Wiki:Requests for administrator attention

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Latest comment: 1 day ago by Chris2map in topic Broken redirects to Tmp:Proposal talk:...
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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:

See also:

Requests

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

MediaWiki:Lang pages

Unresolved
Stale

Please create:

This request has been waiting since 2012: MediaWiki talk:Lang.
See also: Template talk:Uselang. maro21 13:48, 2 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Maro21:? Is it a good idea? Verdy p was famous for making or requesting many things of problematic value and ended being blocked for that. Is it one of their bad or good ideas? Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 07:48, 4 April 2022 (UTC)Reply
Hehe:) I'm not asking for it because someone asked. We (I and Chris2map, but also others) need it to detect user's interface language which would help some templates to display text in a user's language, not page language. All details you have in linked discussions. As an example: Template:Bs:Map Features:abutters - do we want {delete} template to display text in Bosnian because Bosnian page was nominated to deletion? maro21 21:36, 4 April 2022 (UTC)Reply
@Maro21: If a message needs to display in the user's preferred language instead of the page language ({{PAGELANGUAGE}}), that would be a good argument for moving that message itself to the MediaWiki: namespace. That way, we can take advantage of MediaWiki's built-in language fallback capability. Alternatively, if showing translations in {{Delete}} is a problem, we could just make the template unlocalizable and hard-code it in English. Abusing interface messages for template content creates problems for VisualEditor, but the problem can be confined to certain templates that are unlikely to be edited that way. Making the language code more reusable via MediaWiki:Lang would open the door to unforeseen editing bugs. This is part of the reason an interface language magic word was declined. – Minh Nguyễn 💬 02:03, 5 April 2022 (UTC)Reply
> that would be a good argument for moving that message itself to the MediaWiki: namespace
But Mediawiki namespace can be edited only by admins, while templates can be edited by anyone. I haven't thought yet about whether the {delete} template, and others like it, should be localizable and accessible to the end user, or only in English.
> we could just make the template unlocalizable and hard-code it in English
This would also be a good solution. Unless we want to make the interface more accessible to non-English speakers, but editing here - however there aren't many of those people. But what about other templates of this type? maro21 19:20, 5 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

By the way, Wikimedia Commons takes the approach of localized templates that match the interface language but link to versions in other languages. This table outlines the main advantages and drawbacks of five different template localization systems in use on that wiki. – Minh Nguyễn 💬 21:03, 14 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

You see, even Wikimedia Commons is using this method with MediaWiki:Lang :). maro21 19:55, 15 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Maro21: MediaWiki now supports a en magic word for this purpose, but it's currently disabled on this wiki; it always resolves to the page content language, just like en. I've asked the operations team to enable this magic word to work for real. [1] – Minh Nguyễn 💬 02:00, 3 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

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)Reply

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)Reply
Basically all file deletion requests are license related Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 17:10, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
 Support Something B (talk) 22:08, 2 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
@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)Reply
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)Reply
Category:Deletion proposed is de facto ignored (not processed at all). Something B (talk) 22:08, 2 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
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)Reply
Tried at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User_talk:Minh_Nguyen#Deletions Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 12:45, 15 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
@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)Reply
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)Reply

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

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)Reply

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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
wrote https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User_talk:Maro21#babel_system Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 12:50, 17 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
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)Reply
@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)Reply
I reverted them already. Those left are from Maro. --Chris2map (talk) 13:34, 19 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
I cleaned those Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 14:47, 19 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
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)Reply
@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)Reply
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)Reply

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)Reply

"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)Reply
@Mateusz Konieczny: This one: wfLoadSkin('Timeless');. Kinsio (talk) 08:33, 8 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
@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)Reply
There was a request and talk attempt with Talk:Wiki#Timeless skin in 2024. --Chris2map (talk) 20:04, 14 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Also another skin Talk:Wiki#Add Citizen skin. --Chris2map (talk) 20:07, 14 June 2025 (UTC)Reply

Patrolled edits

I want to propose to disable "patrolled edits" function. I think we don't use it and if we don't use it I don't need those buttons and links.
It should be possible to disable by $wgUseRCPatrol = false; in LocalSettings.php. --Chris2map (talk) 18:40, 10 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

+1 Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 08:25, 30 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Minh Nguyễn @Wynndale: What do you think of it? --Chris2map (talk) 16:40, 5 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

No particular interest in patrolled edits myself. There aren’t enough admins for it to be useful. Wynndale (talk) 20:42, 5 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Minh Nguyen: Before I forward the request to the sysops, I wanted to ask if deactivation would be okay with you as well. --Chris2map (talk) 16:34, 22 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

@Chris2map: I do mark new pages as patrolled as I encounter them organically, in case it matters to anyone who monitors Special:NewPages, but I don't monitor it myself regularly these days. I don't bother to mark other edits as patrolled. I was curious whether this functionality is tied to the "updated since your last visit" message on the history page, but it turns out to be unrelated. So I'm fine with disabling the functionality if it's causing problems. – Minh Nguyễn 💬 17:38, 26 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for feedback. Not problems, but less functions and links is more in this case to me. Escpecially if they are not used. Then they needn't to be processed. – I'm going to ask the sysops for deactivation. --Chris2map (talk) 18:41, 3 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Ticket has been created: https://github.com/openstreetmap/operations/issues/1357 --Chris2map (talk) 16:35, 22 April 2026 (UTC)Reply

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)Reply

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)Reply

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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
Given the edit warring history of Shop suffix[2] 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)Reply
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)Reply
@Hardcover2452: have you notified DWG about their bad edits? Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 05:26, 26 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

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

"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)Reply

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


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)Reply

Eliminating external dependencies in gadgets

This morning, the Wikimedia Foundation experienced a security incident that took down Wikipedia for a while. The short story is that they mistakenly activated a latent worm while doing a security audit. We were not affected, but I believe it's only because we got lucky and Wikimedia Foundation staff acted quickly to clean up their mistake.

The worm took the form of a user script. We don't do the kind of audit that would activate a worm like that, certainly not with elevated permissions. But this incident does expose another potential risk for us. Most of the gadgets we've deployed in Special:Gadgets are self-contained, relying only on other scripts and stylesheets in the MediaWiki: namespace of this site. The one exception is MediaWiki:Gadget-convenientDiscussions.js, which loads c:User:Jack who built the house/convenientDiscussions.js on Wikimedia Commons. Out of an abundance of caution, I think we should either inline this gadget or remove it as a potential security vulnerability. Inlining this gadget would make this site's administrators responsible for maintaining it. Unfortunately, I have very little familiarity with the gadget and don't feel comfortable maintaining it myself. My preference would be to delete it, but this would greatly inconvenience some users until we install DiscussionTools. [3] Would anyone else be willing to help maintain Convenient Discussions until that happens?

 – Minh Nguyễn 💬 03:38, 6 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

While I support the security approach and therefore removing of the external convenientDiscussions gadget, I couldn't maintain the local instance. --Chris2map (talk) 19:34, 6 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
Now that DiscussionTools has been deployed, I’ve deleted the Convenient Discussions gadget from this wiki, both the definition and the generated source code. Users who prefer CD can still install it themselves as a user gadget, at least while we continue to allow external dependencies in user gadgets. Minh Nguyễn 💬 08:15, 26 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

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)Reply

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)Reply
@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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply

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)Reply

@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)Reply
@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)Reply
@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)Reply
@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)Reply

Add whole-wiki banner for Commons situation

Questions asking about missing pics are getting common. There are a few extensions for showing site-wide notices on every page. This would help explain and remind all users, and make this a known problem to avoid the wiki appearing unmaintained. Kovposch (talk) 11:26, 17 April 2026 (UTC)Reply

+1 Good idea! -- Chris2map (talk) 17:32, 17 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
@Kovposch: I could add something to MediaWiki:Sitenotice, but it's hard to say anything actionable beyond stating the obvious about what's broken. For what it's worth, after a server configuration change, things seem to be getting back to how they were a couple months ago: not great, but not as dire as they've been the past week or so. Purging the page works more reliably (though this is only a very limited workaround, not without drawbacks). Minh Nguyễn 💬 07:42, 18 April 2026 (UTC)Reply

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)Reply