User talk:AgProv
It's not hard to export pages and import them into here. But I'd hold off, Sanity is supposed to be giving me a copy of the existing site this weekend. --Osiris (talk) 19:30, 2 October 2012 (PDT)
Back again! Check the "Delete" option in the drop-down from "Create" in the vandal's User page. It's quick and easy and removes the pest from the User list at the same time. It only lacks a knob on the end! --Old Dickens (talk) 15:13, 16 November 2012 (PST)
There's a little drop down arrow with extra options on the page. Delete, Move, Protect, & Watch. --Osiris (talk) 16:56, 8 December 2012 (PST)
Thanks guys! See what you miss if you don't stay alert? AgProv (talk) 06:28, 9 December 2012 (PST)
Strange templates
There. I think I fixed the Annotations section of the Book Data template so that it works instead of creating a new page with a stutter. Now if someone could make the Amazon cover look-up work...--Old Dickens (talk) 21:59, 3 February 2013 (GMT)
Hi AgProv
Hello AgProv!
Thank you for your kind words. I take your point about potential spammistry so I've thrown a random thought up onto my user page.
Thanks again for the warm welcome!
Allan
What's new
Yo! You're back from Seattle! Feel free to comment on various changes to the infrastructure and the new creator permission. Sewage has been transpiring. --Old Dickens (talk) 23:51, 10 June 2013 (GMT)
Holy Mother of Nuggan! That must have been the biggest day ever. --Old Dickens (talk) 22:20, 17 June 2013 (GMT)
It was a sense of acheivement. I also have an uneasy feeling that User Sharlee (7070) might have been legitimate, as he/she made a couple of insightful edits to one page. (Deep sense of "whoops") I may have deleted them in error. Is it possible to get a second opinion on this and restore them?AgProv (talk) 23:31, 17 June 2013 (GMT)
"friendly fire incident": sure, blame it on the Americans!
--Old Dickens (talk) 00:51, 21 June 2013 (GMT)
Quite a few in the Falklands and Northern Ireland when there wasn't an American in sight.... at some level, does the Wiki store email addresses for users? A quick email from me to Aldibidable (and Sharlee) to explain what's happened and beg apology might be called for here... AgProv (talk) 23:18, 21 June 2013 (GMT) more care is now being taken when blitzing spammers, although this is hardly an excuse...AgProv (talk) 23:18, 21 June 2013 (GMT)
No worries about the accidental deletion. I only managed one bit of spam killing as my aldi account anyhow. Manwe (talk) 21:02, 23 June 2013 (GMT)
Speaking of spam, the talk page for this account was spam. Discount handbags indeed. Manwe (talk) 18:08, 24 June 2013 (GMT)
DanaeBatt: he/she/it is now not even a memory. Thank you for pointing it out! having now killed all the "B"'s in UserList, with the exception of BS5770 and Britarse, I'm onto the C's...AgProv (talk) 18:49, 24 June 2013 (GMT)
A couple of things
First off the main page keeps getting vandalised. I have undone edits twice in the last 24 hours where it has been replaced with an ad for methods of getting 'free' xbox live points. Is there no way to protect the page somehow or is that not something this version of the wiki software will do?
Also, I have spotted some redlinks for pages I wouldn't mind creating, but I can only seem to edit existing pages not add to blank ones, is this intentional? Forgive my newbie-ness - is there something I need to do to get access to this or do I need to get one of you guys to put some text in to enable editing like you did for my user page? Manwe (talk) 10:15, 26 June 2013 (GMT)
What we've discovered - Old Dickens and me spotted this independently - is that there are two "special" spammer names that just cannot be killed, at present: they appear to have burrowed themselves neatly into the deeper programming of the Wiki and corrupted the database. these two user-names specifically target the Main Page and at present appear kill-protected - all we can do here, for now, is to keep restoring the original edit. I suspect this may be a useful clue to something deeper. I also discovered a third spam user who just keeps coming back with the same name, however often we detect, delete, and merge. Like a vampire, this one has returned from the grave three times. Funny what you find out when you're intensively slaying spammers and start noting exceptions and anomalies...I wish I had the know-how to explore this more deeply...AgProv (talk) 15:13, 26 June 2013 (GMT)
Well I don't know if I can help any, but I am a computer technician. What do you see? Manwe (talk) 20:34, 26 June 2013 (GMT) I don't know if you see what I see when you go to a userpage, but what I'm getting when I try to merge/delete certain users into "Anonymous" is this:
Database error
A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was: (SQL query hidden) from within function "DatabaseBase::update". Database returned error "1062: Duplicate entry '0-0-Main_Page' for key 'wl_user' (127.0.0.1:3307)".
I have so far identified THREE spam names who return this error message and who all appear to still have active accounts. These are:-
- Darrington07
- Parent7kettle
- Taiwan5kettle
The "vampire" user who has so far returned from deletion three times was "Antoinette"
O.K., so what I have gathered from looking at the documentation on the merge user tool is that this is caused by the spam user's watchlist. Would I be right in assuming that the Anonymous user you are merging them into is the one that you/the admins control? If so you need to log in as the Anonymous account, go in to the account's watchlist, edit raw wtachlist and clear it. Then log back in as your administrator self and try merging/deleting the troublemakers again. That should obliterate them. Manwe (talk) 00:39, 27 June 2013 (GMT)
Addendum, if I got this right, the error is caused by the user you are trying to merge having something in their watch list that is already in the watch list of your dummy deletion account which the database can't handle. It's not a serious hacking attempt fortunately. Manwe (talk) 00:43, 27 June 2013 (GMT)