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Ideally, please use this link to post new messages at the bottom. If you can't find something you recently posted, I might have moved it down there or it could have been archived if you posted it over 7 days ago. Cheers :)
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Comment

Regarding slakr:

Why did my page get deleted?
Please see Wikipedia:Why was my page deleted? first.
I have no idea what you're talking about. What's vandalism?
If you received a warning from me and you're not logged in, you might have gotten an old warning I sent to someone who shares your IP address. On the other hand, if you've made recent edits and received a recent warning message from me and you genuinely believe that it's not vandalism, don't fret-- simply drop me a message below, because I could have simply made a silly mistake. :)

Regarding SineBot:

Why does SineBot keep signing stuff I've already signed?
All comments should have a signature that includes both a link to your user page (slakr) and a datestamp (05:12, 20 August 2007 (UTC)) (per signatures - internal links). This is most easily generated by placing four tildes (~~~~) at the end of your contributions, which makes something like "slakr 05:12, 20 August 2007 (UTC)".[reply]

If you have an interwiki-linked user page, consider either creating a user page on enwiki that redirects to your preferred home wiki or simply opting out of automatic signing.

If you're still having problems after trying that, post a message below. Be sure to include diffs to make sure I can reference the problem.
I don't want my comments signed by SineBot. How do I get it to ignore me or my talk page?
Please use one of the opt-out methods listed on its user page.
SineBot forgot to sign something it should have signed.
Usually this happens because the bot isn't sure if it really should sign something, so it defaults to not signing it (e.g., in cases of complex edits). It does this to avoid being annoying. Other times, a comment might be made when the bot is down for maintenance, so the bot simply never sees it.
SineBot signed something that it genuinely should not have signed.
Please let me know-- especially if you think it's not a one-time thing. Be sure to include diffs to make sure I can reference the problem.
Is SineBot's source code available?
Not currently.
I'm signing with four tildes (~~~~) but it's still saying I didn't!
You likely enabled raw signatures. Open your preferences, click the "User profile" tab, make sure that "Treat the above as wiki markup" is NOT checked, and click Save; it should be fixed. If you have an interwiki-linked user page, consider either creating a user page on enwiki that redirects to your preferred home wiki or simply opting out of automatic signing.

Discussion at AN about SineBot

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Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#SineBot, benign helper or closet vandal?. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 15:47, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@ScottishFinnishRadish: So I've been a bit inactive at times this year due to moving cities, other volunteer-organization commitments in real life, and most recently a bout of severe depression. But more importantly, I wanted to let you know the sequence of events that happened in my head tonight/this morning, in case you were interested.
  1. "Now that I'm feeling up to it and have a moment, finally going to get back to Wikipedia. That random YouTube video that was indirectly thanking me for helping all those years on Wikipedia made me feel good again and reminded me of how important it is to help out there right now."
  2. "Okay, so first stop, talk page messages. Probably just random stuff that—"
  3. I find your thread, up here first, and read its title. "...benign helper or closet vandal?" I go click into it, assuming AN was running low on hot takes or something.
  4. "Huh. Maybe it's someone new who doesn't know how the bot works or any of its histor—"
  5. I hover over your name—I suck at remembering names—letting Popups do the work. I'm actually surprised.
  6. I consider trying to explain things, but I suddenly feel a lack of energy; not only is it a month late, but what would be the point? Would they even read it? Would they even care?
  7. I read some of the other comments supporting the thing I put work into, reflecting all the things I would have said, and it helps. Sorta.
  8. My confusion and a general sense of worry and anxiety mounts anyways. Paradoxically, I feel tired again. Very tired.
  9. I start getting sad because, like, this was where I was coming to feel better by helping, and now someone's basically calling my bot a useless vandal that's doing more harm than good. If it were a troll, well who cares, but presumably this person is trusted.
  10. I feel like I need to relay my feelings to them in case it was unintentional on their part. You know, so that maybe it doesn't happen to someone else? Maybe it could be some kind of learning moment? I dunno. :(
  11. After typing most of this, I giggle at the sudden thought of someone phrasing literally anything else that way. "Old people: benign helpers or closet family saboteurs?" ... "Traffic signs: benign helpers or closet car crashers?" I laugh and improve in mood a little, and I'm thankful for being lucky enough to have humor as one of my primary defense mechanisms. I get sad again remembering that not everyone has that, and it reminds me of many of the problems in the world.
  12. Finally no longer distracted by the start of the thread and how terrible it made me feel (although that wasn't its intent), I read toward the end of it and see a possible change I could implement, but am completely de-energized after having felt all of this and subsequently wasted my time trying to convey my feelings. "Man, if only they had started with that...."
  13. I consider deleting all of this and replacing it with a generic Bradspeak response because, in a very real way, it truly isn't a big deal. Yet I don't delete it because it caused me to feel like it was a big deal, and I owe it to both you and myself to reflect that honestly.
And that brings us to now.
So yeah. Please consider this perspective for the future. I know you didn't mean for it to come across this way—no worries. Yes, it's just one type of personality in one type of circumstance, but I assure you that if you take all of this to heart, it has applications not just to Wikipedia but to any volunteer-driven organization as a whole should you so similarly climb the ranks.
I'll try to look into taking EF tags into account—it's likely super quick and easy—but honestly I'm probably just going to go back to admin backlogs for a little bit. If I forget about it, I swear it won't be due to snubbing you; it's just because I'm not feeling great and sometimes I desperately need something other than coding to help me feel better. Feel free to give my talk page a tickle to remind me; I have a feeling someone suggested it before, and I might have just forgotten. I'll get to it one day, damnit. :P
Thanks, and cheers. Sorry for the giant blob of text.
--slakr\ talk / 10:50, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
After typing most of this, I giggle at the sudden thought of someone phrasing literally anything else that way. "Old people: benign helpers or closet family saboteurs?" ... "Traffic signs: benign helpers or closet car crashers?" I laugh and improve in mood a little, and I'm thankful for being lucky enough to have humor as one of my primary defense mechanisms. I get sad again remembering that not everyone has that, and it reminds me of many of the problems in the world. That is how you should have read it, and I often forget not everyone understands SFR-speak. I'm... histrionic at times, and text doesn't convey my not-self-serious tone very well.
Sorry for coming on so harsh, and I appreciate the work you do. I understand the reason behind SineBot, and as was pointed out, it has ~1.6 million constructive edits. With the work I'm primarily doing, though, I see a lot more of this than the constructive edits it makes. That doesn't mean it's not doing helpful things, but it does mean that it often interferes with vandalism and abuse mitigation. If there were ~400,000 signs of vandalism or other disruption by the bot and it takes ~5 extra seconds to revert then it's added 550+ hours to the patrolling burden. It's certainly saved time on the signing unsigned posts front, though. I think the delay proposed at the AN thread (and as you correctly remembered brought up here as well).
Again, sorry for being an insufferable prick, and I hope in the future you can read my words in the tone of Peggy Hill writing a musings column rather than like an asshole. There's no rush, since the status quo has been working for years, but I would certainly appreciate it if you can make the delay adjustment at some point. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 12:08, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

IP user #25208994 sockpuppet accusation

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Hello dear Slakr, i recently saw that my account was blocked for being a suspected Sockpuppet of another IP user (IP adress: 89.205.128.0/17). This is not true, as i simply lost the password of my normal account (i can state the account if you want). Can you give me explanation and a picture of why you blocked me? Thank you for the reply beforehand. 46.244.62.112 (talk) 21:38, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Guide to temporary accounts

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Hello, Slakr. This message is being sent to remind you of significant upcoming changes regarding logged-out editing.

Starting 4 November, logged-out editors will no longer have their IP address publicly displayed. Instead, they will have a temporary account (TA) associated with their edits. Users with some extended rights like administrators and CheckUsers, as well as users with the temporary account IP viewer (TAIV) user right will still be able to reveal temporary users' IP addresses and all contributions made by temporary accounts from a specific IP address or range.

How do temporary accounts work?

Editing from a temporary account
  • When a logged-out user completes an edit or a logged action for the first time, a cookie will be set in this user's browser and a temporary account tied with this cookie will be automatically created for them. This account's name will follow the pattern: ~2025-12345-67 (a tilde, year of creation, a number split into units of 5).
  • All subsequent actions by the temporary account user will be attributed to this username. The cookie will expire 90 days after its creation. As long as it exists, all edits made from this device will be attributed to this temporary account. It will be the same account even if the IP address changes, unless the user clears their cookies or uses a different device or web browser.
  • A record of the IP address used at the time of each edit will be stored for 90 days after the edit. Users with the temporary account IP viewer (TAIV) user right will be able to see the underlying IP addresses.
  • As a measure against vandalism, there are two limitations on the creation of temporary accounts:
    • There has to be a minimum of 10 minutes between subsequent temporary account creations from the same IP (or /64 range in case of IPv6).
    • There can be a maximum of 6 temporary accounts created from an IP (or /64 range) within a period of 24 hours.

Temporary account IP viewer user right

How to enable IP Reveal

Impact for administrators

  • It will be possible to block many abusers by just blocking their temporary accounts. A blocked person won't be able to create new temporary accounts quickly if the admin selects the autoblock option.
  • It will still be possible to block an IP address or IP range.
  • Temporary accounts will not be retroactively applied to contributions made before the deployment. On Special:Contributions, you will be able to see existing IP user contributions, but not new contributions made by temporary accounts on that IP address. Instead, you should use Special:IPContributions for this (see a video about IPContributions in a gallery below).

Rules about IP information disclosure

  • Publicizing an IP address gained through TAIV access is generally not allowed (e.g. ~2025-12345-67 previously edited as 192.0.2.1 or ~2025-12345-67's IP address is 192.0.2.1).
  • Publicly linking a TA to another TA is allowed if "reasonably believed to be necessary". (e.g. ~2025-12345-67 and ~2025-12345-68 are likely the same person, so I am counting their reverts together toward 3RR, but not Hey ~2025-12345-68, you did some good editing as ~2025-12345-67)
  • See Wikipedia:Temporary account IP viewer § What can and can't be said for more detailed guidelines.

Useful tools for patrollers

  • It is possible to view if a user has opted-in to view temporary account IPs via the User Info card, available in Preferences → Appearance → Advanced options → Tick Enable the user info card
    • This feature also makes it possible for anyone to see the approximate count of temporary accounts active on the same IP address range.
  • Special:IPContributions allows viewing all edits and temporary accounts connected to a specific IP address or IP range.
  • Similarly, Special:GlobalContributions supports global search for a given temporary account's activity.
  • The auto-reveal feature (see video below) allows users with the right permissions to automatically reveal all IP addresses for a limited time window.

Videos

  • How to use Special:IPContributions
  • How automatic IP reveal works
  • How to use IP Info
  • How to use User Info

Further information and discussion

Most of this message was written by Mz7 (source). Thanks, 🎃 SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 02:47, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

SineBot down

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SineBot has not edited since October 23, 2025. Could you have a look when you have time?

Also, not entirely sure if you've seen the AN thread about extending SineBot's waiting period to about 15 minutes to give a larger window of time for vandalism to be reverted and revdelled. —⁠k6ka 🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 14:21, 4 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – November 2025

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News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2025).

Administrator changes

added Toadspike
removed

CheckUser changes

added asilvering

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:35, 4 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom 2025 Elections voter message

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Hello! Voting in the 2025 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 1 December 2025. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2025 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:22, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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