SysopEdits

Moderator Page

I thought that perhaps the moderators should have somewhere to discuss certain guidelines, particularly with respect to blocks/bans etc. In my opinion this is better than all of us having different views on what to do!

Any thoughts? Add them below if you want. I've made it so that only sysops can edit this page - it may also be an idea to add it to your watchlist so you can easily see what's going on.

Old or resolved discussions go in the Archive.

A few changes and discussion

Hi everyone. Hopefully people who are sysops & still interested will see this. I've just updated the wiki software, along with the theme & email and could do with a high-ish res, non-copyright picture of something featuring brgs for the left navigation (can't access my library of images at the moment), just upload or send to

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.

It'd be useful to have a discussion and get feedback on the following ideas:

• Updating the editorial guidelines, separating out the musts from the shoulds. Any other updates?
• {Youboy} and {Youboycustom|your text here} templates now available (use two curly braces to make them work).
• 'Year Upping' (current system spec.: year upping) feedback (?).
• Maybe Gold/Silver pages - just a quick idea - both types of page where formatting, presentation and spelling should be stricter. Silver = working towards that goal. Gold = reached that goal. These could form a pool of articles to be featured on the main page.
• Anyone know the current status of the school lancs filter for: www.brgswiki.org, brgswiki.org and stats.brgswiki.org? (previous discussion in 2007)

Also, changes that I've done or are planning to do over the next couple of weeks are:

• More style and formatting work, particularly on the main page.
• Updating the help section and making the section easier to navigate.
• Update to links below the edit box, reflecting the changes to the help system.
• Implementing year upping fully, if the system is useful and makes sense, by September.
• Installing mods that we had in the past. (e.g. userscore, permissions etc.)
• Creating and upgrading the logic behind Google Sitemaps - getting page priorities and refresh rates right for search crawlers.
• Re-enabling basic HTML tags in edits, if possible (enabling useful HTML tags that allow you to do things like noinclude).

Clizard 21:10, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Contact

Brand new email address for contacts:

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. Hopefully we can now stop checking the Hotmail address which was being bombarded with spam and MySpace rubbish :). It'll be checked for a couple of weeks still but will eventually be left to pass away!

All relevant emails will be passed on to all the moderators who are currently active.

Thanks, Chris ^{talk - mod}

New Sections

We really need some new sections creating to help the wiki expand. Perhaps we should make suggestions here and then announce them publicly?

On a side note, myself and Clizard have had to endure a Speech Night filled with staff asking us about then wiki...... so at least it's notorious!

Chris ^{talk - mod} 23:37, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Added BRGS News, which is aiming to be a news service. Obviously we need the Mods who are actually still at BRGS to help kick this off! Any ideas?

Chris ^{talk - mod} 12:28, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

The School IP

Due to further vandalism today, such as the blanking-out of Heskey's page, the school IP address has been blocked indefinitely.

Do not unblock the school address at this time, as the majority of all vandalism happens on this IP, we assume by people who (mistakenly) believe that they can hide behind it. Furthermore, it also means that fewer edits (in theory) will happen during the day, hopefully then cutting down on unchecked vandalism due to all the mods being at school/uni/work/in bed..

Thanks

Chris mod 15:02, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Contact information

I think posting someone's contact information beyond their email address (so stuff like their home address, telephone/mobile number etc.) should be a bannable offence. Jonny talk • mod 16:46, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

How to make your signature even more awesome...and I have too much spare time...

1. I'm afraid this no longer works since html is disabled and prevents editing of pages where it already exists (and there's not a lot I can do about it). Clizard 15:00, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

This makes it a dynamic template - whenever you change your signature on User:Your_name/sig, it's updated all over the wiki. It might be an idea to protect these, as anyone who changes the page will then have the changes shown all over the wiki; which will make it easy to do a DoS attack.

I didn't spend half an hour trying to work out how to do this >_<. Jonny (talk)

Erm, OK.. does this work? Chris ^{talk - mod}

Yep, it took me ages to work it out. The advantage is that if in the future we get a page we want to link to (for example, if BRGS_Wiki:Administrators is done properly), it'll be linked to in the past as well, so people will easily be able to see it. Plus I like the novelty factor :P Jonny (talk) 17:28, 13 December 2006 (UTC) (and it's easy to see which pages you've signed on).

Policy here?

I was wondering what the general policy is for comments like the ones on that page. Are we leaving them, deleting them, toning them down or what? Jonny (talk) 21:55, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Not sure.. I think we can leave it mostly... except maybe tone down the Mr Fitton bit Clizard 22:05, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Okay, how about it now? Jonny (talk) 22:09, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

good good - Clizard 22:24, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah I'm guessing we should stress that "allegedly" these things have happened, as it's impractical to confirm them. Unless they are offensive, and hence bannable, then they should stay. Chris ^{talk - mod} 22:30, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Form pages

Wow, I seem to be posting a lot on here lately...Anyway, I was thinking, should we allow forms to have a section on their form pages to say what they think about themselves. In effect, an area exempt from the general feeling on keeping it NPOV, but still within the guidelines of insults and grammar etc. It won't harm anything, and as long as we check them, it should be ok. Jonny (talk) 23:41, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Since traffic has slowed down recently, i think it should be considered, to get traffic going again, or to just give us more work, as there is very little these days. Kronos mod 19:34, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think the BRGS Wiki has to be absolutely NPOV anyway, just not offensive - positive pages are always appreciated. On the other end of the scale, with negative pages, the offensiveness, insults and bad grammar generally go hand in hand. In terms of traffic December looks set to be an overall increase in traffic over November, and is at least on the same level of traffic. Blocking some of the school range to edits has helped reduce minor edits, even though not all edits from school were vandalism. Overall edit levels have perhaps decreased. I think other new sections should be focussed on rather than writing about students, which is generally difficult to moderate (which is one reason why we have some year reps - to try and check facts).

Clizard 00:09, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Adbots

The first one edited Talk:Suggestions/ today. I'm assuming we can just infinitely block them...? Jonny (talk) 22:24, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Might need to change to username editing only if the problem gets worse. Block them for a month/few weeks - many of the ip addresses will change so blocking them probably won't be completely effective. I periodically go through and unban addresses that have been there for a few months anyway. Clizard 00:26, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok, fair enough. Jonny (talk) 18:09, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

School IP

I think we should change the block to only block anonymous editing and account creation from school. Then, people who have accounts that were created at home can still edit; and we can still block them and their IP address as normal. (This is also how Wikipedia does it) Jonny (talk) 21:29, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah that's an awesome idea. I'm not sure whether it's possible to do this by default but I'll investigate or do some customising when I do updates to the wiki in a week or so (don't have a lot of time at the moment). Clizard 00:26, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I think you can do it by just checking the 'block anonymous editing' and the 'prevent account creation' when you block it :S Jonny (talk) 18:09, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Didn't notice this before. I've reblocked with the new settings. Have a try and see if it works correctly next week. Thanks, Clizard 20:11, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Yep, this is working, I'm logged on at school at the minute. It seems that http://www.brgswiki.org is blocked, but http://brgswiki.org isn't though :S Jonny (talk) 09:09, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Is that by the school bull(dog) filter? If so I can try an autoredirect. Clizard 17:58, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Erm, yeah I think so. It's easy enough to get round, but you just can't save anything on the www. one. Jonny (talk) 20:05, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorry

Sorry, I looked on here today for the first time since I left and I wasn't going to do anything until I saw those stupid pictures uploaded, so I deleted them and blocked the idiot who uploaded them. Anyway, I'm going now. Bye Jonny (talk) 22:43, 16 May 2007 (BST)