User talk:Farred

Welcome to the flip side. :D - Jarogers2001 22:46, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Happy to be here. Thanks. --Farred 16:55, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

I want to get a link to Mike Combs' space settlement FAQ to work, so I will try it here.

Well, I tried it. It did not work. I removed it. --Farred 04:56, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

How about that one: Space settlement - What is there to mine on the moon?? -- Rfc 19:29, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I tried the new link put in by Spriditis. It works fine. It seems to me that links have a tendency to go bad with time. I think the link that I put in worked when I wrote it. --Farred 00:20, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I used wiki tags url_title - [http://url_path url_title], You used just url.. maybe that was the case. -- Spriditis 15:01, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks --Farred 18:48, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

SPAM

Hi! I help Strangelv on Lunarpedia, and we've developed some tools and methods to help us deal with spam.

One thing that we do is set the "reason" for deleting a spam page to just "spam." If the original text of the spam remains in any form, it's possible that the spammer will get paid for it and come back and bring his spammer buds along.

I believe Strangelv has installed his WHUMP tool here, which will auto-delete spam on new pages and block the creator. We'll be tweaking the lists of words, since WHUMP was originally created for lpedia, a political wiki, but I'm sure it will help us keep the spam under control here. Please do tell us common "spam indicator" words that you see in the spam you delete.

Miros1 16:49, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

I am happy to see anyone fight the spammers. When I delete a spam page there is automatically a string of text that shows up in the recent changes as the first few bytes of text as part of the reason for deleting the page. This string is only in recent changes and is only available as long as the recent changes is available. Do you want me to erase this string too? I do not delete according to a particular set of words. I check if the posting has a link advertising something that is not Mars or if the text advertises something that is not Mars. In a few of the cases a connection to Mars could have been made if the user had any interest in Mars, but since the user is just a computer program, there is no effort to refer to colonizing Mars. The post is spam and it's history. If I do notice good spam indicator words, I'll let you know. Thanks for being part of the good effort. - Farred 20:53, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

I wonder how many legitimate articles are uncategorized -- on LPedia (not connected to Marspedia, Lunarpedia et al. -- it's a political party wiki) that's been the most reliable source for identifying garbage articles as Brian Holtz categorized the last remaining uncategorized pages in the main namespace. Let me wake up enough to start collecting lists of articles to delete and feed into WHUMP. Ideally I'd like to delete the party that posted them originally, but I may chicken out and just have it delete the articles. As WHUMP is flagged as a bot, its activities are hidden by default. Click on 'Show Bots' on Recent Changes to see if it's done anything recently. -- Strangelv 22:14, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Done; just a blanket delete with no effort to hunt down and ban the original author -- after al[l, at least one of those might have started legitimately. Moving on to uncategorized pages. The situation here is a lot less bad than I'd assumed from the plea for help. Well, except for the classified as an attack page bit.

I'm having trouble getting WHUMP's actions to show up in RecentChanges even with Show Bots selected though. Wait, going back to default and then pressing show bots it works. -- Strangelv 22:47, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Have we run out of targets on Marspedia already? It may be time to move on to Exodictionary -- it's been getting slowly pummeled for awhile, although it may not be a large percentage as it has more articles than the rest of our wikis put together -- at least until I get Autostub1 working and crank out about 10,000 articles for Lunarpedia... -- Strangelv 00:23, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Congratulations, Strangelv, on getting WHUMP to work. I count 122 title only articles deleted. I did not hear about Marspedia being described as having an attack page. What is the trouble with an attack page? - Farred 09:49, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

There are two sorts of SPAM:
1. Manually inserted text, which seems not so frequent.
2. New user accounts, obviously created by bot. Also, some exchange of whole paragraphs, probably carried out by bot. So, we need a better captcha to block the bots. Are you in contact with Dana Carson or Mike Delaney, who should be authorized to modify the wikimedia software? Strangelv may be in close contact with them. See also User talk:rfc#captcha code. -- Rfc 20:40, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, I have been in contact with James Gholston and some others about the spam situation. I think people are doing as much as seems reasonable with captcha and automated spam removal. The spammers just seem to have some way of getting around the captcha with little effort. It may involve a work at home scam by which they con numerous poor people into doing their spamming. - Farred 21:40, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

InoCont

Dear Farred! Thank you for your participation in the development of the concept of "InoCont" and the editorial work you are doing in this area.

As you know, the international scientific and creative program "Another Contin(g)ent» (www.inocont.net) is developing nearly 4 years, and our aims are to unite creative people of all countries to search for a vector of future discoveries and achievements in all spheres of activity both in space and on Earth. This is - a call for co-organizing an international experiment in the creation and testing of complex models of life and infrastructure of autonomous planetary settlements (APS).

Extended abstract concepts in the English language is available on the Marspedia (http://www.marspedia.org/index.php?title=Another_Contin%28g%29ent_Concept ).

Most likely, you will see that our initiative is still evolving without external funding, receives no government support and investment, and relies solely on personal savings and the enthusiasm of volunteers.

We all believe that in an increasingly globalizing world, experiential understanding of the phenomenon of autonomy is necessary for regeneration of new socially significant meanings. This will not only introduce new ideas to solve the problem of initial survival, but also will open up innovative approaches in the development.

The "InoСont" Program relies on the principle of "from the complex – to a simple", which means the union of all the inhabitants of Earth in search of solutions for large-scale social settlements on the Moon, Mars and other objects in the solar system. It is able to rethink the problems of life on Earth and to strengthen the fundamental-project basis for innovative development.

For this paradoxal purpose we develop a unique methodology for forecasting design (FutureDesign) of socio-technological imperatives of development, which will focus on intermediate contests. The first one is planned under the title "UniCont" under the "Cultural Universiade-2013" during the XXVII Summer World Student Games in Kazan, Russia.

We believe that the development of the niche free competition will be extremely attractive to investors today. The Program provides competitive to attract investments for the implementation of the startups.

Development of information and the methodological basis of the experiment will focus on network semantic design, business-project games, musical improvization, simulations in virtual worlds and the creation of full-scale APS’ prototype architectural and engineering controls, etc. The achievement of high-level design specifications (and this is - more than half of the success of any innovation) will contribute to broad interdisciplinary projects and their testing in difficult climatic conditions of the Arctic, underwater, underground and other extreme environments.

Example of APS can become a good practice, working on a team project based on your scientific and cultural interests: that is suitable for extreme conditions, will be effective for milder conditions of the Earth.

All this requires special support from society and business, liders of culture, high-quality new partners.

Please help the program "InoСont" by your tremendous experience and recommendations, well-aimed advice to colleagues and students.

I would be happy personal acquaintance with you and fruitful cooperation.

I wish you good health and all good things of life

Nazym F. Sayfullin, Chairman of the "Planetonautics" Section, Moscow Society of Naturalists (founded in 1805)

Welcome to Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/groups/inocont/

--PPark 10:09, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

To Nazym F. Sayfullin:

My efforts with the [[Another Contin(g)ent Concept]] article were not undertaken on behalf of InoCont. It is my duty and my privilege as a guest administrator on Marspedia too serve the interest of Marspedia, which is the interest of THE MARS SOCIETY. I see no evidence that InoCont is a legal person capable of owning copyrights. I see no indication that Inocont is anything more than the creation of Nazym F. Sayfullin or PPark. The quality of the material posted by PPark does not suggest scholarly effort. It seems that the intent of Marspedia has been to give contributors a chance to bring their work up to a quality that reflects well upon Marspedia. So I have been trying to improve [[Another Contin(g)ent Concept]] in hope that you get the idea that unfamiliarity with the English language is not an excuse for posting extensive amounts rambling disjointed prose on Marspedia. Claims of official positions with societies do not merit any special consideration on Marspedia unless they can be substantiated by officials of THE MARS SOCIETY. So far I have not had any indication that THE MARS SOCIETY has any interest in promoting InoCont or its program. - Farred 19:43, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Contribution copyright status

You've made contributions to Marspedia between 1 January and 20 June 2012, a period where there is a problem with the rules for the main namespace, specifically Another Contin(g)ent Concept, Coronal Mass Ejections, and Foundation of an Autonomous Colony. Do you officially allow your contributions to be released to the public domain? ...And by any chance are you the one who contributed anonymously to Autonomous planetary settlement from 174.31.99.237? Otherwise we may need to revert those helpful edits.-- Strangelv 02:17, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

I officially allow my contributions to Marspedia to be released to public domain. It seems likely that the contribution from 174.31.99.237 was mine also, but I have no control over the IP addresses that are assigned to me, and I have kept no record. I just reverted that contribution and replaced it with one listed to my Marspedia name. I hope this is helpful. I can make further clean-up edits to [[Autonomous planetary settlement]] if I find the time. - Farred 22:47, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

To do

The edit by user:123.115.107.183 on the 16th of July to the Talk:Discussion page related Cnc (computer numerical control) machining to considerations for Earthly use, but CNC machining would be a good compliment to forging on Mars too. It is possible that this IP address editor was making a good faith effort to contribute to the discussion of Mars colonization, but the edit was not in the proper place to be appreciated. I hope to add something about CNC machining when I can do it well and in the proper place. It is somewhat related to Colonization strategy. I have got Talk:Teraforming and other things to consider. Too much to do. - Farred 21:38, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Something Rose and I noticed a month or so ago was that some of the article-damaging attacks were using an AI that made text that read very much like it was on topic. The only way it was unambigous that it wasn't an attempt at a legitimate contribution was because it was deleting pre-existing content a section at a time, consistent with a common attack strategy.

Fortunately, the main attackers singling out Marspedia are running low on non-blocked IP addresses. At least the ones who aren't creating garbage accounts and little else...

--Strangelv 01:47, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

fix [[Outgassing]] definition; review [[Economic Systems and their Relation to a Mars Colony]] - Farred 01:08, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Deletion reasons:

• unused file form unknown source with unknown copyright status

• unused non-English file with unknown copyright status

- Farred 19:42, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Technical Difficulties

What exactly goes wrong when you edit and what do I need to do to duplicate the problem on my end? -- 173.74.208.113 06:05, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

I suppose messaging might work better if I'd remember to log in first, which reminds me of another problem I've been baffled by: why WHUMP is no longer able to log into here. I get this error message:

the high score is 670
Starting check for site http://marspedia.org
Logging In
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/[SNIP path]/WHUMP_M814_1247_marsp.py", line 192, in <module>
    BR.select_form(name="userlogin")
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/mechanize/_mechanize.py", line 530, in select_form
    raise FormNotFoundError("no form matching "+description)
mechanize._mechanize.FormNotFoundError: no form matching name 'userlogin'

...And I've been unable to figure out why. It was working before and only breaks for this wiki out of the five I'm presently running or trying to run WHUMP on.

Okay, I just hit preview and fot a page full of hyperlinks that are definitely not wanted. The background graphics were intact, and I belivee the text was over the graphics. Is this the problem you're running into? I'm still not sure how it could be caused. ...unless this is something in addition to what you're running into and it's happened since the last time I looked...

Interestingly, Firefox's built in spell checker isn't working right now as I type this.

There it goes again. First the links, then the template, and the links are under the graphics and a few DIVs that are part of the template.

hmm.

-- Strangelv 06:17, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

WHUMP's last ban here was 7 August, which may correspond to the problem unless it corresponds to my disk trouble that took my workstation offline for 2-3 weeks (doesn't look like it). When did the page full of garge links problem start? -- Strangelv 06:36, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

I've replaced the main directory's non-data php files with a set copied from exodictionary and am attempting to reproduce the problem. I'm not succeeding. Maybe this has been going on longer than I suspected?

Bonus: WHUMP is now able to log in again! -- so if the problem has been around since at least May (going by the date stamps on the files before I overwrote them, which is the date the attack I knew about was removed), why did it not become a problem for WHUMP until August? -- Strangelv 07:01, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

From your message it seems that you have found the problem that I mentioned on your talk page at Lunarpedia on the 17th of August. The symptoms you describe are consistent with what I see, but I do not notice the problems with WHUMP or Firefox because I do not run these programs. A possibility that I can guess at for staged symptoms is that at one point an attacker got access to the system and later by using that access found a place to make alterations that caused present symptoms. That is as close as I can come to being helpful. I no nothing in particular about programming wikis or setting them up. Good luck. - Farred 10:10, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

I hope the problem is fixed now. I did not see the spam links filling the screen when I edited my talk page last. - Farred 10:16, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

On the Recent Changes page click on the Show Bots link to see what WHUMP has been up to lately. 8) -- Strangelv 11:48, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Good work! - Farred 20:20, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

whoops

Yes, I agree that anonymous people should not be allowed to crap up Marspedia. If we force them to create an account, that discourages a lot of spam right there. If they actually create an account and log in, it's far easier to get rid of all their crap; JamesG has a script to help mechanize spam removal. Miros1 20:21, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

more SPAM

Yes, I agree that anonymous people should not be allowed to crap up Marspedia. If we force them to create an account, that discourages a lot of spam right there. If they actually create an account and log in, it's far easier to get rid of all their crap; JamesG has a script to help mechanize spam removal. Miros1 19:51, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

I have to disagree: the anonymous attacks expose their IP addresses and we can deal with them for however long we need to (180 days almost always works): they run out of IP addresses and can't attack anymore until they get new ones -- and then those get banned for 180 days too. When they create accounts they're protected: they can create new accounts continuously, and the longest the IP gets blocked is 24 hours. Give me anonymous IP attacks any day. It's the account-creating attacks that are a problem. If we want to get desperate, blocking account creation would go a lot further towards bringing the situation under control. The WHUMP script is running as I type and has been for quite awhile. I haven't thought of an algorithm for detecting damaging attacks to existing articles (so WHEMP automatically ignores such attacks), but I believe the Bad Behavior extension can help deal with those if we install it. -- Strangelv 20:21, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

I replied on Miros1's talk page before seeing Strangelv's comment too. As to blocking IP addresses, I am not sure it does any good. I have checked for deleted contributions from IPs when removing their SPAM and only a couple of times have I found any. In those cases I blocked the IP. It may be that there is some other way of spoofing the system to give multiple IP addresses to one user than using a bot-net; or there may be so many zombie addresses available that the spammer never needs to use one twice. I am certain that I have never seen an over 180 day old deleted contribution listed to an IP. I will mention here too that I suspect a virus in my e-mail account. So I will try not to pass it along as we do what we can. - Farred 22:21, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Now I see that undone contributions do not show up as deleted contributions on Marspedia like they do on Wikipedia. That makes things different than I suspected. I will start blocking IP address spammers more. Changing deleted contributions to include undone contributions might be more trouble than it is worth. - Farred 22:44, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Featured article

How do you think about this proposal? Problem is, I do not have permission to do it myself. -- Rfc 18:50, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Whatever article you think would be good as a featured article is likely to be an improvement over leaving the same featured article for years. I have no experience in changing featured articles. I was just given administrator powers when there was a rash of vandalism to the wiki so I could help with that, but I have little technical knowledge about how a wiki is managed. People who disagree with your choice have every opportunity to voice there opinions. I have seen no objections to your proposal so far. - Farred 16:01, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

All you need is to edit Template:Featured article. You may just copy parts of the selected article into there, and that is that. I have not the permission to do it, that is why I am asking you. -- Rfc 21:07, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

I have created a draft here. Could you please have a look and, may be after some enhancement or not, put it in there in order to make it appear on the main page? Thanks.

One more thing: Sorry for writing onto you user's page. I am going to move all the discussion stuff to your talk page, and I hope this is okay with you. -- Rfc 14:50, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for moving the talk to my talk page. I was thinking I would get around to it sooner or later. I did see your edit on my user page and on [[Talk:Equipment for autonomous growth]] earlier but was still considering how to respond when I had the time. You have made it so easy for me now that I will first edit the featured article template and see what happens, second get back to autonomous growth later. - Farred 21:34, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Sorry

Note to self: never again edit Marspedia just because you think the medicine has worn off. I really messed that semimajor axis article up. Sorry. ChristiaanK 04:05, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

user Rfc is blocked

Is blocking a proper mitigation for the massive bot attacks? We had better enhance the captcha, because our captcha works really poor. Obviously, the bots have no problem in dealing with our captcha. -- Rfc

I recently finished 142 actions of blocking, deleting, and undoing the actions of spammers and vandals. I spent two hours and one minute doing that. I also unblocked Rfc. User:Strangelv, our local bureaucrat, changed the new account requirements at Lunarpedia to require requesting an account to get one. That helped. I suppose he could do the same for Marspedia. I will ask. - Farred 07:07, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

What was done to reduce spam at Lunarpedia does not seem appropriate for Marspedia. If Whump just keeps working as planned, it is not too much trouble. - Farred 00:06, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Whump blocked you 22 minutes after you last recorded edit. I see nothing in that edit that should have attracted Whump's notice. Whump does not seem to have been doing it's standard job since then either. Perhaps it was altered. Something should be fixed. - Farred 07:35, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! You are doing a great job here! -- Rfc 09:37, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

New User

Pete9804 has started making edits. - Farred 22:24, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Motivation

See Motivation NASA reference, Why Mars?. - Farred 00:13, 23 November 2013 (UTC)