User talk:Evilkolbot

For previous discussions with me, see

User talk:Evilkolbot/archive

User talk:Evilkolbot/archive2

---

summary bans

• we had a spam problem.we did some stuff and those spammers seem to have gone away.
• new spammers spring up every day, though, and there is a race to block them before they can do any damage.
• if i banned you and you're no spammer, please feel free to complain.
• i have this account in-game, and i read my gmail account every now and again.
• i am very sorry. --Evilkolbot 19:32, 13 April 2012 (CEST)

caching

Just notifying "an admin" about problems noticed with the wiki - the "Random Page" button now just takes me to the Evil Cultist, over and over. --Lindia 8:42, 31 August 2011

• Huh, interesting. It sent me to the grimacite weightlifting belt page. So it's presumably generating a random link only once per user/large time period. --Flargen 15:00, 31 August 2011 (CEST)

Ah, got it. Your comment to me was about the 2 redirect pages I added. I just also proposed a sitewide addition that would make it easier for external programs (but not people) to find items by allowing them to link to pages using the item number too. Searching via strings is notoriously awful, so that should be avoided if possible. This is my first proposal here, but if that goes well, maybe we could propose that if any search fails, a page is returned saying 'did you mean?' with any item spelled the same but with different capitalization.' The same return could strip out any HTML, or do a replacement of unusual characters, and the like. --QVamp 17:44, 10 August 2011 (CEST)

Sorry about deleting the info on Bagatelle talk page.

Please delete my kol.coldfront.net account, Robi207, or tell me how to do it myself. --Robi207 01:20, 14 July 2011 (CEST)

• that's a bit drastic. i'm sorry you feel that way. unfortunately i don't have the power to do that. you could contact jinya since it's her wiki, or one of the coldfront admins, mag, say. i don't see the need, though. if you wnt to walk away you just can. i'd be sorry to see you go. if you want to start afresh with another wiki identity you can, there's no lik between the two. is the idea of editing on the wiki so unbearable? we always need helpful contributors. why not stay? --Evilkolbot 09:14, 14 July 2011 (CEST)

You're right. I was just having a bad day, wasn't feeling very helpful, and the thing with Bagatelle pushed me over the edge. --Robi207 22:13, 14 July 2011 (CEST)

The name "Evilkolbot"

I think Evilkolbot is one of the funniest account names I've seen on this wiki... and I wonder how the account owner came up with it. --Wrldwzrd89 01:08, 27 August 2011 (CEST)

• why thank you. i was thinking i'd like to write a bot from scratch, and created the account before i had any idea of what it would do. turned out i lacked inspiration. the name's pretty close to my RL name, although i don't remember why i picked it particularly. --Evilkolbot 09:04, 27 August 2011 (CEST)
  • Suggestion, if you ever want to get around to trying that: 1. player makes wiki account, 2. player sends a blue/green message to the bot, 3. bot enables the wiki account. That might reduce the spam issue… or invite the spammers to go through the game, I don’t know. --Xyzzyn 12:11, 13 December 2011 (CET)

Pre-emptive bans

I'm feeling a little uneasy about your new habit of preemptively banning accounts you think are would-be spammers. Feels like thought crime mixed with racial profiling. --Flargen 09:29, 7 October 2011 (CEST)

• as a matter of fact i was going to start a discussion on that very topic. i feel uneasy about them too. problem is that all the spammers need to make money is for the web crawlers to read a page with their link on it once. the longer the link is up the more likely that's going to happen. it's better all round if the spammage doesn't happen at all. i've tried to be as restrained as possible. i haven't banned people just because they have spamtastic names. i wouldn't ban User:eeQ43dyT just because that's "obviously" botted. i didn't ban slotwin even though the name set off alarm bells in my head. (note to self: check all slotwin's edits just in case.) seems we have at least two bots acting relatively in unison, though, or one bot that's programmed to add more than one user at once. i've only been banning pairs or more of users with names in a similar format (recently nameAnameB99) if the users were added in a relatively short space of time. i do still feel guilty, though, even in such obvious cases, especially since there's no way of appealing. beyond the obvious "no punishment without a crime" do you think i have been unfair? is the principal strong enough that it outweighs every other consideration? don't forget that the accounts i'm trying to preempt aren't people. --Evilkolbot 13:58, 7 October 2011 (CEST)
  • For whatever my opinion is worth, I'm on the fence; I wouldn't want to see new editors turned away because their names look kind of spammer-y... but on the other hand, their names look REALLY spammer-y. Maybe put something on the account creation page - "If you are a real person and not a spammer, the first thing you should do is [post "I am a real person" on your user page/write a haiku about fish and mail it to an Admin/clap your hands and wish upon a star] so you don't get preemptively banned. --Johnny Treehugger 16:24, 7 October 2011 (CEST)
  • The banning decisions you've made so far all seem reasonable to me; certainly there's a clustering property to the spambots, and it makes sense to take advantage of that. Still, I've been surprised many times seeing new user names that I thought for sure were going to end up being spambots turning out to be people making constructive edits, and I expect it's statistically inevitable that pre-emptive banning will eventually result in some mistakes. It'd be nice to have some easy recourse for those people that doesn't turn them off editing. Requiring a simple initial declaration/post in the vein that Johnny Treehugger describes above might indeed work: it could be made fun, would be low effort on all sides, and the spambots are likely aimed generically at wikis and unlikely to be tuned to such specific, arbitrary, and trivially changeable requirements (unless they're based on cheap human labour rather than scripts). --Fig bucket 03:09, 8 October 2011 (CEST)
    • A first post feels like something that can be scripted up. A better blocker might be to require a captcha be entered on any user's first edit (or first N edits). --Flargen 03:26, 8 October 2011 (CEST)
• so, three new accounts today. gottiebluntsrus and qwerty7up, probably not spam; cammie88dodson suspicious given the fondness of our spammer for the formulaic. still, just one, though. paired with carnie99lutwidge two minutes later they'd both be banned. benefit of the doubt. hopefuly we've got mod coverage for the weekend.
• any countermeasure we put in place has the effect of annoying the genuine and barely causing the evildoer to break stride. CAPCHAs are easily circumvented using unwitting dupes. requiring subsequent edits is too much work on our part to be unbottable. i think the system at the moment is fine. general tolerance and understanding combined with a one strike rule seem to be working mostly. if no one objects i'll continue to squish the twins and triplets. the universe will continue to work out as it should. --Evilkolbot 18:40, 8 October 2011 (CEST)

candidates

there have been more new user names that follow a pattern but that haven't shown their colours. if they all kick off at once we're in trouble.

• "XX"
  • Fw
  • Kh
  • Eq
  • Zo
  • Nq
  • Ka
  • Ei

--Evilkolbot 13:59, 11 October 2011 (CEST)

• Is there any way to report a page / new account to a wiki admin in order to "flag" any of these spam attempts?
• Have any of the names shown up in a Google search to see if it's a specific culprit?--Erich 07:57, 13 December 2011 (CET)
  • if you think we missed one, then a talk page like this is a good idea. "pages for deletion" (whose exact name always escapes me) would work, too, and there's always plain old "discussion".
  • i did some research (welll, one page) and it seems that it takes the google spiders about four hours to pick up changes to the wiki. so as long as we delete them in that time we're good. i guess it's a scheduling thing, though.
  • as far as identifying who is doing this and getting them to stop goes, well. it costs them nothing and there's a possibility of reward, getting a google boost, so no matter how good or bad we are at catching them it makes no odds. there's no incentive for them to stop.
  • and they're probably the wiki defacing wing of a criminal network that also deals in trafficking and donkey porn. this bit, though, what have they done? broken a terms of service? they're not scared. --Evilkolbot 08:45, 13 December 2011 (CET)
    • for science, i looked at the text posted for once of the recent edits. there were three links on the page. they all point to polish language sites. the second link is for cheap flights and the third for interior design. the first link is for a web massaging company that claims only to bill its customers if they are in the top ten results on google. i wonder what that's about. forgive my language, but that's an asshole business model. i wonder what google will have to say. --Evilkolbot 13:57, 13 December 2011 (CET)

• WDeshawnReynoldsy
• EDeshawnReynoldsx
• CIrisJenseny
• MIrisJensenj

--Erich 02:43, 24 December 2011 (CET)

• StacyuyomkifyfiHallman
• Llucofdxbk
• Grace88bm
• Lyjdculmr

~Erich ^t/_c 19:59, 4 October 2012 (CEST)

• you make a very good point. however, rules is rules. editing of talk for spelling and grammar is strictly forbidden. −--Evilkolbot 21:02, 4 October 2012 (CEST)

false positives

Hmm, we're somewhat lucky that most spambot names stick pointless numbers in the middle, making them easy to identify. I don't feel quite right about blocking "SheesleyLavenia" since it could more easily be a legitimate name. (Unless there is some tell I'm not noticing) --Starwed 20:35, 23 December 2011 (CET)

• i felt uneasy about that one, yes. the lack of numbers means nothing, though. i'm guessing these spammers don't homebrew, and they buy off-the-shelf shit-on-a-wiki software which is endlessly configurable. there's no player of that name. perhaps i was too hasty. should we unblock and see? --Evilkolbot 22:18, 23 December 2011 (CET)
• I made an account about a month ago (Suiken) which was subsequently blocked pretty soon after creation. I looked around, but couldn't find a way to directly contact you to get it unblocked (apparently email access was blocked too?). I feel like making this secondary account just to be able to tell you about a block on account I wanted to use primarily isn't really the proper approach to this, but I wasn't sure as to what options I had at that point. The block info was as follows:

The block was made by Evilkolbot. The reason given is Unacceptable username: see khamul.

Start of block: 06:55, 26 February 2012 Expiry of block: infinite Intended blockee: Suiken You can contact Evilkolbot or another administrator to discuss the block. You cannot use the 'e-mail this user' feature unless a valid e-mail address is specified in your account preferences and you have not been blocked from using it. Your current IP address is 71.59.143.142, and the block ID is #2238. Please include all above details in any queries you make.

I don't really understand why the name "Suiken" would have been unacceptable, or how it's related to this "khamul". I originally wanted to help with some of the spading efforts, though I changed my mind for the time being and decided to focus on building my character in KoL a bit more first. The account never made any edits (to my knowledge) of any pages, so could you unblock it? I didn't really want to make this second account, as I'd rather use the name "Suiken", and I don't really have any intentions of using this account after this message (as I said, I didn't really know what other choices I had to let you know). ----Kizuken

• Unblocked. Sorry about that. --Flargen 08:28, 16 March 2012 (CET)
  • Maybe the block message should give instructions for contacting wiki admins in-game, since any legit user of the wiki would be able to do that. --Club (#66669) (Talk) 18:11, 16 March 2012 (CET)
  • If my inconvenience helps out future legitimate users, I guess it's all good! Thanks though! ----Suiken 01:02, 17 March 2012 (PST)

cv6

What does this mean? --Flargen 22:18, 25 March 2012 (CEST)

• a bot has been creating user accounts which are a random combination of six pairs of consonant vowel. which is tough if your name is hitomi mifune or nicola padilo, but there have been hundreds. since they've not proved themselves spammers i have a feeling we're being used as a testbed for CAPTCHA cracking or just general MEDIAWIKI user creation. am i being too harsh? should i stop blocking them? --Evilkolbot 00:43, 26 March 2012 (CEST)

Answer to spam help request

Hi, at the NetHackWiki, Paxed takes care of the technical side of things. (I'm very thankful.) Maybe you could contact him about anti-spam measures: ask paxed in #nethack on irc.freenode.net. One thing I do know about is a custom form of captcha that requires some elementary in-game knowledge. Good luck fighting the spammers! --Tjr 23:30, 31 May 2012 (CEST)

Technically, we use mw:Extension:QuestyCaptcha to serve NetHack-specific questions. --Tjr 11:24, 1 June 2012 (CEST)

That's what we're using right now; just need to add some more questions. And maybe need to add it to the account creation. --Flargen 11:29, 1 June 2012 (CEST)

so that's something for the coldfront admins. perhaps we should prepare some kol-related questions. they should definitely mention kol explicitly. i play tiles in NetHack so have to look up the answers. i'd prefer it if you could do the same in the wiki, although others may disagree. perhaps the player numbers of people with pages in the main space? and what happened to HotStuff? and it should definitely be on account creation, duh.

--Evilkolbot 13:11, 1 June 2012 (CEST)

Update: The only other automated spammer defences we use at NetHackWiki are some http rate limiting and ip blocking. --Tjr 01:11, 2 June 2012 (CEST)

I still think you should make it so you can't make a new user account for a few days. It'll give you time to fix this without worrying about more of them, and it might throw off the spambot so that it goes elsewhere. ~Erich ^t/_c 18:11, 2 June 2012 (CEST)

• having blocked umpteen accounts today, perhaps that's a good idea. --Evilkolbot 18:15, 2 June 2012 (CEST)

Help

O' most vile and powerful Evilkolbot, the redirects based on the Template:Pvp are not working due to the deletion of the PVP Fights redirect. I have been unsuccessful in editing the template to reflect the new redirect, either due to lack of permission or not enough knowledge (or both). Can you impart some of your wicked and sinful knowledge so that the problem may be fixed? I am more than happy to do the work but I do not want to make it worse through my incompetence. The most lowly and woeful--MageRed 03:51, 3 June 2012 (CEST)

• i wrote a long answer but my handheld ate it. boo. lucky, though, because it was based on a misreading of your question. i'll have a look at the template and see if i can fix it. (strikes me you be being impatient. the template space is notoriously slow to update) --Evilkolbot 13:00, 3 June 2012 (CEST)
  • Could be that I was impatient, most maligned one. When I attempted to change the template and utilize the "show preview" option, the changes to the template code would not be displayed. The lascivious knowledge that you impart above indicates that I should have just saved the page to affect the changes?--MageRed 13:37, 3 June 2012 (CEST)
    1. the changes to templates don't show up until they're saved
    2. sometimes it takes a few minutes after you've saved even
    3. links have to be cased exactly
    4. it's "Extra PvP Fights"
    5. you should never link to a redirect
    6. if your direct link isn't working it's because you're not paying attention
    7. don't ever move a redirect again if you're not an admin, it leaves behind a double redirect link which is bad
    8. that is all. phew. --Evilkolbot 15:54, 3 June 2012 (CEST)
    • Thanks Evilkolbot for the fix. I was really out of my depth trying to understand the template syntax. Yvain 07:12, 9 June 2012 (CEST)

Friend banned for no reason

My friend krazyyo42 was banned by you for having an "unacceptable username". Is there anything wrong in particular with his username that he should have rectified? Thanks --Echeese 03:29, 21 June 2012 (CEST)

• It looks rather like a spambot generated name. And possibly occurred in the midst of several spambot registrations. --Flargen 04:56, 21 June 2012 (CEST)
  • what flargen said. and what i put at the top of this page. i am very sorry. --Evilkolbot 08:57, 21 June 2012 (CEST)
    • It's all cool, just a casualty of war. Though, it's one that can be revived with a push of a button. Thanks for keeping the wiki spam-free --Echeese 18:29, 21 June 2012 (CEST)

html comments

You know the wiki shows html comments when you select to see page diff on a recent update? Just checking. --Club (#66669) (Talk) 21:02, 30 October 2012 (CET)

• i did know that, yes. i havered between leaving it out in the open and leaving it out altogether. too bitter to do either. i apologise for any offence caused. --Evilkolbot 21:50, 30 October 2012 (CET)
  • No skin off my back if you insult people, I just thought it a strange choice. --Club (#66669) (Talk) 03:05, 31 October 2012 (CET)

Spam names

Is there any way to view the recent changes page but filtered so the namespace of "User creation log" doesn't show? The spam names make it so that the recent changes are sometimes difficult to read. ~Erich ^t/_c 16:32, 23 November 2012 (CET)

• i wondered that, yes. there may be a way in mediawiki, i don't know. quietust is your man for that sort of thing. other than that there's greasemonkey or somsuch. about which i know even less. question's out there now. maybe hod or afh could help out, idk. --Evilkolbot 18:12, 23 November 2012 (CET)

Images to be moved

• top.gif - otherimages/faq - otherimages/mclargehuge

I suggest moving it to here

• vmachine.gif - otherimages/da - otherimages

I don't know what to move it to, but as I have seen, conflicting names require all images to be moved, so that the page may link to it right. — Cool12309 (talk) 03:27, 2 February 2013 (CET)