NSwiki:Village pump

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This is a place to talk about anything NSwiki related. If the discussion is more appropriate on some other page, move it there. For example, if it is a question and answer that others may find useful move it to user questions.

Recent spam

Hey everyone. I'm new here, but a quick look at your recent changes look shows you are in dire need of more admins, or better captcha, or something. There's dozens of spam attacks per day, and it seems no one is around to remove them. Why has this quiet little place been declared a target for spambots? I'm not entirely certain what the best solution is (though you need much better captcha, to start) but I wish to know if and how this problem is being addressed.

Could it also be that all the spam pages on here that have not been removed and are just causing clutter are responsible for the extremely annoying 500 errors I keep getting every other click? There could be a correlation... -- The Republic of the 500

500 error messages

I'm getting a lot of bare 500 Internal Server Error messages lately whenever I try to do anything. Anyone else getting this, or is it just the antique iMac I'm currently using? Inutoland 12:13, 1 December 2011 (PST)

Nope, I'm getting it a lot too. Like you, usually when I try to edit something. --Omigodtheykilledkenny 12:29, 1 December 2011 (PST)

And just now, when I tried adding this comment! :D -K

I get this too regardless of internet status. I guess this is a server issue? User:Hobbes City 16:46, 19 January 2012 (PST)

In addition to Inutoland's concerns, I am also getting 503 service unavailable messages. Has the admin checked the log to see if any DDoS attacks are in progress? --Marian 12:17, 6 January 2012 (PST)

I think it's down to the recent spam attacks clogging the server - T.dot, 16 May 2012

Question about linked images

I have a question about images displayed from the html code - the "http://whatever" type links. Is is possible to resize their display size on NSWiki. Say I want to link in a 900px image, but only want it to display at a 300px size. Can this be done, or is it super-complicated? I've tried using the {{image}} template, but I don't think I'm doing it right, as it's cumbersome and I can't get it to display like I really want it to. Can anyone help me? Inutoland 05:48, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

You have to upload images if you want to resize them. To display them, use the template [[Image:(image name)|100px]] and change the number to indicate size. --Omigodtheykilledkenny 17:05, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Yeah, most of the time I upload stuff I want to display, but there are occasions when I want to display something from an offsite link. Is there a reasonable way to wrap text around a linked image, the way you can around an on-site one? Inutoland 19:58, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

This template:

{{image|http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/274/udgx8.jpg|left||Aj Ud was Ariddian Prime Secretary for 45 years|210px}}

will produce an image box as seen here: Ariddia#Government

...It won't resize the image, though; it just makes sure the caption fits in the space below it. So if you use this template you first have to make sure the image you're linking to is the size you want it to be. Otherwise you're better off just uploading. --Omigodtheykilledkenny 21:19, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Question: How to put a new article on the front page?

Perhaps one of the older contributors could explain how selected articles can be cycled onto the front page? I'd like to do it but I am not entirely familiar with the procedure. And the current article has been on top for literally years. --Knootoss 10:41, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

You should probably drop Pac or Jey a line, since no one reads the community pages anymore. As far as I know, it's just a matter of editing the feature template and adding the "featured" tag to the newly cycled page (and of course editing the queue and the FAC vote so people aren't still trying to vote on it), but obviously you should check with a fellow admin first. --Omigodtheykilledkenny 18:26, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm half-tempted to just go and cycle the front page. The tallying-the-vote procedure does make it an enormous amount of work though. Grumble. --Knootoss 11:30, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Can we go ahead and cycle the featured article now? There are at least 3 articles in the queue with a high majority of positive votes. -Inutoland 04:22, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Anti-Spam Department

Anti-Spammer Link?

When I clicked on Qazox link, it took me to WikiStates; on the bottom of the page is a link to this. Not sure if its effective, or if something similar is already in use but I figured I'd post it here anyways.
--Oiseaui 04:13, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

It sounds interesting but right now we've got spammers who make one page and leave. I'm not sure if something like this would work for us. --Knootoss 11:30, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Is this considered spamming?

On my nation page: Luxativia for my national sport, animal, fruit, and flower, they're external links to just images.

They're actually links to Wikipedia articles, and I'm not really sure these are needed for an infobox. Just my opinion. —BETTIA— ^talk 09:44, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Image Spam

ATTENTION: It has been discovered that spammers have been uploading images for the purpose of illustrating linkspam articles. The file names are usually in the form of a phrase followed by a four digit number. Examples of these include "Image:Get instant approval 3998.jpg" and "Image:New Cars 3420.jpg", which were used for link spam.

I must point out that it is suggested that IP addresses of spammers should remain blocked even if anonymous editing has been phased out. It may be apparent that link spammers may have been creating spammer accounts from a single IP address, but that's a theory. --Marian 13:15, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the memo, I will tag all the spam for deletion. Swkoll - Talk to me 16:44, 4 October 2011 (PDT)

IP address banning

I'm sorry, but to be honest the only way to reduce the link spam is to reinstate permanent IP address banning against the spammers. In the last 13 hours, I have caught more than 350 spam articles and 50 spam images, some of which link to illegal porn. Without reinstating IP address banning, the spammers can easily create a new account in lieu of a blocked one. Thank you.

And a message to the spammers. I'm not afraid of you any more. I may be a university student but I will still be here and I will get you eventually. --Marian 04:14, 13 May 2012 (PDT)

When blocking a user, there is an option to "Automatically block the last IP address used by this user, and any subsequent IP addresses they try to edit from" (as seen on this screenshot - this is checked by default so the IP address linked to that particular spam account is also blocked unless we choose otherwise. However, this only blocks one IP address, and proxies provide a lot of addresses to them to use. We certainly need more anti-spam measures implemented here, but that's beyond my remit. A couple more sysops (new or existing) helping out with clean-up duties wouldn't go amiss neither... Bettia ^talk 06:38, 15 May 2012 (PDT)

The IP bans don't appear to be permanent from the current log. If we are to have zero tolerance then we need to know where they are operating from before manually setting up the permanent IP bans. Otherwise, try this. --Marian^(chirp) 11:18, 16 May 2012 (PDT)

Addendum: the software is definitely not blocking spam IPs permanently. I can determine this from the records when you blocked the IPs. For example:

15:34, 18 June 2012, Bettia (Talk | contribs) blocked (IP) (expires on 19 June 2012 at 15:34, account creation blocked) (Autoblocked because your IP address has been recently used by "(SpamUser)". The reason given for AlicaTilghman227's block is: "Spamming links to external sites")

--Marian^(chirp) 14:58, 18 June 2012 (PDT)

Technical Department

sitesupport goes nowhere

It appears that the link "sitesupport" on the navbar (using the "antiquity" Monobook theme) is pointing to an empty page. Should it be pointed to NSwiki:Help instead? Thanks. --Marian 06:27, 28 October 2011 (PDT)

I've set the redirect, but could the link at the navbar be renamed for convenience? Thanks. --Marian 16:55, 3 November 2011 (PDT)

spam filter problem

Hi, I am having problems recently with saving articles as the spam protection filter keeps preventing me - it appears with the message which i can't seem to post either (I even had problems posting this -,- It seems to have a problem with me inserting a table like the one seen here: Education in Jinavia - T.dot 9th July 2012

Good afternoon, are you using full addresses to link to other NSWiki articles? If so, then it should only need to be in the form of, for example, [[Elementary school]]. If you are using NoScript, you need to allow "Google.com" to see reCaptcha, and "NSwiki.net" for all Java-related functionality. What does the error message specifically say? --Marian^(chirp) 04:34, 9 July 2012 (PDT)

Ok I have tried to post a reply three times but each time the reply has been blocked; I think i will try and create a new account to see if it will work then - everytime i try to write what it says it blocks it

Problem Solved! Education in Okwe - T.dot 11 July 2012, 2.18 pm

Question: OGG Files?

I looked on the Upload Files page and realized this: The preferred formats are JPEG for photographic images, PNG for drawings and other iconic images, and OGG for sounds. When I tried to upload an .ogg file, it wouldn't let me. Then I realized this: Permitted file types: png, gif, jpg, jpeg. If OGG files aren't permitted, why is it written on the upload page that you can? Thanks. --Ainin 08:03, 27 June 2012 (PDT)

Fatal error

We have problems going through the list of images to clamp down on image spam and unused huge images. We sometimes get this error:

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 125829120 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 45963840 bytes) in /home/goobergunch/nswiki.net/includes/media/Bitmap.php on line 362

.

Is there a fix for this? Thanks, --Marian^(chirp) 20:01, 9 July 2012 (PDT)

Looks like its a database / server thing, and can only be fixed by Goober.[1] While we're on the subject however, unused files can be speedy deleted, and seeing as we've finally cleared the spam backlog (give or take a few stragglers that may yet surface), I can finally get round to other maintenance tasks! ☺ ~~ Bettia ~~ ^talk 04:29, 10 July 2012 (PDT)

False positive in spam filter

Typing "display:none" within the HTML tag span, which is used to sort tables using invisible characters, is triggering a false positive in the spam filter. Example: <span style="display:none">Y</span>. --Marian^(chirp) 08:14, 9 August 2012 (PDT)

Locked Out...

Hi,

Terribly sorry if this in the wrong place but I wasn't too sure where I should put it. Well, I won't beat around the bush. Luckily I seem to be able to remember my password after a few minutes if I've forgotten it but I'm unable to use the password reset option because my address has been flagged and I get a message saying I am unable to edit or use the password reset function. However, if I by chance remember my password I can log in fine and edit as normal. Just thought I would leave a message here in the hopes that someone might be able to help me out here.

Thank you --Santosa 18:29, 27 December 2012 (PST)

Suggestion Box

NSwiki sysop/active user priorities

I've just archived the old discussions from the village pump, of the period 2008-now. This will hopefully clean up the village pump, and make it a more welcoming place for new contributors. With the monster of linkspam (mostly) defeated, I am hoping that the sysops and active users on NSwiki can work on a bunch of new and more interesting priorities. Here are my ideas:

Now that all users are forced to register, we should make sure to use the standard welcome message every time a user registers, and begins editing the wiki. This will improve the quality of their contributions, and hopefully we'll get a few new active users out of it too.
There is a backlog of old spam that should really be deleted. Marian has already begun to use key words in order to dig these pages up and add delete tags to them. This is a worthy effort that should certainly continue.
There are still a lot of non-spam related "odd jobs" to do on this website, mainly requests for deletion of articles, unsorted articles, that sort of thing. I'm hoping that we can re-open some of these "cold cases" now that we actually have the time to look at them. --Knootoss 14:35, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

New extensions

I wish to suggest adding an citation or references extension to allow users to cite NationStates threads and other sources in a more professional way, like what it is done on the English Wikipedia. Also, to help users create national timelines I would suggest implementing the Timeline extension. Finally, I wish to see the addition of the Parser functions extension to make conditional formatting templates easier to create. Thank you for your consideration. --Marian 01:50, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

It's possible to insert references using Template:ref and Template:note - see Xkoranate for an example. It's nowhere near as efficient as Wikipedia's citation template - I don't know if that would work here. I'll give it a go later. —BETTIA— ^talk 13:22, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

As a Wikipedia editor I personally find the References extension easier in the long run. References could be inserted next to the relevant text, and in the References section itself only one tag or template call is required to tabulate and auto-number the references on the page without having to number it manually and avoid number duplication. --Marian 15:47, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

I would like to add on that there needs to be an extension to allow me to make currency conversions easier (e.g: 5 shillings (£1.96)). At the moment I am manually converting prices by hand. What I wish to do is create a template like this one that stores the exchange rate in the template, so when the exchange rate in the template changes, the values in, for example, Taxation in Minoa, update automatically. --Marian 15:47, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

ParserFunctions and Cite have been installed. EasyTimeline is a bit funkier to install, so I want to look at it a bit harder before doing anything. --Goobergunch|? 15:18, 10 October 2011 (PDT)

Upgrade to MediaWiki 1.17

Last I checked we are running MediaWiki 1.12. This means we are five versions out of date so, could we go ahead and update? Swkoll - Talk to me 19:17, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

I will talk to Goober about that ASAP; thanks for the suggestion. (( Paci talkia )) Time sent: 20:08, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

I'll do this next time I have the time to do it properly. Hopefully that will be later this week. --Goobergunch|? 14:12, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

The Main Page says we've upgraded. Why do ParserFunctions still not work? Ad’ihan 08:26, 10 October 2011 (PDT)
- Try now. --Goobergunch|? 15:13, 10 October 2011 (PDT)
  - Doesn't seem to work fully. Ad’ihan 06:50, 12 October 2011 (PDT)
    - Could you be more specific? Swkoll - Talk to me 16:56, 21 October 2011 (PDT)

Captcha whitelist

Is there a way to exempt nationstates.net links from requiring Captcha? Thanks. --Marian 15:23, 18 October 2011 (PDT)

Captchas revisited

While changing the site permissions so that only registered users can post has certainly helped, we're still getting visited by spambots creating throwaway account to post their trash. At the moment, we're around 30 a day, which is manageable if us admins keep on top of it. However, I've been away from here for a while and have just deleted 140 pages and images which as you can imagine took a fair bit of time. I reckon we need all new users filling in a Captcha for their first 10 posts or so, just so they can confirm they are genuine users. Hopefully, this would block any spambots. Please Goober? Bettia ^talk 07:39, 25 January 2012 (PST)

I wholeheartedly agree. SpamPatrol 08:23, 25 January 2012 (PST)

I'm also in support of this; I will give Goober the heads-up about this request and hopefully he can make the changes. (( Paci talkia )) Time sent: 21:08, 28 January 2012 (PST)

It would certainly help but even that may not eliminate linkspam altogether. A couple of the spams I deleted yesterday were advertising a mass wiki posting programme which, among other things, boasted about being able to bypass captchas using services such as DeathbyCaptcha (whether this claim is genuine or whether they're just blowing hot air to grab some extra money remains to be seen). Is FlaggedRevs be any use here, where posts by new users have to be cleared by a reviewer before it goes live? Bettia ^talk 04:29, 16 February 2012 (PST)

Yes, this may be a good idea. This would however necessitate the creation a new user group called "reviewers" on NSWiki, so more old-timers can speed up approval of genuine edits. However, what solution do you have for the image spam, because I am very concerned about the possibility of spammers uploading inappropriate or even illegal images in future. --Marian 10:07, 16 February 2012 (PST)

I haven't really examined it too closely, but it looks like images would also come under the general heading of "posts", and need to be cleared by a reviewer. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. I'm not sure I like the idea of making the wiki intimidating for "real" new users wanting to try their wings, but something does have to be done. - Inutoland 13:52, 16 February 2012 (PST)

I believe that before we consider these measures, I feel that it would be absolutely essential to reinstate IP address blocking, using these measures. --Marian 23:59, 16 February 2012 (PST)
- When blocking a user, that IP and any IP that they try to log in from are also blocked by default (although we can uncheck this option). Bettia ^talk 01:28, 17 February 2012 (PST)
  - Hmm, it didn't seem to show up on the recent changes logs. Either way, we need to make use of the stopforumspam and SBL lists. --Marian 01:49, 17 February 2012 (PST)
    - Yes. Captchas. Please. *beg* --Knootoss 02:32, 17 February 2012 (PST)

This extension could do the job nicely, it looks like it'd be difficult for a bot to outwit, and it has kittehs. Bettia ^talk 06:37, 28 March 2012 (PDT)

Extension-based anti-spam measure?

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:TitleBlacklist

This could iron out some of the sex/porn related spam. Thoughts? --Marian 14:21, 4 February 2012 (PST)

Proposal to delete anonymous user talk pages (0/0/0)

With the removal of anonymous editing on NSWiki, I propose that NSWiki should delete most anonymous talk pages (e.g. User talk:138.87.221.100) because it wastes bandwidth. The exception to the proposal is where there is enough significance for it to be retained. Feedback please, thank you. --Marian^(chirp) 20:25, 18 June 2012 (PDT)

Support (0)

Oppose (0)

Comments (1)

I certainly see where you're coming from. However, we have more pressing concerns right now (i.e. clearing the thousands of spam pages off the site), so I'd rather we focus on that before thinking about other maintenance tasks. If any admins reading this can head on over to Category:Candidates for speedy deletion and help to clear the list, that would be great! Bettia ^talk 07:03, 25 June 2012 (PDT)

SVG Files support

SVG files are getting more popular partly because of the smaller file size than JPGs and PNGs, but more because of the ease of rescaling. I think such file support should formally be added. Thanks, --Marian^(chirp) 14:48, 7 August 2012 (PDT)

I agree 100%. ~~ Bettia ~~ ^talk 02:19, 8 August 2012 (PDT)

Agreed. -- Phourvixia 10:18, 24 August 2012 (PDT)

Complaint Department

For complaints about vandalism, please go to NSwiki:Vandalism_in_progress and leave a report.

Spam filter problem

I was trying to edit a page like this: [[2]] Then it got blocked for spam. Please help. --Zokoria 05:42, 8 October 2012 (PDT)

I've also had trouble trying to edit anything at all on my countries page because of the spam filter. Any help would greatly appreciated.

Foxbat 06:32, 1 November 2012 (PDT)

Typing "display:none", which is used to sort tables using invisible characters, is triggering a false positive in the spam filter. Example: <span style="display:none">Y</span>. That needs to be white-listed. --Marian^(chirp) 08:35, 4 November 2012 (PST)