BattleTechWiki:Masthead

Post in the section Admin Help Requests to get proper attention to the issue/problem. Please be specific and sign your request (by adding ~~~~ at the end).

Current Sarna.net Wiki Administrators

• NicJansma (Talk to me)

• Revanche (Talk to me)

• Xoid (Talk to me)

Auto-updated list found here

Admin Help Requests

Make your request here (and sign with 4 tildes (~~~~)):

• Sample Title

I'm not sure how to create links on my Neveron Faction page to other articles. Can you help me? Revanche 17:19, 4 October 2006 (CDT)

• Spammer

I just recently had to fix the Board Game page from a spammer, IP is 202.212.58.10 in case you want to block or take whatever action you need to.--CJKeys 11:11, 6 November 2006 (CST)

Thanks CJKeys. I think I'll try to implement a captcha system for new changes that include outside URLs like wikia.com does. Nicjansma 15:32, 6 November 2006 (CST)

Had to fix it the Board Game page again, the IP for the spammer this time was 200.31.148.46. I dont know if you can block IPs but I thought I would let you know it happened again. Thanks.--CJKeys 00:24, 8 November 2006 (CST)

Also, thanks, CJ. I blocked both IPs for 3 months. --Revanche (admin) 01:10, 8 November 2006 (CST)

This looks like a minor annoying problem right now, but I could see it getting worse. Should I spend time investigating captcha for external links in edits? Nicjansma 21:42, 21 November 2006 (CST)

I had to look the term up, since its the second time you've suggested this. How would you envision it working? Would everytime someone made an edit, they'd have to translate the image? Or, would we limit wiki editing only to registered users, who had to pass this test to register? The latter would be preferable to me. --Revanche (admin) 00:17, 22 November 2006 (CST)

Well I still want to allow anonymous edits. The captcha prompt would only occur if 1) The user was not logged in (not registered) AND 2) they posted an edit with an external link. This would avoid 90% of the 'referral spam' that spambots want. It wouldn't block vandalism, but we're only trying to curb spam-bots with captcha.

I like it. It is not restrictive for 95% of any edits, as how many times will an unregistered user seek to post links? Is this something you think you can turn on? --Revanche (admin) 10:21, 22 November 2006 (CST)

There may even be a way to get around needing that. The nastiest stuff is usually the <div style="display: none"> and similar crap that adbots love to toss around. You can also try setting a spam blocking RegEx similar to the one Wikipedia uses. It's one of the settings that is heavily documented on either Meta or MediaWiki.org. --Xoid 11:49, 22 November 2006 (CST)

Copyright infringement

Greetings. I have recently become involoved in contributing to BattleTech through the Wikipedia end. I submitted one article over there, "Chaos March." I came over here, only to find that my article had been copied verbatim. By itself, this is fine, because I know Wikipedia articles are public-domain, however no credit was given on the part of the person who 'ported the article to MechWiki. I would appreciate it that, for all articles taken from Wikipedia, credit be given to the original author and/or a link be provided to the original article (as provided in Wikipedia's copyright, which can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights). Since the only article of mine in question I have found is "Chaos March," that is all I am concerned with, however, I am sure the other authors from Wikipedia would appreciate it if you gave them the same consideration. — The preceding unsigned comment was posted by 4.234.144.246 (talk • contribs) .

Great. Just. Great. *sigh*. Alright; damage control. Nic: can you tell me exactly which pages were auto-generated? I'll run kdiff against a list of all articles with your list of generated articles so we know which ones to exclude from our inquisitorial purge. Revanche: a list of all articles you've imported would be appreciated.

Note that I could go through the 'Mechs and see if I can find any parts that are copied verbatim, though for obvious reasons that would be a PWOT (I know everything I've submitted is my own work, Daniel's 'articles' are next to non-existent and its rather obvious from CJ's fractured English that he wrote his articles himself (no offense intended CJ)). From there we've got two options here; nuke the lot and start over, or get cracking on providing appropriate licensing information. For obvious reasons I'd prefer the latter, but if you're antsy about getting sued go for the former. --Xoid 13:13, 13 December 2006 (CST)

My apologies for not signing up and signing earlier. My bleary eyes couldn't find the "create an account," button, even though it's in the same place as Wikipedia's. Apologies are certainly accepted. Lord knows I've made mistakes in the past. I'm not going to sue, I was just upset at not being credited for my work. I think this project is a great idea that can contribute a lot to the BattleTech community. Moreover, I have trolled on sarna.net for around a decade, and I would do nothing that might harm it. I think I have somewhat of an idea of at least some pages that were 'ported over and, if you all don't mind, I'll assist in linking them back to Wikipedia. Scaletail 21:17, 13 December 2006 (CST)

Sure, any assistance is appreciated. I wasn't worried about you per se, I'm worried about the 'we'll sue your pants off' type; we all know they exist and it's better to be safe than sorry. Once upon a time we ran into legal troubles at another wiki I work on. I do not want a repeat here. I hope that explains my somewhat panicked reaction. --Xoid 00:01, 14 December 2006 (CST)

I'm assuming your reffering to the name change of a group on UD?--The General^T 20:33, 14 December 2006 (CST)

Scaletail, any assistance you could give us in this matter, such as pointing out articles that may be infringing would be much appreciated. We are dedicated to making this wiki legit, as well as not upsetting others who have contributed to BattleTech :) Nicjansma 13:35, 14 December 2006 (CST)

I apologize, 4.234.144.246. I had not realized that article was copied verbatim.

Most of the 3,000 pages here are autogenerated (Planets, etc). We can use DynamicPageList (DPL) to get articles not in categories we've autogenerated and or created (mech articles).. try BattleTechWiki:SuspectPages. We can use that page list to review articles to see if they've been copied. We should also setup a template to link back to Wikipedia for articles that have been copied to give credit. Nicjansma 16:46, 13 December 2006 (CST)