Nazi wikipedia?

[The Adversary]

What the heck is going on; I just see nazi flags when I try to read Frederica of Baden (T-H-L) or Elizabeth Alexeievna (Louise of Baden) (T-H-L)??

See https://archive.ph/NFC8j

[LargelyRecyclable]

Awww, I though this was about an actual wiki on Nazi Germany.

Apparently the offending edits already got memory holed. Unless it's something super bizarre on your end...

[el84]

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... f_articles

Someone vandalised the template "Template:Wbr" or something according to the comments there.

[Ritchie333]

Standard template editor vandalism. Probably somebody "testing the security of the site" for the lulz. At least it wasn't a giant picture of a cock this time.

The real problem is that not all high-profile templates are appropriately protected. There is bot that semi-protects them if they're considered "high use", but it's not too difficult to circumvent that if you're really determined. All high-use templates should be template editor protected.

[No Ledge]

MusikBot II protected "Template:Wbr" as a High-risk template or module, requiring autoconfirmed or confirmed access, on 3 March 2019, but, no problem, Xylophonist made about the minimum number of edits, over the minimum amount of time, to auto-confirm themself.

Vandals will find a way.

[Poetlister]

Standard template editor vandalism. Probably somebody "testing the security of the site" for the lulz. At least it wasn't a giant picture of a cock this time.

The real problem is that not all high-profile templates are appropriately protected. There is bot that semi-protects them if they're considered "high use", but it's not too difficult to circumvent that if you're really determined. All high-use templates should be template editor protected.

Ritchie modestly does not point out that he blocked the offending editor and protected the template. It says it's used on about 53000 articles, so it should certainly be protected.

[The Adversary]

Thanks, everyone. However I cannot see that Template:Wbr is used in the two articles I noted it first; what am I not seeing?

[Ming]

Thanks, everyone. However I cannot see that Template:Wbr is used in the two articles I noted it first; what am I not seeing?

Probably transcluded from another template; there are dozens involved.

[No Ledge]

Thanks, everyone. However I cannot see that Template:Wbr is used in the two articles I noted it first; what am I not seeing?

Probably transcluded from another template; there are dozens involved.

Yes, from the screen capture it looks like it was near the top of the article. The infobox is at the top just below the hatnote, and Template:Marriage is used in the infobox and transcludes the previously-infected template, which was a variant with a high level of transmission to other templates.

The complexity of this ensures that an editor with significant template editing experience will be needed to track it down and make the reversion, if it isn't spotted by the recent changes patrol.

[Poetlister]

There are loads of edits to templates all the time - see here. Maybe there are too many templates.

[Beeblebrox]

It's certainly an obscure thing to choose to vandalize. I started reading the documentation, just trying to figure out what this thing even is, and my eyes just glazed over.

Please do not take this as an invitation to explain it to me. I appreciate people who create and maintain apparently useful little things like this, but it's just not my thing.

[Poetlister]

It's certainly an obscure thing to choose to vandalize. I started reading the documentation, just trying to figure out what this thing even is, and my eyes just glazed over.

Please do not take this as an invitation to explain it to me. I appreciate people who create and maintain apparently useful little things like this, but it's just not my thing.

It's a great way to vandalise if you know what you're doing, because as we've seen it can affect huge numbers of articles and finding out where the problem is so that it can be fixed can be quite time-consuming.

[No Ledge]

It's certainly an obscure thing to choose to vandalize. I started reading the documentation, just trying to figure out what this thing even is, and my eyes just glazed over.

Please do not take this as an invitation to explain it to me. I appreciate people who create and maintain apparently useful little things like this, but it's just not my thing.

It's a great way to vandalise if you know what you're doing, because as we've seen it can affect huge numbers of articles and finding out where the problem is so that it can be fixed can be quite time-consuming.

Actually German editor Hoo man (T-C-L) was on it within 5 minutes of the infection, reverting it 2 minutes before the first ANI report. That first reversion was Hoo man's first edit in seven days.

My that's quite a long discussion which is still ongoing!

This template can safely be substituted, though there is no particular reason to do so.

Actually there was a reason. To protect your page from possible future Nazi infections!

[The Adversary]

Lots of news-articles about it:
*https://www.yahoo.com/news/wikipedia-te ... 49735.html
*https://gizmodo.com/thousands-of-wikipe ... 1847494288
*https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/wi ... ar-AANnhCh
*https://forward.com/culture/474208/wiki ... a-company/
*https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/15883450/ ... -swastika/
*https://markets.businessinsider.com/new ... kas-2021-8

etc, etc

[Beeblebrox]

Glanced at a few, funny that so many sources picked up on something that was only live for five minutes. Many of them don't quite seem to understand what happened, thinking individual pages were "hacked".

[Poetlister]

This template can safely be substituted, though there is no particular reason to do so.

Actually there was a reason. To protect your page from possible future Nazi infections!

It's probably sound advice to do that. But what happens if you subst a template that calls other templates? Do all the others get incorporated? You could end up wit ha very large piece of code in the article, and that might get vandalised. Also, if there are bugs in the template, they can't get fixed if you've done a subst.

[No Ledge]

Glanced at a few, funny that so many sources picked up on something that was only live for five minutes. Many of them don't quite seem to understand what happened, thinking individual pages were "hacked".

Noting the mention of null edits in the discussion, I think because of update lags due to page caching, some of these lingered for more than five minutes, perhaps significantly more than five minutes. The task of updating the pages gets added to the job queue when there are more than 500 pages needing updated, so the threshold for "high use" needing template protection might be set at 500.

Use of high-use templates like this one can be lessened by substituting them in widely used intermediate templates.

This need for null edits continues to annoy me. They should increase the speed of their updates to cached pages.

I also think the vandal's goal was to embarrass the Wikimedia Foundation so they likely tipped off the media sources at the same time they transmitted the infection.

[Ming]

This template can safely be substituted, though there is no particular reason to do so.

Actually there was a reason. To protect your page from possible future Nazi infections!

It's probably sound advice to do that. But what happens if you subst a template that calls other templates? Do all the others get incorporated? You could end up wit ha very large piece of code in the article, and that might get vandalised. Also, if there are bugs in the template, they can't get fixed if you've done a subst.

Substitution is not recursive: the most commonly substituted template, afd1, just drops a template into the top of the page.

[No Ledge]

This template can safely be substituted, though there is no particular reason to do so.

Actually there was a reason. To protect your page from possible future Nazi infections!

It's probably sound advice to do that. But what happens if you subst a template that calls other templates? Do all the others get incorporated? You could end up wit ha very large piece of code in the article, and that might get vandalised. Also, if there are bugs in the template, they can't get fixed if you've done a subst.

I just did a substitution on the single use in Template:Marriage. {{marriage}} is used on 52,000 pages so that's 52,000 fewer pages for the job queue to work through, and Frederica of Baden (T-H-L) has now been vaccinated as {{marriage}} was the only template that article was using that transcluded {{wbr}}.

[Poetlister]

This need for null edits continues to annoy me. They should increase the speed of their updates to cached pages.

I expect that this would require either expensive additional and better servers, or competent developers. The WMF isn't in the business of spending lots of money on improving Wikipedia.

[Midsize Jake]

...Many of them don't quite seem to understand what happened, thinking individual pages were "hacked".

I'm starting to think that the media has been deliberately applying the word "hack" to practically any form of undesirable internet activity, simply because they're mostly lazy (or overworked) and don't want to have to deal with the tremendous complexity and diversity of such activity. IOW, they're simplifying it for their readers less because they think their readers are likely to be bored or confused by it, and more because having a single four-letter word for it makes their job(s) a lot easier.

That said, I'd be remiss if I didn't also note that Wikipedia has done largely the same thing with the word "vandalism." That word might be the closest conventional analogy to what goes on, but that only increases the desirability of creating a whole new word.

[AndyTheGrump]

...Many of them don't quite seem to understand what happened, thinking individual pages were "hacked".

I'm starting to think that the media has been deliberately applying the word "hack" to practically any form of undesirable internet activity, simply because they're mostly lazy (or overworked) and don't want to have to deal with the tremendous complexity and diversity of such activity. IOW, they're simplifying it for their readers less because they think their readers are likely to be bored or confused by it, and more because having a single four-letter word for it makes their job(s) a lot easier.

That said, I'd be remiss if I didn't also note that Wikipedia has done largely the same thing with the word "vandalism." That word might be the closest conventional analogy to what goes on, but that only increases the desirability of creating a whole new word.

Wikipedia routinely redefines words and phrases to mean something else: see e.g. 'notable', 'reliable', 'anyone', etc, etc. As for lazy journalism, I'd say yes, most readers don't like to have things explained to them, most of the time. At least not when they are looking at trashy clickbait articles. 'Wikipedia hacked' makes a good headline, and holding the readers attention long enough to explain how Wikipedia works isn't the purpose of the exercise.

[Ming]

It's not completely unreasonable to describe this as a hack: someone exploited a security hole and some inside knowledge, and mucked up a bit of low level code. About half of the linked stories described this accurately enough, though it's not clear that any of them fully understood the description. Nobody except the Gizmodo fellow stepped up to the reality that "the encyclopedia anyone can edit" is, by its nature, "the encyclopedia anyone can hack." And the Business Insider article: if there was ever an illustration that the WMF is something of a parasite on the project, this was certainly one. If they are going to keep pretending to be running the show, they had better be right on top of things when they get calls from the press about changes made in the last hour or so.

[Poetlister]

It's not completely unreasonable to describe this as a hack: someone exploited a security hole and some inside knowledge, and mucked up a bit of low level code. About half of the linked stories described this accurately enough, though it's not clear that any of them fully understood the description. Nobody except the Gizmodo fellow stepped up to the reality that "the encyclopedia anyone can edit" is, by its nature, "the encyclopedia anyone can hack." And the Business Insider article: if there was ever an illustration that the WMF is something of a parasite on the project, this was certainly one. If they are going to keep pretending to be running the show, they had better be right on top of things when they get calls from the press about changes made in the last hour or so.

This is certainly much closer to a hack than the usual use, where someone has just edited an article to make some silly comment about a sportsman. Any idiot can do that,and of course quite a few idiots have done. Editing a template called by other templates is far more sophisticated.