LGPedia:Lucy's Balcony/archive2

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Bottom indexes

We all like bottom indexes, right? At template talk:Bree's religion we have a prototype sitting around for the religion pages. My only concern with the Bree's religion index is that I don't understand what "related videos" means. Do we want to implement a bottom index for other types of pages as well? --JayHenry 23:01, 26 February 2007 (CST)

I ♥ bottom indexes. Last time I tampered with the one for Bree's religion, I took out the "Related videos" thing altogether. I think we should leave it that way unless someone proposes a good way of determining what a "Related video" is and how that would be useful. OwenIsCool 00:02, 27 February 2007 (CST)
In addition to a "thumbs up" on the bottom indexes, I'd like to say that while I think naming related videos is a good idea, it probably should be done in the body of the page. Rather than vaguely saying "Video X had some info on subject Y," which is what the "related video" concept meant to me, the article should outright say, "In video X, Bree said that her parents were always talking about subject Y." --Brucker 10:00, 27 February 2007 (CST)
Agreed. If it's related, then the article should mention it. I can see how we could use it with location pages -- you wouldn't call it related, but you would say the location appears in: Motel Pool, Breakfast In Bed, etc. Let's go ahead and implement the religion bottom index. --JayHenry 11:19, 27 February 2007 (CST)
hehe, thanks for adding the semicolon to my ♥ and nice work putting the template back on the religion-related pages. OwenIsCool 15:10, 27 February 2007 (CST)

In thinking about a bottom index for locations I tried to create a list of all the locations. Does anyone have input on the two proposed lists? --JayHenry 11:37, 2 March 2007 (CST)

Puzzles

I'd like to always include puzzles in the "Recent Developments" column. Good idea? It could be a way to increase visibility like OIC was talking about at Talk:Miss Me? puzzle. --JayHenry 23:11, 26 February 2007 (CST)

Good idea! I second. OwenIsCool 00:02, 27 February 2007 (CST)

i third, i know im not a admin, but i contrbute as much as i can. --TJ Marsh 01:22, 27 February 2007 (CST)

I like the idea, but just a thought: If a new puzzle comes up within the context of the latest video, the puzzle should be listed below the latest video just so the video is at the top of the list. For instance, the latest puzzle is fine, but it we had listed the "semiotics" puzzle, it should have been below Jonas Sucks. Just my opinion. --Brucker 10:03, 27 February 2007 (CST)
OIC also suggested somewhere that we could use Template:Init with puzzles and possibly all events. I'm wondering though -- puzzles don't lend themselves well to dates; they're not really events. Should we create a separate main page template for puzzles?--JayHenry 00:16, 28 February 2007 (CST)
We'd probably be ok just using the date that the puzzle was "posted" (via video, message, wherever it started). And even though the template is called "event", it looked fine when it was used for the puzzle. Maybe we could just add the Init and perhaps link to the forum thread, and keep them optional? If that's complicating things too much, we could just make a separate template. It shouldn't be too difficult since they're similar. I just care about adding Init, and perhaps the forum thread; it doesn't matter so much to me how we get there. OwenIsCool 19:51, 8 March 2007 (CST)


Recent vandalism

I've noticed that there have been a number of vandalism edits from various IP addresses that simply remove a large portion of content from a page. Here are some examples: 1 2 3 4 5 6. Anyway, I think everyone gets the idea. Does anyone know what could be the cause of this? It's not like all the vandalism is coming from one IP address so we can't just block it.--Jonpro 00:04, 12 April 2007 (CDT)

Well, really the only way to deal with vandalism is to revert it when it happens and to block offenders. However, I do notice a similarity between all these addresses. They're all anonymous--a WhoIs lookup provides the country, but is unable to process any abuse reports. These addresses are originating from Mexico and Asia, from ISP's that don't release user information. This is just a shot in the dark, but it could all be the same person coming back through proxies. If this is the case, they should get tired of the molasses-slow internet speed that they must be putting up with, and it will all stop when they do. Then again, OIC is not psychic... this is for entertainment purposes only.  ;) OwenIsCool 01:02, 12 April 2007 (CDT)
Ok, well this latest streak was weird. Several IPs and a couple of nonsense account names each blanked one page, but not completely. I banned each for a month since they might not be connected, but I think they are. Should we go back and ban them indefinitely? I'm not sure what's up with the recent wave... might be a vandalbot. I haven't had the change to look up the IPs. OwenIsCool 08:32, 18 April 2007 (CDT)

Spam wave

Yikes, any thoughts on how to stop something like that from happening again? --JayHenry 11:06, 28 April 2007 (CDT)

And here I was about to ask you that.  :-x
OwenIsCool 11:15, 28 April 2007 (CDT)
As far as I know there's not even a way to temporarily stop IP addresses from making edits. --JayHenry 11:18, 28 April 2007 (CDT)
We could look into this. I think we'd need to get TWJaniak to come back and install it because we can't get into the MediaWiki configuration settings. --JayHenry 11:29, 28 April 2007 (CDT)
Hm, that might be helpful... so what that blacklist does is prevent edits containing those domains from being done? I guess BK could install it, he's the new Buka, isn't he? OwenIsCool 11:36, 28 April 2007 (CDT)
Sounds like a good idea to me. I've encountered this editing Wikipedia when I tried to add a link that was apparently on the blacklist. It just gives you a message saying that the link is on the blacklist and you'll have to remove it before saving.--Jonpro 11:41, 28 April 2007 (CDT)
Blacklisting links will be halpful, but I don't expect that it will completly solve the problem, my guess it that this was an attack from the fish taco guy, and he will just comeup with a new form of vandalism, I think he's more focused on vandalizing , than getting clicks. Also I checked the location of those IP Adresses using | Geobytes IP locator and they were comming from all over the world, so this guy has a major proxy network or know some other way to spoof IPs -misty 11:57, 28 April 2007 (CDT)
I think you're grossly overestimating that guy, misty. Using the web through proxies is really easy to do, he wouldn't have his own "proxy network" or anything like that. This spam was definitely from someone else's spambot, but I guess it doesn't matter who it was anyway, just whether we can find an easy way to control it. OwenIsCool 13:05, 28 April 2007 (CDT)
well if you think it was a bot, then maybe CAPTCHA verification will help, I think wikipedia uses something like that. And even though everyone disagrees, I still think logins should be required -misty 13:23, 28 April 2007 (CDT)


I moved yesterday's discussion into its own thread. I think we had even more spam this last wave. I was at the computer until very late (studying for finals) and I kept checking periodically. I reverted one spam thingie, but went to sleep soon thereafter and then it started for real! The same thing happened the night before! grrrr! Anyway, I think the blacklisting isn't going to work so well. If you look at the links posted by the spammer, the domains are harmless! There's Harvard (harvard.edu), Stanford (stanford.edu), John Hopkins (jhu.edu), U South Florida (usf.edu), Central Michigan U (cmich.edu), plus a few random domains, like forumhosting.org, jubiiblog.de, blogdiario.com, blogspot.com and more universities. Interestingly, if you click them, you do get redirected to a Samsung ringtone page like the link label said, it just gets routed through the Harvard Computing Society's website or whatever the REAL link is.
Instead of blacklisting, I think what Misty suggested (CAPTCHA) will be more effective for us. That, or find another MediaWiki add-on that lets us limit the amount of external links posted in one edit. I can handle the inconvenience of posting one at a time. In the meantime, perhaps we should limit anonymous IPs from editing. Less time wasted blocking them, more time to figure out what to do about it. At this point, spammers make more edits than other well-meaning anonymous users. I'm just suggesting it as a temporary thing while we figure out how to control this intelligently. Whether it's simple to implement, I don't know.
OwenIsCool 11:06, 29 April 2007 (CDT)

Some (hopefully) helpful links. WikiMedia anti-spam features covers CAPTCHA, blacklisting, proxy blocking, and lockdown (blocking anonymous users). I think proxy blocking might be a good option. MediaWiki ConfirmEdit extension (captcha), asks you to enter verification codes when inserting external links. OwenIsCool 11:17, 29 April 2007 (CDT)
PS: I went through all the edits, Jonpro, and it looks like you got them all. *whew* another morning at the wiki...
I can't figure out how to install these. Can anyone make sense of these extensions? --JayHenry 11:55, 29 April 2007 (CDT)
Hmm, Confirm Edit seems like it would be a good idea to me. By default it uses Captcha on new accounts and external links and that won't be too big of a hassle. As for installing it, the instructions don't look too difficult, but I don't know much about that sort of thing so I'm kind of lost. I'm assuming we would need one of the site administrators or something to install it. The way I see it, the sooner we get this done the better. This spammer is getting really annoying.--Jonpro 12:15, 29 April 2007 (CDT)
I'll PM Broken Kid and see if he has the access. If we add captcha and the spam blacklist that should shut the spam down... if it's a human spammer we're just going to have to hope he gets bored. --JayHenry 12:27, 29 April 2007 (CDT)
Well, I've read through the mediawiki manual and I understand how to install it. It looks very simple. And there's no reason we can't go through and block almost all those sites he lists. On real wikipedia you wouldn't want to block links to Harvard.edu -- but there's no reason we need them here. We just need someone with FTP access to the site. Hopefully BK will get back to me soon and we'll be able to get it up later tonight. --JayHenry 18:50, 29 April 2007 (CDT)
Mmmkay well... I still haven't heard from BK. I hate to leave things like this overnight, but I don't know what else to do... I'll e-mail Miles tomorrow if I haven't yet heard from BK. --JayHenry 23:10, 29 April 2007 (CDT)
How about that temporary (overnight) lockdown? I think all you need to do is use the User Rights permission stuff. I don't have access to that though, so I don't know how it works. Maybe it's not as easy as I think it is. OwenIsCool 23:21, 29 April 2007 (CDT)
We can't do the temporary lockdown either. It's an installation setting. The only thing I can do with regards to user rights is make people admins or bots. We could make the LGBot an admin and then have it go through and protect everything (or at least, I assume the pythonwikipediabots can do that). But, the spammer has the ability to create new pages, so it's not a very useful fix. We can't protect every possible page. --JayHenry 00:25, 30 April 2007 (CDT)
ah ok. we'll just have to hold out until someone with installation privileges comes to the rescue. we can wait, the spam is controllable, it's just annoying as heck. OwenIsCool 00:46, 30 April 2007 (CDT)

Le sigh. Just when we thought the spamming was easing off... Maybe it kicks in on the weekends when less people are editing. I blocked a few spammers throughout the night, it looks like if you "nip it in the bud", it stops, waits, and then tries again like 30min. later. Otherwise it just keeps going. rawr, want lgpedia anti-spambot extensions. OwenIsCool 17:05, 4 May 2007 (CDT)

Actually, what you want is simple FTP access. If anybody had just added "ringtones" to $wgSpamRegex right after the first bot attacked, all the others would have been unable to post - the entire wave would have bounced right off the editing page.
Sure, it'd still have stressed the server, but at least we wouldn't have had to clean up afterwards...
~ Renegade (talk | contribs) 18:01, 4 May 2007 (CDT)

Performance issues

I've noticed that the use of alot of templates or included page, can have a big effect on the loading of pages. This can really be seen on list of videos page. does anyone know something that can be be done to improve the performance. -misty 15:31, 12 April 2007 (CDT)

Well, I don't think it's templates or transclusion that's causing the problems on List of Lonelygirl15 videos. No matter how it's organized, with templates or not, the page is simply enormous -- more than 7 times bigger than the Main Page. Other than dumping the videxpand template or really reducing the number of images (or shrinking the size of the actual image files?) there's little we can do. --JayHenry 10:31, 13 April 2007 (CDT)


Fate of AphidPedia?

Now that OpAphid is no longer, official. should there still be an AphidPedia section or should it be downgraded to Catagory:OpAphid and removed from the left menu? -misty 02:32, 14 April 2007 (CDT)

We can still keep the OpAphid page, I'm sure. We have pages for other non-canon/non-official ARGs. I don't really know the structure of all the OpAphid pages, but we might want to remove the link from the left menu. I'm not really sure on that. The pages definitely need to be updated to indicate that OpAphid is no longer the official ARG if that hasn't been done yet.--Jonpro 21:43, 15 April 2007 (CDT)
Oh, I missed this conversation. I just came here to ask the same question. I don't think we should delete OpAphid from the Wiki, but we should be sure to note that it is no longer official. And I think we should take it off the sidebar, although if anyone has a good reason it should stay I would listen. --JayHenry 11:25, 17 April 2007 (CDT) 11:15, 17 April 2007 (CDT)
I wasn't suggesting getting rid of OPAphid, I was just wondering if it was still apropriate to call it AphidPedia, or if that should just be merged into the OpAphid article and not be so prominent. When it was the official ARG it made sense for it to have it's own main section, but now it's just another part of the of the extended Breniverse. -misty 10:31, 18 April 2007 (CDT)
I guess my vote would be to keep the AphidPedia -- it's still a good index for the material -- but move it off the sidebar and probably off the Main Page too. --JayHenry 14:19, 18 April 2007 (CDT)
I went ahead and removed it from the sidebar and the main page. I didn't make any mention of the scandal, because I think it's best to just move on. We really need some new stuff to add to the main page. Maybe links to pages about all these new girls?? --JayHenry 10:55, 19 April 2007 (CDT)


Distribution for LonelyGirl

I'm interested in talking with someone at LGPedia about additional distribution of Lonely Girl. Can someone please advise me who to contact? I can be reached at lannick@licensinganimal.com Thanks for your help.

Here at the LGPedia we're all just volunteers. We can't help you unfortunately. You need to contact "The Creators" of the series. You can send them a private message at the forum. Good luck! --JayHenry 15:17, 25 April 2007 (CDT)

Special:Wantedpages cleanup

I've started going through Special:Wantedpages, and I'm trying to eliminate references to deleted pages (or pages that don't really need to be created). I'm adding nowiki tags or removing the brackets, where non existent pages are referenced in talk pages, and adding redirects where appropriate to existing pages. Hopefully soon that list will only contain pages that really should be created. anyone else who wants to help it would be appreciated. -misty 02:03, 13 May 2007 (CDT)

Also PLEASE clean up any references that are on your own user pages, talk pages, sandboxes, etc. If everyone does that it will make the job a lot easier. -misty 02:10, 13 May 2007 (CDT)

FYI about the spamming

I've contacted Broken Kid. It turns out that there is now a Web site guy and he's been notified. I didn't even know there was a Web site guy (hence the red link!), and he hasn't contacted me yet, to either give someone temporary FTP access or to ask what sites need blacklisted. Apparently things are a bit hectic because MM&G are/were recently in London laying the groundwork for Kate. --JayHenry 22:09, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

I noticed that we have a new spambot check in place :) Now we can see if its a bot or a person spamming-misty 23:38, 7 May 2007 (CDT)
Yeah, at some point someone installed the ConfirmEdit extension. Nobody ever identified themselves as this mysterious Web site guy, but it's up and running. Did we have any incidents last night? It's only sorta annoying. There should be some way to set up a "whitelist" or, a list of sites that it won't ask the question for. This should include lonelygirl15.com, revver.com, youtube.com, IMDB.com, wikipedia.com -- can anyone think of other sites that should definitely be on that list? --JayHenry 08:45, 8 May 2007 (CDT)
Perhaps myspace.com? Other than that, I don't know of any. And how does this confirm edit thing work exactly?--Jonpro 08:53, 8 May 2007 (CDT)
The feature doesn't apply to admin or bot accounts, I believe. When adding an external link it asks you a quick math problem -- "what is 11 - 6?" for example -- and apparently the bots don't know how to parse this. Has the spammer struck since last night? If this isn't sufficient deterrent I think we'll want to disable this and try the blacklist instead. --JayHenry 09:13, 8 May 2007 (CDT)
This is the last spam edit we've had, so I don't know when this was installed, but it might be working. Then again, the spam bot seems to be pretty sporadic, so I guess we'll just have to bide our time for a little bit to see if it comes back.--Jonpro 09:28, 8 May 2007 (CDT)
It doesn't seem to have a whitest of trusted URL's, but I could modify it to have one. -misty 10:33, 8 May 2007 (CDT)
Wait, really? I thought only Web site guy could make the modifications. How do we add the sites mentioned above to the whitelist? Can anybody think of any other sites that should definitely be whitelisted? --JayHenry 15:45, 8 May 2007 (CDT)
Well, I can modify the script, but the web guy (or anyone with ftp access) will have to upload it. I just need the list of sites we want included. -misty 16:33, 8 May 2007 (CDT)

whitelist

Gotcha -- the whitelist feature is built into MediaWiki, so we can just give him a list of the sites and it's simple. I think we need to whitelist

  • lonelygirl15.com
  • lg15.com
  • youtube.com
  • wikipedia.org
  • hymnofone.org
  • myspace.com
  • revver.com
  • imdb.com
  • bebo.com

Can we think of any others? I'll make the request early tomorrow to give people time to think of other sites. --JayHenry 16:38, 8 May 2007 (CDT)

that list looks pretty much complete. I looked at ConfirmEdit.php and it doesn't use any global whitelist from the rest of MediaWiki. Instead you need to Hard code the white list, as a Regex, assigned to the variable $wgCaptchaWhitelist. on line 145. For the list above it would be:
$wgCaptchaWhitelist = '#^https?://([a-z0-9-]+\\.)?(lonelygirl15|lg15|hymnofone|wikimedia|wikipedia|youtube|revver|myspace|imdb|bebo)\.?(com|org|net)/#i';
--Misty 18:11, May 8, 2007 (CDT)
Any word on when the whitelist will be implemented? Has the web guy seen the instructions above? -misty 17:15, 19 May 2007 (CDT)

trusted users

Is it possible to create a group for trusted users (perhaps people who have over 200 unreverted edits), and give them exemption from ConfirmEdit and the ability to edit protected pages? -misty 22:00, 9 May 2007 (CDT)

Anybody with an account should be able to edit any of the protected pages. As for ConfirmEdit, I think our best bet is to get the Web site guy to add the Whitelist. --JayHenry 11:23, 10 May 2007 (CDT)
This isn't true, I was not able to edit Glenn Rubenstein, until the protection was taken off. Any word when the whitelist will be implemented? ConfirmEdit challenges are fine for occasional edits, but when you are doing a bunch of edits in a row it gets annoying. -misty 14:01, 14 May 2007 (CDT)
Let me explain. There are two levels of protection; protection and sysops only. Even if we created a new class they wouldn't be able to edit sysop only pages. The only time we protect anything to sysop level is when nobody should be editing it, as was the case with Glenn Rubenstein. You already can edit any page that's under regular protection, which is what I meant. I'll send an e-mail about the whitelist this afternoon. --JayHenry 14:54, 14 May 2007 (CDT)

New admins!

In case people don't know, Zoey and Psmith were recently made admins on the LGPedia. Congratulations to both of them and a big thank you for all of their hard work.--Jonpro 13:26, 10 May 2007 (CDT)

Just don't let the power go to your heads :P Just kidding. Congratulations to both of you ----misty 15:28, 10 May 2007 (CDT)
Yay thanks! And oh look, I get to be Snow White!! -blinks- Are any other admins female? Whoa.. strange. --Zoey 19:43, 10 May 2007 (CDT)
I guess it doesn't say who's who in the picture of OIC, Brucker and I. But apparently two of us are female. --JayHenry 21:53, 10 May 2007 (CDT)
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