MediaWiki talk:Titleblacklist

The following instructions were copied from mw:Extension:Title Blacklist.

The disallowed titles list is maintained as a system message MediaWiki:Titleblacklist.

This page consists of regular expressions, each on a separate line. For example:

Foo <autoconfirmed|noedit|errmsg=blacklisted-testpage> 
Bar #No one should create article about it

There is no need to use "^" at the beginning and "$" at the end; these are added automatically.

Each entry may also contain optional attributes, enclosed in <> and divided by |

• autoconfirmed — only non-autoconfirmed users are unable to create/upload/move such pages
• noedit — users are also unable to edit this page
• casesensitive — don't ignore case when checking title for being disallowed
• errmsg — the name of the message that should be displayed instead of standard

When the action is blocked, one of the following messages is displayed together with the filter row (as $1): titleblacklist-forbidden-edit, titleblacklist-forbidden-move, titleblacklist-forbidden-new-account or titleblacklist-forbidden-upload. Generic filenames have their own custom error message, MediaWiki:Titleblacklist-custom-imagename.

There is also MediaWiki:Titlewhitelist and a global title blacklist.

Only administrators, page movers and template editors can override this list on all actions. When they override this list when creating or editing a page, MediaWiki:Titleblacklist-warning is displayed. Account creators can override this list on account creations only.

The disallowed usernames list is handled at meta:Title blacklist by adding entries with the <newaccountonly> parameter.

Edit request May 2023

Please blacklist:

• "Object show"
• "Inanimate Insanity"

WP:COATRACK for WP:BFDI, already blacklisted. Thanks 118.149.80.96 (talk) 22:30, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

 Not done it isn't clear what you want done. Please provide the exact text of the change you would like to make, as if you could edit the page yourself. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:51, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

These terms are closely related to the YouTube series Battle For Dream Island (BFDI), which are a salted topic due to repeated re-creation. Inanimate Insanity is a BFDI spin-off, and BFDI-esque content are called "object shows", which is not a notable concept. Ca ^{talk to me!} 06:21, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

Filename blacklist

Hello, I am new to writing Wikipedia pages but I am not completely sure that this it the right page. I attempted to upload an image of the boyflux flag, which was named "boyflux.png" I was trying to upload this in my sandbox, however I just ended up with this message instead: "The file name you were trying to upload has been blacklisted because it is very common, uninformative, or spelled in ALLCAPS. Please go back and choose a better file name. When uploading files to Wikimedia Commons, please use a file name that describes the content of the image or media file you're uploading and is sufficiently distinctive that no-one else is likely to pick the same name by accident." I tried to change it's name to "boyfluxgenderidentity.png" but got the same message. I also do understand that I do have a past of vandalism however I've stopped doing that to wikipedia pages, and now will only edit them if I see errors, or would like to cite sources that are missing from them. Mrsimonst9969666 (talk) 18:08, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

It might be a bug, I could try to upload it if it doesn't work on your side. Which boyflux flag do you want? (There are a bunch of them, I guess probably this one? I'll have to check the license to see if it can be uploaded but I think it should) Chaotic Enby (talk) 07:00, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

It would not meet the threshold of creativity to be copyrighted so its in the public domain. :3 F4U (they/it) 02:28, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

@Mrsimonst9969666: This would be an issue with the commons:MediaWiki:Titleblacklist, not with ours, although at a glance I'm not seeing anything in their blacklist that would cause this issue. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 07:09, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

I have same issue. I have same issue, even when i am trying to upload modified image with same filename it had before! Urmo123 (talk) 09:33, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 22 July 2023

Add the .webp file extension to # Prevent accidental creation of files with double extensions or unconventional spacing Jonteemil (talk) 19:42, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

@Izno: Would you be able to add it? Jonteemil (talk) 00:14, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

 Done Izno (talk) 00:49, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Request salting en:Category:Honorary citizens

Per Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2023 August 1#Category:Honorary citizens. Long story short: categories about honorary citizens have been created and deleted and created again and deleted again etc. since 2007, while there is a very strong consensus that these categories are en:WP:NONDEFINING and en:WP:OCAWARD. I think salting it would save Wikipedians a lot of time and energy in the future instead of having to track this down and rehash the same deletion discussions over and over we've been having for over 16 years, but always ended with the same result: deletion. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 08:42, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

For the record, I directed Nederlandse Leeuw here in the closing statement for the linked discussion, on the grounds that they had requested salting but ordinary salting wouldn't work since the problem wasn't the same page being recreated but different pages with similar titles being recreated. The entry to add would be Category:.*honorary citizens.*, preferable with a custom error message explaining the problem, but I'm undecided as to whether it is actually necessary and would prefer an admin other than me make that call. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 21:27, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

List of previous deletions here. I widened the pattern to /^Category:.*honorary.*citizen.*/, which finds 8 more deletions among 7 titles. There's also three currently-existing categories - Honorary citizenship, Lists of honorary citizens, and Lists of honorary citizens by city - but that's not much of an issue in this namespace. —Cryptic 22:31, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

@Pppery @Cryptic Do either of you want to add these? Izno (talk) 22:32, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

Probably if this remains unanswered for long enough I will eventually do it, but as I said above it was my preference for someone else to make the decision. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 00:04, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

I don't work with categories enough to be able to make a competent decision either way. —Cryptic 01:03, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

So over a month after the initial request nobody cares -  Done * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 01:19, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Salt Zepotha-related pages

I'll preface this by saying that I don't know if this, WP:EFR, or nowhere is the most appropriate venue for this. There appears to have been a recent TikTok trend involving a fictional 1980s horror movie named Zepotha. I am not entirely sure of the story behind it, but it seems like a user publicized the idea of spreading this nonexistent movie to promote their music. Since then, many IPs, new accounts, and in one case I have seen, an autoconfirmed account have created and edited hoax drafts (and userpages/project pages/mainspace articles). By my count, pages have been G3'd (or similar) at least 13 times in the past 24 hours. See Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Zepotha for some examples, but there are several more.

Given the fairly consistent disruption recently, this might be a candidate for title blacklisting. I am assuming the trend will be relatively short-lived (although who knows). A few of the pages have been salted, but obviously that is not an great option since people just keep creating differently titled pages. Blocks are also not an option since the disruption is distributed across multiple accounts and IPs who, for the most part, don't seem to be socks.

Note that if someone does go ahead with this, there have been some cases of (probably intentional) misspellings like Draft:Zapotha, so that might need to be accounted for to try to mitigate circumvention. —⁠PlanetJuice (talk • contribs) 16:58, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

All of the pages the accounts on that SPI page have edited are in the list given by Liz on the SPI (and B3251 in the MFD; the lists are the same), except for Draft:Zepotha 3, User:Asoterria, and draft talk pages. None of the accounts have any live edits. List of existing and deleted pages (and deletion logs) matching /.*z[ae]potha.*/i, which includes everything in the SPI/MFD lists, the pair of Zepotha 3 pages, the Zapotha page, and a bunch more (but neither the user page nor Zephota, which was moved by its creator to Zepotha), is at quarry:query/75837.

This isn't yet at the point where it would normally merit a title blacklisting, unless there's more pages/accounts I don't know about, but does look like it might get there pretty quickly. In particular, the currently-existing Draft:Zepotha seems perfectly reasonable as a draft, even though it wouldn't survive in mainspace with the sourcing it has. Since all the deletions happened on the 12th and 13th, I'm inclined to wait and see how persistent this is. —Cryptic 02:25, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

This is probably unnecessary now and in hindsight was perhaps a bit premature. Disruption seems to have slowed down and moved to userpages and Draft:Zepotha, which now has ECP for the time being. Thanks for the advice. —⁠PlanetJuice (talk • contribs) 01:50, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Declining the edit request for the time being. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:29, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

Overly broad new entry

A recently added entry regarding NCircle Entertainment, a non-notable home video distributor, is overly broad — as currently written, it covers any word containing the letter n or N that precedes the word circle, e.g. Netcong Circle. I'd suggest changing the entry to .*N[\s-]?[Cc]ircle.* <casesensitive> to prevent only new articles about NCircle. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 05:15, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

I agree (and should have looked at the diff instead of just the edit summary on my watchlist). Full list of matches here. I'll edit as soon as I have results for your pattern. —Cryptic 05:37, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

OK, done. Results for your pattern here. @Ivanvector: - any problematic titles not in that list? I don't see any in your deletion logs, but I certainly haven't gone through all 7000-and-some entries in the first query. —Cryptic 05:47, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

Thank you both for checking my sloppy work. I do try to test against edge cases and possible false positives but of course I can't think of everything, and this is a bit of a tough case on top of all that. Nothing problematic that I can see not being captured by your refined query, but it also doesn't need to catch entries for "NCircle Network Security" which seems to be a distinct topic, and "ncircle" on its own is fine. I had tried adding .*[E|e]ntertainment.* but then it seemed overly specific. The entry was meant to catch a UPE case that was repeatedly recreating NCircle Entertainment as well as multiple drafts and userspace pages with the same title (sometimes with a numeral in parenthesis, like how Windows renames duplicate files), so salting was not going to go far enough. Please adjust as you see fit, or if this can't be refined enough to be useful then I'll try salting some of the pages instead. Thanks again. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 14:45, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm not concerned about the NCircle Security false positives, since they're all deleted and all long ago; and the most recent NCircle was related to the Entertainment company. Somewhat more bothered by it catching File:TKTNcircle.jpg and similar (despite that being even older); I might have tried something like .*\bn\W*circle.* (case-insensitive again) if I was blacklisting this de novo, but it wasn't worth bikeshedding LaundryPizza03's version while we were still blacklisting so many false positives. —Cryptic 15:38, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

Zero-width joiner

I would suggest adding:

.*(?=.*[A-Za-z])(?=.*[\x{200C}\x{200D}]).* # Zero-width (non)joiner with Latin letter

Or, equivalently, if for some reason lookahead (?= ) doesn't work:

.*[A-Za-z].*[\x{200C}\x{200D}].*

.*[\x{200C}\x{200D}].*[A-Za-z].*

The characters zero-width non-joiner (200C ~ %E2%80%8C) and zero-width joiner (200D ~ %E2%80%8D) are generally invisible, which is potentially problematic. For example, recently Giancarlo DiTrapano was at Giancarlo DiTrapano‍ (Giancarlo DiTrapano%E2%80%8D).

However, these two characters have legitimate use in redirects from emojis and words in non-Latin scripts, including these redirects that have one or the other, which is why I am limiting this to titles that also have Latin letters. SilverLocust 💬 07:44, 26 August 2023 (UTC); revised 05:48, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Remove Entry

For some reason WikipediaDoesNotAllowSnakeCase is not allowed as a username. 73.69.254.249 (talk) 17:40, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

The local title blacklist has no impact on what usernames are allowed. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 04:18, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 22 September 2023

Add the <antispoof> attribute to .*[D|d]om.*[P|p]ewee.* as per the recent creation of DDP DJ Dominic Pewe€ (DJ D P) this page via a sockpuppet. Deauthorized. ^(talk) 03:13, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

 Done * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 18:05, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 23 October 2023

Please remove (?!(?:Talk:|(?:User|Wikipedia|File|MediaWiki|Template|Help|Category|Portal|Draft|TimedText|Module) talk:)).*\/Print <noedit|errmsg=titleblacklist-custom-print> from the title blacklist.

It has been ten years since the potential security problems were discovered, and they ought to have been fixed by now. Also, certain non-print templates are also locked such as Template:HD/print. Book namespace was disabled and the default MediaWiki print service were disabled for security reasons. Awesome Aasim 23:49, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Also delete MediaWiki:Titleblacklist-custom-print per G8 after removal. Awesome Aasim 23:50, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Pinged TheDJ and Davidgothberg here to see if the security issues have been, in fact, fixed. In particular, while the book creator is inactive now the download-as-PDF function is still active - does it rely on /Print subpages? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:41, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

This should be no problem to remove. The /print functionality was removed quite some time ago and is not going to return. And even before it was removed, I'm pretty sure this issue had been fixed already for a while. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:51, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. OK, this is done then, as well as the corresponding rule on the titlewhitelist. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:59, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Edit request 11 November 2023

Description of suggested change: the .*sssniperwolf.* entry doesn't seem to serve a purpose anymore because SSSniperWolf. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 22:03, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Edit request 22 November 2023

Description of suggested change: Could you please add the terms "super mario wiki" and "mariowiki" to the blacklist? There's been multiple attempts to get an article about the fan-run Super Mario wiki, despite not being notable (See Special:Diff/1186343919). — Davest3r08 >:) ^(talk) 16:02, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Oppose @Davest3r08, this is only one user? The blacklist does not exist to prevent one user from doing something. That's what WP:ANI is for. Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1142#Possible ultra? seems to have handled this. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 08:36, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

(Non-administrator comment) Definitely only a handful of pages, no proof this can't be handled using normal WP:SALT. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 09:53, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Noting here that the deletion discussion Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Super Mario Wiki has been closed as delete and the page Super Mario Wiki has been salted. No evidence yet that there will be attempts to circumvent the salting, so oppose. Nothing needs to be done here, but I'll wait for an admin to close this. (Non-administrator comment) Liu1126 (talk) 10:36, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

 Not done * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 01:36, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Blacklist annamalai

(Sorry everyone, my first request here, don't know how the system works; hope this informal approach will suffice.)

I'm requesting blacklisting of the string *annamalai*, either alone or in any combination with any other character(s), to prevent new page creation in the main and draft spaces.

Please see this ANI discussion: Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#K._Annamalai_et_al. Countless drafts and articles have been created, and in all probability will continue to be created, for a politician described in eg. this draft Draft:K. Annamalai (politician), using never-ending variations of the title. Please help plug this time-sink.

Thank you, --DoubleGrazing (talk) 11:31, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Just .*annamalai.* is far too broad - current title hits in mainspace, plus it's a common surname. \bannamalai\b.*k|k.*\bannamalai\b from quarry:query/77802 isn't good enough either; still too many false positives and negatives. Maybe annamalai.*(\bk\b|kuppu)|(\bk\b|kuppu).*annamalai. And as I mentioned at ANI, it should exclude at least the talk: and wikipedia: namespaces. Maybe draft/draft talk: as well, or we could bless one of the existing drafts (there are currently at least three) and forbid any others. —Cryptic 12:42, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks @Cryptic (and sorry, I meant to go back to ANI to say I'd opened this, but got sidetracked). As these editors have shown already, they are perfectly willing to spell the name differently, swap last and first name around, abbreviate either name with or without punctuation, etc. I've lost count of how many variations I've seen, and IIRC the only constant throughout has been 'annamalai'. I get that we can't create too general a block, if it then does more harm than good, but a narrow one just won't have the desired effect, I don't think.

I take it the rule will only consider the title, or can it made to peek into the draft/article contents also? As in, if the title has 'annamalai' and the contents include, say, this person's year of birth or name of their party, only then it would get blocked. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 13:27, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

It can't look at the contents. The edit filter could, but that's much less efficient, has a greater chance of catastrophic false positives, is a much worse editing experience (it won't kick in until after someone writes up an article and tries to save it, instead of preventing creation in the first place), and it shouldn't be necessary in the first place. If we're still getting unnacceptable false positives after refining the regex all we can, we could add a custom error message; but I don't think that'll be necessary either. quarry:query/78646 will have matches on my pattern above in a few minutes, though this method can't be used to test namespace exclusions. —Cryptic 13:38, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

(?!(wikipedia( talk)?:|talk:)).*(annamalai.*(\bk\b|kuppu)|(\bk\b|kuppu).*annamalai).*    # Special:Permalink/1189541550#K. Annamalai et al, Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2023 November 2#Annamalai Kuppusamy, quarry:query/78646

Edit request because I'm involved here. Omission of .* at the start is deliberate. Replace the start with (?!((draft|wikipedia)( talk)?:|talk:)) to allow draft: and draft talk: as well, though that's not my preference. —Cryptic 13:58, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

 Done * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 01:10, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 3 January 2024

Should we auto semi-protect Deaths in ... pages because of vandalism by IPs during the New Year's Eve, when it's not protected?

Deaths in 20\d{2,3} <noedit|errmsg=titleblacklist-custom-deathpages|autoconfirmed>

Just a random Wikipedian^(talk) 13:50, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

 Not done We would need a much broader discussion before applying pre-emptive protection. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 17:48, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Edit request (January 2024)

I request to make an image that is a screenshot of Hobartville from Google Maps, as it says the page needs more images on the Community portal. I want to do this to become more experienced and trusted as an editor. Oo-rah! the marines are here (talk) 17:47, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

 Not done Badly misplaced and malformed. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 19:18, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Fix for the "nine consecutive capital letters" entry in userspace

Description of suggested change: I'm not sure exactly how this would be done, but could someone edit this to make it so that the filter .*\p{Lu}(\P{L}*\p{Lu}){9}.* <casesensitive | moveonly> # Disallows moves with more than nine consecutive capital letters allows moves in userspace that include someone's username if it matches that filter? I can't move my user subpages anywhere because I (foolishly) chose a username with all capital letters. LOOKSQUARE (👤️·🗨️) talk 21:35, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

I am disinclined to modify sitewide rules to accommodate your admittedly foolish username choice. Consider changing your username. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 15:47, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

@LOOKSQUARE: If there aren't too many pages that you want moved, you can ping me of which ones that would be, and I'll move them. SilverLocust 💬 22:39, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

 Not done you may file an edit request on the page you want to move asking it to be moved. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:17, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

WP:RM/TR#Uncontroversial technical requests would be the more usual place to request a Titleblacklist override. SilverLocust 💬 23:52, 16 January 2024 (UTC)