Wikibooks:Reading room/Administrative Assistance

Welcome to the Administrative Assistance reading room. You can request assistance from administrators for handling a variety of problems here and alert them about problems which may require special actions not normally used during regular content editing. Please be patient as administrators are often quite busy with either their own projects or trying to perform general maintenance and cleanup.

You can deal with most vandalism yourself: fix it, then warn the user. If there is repeated vandalism by one user, lots of vandalism on a single page, or vandalism from many users, tell an admin here, or in #wikibooks (say !admin to get attention).

For more general questions and assistance that doesn't require an administrator, please use the Assistance Reading Room.

Cite errors

Would an administrator mind adding categories to the cite error mediawiki messages so that pages with these errors can be easily found? An example way to do is shown at en.wikt: messages and helper template. --Bequw (discuss • contribs) 00:24, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

I've added Category:No references for citations to the two that were blanked here for now. I think refs are broken intentionally at times though, so be careful about fixing pages with those errors. --darklama 11:35, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

"Wikibookian" Organisation

Well, what do people make of User:Wikibookian? The user page makes out that this is some kind of "sub-project" and the account is operated by an organisation. Now things like [this are springing up. While not in use by being linked to any page it is obviously contrary to the way this project operates. An explanation of the usage of the account, the purpose of the "project", etc. would be useful and has been invited. QU ^TalkQu 21:47, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Claims of ownership are fundamentally contrary to the wiki principle, and the username seems to me to be fundamentally misleading in nature, claiming nonexistent formal authority. Over at Wikinews, if somebody created an account with a name like "User:Wikinewsie", in short order somebody would block the account till infinity for violating our username policy, and that would be that. --Pi zero (alt acct) (alt talk) 22:07, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Seems pretty fishy to me. It claims to be "in cooperation with Whiteknight, but it certainly doesn't sound like Andrew, the Whiteknight many of us know. He was an admin, 'crat, and CU here for a long time, and was well versed in how we do things here. I feel confident that if Andrew were involved in something like this, we would have heard from him. He hasn't made regular contributions here since November 2009, and hasn't made any edits at WV since Feb '09. My guess is that someone has borrowed his name. --Jomegat (discuss • contribs) 01:55, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

I sent him an email alerting him to the use of his name. --Jomegat (discuss • contribs) 01:59, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the email, Jim. You're right, I haven't spoken to anybody like this and am not currently in "cooperation" with anybody or any active wiki-related projects (I wish I were, but I'm not). I don't think I've spoken to this person, but then again, I could have at some time in the past under a different alias, etc. It doesn't look to me like there was anything malicious about this account, maybe just a little bit misguided. Thanks for the alert! --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 12:19, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

This seems very strange. I just went to his page and there was nothing there except the word "bye". I have no idea what this is supposed to be.

User space has been historically a semi-public space. I (and others) have from time to time placed notices on pages restricting editing, of course this all depends on the wording used, but ultimately the userspace is under that userspace owner "control", in this case specific to the notice a better wording could have been used but considering the low visibility of that subpage it isn't a major issue.

The question about the username can be more problematic, especially because we don't have an username policy. But it all depends on the motivation and use, noting that an account can indeed be operated by an organization. In any case an admin can talk to the user to see if he agrees to have it changed. If things are explained, without a very good argument to keep that present name, it should be an easy fix.

I have done a quick check on the edits made by the user and it seems to me that they are from someone that has just begun editing on wikibooks and so ask that a more diplomatic approach should be fallowed. Until we hear back from Whiteknight ("cooperation" can be an extremely abrangent term) a consensus on the issues (with participation of the user) is reached or there is a violation of our rules. There is no facts to support the assumption that the user is in bad faith...

In any case we should probably start a draft on an username policy. Probably based on another Wikimedia project (I don't know any but protection from using common reference names, trademarks and close derivations, exceptions if intended as a satiric or a demonstration of support or opposition should be included...) --Panic (discuss • contribs) 04:19, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Moving Lesson_6 -> Lesson_7, Lesson_5 -> Lesson_6, Lesson_4 -> Lesson_5, Lesson 3 -> Lesson_4 so that I can insert a new Lesson_3

Can someone help me do that? (I want to preserve the edit history)

Lesson_6 ⇒ Lesson_7
Lesson_5 ⇒ Lesson_6
Lesson_4 ⇒ Lesson_5
Lesson_3 ⇒ Lesson_4

Thank you.

EDIT: Lesson_6 (which I want to change to Lesson_7) is here: D_(The_Programming_Language)/d2/Phobos/Lesson_6 I'm sorry if this should be in the Renaming reading room; it appeared to me that that is for renaming usernames only. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jcao219 (talk • contribs)

You should be able to move the page yourself. The "move" link is under the dropbox (triangle) next to the search box (though that may depend on the skin you're using). The edit history will follow the pages, so there is no worry about that. This problem illustrates why it's not a great idea to name a page "Lesson N". It would be better to have named it "Strings and Dynamic Arrays" instead. This way you can re-order the chapters using a navigation template or the table of contents more easily. --Jomegat (discuss • contribs) _Lesson_7,_Lesson_5_->_Lesson_6,_Lesson_4_->_Lesson_5,_Lesson" class="ext-discussiontools-init-timestamplink">03:21, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

I can't, because it says a page of that name already exists. I think I'll take your advice of renaming everything, and just making the changes to the re-ordering in the TOC and navigation template. thanks.