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((subst:W-screen)) ((subst:User:Alison/c)) Wikipedia:SPI/CLERK and Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/SPI/Indicators

Note to self: Consider writing an article about the Forster Family Dollhouse in the Canadian Museum of Civilization. Some day.

[Listeria Bot

		Happy New Year!
		Wishing you and yours a Happy New Year, from the horse and bishop person. May the year ahead be productive and distraction-free and may Janus light your way. Ealdgyth (talk) 14:05, 1 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. I just want to know why you tagged File:Ascott House Front.jpg as keep local, even if there is a Commons copy and the building is located in a country with full FOP for buildings (c:COM:FOP UK). More so it is already in public domain since the renovating architect George Dewey has been deceased for more than 70 years. In my opinion keeping a local copy with the relatively-useless ((Ir-FOP)) tag is not reasonable now. The tag itself is already redundant to ((FoP-USonly)) which is the de facto active FOP template on enwiki today, used on unfree buildings of countries with no FOP (as enwiki only respects US law). Photos of US and UK buildings are almost accepted at Commons since both have FOP for architecture. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 06:35, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello JWilz12345. Unfortunately, some of us have had negative experiences with images being transferred to Commons. They have sometimes been confusingly modified, deleted, or renamed in ways that make it suboptimal. Keeping a local copy significantly reduces these issues. This has been a much more frequent issue in images that are uploaded with the intention to use them in relation to architecture articles. I hope you find this information useful. Risker (talk) 08:23, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Risker: perhaps ((FoP-USonly)) be the suitable tag? I cannot see the future utility of ((Ir-FOP)) since photos of buildings from countries with FOP (like UK) as well as virtually all U.S. buildings are also free for hosting on Wikimedia Commons any way. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 10:54, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

In regards to this comment [7], one reason might be how a lot of welcome templates link to the Wikipedia:Task centre nowadays? It explicitly mentions noticeboards. It's under "community". If you go to that, it lists every noticeboard we have with just one more click. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 04:46, 7 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Clovermoss, very nice to hear from you. But...maybe have a non-Wikipedian look at that page and see where they would go to get help. The part about noticeboards suggests that *intermediate* level editors could help others at noticeboards. I know there's no really good way to address this, but this might be something where we'd benefit from comparative newbies telling us what they would find most helpful. The basics of editing, but also...what kind of interactions they can expect, and where to go if they don't know how to handle them. Or something like that. It's something we've never really been good at, because by the time people know how to write the stuff up, we've already normalized a lot of things that are pretty weird to newbies. I don't have a good answer to this. But that template is a good idea! Risker (talk) 05:16, 7 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

So typically when the task centre is mentioned in welcome templates it's in a "things you can do way". See this for an example. I stumbled upon this recently and have been thinking about how maybe something in this situation could be improved. I do think it can have the unfortunate side effect of someone going to a noticeboard and then more experienced editors are like "how do you know this exists?" I think it can be somewhat unfair when a lot of newbies can find that easily if they just read instructions. So I guess it's something I wanted to bring awareness to?

The usefulness of certain things in the welcome templates is a whole separate question. I've given a lot of thought to it myself. I get that the longer we've been around the harder it can be to understand a newbie's perspective on things, but I try. It's one of the reasons I've been trying out the Wikipedia app for the past several months... trying to understand what people are talking about when they reference it in Teahouse questions and trying to meet people where they are (typically the advice given is "don't use the app" but that's not always the answer they want). That's had the bonus of identifying a slew of technical issues just by observation but I don't want to get too far off topic if you're not interested. Anyways, something I always thought was a cool idea was User:Levivich/Help. I've always admired the simplicity of it and how easy it is to navigate and find what you're looking for compared to our categories full of help pages. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 11:14, 7 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

An editor has asked for a deletion review of Andrew Stewart Jamieson. Because you closed the deletion discussion for this page, speedily deleted it, or otherwise were interested in the page, you might want to participate in the deletion review.

Andrew Stewart Jamieson

Andrew Stewart Jamieson (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (article|XfD|restore)

ASJ is in the news again due to a heraldic invitation design (link). This allows for more RS cites. Arlo James Barnes 17:20, 7 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Risker, just to say thanks / apologies for the confusion last week, and to pass on two nice songs I think/hope you might like. Linda Ronstadt, and one that's very close to my experience in small towns Iris Dement. Best as always. Ceoil (talk) 21:39, 7 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oh ny goodness, Ceoil, what intriguing selections. The Linda Ronstadt song was written by Anna McGarrigle, and it was Kate & Anna McGarrigle who were singing with her. Kate was married at one time to Loudon Wainwright III, and they parented Rufus Wainwright and Martha Wainwright, both very talented singers. (Here's Rufus leading a 1500-person choir in singing Hallelujah [8]) Loudon went on to work with....you guessed it, Iris DeMent. The world is very small. Incidentally, the McGarrigles and Rufus and Martha Wainwright are all solidly Canadian icons, hailing from the Montreal area. Thanks for the links! Risker (talk) 04:31, 8 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Woah, small world indeed. The Ronstadt song was a favourite of my mother-in-law (and played at her funeral) while the Iris track something I bonded with my own mother while a difficult young punk rocker when it came out....we saw it as a American version of (her beloved Dubliners) [9]. Never knew the connections, and off into the music of the Wainwright family I go: Rufus is really grabbing me - love bathos! :). ....getting to the McGarrigles :) Ceoil (talk) 10:51, 8 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I first ran into the McGarrigles one day at the cinema, back in the day when it was commonplace to have a short before the main film. It was back in 1979 (yeah, I know, you weren't even born then), and the short for the day was an NFB "Canadian vignette" called The Log Driver's Waltz, with a soundtrack by the McGarrigles. You can see it here.[10] You're certainly getting plenty of Canadian content today. :D Risker (talk) 14:41, 8 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oh I was also visiting the cinema in 1979 don't worry; I'm just about old enough to remember The Beachcombers which hit Irish screens c 1978:) Very much taken with the McGarrigles; tunes and footage like this is are gold. Horizons broadened, thank you very much. Ceoil (talk) 17:36, 8 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Precious

Two years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 04:54, 3 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've had a couple of folks poke me to ask me where I've disappeared to. The short answer is that almost all of my volunteer hours (which seem to be piling up like nobody's business) have been focused on work with the Movement Charter Drafting Committee. I've been averaging 15+ hours/week for the last couple of months, not including a 10-hour-days weekend at the beginning of June. It's coming along well, I think, although I hope that members of this community take advantage of the different opportunities for review and comment on the draft chapters we'll be releasing in July: decision-making, Global Council, Hubs, and roles and responsibilities. We're also including a glossary this time around. Please. We know they aren't all the way there yet, and we need to get good, useful feedback on how to improve. The comment period runs until after Wikimania in August, and I'll post some links when they're up.

Once we get past that, it will take us another few months to cobble together everything else, get some more thoughts, work out how we're going to do the voting on this thing, and so on. So there's still much to do. But I think the pace will slow down after Wikimania. I hope so. I don't think I've ever said this before, but I'm almost looking forward to getting stuck into a couple of SPIs....

Still around, and I still follow up on this page, and check my watchlist pretty much daily. Risker (talk) 02:18, 21 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I do wonder and worry, given you are a brick of sense and an irreplaceable source of institutional knowledge. A tune to reflect tone Ceoil (talk)

Ah what a lovely tune, Ceoil! You know, I think this may be the first time that any woman appreciated being compared to a brick. :D Stay well, best to the fam. Risker (talk) 02:43, 23 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Just wanted to say thank you for staying in touch through difficult times - it means/meant a lot to me. — Ched (talk) 18:27, 9 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Risker. A couple of years ago you granted me an IP Block Exemption since I often edit on a corporate network that proxies its traffic through Google Cloud. That exemption expired last month, and I sent an email to checkuser-en-wp asking for a renewal, but I haven't heard back. I know you're not that active these days, but would you be able to renew my exemption? Thanks. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 21:20, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Ahecht. Have seen your request and have renewed your IPBE. Sorry about the delay on the VRT queue, the few of us who routinely do this have been very busy on other projects and it has fallen behind. I'm hoping to deal with that this weekend. Risker (talk) 21:40, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:06, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

What would it take to get more people working that queue? Is that a CU-only thing? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:04, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There are several ways of requesting it. Some users post on their talk pages. Some users use UTRS. It is still within the remit of an administrator to grant IPBE on their own, although we do recommend that they make it a short-term (i.e., 3 months or less) grant. The VRT queue is checkuser-only for a reason; those of us who work it are expected to be familiar with situations in which IPBE may not be the only issue (and some of those issues are serious user safety ones - and not just those of the user requesting the IPBE). I'm finally through the worst of the other project so will be happily working the VRT queue until it's cleared. It will be much easier to maintain then. Risker (talk) 16:24, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Between the upcoming IP masking project and the changes to Google Chrome, I'm expecting to see changes to how IP blocks and IPBE are handled by the communities. I don't know whether it's more likely to increase or decrease the workload (increase because more people need it vs. decrease because we give up on IPs as the primary identifier), but I think that preparing for an increased workload might the wiser choice.

It sounds like that would require finding more CUs. Do you have a list of potential candidates already? If I wanted to get two or three dozen new CUs (there are currently 50), would an open call for admins to e-mail ArbCom about their willingness to serve be appropriate? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:56, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I refer this question to Arbcom, but this is generally the time of year that they put out a call for CUOS candidates. And seriously....there's no way the community is going to tolerate nearly doubling the number of checkusers; I'm pretty liberal when it comes to that, but not even I could agree to that. After all, we *do* have 50 checkusers; if the workload increases significantly, we'll deal with it then. My sense is that, if anything changes, it will be the number of people asking for their IPs to be suppressed, and that really doesn't have a lot to do with IPBE. The bigger problem is the massive number of IPs hardblocked globally because it looks like an open proxy; this isn't likely to change significantly. Risker (talk) 22:34, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

If IP Masking is effective at tracking individual bad actors, we might not need to be so strict about open proxies. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:25, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

IP masking is the exact opposite of tracking individual bad actors. Reaper Eternal (talk) 03:25, 24 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it's more complicated than that. Some bad actors may be easier to track, because all of their edits will be from the same temporary account. Currently, we have:

• Add bad information to an article from Home IP 127.0.0.1.
• Get warning, but never see it, because now I'm edit-warring from Bus IP 172.11.13.31.
• Get another warning, but never see it, because now I'm edit warring from School IP 191.24.4.17.

That user is currently three "accounts" but will be unified into a single, trackable account. The IP address itself will be visible to most patrollers, but it'll mostly not be needed, just like admins can block registered accounts without first checking out their IP address.

Other bad actors are difficult to block now and will remain difficult to block then. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:44, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Well, sort of. That only works if the "account" uses the same device for all of those edits. If they use their desktop at home, their phone on the bus, and their laptop at school, those cookies aren't going to follow them. That doesn't change from today's challenges, especially since so many people have multiple devices at hand. (I humbly confess to personally having five different devices within reach as I write this.) Nonetheless, I've been persuaded (at least partly because of my work as an oversighter) that it's a net positive to not display IP addresses to the public. There are just too many bad actors who can (and do) use that information in ways that are harmful to both good and bad editors. Risker (talk) 01:04, 29 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Same browser and not clearing cookies, but that's how most human editors work. It will work well for the student edit warring from their phone, or for the struggling newbie, but it will have no effect on stopping, e.g., a botnet or the users who are currently changing their IP addresses to evade detection.

Admins will still be able to see the IP addresses and set IP-based blocks.

Risker, I can have five IP addresses (and at least two ISPs) just by picking up my phone and strolling down the street. Our current system is flawed, and while https://xkcd.com/1172/ is real in the individual case, overall I would not want to put much energy into carefully preserving it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:33, 29 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Meh, no worries. This reminds me of some ancient history. When my house was filled with teenagers, I taught them all browser hygiene and cookie-clearing. A couple of the kids thought I was a bit nuts ("then I have to log in every time!"). I just blandly looked at them and asked them if they ever visited sites that would get them grounded if their parents saw the cookie or the access history. They blanched and said "good idea!" And this (and editing Wikipedia) is how I became the "cool mom". Risker (talk) 01:45, 29 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Are you on it? - CorbieVreccan ^☊ ☼ 00:01, 14 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

No, I am a former arbitrator, and a current CheckUser and Oversighter. My main focus over the last 2 years (give or take) has been the drafting of a proposed Wikimedia movement charter. Only active arbitrators are on the Arbcom mailing list. Risker (talk) 00:18, 14 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

OK, check your mail, please. Best wishes, - CorbieVreccan ^☊ ☼ 00:36, 14 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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❄️ Happy holidays! ❄️

Hi Risker! I'd like to wish you a splendid solstice season as we wrap up the year. Here is an artwork, made individually for you, to celebrate. It was great to meet you in Toronto, and best of luck with all your committee work! Take care, and thanks for all you do to make Wikipedia better!

Cheers,
((u|Sdkb)) ^talk

Solstice Celebration for Risker, 2023, DALL·E 3.

(View full series)

Note: The vibes are winter solsticey. If you're in the southern hemisphere, oops, apologies.

((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 06:57, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Risker,

You recently offered a statement in a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Conflict of interest management. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Conflict of interest management/Evidence. Please add your evidence by March 20, 2024, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Conflict of interest management/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration.

For the Arbitration Committee,
~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:03, 6 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Risker,

Back in winter 2023, I sent an email to the VRT team to request a block exemption, as my life circumstances are keeping me from editing via an unblocked IP address. You granted this request on 29 December 2023, and mentioned I could request an extension here if I was still interested in editing. I still am, and was wondering if you could grant me such.

Thank you for the consideration, Anodium (talk) Anodium (talk) 00:38, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Anodium. I have extended your IP block exemption for 3 months. Risker (talk) 02:12, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Hope your day goes well. Anodium (talk) 02:14, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]