Wiki:Requests for administrator attention

This page is for requests for administrators and data administrators attention, i.e:

• edit a protected page
• create or edit a page in the MediaWiki: namespace
• protect or unprotect a page
• block or unblock a user
• create Properties
• and other

This page is NOT for:

• asking for technical help → use Talk:Wiki
• asking to install MediaWiki extensions or fix internal errors
• nominating a page for deletion → use templates {{Delete}} or {{Delete proposal}}
  • for data items – place it on the data item's talk page
• Requesting user name changes

See also:

• Category:Edit requests – existing entries:

Template talk:Description

Requests

Once the request is done, please archive it by moving the text to the most recent archive.

Add a new request

Category:Labelled for deletion

Would it be possible for sysops to look at least through some entries at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Category:Labelled_for_deletion ?

330 categories, 204 articles and 229 images are there.

Is there any way how regular wiki editors can help there?

Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 16:43, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

May it help to add some structure to the labelled for deletion categorization? E.g. subdivisions (categories) for standard cases like pages "created by accident", media "without a license", spam content, ... --Chris2map (talk) 19:33, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Basically all file deletion requests are license related Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 17:10, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

May it help to promote someone trusted (e.g. Mateusz or Chris) to administrators, as minimum temporarily? Something B (talk) 23:13, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

I would be happy to help remove the pages, but I don't have the admin tools (I assure that I would do it with caution, and leave contentious cases for discussion or clarification). I am active on the Wiki, I'm online almost every day, and some of the deletion requests that I have written slow down my work, because, for example, they involve removing a redirect to move an article there. And these requests have been waiting for several months. Without removal I can't move, and without moving I can't continue to improve. It would be nice if someone active was an administrator (e.g., Chris2map or me; let's let the people who are willing to do the work do it), because we currently have 18 administrators, 17 of whom are inactive (Minh is active, but rarely does deletion). Tigerfell used to delete pages once a month and somehow it worked, but now he's inactive, maybe he doesn't have time. maro21 21:56, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

 Support Something B (talk) 22:08, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

@Maro21: Thanks for volunteering! You'll need to request permissions on Talk:Wiki for the broader community's input; this is a page for requests made to existing administrators. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 16:24, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

We already have categorization: Category:Labelled_for_deletion is for obvious cases, Category:Deletion_Proposed is for other cases. maro21 21:56, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Category:Deletion proposed is de facto ignored (not processed at all). Something B (talk) 22:08, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Wrote at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User_talk:Lyx#Requested_deletions_backlog - will write to other sysops later if it does not help Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 06:05, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Tried at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User_talk:Minh_Nguyen#Deletions Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 12:45, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

@Mateusz Konieczny: Thanks for the heads-up. Seems like these deletion requests come in waves, so it's difficult to keep them low all the time. I just processed all the requests in the Item: namespace and deleted 122 categories created by yourself (about users of Garmin devices) and User:Babel AutoCreate (probably mostly the result of Verdy_p trying to create facts on the ground for obscure languages). Unfortunately, I can't go further for now, because all this deletion is giving me repetitive stress injury. It sure would be nice to have more efficient tools for this sort of thing. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 16:24, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

A big thank to Minh Nguyễn for doing a big bunch of waiting deletions! Have a good rest and get well! I hope others will help. --Chris2map (talk) 12:16, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Was also raised at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Wiki#Deletion_requests Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 06:53, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

I started deleting a bit and modified Template:Delete to add some handy links, useful when you are deleting. Including delete link that reduces number of clicks you need to perform Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 06:48, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

Additional admins were appointed 28 May 2025 to process it (Wynndale, Mateusz Konieczny, and me, Chris2map) and the amount decreases somehow and somehow not.

49 categories, 56 articles and 458 images are there in Category:Labelled for deletion, 11 October 2025.

There is a big backlog with images. The amount of images without license statements or attributions is still huge (1) (2) (3). Marking them is one thing, tedious but simple. Another thing is the deletion. There is hesitation / indecision among the admins because there is very little attention, interest, support in the user community, as well as questions about determining the use of images on archived articles, proposals, discussions, or the correct procedure whether contacting uploaders or not. So the question is, how things can continue? --Chris2map (talk) 15:16, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

Note that we were going through some categories marked for deletion together with all their empty subcategories. These requests are easy to do (category creator agreed that these are mistakes) but deleting them is quite tedious, and now that those are gone maybe numbers will go down quicker. For these categories 49 deletion and checks were needed to process a single category listed in deletion requests. For articles/images I was keeping away from them as I run into https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Fi:Public_transport&action=history and https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=File:Agente_Interbank.JPG&action=history where I requested deletion so I prefer to not be one to also delete them. If you look at Category:Labelled for deletion/sorted then https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Tag:car:repair%3Dtuning&action=history and https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=File:M%C3%BChlenweg_img_3317.jpg&action=history that are first on list were also nominated by myself. Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 13:47, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

Can anyone tell me, why we should delete empty babel-created categories "User xy-#", such as Category:User hu-3 or Category:User se-2? In a way, these are already being used: If someone specifies the language on their user page, it will be filled. (And we need to add the categorization (Category:User xy| #)). BTW, there are many! empty categories with "Users ...". --Chris2map (talk) 17:22, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

reminds me about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Possibly_empty_category and similar. In this case user has prolonged inactivity so not sure whether asking them to join discussion and waiting for them makes sense. I reverted hu-3 in https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Category:User_hu-3&diff=prev&oldid=2908900 Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 12:47, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

but overall, if deletion request is not clear I would revert it and ask whoever set it to clarify why they thought it should be deleted Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 12:48, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

wrote https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User_talk:Maro21#babel_system Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 12:50, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply and the link. I'll see. For now I tend to not to delete these. --Chris2map (talk) 16:28, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

@Chris2map: I see you marked some for deletion. Would you be fine with reverting this requests? Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 10:36, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

I reverted them already. Those left are from Maro. --Chris2map (talk) 13:34, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

I cleaned those Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 14:47, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

Looked again, I tried to find candidates for processing but basically all what I seen was proposed to be deleted by myself, so not something that I should process. Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 11:49, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

@Mateusz Konieczny: Most file uploaded by FrankM are labelled by mine. Also File:KG.jpg and File:Grassland.jpg. Something B (talk) 21:15, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

Also File:Forest.jpg, file:cliff01.JPG, file:kiosk germany.jpg, file:floodway1.jpg, file:entrance.jpg. Something B (talk) 00:18, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

Timeless skin

Unresolved

Stale

Can an admin make a request on the OSM Operations issue tracker to install the Timeless skin? I'd really like to be able to use it here, it should already be bundled with MediaWiki and just need one line added to LocalSettings.php to enable it. Thank you :) Kinsio (talk) 17:23, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

"just need one line added to LocalSettings.php to enable it" can you share which specific line would do so? @Kinsio: Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 17:42, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

@Mateusz Konieczny: This one: wfLoadSkin('Timeless');. Kinsio (talk) 08:33, 8 June 2025 (UTC)

@Kinsio: We haven't had a request for a skin for a long time. Skins are managed more or less like extensions, with similar maintenance overhead. Folks maintaining templates and gadgets would need to account for an additional skin. Maybe this needs to be a broader discussion on Talk:Wiki before we formally ask the operations team to install it? – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 16:58, 8 June 2025 (UTC)

There was a request and talk attempt with Talk:Wiki#Timeless skin in 2024. --Chris2map (talk) 20:04, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

Also another skin Talk:Wiki#Add Citizen skin. --Chris2map (talk) 20:07, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

User TourismInfo spamming the wiki with empty pages and undermining existing standards (Rtfm sock)

Please look at the edits made by TourismInfo, they are creating plenty of empty pages with redirects or pages with little info for tags that are unused. They are also directly going against existing standards making it more confusing for new users to learn how to map and it could lead to competing standards for the same content.

Here are some references to look at:

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User_talk:TourismInfo

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Key:aeroway:paragliding

I didn't review all of their contribution history, maybe they also did a lot of good stuff, but at the very least they need to not sabotage existing standards that other users already put a lot of effort into without even having an open discussion first. --Hardcover2452 (talk) 08:19, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

Please also revert his modifications from the user https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/ti-lo

They seem to be manually modifying existing mappings to their new standard, actively making OSM worse... --Hardcover2452 (talk) 16:35, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

Have you reported the map edits to the DWG? @Lyx: Is TourismInfo the same person as ti-lo/Rtfm? Wynndale (talk) 18:03, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

Wynndale I did not, I only now found it and wanted to wait for your comments to see that my report is valid. --Hardcover2452 (talk) 18:28, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

I DMed ti-lo and explained that they are going against established standards. From their edits and comments I am very confident that they are the same person as TourismInfo, but benefit of the doubt. If they don't revert the changes I will contact DWG as well. --Hardcover2452 (talk) 06:37, 5 August 2025 (UTC)

Given the edit warring history of Shop suffix[1] and the fact that TourismInfo edits when Rtfm (ti-lo’s other wiki account) is blocked, I have blocked without waiting for a CheckUser investigation. The wiki now needs to be cleaned up. Wynndale (talk) 19:54, 5 August 2025 (UTC)

thank you! I changed what I could and knew (paragliding stuff) but they made so many empty pages and usless content, it's crazy. Someone with the permissions should delete these pages. I have also reported the user ti-lo as a vandal, I hope that's enough. --Hardcover2452 (talk) 21:24, 5 August 2025 (UTC)

@Hardcover2452: have you notified DWG about their bad edits? Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 05:26, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

I tried to purge their edits from OSM Wiki Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 06:03, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

"I didn't review all of their contribution history, maybe they also did a lot of good stuff" - as they are banned block-evading banned, repeatedly blocked account of user known to produce large volume of pages of text that are often highly misleading, wholesale mass removal is perfectly fine in this case Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 06:05, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

Argh. I see another account that seems to be a Rtfm sock. Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 06:17, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

If anyone would have time to review are all their edits now reverted ( https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AContributions&target=TourismInfo&namespace=all&tagfilter=&start=&end=&limit=1000 will be likely helpful) - please check, and comment here so that this case can be closed Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 08:25, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

Multiple wiki user accounts

Is there a convention whether it is okay or allowed to have more than one wiki user account for personal use? E.g. User:Hoo9ohGhie0phuzo and User:Marcknj? I wouldn't appreciate it if people used multiple accounts. --Chris2map (talk) 17:06, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

This may have been what you mean by "personal use" - but, as an example case, I made edits under this

 Lumikeiju (on OSM) account when contributing in my own time as a volunteer, and under

 UW Amy Bordenave (on OSM) when contributing on work time. Lumikeiju (talk) 22:17, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

@Chris2map: I don't think we prohibit secondary accounts (nor does Wikipedia, for what it's worth), but the relationship between the accounts should be disclosed, so that anyone responding to them in a discussion or doing vote-counting on a feature proposal can verify that they haven't engaged in sockpuppetry. Minh Nguyễn ^💬 07:09, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

In fact, it wouldn’t be possible to prevent that. However, it also makes it very easy to influence the weight of opinions in discussions or the outcome of votes. I hadn’t really realized that until now. At first, my question was simply whether I had a gap in my knowledge that wouldn't allow me to respond appropriately when encountering known or obvious multiple accounts. If the different accounts were linked to one another, that would of course be the ideal scenario (though a proposal author would still have to review all users during the counting and look for such indications) but we still have to rely on the users and, furthermore, I can understand if one doesn't want to make public their work (job) and their personal (private) actions and identity. Maybe we can write a short rudimentary guideline with a few basics:

• Recommendation to avoid multiple accounts.
• Recommendation to indicate if more than one account is used.
• Policy not to masquerade, not to pose as another or different persons, and not to use multiple accounts in discussions and votes to manipulate the outcome.

I looked at Wikipedia's phrases in this regard, see w:Wikipedia:Username_policy#Using_multiple_accounts. What do you think? -- Chris2map (talk) 17:35, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

I agree with those guidelines, and have updated the user pages for both of my accounts for good measure! Lumikeiju (talk) 18:46, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

I would expect them to be both clearly marked and only one used in given discussion vote. Ideally only one would be used for any votes. I am not aware of specific policies, but if someone would pretend to be different users in the same discussion or vote I would ban all related accounts. "I wouldn't appreciate it if people used multiple accounts" what about bot accounts? Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 12:07, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

I consider bot accounts to be a legitimate exception. Of course, it is important that it is clearly explained who operates the bot. --Chris2map (talk) 19:04, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

I wrote to User:Hoo9ohGhie0phuzo and User:Marcknj on both talk pages encouraging them to be clearer about link between those Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 19:34, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

Resolved: (if someone thinks that Wikipedia-style policy is needed, you do not need to be an admin to draft one) Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 16:02, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

regex search doesn't work

Searching for something like insource:/a/ should yield results, but it gives an error instead. See mw:Help:CirrusSearch #Insource, for how it's documented to work.

I wanted to look if there are mentions of bahnhof.de, but without regex search, the results arent exact enough. I don't kniw what the exact difference between that and insource:"bahnhof.de" is, or the same without insource:-prefix.
–cyton (talk) 11:40, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

@Cyton: Regular expression searches require extra configuration that I don't think we've done. You'd need to request this feature from the operations team. Incidentally, if you're only interested in finding links to that domain, MediaWiki has a built-in link search engine. Minh Nguyễn ^💬 07:05, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

@Minh Nguyen: I see.

Yeah ok, I didn't know/think of the link-search, that's helpful for links. I was interested in mentions of the string itself too, which aren't links.

I guess that means there either aren't as many mentions as I thought/hoped, or they're not in the rendered portions like html comments (which is even more unlikely, I know).

I guess I can ask for the feature, but I don't really see a good reason to add giben that support time, server time, etc. are limited. Sure – regex searches are helpful at times to find snippets to replace, like copy pasted stuff, but for non-editing non-technical non-logged-in users I don't see how that's helpful.
–cyton (talk) 07:40, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

@Minh Nguyen: Another use would be searching through wikitext source with a special character.

For instance pages which use a template directly (opposed to used by a template which is used on a page, or further away through multiple transclusion).

Since a search for "{{templatename" (including the quotes) is treated as if the braces don't exist. Basically any use of greyspace is unsearchable.

This can't be done with the "hastemplate:" search prefix, or the WhatLinksHere special page, both list all after-expansion uses of a template.

Maybe there's another way to do that, but I'm not aware of it.
–cyton (talk) 11:12, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

@Cyton: I'm unaware of a workaround. The insource:/…/ syntax is how you'd normally search for this kind of thing. If you're really determined to find this information, you could download a dump of the wiki's entire contents and do a full-text search locally. Minh Nguyễn ^💬 07:36, 18 April 2026 (UTC)

Broken redirects to Tmp:Proposal talk:...

There are 2 Special:Broken Redirects for years that just won't come off the list.

Proposal talk:Documentation of key prefixes & suffixes → Tmp:Proposal talk:Documentation of key prefixes & suffixes
Proposal talk:Named protection class for protected areas → Tmp:Proposal talk:Named protection class for protected areas

I tried more than once to change the redirects and to delete and recreate the pages – without any success. Does anyone have any idea how to bust them? Do they have to be or can they be hard-removed (in the file system or so)? --Chris2map (talk) 16:49, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

Unresolved

No one any idea? --Chris2map (talk) 15:21, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

Creating redirect in opposite direction keeps this page happy. Maybe do this? Or file issue at https://github.com/openstreetmap/operations Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 12:05, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

I had tried that but they appear again if deleted. I've now created the Tmp: pages with redirects again and will leave it this way for a while. --Chris2map (talk) 08:16, 27 September 2026 (UTC)

archive that talk:wiki section?

I tried archiving https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Wiki#Edits_to_Tag:addr:country=(value)_pages but User:99 tabazan protested.

It looks like it is not going anywhere and it would be better to archive it

if some person not involved in this discussion disagrees with archiving idea, feel free to mark this request as resolved and rejected

if some person not involved in this discussion agrees with archiving idea - can you archive it?

Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 08:34, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

Move Key:addr:neighborhood to Key:addr:neighbourhood (with "ou")

Hi, the spelling with "ou" is British English, which is used by OSM, and also significantly more common according to Taginfo. The source page contains some useful information that I would like to keep (minus the typo) - but I can't move the page, because the target page already exists (it was a redirect to addr:*=*). Biff (talk) 13:43, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

Resolved: Move done --Chris2map (talk) 14:39, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

AI agent and Wiki bot account

In light of a recent event, Special:Contributions/Yzuio, I am asking whether using an AI agent to perform wiki edits requires a bot wiki account, so that the situation is clear and tracking is facilitated. --Chris2map (talk) 13:32, 6 October 2026 (UTC)

Yes, it ought to. It has similar pitfalls and asking to know about agents favours transparency. Wynndale (talk) 16:13, 6 October 2026 (UTC)

I would say that it has all problems of bot edits and some extra Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 01:49, 7 October 2026 (UTC)

It is a bot edit so answer is yes Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 01:49, 7 October 2026 (UTC)

That’s how I see it, too. We need to state this somewhere so that just about everyone can find and read it. There isn't a suitable spot or page for it yet — or have I missed something? --Chris2map (talk) 05:17, 7 October 2026 (UTC)

I created AI agents page Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 05:59, 7 October 2026 (UTC)

Iʼve asked for the translations to be reviewed. Wynndale (talk) 16:36, 8 October 2026 (UTC)

I think that as it was undiscussed bot LLM edit they should be purged, no matter their quality Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 16:45, 8 October 2026 (UTC)

Stupid but genuine question: Where is that written? I’ve been searching for quite a while now, but everything I can find relates to the OSM map and database. I can’t find anything relevant regarding the wiki. --Chris2map (talk) 17:40, 8 October 2026 (UTC)

We do not really have formal written down rules, so it is mostly assuming rules similar to main database. Plus I really prefer to establish precedent that runaway bot edit via LLM agent will be purged Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 20:35, 8 October 2026 (UTC)

See also https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/request-for-chinese-speaker-to-review-wiki-translations/148551/6 - is anyone here opposed to mass deleting all of them? Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 12:34, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

I see. There are some very relevant arguments:

• Discourage carrying out mass translation efforts, because we have few tools for managing the tagging-related pages and keeping them in sync.
• Regarding machine translations, in-browser translation is either immediately available or one click away.
• Translations of tagging descriptions, advices, schemata, guidelines, rules should be authored by someone, to be aware of possible “false friends”.
• Why bothering a human to review AI work.

When I consider the effort required to ensure accuracy, quality, and ongoing maintenance in light of these arguments, I conclude that deletion outweighs the value of these translations, as they could be regenerated at any time without comparable effort. --Chris2map (talk) 17:45, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

Agreed. Wynndale (talk) 20:24, 9 October 2026 (UTC)