User talk:Rick Block/Archive2017



Administrators' newsletter - February 2017
News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2017). This first issue is being sent out to all administrators, if you wish to keep receiving it please subscribe. Your feedback is welcomed.

Administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg NinjaRobotPirate • Schwede66 • K6ka • Ealdgyth • Ferret • Cyberpower678 • Mz7 • Primefac • Dodger67
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Briangotts • JeremyA • BU Rob13

Guideline and policy news
 * A discussion to workshop proposals to amend the administrator inactivity policy at Wikipedia talk:Administrators has been in process since late December 2016.
 * Pending changes/Request for Comment 2016 closed with no consensus for implementing Pending changes level 2 with new criteria for use.
 * Following an RfC, an activity requirement is now in place for bots and bot operators.

Technical news
 * When performing some administrative actions the reason field briefly gave suggestions as text was typed. This change has since been reverted so that issues with the implementation can be addressed. (T34950)
 * Following the latest RfC concluding that Pending Changes 2 should not be used on the English Wikipedia, an RfC closed with consensus to remove the options for using it from the page protection interface, a change which has now been made. (T156448)
 * The Foundation has announced a new community health initiative to combat harassment. This should bring numerous improvements to tools for admins and CheckUsers in 2017.

Arbitration
 * The Arbitration Committee released a response to the Wikimedia Foundation's statement on paid editing and outing.

Obituaries
 * JohnCD (John Cameron Deas) passed away on 30 December 2016. John began editing Wikipedia seriously during 2007 and became an administrator in November 2009.

Discuss this newsletter • Subscribe • Archive

13:36, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

QuestionPro
Hi, so there are some articles on YourStory, VentureBeat and Livemint on QuestionPro. And when I try to search for QuestionPro on Wikipedia, a number of articles show up that have this company mentioned. But it appears that this page was either deleted before or YourStory links have been blocked. I am not quite sure, can you help please? I use their software. So thought ill check once. Thanks!
 * The articles on YourStory and QuestionPro have been deleted, see Articles for deletion/YourStory and Articles for deletion/QuestionPro. -- Rick Block (talk) 20:37, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Category:Singaporean people has been nominated for discussion
Category:Singaporean people, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to see if it abides with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Marcocapelle (talk) 07:39, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:List of administrator hopefuls
why is the brot wiping me out here? BernardZ (talk)
 * You don't edit the list directly. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_administrator_hopefuls#Adding_yourself_to_this_list . -- Rick Block (talk) 15:22, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Rick Bot
Just a nudge to tell you that Rick Bot stopped working on the 10th. Regards, — Moe   Epsilon  04:02, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * This is going to take a bit of effort to fix. I'll get there eventually but it might take another week or so.  -- Rick Block (talk) 05:27, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your efforts Rick! Trying (poorly) to be patient :) --Hammersoft (talk) 20:38, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Sorry - real life intruded for a while. I think it's running again (doing a test run right now). -- Rick Block (talk) 17:41, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Oh come on! You're supposed to sacrifice yourself to the almighty wikipedia! How dare you! :) Welcome back! Looking at this, thanks for getting it back up and running again. But, could it state in the edit summary how many active admins there are, like it did before? This is quite useful for tracking active admins over time, rather than having to extract the information manually from each diff. --Hammersoft (talk) 18:03, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes - I noticed that. I'm chasing down why this is not working.  -- Rick Block (talk) 18:17, 10 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Tangential; but something that has been in my thoughts of late, and you being experienced in writing bots would have considerably more insight on this than I do. Your bot going down recently, plus another bot going down a few months before it, reminds me of what I see as a problem. We have many bots that do critical work around here. Those bots are run by editors who are here of their own free will. What happens when (not if; we will all leave eventually) that editor leaves? The bot stops functioning, and we lose functionality. To me, it seems reasonable that a bot known to have worked successfully within the project for a period and known to be critical to functionality should be brought on board as something operated by the community, and not just one editor. Sure, it might be possible to grab code and move forward, but it might not as well. The owner of the bot that shot down some months before gave me code, but as yet I haven't toyed with it and haven't attempted to get it running again. It'd be better though if the bot was run and supported by the community. Alas. Anyway, is there any effort like that? Having a community driven bot effort for operating and supporting them? --Hammersoft (talk) 18:50, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * One of the things that's been on my list for a long time is to write a "meta bot" that fetches a bot's code from a wikipedia page and runs the fetched bot. With this approach, if when a person who runs a bot disappears, the bot code is still around and somebody else could easily pick it up.  I don't know if there has been previous discussion about this topic.  If so, I think it would be at WP:BOTN (I'm not finding a previous discussion with a quick search).  I think the general rule should be that every bot's source code should be public (there are a few exceptions - like the automated vandalism bots).  This is currently encouraged (per WP:BOTPOL), but not required. -- Rick Block (talk) 19:31, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Working great! Thanks! --Hammersoft (talk) 17:20, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

The bot hasn't run on WP:List of administrator hopefuls in a long while. --Izno (talk) 18:25, 17 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Interesting. It's been running but has been failing to fetch the list of RFAs.  It asks to fetch 500 at a shot but has not been getting 500 (which it has assumed meant that that clump was the last clump).  Seems like something must have changed in the api interface on the server side.  I think I've fixed it but will keep an eye on it.  Thanks.  -- Rick Block (talk) 17:22, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Footer Olympic Champions 4x100 m Men/year
Template:Footer Olympic Champions 4x100 m Men/year has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Frietjes (talk) 16:38, 2 November 2017 (UTC)