User talk:Renegade

Archives: pre-2025 ● 2025 ● 2026

New Advertising Bot List(Continuous Updates):

AD Bots User Page	Solve or not
User:G28carkeys4877	✅
User:Autolocksmith8439	✅
User:Autolocksmith8575	✅
User:Bestautomaticvacuum1822	✅
User:Tassimomachine2513	✅
User:TripleBedBunk6480	✅
User:Builtinovens5192	✅

All created ad pages are listed on their respective user pages.

You can also find them from the del list (however, there are still some pending tasks in the del list that haven't been processed yet. It is recommended to use the former method to locate those pages).

---

Discussion with DeathFish

Editing work

Delete Page

By the way, you banned those remaining advertising accounts last time, but once again forgot to clean up their user pages :P
The list can also be found on my UserTalk page or by visiting the del list.

~ DeathFish (talk) 14:16, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

See, this is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about, about trust and conflicts of interest.

I didn't forget to do anything.

I checked those user pages when you gave me the list, and their current content was your documentation of their deeds.

What pressing need is their to delete them?

What is your threat model here? That bored users start browsing the user pages of banned users and then learn that -gasp!- the user was banned because it was a spambot?

You seem to have a very radical approach to deletion. Marking your own user page is one thing, but marking someone else's talk page?

Just because the page doesn't serve a productive function right this moment doesn't mean it has to be terminated immediately.

Especially not a talk page.

I'm not deleting talk pages just because no one's talking right now.

If a page exists solely for spam pages, e.g. a new page called "buy viagra now" - fair enough.

But user pages are technical representations of the users and if there's currently no spam on them, there is absolutely no functional need to delete them.

Same with the superfluous content pages.

If you have already removed its content, and it's not linked from anywhere, and it's been put on the deletion list for the future...then what is the actual, tangible difference between deleting them now or bulk deleting 30 at once next month?

I acknowledge your assessment that those user pages should be deleted...but since no harm is coming from them right now, I really don't see a time pressure here.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 14:58, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

I don't quite see how trust and conflicts of interest relate to this matter. Are you suggesting that my actions are undermining your website?

I merely thought to remind you since during your last batch operation you seemed preoccupied with account suspensions.

Even if you didn't respond, I wouldn't have pressed you further (shrugs).

My threat model? That's not a threat - since the accounts that needed banning have been banned, and the pages requiring deletion have been purged, those explanatory notes have become obsolete. Should we keep links to already removed garbage pages for users to click and recreate them? Maintaining that page serves no purpose.

As for the user talk page I marked for deletion? It's not about current functionality - it's a page where two users attacked each other, an oversight from previous edit wars where similar pages were deleted. If you consider this 'technical representations', fine. But this new advertising account should indeed be banned, right?

Or are you referring to that wish list-style page? Such discussions should be raised in extension engine's Issue tracker, not left where engine developers might stumble upon them when accessing ModEnc and feel like someone is using a wiki to teach them how to develop engine extensions - especially when the completed extensions may never reach the users who requested them.

If user talk pages aren't war relics - like that as if the wish list were a subpage under User_talk:Testid123 instead of a standalone page - I wouldn't mark them for deletion. In such cases, it's just users expressing themselves.

As I said before: I was simply uncertain and wanted to remind you. Where's the urgency here? Neither of us needs time pressure on this matter.

~ DeathFish (talk) 15:50, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

I'm suggesting that you continue to subtly insist that whatever happens or doesn't happen around here is fundamentally rooted in a lack of care on my part.

Forgetfulness, inaction, disregard.

When the reality is that I just don't share your views or priorities in some cases.

It's a fundamental expression of distrust in my ability to perform the necessary tasks to run the site, and serves to continuously undermine trust in my actions even when nothing actually went wrong and everything was exactly as it was consciously chosen to be.

So I'll be quite clear here: As long as user-centric pages don't contain active spam or other abuse, I see no reason to delete them at all. And empty regular pages don't particularly bother me. To be honest, I only deleted all the extra Color-pages because I was in the middle of dealing with five things at once. Considering how long they had carried content, the correct way would've been a redirect to Color. So unless a page currently displays spam or abuse, it may very well continue to take weeks or months before I delete them.

Not because of neglect, but because it just plain doesn't matter.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 21:31, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Even though I'm just reminding you, you would still think that I'm implying you're not caring enough. I don't know where your sensitivity towards repeatedly clarifying this matter comes from. Your continued concern about the website was already demonstrated on my User_talk page before, even though at that time I could only communicate with you on my own page due to being under a block. You overthink things, though I don't know exactly what you discussed with them on Matrix, especially now that the holiday has ended and I can no longer log into Matrix or Discord to ask or check anything. Anyway, now that I know you actually have your own plans and have received your response, that's sufficient. After all, I don't have any strong demand requiring specific actions from you, regardless, I am sorry that my actions made you feel offended,.

Okay, I now understand your evaluation method. Actually, you could have simply used a specific page as an example from the beginning and told me it shouldn't be deleted for certain reasons - I would have been happy to listen. Your comment about me tagging pages for deletion too quickly is valid.

~ DeathFish (talk) 03:15, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

There is no sensitivity or overthinking involved in parsing "once again forgot to clean up". It's quite clear the way you phrased it.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 21:40, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

I mean... ah, indeed. Regardless, I did use those English terms on the page. My mistake.

However, if I truly lacked trust in your management style and capabilities, I wouldn't have stayed here this long. I originally just wanted to express the parallel relationship between two matters... In any case, your experience and abilities in operating and managing wiki-type websites far surpass mine. Therefore, I have no grounds to question you. On the contrary, I actually want to learn about page handling protocols - like whether simply clearing spam content on User pages is sufficient, or if pages with a history of disputes should retain their original content instead of being purged, etc. It's not that I'm questioning you; quite the opposite, I'm more concerned about where I might have made mistakes or created any inconvenience for you...

~ DeathFish (talk) 16:57, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

It's not a matter of illusions of grandeur, it's a simple matter of what the actual effect, the actual consequence is.

How to deal with Spam Pages

If there's spam on the site, that's an issue.

If there's not, it's not.

There's no fundamental advantage in deleting a user page over blanking it. And deleting it actually causes a whole lot of log messages and markers and whatnot, whereas blanking it just adds a revision.

Sure, if it's a page like "Peace through Potency! Buy your Tiberium Penis Pills here!", then there's a strong chance we're never gonna need that page again, and it's fine to delete it. But any user might use their user page at some point. Unlike a pure spam page, a user page is associated with something that actually exists in the system - the user account. Might as well let it live.

And any page that has seen genuine use in the past (like those Color_I... pages) is usually better left a redirect to the new place of the information.

Genuine pages for things that turn out not to exist are a bit of a grey area. If we have a significant amount of those, I would suggest a page along the lines of "Flags that don't exist" and redirect the pages to that.

If only to make sure that no one recreates the page under the false assumption that it is a real flag and ModEnc just doesn't have a page on it yet.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 19:54, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

This is just a practical comparison. I always prefer collaboration and improvement. Thank you for explaining. Since deletion operations generate more redundant data, simply clearing the page is indeed a better choice.

What do you mean by user pages being linked to user accounts? Previously, whenever a user registered, RSS would send me a notification, so I could always promptly jump to the target page for inspection. Sometimes it was a user page that already had promotional content added, which would then be promptly cleaned up. Other times there was only a notification but the page hadn't actually been created. Do user pages actually exist as associated entities when accounts are created?

I'm unclear about why pages like Color_I were marked for deletion in the past. Initially, I thought that as long as a page isn't spam, it should retain access paths created since its inception - including easily misspelled Flags, which are suitable for using redirects to guide users (e.g. Gattling Weapon System could redirect to IsGattling when deprecated). Although I did think such pages needed deletion precisely because Color_I had a deletion mark. xD (Rest assured, I now know how to proceed.)

~ DeathFish (talk) 15:41, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

I'm glad I happened to be online during the weekend when you were maintaining the website. BTW, Happy Labor Day! :P

However, didn't you previously inform me that user User Pages do not need to be deleted? I noticed you deleted one of them, so should I mark such pages when adding {{del}} in the future? Currently, I’ve been following your earlier instructions—not marking user page and only cleaning them up. Do I need to change this approach?

~ DeathFish (talk) 16:29, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

Nothing has changed.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 20:43, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

Template:F with Redlink Checker

Emm, Color_I appears to be a special case within this category?
For example, even when Crates_I redirects back to the Crates page, a warning still appears on the Crates page stating: "Warning:One or more numbered subpages exist: Crates I. These should be merged into this page." but I cannot perform the merge operation. Or perhaps this warning is the reason why Color_I was marked with {{del}}?
For non-existent Flags, can we directly state why they don't exist on the page? Like writing 'This is a legacy from the development phase' directly on the PreventAutoDeploy page. If many such contents use redirects pointing to the same page, clarity might still be compromised, or we might still need to write explanations for different statements separately.

~ DeathFish (talk) 15:41, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Among other things, the URLs of the user-associated pages act as gateways for the user-centric functions. They are not independent pages, they have internal connections to that specific user.

The numbering check is a very simple "does this exist?" check. You're the first one to call out a problem there. If you put a description of the issue on the flag template's talk page and drop it in a category like "known issues", I'll see if I can fix it when I get to it.

The trouble I see with individual pages for nonexistent flags is two-fold: For one, you then have a flag page that's not a flag page, which doesn't seem good, or a flag page that's a fully expressed flag page, for something that's not a flag. You know people will miss the little "this is not real" marker and treat it like an actual flag. And complaint when it doesn't work. For two, you end up either having to update all nonexistent flag pages individually if there's a common change, or having to create templates just to commonly govern something that you don't want in the encyclopedia in the first place. It's a waste of effort.
I think just having a page with a table of {flag name, description} for all nonexistent flags and redirecting the myths to them is vastly more efficient. And you can still put "left over from development" in the description column.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 15:36, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Okay, I understand.

I'm not sure how to proceed. When I check WantedPages, there are many pending pages named "*_IIII," but when I inspect the links requesting these pages, they are just simple [[<str>]] entries. I don't fully grasp the deeper issue.

Indeed, even current pages like UseTurretShadow are inconvenient to handle with the tsobsolete tag. Creating a universal template and setting up redirects would be a better solution. I’ll try to work on this later.

By the way, is it possible to create non-existent pages from the start for redirect purposes and point them to the actual Flags we need to use? (I’ll add the redirect rationale on the original page.) Based on my teaching experience, legacy or abandoned Westwood syntax often misleads newcomers, like TiberiumRadius.

I support open principles. What I’m suggesting is applying CAPTCHA during the registration phase, not just when new users save edits. I see you’ve already implemented this.

~ DeathFish (talk) 15:55, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

LOL! Looks like Template:Flag's numbered page check triggered the redlink checker somehow. That seems like a bug in MediaWiki.

That template has existed for decades and you're the first one to bring that up.

Thanks for the heads-up, I'll change the code right now. The other problem (numbered warning) will likely vanish through that as well.

And of course you can just create new pages with redirects.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 16:07, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

You're welcome, I'm happy to help. I'll check again later to see if those pages have been processed.

I have already implemented redirects for some of these pages, but I don't know how to find all the created pages that have this issue.

At this point, I believe I have added redirects to all pages containing Roman numerals like I, II, etc. that were discoverable through my searches.

Media Wiki link

By the way, did you modify the theme settings? The Discussion link next to Timeless in User Preferences/Appearance currently points to a broken page on ModEnc instead of the official MediaWiki page. The Always enable safe mode option on the same settings page has the same incorrect link issue.

~ DeathFish (talk) 16:18, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

That's due to the way the maintainers generate those links. The working ones are static links, whereas the non-working ones are expecting an interwiki-link to MediaWiki to exist, which it does not. The link probably works fine on MediaWiki's platform (Wikipedia, Wiktionary, etc.), and the maintainers either never checked elsewhere or don't care.

There's nothing we can do about it and it's unlikely to matter anytime soon.

But thank you for pointing it out so I could check.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 18:22, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Dedeezirified

Regarding the ActiveAnimZAdjust issues (I...IIII) in WantedPages, are there any solutions available? The modifications made to Template:F have eliminated the warning prompts, but these pages are still being requested.
Additionally, it seems the Category:Flags which should be merged into their parent article requires some time before it can be updated. When locating those pages, I actually cross-referenced the list from Category:Flags_with_import-generated_subpages and manually added "_I" in the title bar. However, it appears most of them have now been processed.

~ DeathFish (talk) 18:42, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Give the change time to propagate through. There are tens of thousands of pages that have to be re-evaluated and re-cached and for many of them, it's entirely possible it's only doing that when the pages are opened.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 18:49, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

It seems this single issue has unearthsed a host of longstanding problems. Could you please clarify the criteria for "Dedeezirified completed"? For instance, does this page is fully finalized? Or does it require a certain percentage of the content to be non-DeeZire source text?

Since my native language isn't English, I would like more specific guidelines. I noticed in the edit history that Nighthawk200 has labeled some pages as Dedeeziri

~ DeathFish (talk) 19:19, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

It really only unearthed a single, current issue: Utterly lacking reading comprehension. Or laziness. Or dishonesty.

Whatever you consider the motivating factor, apparently it has become en vogue to simply remove the marker instead of doing an actual conversion.

The criterion is very simple: As long as the page contains any text lifted from The Guide, the page has not been fully converted.

As a sidenote: The inclusion was only ever meant to be temporary, until all entries had been converted. The fact that, 19 years later, we still have those texts on hundreds of pages, is one of the clearest indicators that the Discord myth of the enormous, active ModEnc community is nothing but a fairy tale.

If there truly were that many people, each of them could do two pages and in half an hour, no imported text would be left.

It takes twenty years because there are only ever about three people editing.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 18:52, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Oh, but even though I'm not a native speaker, I still believe that the mere presence of a few unchanged connecting words at the lexical level should not fall within the judgment criteria. For instance, I consider the example above to have been completed, though I'm not certain about your specific requirements.

Regarding the issue of simple removal of markers you mentioned, it certainly does come from some reading comprehension problems. However, from my personal perspective, there's another aspect to consider: many people perceive this marker as equivalent to {{Flag}} due to its position in edit mode, leading them to directly delete it and replace it with a {{Flag}} list. This isn't to excuse others' behavior - regardless of circumstances, it remains an objective error.

yeah, yeah, if we truly had a large number of active and proactive contributors to ModEnc, even such errors could be easily rectified. However, the reality falls far short of that expectation (sad).

~ DeathFish (talk) 04:10, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

My concern are examples like this change of yours to Credits.

It's literally the same fucking text.

This is DeeZire's work.

Previously, it was marked as DeeZire's work.

Now it is not.

That's not okay.

Or this change to CloseEnough.

Even the current revision is not okay. The text is still virtually unchanged. Changing "a unit" to "an AI controlled unit" and "blocked" to "inaccessible or blocked by other objects" does not fundamentally alter the text.

That's like re-writing "to be or not to be" to "to live or not to live" and pretending that you wrote an entirely independent work of fiction.

And to be entirely frank here: People who look at an unparameterized template called "DeeZireInclusion" and believe it to be wholly identical to twenty lines of parameterized "Flag" clearly do not have enough understanding of the meaning of configuration flags to teach others about configuration flags.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 09:09, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

Huh, errors crept in due to rushing the merge.

Would this situation fall under the category of virtually unchanged? and what about SpreadPercentage? Are you allowed to rewrite the original sentences using new expressions, or must there be substantive new content to replace the existing material? I noticed that your previous rewrite example seemed to retain nearly half of the original text.

Of course it(DeeZireInclusion → Flags) has issues, just like the example you mentioned with CloseEnough, this is simply a current practical reality that's everywhere in abundance. En, I briefly checked and they should all have been included in Category:Review_for_fake_conversion_and_revert_if_necessary. Looks good, at least they can still be tracked.

I'm somewhat curious whether you originally obtained authorization from DeeZire when importing content from "The Guide" into ModEnc. Because if permission was granted, it should have been an account named DeeZire creating those pages or filling in submission information during page creation to attribute the content to DeeZire. Then they would be treated the same as content added by later contributors on ModEnc, rather than potentially constituting plagiarism if not rewritten.

~ DeathFish (talk) 13:09, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

We have done what we have documented we have done: We imported the stale contemporary documentation we had as a basis to be rewritten. Quickly.

And then the community, as usual, was too lazy to contribute and there weren't enough editors to get it done. For literal decades.

I understand that the approach might be confusing for someone fresh in the community, but back then, there was no other documentation. There weren't a dozen guys with a decade of experience decompiling the game who had a beautifully filled .pdb and could tell you exactly what everything did.

There were two things: The INI Comments and The Guide.

Everything was based on The Guide, one way or another.

So there wasn't really a choice about it. It was only a question of whether we had an empty wiki and every editor opened The Guide on his computer to transfer knowledge into ModEnc, or whether we facilitated the conversion in here.

Either way, the information was going to come out of The Guide, because that was the only documentation there was, and the one we had to replace (because it wasn't being updated anymore).

_

I'm not going to give blanket OKs based on selected examples.

In case of MinZVelocity, for example, there's not really a lot to say about it other than what's already in the flag name itself: It's the minimum velocity on the Z axis.

There's no point in artificially lengthening the description to ten sentences and trying to describe "MinZVelocity" without using the words "Minimum", "Z" and "Velocity".

This is different from a flag like CloseEnough, where the flag name doesn't really imply what it's about and even the original description was multiple lines long. There's a lot more room to rephrase there and to improve in the context of a wiki.

If the rewrite of Font ultimately retains most of the leading sentence "Specifies the name of the font to be used for display of the subtitle", I take less issue with that than if CMislPitchInitial retains its description word for word.

Why?

Because if the name is "Font" and it sets the font, then the information to be transferred is not infinitely complex: Font sets the font for X, in the manner of Y.

Artificially rephrasing that to "YR has subtitles. Typefaces have names. For the purpose of configuring the typeface denominator, the designator of a typeface can be inscribed with the help of this flag." does not increase usability or intelligibility in any way.

CMislPitchInitial, on the other hand, is decidedly less obvious, has more context potentially to be elaborated on, and possibly could be moved to a systems page for the Cruise Missile anyway. I would find it a lot harder to believe someone who insisted there was no way to rewrite that entry.

_

Either way, the fact that younger editors have created this problem all over the place doesn't mean that it's magically okay.

Only that the younger editors seem to have trouble reading the instructions.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 19:35, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

Huh, in fact, as far as I can see, even now, people who modify games using C++ still aren't particularly interested in understanding the specific workings of each flag in the original engine. Apart from my meager coding knowledge, most of my discoveries still come from launching the game and experimenting/recording results.

_

What about licensing? If you have DeeZire's permission and are just helping them import content to an online platform, wouldn't that eliminate copyright concerns?

_

This seems reasonable and meaningful. I'm just confused about the absolute criteria stated as 'As long as the page contains any text lifted from The Guide, the page has not been fully converted'.

_

Of course, incorrect rewriting shouldn't be approved, since it's fundamentally erroneous.

~ DeathFish (talk) 19:54, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

Weapon19

Truthfully, if Weapon19 is an actual Ares flag, then your aggressive and unilateral decision to delete it is actually highly inappropriate. Just changing the game parameter to Ares only might make the page entirely accurate.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 21:31, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Regarding WeaponX, the main program of Yuri's Revenge limits MaxWeapons to 18. Existing flags in the WeaponX series are all within this range, with Weapon19 being the sole exception. If the extended features introduced by Ares need to be preserved, there would be a total of 127 available flags. However, retaining the Ares extensions in this context feels somewhat... unconventional. Of course, specifically for Weapon19, designating it as an Ares-exclusive feature would indeed be a viable solution.

~ DeathFish (talk) 03:15, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Template standardization issue

The Template:CatAllTypes appears to still be in use? Previously Testid123 extensively used this template. I notice we now have

• {{Categ|Technoes}}
• {{CatAllTypes}}
• {{Categ|TechnoTypes}}
• manually added {{Categ|InfantryTypes}}, {{Categ|VehicleTypes}}, {{Categ|AircraftTypes}}, {{Categ|BuildingTypes}} (the order might be arbitrary)

This is clearly very disorganized.
Should they all be unified into {{Categ|TechnoTypes}}? or {{Categ|Technoes}}?

~ DeathFish (talk) 21:06, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

As you have undoubtedly noticed, I've been doing some preparation work recently. When I'm done with that, Template:Flag will be replaced with Template:StructuredFlag and manual categorization like that will no longer happen.

So just leave it as it is for now, and when the Flag template has been swapped out, we'll check what places are left that still use those categorization templates and what the best way to deal with them is.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 18:37, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, I see, this form looks extremely tidy. However, I'm unsure how multiple Flag templates on a single page would work—but I'll look forward to seeing it.

By the way, the new Form:StructuredMetaMod directly treats the and others under the Developers section of Phobos and Vinifera as an actual user existing on ModEnc, linking to the User:And_others page on ModEnc. How do you plan to address?

~ DeathFish (talk) 19:16, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Multiple templates won't be editable by form, because it aims for the top of the page.

But since those templates will still work better even when placed manually, and thousands of pages only have one flag template, it's still a net win.

I don't plan to address "and others" at all for the time being. It's a tiny nuisance and if it's really important for someone to link the full credits of those projects, they can do it in the page body.

We can still see if it's worth adding different handling for that edge case later on. For the time being, the reality is that that has a negligible impact on a reader's ability to use the page. (Not to mention that the Phobos faction is building their own wiki anyway, so it's not like that's a highly frequented page.)

~ Renegade (SysOp) 18:42, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Perhaps there is a page which automatically collects all pages that use one or more Flag templates, which would be helpful for organization and checking.

Anyway, a link to 'User:and others' is definitely an odd existence. However, the original listing was simply because I wanted to maintain both a single-line list and ensure information accuracy. Now it seems that simply keeping (co-)author might be a better solution, after all, the full credits have already been included in the document mentioned in the page body.

~ DeathFish (talk) 18:00, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Bug in page application for Template:Categ

The Categ Template seems to have some strange issues that I haven't looked into in detail yet - there are many required interfaces in Special:WantedPages. If a type is specified as {{Categ|TestTypes}}, it will request two pages: Category:TestType Flags and Category:TestTypes Flags. Similarly, the Difficulty flag has requested pages like Category:RA2(md).in Flags and Category:RA2(md).ini Flags. I noticed that there is a check in the #default branch of the template based on whether pages with or without an 's' exist or not, but it's still requesting a Category:Warheads Flags or Category:LandType Flags page even when Category:Warhead Flags or Category:LandTypes Flags already exist

~ DeathFish (talk) 12:54, 24 May 2025 (UTC)

This was because Template:Categ was improperly called for INI-Files.

The page had {{Categ|RA2(md).ini}} rather than {{Categ|ini=RA2}}.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 21:17, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

Yes, it has this issue itself... Perhaps it would be better to directly use another actual problem: we currently have the category Category:Warhead Flags, but the Wanted pages begin with '1. Category:Warheads Flags (54 links)'. I see the rule in the template is: when checking that a category does not exist, it looks for a category with its last character removed, and if found, uses it (Warhead Flags). However, after this process concludes, the page still attempts to link to the original category (Warheads Flags), creating red links and leaving demand information in the Wanted pages.

~ DeathFish (talk) 02:47, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

This has nothing to do with our template - that's fine.

This is a design issue within the #ifexist parser function that will be fixed in an upcoming version of MediaWiki.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 15:58, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

Oh, no wonder. When I tried to redesign the template earlier, I found it very difficult to use this function to simultaneously check the four existence conditions across two pages for judgment and subsequent operations. At that time, I suspected it might be the function's own issue and attempted to replace it, but didn't complete (so I didn't make the modification on ModEnc either). It seems this problem can just be left to MediaWiki itself to handle. That's really good news. :P

~ DeathFish (talk) 16:09, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

Other Talk

About Template:F

Template:F seems to be experiencing some issues. On the original page, Template:F serves as an extended version of Template:Tt.
Any text using either of these templates should be parsed as <span style="font-family: monospace;">Text</span>.
The original Template:F style applied to texts with Bouncer=no; refer to the Next page.
However, after the last Bad Gateway incident, Template:F lost this styling.

~ DeathFish (talk) 20:46, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Are you sure this is the wiki meant to post this on? Since it looks fine here. The other site didn't copy the CSS.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 21:02, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Look at the link in the lower left corner of the image. I intentionally left the image uncropped - this screenshot was taken from ModEnc on February 10th, when other sites didn't even exist yet.

Media:Template_F_Now.png Even though I tried using Ctrl+F5 and it didn't work properly, if everyone else is fine, then I'll figure it out on my own.

~ DeathFish (talk) 21:17, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

---

Additionally, I forgot to mention that the previous template issue has been resolved because I had enabled settings like safe mode during those days and forgot to turn them off. :)

~ DeathFish (talk) 16:57, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

Other Site

It looks fine over here, and so does the generated HTML. Have you tried a different browser and/or device? What skin are you using?
Speaking of the other site: It does seem like you're already very busy combating spam over there.
Deleting 78 pages in fewer minutes than that.
I can hardly expect you to do the same here as well.
After all: The people you're working with are very bad at communicating and expect swift action nonetheless.
Wouldn't want to get you in trouble by splitting your attention.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 21:41, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Those pages were inherited from ModEnc, but previous contributors hadn't finished addressing them (shrugs). So I resolved the half-finished issues they left behind, and one of them even expressed gratitude to me.

As for ModEnc? Haven't you already finished cleaning up? Now that the garbage on both websites has been cleared, there shouldn't be much left to handle in terms of cleanup.

They opted to transition the site to a membership system where editing privileges are granted only after user vetting. While I acknowledge this approach prevents mass vandalism like the Testid123 incident from recurring, I believe it makes instant knowledge sharing on the wiki less convenient for anyone. In my view, having active administrators conducting regular patrols should theoretically suffice to prevent such incidents. But as to which approach is better - who really knows?

Of course, they should be able to effectively prevent the issue of ad bots.

~ DeathFish (talk) 21:55, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Be that as it may, the fact that you are making a point over there to emphasize supposed long-lasting neglect on ModEnc, clearly positioning that site as the saner, cleaner alternative, does not exactly give you incentive to work well over here.

After all: What's the use for an alternative, if there's nothing wrong with the original?

You (plural) already took all the content. All you need to do now is replace ModEnc in processes.

And that's much easier when the site is damaged and dysfunktional.

So any contributor of the other site has a clear incentive to sabotage this one.

You cannot honestly tell me that you believe it to be effective or efficient to run both sites in parallel.

You cannot honestly tell me that you believe it to be the goal of that site to be secondary and immaterial.

Especially not with such brazen statements as "ModEnc was previously hosted at modenc.renegadeprojects.com, currently re-hosted at modenc2.markjfox.net" on there.

The goal is replacement.

And it would be foolish to give power to those who seek to end the site.

It's nothing personal. That entire Discord cannot be trusted with elevated privileges under these circumstances.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 22:16, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

The person who originally created the website is not what you imagine. While I can't speak for others, neither I, him, nor Crimsonum want that site to compete with ModEnc. Especially considering I was just an normal editor until yesterday - I wouldn't have been involved in spam handling had I not needed to assign user groups for our community members. Here's what the site's founder said yesterday:

My intention for ModEnc² was primarily to preserve and protect that collection of information because it looked like Renegade was gone and didn't care about it. But it's good to see that ModEnc is getting its second spring (if that phrase makes sense in English 😁).

Why must you assume others wish to undermine ModEnc? I certainly don't consider that website insignificant, at least based on what I learned from the edit war's historical commits a few days ago. When this place became a battleground, the emergence of such a site naturally drew me to participate.

I suggest you directly contact their founder to discuss the future relationship between ModEnc and that site.

Regarding working on both sites simultaneously? All modifications I made on that site today have been synchronized to ModEnc, allowing me to cross-check them like release and development versions. Where does your hostility towards Discord come from? I just logged into Discord yesterday and only know you had a conversation with them on Matrix. Of course, you're not obliged to explain.

But how can you prove to me that they are untrustworthy?

~ DeathFish (talk) 22:31, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

They've literally taken the content and started their own site with it.

After not even trying to contact me regarding this one (regardless of their claims to the contrary).

Why would I trust them? What grounds do I have?

It's not a matter of proving anything to you. It's a matter of competing interests. They have their own ModEnc now. What motivation would they have to make this one better than theirs?

~ Renegade (SysOp) 22:39, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Furthermore, they haven't simply replicated existing content from ModEnc. They're still in the infrastructure development phase, with some pages remaining incomplete and even the future website server funding yet to be addressed. If you wish for them to cease their work, you can approach them directly now. The website's creator holds no hostility towards you, from what I understand.

And, from ModEnc:Copyrights

In the past, we had a policy of prohibiting the use of ModEnc's information to create a new, competing wiki. Since this created an inconsistency within the license, we dropped that policy. Note, however, that creating a competing wiki with the same information splits an already tiny community, while providing no benefit (since no new information is added). Cooperation is better than competition, in this case.

I can honestly tell you that I believe it to be the goal of that site to be secondary and immaterial. And they have merely backed up ModEnc's assets as a safeguard, not to replace or compete with it. Isn't this exactly what they have claimed? I also don't want to see the community split apart.

If you are concerned about the potential competition between two websites, how should you respond? My hope is that while ensuring ModEnc can operate smoothly, other wikis could serve different functions. The current situation undoubtedly needs adjustment, but it shouldn't escalate into a cutthroat rivalry. That would essentially be equivalent to elevating edit wars to the inter-site level.

Haven't you been in contact with them through Matrix? Then you can also discuss the website issues. Awaiting the outcome of your negotiations.

I can't vouch for the vast majority of others, nor can I mediate the potential conflicts between you, but I believe you need to have another conversation.

~ DeathFish (talk) 22:41, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

It's not about imposing will or negotiations.

It's about intentions.

If the intention had truly been to just preserve ModEnc in the face of unspeakable terror, somebody could've tried contacting me (like you are doing right now), and now that Testid is banned and everything is restored, all necessity for that thing would be gone.

And especially if there weren't even secure funding for the hosting, there would be no motivation to uphold the site a moment longer than necessary.

Instead, the work evidently continues.

I acknowledge the propaganda, but actions speak louder than words.

They are building a replacement, and they openly try to become a replacement.

So why on Earth would I trust them to behave gracefully in regards to the site they're attempting to supplant?

~ Renegade (SysOp) 22:59, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

And, from ModEnc:Copyrights

In the past, we had a policy of prohibiting the use of ModEnc's information to create a new, competing wiki. Since this created an inconsistency within the license, we dropped that policy. Note, however, that creating a competing wiki with the same information splits an already tiny community, while providing no benefit (since no new information is added). Cooperation is better than competition, in this case.

I can honestly tell you that I believe it to be the goal of that site to be secondary and immaterial. And they have merely backed up ModEnc's assets as a safeguard, not to replace or compete with it. Isn't this exactly what they have claimed? I also don't want to see the community split apart.

~ DeathFish (talk) 22:41, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

This is not a matter of copyright. I'm not questioning the legality of what they're doing. I'm questioning their honesty and their intentions.

A backup doesn't have to be live, a backup is not continuously edited and improved in parallel, and a backup doesn't proclaim to be the original, rehosted.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 22:59, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

If you are concerned about the potential competition between two websites, how should you respond? My hope is that while ensuring ModEnc can operate smoothly, other wikis could serve different functions. The current situation undoubtedly needs adjustment, but it shouldn't escalate into a cutthroat rivalry. That would essentially be equivalent to elevating edit wars to the inter-site level. Haven't you been in contact with them through Matrix? Then you can also discuss the website issues. Awaiting the outcome of your negotiations. I can't vouch for the vast majority of others, nor can I mediate the potential conflicts between you, but I believe you need to have another conversation.

~ DeathFish (talk) 22:41, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

They have not brought up the other site. They were busy trying to pin their lack of communication on me.

There's really not a lot to say here. What they do is legal, but it's not useful in the grand scheme of things.

That doesn't mean they can't do it, but it does mean I can't trust them elevated privileges on this site, due to a conflict of interest.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 22:59, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

---

Also: It is exceptionally hard to respond to you when you edit your post 5 times while I'm trying to respond. :P
Oh, sorry, that's indeed far too frequent. If only the wiki could handle merge conflicts like Git, then I wouldn't have to rush to add new responses. xD
MediaWiki is actually reasonably good about handling it. I would like to not have to handle it. :P

If approached from a non-benevolent perspective, I must admit the situation you described does exist. However, apart from those blocked during edit wars, only Crimsonum and I have remained consistently active these past few months. The others are even newly registered users without any special privileges. Have they demanded that you hand over moderator privileges to them? Or are they organizing to sabotage ModEnc?

Furthermore, what is the connection between your conflict of interest with them and your fear of causing me inconvenience? Does my logging into Discord yesterday make me one of them? By that logic, since I registered on Matrix yesterday, does that also make me Ren's accomplice ;P?

In any case, I believe your issues with them should be addressed through communication with that website's creator.

~ DeathFish (talk) 23:11, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

There's nothing to be addressed.

It's a simple matter of policy and reason: I can't trust someone to be a benevolent privileged user on here who's working on a replacement site at the same time.

Either someone wants this site to persevere and to succeed at what it does, or someone has given up on it and wants a replacement.

There's really no middle ground. Either you want ModEnc, or you want something else. Having two of these didn't make sense 20 years go, and it makes even less sense today.

There is no realistic scenario in which both sites are successful. People are lazy, and people enjoy their comfort. They will pick the site that fulfills their needs and contribute there.

The idea that the exact same information would be contributed to both sites at the same time at the same quality is just not realistic.

In the long term, people will either be ModEnc or ModEncJFox contributors.

So either both sites are crippled by a halving of an already tiny pool of contributors, or one site dies.

And that brings us full circle: Why would I consider people for elevated positions on this site who are actively working on crippling or killing it?

That would be positively stupid of me.

I'm not questioning anybody's right to contribute over there and I'm not going to push anyone out because of it. I'm just making the simple observation (and concordant decision) that those who receive more power need to be trusted to act in the interest of the site, and someone who's actively supporting a replacement has a clear conflict of interest in that regard.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 23:38, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

At the very least, I only need to maintain stable operation and rich content. After all, I have RSS feeds - I can receive AuY's edits on ModEnc and others' edits on ModEnc2. As for you saying I support alternatives? No no no, I only support their protection and backup during edit wars, and I appreciate them for stepping up. As I said, if ModEnc can operate stably, then other wikis should handle different responsibilities. Of course, it's unrealistic for both sites to succeed simultaneously. While I can manage my own content, I clearly don't have the authority to freely migrate content that others have added to both websites separately. Regarding irrational privileged users? Are you suggesting I would let them vandalize ModEnc without fulfilling my blocking and protecting responsibilities when you're absent? What benefit would that bring me? I certainly wouldn't do that. Even as a regular editable page user, I wouldn't participate in actions that damage ModEnc's pages, whether you believe it or not. ;P

Power is not essential. However, if you require assistance, I can do my best within my capabilities. This specifically refers to maintenance support and does not include involvement in disputes between your sites. I will assist any site that requires help without harming others, as long as the community's collective knowledge assets continue to grow. Of course, if you consider helping ModEnc or ModEnc2 as taking sides against another site, then I have nothing more to add. Moreover, since you are still present here, should any issues arise, I can always send messages through this page for you to perform necessary operations to maintain site stability.

Additionally, if you're concerned about ra2diy-wiki (not ModEnc²) potentially impacting ModEnc, rest assured that ra2diy-wiki serves the Kratos engine. We have no intention of creating a verbatim encyclopedia like ModEnc that meticulously documents original game content. For Kratos engine-related materials, many components are highly interconnected (its design philosophy resembles GearZero from earlier years). Therefore, we believe separating every flags into individual pages would be inconvenient. On behalf of ra2diy-wiki, I explicitly state that there will be no competition with ModEnc.After all, what we are doing is fundamentally different from your approach. We started with a blank MediaWiki connected to RA2DIY and haven't imported any content from either ModEnc or ModEnc2. All content on ra2diy-wiki is our original creation, and by its very nature will remain complementary to your website.:)

~ DeathFish (talk) 00:02, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

---

From AD Bots

#To Other Site

I appreciate your desire, but my time investment in this site has already increased a thousandfold compared to the past few years, and I'm not magically gaining more time.

The only reason I'm frequently checking in right now is because last time I left this generation of editors unsupervised, a civil war broke out, page histories were raped and attribution was removed.

To be frank: In the past, this kind of hand holding wasn't necessary.

It's not making me happy.

And to be utterly frank: Any motivation to invest even more time in ModEnc is thoroughly and completely undercut by the existence of MockEnc.

Why would I sink precious spare time into keeping you company here, while you are actively helping build a replacement?

I really do not understand how the community would come to the conclusion that the fact that you've already decided you're going elsewhere would drive me to invest more in ModEnc.

You (plural) are literally encouraging the opposite of what you claim you want.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 20:40, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, yeah, keep stubbornly believing I'm working for MockEnc while turning a blind eye to the fact that all my contributions have been made on ModEnc. When you questioned my previous ridiculous initiative, I acknowledged it was meaningless and withdrew it. Earlier still, when you asked if I could honestly consider that website's purpose secondary, I answered accordingly and haven't mentioned ModEnc2 or MockEnc since. Even with MockEnc existing, I'm still here keeping you company.

But what have you done? First, when I raised questions about Template:F, you deliberately diverted the conversation to other websites, doubting my ability to contribute equally on ModEnc (despite all my contributions being there), then started lecturing about privileged user conduct. You constantly misinterpret my well-intentioned reminders as veiled accusations and respond with sarcasm. Yet you never question those actually contributing to MockEnc when they discuss normal topics. And you still address me with You (plural)...

It's absurd and disheartening that despite my consistent contributions to ModEnc, you still suspect me of aiding other sites. Even after I've endorsed your position, you keep interrogating my sincerity. Does MockEnc possess some special advantage that makes you insecure? You might as well directly tell me: 'No matter what contributions DeathFish makes or his actual work for ModEnc, Renegade still considers him a spy from another site - get out, go back to MockEnc!' Or: 'I see DeathFish clearly prefers MockEnc and has been aiding it through [list of concrete actions]. Why not go to your preferred website?' If so, I would immediately cease my efforts here.

The fact is that I have been working for ModEnc all along. Even during the civil war when several people and Testid123 were reverting each other's edits, and when ATHSE and Testid123 were engaged in verbal battles, I merely moved three pages that had been moved incorrectly back to their original positions.

In moderation work on ModEnc, even though I haven't become a privileged user, I have been actively cooperating by helping to identify and list ad bots. After you informed me that the page deletion criteria were overly aggressive, I have adjusted my approach.

Not to mention those routine editing tasks.

If I'm not doing something right, just tell me directly how to improve, instead of using meaningless editorial remarks like "Anyway you work for MockEnc", "You (plural) created an alternative", "I don't know how you came to xx conclusion". You think the current situation is dampening your enthusiasm for maintaining ModEnc, but isn't your response doing exactly the same to me? Whether or not you are willing to put time into it, at least for now, I am still willing. Of course, as mentioned before, this is your website, and I will follow your lead.

But I am NOT someone who supports replacing ModEnc with other websites.

~ DeathFish (talk) 11:46, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

First of all, I did not "deliberately diverted the conversation to other websites" - your request did not seem to make sense within the confines of ModEnc, and helpfully explains "On the original page, Template:F serves as an extended version of Template:Tt".

So if your comment doesn't seem to make sense here, and a reference to an "original page" doesn't seem to make sense in context, and there also happens to be an impostor site which uses a barely-edited version of our logo, what is more likely: That you posted unverifiable problems without context - or that the template was broken on MockEnc, and you accidentally got the wrong tab, because they stole our logo and it looks almost identical scaled down to tab size?

So I asked if your were sure you were posting on the right wiki. I didn't judge at all. I even helpfully pointed out that the other site didn't steal the CSS, which would interfere with the way styling templates would display.

Imagine all you want, but my question was valid and there was no hostility in it.

And then you said you'd figure it out on your own. So I considered the topic resolved.

Do you or do you not have trouble with Template:F?

_

I'm not doubting the mathematical possibility of equal contribution.

What I'm doubting is the value and the reality of equal contribution.

If you have 60 minutes to spare for editing, and you edit 60 minutes on one site, by definition, you do not have another 60 minutes to edit on the other site. It is literally impossible for you to maximize your contributions on one site and give equal amount of care to the other.

You cannot invest the entirety of your editing time on one site and then also invest the entirety of your editing time on the other site.

Working on both sites always and inevitably means that you split your time and your efforts.

So sure, you can contribute equally...but that means that either site only gets half of what you have to offer.

And it doesn't change the fact (and this is also the response to some of your other remarks) that any contribution to a copycat site is detrimental to ModEnc, because it splits the userbase and -by virtue of increasing the value of the other site- encourages and enables a long-term split and competition.

With every edit on another site, more users gain the impression they should go elsewhere, leaving multiple modding encyclopedias with fractional communities and a handful of editors each.

And any individual site will have to determine whether what's there in activity and user base is worth the continued effort of administration, maintenance and fees.

It's not a matter of "insecurity", it's a matter of this entire situation being so objectively stupid that we literally predicted this would be the outcome nineteen years ago.

_

I will say this, though: Contrary to the amicable picture you seem to have, I do think that that site is clearly an act of hostility.

Look at what they've done: They've taken our name, our logo, and they put shit like

"ModEnc was previously hosted at modenc.renegadeprojects.com, currently re-hosted at modenc2.markjfox.net (to protect it from TestID123 vandalising the wiki in absence of administrators), [...]"

on it.

They steal our name, they steal our logo, they pretend they are us rehosted, and they pretend that the site is currently being vandalized by Test123 because there is no administrator here to stop him.

And I'm supposed to sit here and pretend that that was a friendly, helpful act of community assistance?

Fuck that.

That's a hostile takeover.

They're deliberately misleading the community about what they are and what happened, in order to take control of ModEnc by way of pretending that they are ModEnc, but new and better.

Nothing stopped them from choosing a different name.

Nothing stopped them from making their own logo.

Nothing stopped them from being honest about the situation in the first place ("no one's blocking Testid, but we didn't actually ask anyone to block him, either").

Nothing stopped them from being honest about the situation a week later ("the place is cleaned up, the vandals are banned, shit's up to date...but we'll continue to pretend we're ModEnc anyway").

Their own news declare that the spam pages have been removed on April 2. That's literally the same day I cleaned up ModEnc. They could've done absolutely nothing and they would've had exactly the same result at the same time.

Instead, a month later, they're still brandishing our name, our logo, lying that they have no other choice but to do it, because this place is under Testid's reign of terror.

I will treat that site for what it is, and if you cannot understand that I'm viewing people who contribute to a site that is literally hostile to us with reservations, then there's really nothing else I can say.

It is the way it is: Instead of talking to us and trying to improve ModEnc, they stole our name, our logo, and they're running a smear campaign to convince users they had to do it and they're the future of ModEnc.

That is the situation.

It is your spare time. I appreciate if you invest it in ModEnc, whole or partial. But please understand that I cannot just pretend that that place is a friendly sister-site and that there's absolutely no problem at all with people working on both of them.

_

As for me supposedly picking on you and ignoring other editors: I know the propaganda is that everyone's talking to me and I'm just utterly uncontactable, but the fact remains: You're the only one talking to me.

Yes, ATHSE posted a question last week.

But if you look at it closely, you'll find that it was really a copycat site question.

So yes, he made contact, but it's not a ModEnc-based question for the improvement of ModEnc, it's a question originating from a hostile site.

And there is no one talking about ModEnc on Matrix either.

You are the only one talking to me about ModEnc.

There may be the occasional exception that proves the rule - but in general, you are the only one talking to me about ModEnc.

Regardless of the lies of those trying to justify their takeover, there is no grand conversation. There are no full chat rooms and hundreds of conversations about ModEnc.

This is it. Right here. Your talk page and mine. That is the entirety of the extent of conversations that I have about ModEnc.

So yes, if I have a complaint about ModEnc editing, it is generally in a conversation with you. Because there are no other conversations.

And contrary to your impression, there aren't too many other editors, either.

It's not like I'm ignoring hundreds of people to pick on you.

I can assure you that I'm not singling you out.

It's just that you're making up the vast majority of edits and practically the entirety of my conversations about ModEnc, so if there's anything related to ModEnc editing, there's a 99% chance it involves you.

That's not personal. That's the reality of the situation.

_

tl;dr: The other site is objectively hostile and dishonest, and I will treat it as such.

I will have reservations towards anyone who supports it - by necessity.

I am not singling you out, you're just involved in almost everything that's not administration regarding ModEnc, so anything that involves ModEnc usually involves you, and that includes situations that didn't go according to plan.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 14:01, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

The issue with Template:F has been resolved.

_

I don't mean equal distribution. I don't deny your view that people can only focus on contributing to a single website, and I oppose division, which is why I subsequently chose your site. But "I can hardly expect you to do the same here as well." The results I got from multiple translation tools all make it sound like I'm only capable of contributing that much to their site but unable to do the same for ModEnc. Then you told me "Wouldn't want to get you in trouble by splitting your attention," "it would be foolish to give power to those who seek to end the site." Even though I have no objection to your choice of whether a person can or cannot become staff, such reasoning sounds like you consider me part of other websites hostile to ModEnc. Similar to how you said we've mostly just been chatting between you and me, and from the edit war until today on ModEnc you've only asked me if I needed permissions. So I can only assume that was directed at me. Yet you could simply have said "I changed my mind and decided to increase my own site-checking frequency, so I don't need your help anymore."

_

Huh, I long ago abandoned unrealistic fantasies. I agree they should use their own set of logos and names, and have tried negotiating with them, but they still haven't changed. You certainly don't need to whitewash this, and I've stopped whitewashing it too. As you said, after the edit war settles everything should return to normal. So of course I can understand that and it’s actually reasonable for you to say Fuck.

_

Heh, this makes it sound like the reason I'm facing these interrogations is because I came here to talk with you. Though I'm already satisfied that you've stopped using the "You (plural)" form of address with me now.

~ DeathFish (talk) 15:32, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

No, you're taking the expectation line out of context: It was specifically in context of work that you had done on the other site before.

So the message wasn't "you are incapable of doing that much work on ModEnc", the message was "you can't do that much work on both sites".

Exactly what I said in this conversation: You have a finite amount of time. You can't max it out on both sites.

As for the matter of privileges, I don't really know how to explain it differently: It's not a matter of not being happy about help, it's a matter of trust.

Even if you don't contribute to the dark site right now, three weeks ago you were still active there, and less than a month ago, you were posting news like this.

If you have chosen not to support that project further, I am grateful for that.

But please understand that that's not visible to me yet, simply because it's a very recent change.

_

Ironically, adding the hint that it was a plural you was intended to show that I wasn't singling you out individually.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 20:22, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

An acceptably extended explanation.

Yeah, if a person contributes content to two websites simultaneously, it will definitely reduce their work efficiency to some extent, so the best approach is still to choose only one.

Okay, after all, it's been less than a month. The time is too short, which is completely understandable.

_

Huh, sorry, it seems I prematurely separated my positioning from theirs. Now I understand what you mean.

Funny thing is, I actually first discovered the already completed website on the edit war battlefields of this site, rather than someone informing me of the URL, heh.

Special Note: Privileges are merely an optional means for me to provide assistance, not something to be demanded or traded. Just as I continue working on ModEnc even without receiving privileges from you and even non-admin users cannot delete spam pages.

But your concern sounds as if you plan to go on vacation and do not supervising after giving me privileges. But how is that possible.

This isn't a request for trust, but merely a comment, or casual conversation.

~ DeathFish (talk) 21:03, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

Well, realistically, the whole point of delegation is to not have to be around.

I'm not saying I'm going to hand you rights and then vanish forever, but what would I give you rights for if I'm going to stick around 24/7 to supervise you anyway?

If I assign elevated privileges to someone, it's because I trust I don't have to supervise them. That they'll be fine to use them when necessary, in a responsible manner in line with the site's interests.

In every organisation, the whole point of delegation is that someone other than you has the ability to do the thing, so you can focus on something else.

So while the myth of the uncontactable Renegade is and always has been horseshit, not having to be here and babysit recent changes all day is absolutely an aspect of finding more moderators.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 08:41, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

Ares Flags

BTW, regarding the issue of expansion engines, does ModEnc plan to add content related to expansion engines? Ares-related pages and categories have existed for a long time, and Testid123 added some content (though upon review, the content does not come from official documentation). Should I add Ares engine content to ModEnc?

~ DeathFish (talk) 00:02, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Ares has been a valid selection in the Flag template forever. It's absolutely fine to add things from that.

As for other extensions, it's really a matter of notability and how widely used they are contemporarily.

NPatch, for example, did see some usage a long time ago, but I didn't get the impression that adding its flags would serve anyone today.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 21:03, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

The contents of NPatch and RockPatch are naturally excluded from consideration, since the flag types of RockPatch have been removed. Even if NPatch flags existed, categorizing those flags that date back to the RockPatch era would be problematic, as the version updates of ETS and NP lack consistency in their incremental changes... At most, I'll examine the necessity of certain statements in Ares - such as Deliver.Buildups being removed in 0.C, the vehicle GapGenerator being disabled due to Ares' rushed official release, and SW.Suppressors, etc.

~ DeathFish (talk) 16:57, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

User Group and CAPTCHA

BTW, could you please check the abuselog or manually remove and then re-add my autoconfirmed user group? The CAPTCHA verification still appears every time I save edits, even when I'm not using external links. From my search, it seems the required recovery period should have elapsed by now (maybe). Or does ModEnc have different configuration settings in this regard?

~ DeathFish (talk) 16:57, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

Due to the age and the relative in-activeness of ModEnc, autoconfirmed status does currently not confer skipcaptcha status.

Look at it this way: If the only thing a spammer has to do to beat the CAPTCHA is wait, then what's the point of the CAPTCHA?

On more active wikis, where the ratio of real users to spam accounts is hundreds to one, allowing confirmed users to skip the CAPTCHA makes sense.

With the ratio ModEnc had recently, there are more people that need to be stopped from editing than there are genuine editors.

We've had 10 spam accounts this week. And we have two real editors. With numbers like that, I'm not opening loop holes in the CAPTCHA.

Maybe I'll create a "manuallyconfirmed" group sometime to let known good editors bypass the CAPTCHA. But with the future as unclear as it is, we'll have to see.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 19:54, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

Okay, I was just making an incorrect assumption based on the information I found about what might be wrong with my account.

However, according to the previous system settings, even advertising users should need to create multiple pages to become autoconfirmed users when first registering, right? Did previous bots pass CAPTCHA before creating pages? Of course, I've noticed that you seem to have added more CAPTCHA questions for further optimization.

I'm wondering if this verification can be implemented during user registration? I think that might make the verification mechanism more effective. Just a suggestion or hypothesis.

Additionally, given the current situation, does marking an edit as patrolled still hold significance? I regularly review the records in Recent Changes, but I've also left numerous edits that haven't been marked as patrolled (I have noticed you reviewed and marked one of my edits yesterday, thank you).

~ DeathFish (talk) 15:41, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Autoconfirmation: That's a fair point. It's been over fifteen years since I set that up, I forgot we had the separate count in play.

Bots vs. CAPTCHA: There were two different issues at play there: For one, the CAPTCHA broke in November and despite actively asking for feedback whether it was still working, nobody told me it had broken. Independent of that, the previous questions had been broken, so even after I noticed the CAPTCHA was off and reactivated it, the bots were still getting through. It's been quiet this past week because the CAPTCHA is active for account creations and because I added new questions.
When the CAPTCHA works, it works.

DeathFish vs. CAPTCHA: Regardless of whether autoconfirmation lets you bypass the captcha, you should be able to bypass it with email confirmation now.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 14:30, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Bots vs. CAPTCHA: Good handling. The new verification questions are sufficiently diverse. Although some people might not be able to answer them due to the emergence of new-generation tools, contributors here haven't encountered this issue so far.

DeathFish vs. CAPTCHA: I saw the notice on the homepage and subsequently set up my email. Thank you for the notification.

~ DeathFish (talk) 15:17, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

---

By the way, did you ever consider in earlier years - after creating all pages for gamemd.exe and Ares - users who have just registered recently must submit a request to create new pages. Although, even now, the prerequisites for doing so still have not been met.

~ DeathFish (talk) 15:41, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

I think we locked down the site once, to curb an ongoing assault by trolls or something. Other than that, the goal has always been that all members of the community can contribute, registered or not.

Every barrier of contribution loses you contributors.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 15:36, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Patrol

Patrolling: Patrolling is an organisational measure. It helps coordinate multiple moderators. You don't have to check a revision if somebody else has already done so. So there is value in it, but at a wiki with three editors and a handful of revisions per day, its significance isn't quite noticeable in practice.
Back in the day, I was quite happy when D or Gordon hat already patrolled something.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 14:30, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Patrolling: Actually, even regular readers use this feature. It signifies that the content on the page has been checked by someone. Of course, I could simply ask someone to review my edits to complete patrolling.

Back in the day: It's a pity I wasn't involved in the international C&C community when ModEnc was first created. In any case, thank you(plural) for your years of work.

~ DeathFish (talk) 15:17, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

I didn't necessarily mean a moderator in the sense of someone with elevated privileges. Just somebody...moderating. It's a marker that somebody has looked at the edit and deemed it okay. (As opposed to a state where you don't know if the edit still exists because it's good, or because nobody has seen it yet.) It's the positive counterpart to rollback, if you will.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 15:52, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Under MediaWiki's operational mechanism, system user groups are automatically patrolled, while regular user groups require their edits to be reviewed and marked as patrolled by others. After adding this feature, does it mean I can mark my own edits as patrolled on the page without others reviewing them? This mechanism of allowing ordinary users to manually verify their own edits seems somewhat unusual.

I would prefer to focus on tasks achievable under the current framework. Since I'm the only one concerned about this matter, there's no necessity to incorporate it.

~ DeathFish (talk) 19:28, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

I have no idea if you can patrol your edits. My accounts are special-purpose accounts. Just check?

~ Renegade (SysOp) 18:52, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

AD Bots

A bad news: the first ad bot (User:Autolocksmith8575) that breached the current moderation mechanisms has emerged. It is not yet known whether specific question in CAPTCHA have been cracked or if the bot bypassed CAPTCHA by adding email addresses.

~ DeathFish (talk) 11:51, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

The second one (User:Autolocksmith8439) appeared today.

~ DeathFish (talk) 02:58, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for reporting. I have altered the system to change the CAPTCHA daily. This will not prevent inner-day manual spam, but there is no automated way to do that anyway.

Hopefully, having to send a human to crack the captcha every day will be too costly to deal with us.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 18:44, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

Have you been busy lately? It would be great if the administrators could check in daily. For example, regarding what you mentioned on the Main Page about ad bots possibly being integrated with large language models, I’m afraid the current measures might still be insufficient to handle that scenario.

Additionally, there is another message regarding page processing methods at 16:29, 30 April 2025 (UTC) (#How to deal with Spam Pages). I need to confirm some operational process issues.

~ DeathFish (talk) 18:58, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

To Other Site

#From AD Bots

Set the default editor on mobile phone

Hey Ren, is there a setting on the phone to use the visual editor or source code editor by default? I'm used to editing the source code directly, but a few days ago when I was working remotely and operating ModEnc, it seemed to default to the visual editor (without considering changing the UA identifier, which is similar to manual switching).

~ DeathFish (talk) 17:46, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure what you mean, but you can both deactivate the visual editor completely as well as set the visual editor to wikitext mode under Editing in your User Preferences.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 18:41, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

Have you tried opening ModEnc on a mobile phone? The desktop version works perfectly fine, but when I edit on my phone, it defaults to the visual editor and requires manually switching to the source code editing mode.

~ DeathFish (talk) 18:58, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

For me, the pencil/edit-icon in the top right corner is a dropdown button, where I can switch between visual and source.

Source is the default for me, so I can only refer you back to the options I already mentioned.

I have the visual editor turned off and as far as I can tell, the mobile site respects that.

You can access the setting on mobile by going into the Hamburger Menu, Settings, User preferences/Open preferences, Editing. You then have the "Enable the visual editor" button in the Editor section.

As said: You could leave it enabled and set the button below, "Use the wikitext mode inside the visual editor" instead.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 19:52, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

I had already disabled the visual editor in my personal settings (Or perhaps I closed it immediately when it first appeared), so it shouldn't be an issue with the preference settings. It seems that perhaps it's only enabled by default when editing on mobile for the first time. A few days ago, I manually switched to source code editing mode on the edit page, and today when I tried again, it started in source code mode by default.

Well, consider it resolved. Close as completed.

~ DeathFish (talk) 20:01, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

Template:Bugs Bug

On any page that uses this template, it appears as a second-level heading, but clicking the "Edit" button on its right redirects to the editing page of Template:Bugs instead of the editing page for that specific paragraph. To edit the content of the Bugs section, one must locate the nearest preceding heading before this template and edit there. This is highly counterintuitive. I am unsure whether this is an intentional design choice or if the template is not functioning as originally intended. Alternatively, is there a way to modify this behavior after over a decade?

~ DeathFish (talk) 15:40, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

This seems to be by design, so that, in pages that are made up of multiple transcluded parts, you can edit the section directly - despite the fact that it's coming from a different page.

I'm not entirely sure the effort it would take to resolve this is worth it.

My proposal would be to change the template to only do the inner part of the current template.

So the template would contain Stuff instead of == Stuff ==, and we would change the pages it's included on to == {{Bugs}} == instead of {{Bugs}}, so that the result on the page remains == Stuff ==, but the section is native to the page.

That should resolve the problem.

Since {{Bugs}} should stand alone and the system can tell us what pages it's on, I should be able to automate the replacement on the pages.

~ Renegade (SysOp) 19:54, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

I have already resolved it ;)

When I tried the method you mentioned, I found that even after removing the heading format, the line breaks in the original template still disrupted parsing. I then modified the template again, and discovered that only 254 pages actually use this template. Moreover, some pages improperly used level-2 headings where they shouldn't have, while others merely mentioned {{Bugs}} without using it as a section (like here, on your Talk page). Bulk replacement clearly can't handle these cases or would require special processing. Therefore, I manually replaced them yesterday. I just completed the first full round of inspection. If you want, maybe you just need to use regular expressions to search for (?<!=)\{\{Bugs\}\}(?!=) to check for any missed instances and no longer need to run the wiki bot for replacements.

~ DeathFish (talk) 12:30, 24 May 2025 (UTC)

Impressive work!

Thank you for the effort!

~ Renegade (SysOp) 21:17, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

Default is minor edit Option

Did you remove this setting from the user preferences? Probably after yesterday's update, I can only manually check the This is a minor edit option each time I commit. When I checked under User Preferences/Editing/Editor, the Mark all edits minor by default option for has also disappeared.

~ DeathFish (talk) 19:58, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

Yes I did, earlier today.

I noticed that you had a number of non-minor edits being declared minor (e.g. less than two hours ago), and when pondering whether to talk to you about it, I realized there wasn't really a situation in which it was reasonable for any user on here to set that option. Not even for any of my accounts.

It is exceedingly unlikely that someone regularly and frequently edits ModEnc and only ever fixes typos and formatting.

Anyone can still mark an edit as minor, if he believes the edit to be minor. I've just made sure that it's a conscious decision.

(I didn't post about it because you were actually the only active user to have that option set. Nobody else would have noticed.)

~ Renegade (SysOp) 20:37, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

Indeed, I usually only manually uncheck that option when adding substantial meaningful knowledge, while for edits that merely correct spelling and formatting issues, I directly merge them into the next content update and rarely create a separate commit. To me, this feature is more like marking a 'useful' edit operation by proactively unchecking it.

However, if it's not enabled by default, there might be cases where people forget to mark simple modifications as minor.

No big deal, I'm just confirming this wasn't a system error but rather an intentional change.

~ DeathFish (talk) 21:21, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

we need a special guide/tutorial header

On modenc2 I had the admin add a {{guideheader }} which just includes the games it relates to.

• This is actually very handy for encompassing pages that describe logic and link various topics together that belong in wildly different sections.

Also added was a new {{sectionheader }} which takes game+[section]+files only.

• This is far better than {{wrongtitle }} complaining that the section should be [section]...

If you could add those it would make my updates easier, since a lot of the updates on deezire pages especially don't neatly fit existing headers, and I never know precisely what to put. IFV Weapon System is a perfect example.

~ ATHSE (talk) 02:12, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

I do not understand what exactly you are requesting, and I don't understand what makes it so special that it requires an admin to do it.

Can you elaborate?

~ Renegade (SysOp) 18:35, 30 April 2025 (UTC)