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Admin requests

Welcome to your mother's basement! Problems requiring assistance from an admin. User problems, changes to protected pages, more user rights etc. (+post)

List of Admins:

Discussion Area

Convert to real X-Forwarded-For IP addresses?

Can you admins do the https://serverfault.com/a/526551 thing so you can block by real IP addresses and ranges? 172.70.211.134 15:45, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

That is out of my league. But maybe some of the other clever admins may know what if that can be used? Kynde (talk) 17:07, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

Install anti-spam programs

I think it’s time to install some sort of automated anti-spam programs that can catch these spammers fast.172.70.130.91 06:30, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

I don't want to be disrespectful, but it seems that the current set of admins lacks the collective time or ability to upgrade Mediawiki/MySQL and install widely available anti-vandalism and anti-spam measures. But you have perhaps the most technically inclined, supportive, and motivated audience you could hope for here. Why not use the main page top banner to ask for expert Mediawiki volunteers or if that doesn't work, funds to hire such a consultant to upgrade blocking and filtering tools or a new hosting solution if needed? I believe you'd be surprised with the extent of community support you can muster, and manually chasing vandalism is becoming tiresome. 172.70.211.90 07:28, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

I've been chasing jeff for months now because he's the only one with access to the server. I know he's alive and still active online, but he clammed up partway through the previous wave of heavy spam and the email chain is just 20 of my own emails, I'll get through eventually. y²²[talk] 18:10, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
@jeff_underscore tweeted four days ago. Would it help if we launched a Twitter campaign to get him on board with a server update fundraiser, or something? 172.70.214.43 03:36, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
Anyone with the skills and experience should tweet him to take him up on his offer, IMHO. 162.158.118.39 04:12, 25 July 2022 (UTC)


Basic punctuation standards

Can we please have some agreement that ." is better than ".? 172.71.150.29 07:08, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

That would depend.
When asked "How do you deal with endquote punctuation in quoted speech?" he answered "Yes," with a definite nod of his head, "I would always try to put the punctuation before the quote."
...that is how I was taught to do it, <mumble>fumphty-fumph</mumble> years ago, and when it is clear quoted speech (with 66s, 99s) then that's probably best. Except when it might confuse, but then a rewrite (or clearly indicated paraphrase/part-quote) might be useful. You'll note I example-quote 'wrongly' in some places below, to accomodate other factors. Like an exclamation point as a feature of the holding sentence that makes no sense at all to be translated to within the quoted sentence(-fragmant).
On the other hand providing "a set of words", with no clear quotation to them, ellicits no such compunction.
...it gets a bit hazy, because a partial quote of a real full sentence (or an incomplete/incompleted quote) could go either way. But I would not consider "a set of words," to be sensible.
If you give a "list", "spread" or "set" of singular terms then no, or even compounded ones if they are ultimately the "be-all" and "end-all".
...noting that I might personally single-quote in this case (I know not why I have adopted this principle, exactly), though I've often seen such things changed by others and it may be more contested than even the terminator punctuation. I might say that the 'true' difference is whether it is a definite "literal", insofar as meaning, or somewhat 'ad hoc', 'foreignish' or just plain constructed.
But this is just my opinion. And, regardless of my preference to quote-punctuation ordering, I've seen several recent occasions where paren-punctuation ordering was totally off (IMO). Either "...at the end of a sentence (an aside.)", which should have been "... (an aside)." instead, or "(As a whole aside of its own)." for which it must surely be "(As ... of its own.)"
Now, obviously too much ()ing is awkward, especially if nested, but I prefer the clearer in/out indication than other methods — like the mdash — which seem to be the favoured method by some editors — and, even more confusingly, often without spacing both sides. (Like "...by some editors—and, even more confusingly..."! Looks more like a hyphen, despite "—” and "–”-users changing hyphens-used-as-dashes to one or other of the dashes to try to differentiate them.)
Ultimately, though, the people here will have learnt (or redeveloped) their own typographical standards over a wide range of educational eras (or under teachers/mentors whose own learnt-preferences might themselves be several decades passed into history) and with additional localisation/localization complications as well. I tend to agree with you (with caveats as mentioned) but it won't be universally acceptable. 172.70.85.13 21:34, 24 August 2022 (UTC)
Better? No. Correct (at least in American English)? Yes. Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 13:25, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

Propose block of (an?) IP user(s?) and suppression of their edits

I don't mind being insulted but I think it's clear they're bad for the community:

--NotaBene (talk) 14:15, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

As the IP who subsequently reverted those back out of existence (wasn't sure you'd seen it, but was clear to me it wasn't a useful/good-faith commentary, and now I find that you had and had certainly ignored it in-situ) I have mixed opinions. I could not have done my (good faith) edit if somehow restricted, in a way someone had previously gotten around. Bearing in mind the idiotic vandal(s) we have had before, and always ended up dealing with through sheer force of the more righteous and honest userbase, I think that drastic actions aren't necessary. But I can think of a few minor tweaks that maybe the current adminship can still hold in reserve and occasionally employ, without preventing the likes of me (long time contributor, but not yet decided to make it 'official') occasionally poking registered users' Talk pages with genuine queries or comments under most circumstances that may actually warrant it.
That said, we have indeed had a spate of vandalism, recently, which I'm inclined to believe is 'our old friend' who probably decided he(?) was bored again. A few novel tricks (nonsense 'cat on keyboard' edits with no clear pattern to the nonsense or what it replaces) but in association with some of the old ones (global word replacements throughout an article). Quickly recorrected in all cases, SFAICT, so not a big problem.
The above insertion (...insertions... seeming to care about punctuation typos!) I might have left for you to blue-pen out of your own Talk page (whatever the intent behind it) except for my spidey-sense saying it really was just trolling and that you had no reason to even consider a dismissive reply, never mind argue your defence against such an accusation. (But could always restore and reply to it if you really wanted to!) 172.71.178.137 17:57, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
To be clear, I'm not proposing a site-wide restriction of all IP users, just those specific addresses. --NotaBene (talk) 18:41, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
Understood, but that'd mean inconveniencing even legitimate readers routing through the same Cloudflare gateways. Which are in bunches, such that any given region of the world is served by not necessarily contiguous IP ranges, thus false-positives and false-negatives. Until you blanket-ban enough to just make for a whole lotta false-positive blocking for a segment of real users once the instigator of the mess just moves on (or enjoys the mess he made, if self-aware enough of it).
I won't even know, until I submit this, if I'm this time listed even in the same IP/8-block as the above (172.71.178.137), but if it turns out that I'm a 141.* this time (or maybe 142.*, I forget what I occasionally show up as) then obviously had you reason to IP-block me because of my own actions then you'd have accomplished little by even banning the whole 16-/24-block of my original. And that's without any conscious intent to bypass the default allocation system...
So, not that you should take my own opinion as gospel, just thought I'd mention this. 172.70.90.3 20:23, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Hey

I cleaned everything up. You should probably restore the newest 3 topics.

It could definitely do with a cleanup (not the only page like this!), but in a positive and considered manner, not just wiping and expecting unwarrented deletions to be restored after your removal. Archival sub-pages (restricted/fully-protected) should be involved, perhaps, for reference/history (on top of the History view itself).
Not just wiping by an unisigned contributor, as you did. I'm a hairbreadth from just reverting it all back again, on principle, and maybe someone else will do that anyway.
But defering to known named users (esp. the admins) and their decision on how to procede. (Please do delete this contribution if you see fit to do any restoration and make my opinions moot.) 172.68.138.79 20:26, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
I agree that it needed cleanup, and also agree that wiping everything was not the best way to go about doing it. I've moved most of the deleted content to the "talk"/archive page, and put back some discussions. theusaf (talk) 23:22, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

Complaint transcluded from user:ArthurGreenham

(Ok, so, the above transclusion is subject to change at any time, as proven by While False going in there and 'wikilinking' everything since I first saw the transclusion inserted here, so perhaps a little less ephemeral explanation is needed..?)
Point the first: I have no issues with While False, in general. Seems to be a good editor in general. As I recall, did a lot to counter that particularly recurring bad-faith editor who the current expanded admin set will recall. And regular editing from you, mate..? As good as anyone else, I would say. No bad-faith detected in you at all.
Point the second: You do seem to be a bit too gung-ho with new pages, and similar experiments with markup. Just because you can, it seems. If those with the power to remove pages choose not to, then I'm not complaining, but I still think it's a bit... self-indulgant. Not that a mere IP like me can rightfully complain.
Point the third: Clearly, among the mass of newly registered users (who never then contribute) there is a large cohort generated by some external script(s) for the intention of SEO/propogation of linky-links. I suspect that they're set to do this on any wiki that they can create accounts upon, mindlessly and with the initiating 'intelligence' not bothered how well they do it (economies of scale, as per spamming/etc) because some will do it and fulfil whatever purpose.
Point the fourth: But, back a long time ago, our chief admin here (and his then current peers/etc?) set it up so that new users just did not so easily create brand new pages. Without overly restricting the spamming of user-registration (or, more importantly, legitimately interested actual contributors) it stymied the scripts that were creating users that then could not create (and write their spam upon) the pages they were programmed to create.
Point the fifth: But if someone who is an autoconfirmed user looks at the accounts created (I'm guessing here, so corrects me if I'm wrong) and decides to make the pages that new and heretofor uncontriutive users cannot create for themselves, there are times (at least two, that I know of) that the mindless spam-script has not given up and moved on from putting their random link-spam upon RandomNewname's user page. And as RandomNewname has a page, it does its preprogrammed stuff.
...and the world does not stop turning, if that happens. But it does just marginally increase the benefits vs costs of the spam-engine technique (which are probably already breaking even and more, across all speculative spam-destinationa) and I'd suggest we shouldn't be helping with that any more than we already have to.
Maybe theusaf could add to their own bot some sort of detection of a suspicious level of linkspamming upon a user's own pages (to neuter these that leak through, like the ones that it deals with in other circumstances), but that'd be difficult without having false-positives upon genuine new users with (once they can) a genuine reason to populate their userspace with various external links.
Instead, perhaps hold back upon feeding the spambots the fresh ground that they seem to like to make use of. Perhaps a page for "please create my userspace!" if we want genuine users (or at least ones that can find and read instructions) to get a userspace more quickly than the normal limits apply, so any established (named) editor can give them their Welcome-templated editspace.
We can't so easily protect against conscious bad-faith editors (we will just have to deal with them, as we have done), but we seem to have sufficient anti-bot defences. If misguided editing doesn't open up cracks in the walls.
...Ok, that looks like a rant, but was just intended to cover (much of) the issue as I saw it in a way that explained my accumulated thinking on the matter. And I clearly think too much. This is not a diatribe against anybody (except the spambot originators), just a plea for action (or, rather, inaction) in a key way. And perhaps some moderator-level cleanup, so that the above transclusion is now effectively red-linked (then delete/archive this horribly overblown entry). Leaving it up to you lot. Have fun! 172.70.90.3 10:34, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

2696: Accuracy and precision

This is my first edit/post here. Could someone please include the Wikipedia link to "Accuracy and precision" [1], which is a separate article from 'accuracy' and 'precision'? Thanks! unsigned ip|172.71.98.97|16:04, 9 November 2022}}

If someone else hasn't done already, it's trivial enough to do yourself in a similar way to how you edited here, in any one of a number of ways.
  • By bare URL (shows the URL, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accuracy_and_precision but not really suitable here)
  • As you did it above, with [] around the URL, giving a 'reference'-like link. Occaisionally useful, but a little impersonal in most cases.
    • Or use URL and alternate text in the []s (space-separated) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accuracy_and_precision like this], which looks like this and is most useful for non-wiki links that you can describe well, or associate into the flow of text.
  • An internal wiki link is defined like [[2696: Precision vs Accuracy]] and renders as 2696: Precision vs Accuracy, which is common site practice (you could alse link to 2696 or Precision vs Accuracy, in most cases, which are redirects) but doesn't help in the above link's case.
    • If you wanted to internally link with other text then using [[2696: Accuracy and precision|other text]] is the way to do it (use the pipe delimiter).
  • When it comes to wikipedia links, though, we have a nice template for it. By using Accuracy and precision}} (or with the underscored version of the title, if you wish) you get a link to {Accuracy and precision}}, with the nicer aesthetic. Probably what you wanted. You can lowercase the "A" and it will still link (usually... always good to check) and linking to something like a w|noun}} can generally be written as |noun}}s should you wish the flow of text to seemlessly render the link as being for multiple noun}}s, thanks to a little more background trickery.
    • If you want to use more Accuracy_and_precision|replaced text}} then you get aAccuracy_and_precision|replaced text}} rendering. Another possibility for what you'd wish to use, here.
    • Similar templates exist for linking the likes of emplate|wiktionary}} and evenemplate|tvtropes}}, should you need them.
    • ...noting that the latter needs the NoSpacesVersion of the title and because tropes|TVTropesWillRuinYourLife|TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Life}}, it has a slightly more forboding format, even though it isn't really that much worse than 214: The Problem with Wikipedia. ;)
In case that's of any use to you, or anybody else. There are a few more tips and tricks, but this covers a lot of the usage-cases.
Also, in discussion pages and ones like this, it's useful to sign your contribution with the four tildes. But it's easy to forget and there are templates to mark unsigned contribution. As I did above. Don't worry about it. It just lets you datestamp and demarkate elements of conversation in a useful manner. As a first edit, you can be forgiven, but just so you know for future! 172.70.91.57 18:21, 9 November 2022 (UTC)
    • "'it's trivial enough to do yourself in a similar way to how you edited here'" Those options do not seem to be open to me if I do not set up an account; I'm not ready to take that step, so it looks like I can only edit behind-the-scenes pages, not comic pages. Thanks for the advice! I do enjoy the site when I check in! 172.71.182.17 18:35, 9 November 2022 (UTC)
    • Never mind. I found the option. I didn't realize the new comic page was separate from the main page. I was trying to edit the main page. Thanks! 172.71.182.17 18:39, 9 November 2022 (UTC)
...I must say, I never thought about that, or I might have not concentrated on the link-formatting stuff (which I hope was just as useful, in its own way).
As you see, I'm also not 'ready' to set up an account. But I rarely go via the main page, which is locked against trivial vandalism, plus know that the useful editing occurs only in the transcluded source page anyway. And now so do you, happily.
I don't know if that confusion catches out many potential editors, but at least now you know yourself. And, from one IP to another, Welcome! I hope you now find yourself productively editing away in the future, if you have anything else useful to include. No obligation, of course, except to play nice if you do. ;) 172.70.86.11 19:20, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

There's a lot of vandalism going on

See the page history of any recent comic page. Not sure what to do about it. Equites (talk) 00:57, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Ban 162.158.107.56 and 172.71.150.83, they seem to be the perpetuators. Starstar (talk) 02:15, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

As of the 22nd, the users ChuddyCobson and CobsonTheGemson are responsible for a large amount of attacks and image vandalism, most of them NSFW (inappropiate and/or gore). Can something be done about them? Gyozaplanet

I noticed the image for 1460 has been vandalized. But, in looking at the history it shows an old vandalism that was fixed. But following the link in the alleged fix gets the vandalized image. I'm out of my depth for fixing this, but couldn't find a better place to report it. It's getting too late and I'm far too tired to do more... (As an aside to what I came here for, are the above two things vandalism here? That's a rathole I'm not continuing down.) MAP (talk) 09:37, 22 December 2022 (UTC)


A few hours ago I decided to visit this wiki, and got quite the surprise on the front page, in that it was heavily vandalized. Decided to make an account after looking at recent changes and saw how much there was.

The accounts involved seem to be these;

  • CobsonTheGemson
  • ChuddyCobson
  • Cobson
  • Stinkycobbypoopoo
  • Chud
  • GotTheJakkyDoe

Kinda confused since they don't seem to be bots but I assume they're using a script or something to automate their vandalism. As far as I know, A few other people and I reverted more or less everything those accounts have done but it's possible some stuff fell through the cracks.

Also some of the gifs I reverted (most notably the gif for 381) seem to still have the same image so I'm hoping that's just a cache thing that'll sort itself out in time.

I left the above weirdness since I don't know the etiquette for deleting stuff in this section and it would remove some context to the above person's post. Hope I didn't break anything while cleaning up. Neerti (talk) 10:24, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

Cleaned up some accounts Color|#707|David}}y²²[talk] 16:38, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

Opening Certain Pages causes mediawiki errors

For example Proposals and this user page Starstar (talk) 02:10, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Apparent abuse of multiple accounts

For a few weeks (mostly the last few days) 51 accounts with the same soon-current name have been created. To me it looks like preparation for abuse of multiple accounts. —While False (museum | talk | contributions | logs | rights | printable version | page information | what links there | related changes | Google search | current time: CURRENTTIME}}) 11:44, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Now, they’re 195. —While False (museum | talk | contributions | logs | rights | printable version | page information | what links there | related changes | a late contribution | current time: CURRENTTIME}}) 17:24, 19 December 2022 (UTC)
With the exception of being 'topical', these are quite typical of numerous other "<commonroot><randomchars>" sets of never-ever-used usernames. It is good to be aware of them, but I think this 'common root' was just randomly grabbed by the algorithm (or its master) without any particular view to be used any more effectively than before.
I leave it to those who can actually do something to decide whether to actually do something, but I'm currently not so concerned. 172.70.91.127 01:06, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
Addendum - alongside "SadSanta...", we're getting a lot of "Natasha"s, while around this time last year (as the first time glanced back at) we had "PellGync" and "Snawlrab" as the common roots concerned. Which ultimately came of nought.
I get the impression that the limited-success script (as being used to create spam-accounts, but overwhelmingly failing to then exploit them) is set up to randomly apply two such common roots at a time (or else there's two copies of the code running, wherever, each switching out 'exhausted' roots for the next enqueued one in their own list ...as and when necessary). A quick poke into other 'recent' historic points in the Account Creation log highly supports this, but it could do with a far more rigorous analysis to be more definite. 172.71.242.118 01:31, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

There also used to be a lot of eight-letter usernames. Too many usernames are being created every day. --ColorfulGalaxy (talk) 22:03, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Current troll(s)

There's trolls posting extremely obscene stuff on the homepage, and frankly I'm appalled. The Admins need to take several steps to lock down the main page so that it's not possible for readers to view such obscene content (for example, why are arbitrary images that don't come from xkcd.com allowed???) Why are random users allowed to post arbitrary images that are not filtered/scanned in any way? (bkayes)

It's been like this forever. It's rare enough that the admins leave things fairly open, but lengthy stretches lead to the lockdowns you're asking for, usually for about a week which is usually sufficient. Mixed feelings. There are a lot of tools that could help a lot, but we can't get User:Jeff to upgrade because his hosting deal depends on some ad stuff that won't port to newer versions. :( Liv2splain (talk) 04:45, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
Image uploads being open is usually nicer for everyone, except in the scenario while children decide to use it as an avenue for vandalism. I got enough on my hands already to be dealing with but this probably demands some attention Color|#707|David}}y²²[talk] 16:38, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
(Rerationalised under a new header, as a different issue, though also related to a prior section's 'insertion/revival' in response to the idiot concerned, too.) Appreciated, David. Noting that the inability for me to correct the account-led vandalism, last night, is the one factor that might eventually push me to establish a non-IP presence. But we had other volunteer accounts reacting fairly well to the trouble, and I knew we'd settle down soon enough. Anyhoo, Merry Christmas to you and the others on the side of stability, while I'm here and chatting away. 172.71.178.136 17:00, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
I find it unfortunate that "rarity" is any sort of excuse for allowing this to happen. XKCD is a fantastic source of quality STEM entertainment, and thus is a great resource to get younger audiences interested in such fields through humor. Many high school age and younger people regularly view xkcd content. However, some of the comics are quite obscure or contain a lot of depth, which is why explainxkcd has been such a great resource for everyone to learn things that are outside of their depth (including younger audiences). The knowledge that someone can open explainxkcd and have the slightest chance that they see extreme gore/porn is absolutely absurd and unacceptable for a wiki that is serving solely family friendly science content. I can no longer recommend explainxkcd to people I know (and especially not younger people) because of the lack of modern anti-trolling tooling, and that really sucks. I understand the issues surrounding locking down the text explanations, but the images should be a trivially solvable problem. Compare a checksum between the image found at *.xkcd.com and the image uploaded and reject an image that doesn't match, or better yet *use the official xkcd RSS feed* (https://xkcd.com/rss.xml) to download the images directly, and don't allow any user edits of the images. Then you can deal with vandalization of the text some other time, locking down the images is really the highest priority here I think. (bkayes) 04:17, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

2659: Unreliable Connection

Could probably do with some page protection here. Thanks. 162.158.34.231 23:41, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

If you mean for the thing that gets reverted very quickly, I think that's already dealt with quite nicely. And it isn't the only page that is targetted, so where do you stop? Whole-site lockdown, when the occasonal automated spam is equally automatically reverted? 162.158.74.21 00:05, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
Over the past couple of weeks, the edit history of this particular page has consisted of nothing but vandalism and it's subsequent reversion. The vandal doesn't seem to be targeting (m)any other pages, so protection should make them go away. 172.69.79.158 21:43, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
Nonetheless, the same tactic has been seen (and reverted, promptly) on other comics, like #976. edit: ...and #2503 suffered this vandalism/reversion, again, on 15 Jan 2023. Block 2659 and 976 from editing and someone may easily change the config for the script and hit any othe page they please, not really reducing the ultimate change/revert frequency, just where it is happening.
I'll accept gradual locking down of progressively more and more of the site, if it happens, but I'm not sure it'd be of any real benefit to do so. Not my call, so just giving my POV... 162.158.34.74 23:47, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

Someone pointed out that the spams are more likely to occur on pages with "Connect" in their titles. ColorfulGalaxy (talk) 10:49, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

The user talk page with the same name got spammed. 172.69.134.242 06:18, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

Announcement: online chat with Randall January 31

Admins: would you please consider adding this blurb to the end of the MediaWiki:Sitenotice just for this month?

Register to attend an online chat with Randall Munroe January 31 at 11am Pacific.

Thank you for your consideration. Liv2splain (talk) 06:23, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Done —theusaf (talk) 23:29, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
Thank you! I'm very much looking forward to the well-attended zoom chat, let alone what should come from the large pool of questions from international fans. 172.69.134.16 14:04, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Archive of livestream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAEutGwIQ9c 162.158.166.173 19:03, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

All community portal

Would you mind semi-protecting this and that page? They don't seem to need edits. --ColorfulGalaxy (talk) 17:55, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Brief(?) and limited spate of vandalism.

It may be a flash in a pan, but there's some misuse of multiple accounts going on here as of this timestamp (with ColourfulGalaxy having mostly had to correct matters on their own, so far). FYI, on their behalf. With any luck the idiot involved will get bored soon, if not already, but making a note anyway. 162.158.159.124 20:15, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

He edited my user page just now. --ColorfulGalaxy (talk) 20:17, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
I tried to help them, but failed. I had to turn to you for help. ChristmasGospel (talk) 20:24, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
EDIT: By the way, don't call him "idiot", or he may be angry.
Given that someone seems to be stalking you, and even snuck in some activity before my post, above, I'm starting to suspect something more. I leave it to those who can do things to sort it out. As an IP, I don't think I have any say in the matter, but I'll let others consider the possibilities. (You've got to be an idiot to clearly log in with the wrong account, though, and then fail to pick up the changes with the 'right' one. And I knew While False wasn't truly finished trying to do stupid things to the site... You're not impressing anybody, WF.) 172.70.85.201 20:28, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
That’s not typical WF behaviour at all. —162.158.222.198 19:38, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

The online chat s over

Please revert https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Sitenotice&diff=304122&oldid=239894 172.70.211.92 18:45, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Users involved in spamming.

There are at least three 'people' involved here, using trivial character differences/substitutions:

(...in case not obvious, especially in sans-serif, the second two use capital-I (i) instead of small-l (L), and the s/z difference should be obvious. No obvious signs of anything like using cyrillic look-alike characters, yet.)

There may be others, or will be, but these ones have just recently popped up in spamming (and then obfuscating? ...hoping to be reverted back into the spam version?) the redirect pages Drama‎‎ and Google Maps (see here and here), though they are currently fully reverted. 172.70.90.35 04:33, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

One of these also interacted with a differently named suspicious-looking/acting account:
Could be a coincidence, but... For reference. 172.71.242.190 13:18, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
And now User:ElisabethPacheco (do not ban me). AndroidTheLucario (talk) 03:54, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Can someone block User:Email Trial 1? They're repeatedly adding comments on spamming other people's emails. Thanks! ~ Megan she/her talk/contribs 16:25, 24 March 2023 (UTC)


Ongoing image vandalism

by this user (contributions). ~ Megan she/her talk/contribs 02:50, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

I suggest we raise the threshold for image uploads. After all, there's no reason for most editors to upload images. ~ Megan she/her talk/contribs 03:13, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Fix obnoxious typo on the Editor FAQ

This page contains a typo and I can't edit it out: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/explain_xkcd:Editor_FAQ

It's highlighted in this sentence:

"You can use the Math markup <math>...</math>. The other known code from Wikipedia <chem>...</chem> is not supported yet. It's based on LaTeX syntax and a general overview can be found at it's Wikipedia help page. Don't use it unless you actually understand what you are doing." Edit: Whoops, forgot to sign: FaviFake (talk) 09:04, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

Update MediaWiki

The current MediaWiki version is 1.30.0 which ended support mid-2019, please upgrade to 1.39.x or something due to security concerns. Instructions here https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Upgrading Cam1170 (talk) 20:55, 29 March 2023 (UTC) Make sure to upgrade to 1.35 first, from the Check Requirements section. Actually, 1.31 then 1.35 then 1.39 for the smoothest transition. Cam1170 (talk) 15:15, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

user edits someone else's comment

https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2760:_Paleontology_Museum&diff=309970&oldid=309964 162.158.87.65 09:51, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

That word is not spelled "Ye". It's "Þe". Omg Oriental Music Group (talk) 00:49, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
That would depend. We all (FCVO 'all') get your point, but is spelt (or, if you wish, "spelled", but I would like to use the other form) that way by the original commentator. And it was a signed Talk post, not an Explanation page that needs to be standardised(/standardized) by success revisions.
Can you also say for definite that it was not intended by the original author to be the second-person plural personal pronoun (nominative), correctly or otherwise, rather than the definite article (under a standard reduced typeset)? No reason to change it, not even if an actual tyop. 172.71.178.207 11:56, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, bad practice, except where correcting clear mistakes or otherwise sanitising something best not left up in the open (for whatever good reason). Like if I'd misapplied a style "colour" tag, by accident, but not if I'd openly written "colour" in a Talk entry.
But not necessary in this case of language-geek hyperconnection. I think a revert/re-edit to restore the original would be not an issue, but I won't do it myself.
The best way to look smart with the "thorn" character would have been to say "You have 'Ye Olde blah-de-blah', but I hink you meant... [etc]" and own the joke and the smugness rather than try to 'improve' on the original in-situ. As one who has made typos (but also said exactly what I wanted to, perhaps deciding not to over-egg the pudding) I would prefer even a snarky "did you mean.." reply over an invisible 'improvement' that may not even be properly focused any more. Each to their own, but my suggestion, if the editor wants to revise their edit. 172.71.178.65 15:54, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

Deletion of wrongly-titled pages

Could you please delete this redirect? 2503: Memo Spike Connector (talk) 06:18, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Could you delete this page? ClassicalGames (talk) 03:29, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Usertalk:Billstz turned into a redirect. It should have been deleted. ColorfulGalaxy (talk) 21:10, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Repeated spam in user talk page

The page User talk:ClassicalGames got repeatedly spammed. Could you semiprotect it? 172.69.134.242 02:07, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Hmmmmm, I think he really deserves the spam. He spammed in someone else's user page without permission. 172.71.154.228 03:56, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
Easily reverted, to restore legitimate conversation. (Perhaps more such attention should go to where some people are repeatedly making entirely useless and gratuitous edits...) 172.71.242.86 08:59, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
Those spammers probably knew the CG rules, and appeared to have welcomed every CG group member with a spam. 172.69.23.33 09:57, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

The relevant xkcd comic from not xkcd

https://thomaspark.co/2017/01/relevant-xkcd/ This comic. A reference to xkcd, in the style of xkcd, about xkcd.

Can I make a page about it? Please? :)

What's a "comic incarnate"?

User:Memo Spike Connector seems to have a friend group of users with the names of various comics. E's been changing their user pages and signatures to match the comic pages and titles. Is this some sort of cult? It sounds fun! Where do I sign up? --Your favorite aura doggo (talk) 03:18, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

To answer the title, "incarnate"=="made flesh". Reincarnation is when you're given a new body, again, incarnation can therefore be taken as when the 'spirit' first assumes a tangible (or visible) form.
To ponder on this fad of creating comic-related user accounts... pretty much unnecessary and has no reason to be encouraged, I suppose. 172.70.162.62 03:52, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
How do I join? I wanna be cool like them! --Your favorite aura doggo (talk) 03:59, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
I think this needs to be taken more seriously now. User:Memo Spike Connector has had their page added to the *category* of Cursed Connectors, despite not being an official comic. It's starting to feel like a very unusual case of vandalism, but I'm not sure. Tsumikiminiwa (talk) 19:37, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
Addendum, User:Unreliable Connection has their page added to the Internet and Social Interactions categories. Everything else I said before still stands. Tsumikiminiwa (talk) 19:41, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Main page in phones category

The Main Page is now in the Category:Phones category. ClassicalGames (talk) 03:25, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Surely because 2789: Making Plans, currently transcluded there, is legitimately given that category. I'd be more surprised if it wasn't. (Until Wednesday's new comic release changes this, if it does.) What's the problem, and how is it related to 'your' issue, above? 172.71.178.146 10:04, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
I moved this to its own section, but you can change the section title if you want. --Your favorite aura doggo (talk) 19:43, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

please block u|Vandal (and many more)

cf. Special:Contributions/Vandal 11 page blankings today. Thanks. JohnHawkinson (talk) 21:24, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

Actually, looking at Special:Log/newusers is pretty ominous. Nearly all of the last 500 (within the past 4 days), and also the next few thousand, are suspicious. The CAPTCHA probably needs to be replaced with something more difficult that is perhaps not as trivially automatable? And all those users blocked? Not sure. JohnHawkinson (talk) 22:05, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

As a regular checker of such things, I know for a fact that you get hundreds of 'suspicious' accounts created every day, and most of them 'go nowhere'. The account creation speedblocks may not be very good. Or, possibly, tens of thousands of accounts are tried to be created, with 'just' a small percentage of them getting past the CAPTCHA/etc to get noticed by us - the actual top-level site admins will have access to the 'failed to register fully' logs. But, the actual page vandalism is very rarely any of these 'mechanised spam accounts'. I presume because the CAPTCHAs throttle down the 'lucky' accounts' abilities to do anything they were programmed to do once registered. And, no, the accounts aren't blocked (i.e. disabled accounts, except on very rare occasions when an Admin gets annoyed with a conspicuously used spam-login), if the actual Block Log is to be believed, but so many get created and never used so it looks like the "new user early posts" precautionary checks do a very good job.
We're also getting that idiot (I presume the same idiot as we've had for a year or two now) who manually creates accounts, such as you have been dealing with (and me, and others) over the last 24 hours or so. As a stupid human rather than a 'smart' bot, the CAPTCHA is no block to him/her/them. And the occasional IP gets used in that way, too (and I mostly successfully revert vandalism as only an IP; usefully, I hope) which might just be lazy vandalism, on top of the baseline stupidity. But the precautions against them are different. As with the 'Eric's ("Hi, I see your website needs improving - Eric"-types of message), which also seem to be handled by the community (and/or our automated blocking/reverting).
I don't see increasing the severity of the CAPTCHA to be a solution to much, honestly. Not from my perspective, certainly, though I know there's no reason to take my own unattributable word on that.
Instead, we should keep on keeping on. The community handles these things as they need to be. The admins know the 'hidden fight' going on in the background, but won't (and shouldn't) reveal too much about the extent of the first-line defences against bad faith 'automated' edits and the rest. 172.70.90.140 08:13, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Vandalism appeared again in 2800. ColorfulGalaxy (talk) 20:07, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Ban fake IP

Could you ban User:172.68.102.XXX? His edits sound suspicious, and he seems to be fighting against us. ColorfulGalaxy (talk) 19:41, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Vandalism by 172.69.214.158

Large number of extreme vandalism, which ThatoneU is valiantly yet inefficaciously fighting:

example from https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1193:_Externalities&action=history 

(cur | prev) 01:04, 24 July 2023‎ 172.69.214.158 (talk)‎ . . (6,765 bytes) (-15,000)‎ . . (Undo revision 318344 by ThatoneU (talk)) (undo)
(cur | prev) 00:47, 24 July 2023‎ ThatoneU (talk | contribs)‎ m . . (21,765 bytes) (+15,000)‎ . . (undo)
(cur | prev) 00:46, 24 July 2023‎ 172.69.214.158 (talk)‎ . . (6,765 bytes) (-15,000)‎ . . (undo)

Vandalism on page 2805

The latest comic page (2805) is currently being vandalized. Can an admin please look into it?

Problem with new accounts and IPs

So I'm sure many of you are well aware of the vandalism happening recently. But what concerns me the most is that all the edits were done by many, many different IPs, meaning that we can't just block one, and this site could get overrun by systematic IP vandalism. Also, the new accounts being created seem very suspicious. For such a small community, there's no way that there can be around 100 new users each day. The actual usernames of the users seem to follow a very repetitive pattern (generic first name + generic last name + random number). 172.70.42.209 18:44, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

As a fellow IP (and not a vandal myself, at least by intent) I find that the advantages of being able to leap in and correct (often 'named') damage outweigh the relatively small amount of IP-led vandalism. And the details of how the IPs represent the (limited, but geographically distributed) Cloudflare gateways has been noted before a number of times, together with what can be done about/with them.
About the new accounts... Look back for years, and you'll see the same (or similar) patterns. Almost all the truly rogue (presumably automated generation/'registering') then do nothing else as the site blocks the (still automated) attempts to do something with them.
The worst danger this site is threatened by is the actual manually-posting individuals who (IPed or named) can do what they like so long as (like us legitimate editors) they are prepared to be sat at the keyboard and spend/waste the time in navigating the initial CAPTCHAs/etc to set down their changes. And there's not much more anybody can do about them without ruining everyone else's experience to a similar degree. Perhaps there's some adjustments possible, but none seem necesary to address the account-spam and other precautions are intercepting/reverting the lion's share of the edit-spam (with or without accounts).
Not up to me, but I trust in those who it is up to. To continue with what is happening right now or to respond in new ways to anything that needs a new approach. Not saying that I don't have ideas of my own, for if I were able to intervene, but I doubt it'd be useful to voice them. 172.70.162.158 21:12, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Large amounts of vandalism involving disturbing imagery.

Page 2805 has a huge vandalism problem. Vandals (it seems to be the same few people over and over, or maybe one person with multiple addresses) keep covering the page with weird, disturbing photos and way-too-bright colors. A few people have been valiantly fighting back but that doesn't mean this isn't a problem. I would like to please request that the page be locked to prevent further vandalism, and that you please ban all the people that have vandalized it in this way before (and/or take some other action to prevent future vandals) . Thank you very much! (insert name here) (talk) 01:20, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

There also seems to be a parser problem where instead of vandals replacing the page source, the vandalism is appended to the end, even though it isn't in the source. 172.71.174.230 03:39, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

The optimal way to go would be to add bots that automatically replace questionable content like divs and detect image/word spam (like the one in Wikipedia). They would always be on so the vandals would get overwhelmed. Similarly I'd suggest monitoring the constant stream of IP addresses and created accounts. Most editors are IP addresses though, so you might want to watch out for that. Does ExplainXKCD have semiprotection capabilities? You would definitely want to do that, especially the important articles like xkcd, Randall Munroe, Cueball, 1:_Barrel_-_Part_1, and ALL of the templates (the vandals were targeting those the most). 84596Gamma (talk) 11:53, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

I agree that the important pages (primary pages, plus all templates) need to be protected somehow so that this can't happen again. It's nice to have a low threshold to editing; it's nicer having a resource that can be depended on and doesn't require random volunteers jumping in to save. (Let's be honest; the images the vandal posted could have been much, much worse.) -- Dtgriscom (talk) 12:28, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
What the heck is 'Explain XKCD Administrator' doing? He seems to also be doing some weird div BS, making it so that it's impossible to scroll or click on templates or some comics. Blocking would be heavily advised. 84596Gamma (talk) 12:39, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Becoming an admin?

Hi. I've been contributing occasionally for eight years now, and I think I've been helpful. But, almost half of the edits were last night in that wave of vandalism. It was very frustrating knowing that I had the same tools as the (14-year-old?) vandal, and the only end-point to the fun would be one of us throwing in the towel, and it was probably going to me (bedtime).

I don't have the time and/or commitment to do regular moderation work, but I (think I) am a reasonable person, who deals with conflicts rationally and could help out in a pinch. Is there a chance I could be given some more powers to help out if (when) such a crap-storm happens again? Thanks for your consideration... -- Dtgriscom (talk) 11:14, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

I saw your efforts, early on in my own day, definitely looked to be amongst the helpful editors. I later picked up several cases (might have missed a couple, that others IDed before me) after I got online, and undid that latest form of vandalism in both templates (agree with above, they probably should be semi-protected) and pages. A simple Undo even at my level was sufficient to revert practically everything. What might have been handy was one of the top-moderators being around to use the mass-revert tools to streamline that, and keep on top of the account (or accounts, as the problematic one would definitely open new accounts - we've seen them do this before) deserving to be blocked and banished. Unfortunately, the freedom of a wiki (which I value) doesn't really work well with over-administration. But that's a discussion to be had by those already at the top levels. I don't envy them. 172.70.90.164 18:08, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
Well, the 14-year-old is back. I'm losing interest in fighting this mud-fest without real admin tools. -- Dtgriscom (talk) 20:11, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
We really need to stop this wave of persistent vandalism with protection. When will the admins notice our suffering? 84596Gamma (talk) 20:23, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
I feel your pain. I caught (and had to recatch) a few of them as he turned up whilst I was browsing/considering proper edits. nd then I noticed you had appeared and were also retroing them, just as I thought I was barely keeping pace. But he's slackened off, so maybe you arriving here has made the difference. (And I'm fed up with pictures of fire hydrants!) 172.70.91.214 20:20, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
Me too... I'm coming to help. Hopefully we can fight that manchild off. Also I call death and destruction to Captcha. 84596Gamma (talk) 20:22, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
It's frustrating to watch the same few IP addresses wreak all this havoc. Being able to ban them would be a joy; why can't we have that power? -- Dtgriscom (talk) 20:31, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
OK: 2/3 of my contributions have been in the last 24 hours fighting Bozo-Man in all his flamboyant IP addresses. Without further powers, I'm done, because (unlike Bozo-Man) I have better things to do. Sorry... -- Dtgriscom (talk) 22:39, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
What powers do you need? --Jeff (talk)
I'm not looking for Super Duper Guru™ powers, just something that would even the battle a bit. No, that's not true: I'm looking for something that would make the battle unfair by making it easier to clean things up than it is to vandalize them. For instance, of the 123 vandalisms I reverted over the pat 24 hours, a third of them were from the top four IP addresses, and two thirds were from the top ten. If you only look at the first three quads of the IP addresses, half came from just two subnets. Block a few IP addresses, and the moderation load would go way down. (And that ignores the work the other users did.)
It makes sense that you wouldn't want to be handing out Thor's Hammer indiscriminately, but (IMO) something needs to change. If MediaWiki's moderation permissions aren't selective enough for your tastes, I'd be happy to follow your guidance (e.g. no blocking people for more than 24 hours). -- Dtgriscom (talk) 01:16, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
Congrats, you are promoted, thanks for helping out. See me in a week if you still want the powers. --Jeff (talk)
Thank you. Any guidance for the newbie admin? Or should I just "moderate moderately"? -- Dtgriscom (talk) 01:33, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
Block and move... block and move. Great power / great responsibility and all that. --Jeff (talk)

Preventation of vandalism

I'll bet the entire budget of the Death Star II that the vandalizer is going to strike again in a few hours. We should be more prepared - I've already cut links to templates, and we should be vigilant about the pages they are going to attack: the current comic, templates, important pages. 84596Gamma (talk) 00:06, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

What do you need to help? Let me know. --Jeff (talk)
Semiprotect all the templates. 84596Gamma (talk) 00:52, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Username request

It looks like an impersonator registered an account under my name. Is it possible for me to get that username? Randall Munroe 2 (talk) 04:41, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

To ask an obvious question: who are you? And, if you say you are the Randall Munroe of XKCD fame, how can we be sure? -- Dtgriscom (talk) 12:41, 30 July 2023 (UTC)
May I have your attention, please?
May I have your attention, please?
Will the real Randall Munroe please stand up?
I repeat
Will the real Randall Munroe please stand up?
We're gonna have a problem here...
(...but, in my assessmemt, Randall would have actual more direct ways of introducing himself to; if he suddenly decided to muddy the water by descending to our level when his interactions even with the forum were minimal; if he hasn't already been here/there/wherever all along, incognito and with/without the administrators knowing this. But Randall's technical and connected enough to not need to ask the above the way it was asked.) 172.70.162.181 15:36, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

user page

how do i put stuff in my profile? others have done it but for mine it says that i don't have permission to create that page An user who has no account yet (talk) 16:01, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

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