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Archiving problems again

Archiving is broken.
Dunno why.
Something seems to have changed again.
Bot can't log in.
Working on it. —scs (talk) 04:28, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I think it's fixed. (Remarkably, there ended up being about four separate problems, that somehow all came together at once.) Please help me keep an eye on it for the next few days, as the changes were significant, and certain errors (in the worst case resulting in the garbling of archived pages) might be possible. —scs (talk) 04:07, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Baseball trivia.

(Moved to Entertainment desk by Deor (talk) 22:46, 10 October 2025 (UTC))[reply]

Temporary accounts

I wondered why we were suddenly seeing so many strange looking usernames that are just a string of numbers beginning with 2025. Turns out they are temporary accounts – I had completely missed their introduction last week. I wonder how the fact that non-admins can no longer geolocate unregistered IPs will affect our ability to deal with trolls and banned users. Vote (X) for Change, for example, is quiet at the moment, but identifying his posts used to be straightforward based on his IP address. Just throwing this out for discussion. --Viennese Waltz 13:17, 10 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like you want to get Requests for permissions/Temporary account IP viewer permission. DMacks (talk) 14:00, 10 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder what the WMF thought they were fixing by doing this. Sometimes I think they've got too much money and too much spare time. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:13, 11 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I can see the sense in it, actually. It's reasonable to give unregistered editors privacy by not allowing them to be geolocated. --Viennese Waltz 07:54, 11 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at Wikipedia:Temporary accounts, the theory is protection from persecution. It may not be foolproof, but it's something. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:51, 11 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The one thing this does, apparently, is to allow kind of a backdoor indefinite block, as IP's are generally not indef'd. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:45, 11 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I can't claim to be familiar with all the niceties of TAs, but I don't believe that's correct. If an IP clears their cookies or just logs out of the TA, the IP should be able to continue editing, with a new TA assigned; and a TA expires in 90 days anyway even if blocked. Of course, the underlying IP, which admins can see, can still be blocked, but not indeffed. Deor (talk) 03:50, 11 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't been following the development and rollout of temporary accounts in detail, but my impression is that:

the motivation is indeed protecting the IP "identity" of unregistered editors
the pros and cons of the idea have been extensively debated
the impact on fighting vandals has certainly been considered
new tools for fighting vandals (consistent with the TA mechanism) have been introduced
this was not just a case of the WMF spending its money on a silly project

—scs (talk) 12:01, 11 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That last point is debatable. This seems like a Rube Goldberg alternative to requiring editors to register like pretty much any other website does. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:46, 11 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

When I read scs's comment, the word "just" in the last item is carrying a lot of weight. DMacks (talk) 15:13, 11 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Aha! A subtlety. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:58, 11 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well, no, I fear you both may credit me with more wit than I've managed to display in this thread! The only weighty words of mine were "my impression is...", and they render that last bullet perfectly undebatable, for my (perhaps naïve) impression is that this was a worthy (not silly) effort. —scs (talk) 02:55, 12 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

old RD contentious-discussion-tagging templates

Anybody remember this thread? I certainly didn't. But evidently old User:Clask went and implemented those templates, and they've been sitting under his user page ever since, until the day came that someone noticed their antiquity, and proposed them for deletion. On the (very!) off chance that anyone cares, head on over to this discussion and let them know what you think. —scs (talk) 21:09, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, that's one from the history books; half the folks in that thread are banned now. Matt Deres (talk) 15:54, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]