All The Tropes Wiki Project, Part XIII

[Bob Schroeck]

And while I'm complaining about things, what was that plug-in/extension/programming thingy that was supposed to force lazy/stupid users to pick a license when uploading an image? And when can we please have it?

[Bob Schroeck]

Argh.

I just tried to edit a message of mine on User talk:19SnyderWan97, and when I try to save the changes I get this instead:

[5305bb7424d5fca157cf9749] Caught exception of type Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBQueryError

[Bob Schroeck]

Hey, guys. Can you take a look at User talk:185.14.29.161? Is this a clueless foreign user, a clueless spammer, a clueful spammer in a character set I'm not using, or what?

Thanks.

EDIT: Never mind, Stopforumspam.com identifies them as a major Russian spammer.

[Labster]

Most likely: a clueless foreign spammer

[robkelk]

And I just blanked a second one. Russian spam is just as fattening and unhealthy as the other sort.

[Bob Schroeck]

Oh, I forgot to mention I added a new page of help/advice we can point users to : All The Tropes:Uploading and Adding an Image to a Page.

[robkelk]

I';m reading through Spinerette, and am into the content that was posted after the TVT/ATT fork. There must be a trope on this page, but I can't think of what it's called. (This Troper is distracted by the sexy...)

Link might be NSFW, depending on the workplace.

[Black Aeronaut]

Snrk. I remember that one. She is no end of amusement.

Hmmmm... professionally sexy?

[robkelk]

I was thinking more the "cut to commercial" line was a trope, but I don't know which one.

[Black Aeronaut]

Panic Cut? Panic Button? Hitting the SCRAM button?

[robkelk]

No, none of those names are on the wiki...

---

Changing gears: Does this page have links to all of our pages about images, or did I miss one/some?

[robkelk]

Okay, I think now all of the links (blue and red) on the National Film Registry page now point to pages about the films instead of to other works with the same name.

And we're 60.4% of the way to having pages for all of the movies in the National Film Registry.

[robkelk]

I'd appreciate other mods looking at the speedy deletion list. Three of the four entries there are mine.

[Labster]

The character alignment thing can die; all the same information is on the Character Alignment page. Honestly, the alignment pages are pretty bad because they're mostly Square Peg Round Trope for people trying to describe characters with broad strokes. For instance, the Wolkenritter are listed on both the Chaotic Good and Lawful Good pages. But couldn't you also make the case that they were willing to kill anyone to help the owner of the book, making them Lawful Evil?

It really only has meaning in the context of game-like settings, like you could make a case for Slayers or Fate/stay night. But V in V for Vendetta and Rock in Black Lagoon are CG? The whole point of those stories is moral ambiguity. I like D&D and all, but these tropes feel like Complete Monster all over again.

[robkelk]

And we already have a mod dedicated to Complete Monster.

Okay, I've updated the two pages that linked to the character alignment debate (before Bob could), as we discussed two moths ago. Nuking that page.

EDIT: And, while cleaning up links to that page, I've tagged All The Tropes:Administrivia as needing cleanup.

[Bob Schroeck]

I'd appreciate other mods looking at the speedy deletion list. Three of the four entries there are mine.

I'm probably just going to say what someone else already has, because I haven't read the rest of the thread yet, but the hell with it. I'm tired and lazy right now.

Nuke Death Smiles/Nightmare Fuel.

It would be nice to keep a list of the discussion templates we have implemented, somewhere... I know I've meant to use a couple in the past.

The sandbox is recyclable before we delete it -- our page for The Winter Soldier only has four tropes on it, and we should use as much as we can from here.

[Bob Schroeck]

Then again, maybe there wasn't so much to read after all. And yeah, Administrivia needs it. Hell, Administrivia needs to be turned into a proper portal of sorts. It's pretty much a fossil from TVT that we've whipped and beaten into a halfway-usable shape.

[Bob Schroeck]

So, over the weekend we got a bunch of strange posts from Russian spammers, and in dealing with them last night, I thought it might be useful to share just how I found out that they were Russian spammers. Well, there's a site called Stopforumspam.com which maintains a publicly-accessible database of spammers and their IPs. To check an IP, just go to a URL like this one:

https://www.stopforumspam.com/ipcheck/31.184.238.185

Replace the IP at the end with the one you want to check, of course. If any spam has come from that IP (and been reported), you'll get a page on what that IP has been up to. (Oh, and that IP is one of the ones I just banned, in case you're curious.)

I should note that the nine IPs I banned yesterday each had no less than 7000 reports each -- and some were over 9000!. And they've been at it for weeks or even months. I should also note that the IPs only varied by the last triplet -- they were all 31.184.238.*. We're not looking at someone spoofing or borrowing an IP -- we're looking at a dedicated spam operation in the Russian Federation that is not likely to go away soon. I suspect that as soon as those 1-week bans I gave are up, they'll be back, and I'm very seriously considering turning them indefinite (as I've done to other confirmed spammer IPs) to avoid having to go through this all over again. (And I need to go research to see if we can ban 31.184.238.* instead of the individual IPs...)

Anyway, I just wanted to share this tool with the other admins.

[Black Aeronaut]

Huh. Maybe you guys should get a little proactive about it. Since the list consists only of confirmed spammers, then maybe you guys should just import the entire list and set up a script to check that list for changes and apply them every week.

[Dartz]

So, over the weekend we got a bunch of strange posts from Russian spammers, and in dealing with them last night, I thought it might be useful to share just how I found out that they were Russian spammers.  Well, there's a site called Stopforumspam.com which maintains a publicly-accessible database of spammers and their IPs.  To check an IP, just go to a URL like this one:

https://www.stopforumspam.com/ipcheck/31.184.238.185

Replace the IP at the end with the one you want to check, of course.  If any spam has come from that IP (and been reported), you'll get a page on what that IP has been up to.  (Oh, and that IP is one of the ones I just banned, in case you're curious.)

I should note that the nine IPs I banned yesterday each had no less than 7000 reports each -- and some were over 9000!.  And they've been at it for weeks or even months.  I should also note that the IPs only varied by the last triplet -- they were all 31.184.238.*.  We're not looking at someone spoofing or borrowing an IP -- we're looking at a dedicated spam operation in the Russian Federation that is not likely to go away soon.  I suspect that as soon as those 1-week bans I gave are up, they'll be back, and I'm very seriously considering turning them indefinite (as I've done to other confirmed spammer IPs) to avoid having to go through this all over again.  (And I need to go research to see if we can ban 31.184.238.* instead of the individual IPs...)

Anyway, I just wanted to share this tool with the other admins.

Announcement: "I'm pleased to say I've signed legislation to outlaw spammers forever. We begin banning in five minutes"

[Bob Schroeck]

Heh.

I did check on stopforumspam.com -- while they're not using the entire final triplet of that IP, damn if they're not using at least half and more like two-thirds.

[robkelk]

(And I need to go research to see if we can ban 31.184.238.* instead of the individual IPs...)

Here's the relevant documentation. Do we need to block the entire /0?

[Bob Schroeck]

Yeah, I found that and almost did it yesterday but held back. I'm afraid we still might need to -- as I noted above, they're using a good two-thirds of the addresses in that final triplet. I worry about who else we might block if we do that -- Russia is our fifth largest origin for inbound links -- but a) (today at least) that's only 24 vs. 612 for the US and 62 for the UK, b) how many of those inbound links are the spammers?

[Bob Schroeck]

Okay, policy question for us admins. I took a quick look at Recent Changes just now, in the minutes before I left for work, and I saw this:

(diff | hist) . . ! Idiot Plot/Film‎; 20:24 . . (+11,769)‎ . . ‎108.210.180.169 (talk | block)‎ (Removed on TV Tropes for stupid reasons moved it here as I was banned equally poor reasons because this Wiki is the best alternative.)

Which raises an odd little question. Can we legally make use of material postdating the fork but deleted from TVT since?

[robkelk]

It would be easier to answer that if we knew whether the material was originally posted to TVT by the person who posted it to ATT.