse that useless.  By encouraging/engaging him you are spawning a greater problem and damaging Wikipedia, unless you are prepared to be the monitor of the catagories. How many warning signs do you need to respond?  Look at the Talk page for Chemicals and look at his talk page.--Smokefoot (talk) 13:37, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

WP:AGF only takes it so far. I'm generally not a man of strong words .. but .. --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:53, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Template:Chembox Identifiers
Looks like you're tinkering with it right now. I'm seeing some pages with a rogue "value10=" at the top (e.g. Arsenicin A), and I'm pretty sure it's related. —Keenan Pepper 14:42, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Just found one as well .. Having a look. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 14:43, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

AfDs
Hi. As you just participated in discussions on a closely related topic (also a current AfD re a Jewish list), which may raise some of the same issues, I'm simply mentioning that the following are currently ongoing: AfDs re lists of Jewish Nobel laureates, entertainers, inventors, actors, cartoonists, and heavy metal musicians. Best.--Epeefleche (talk) 08:25, 1 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Indeed, thanks. Delete all.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 08:35, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

What are you doing?
You seem to throwing Uw-spam4im notices around with great abandon. In some of these cases there seems to be no justification. For example, your warning is the only edit of User talk:87.248.226.210, an account that has, in any case, been blocked since August, and has obviously made no edits since. Jan 1 naD (talk • contrib) 12:05, 2 December 2010 (UTC)


 * diff? --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:08, 2 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Why would it be reverted anyway? It seems a fairly useful link to me. Even if it needs reversion, why the 4im?
 * And what is the point of throwing warnings onto IP user pages about edits from last August, let alone on IPs that are already blocked? Jan 1 naD  (talk • contrib) 12:14, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, it was massively spammed, re-inserted when removed, editors using multiple IPs (20-30?), open proxies, accounts (5-10), on several wikis, etc. etc. Up to the level that it got meta blacklisted. It was plainly spammed, with no regard for our editing policies. Some IPs get used over longer times, others only shortly, or once. However, if it is an open proxy, they might return on it to see if it is unblocked already.

After blacklisting of ppdictionary.com, they created a redirect service, and happily continued to spam. Again, edits got reverted etc. etc., until today I also globally blacklisted that site. Upon looking further, there are other links also spammed by this group of editors, some of these links are more commercial in nature, but also this site is not really suitable.

Now, the person behind this spamming is now at 4im level, even as a first warning.

I now tagged a handful of IPs, mainly to make sure that the LinkSummaries are there (easier to track the many accounts). And might they return, they would see that there actions were noticed (I agree, on some IPs the chance is small - some IPs get used only once, others get used over and over, starting months ago, and still in use), and really unwanted in this form. I am sure, that in a couple of days they will return with yet another redirect site. I will try and be a bit more alert now. The spam warnings are there to make sure that if they return, they do see the warnings (or at least, we can say that we did try to warn them).

I am still working on a full report to get all the links they are pushing (there is also other stuff that got pushed). I hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:35, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your full explanation. I have now found the site on Spam_blacklist. Best wishes. Jan 1 naD (talk • contrib) 13:15, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Whitelist
Dear Dirk, please have a look at m:User:COIBot/XWiki/pubmedcentral.gov, I hereby request whitelisting since COIbot keeps reporting Too many records to analyse. EdBever (talk) 12:55, 4 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Yep. I enhanced the redirect-detection, which now results in these problems.  Some of these sites are (harmless) redirect sites.  Thanks for reporting this one, MER-C and I are working to eliminate others as well.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 18:09, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Parasol unit page
Dear Dirk

I understand you flagged Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art's page as having some issues. I have added external references, is this what was needed?

Thanks Umbrellaki (talk) 09:15, 6 December 2010 (UTC)Umbrellaki


 * No, you added a handful of external links - I cleaned it up. There were some in-text references, so I removed that tag.  Could you please have a look at the manual of style, the citation guideline, the notability guideline, the verifiability policy.  Moreover, you might want to check the conflict of interest guideline, the spam guideline.  Please, Wikipedia is NOT the place to promote the organisation, but it is the place to give a neutral overview.  Thanks.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 09:46, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Requesting assistance with whitelisting
Hi Dirk, was wondering if you could help me figure out why this entry isn't working on the whitelist: The page I'm trying to link to is stores.lulu.com/raruto_eng?fContentOffset=3. Thanks! OhNo itsJamie Talk 20:28, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * \bstores\.lulu\.com\/raruto_eng?fContentOffset=3\b # For use in Raruto
 * I guess the question mark is bugging it. You might want try to escape that one:
 * \bstores\.lulu\.com\/raruto_eng\?fContentOffset=3\b
 * Hope this helps. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 09:52, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
 * As we say in America: you are the man. Cheers! OhNo itsJamie  Talk 04:12, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Template:Drugbox
Howdy. I suspect this edit to Template:Drugbox isn't quite working as intended. Around 1300 pages making use of this template are attempting to transclude the empty page Template:Stdinschicite (see what links here) - that is to say, the parsed results of their templates contain the text.

Copying an pasting a drugbox (for example from Erythromycin) to a test page and using subst: to display its parsed result may show up more clearly what's going on. Probably a brace too few (or too many) in there somewhere. - TB (talk) 22:13, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Nope, a typo I think. Will have a look in a bit.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 07:41, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Solved. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 09:52, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
 * GJ, thanks. - TB (talk) 12:17, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Wikileaks - finding the links to it from Wikipedia
Hi, Your name was given to me on IRC...

I was led to understand that you operated a bot that looked for specfic URI patterns?

Would it be possible for such a bot to generate a list of page revisions/URI additions to material on Wikileaks?

This is so that some idea of how much stuff is linked in relation to an on-wiki disscussion about linking to them. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 16:36, 7 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I am running bots that monitor mainspace for link-additions .. is that what you are looking for? --Dirk Beetstra T  C 17:33, 7 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Well what was needed was a bot to monitor for new addtions of *wikileaks* pattern links, AND to identify all the existing page revisions in which links to WikiLeaks were added along with the contributors that added such links. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 00:31, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Hmm... if you just want a quick list, one is available at Special:LinkSearch/*.wikileaks.org. Netalarm talk 00:33, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
 * It was finding the other mirrors as well, something that isn't possible with Linksearch at the moment.. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 14:44, 8 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I could run an off-wiki query on the database for all links containing 'wikileaks' in them. I have to see how that goes - the database is not really suitable for that type of queries (in text searching on that field might take a lot of time).  Not sure if this would give all 'wikileaks' links (what if they did not name 'wikileaks' in the full link), and whether all links with 'wikileaks' actually would be to wikileaks data (and not to news items about wikileaks, e.g.).
 * I added 'wikileaks' to the redlist of LiWa3, people following the feeds will not be alerted on the addition of links containing that word. You can find the feed for en.wikipedia in #wikipedia-en-spam.  I hope this explains.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 09:11, 10 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I appreciate you concerns about 'false postives' from a variant on the Scunthorpe problem.

What is LiWa3 BTW? Sfan00 IMG (talk) 13:17, 10 December 2010 (UTC)


 * The IRC-only bot (see m:User:LiWa3) that parses every edit on all 750+ wikipedia's to extract the additions of external links. You can find it in #wikipedia-en-spam on IRC (where it shows all the additions for en.wikipedia only).  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 13:26, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Regarding Blacklist Removal
hi, I agree that my actions regarding insistence of certain aspects about what I considered was right regarding links has put me into trouble. But I believe that some of the sources quoted by me were quite valuable to wikipedia community. I request you to kindly remove the urls from the blacklist and give me some chance to correct my act.

I have read your talk page and your policy regarding external links as to the pages which will help to improve the content on wikipedia rather than drain its traffic, which is true but many times it becomes a duplicate content issue to do the same.

In any case I will try to follow your guideline regarding adding content of references and then putting a link to the target page from which I have referenced content. Kindly revert the blacklisting as I am not a professional spammer just a health writer who needed more exposure. But now I know my limitations. Hoping to get a positive response from your side.

59.183.52.9 (talk) 10:58, 8 December 2010 (UTC)Gauresh.


 * Thanks for your discussion. I am not sure about which link you are talking, and I would prefer to keep these discussions centralised, on the blacklist page.  Could you point me to the relevant discussion?  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 09:05, 10 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I am referring to the section titled Adsense pub-4681742646893563 . with a group of domains wikitest.org and orthoped.org ivsedation.org etc. I would earnestly request you to kindly allow them in whitelist. They contain information which can be useful to fill lacunae on pages like cozens test, dugas test ( important test not mentioned in shoulder dislocation page), and so on. The content is personally written by me ( I am a diploma holder in Orthopedics ) and can write authoritatively on any Orthopedic condition with reliable information. I hope with respect to this you would kindly grant me this request and I assure you that until now I have been infringing on the concept of draining of wikipedia traffic but I would try to clean up my act in the right manner. 59.183.36.222 (talk) 16:09, 10 December 2010 (UTC)Gauresh

As I said, I will not decide that here, but I may chime in (though recuse from decision) if you request whitelisting or de-blacklisting. But you might want to start to first add info and content to Wikipedia, and show that you understand the policies and guidelines involved. Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra T C 16:55, 10 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes ofcourse. I do intend to do that as well and infact if u see some of my edits, I have a keen sense of order and I have ordered a lot of references and also some contributed some corrections to the info on wikipedia. Also I did submit a whitelisting request but that has been declined. If you could help me there I would really appreciate that. Also I have a long lost query, regarding changing the name or title of a page in wikipedia to which I havent found a solution as yet. eg. Orthopaedic footwear is one page where I would be really interested in changing it to Orthopedic footwear so that it can be easily linked from other pages in that category.

59.183.0.61 (talk) 21:44, 10 December 2010 (UTC)Dr Gauresh


 * still waiting for ur answer and ur assistance.

59.183.37.83 (talk) 11:06, 17 December 2010 (UTC)Dr Gauresh

I am afraid that there is not much I can do. The only way forward for you would be to contribute content to Wikipedia without linking to your own site. If others then see the value of your site (you might want to talk to a WikiProject), then maybe you will get somewhere. Until then I am afraid that you will have to use independent sources.

Regarding the rename, it does not matter .. Orthopedic footwear and Orthopaedic footwear both link to the same place, Orthopaedic footware, and everything can hence be properly linked and properly categorised. I hope this helps. --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:25, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Whitelist req
Hi Dirk, I've got a request in at MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist for a webpage to be whitelisted. Would you be willing to do this for me please? Mjroots (talk) 11:02, 13 December 2010 (UTC)
 * ✅. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 15:25, 13 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Mjroots (talk) 17:06, 13 December 2010 (UTC)