This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:STiki. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Hey there, I was hoping I'd be able to get permission to use STiki. I don't have 1000 edits yet or Rollback rights yet, but am ONLY interested in helping to stop vandalism on Wikipedia, so it will be difficult for me to meet either of those requirements without the help of a tool like STiki. ThadeusOfNazereth (talk) 19:08, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
@L293D: So it's specifically saying that I need permission to use from a current STiki user since I do not have 1,000 edits as of yet. The article for STiki confirms this. ThadeusOfNazereth (talk) 23:57, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
@ThadeusOfNazereth: Given STiki's dwindling user base, I am tempted to approve this. But for the sake of consistency, I have to point you over to WP:CVUA after which I will speedily approve. Just 120 live edits and 49 in the past year is a bit below threshold. West.andrew.g (talk) 14:21, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
@ThadeusOfNazereth:Also, a good way to revert a lot of vandalism and gain a lot of edits is by enabling Twinkle in your preferences. Before I got rollback privileges so that I could use Huggle, I would go to the recent changes and activate the following filters: Likely have problems, likely bad faith, human (not bot), page edits, page creations, and logged actions. About 2/3 of the edits with these filters were vandalism, and with Twinkle enabled, I could quickly rollback the ones that were outright vandalism (using Rollback Vandal), and leave an edit summary for the ones that were unconstructive but still good faith (using the middle Rollback button). There is actually a lot you can do without having STiki or Huggle.--SkyGazer 512talk / contributions / subpages15:37, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Sorry, I just realized that you have, in fact, enabled Twinkle. However, the part about the recent changes filters still applies and can be very helpful when reverting vandalism, especially because you have Twinkle enabled.--SkyGazer 512talk / contributions / subpages17:21, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
@Centibyte: Very cool. Can you create a page with the barnstar "code" so it can be used with the "subst" template command, consistent with the style of many other barnstars? With this, I will post/store it alongside the other STiki promotional materials. West.andrew.g (talk) 23:19, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
May I have permission to use this software? I would like to fight vandalism but do not have 1,000 edits yet nor the rollback right. KingAndGod16:05, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
@KingAndGod: Purely by the numbers I'm inclined to decline this request: A very new account, with less than 200 edits, that hasn't really dabbled much in the anti-vandalism space. That said, the user is demonstrating the traits of a very experienced editor in terms of playing in the AfD realm, using alternative namespaces, etc. -- suggesting they aren't so new to this. Do you have an alternative account? Or one on a foreign language or alternative wiki? I'm searching for hard evidence here that will confirm my intuition that an approval might be appropriate. Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 23:30, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
Hi, I'd like to ask @West.andrew.g: or anyone who's involved deep in this about potential Chrome OS support for STiki. I'm a Chromebook user and I reckon there will be more and more of us with time, so I was wondering about the possibility of making it accessible on this platform. I know it's a lot of work and I don't expect it to be easy, but if ever someone has the time, it would be amazing! Stay awesome, Double Plus Ungood (talk)19:24, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
@Double Plus Ungood: I literally know nothing about Chrome OS beyond what a cursory 5 minute Googling just taught me. Phrases like "Why can't I run Java on ChromeOS?" and "Why can't I run a *.JAR on Chromebook?" were not an encouraging start. STiki is written in Java, one of the most cross-platform compatible languages in existence. I'm sorry to say that with 10's, if not 100's, of thousands of lines of STiki code -- I will not be undertaking the task of porting it to a different language. Some have succeeded in getting Java to run on ChromeOS, but it seems like a fragile task that begins with putting the device in unsupported "dev" mode, wiping the device, using system commands, potentially installing Linux distributions, etc. I cannot personally endorse this approach, and I suspect that since you arrived here with your question, its probably not one you'd be too comfortable with. West.andrew.g (talk) 23:13, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
Chrome OS was really supposed to be a lightweight operating system that saw use in schools and small businesses that had most of their operations in the cloud, specifically G Suite and other Google products and services. It may be possible to create a Chrome OS app for STiki that can work on Chromebooks, although in that case it would probably be a better use of time and resources to create a web-based version of STiki that does not require downloads or Java at all, and would work in pretty much any browser (and therefore on pretty much any operating system). Chrome OS is in fact based on Linux, and it's possible to turn a Chromebook into a decent Linux laptop (as ArsTechnica reports). —k6ka🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 20:01, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
Request to use STiki
Hi, I've only been a Wikipedia editor for 2 months but I've become fairly addicted and I passed my 1000th edit today. Not sure if I have rollback rights, maybe just the rollback buttons I got through Twinkle. Anyway, I'm interested in having a go at using STiki. I installed Java, downloaded the STiki source and ran the .jar file but it wouldn't let me log in. I've been occasionally reverting vandalism that I come across in the articles on my watchlist but I'd like to fight some more vandalism through STiki. Please can you help me log on. Thanks. Rodney Baggins (talk) 19:48, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
Thank you. I see what you mean about NS0 edits, a lot of mine have been on talk pages and my user page/sandbox. That's what I love about Wikipedia, there's always so much to learn! Cheers. Rodney Baggins (talk) 06:43, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
Tag edits made using STiki
It would be great to tag STiki edits. This would be especially helpful for data analysis. For instance, XTools attempts to show STiki contributions, going by the "using STiki" advert in the edit summary. However I think users are free to remove the advert, hence removing the tie to STiki. Meanwhile, STiki edits are already tagged as Undo and/or Rollback (which is expected), but say I wanted to see ONLY native "Undo" edits. These contributions may still include STiki edits. For the XTools use-case, I could resolve this by adding a query to remove edits that have the "using STiki" edit summary (if that makes sense), but this is slow and prone to error. A future-proof tag will make this sort of analysis much more efficient.
Any tags currently associated with STiki edits are not done explicitly, but by the platform software. Is there documentation of how they should be used? And API documentation of how it is implemented? Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 13:58, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
From mw:API:Edit#Editing pages, it looks like you first need to create the tag at Special:Tags, then pass that with the tags parameter to the action=edit endpoint. There's some local documentation on tag usage at Wikipedia:Tags, but it doesn't describe any sort of guideline for using them with software like STiki. I can tell you other popular software such as Huggle and the WikiEdu Dashboard tag their edits. With edit filters, we create new tags as needed without discussion, so I think you're okay to do so for STiki, especially given its popularity. — MusikAnimaltalk16:03, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
No approval process. I think the tag is ready to be used immediately, using the tags parameter with the action=edit API (see above). Thanks! — MusikAnimaltalk16:08, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
I see I can also tag previously made edits. STiki has over 1 million reverts. Writing the code to achieve this back-tagging wouldn't be too hard, but I'd like to make sure such an action won't be considered disruptive. West.andrew.g (talk) 04:47, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
Indeed it seems there is an API endpoint for this! However at Wikipedia:Tags it says "tags cannot be added to revisions yet". I'm guessing that's just outdated. That page also links to this discussion which apparently grants consensus to do things like this (though at the time it was not possible), subject to individual bot approval.
I also see the tag log is nearly empty... so that tells me either people haven't realized it's possible now, or consensus on doing this sort of thing has changed. So, I would first start a discussion at WP:VPT (probably better than WP:VPR) to see what people think of back-tagging STiki edits, and if there's no opposition, create a WP:BRFA for it. The one potentially controversial thing here is we're talking about tagging 1,000,000+ revisions, as you say, and that would pollute Special:Log. — MusikAnimaltalk16:38, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
Looks like it is getting some attention! One other thing to think about is "completeness" of the tagging moving forward. I am going to distribute a new version of STiki in the coming days, one that automatically does the tagging at edit time. However, this is not a critical update, so I will allow old versions of STiki to continue operating. Thus, there will by a mix of users that are applying and not applying tags. One could imagine a nightly process in order to fix all this, though again, it might not be worth all the bureaucracy involved. West.andrew.g (talk) 10:34, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
Today's release includes the tagging functionality -- I don't anticipate we'll be doing back-tagging, but the code is there. West.andrew.g (talk) 15:09, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
Yes, we aren't that advanced. You'll just need to replace your *.JAR with the new one posted to the project page (inside the executable *.ZIP). West.andrew.g (talk) 19:45, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
STiki Help/Question
How it shows for me
Hello! It's been a very long time since I've used this to fight vandalism, and I decided to give it a try today. Unfortunately, after starting it, I am barely able to use the application as all the buttons are extremely small, and I cannot find a setting to make it larger. Please see this image. Is there a way to fix this? Thanks, Vermont | reply here19:07, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
Vermont Wow that is different. I run off a 13" laptop and have a much smaller window. In the top bar, under the Options tab (3rd from right) there is a setting to increase the font size. L3X1◊distænt write◊19:35, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
L3X1 Unfortunately, the font size doesn't seem to increase anything but the font inside the diff area. The image I included a link to above shows a diff, and it's font size is at the highest setting (24 point). I don't see anything about it in settings. Vermont | reply here19:46, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
@Vermont: That's an interesting one. The image User:L3X1 posted is consistent with how things appear on my machine, and every other device I've seen STiki on. What is your monitor/laptop resolution? Something absurdly high? What OS are you on? Anything else interesting about your setup? Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 21:04, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
@West.andrew.g: It's a desktop running Windows 10. Resolution is 3840 x 2160, and the screen is huge (no idea how many inches). Also, regarding your message on my talk page, I changed my username from Adotchar to Vermont a few months ago. Thanks, Vermont | reply here21:09, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
@Vermont: Awesome. Re-mapping would just give the new account your old one's contributions, for purposes of the leaderboad and any milestones/barnstars. West.andrew.g (talk) 22:05, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
STiki undergoing maintenance today (2018-APR-17)
I am cleaning up some things up on the STiki server today. The queue's may display non-recent edits, and the tool may be slow/unresponsive at times. Do not panic! Everything should be resolved and back to normal operation within a couple of hours. Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 12:00, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
Done -- This maintenance concluded a considerable time ago, but I'm just now getting around to posting this notification. If anything, STiki might be a little snappier now due to archiving old data in some of our largest tables. If there are any issues, let me know -- otherwise, happy reverting, West.andrew.g (talk) 04:20, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
Interface size
I've returned to a consistent internet connection after a long while, and intended to resume using STiki. In the interim, I've acquired a screen of higher-than-normal resolution, and now I find the STiki interface has text that is far too small to be usable. Any suggestions? Vanamonde (talk) 12:12, 9 May 2018 (UTC)
Within the last hour I received notification the machine on which STiki is hosted has gone offline. There was no known network maintenance going on. I am having a colleague who has physical access to the machine investigate. I will post here again if things come back online (we've had luck with self-repair lately) or I receive an update about the root cause or remediation. Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 18:24, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
Everytime I try to revert an edit, my session terminates. Is it a bug or what? Thanks! - User:AvalerionV
@AvalerionV: We've been chasing this one for a long time; we've believe to it be something on the WMF server-side -- so the best we can do is detect the condition, report it, and shutdown STiki to avoid exposure of registered editor IP addresses. It seems to take care of itself after a few hours, if it doesn't, or if many people start getting the error -- then repost here. Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 16:05, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
Downloading on Windows 10
Hi, I was once a major user of STiki, but I am having real problems downloading the tool now. I am using Windows 10. When I click the download link from the Download section on the STiki main page, I receive a, '8 Zip Lite' file, which, when I open it, I have no idea how to use. I cannot find the launch file at all, just a load of files with names like 'com', 'core objects', 'db client', 'edit processing' and so forth.
I don't use Windows, but I recall this issue showing up here before, and though I can't find the conversation it ended up being something about the .exe. Thanks, L3X1◊distænt write◊12:10, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
You are not supposed to open the .jar file with 8 Zi or any other archive-opening tool. You should open it with Java Web Starter (or Java, or something similar). Have you tried right-clicking the .jar file and press "Open with..."? (t) Josve05a (c)21:07, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
Thank you. Yes, it seemed 8 Zip Lite was the issue (I don't know why it ended up being the default app to open .jar files). Anyway, I downloaded Java and set it as the default program to open .jar files in Control Panel, and now STiki works again! Orphan Wiki11:44, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
I fight vandalism via recent changes and a lot of times some of it slips by me. I would like STiki to help me combat vandalism quicker and to help take the burden off other patrolers. I have a solid record of patrolling recent changes. Thank you JC7V7DC5768 (talk) 23:42, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
@JC7V7DC5768: You have more than 1000 edits in the "main" article namespace (although just barely, so you may have crossed that threshold since writing this message), therefore you are automatically granted STiki privileges. Happy reverting, and be careful! West.andrew.g (talk) 10:12, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
Login
Apologies if I'm missing anything, but how do you log into STiki? I'm trying to use my account password, and my account has rollback permissions. Is there something else I need to do? EggRoll97(talk | contribs) 09:48, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
@EggRoll97: Can you describe the issue in a little more detail? I assume the STiki window opens for you and you are able to enter your user/pass in the provided forms. What happens when you hit "login"? Do you get an error dialogue? Does text appear just beneath the log-in and log-out boxes? West.andrew.g (talk) 10:02, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
@EggRoll97: Hmmm, that's a new one. Are you entering your username in the correct casing (shouldn't matter, but let's try)? Does your password contain any internationalized characters? STiki's logic doesn't mess with this kind of stuff too much for security reasons, it really just passes it off to the Mediawiki API. West.andrew.g (talk) 12:34, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
@West.andrew.g: No, my password is simply a couple numbers and a couple letters (not going to say how many, WP:BEANS), nothing unusual from the regular website's password requirement. I've tried multiple times, making sure I press each key, even copy pasting my password into the slot. Nothing. EggRoll97(talk | contribs) 13:56, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
@EggRoll97: Are you able to run STiki from the terminal / command prompt? When you encounter the failure, does any debugging information get printed to the terminal? It may be the case not, and I'll need to build you a special copy of the JAR so that we can print and view whatever error/failure message the Mediawiki API is throwing. You haven't set any strange settings related to logins anywhere, have you? West.andrew.g (talk) 10:18, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
@West.andrew.g: I followed up on the "strange settings related to logins", and it turns out that having 2FA on my account (via global group of OATHAUTH tester) won't let me log in through STiki. I turned it off and tried to log in again, and it works now. EggRoll97(talk | contribs) 10:58, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
Another Request
I tested Huggle on testwiki before and felt that it was too complicated for me to use. This seems like a better solution. I have done some vandal fighting with Twinkle already so I feel that this could be quicker for vandal fighting. Abequinn14 (talk) 03:05, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
Hi, not sure if there is some work going on with STiki at the moment, but I couldn't log in at all to it yesterday, and today I can log in, but no diffs appear. So, I still can't use it. Not seen this issue before. Orphan Wiki09:21, 18 August 2018 (UTC)
Anyone around? It's still faulty. I can't even close the STiki window when it has been opened now. And still no diffs showing. Orphan Wiki17:04, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
C@Orphan Wiki: The machine running STiki had some network or power issue on Friday evening. I received email of this fact, notified a colleague on site, and the machine came back online sometime Saturday. I was traveling at the time, but quickly logged in and issued the typical commands. Your experience, combined with some unusual data in the health reports I get daily, suggest something still isn't right. Given the unexpected shutdown, I'd be willing to bet one of the database tables became corrupted. I can't access the machine from my corporate network (I'm at work), but I'll investigate this evening and post back here as appropriate. Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 20:00, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
Done -- @Orphan Wiki: Corrupt tables indeed; I repaired them last night, and while I haven't had a chance to verify by actually launching STiki, I'd imagine everything to be in working order now just based on the lack of error messages and some quick sanity checks. West.andrew.g (talk) 13:57, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
@Orphan Wiki: It is. They stopped publishing results to IRC quite a while back (over a year, for sure). IIRC, it is a technical problem on their side that they are unwilling or unable to fix without a big effort -- but you'd need to check the archives to confirm this. Either way, we haven't made and any progress and I don't expect any. Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 13:51, 25 August 2018 (UTC)
As a novice editor of Wikipedia, I do not have the necessary prerequisites to have rollback permissions. I applied anyway and was rejected for having too few edits. Similarly, I do not have enough edits to gain automatic rights to use STiki. Therefore, in order to have a bigger impact on Wikipedia and to battle vandals I would like to request special approval for use of STiki. Any questions are welcome. Yours. PoliceSheep99 (talk) 13:01, 1 September 2018 (UTC)
I'm finding I'm being prompted with edits that are 500-900 days old while I'm using STiki. It's been a while, but I've never noticed anything like this before. Is it considered normal and desirable? —Compassionate727(T·C)23:19, 1 September 2018 (UTC)
It looks like it depends on which queue you use (ClueBot has this problem, Metadata's edits are closer to 90 days old), but it still strikes me as peculiar. —Compassionate727(T·C)23:26, 1 September 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, once you've passed through all the recent edits, then it's just ancient ones which are left. If they are not marked as innocent or reverted, then I assume they just stay in the queue. If you log on, and find straight away they you're encountering really old edits, it's a sign someone else has just passed through the newer stuff. That's how I read it anyway. Orphan Wiki22:03, 2 September 2018 (UTC)
I have been reverting Vandalism from quite some time. I won't say that I am perfect. I use Twinkle at the moment. I want to see if Stiki can be better for me, and if it can help me more. Although I don't have 1000 edits to the mainspace. So, I would like you to check if I can be trusted. Otherwise it's all okay if you decline the request. By the way, if I later wish not to continue, should I inform you here? (I am sure I won't wish to stop using, but still an additional question)
Regards, Knightrises10 (talk) 14:36, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
Oppose, per my warning to this user earlier. I'm aware that they're undergoing mentorship right now, but I don't think this would be ideal. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:17, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
Exciting news! I'll work on getting it integrated into the code base tonight. As a note to the larger STiki community, this should bring dramatically improved vandalism catch rates with the tool. Perhaps we could use this in a recruitment effort, to get some of our old users back, or new ones altogether. West.andrew.g (talk) 15:19, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
When I start Stiki, it sometimes sets "Watchlists options" as "Watch reverted articles" by default without my input. This is very annoying. Please set it as "Never watchlist" by default and hide this option somewhere to prevent accidental clicking. Materialscientist (talk) 04:15, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
@Materialscientist: If this is changing without any action on your part, then it is a bug. This setting is retained in the configuration file -- the setting on startup should be the same as it was at the last shutdown. If a configuration file isn't present, then it should default to the "never watchlist" option. Note the configuration file can also be manually inspected/altered. It is stored as ".STiki.props.xml" in the User's "home" directory (varies by operating system, might be a hidden file). The setting in question is "<entry key="watchlist_set">0</entry>" where the numerical value corresponds to the (zero-indexed) position of the setting in the "watchlist options" drop down box. West.andrew.g (talk) 17:28, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
Welcome button for red linked TPs
I didn't know if would be possible or easy to add a "welcome" button that would either be permanent or show up when the Editing-User had a redlinked talk page that would display a menu with selectable twinkle messages. I have a dream of making a unified one-stop desktop Wikipedia app which would allow this. Thanks, L3X1◊distænt write◊00:13, 30 September 2018 (UTC)
I can't find any text list in the Twinkle documentation or anywhere, so I made a list in in the top part of my sandbox. Rather than the whole caboodle, just having a button for {{welcome}} should serve the same purpose, I'm not a great believer in strictly differentiating whether I use welcome or welcome-anon for IPs. Thanks, L3X1◊distænt write◊01:15, 30 September 2018 (UTC)
CBNG queue has returned!!
The team that runs CluebotNG has fixed their IRC issues and are once again broadcasting edit vandalism probabilities. STiki ingests these scores as the basis for an alternative queue to the "STiki (metadata)" one that has been the lone (and therefore, default) option for quite some time. CBNG's model outperforms the metadata one, and if historical trends hold, STiki users should expect to encounter vandalism 2-3x more often using CBNG data. The feed has been implemented and the CBNG model is now the default queue at startup. Happy reverting. West.andrew.g (talk) 17:39, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
Just for perspective, the revert-rate has been around 35% for the past couple of days, I'd estimate we were < 10% using the metadata queue! West.andrew.g (talk) 20:29, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
Accurate. This is an unlikely effort given limited STiki usage as of late. The entire UI would have to be redesigned for a mobile device; I don't think Java Swing is easily portable. There would also have to be some type of packaging; most devices don't have native Java/JAR support. My source is on GitHub for anyone feeling adventurous, though! West.andrew.g (talk) 10:09, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
Hi Andrew, I'm not so sure. Less than 700 total edits, and less than 200 Twinkle/Undo edits so far. No rollback user rights. User has been editing just 4 months, and while it seems like they are doing some very good work, there is evidence that they are still on a learning curve, and there has been some erroneous AfD/Speedy deletion requests recently too. Maybe Sheldybett should be encouraged to try again in a few more months, when a greater understanding of Wikipedia policy is obtained? Orphan Wiki22:40, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
@TheRedBox: After downloading the executable version, unzipping the file should produce a *.JAR file. This is what launches the tool. If your OS doesn't understand how to launch it, you probably don't have the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) installed. I will point out, your account does not currently appear to have the permissions necessary to use STiki, and as such would require special permission. West.andrew.g (talk) 15:29, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
Frequent 'WMF has dropped session' error message with doing a good faith revert
Hi, when using STiki I very frequently get the 'WMF has dropped session' error message, but only ever when I'm doing a good faith revert. This morning for example, I started up STiki, and classified a number of edits as 'Innovent', but the first time I tried to use 'Good Faith Revert', the message appeared after I'd hit submit. The text of the message (in case there is more than one such message) is:
A check associated with your last revert/AGF action found your login session has been unexpectedly terminated. This is believed to be a bug on the WMF server side, not within STiki itself. Regardless...
I get this fairly frequently, perhaps 50% of the time I try to use STiki. Sometimes it works absolutely fine, other times I just can't do good faith reverts without crashing STiki. I appreciate that if there is a bug on the WMF server, there might be nothing the STiki team can do about it, but I wonder whether other users have experienced this and have found some kind of workaround or way to avoid triggering it? Any tips would be appreciated. GirthSummit (blether)07:49, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
Would appreciate hearing from anyone else who has this issue. This "dropped session" bug has been an extremely nasty and ongoing one, largely because it doesn't seem to be reproducible across environments. If multiple folks are seeing it often, I could drop in some more telemetry to try to pinpoint what is happening -- and if we can't fix it -- then maybe we'd be able to reach out to the WMF developers with concrete evidence. West.andrew.g (talk) 15:24, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
@West.andrew.g: In case it's useful, I'm using STiki v2.1, on Windows 10, 64-bit. I got my Java platform here. After I left that message this morning, I restarted STiki and GF reverts worked fine again; they seem to be working fine again this evening. If I ever establish a pattern of what seems to trigger it, I'll let you know. I appreciate how hard it can be to get to the bottom of intermittent bugs... GirthSummit (blether)17:09, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
@West.andrew.g: Hi, I'm still getting this error message perhaps half of the times I use STiki; I haven't established a pattern yet, but I thought of a way that it would be possible to make it less annoying.
The error only occurs when I do a Good Faith Revert - so, if I get the error message, it means that I've come across something that needs to be reverted; however, the error message tells you that it hasn't performed the revert.
By the time the error message pops up, STiki has already loaded the next diff - so, you can't see what page it's failed to revert.
The only option you have is to click 'OK', thereby closing STiki - I can't go back. Therefore, if I can't remember exactly what the page was called, there's no way for me to find whatever it was that needed reverting and fix it.
Proposal Presumably STiki knows what page it just didn't revert on. Could a hyperlink be added to the error message, linking to the relevant page, allowing you to go and fix the problem manually in your browser?
@Girth Summit: I think it is reasonable that the error message link to the (un-)affected article, to the extent that helps. I will add that item to the issue tracker. Beyond that, I'll explain a bit about why this is a yucky bug. I send the edit request along with your session token (which STiki receives when you login) and the Mediawiki API generally says "cool" and ties the edit to your account. Then, what we can't figure out, is that sometimes it says "what? who is that? we don't have a session for them (error: assert user fail)". The only way to get new session tokens is for the user to login again -- and I don't want to be in the business of storing credentials and doing this automatically. A hard fail at this point was considered reasonable, because for most of history, and most users, this tends to be a sporadic issue. Question after looking at my code: When you encounter this issue, would the AGF have undone 1 edit? or 2+ edits? there is a branch in my code at this point where different API calls are used, and maybe only one branch is problematic? West.andrew.g (talk) 15:08, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
@West.andrew.g: I'm not sure about whether the number of edits I'm reverting makes a difference, I didn't think to log in. What I can say is that it always happens the first time I used AGF revert since logging in - either the first one will fail, or the first one will be OK, in which case I know I'll be able to use it without issue until closing STiki.
In future, before I do an AGF revert for the first time, I'll check the number of edits I'm about to revert, and note whether or not it barfs; if I can establish a pattern, I'll let you know. Cheers GirthSummit (blether)17:32, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
Done -- The 2018-12-08 release of STiki has made significant progress on this issue (see the CHANGELOG above). User testing has confirmed cases where sessions were not viable immediately after login, but through multiple login attempts STiki was eventually able to transparently obtain a viable session so that users could proceed without error. There is more evidence than ever this bug is on the WMF side, and debugging code is in place should it become problematic in a new way in the future. I am marking this issue as fixed + closed for now. West.andrew.g (talk) 21:21, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
Rollbacks/reverts not saving
Recently, I've been making reverts/rollbacks on STiki, however, on both AGF rollbacks and vandalism rollbacks, I took a look at both the article history, my contribs page, and the article, and have found that the rollbacks are not saving or applying. This has happened 75% of the times I've logged into STiki and tried to rollback edits. Often times when I'm in STiki, I've pressed the button, it moves to the next diff as normal, however, no action was taken. I've then had to manually run the action via the article history page, which is semi-annoying but most likely a bug. I'm wondering if I did something wrong, and I'd be happy to rectify it if so, however, it could be a software bug. I'm requesting either help or a bugfix as to why the rollbacks are only saving a portion of the time.
@Redactyll: Things like this make my head hurt; how things could work so predictably for the vast number of users, and then have such an unusual error condition. A couple of questions to get started: Does the "last revert panel" change in the moments after an AGF/revert change to report your attempt? Does it report success? Are you able to run STiki from a terminal/console window? If so, is any text printed to the terminal console when one of these errors occur? West.andrew.g (talk) 14:33, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
@West.andrew.g: I've recently logged onto and used STiki to try out these things, here's what I've found so far. When I recently reverted both an AGF edit and rollbacked a vandalism edit (managed to get onto a non-working session, seems to just be a random thing when it occurs), I did not see a change in any panels, except after when I pres the button the information in the bottom panels all change to the next diff that STiki shows me. Right after I press the button, I see the information for the next diff, even before it comes up, which appears to always react exactly once a button is pressed, despite the fact that the diff does not. I tried running the program via terminal, and no text has occurred when the error happens. The final strange thing is that when the issue happens, it's either all the edits in one session, or none of the edits in one session, and luckily recently it's been working perfectly most of the time. I hope this information helps, but if you need me to get back on STiki and find more information to questions, go ahead and ping me and I'll get right to it. Thanks! Sincerely, Redactyll (talk) 03:12, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
@Redactyll:@Girth Summit: This doesn't sound entirely unique from the "Frequent 'WMF has dropped session'..." thread above. Intermittent problems like this have haunted us for years, yet sometimes disappear for months at a time. GRAND IDEA. For both of you, a session that is "bad" always demonstrates problems on the first AGF attempt, right? For those of you having the issue, there could be a login box option to "Verify session viability" or something like that. The moment you login, before everything gets spun up, and while STiki still has your credentials handy, I could have your accounts edit and then attempt to AGF a meaningless page (i.e., something dedicated in the STiki project space). I could verify if this occurred. If it is succeeds, we know the session is "good", if not, we have everything ready to retry a new session transparently and automatically. We could also write a lot of debugging code around this mechanism. Does my thinking here sound correct? West.andrew.g (talk) 11:19, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
Yes, that sounds like a good option - as you say, if it's going to barf it will do it the first AGF attempt, if it survives the first one it's always fine. If I could, as you say, attempt an AGF on a dummy page when I first log in, it would save a lot of trouble. GirthSummit (blether)13:11, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
@Redactyll:@Girth Summit: Did some coding work today. I hope to do some testing and push out the new version to you before the weekend is over. This will very much be an experimental version. Since I can't re-create the session dropping on my own machine, it might take a couple iterations before we successfully: (a) patch the problem, so that you don't encounter it, if even the solution is a bit of a hack, and (b) possibly identify the root cause and really fix the problem at the source. If you (both) are comfortable with it, could you email me directly (gmail at the very bottom of: [2] to find my email) so I can quickly exchange JAR files with you without having to publish to WP? Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 20:30, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
Hi - I just emailed you from a Hotmail account (I know, but I've had it for >20 years, don't want to change it now...). If you ping any files back to me I'll be happy to test them. Cheers GirthSummit (blether)21:13, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
Greetings! I just sent you the email, and I am awaiting the file transfer. I’ll download the files once I get them, and see if they work. Thank you a bunch for all of this work you put in, I really appreciate it.
FYI this happens to me sometimes (it's just happened now in fact) but I usually catch it straight away. Then I log out and back in again, and it usually solves the issue. Orphan Wiki13:24, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
Done -- The 2018-12-08 release of STiki has made significant progress on this issue (see the CHANGELOG above). User testing has confirmed cases where sessions were not viable immediately after login, but through multiple login attempts STiki was eventually able to transparently obtain a viable session so that users could proceed without error. There is more evidence than ever this bug is on the WMF side, and debugging code is in place should it become problematic in a new way in the future. I am marking this issue as fixed + closed for now. West.andrew.g (talk) 21:22, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
Just to add, I've been using the new version for several days now, and have not had a single recurrence of this issue. This morning, I got the AGF bug for the first time in a while - but realised that it was because I'd opened on the old version of STiki by accident (I will now delete it!). In other words - the bug on the WMF side is definitely still there, but the new version of STiki is working around it efficiently. Thanks for your work on this West.andrew.g, I agree that this is fixed. GirthSummit (blether)07:33, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
Used to have Stiki on my old laptop, and was just going to add it on my new one (haven't used it in over a year, but have seen an uptick in vandalism so I thought I'd get back to patrolling). However, even though I have Java, after I download and unzip the file, the .jar file will not allow me to execute. It only gives me the options of "open" or "save". What am I doing wrong? Onel5969TT me09:40, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
Hi! Just wanted to let you know my username has been changed from JaconaFrere to Jacona...could you reroute the contributions? Thanks! Jacona (talk) 22:17, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
Hi,
I've downloaded the latest version 2.1 that was released on 2018-12-08. When I try to open the .Jar file (with Java) as an administrator, it shows a message : This program cannot be opened on your computer or something similar. I'm using Windows 10 Home version 1809 (October Update). How can I use the program because I was able to use the previous version. RafaelS1979 (talk) 18:31, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
@RafaelS1979: I'm not a Windows user, but some Googling revealed folks sometimes get this error when they have the incorrect version of the Java Runtime Environment installed (e.g., 32bit vs. 64bit). West.andrew.g (talk) 20:48, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
I'm aware that users with 2FA enabled on their accounts need to use bot passwords to access STiki (or else login will simply fail, since STiki doesn't provide an interface to enter the authentication code in). I can see here that bot passwords do work on STiki, but it's not immediately clear how one goes to logging in with a bot password. Do I just enter my bot password into the "Password" field (and enter my username like normal)? What permissions are needed for STiki to work properly? —k6ka🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 11:34, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
Hey @K6ka:, I'm wondering what you did to get it to work. For me, when I log into STiki via my Huggle bot password, it gives me the "you must have rollback and blah blah to use STiki" message. I'm just putting the bot password into the username and password section like I would via my normal account credentials and am receiving that message. Are you doing something different, or is my bot password just not working? I'm hoping you could tell me how you got it to work, since I couldn't find documentation for it anywhere. Thank you in advance. Best regards, RedactyllLetsataco'bou it, son!20:43, 18 December 2018 (UTC) 20:43, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
@Redactyll: I created a new bot password with the same permissions as Huggle, then when logging in, entered my regular username into the Username field, and then the bot password I had generated into the Password field. Basically, when logging in, the only difference is that, instead of the regular on-wiki password you use to log in to Wikipedia on a browser, you use the bot password that you generated in the Password field. The username field remains untouched and is your on-wiki username. —k6ka🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 23:52, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
This didn't work for me either. I have 2FA enabled, created a bot password w/ the Huggle permissions, but get either "Login Failed" (if I enter regular username and bot password) or the insufficient permission/edits message if I use the bot account name, or my username@bot account name, or username all caps, or username with a trailing "@" Anyone have any suggestions? XymmaxSo let it be writtenSo let it be done16:35, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
@Xymmax: Did you try putting "Xymmax" into the username field, and then the bot password into the password field? (When generating the bot password, there's a field that says: "For old bots which require the login name to be the same as the eventual username, you can also use <your username> as username and <password> as password"—that would be the password you'd use). It's been a while since I used STiki but AFAIK that's how I did it.
I've tried all of the above, save the sock account. I think I'm more effective with my tools, so I don't think I'll go that route. I'll just wait until the whole 2FA implementation is a bit more sophisticated. Thanks so much.XymmaxSo let it be writtenSo let it be done04:13, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
@Xymmax: AFAIK you can log in to STiki with your alt account and continue to use your main account in your web browser. Since STiki can't block users (yet) you'll still need to open links in your browser to do things like block users and protect pages, so with this setup you'll be able to use STiki and still have easy access to the mop. —k6ka🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 20:25, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
@DannyS712: "STiki" is named so because it was initially designed to make use of a model using "Spatio-temporal" ("ST-") features to detect vandalism on Wikipedia ("-iki"). Academic details can be found in [3]. This model was largely proof-of-concept, i.e., that detection was possible using these lightweight features. The spatio-temporal features are still leveraged in the "metadata model/queue" available in the tool, but others have been added to improve detection rates. West.andrew.g (talk) 17:38, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
Done -- @KingAndGod: Given STiki's slowing use, I am willing to assume good faith. Your account has been approved. West.andrew.g (talk) 14:39, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
@Orphan Wiki: The machine running STiki had some network or power issue on Friday evening. I received email of this fact, notified a colleague on site, and the machine came back online sometime Saturday. I was traveling at the time, but quickly logged in and issued the typical commands. Your experience, combined with some unusual data in the health reports I get daily, suggest something still isn't right. Given the unexpected shutdown, I'd be willing to bet one of the database tables became corrupted. I can't access the machine from my corporate network (I'm at work), but I'll investigate this evening and post back here as appropriate. Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 20:00, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
Not done -- @Sheldybett: On the basis of the community recommendation above. West.andrew.g (talk) 19:21, 5 November 2018 (UTC)