All The Tropes Wiki Project, Part XXVI

[Bob Schroeck]

Oh, and before I forget for the 20-somethingth time running, can someone please take care of the oldest entry in the Moderation queue -- a proposed page for Thor: Love and Thunder that I believe is a month old at this time. I've been avoiding it because I haven't seen the film yet and didn't want to be spoiled (which may well be the same for everyone else, now that I think of it).

[robkelk]

I've been busy with other projects and haven't had time to do more than glance at the moderation queue lately, sorry.

Ad for that image for Dungeon magazine, it's up now. Thanks for the advice on it.

[robkelk]

Hmmmmm... It looks like we can't automate sub-subpage creation, or set a Wikipedia page name on the "work" header of a subpage.

Why do we have the pages for individual Discworld novels as subpages of the franchise page?

And, if there's a really, really good reason to give up subpages and Wikipedia redirects on the work header for works within a franchise, why do we not do this with the individual Star Trek series?

No matter how this is answered, somebody's going to be doing a lot of cleanup work on the wiki for consistency's sake... so let's be completely certain which way we want to approach works in a franchise.

[GethN7]

Hmmmmm... It looks like we can't automate sub-subpage creation, or set a Wikipedia page name on the "work" header of a subpage.

Why do we have the pages for individual Discworld novels as subpages of the franchise page?

And, if there's a really, really good reason to give up subpages and Wikipedia redirects on the work header for works within a franchise, why do we not do this with the individual Star Trek series?

No matter how this is answered, somebody's going to be doing a lot of cleanup work on the wiki for consistency's sake... so let's be completely certain which way we want to approach works in a franchise.

The Discworld thing is something we inherited from TV Tropes, and honestly, we do need to rationalize it, and I propose we follow how Wikipedia does it for consistency sake.

[Bob Schroeck]

The Harry Potter books also have a horrendous mess of subpages and redirects and subpage redirects and... it's been on my "to fix" list for years, I just never have had the guts to start the job.

[robkelk]

It looks like we're agreed, then - do it the Star Trek way, not the (current) Discworld way.

I don't have time to fix things today or this weekend. though. It's been like this for a decade; a couple of weeks more won't hurt.

[Bob Schroeck]

We may have a spammer or other annoying element trying to get access to the wiki -- we had 56 new users created, all with names that were random alphanumeric garbage, and almost all of them created between 8:07 and 9:12 AM yesterday morning. Three other similarly-named accounts were created on the 26th between 11:02 and 11:47 AM, in what might have been an initial test of some manner of automated sign-up. I haven't looked at the moderation queue yet, and I'm wondering if I'm going to find a spew of garbage when I do.

[robkelk]

No spam in the mod queue at the moment. Plenty of edits by HornyLike..., but no spam.

[GethN7]

We may have a spammer or other annoying element trying to get access to the wiki -- we had 56 new users created, all with names that were random alphanumeric garbage, and almost all of them created between 8:07 and 9:12 AM yesterday morning.  Three other similarly-named accounts were created on the 26th between 11:02 and 11:47 AM, in what might have been an initial test of some manner of automated sign-up.  I haven't looked at the moderation queue yet, and I'm wondering if I'm going to find a spew of garbage when I do.

Yeah, it looked like some spammer tried to make a bunch of accounts to post stuff, but they must have given up and gone elsewhere when they realized we had the Moderation extension, which would prevent any of it from being publicly visible.

[Bob Schroeck]

Yeah, it looked like some spammer tried to make a bunch of accounts to post stuff, but they must have given up and gone elsewhere when they realized we had the Moderation extension, which would prevent any of it from being publicly visible.

No such luck, they're back and creating more accounts this morning:

10:58, October 31, 2022 User account XJiFsjtD (talk contribs block) was created
10:34, October 31, 2022 User account MB2jihou (talk contribs block) was created
10:33, October 31, 2022 User account XS9LyQ (talk contribs block) was created
10:32, October 31, 2022 User account OobBfz (talk contribs block) was created
10:30, October 31, 2022 User account YiUqmL (talk contribs block) was created
10:29, October 31, 2022 User account CYmtuS (talk contribs block) was created

[Umbire]

So, I noticed that our page for Dungeon magazine doesn't have an image.

There's a page on the Forgotten Realms wikia for Dungeon magazine, and it's illustrated with a cover of one of the earlier issues.

Normally, I'd copy and re-use it, with attribution.

But it's issue 5. And that's one with a dungeon written by me in it - the adventure that was updated to 2e and republished in an official collection. People might think I'm boasting if we use that cover. Or I could take Refuge in Audacity and lampshade that "This issue has a Troper Work in it!"

Should we use that cover, or find another?

EDIT: Better-quality copy of the image in question at mycomicshop.com (direct image link)

Oh wow, that rocks actually.

Also hi I'm alive.

[Umbire]

Yeah, it looked like some spammer tried to make a bunch of accounts to post stuff, but they must have given up and gone elsewhere when they realized we had the Moderation extension, which would prevent any of it from being publicly visible.

No such luck, they're back and creating more accounts this morning:

10:58, October 31, 2022 User account XJiFsjtD (talk contribs block) was created
10:34, October 31, 2022 User account MB2jihou (talk contribs block) was created
10:33, October 31, 2022 User account XS9LyQ (talk contribs block) was created
10:32, October 31, 2022 User account OobBfz (talk contribs block) was created
10:30, October 31, 2022 User account YiUqmL (talk contribs block) was created
10:29, October 31, 2022 User account CYmtuS (talk contribs block) was created

And again...
   

[Bob Schroeck]

Joy. I suppose they're being created against future use -- we've seen that in the past. They're pretty obviously not using them now.

I still wish we could block them, even though I figure an unused user account doesn't take up much database space. Maybe we can identify the IP(s) responsible and block those?

[robkelk]

Let Miraheze know, and they can deal with them.

Changing topics, I see that the wiki is in read-only mode at the moment. I was going to do more work on the over 40 work pages under Discworld... (I've only moved four of them so far - they have lots of incoming links.)

EDIT: And they're asking us to open a Phabricator ticket if we discover any images are missing. Here's one. I'm thinking we should make a list and submit in bulk instead of reporting each image individually.

[robkelk]

We can edit the wiki again. EDIT: And that image is back.

[robkelk]

Just tempbanned a troper for uploading an image without a license... again.

In order to catch these a bit sooner, I've created this list. It belongs somewhere other than in my sandbox... but where?

[GethN7]

I'm pretty sure why those spammer accounts aren't doing anything.

Spambots cannot help themselves. No sooner do they make their account they try to post links. The fact we've seen nothing means Miraheze has a global filter in place to recognize this and automatically "hellbans" (no one the user end sees the spam as it's silently rejected without blocking the account) the spam. This actually works better for dealing with spam to avoid tipping off the spammers lest they change their tactics. Without a formal ban message sent back to the spam maker, they have no reason to think it didn't work and their stuff is silently killed off without them being the wiser.

[Bob Schroeck]

I know that Miraheze uses StopForumSpam on at least some level -- I saw a mention of turning it on for another wiki on the Steward's Noticeboard -- so on reflection I'm not surprised.

[Bob Schroeck]

We have several entries in the mod queue this morning from a user called "Babel AutoCreate". It looks like it's some subsystem that's been part of the wiki since at least 2014, but this is the first time it's created pages -- three categories -- in over a year. Is there any reason we shouldn't give it automoderated privileges?

[robkelk]

I'd like to know whose system it is - and who to complain to if it acts up - before granting it any rights.

[Bob Schroeck]

Good point. Brent, do you have any idea of the owner and/or provenance of Babel AutoCreate?

[GethN7]

We have several entries in the mod queue this morning from a user called "Babel AutoCreate".  It looks like it's some subsystem that's been part of the wiki since at least 2014, but this is the first time it's created pages -- three categories -- in over a year.  Is there any reason we shouldn't give it automoderated privileges?

Babel Autocreate is an automated process of the Babel extension, which provides translation capability recognition to MediaWiki. There is absolutely nothing about it to be concerned about, it mostly pipes pre-recorded documentation for users making userboxes for their language proficiency and categories for their maintenance, saving the admins' work on the client side.

For the purposes of transparency (in case it works in error or produces garbled content on the client side), this automated process is logged as a bot style user in the database, but is absolutely nothing to be concerned about. If it does produce any content that is messed up, that can be reported for fixing to the Wikimedia Foundation, as they provide official support for the extension.

[Bob Schroeck]

In that case, I'll give it automod privileges so we don't have to approve its (infrequent) changes.

[robkelk]

Well, that's depressing.

I just put together a navbox for the most prestigious (and richest) award in Canadian literature. It's been awarded for almost three decades now, and it's up there with the Booker and the Pulitzer.

Guess how many of the books have work pages. Go on, guess. If you said anything other than "one", you guessed too high.

Guess how many of the authors have creator pages. One more than the number of works pages - Margaret Atwood and Mordecai Richler.

Goddamn Eagleland bias...

[Bob Schroeck]

Why am I not surprised that the wiki's been throwing up a "technical difficulties" page for a while now? No matter what Miraheze does, it seems like the more things change the more they stay the same.