On using STIki and its diff-screen, I occasionally find myself turning to wiki-diff, since large and complex differences are more easily spotted there. Do other users have the same experience? If so, my - low priority - question is: can you reformat the diff-screen format and make it better? Yours, Super48paul (talk) 13:46, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi Paul!
Yes, and the tiny, obscure edit too. It is better that you continue to use wiki-diff — you can then check previous revisions and/or the history. That is what I do — | Gareth Griffith-Jones |The WelshBuzzard| — 17:29, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

I think the diff shown in STiki is the same as that shown on wiki, apart from:

• The colour scheme in STiki is red and green, like it used to be on wiki. I think the new colour scheme is easier on the eye for many people and better for people who are red-green colourblind, but I would have thought that old/STiki colour scheme does make the differences clearer for some people.
• Long words can have a line break in them in STiki, allowing nicer sizing of columns.

Paul, is it one of these two things where you would like to see STiki conforming to the on-wiki diff? Or is there something that I'm missing?

I often show the diff on wiki because it allows me to use wikEdDiff and/or the further developed diff by Schnark. These are especially good when the edit you are looking at has confused the standard diff. For example, sometimes the standard diff ends up comparing the wrong paragraphs with each other.

Yaris678 (talk) 21:40, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Yaris for your comments. I tried wikeddiff as you suggested, but I was not immediately enthusiastic. For now, with smaller edits, I stay on STIki; with larger more complicated ones I shift over to wikidiff (which to my eyes works faster than wikeddiff). S I will not go so far as to suggest that STiki should change its presentation of difs. Super48paul (talk) 12:04, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Is your preference based on the colours? Yaris678 (talk) 12:18, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

• For bigger, complex edits I shift to WikiDiff and yes, my preference is based on colour, because red-green/yellow combination makes it a tad difficult for me to organise the edits. Soham 12:28, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Cool. I prefer the new colours too. They take a bit of getting used to, but they don't scream as hard as the old colours, which is especially useful for complex changes. I actually went so far as to change my common.css so that Schnarks diff has the new colours. See the image to the right. Yaris678 (talk) 13:00, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Changing the format of the diff is somewhat difficult. I currently just use the standard diff output from Mediawiki (a function available via the API) which gives me some nice HTML. I do some post-processing over this to beautify it for the smaller (and functionality constrained) Java window. However, if people are primarily interested in matters of *color*, it is easy to change the RGB codes to do something softer (or make options available per the menus). West.andrew.g (talk) 20:36, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Thinking about it, there's a difference I haven't mentioned - The font! I'm guessing that would be easy to change too. I think the easy win on this is to allow the user to choose both the font and the colour scheme. When I mentioned Schnark's diff, I wasn't suggesting that should be implemented in STiki. (That would be cool, but I appreciate that it would be more complicated than changing colours and fonts. I think the main reason I mentioned it was to encourage other STiki users to use it... by installing it in their usual wiki interface.) Yaris678 (talk) 10:28, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

I am willing to pursue diff-colors/fonts as a feature, but I'd appreciate if there could be some discussion about what options people prefer. Personally I still use the old "vector" (or is it "mono") interface for WP, so I am well behind the curve regarding default and gadget-enhanced options. If people could extract the HTML color codes in their current setup, that would be most helpful. Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk)

Vector is the current default skin. I use Monobook. I suspect you do too.

I have just checked and the fonts and colours for diffs are the same across Monobook and vector.

If I use Firefox's "inspect" tool (Tools > Web Developer > Inspect) and get the html for line one of this diff I get the following code.

<div><span class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><a href="//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Distinguish" style="text-decoration: none; color: inherit; color: expression(parentElement.currentStyle.color)" title="Template:Distinguish">{{Distinguish</a>|</span>Continuous production<span class="diffchange diffchange-inline">}}</span></div>

This doesn't tell us the style info directly but I think it might come from a cascading style sheet. Looking at the entire source for that diff, I can see this line.

<link rel="stylesheet" href="//bits.wikimedia.org/en.wikipedia.org/load.php?debug=false&amp;lang=en&amp;modules=mediawiki.action.history.diff&amp;only=styles&amp;skin=monobook&amp;*" />

This may or may not be relevant. My understanding of html is limited.

I think the font is Arial. Having an option to use Arial, or some other Helvetica variant, should be quite simple. I guess it would be best if you could make the whole STiki GUI use Arial, not just the diff.

The colour coding looks a bit more complicated.

Yaris678 (talk) 13:41, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

FYI, added to feature table as T#037 for future tracking purposes. West.andrew.g (talk) 15:48, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. Yaris678 (talk) 16:30, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Hello, I am unable to log into STiki. I am getting a response that either I should have rollback permission OR >1,000 edits. I have > 1,000 edits. Can anyone help please? Thanks, Arun Kumar SINGH (Talk) 17:53, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

@AKS.9955: I see you have made over 1000 edits and are autoconfirmed; congratulations. Anyway, it will be good advice to ask West.andrew.g, the developer, to enable STiki for you. Epicgenius (talk) 18:24, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

1000+ edits in 5 days is amazing! However, I would like to see more tenure before using these tools. Enrolling in the CVUA is a great way to start! ///EuroCarGT 23:01, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

• Hello EuroCarGT, pardon my ignorance and asking but is my case special where despite having 1,000 edits I am not allowed to use STiki or is it a general rule for some latency period? Recently I came across someone, who had close to 1,500 edits and was a Rollbacker and Reviewer. So, I am left a little confused here. Additionally, you may want to check my contributions to see if there is anything more that I should be doing. Thanks for your time. Arun Kumar SINGH (Talk) 05:33, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

• AKS.9955, crossing 1000 edits does not automatically give you access to STiki, you have to ask here for that from West.andrew.g who will consider after browsing through your contributions. Soham 13:12, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Actually it does. From Wikipedia:STiki#Using STiki, it's either that or rollbacker permission (I remember downloading and using it as soon as I got rollback); the third possibility is directly asking for permission. I wonder what's wrong with it not working for AKS. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 13:43, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

• Thanks for your time gentlemen. I agree with Ugog Nizdast and tats why I ended up posting a message here. Can anything be done? Arun Kumar SINGH (Talk) 14:40, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

@AKS.9955: You need 1000 edits in mainspace, not 1000 overall. You currently have 69.41% of your edits (817 edits) in mainspace, so you still need more to get automatic access. --Mdann52talk to me! 14:54, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Wow...it was so obvious, I can't believe we all overlooked that. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 15:10, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

• Ouch!!!! I missed reading that simple word and wasted everyone's time. Sorry Ugog Nizdast, User:Mdann52, EuroCarGT, Epicgenius & Soham. My bad. Arun Kumar SINGH (Talk) 15:22, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

• It's OK, at the rate you're going, you'll probably be eligible by Thursday. Epicgenius (talk) 15:25, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

• Ugog Nizdast, Same here. Soham 15:39, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

 Done -- @AKS.9955: -- Yes, the automatic checks the tool does require 1000 edits in article namespace (else any account could easily gain permissions by rapidly editing non-monitored namespaces). The user in question will be at that threshold in a day or two, regardless, so I have gone ahead and explicitly granted access. All the experience (although rapidly amassed) appears to be present. I encourage AKS to not get burnout or catch WP:EDITCOUNTITIS. Happy editing. West.andrew.g (talk) 18:02, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

• Dear West.andrew.g, thanks for the encouragement, support and your trust. WP:ITIS....lol. Did not know something like this exists - technology breeds news problems; isn't it :-). I hope I am not the first "fatality or serious injury to be ever recorded". Suggestion well received. On the lighter note, I happened to visit someone's profile (User:koavf and just to clarify I don't aspire to be anywhere close to him). This guy has 1,339,478 edits since 06-Mar-2005 (@412 / day). OMG!! In anycase, it is not the quantity but the quality I am more keen at. Thanks again. Arun Kumar SINGH (Talk) 18:17, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

• AKS.9955, you may wanna slow down cause editing at that pace may lead to mistakes while editing. Plus I was going to point at it [Editcountisis] but West did it before me.Soham 17:04, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

• Soham, Agreed. Arun Kumar SINGH (Talk) 17:17, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Is something weird happening with the Cluebot-NG queue? The edits it is presenting are as old as 70 days at present. --Greenmaven (talk) 02:20, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Noticed that too...something is really wrong, besides that, an extremely low hit-rate of 5–10% is shown when normally it should be above 30-plus. Is metadata any better? No one used it much last time I checked. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 02:51, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Both queues are showing stale edits recently - Huggle's queue seems to be working well. hmssolent^lambast _{patrol records} 04:17, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

This is nothing new, happens quite frequently. Widr (talk) 11:12, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Something weird is going on and I am investigating. The STiki process normally causes loads of 0.25-0.50 on my machine. Loads are currently beyond 30.0. I made no changes to the software. This looks like threads getting caught in an infinite loop; but the API will also be a point of focus. West.andrew.g (talk) 17:16, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

I am getting current diffs now. Yaris678 (talk) 17:36, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

I am getting quite a low hit rate though... which is unexpected for the time of day. Considering the nature of the diffs presented, I think someone else has been through and pressed pass at anything they couldn't work out straight away. Yaris678 (talk) 17:52, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

I've gotten a few CPU spikes, like those brought up in this discussion a few months ago. Not sure if that's related. — MusikAnimal ^talk 18:30, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

The edit processing in the backend is completely separate from that done with the client-side GUI (so the spikes are unrelated). New edits should be appearing in the queues, as I keep restarting the STiki process to debug. If it runs for too long, though, all threads become blocked and new edits won't get processed. I've currently determined this problem is happening in portions of code related to the diff-text (extracting features for uppercase ratios, character repetitions, etc.). This suggests to me that the WMF has tweaked the diff representation slightly, sending my parser into an infinite loop. West.andrew.g (talk) 19:57, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

 Fixed -- Edits are now being ingested without issue. Indeed, the WMF changed their diff representation on the site and API with a minor tweak that broke my parser (I really wish there were clear notifications for such changes; I even deal with all the discussion on [wikitech-l] in the hopes I have some warning). I'll post the gory details to WP:VPT shortly. Let me know if the stale queues and low-hit rate don't sort themselves out in the next couple hours. West.andrew.g (talk) 21:53, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

On Wikipedia:STiki/milestones, I've just noticed the latest user (Super48paul) who have been listed for the 5000 edits milestone has <5000 edits. On closer inspection, it turns out that, according to the leaderboard, the count is 5109 while the user's regular edit count is 3024. Why this difference? I just found out this can be seen with some more users. Am I missing something here? Ugog Nizdast (talk) 06:29, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

The leaderboard records how many classifications have been done. If an edit is innocent no edit occurs but the leaderboad count is still incremented. --Greenmaven (talk) 07:29, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Oh, I had no idea it was like that. Thanks, Ugog Nizdast (talk) 07:35, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Hello Ugog, Jack's answer seems to be correct. I just checked my own stiki-edit count. I made an accept-this-innocent-edit action, and then, indeed, my edit count went up by one (from 5109 to 5110). So this means that in reality I will have made some 500 to 1000 real stiki-originated edits.Super48paul (talk) 07:44, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, the leaderboard counts classification actions (innocent + AGF + revert/guilty). Innocent classifications are valuable because they help refine our machine learning models for edit scoring. Also, handing out merit-based barnstars only on AGF/guilty actions (actual edits) is begging for edit-count-itis issues. West.andrew.g (talk) 20:47, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Does anyone know the exact location of the file STiki uses to store client-side settings? I wanted to edit mine. Also, feature request: to have some sort of button in the task bar to show it in Windows Explorer or whatever the system file browser is. APerson (talk!) 21:18, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

The full file path is system dependent. Java fetches a system property labeled "user.home" and uses this as the base directory. For me on Linux this means the properties file usually gets dumped in the same directory as the JAR, although Windows or Mac may differ. The filename in the directory will be ".STiki.props.xml". Note that because the filename starts with a period, it will be "hidden" in some OSes. It is probably easiest just to search your system for the filename, making sure hidden files are visible. West.andrew.g (talk) 20:38, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! APerson (talk!) 19:50, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Is there any way that this can be implemented into future updates, especially if they revert vandalism? Kevin Rutherford (talk) 22:44, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

STiki is committed to being a tool that narrowly focuses on anti-damage work. Mission creep into things like page tagging, user thanking, etc. are noble causes, but ultimately not something I am interested in coding. If you wish to thank a user, this is not difficult to do via STiki hyperlinks and the browser interface. Better yet, WP:Snuggle is a tool that consumes STiki's vandalism scores with goal of identifying, welcoming, and fostering productive newcomers to the project. West.andrew.g (talk) 01:04, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Greetings STiki users. Below is the CHANGELOG for the 2013_11_30 release (available for download on WP:STiki), wrapping some recent minor bug fixes and feature requests. As always, thanks for your continued support. West.andrew.g (talk) 07:21, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

• The "user talk" link which appears in the "metadata" and "last revert" panels has been modified so it is appropriately blue/red based on the existence of that page. (T#034)
• A new substitution, "#p#", is available for use when authoring revert comments and AGF messages. This makes it possible to provide the "user whose version is being reverted to". (T#032)
• In lieu of the latest emergency release and the manual notification of the required upgrade, code has now been implemented to automate this in the future. Clients now make an explicit version check against the server, which will pop an informational dialogue and forced exit if the user's version is insufficient. (T#033)
• The first user-facing "revision filter" has been installed in the "filter" menu. Once can choose if edits committed by privileged users (i.e., sysops, reviewers, and rollbackers) should be displayed in the GUI. (T#029)
• A bug whereby mnemonic usage could result in duplicate classifications has been fixed. (T#030)

I have found two cases when text has been added or changed but it does not appear on the right as red text. The whole para is green on the right, and on the left the whole para is yellow. I ignored the first, as an oddity. The latest was on article Frisco High School. --Greenmaven (talk) 22:46, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

I have just found another (the third): in Cyclops (comics) the words "fork on the left" were added, but did not appear in red. --Greenmaven (talk) 22:50, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Found fourth instance: Characters of Supernatural. Text "is baeeee <3" was added - does not show as red text. I will go on providing examples to assist in debugging. --Greenmaven (talk) 23:13, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

The text "or taste" was added to Smoking pipe. Same problem. --Greenmaven (talk) 23:42, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

New variant: In Scottsdale, Arizona the char ">" was deleted, but did not show up in red in the left panel. --Greenmaven (talk) 23:49, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

This is likely related to the diff-parser issues that were causing problems with backend processing. Are there spikes in CPU usage as well? Rather than just the article titles, could you also provide RIDs for some of these cases? I will look into with high priority. West.andrew.g (talk) 20:43, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

I was not aware of any CPU spikes. Will look for RIDs later. --Greenmaven (talk) 21:45, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Latest RID = 592725091 for North Little Rock High School. --Greenmaven (talk) 03:54, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

 Fixed -- Fixed in source. Same issue as with the backend parser. West.andrew.g (talk) 15:43, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Latest RID = 593218045 for École secondaire publique Deslauriers - text added "The program does not offer any benefits." (did not show up as red). There is a space before the period when I select and copy the text, but it displays in STiki without the space. --Greenmaven (talk) 08:15, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Still  Fixed in source. No more reports needed. Users will see the change at the next release, which shouldn't be too far off. West.andrew.g (talk) 15:39, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Can anyone confirm STiki is down at present? Fraggle81 (talk) 15:34, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Scrub that - just managed to connect. Thanks Fraggle81 (talk) 15:36, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

It was down for half an hour, then revived, but is not showing diffs currently (not for me at least). Widr (talk) 15:38, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

I've currently got the same thing going on. STiki staying open but not serving diffs. Fraggle81 (talk) 15:41, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Same here, not a single diff is being provided. Blank window. Soham 15:48, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

It appears there was a loss of power and the server's recovery mechanisms (finally!) operated as expected. The server is back up and I am communicating with it over the network. I also see your queries coming through, but they are being locked for some reason. I am "checking" the DB tables to ensure the sudden power loss didn't corrupt any data or indexes. Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 15:50, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

A couple of corrupt tables are currently having their indexes rebuilt. Expect very strange behavior for the next couple of minutes. Also, I am manually killing off some of your processes to break the locks; so don't even try to make sense of what is happening. West.andrew.g (talk) 16:06, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

 Fixed -- If anything continues to be out of sorts after this point, please report it. Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 20:51, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

I am requesting permission to use STiki. I posses the reviewer and I feel I am experiened enough, and that I know enough about policies to be able to use STIki. I hope that you consider allowing me to use STiki, thank you. Roborule (talk) 20:47, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

 Not done -- @Roborule: I believe this request comes in good faith, but you currently only have ~100 namespace edits on Wikipedia, the vast majority of which are unrelated to vandalism. I am pleased to see you enrolled at WP:CVUA. When you complete that process, ping me back here and I will grant approval. West.andrew.g (talk) 17:13, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

If an edit has a tag, it should be shown in the details panel. APerson (talk!) 19:19, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Tags as in Special:Tags or tag as tagging edits as good or bad? If tags then that is useful! --///EuroCarGT 22:40, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) : Can a consensus be reached on this? It is not hard to implement. I even started to implement it, but then I realized I was having a hard time randomly stumbling upon edits that were tagged. See also Special:Tags. We'd be giving up a line of diff-panel space to include a "tags" area which would frequently be blank. Yes, some tags do show up relatively often, but super common ones like "mobile edit" and "VisualEditor" don't tell us much about damage issues. Tags like "repeated characters" and "page blanking" are relevant, but wouldn't be seen as often as you might imagine, because CBNG would knock out many such obvious cases. Thoughts? West.andrew.g (talk) 22:42, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Is it possible to ignore the tags that appear often? ///EuroCarGT 22:53, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

More importantly, is it possible to ignore any tags? Some of the tags that appear often are tagged as vandalism. Epicgenius (talk) 23:23, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

A tag I would ignore would be changing height or weight, as a recent changes patroller I see a tag and get ready to take action, once I see changing weight and height, then I know it's probably an update to the infobox. ///EuroCarGT 00:38, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

I would argue a change in height or weight should not be ignored. It could be a WP:BLP violation. Usually if it is to the extent of vandalism you should be able to infer this based on the diff alone, but not always. — MusikAnimal ^talk 02:55, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

@MusikAnimal: True. Let me restate this; any time a tag appears it could be a false postive. MusikAnimal, my bad if the wording was wrong. :/ ///EuroCarGT 03:38, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

I think we should ignore tags. We need to compare the diffs and make our own minds up. --Greenmaven (talk) 00:50, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Yep! :) ///EuroCarGT 02:11, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Jack & others: I focus mostly on whether or not an editor made any comments, and what these comments say: did he/she make any clarifications of the edit? Fortunately, such comments show up under Summary in stiki (without any signs like/).Super48paul (talk) 07:37, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Yep. I don't think the tags tell us anything useful that we can't get from the diff. They serve their purpose in the history tab, when users can't see all the diffs without further button presses. In STiki, I don't think they would help. Yaris678 (talk) 11:35, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

 Not done -- Plenty of others seem to agree with my rationale for non-inclusion. Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 17:22, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

I just came across a classic diff (added text) that was left uncolored in the stiki window - so only really visible in the wiki-diff. Why is that? I had it before, but decided to mention it now.

Step Up (film series): (cur | prev) 02:51, 31 January 2014‎ 130.245.251.175 (talk)‎ . . (11,361 bytes) (+59)‎ . . (undo) (cur | prev) 03:56, 19 January 2014‎ 71.201.66.15 (talk)‎ . . (11,302 bytes) (-26)‎ . . (→‎Cast and characters) (undo)

Anyone with the same experience?!Super48paul (talk) 07:30, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

And it happened again just now, a textual change was not indicated.

The Tonight Show with Jay Leno:

(cur | prev) 04:41, 31 January 2014‎ 72.238.89.182 (talk)‎ . . (44,539 bytes) (-11)‎ . . (Wait until episode airs. See WP:MOSTV) (undo)

(cur | prev) 04:13, 30 January 2014‎ 108.46.18.49 (talk)‎ . . (44,550 bytes) (+23)‎ . . (→‎TV Ratings) (undo)

Anyone?Super48paul (talk) 07:46, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi Super48paul,

This looks like the same issue described above at #Text coloration in STiki window. Do you agree?

Andrew says he has fixed it in the source code so the next time we get an update to the download you shouldn't get that problem anymore.

Andrew,

This issue obviously affects the usability of STiki. Can we have a new download soon?

Yaris678 (talk) 15:37, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) -- Yes, Yaris is correct. This is the result of a WMF change and I have made the fix in source. I have a few more things outstanding but I am actively coding on them. Once I wrap all that up, I will push out a new release in the next couple of days. West.andrew.g (talk) 15:42, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

It is a few days later now, a sunny sunday, and I am afraid stiki does it again: not coloring obvious additions or substitutions in edits. Then I have to switch over to wikidiff to actually be able to spot the difference(s). I did not bother to document the instances, but I have encountered 4 of them by now. Enough to ring this bell. Any ideas why? Or am I simply too impatient and have to wait a few more days for the next release..Super48paul (talk) 12:28, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Same here, I used it today for about half an hour and two edits didn't have the diffs coloured properly; I had to click on the diff link to see what was added within a para and then revert. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 12:59, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

This problem has been recognised and addressed. Nothing will change until Andrew is able to release a new version of the software. --Greenmaven (talk) 19:22, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Yes, no further reports are needed. The fix is made, I just need to ship the fix to you. West.andrew.g (talk) 17:23, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm curious whether this has happened to anyone else. I've noticed that sometimes (maybe in 2 out of 3 instances) it hangs up when kept minimised for long. I normally use it for a short while, minimise it, do some other work and when I try to use it again—that's when it happens. I sometimes put my system on standby so there will be a short network disconnection while it's minimised. Also If I'm not wrong, keeping it open like this for long will display stale edits (those already pre-loaded on mine but may get viewed by someone else later), so there are conflicts when reverting. I've saved the crash logs of some incidents and will post it here if needed. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 07:11, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Hello, I do not know about the hanging up (I hardly encounter that), but offered edits that become stale is correct: they get older so to speak. Best thing is to start with refreshing the queue, from Cluebot to metadata (or the other way round)and back again.Good luck,Super48paul (talk) 07:27, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

STiki caches the diff and metadata for the next 10-20 revisions that will be displayed to you. Those edits are reserved for your eyes only, and that reservation lasts on the order of 10-20 minutes. If you are classifying slower than this (or introduce a pause/delay), it is extremely likely those edits will be popped to another STiki user (they are atop the queue, after all, that is why you received them). STiki also makes periodic checks to make sure those 10-20 revisions you have cached are still "most recent on the article". This check can't be made constantly, but its not like leaving STiki on forever will result in completely stale edits on the client side. If you are going to take a break of more than 20 minutes, it is preferable to restart STiki or do the "queue change trick" that Super48paul described. That being said, this should not cause errors or crashes in normal circumstances. I suspect the hard crashes have to do with standby and the loss of network connection, for which there is very little recourse. West.andrew.g (talk) 17:32, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Yup, I've started closing it when not in use; it makes more sense to do it now, since I understood how this works. Thanks both of you, Ugog Nizdast (talk) 17:43, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

I think STiki is a good tool . But this can not be use on other wiki .I hope STiki can use on other wiki soon.It can shorten the RC Patrol work because many destructor on these page to make some destory or make some ads . 9shi (talk) 16:29, 3 February 2014 (UTC)(on zh wiki 9shi)

It is unlikely that *I* will be making STiki available for other language editions any time soon. However, the building blocks are in place if a technically-minded user wanted to do this themselves. First, one would need a backend server to store the databases and do the always-on edit processing. The only significant change to source code on the back-end would be the edit scoring model. My research has shown language-independent scoring models feasible. Then, one would need to localize all the strings in the GUI. I'd support someone in these endeavours, but right now my plate is full with en.STiki and my other wiki side projects. West.andrew.g (talk) 17:19, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

okey, i hope i can help with this . it is highly significant .9shi (talk) 07:07, 4 February 2014 (UTC) (on zh wiki 9shi)

My system monitoring has indicated that 'armstrong.cis.upenn.edu' has become unreachable. The problem is being researched. Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 21:04, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Same here. I can't use STiki, even after I downloaded the latest version. K6ka (talk | contribs) 17:43, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Not getting any error message but the standard box. Maybe we should put up a Stiki is down box on the project page? --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 13:23, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

When I try to open STiki, it stalls for a minute, then displays an error message (titled "Error: Backend connection is required"). A STiki status box would be a good idea in the future. Epicgenius (talk) 13:51, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Like this? Can be transcluded. -_Rsrikanth05 (talk) 14:14, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Yes, or a variant of {{Statustop}} can be used. If it is working, it can say "Online", or else it can say "Offline" or "Broken". Epicgenius (talk) 14:39, 12 February 2014 (UTC)(Note: The Statustop template only works in userspace, so maybe it can be tweaked a little.) Epicgenius (talk) 14:41, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

 Fixed -- I will regenerate the "milestones" and try to dig deeper into the root cause. West.andrew.g (talk) 16:15, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks a lot Andrew. Epicgenius, you can copy the status and just edit the box when needed. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 17:36, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

FWIW, the reachability of "armstrong.cis.upenn.edu" is a reliable indicator of how STiki is faring. I use uptime robot to monitor this (it emails me). A more straightforward fashion to determine this on-demand is http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/armstrong.cis.upenn.edu]. It might be complicated to hook this into pretty status buttons, but an attractive box and link might well serve the intended purpose. West.andrew.g (talk) 18:16, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Flipped through some of the queue edits. Most of them are two days old. I think everything in between the time gaps were unmonitored and unrecorded by the STiki server, which means there might be vandalism that escaped the recent changes patrol and is now out of our grasp. The only way we can find them is to go onto each article and check the page history manually. A tedious process. Ugh. K6ka (talk | contribs) 21:42, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Same problem with the old queued edits, most 2 days and few hours. ///EuroCarGT 21:48, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

STiki is ingesting new edits, as I just popped a couple of the queue that were minutes old. STiki will not, however, go back in time to re-process the edits that occurred during its downtime. West.andrew.g (talk) 16:38, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for getting STiki up and running again. I thought you should know that I have been served this null diff by STiki. I think null edits were supposed to have been filtered out since a few years ago. Maybe the filter has been broken by some of the problems STiki has had recently.

Yaris678 (talk) 22:22, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

I experienced two similar instances 5 days ago.— | Gareth Griffith-Jones |The WelshBuzzard| — 22:42, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Have had several since the new version. --Greenmaven (talk) 00:42, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, that's happened often recently. Widr (talk) 05:35, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

This is likely related to the WMF change in diff format. I will investigate. West.andrew.g (talk) 16:39, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Added as T#038 to tracking table. This isn't terribly pressing (it's inconvenient, but doesn't lead to inaccurate work) and I have some busy-ness IRL, so it might be a bit before this one is rectified. West.andrew.g (talk) 16:45, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

• Another null diff was just served to me here. Epicgenius (talk) 21:42, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

I've also got a null edit. ///EuroCarGT 22:12, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

I love the new version of StiKi! Love the larger typeface. However, in my first tryout today, I found that the program froze after a couple of edits. I open up a new Stiki screen and it freezes again. I currently have three Stiki screens, all frozen, on my desktop. Did I do something wrong? Coretheapple (talk) 17:25, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

I am still running some maintenance tasks related to the downtime (the DB tables and their indexes keep getting out of whack, and the "hyperlinks" table in particular seems to be extremely large and nasty for index rebuilds). It wouldn't surprise me if this is causing some queries to temporary lock/hang. I don't think the problem is in the code. If it doesn't clear up after a few hours then we will dig deeper. West.andrew.g (talk) 17:36, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

OK, but could it be something I'm doing? Ordinarily, when I have a computer problem it is because I poured a cup of coffee on the keyboard or something. Coretheapple (talk) 17:44, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

I can say that it's happening for me too now (and just like you, I thought the problem might be on my end only). Widr (talk) 18:33, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

• Working fine now. Coretheapple (talk) 18:05, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

It would be nice if there were a counter that showed how many classifications had been made in the current session so far, and/or how many edits to pages (in both article space and user talk space) so far. APerson (talk!) 14:11, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

That's a pretty cool idea! However I'll get some editcountitis by looking at those stats if implemented! ///EuroCarGT 04:23, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Okay, I'm still running on an older version, not the latest, but I've noticed, that post the period where Stiki went down recently, a lo of edits made by Admins/Rollbackers and some edits thru Huggle are coming in my queue. Is there a way from preventing these edits from coming onto the Stiki queue? I'm pretty sure they don't need to be undone? Maybe the Huggle whitelist can be used? --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 18:58, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one to be seeing this, as I ran across my own edit just now, and am not seeing much in the way of vandalism, just really good edits that don't need reverting for the most part. I am running the latest version, if that helps anything. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 16:14, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

I also got some of my own edits to revert in the old version. Epicgenius (talk) 00:14, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Click on "Revision Filters" in the menu and unselect "Edits by priviledged users". This will mean you no-longer see edits by admins, rollbackers or reviewers. Unfortunatley, this does mean that people who haven't unselected this option will then get an even higher frequency of such edits, because they get the ones you have filtered out. I suspect this is why there appears to be so many such edits now - because some users have already used the filter. Andrew may want to considering filtering these out of the queue altogether. Yaris678 (talk) 13:33, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

All the options in the menu are Grey to me. I can't unselect any. I agree with Yaris, this could be done away with altogether. Especially edits made by: Reviewers/Rollbackers/Admins with Huggle/Twinkle/AWB. As I posted earlier, the Huggle whitelist is a good start.--Rsrikanth05 (talk) 05:58, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

If you download the latest version of STiki, the important option is not greyed out. Yaris678 (talk) 09:23, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

The option is extremely ambiguous. To me, a "Revision Filter" which simply says "Edits by Privileged Users" means that if it's checked, edits by privileged users would be filtered out. A user shouldn't have to consult the Help page to discover that it actually works just the opposite; it should be unambiguously clear from the menu. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 10:58, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Yes... I had to think twice about it. I came to the right conclusion pretty quickly though. I would have thought that anyone with experience of STiki would realise that they had seen edits of all of the listed types, and all of them are ticked, so the logical conclusion is that a tick means show those edits. However, this could be made clearer. How about changing it from "Revision Filter" to "Displayed edits"? Yaris678 (talk) 20:28, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

 Done -- Fixed in source. West.andrew.g (talk) 20:22, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks a lot Andrew. Will this reflect in the current version or a future one? A gentle reminder to myself that I'm using an outdated version. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 16:09, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

A future one. "Fixed in source" implies that I have done the change, I just haven't distributed it. West.andrew.g (talk) 16:41, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Alright, thanks a lot then. I guess, I'll wait before I download the new version. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 17:17, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Hello, I do not meet the permissions required to use STiki, is it at all possible to obtain special approval? I really enjoy the knowledge Wikipedia has given me and would like to help keep it vandal free however I do not have the time to manually search for vandals and would find using this tool extremely helpful.

Fogest (talk) 03:26, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes, but approval is rarely granted without a certain amount of reverts (I think 200 in articlespace is the bare minimum but I'm not sure myself; I'll have to ping West.andrew.g or Yaris678 for the exact number of reverts). If you have at least 1000 edits in article space, you can use it; however, as of now you only have 46 edits total. You're off to a good start; keep up the good work! By the way, you should consider enrolling in WP:CVUA. Epicgenius (talk) 15:02, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

I'd suggest you build your knowledge of policies first, like maybe using the Random Article feature, look for issues and fix it, go thru Recent Changes, undo what vandalism you find, remove contentious stuff from BLPs, et al. Alternately, you can find someone to mentor you in RC Patrol. Keep up the good work. Your 46 edits seem good so far, let's hope they go good. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 16:16, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

 Not done -- For the reasons described here by others. You are off to a good start, but more experience is necessary. WP:CVUA is highly recommended. West.andrew.g (talk) 17:21, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Moments ago, STiki crossed the 500,000 (half-a-million) revert threshold! User:Flyer22 committed this edit to bring us to this milestone and was barn-starred accordingly (User:Widr was also in the running). This has been a couple of years and a lot of man-hours in the making, and I just wanted to thank everyone who has helped this project to succeed. Now, we turn our focus towards 1 million reverts and the continued protection of this incredible information resource. West.andrew.g (talk) 20:46, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

@The ed17: -- In case the Signpost would be gracious enough to note this. West.andrew.g (talk) 20:55, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Congrats to User:Flyer22 and thanks to User:West.andrew.g for all your work. Widr (talk) 20:58, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

I thank you all. I was quite surprised, when after seeing this post and clicking on the leaderboard, to discover that I am so high up on the leaderboard (I'd never clicked on it until that day). But I guess since I spend so much time on the Internet working on non-Wikipedia matters in addition to Wikipedia matters, I shouldn't be too surprised. Thanks again. Glad that I've helped the STiki matters out. STiki is obviously my favorite tool for fighting WP:Vandalism and other unconstructive edits. Flyer22 (talk) 21:09, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Will do. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 06:23, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

A big shout out for the Stiki family out there! :) --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 16:13, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

That's wow!! Congrats STiki team..Herald talk with me 08:08, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Is it feasible to add more options for the AGF messages (other than the blank, General Revert, Joke Edit, Non-English Contribution, Non-Notable List, empty, Talk In Article, Non-English Contributions, and the four user custom warnings)? Templates like template:uw-test1 seem like useful additions to that list, but it is tedious to have to type them out in the user custom boxes. Epicgenius (talk) 02:00, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Reverting a test edit is a bit different from the usual good-faith revert since it is normally marked as minor. Many people will press the vandalism button as test edits are accommodated by the default edit summary and warning. The 500k^th revert illustrates this. I guess it would be nice to have a tick box to make STiki issue Template:Uw-test1 rather than Template:Uw-vandalism1 though. Gives a bit more freedom to the STiki user to explain the situation, at the cost of a simple tick box.

Having said all that, I do like the idea of having more AGF messages. Do you have other ideas for AGF messages? You could add them to Wikipedia:STiki/Good-faith-revert messages. Andrew takes a look at that page before releasing a new version of STiki and updates the messages in the code.

Yaris678 (talk) 09:33, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

That sounds good. Can I add them right now? I think I have some good ideas for messages in the works. Epicgenius (talk) 23:58, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

I believe that something that sounds like the following would be good. Epicgenius (talk) 00:03, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

==Recent edit#s# to [[#a#]]==\n
[[Image:Information.svg|25px]] Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia.
An edit that you recently made to [[#a#]] seemed to be a test and 
has been removed. If you want more practice editing, please use 
the [[Wikipedia:Sandbox|sandbox]]. If you think I made a mistake, 
or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my 
talk page. Thanks! ~~~~

I always wondered if their will be a user warning for blanking or content removal? ///EuroCarGT 01:02, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

 Sample for Blanking or Content Removal:

==Recent edit#s# to [[#a#]]==\n
[[Image:Information.svg|25px]] Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia.
I noticed that you removed some content from [[#a#]] without explaining
why. In the future, it would be helpful to others if you described your 
changes to Wikipedia with an accurate [[Help:Edit summary|edit summary]]. 
If this was a mistake, don't worry: I restored the removed content. If you 
would like to experiment, please use the [[WP:Sandbox|sandbox]]. If you 
think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a 
message on my talk page. Thanks! ~~~~

(Note: Part of text copied from some templates already in use) Epicgenius (talk) 03:00, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

This seems reasonable. Once consensus is reached on these (or no one manages to complain) please transfer them to the page that Yaris mentioned. Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 07:00, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

On another note: I sometimes feel the need to talk to a proper vandal, like telling him that changing the death toll of Jews in WWII is despicable, or that changing a box office figure (and reduce it to one tenth the number) is sneaky and mean. Right now, vandals are warned automatically (and at the appropriate level) - but messages cannot be added. (I usually switch to Twinkle in those cases). I assumes this message boils down to a request for a blank BF message box. Anyone else feel such need?!Super48paul (talk) 09:37, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Whoa, you're an extremely patient chap...I rarely feel like personally intervening unless they are doing something else disruptive besides obvious vandalism, also it's best to usually be as impersonal as possible (WP:DENY). -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 10:44, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Anyone else with thoughts on this matter? Please give me some more feedback.. Thanks, Super48paul (talk) 18:26, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Ugog on this. The motivation of vandals is often the same as the motivation of trolls. They want to get a "rise" out of someone. The less you appear to care the better. Yaris678 (talk) 21:36, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

In addition to uw-test1 and uw-blank1 mentioned above, I would like to propose three more templates which are in my custom message boxes and I frequently use:

• uw-biog1 (BLP violations, addition of unsourced libellous content)
• uw-unsourced1 (addition of unsourced dubious content)
• uw-spam1 -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 10:44, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Go for it! Add content to Wikipedia:STiki/Good-faith-revert messages. It is just like any other page on the wiki. Of course, that means that someone else may come along and edit what you added. Ultimately, it will be up to Andrew to update the code, so he will have final say over whether a message from Wikipedia:STiki/Good-faith-revert messages end up in STiki itself. Yaris678 (talk) 13:24, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

I've added the Test Edit and Blanking notices to the page linked above. Epicgenius (talk) 13:44, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Yep, I'll copy things over without issue when I update the code. The only thing I don't want to see (and I don't think we are close to this point yet) is a list that balloons to the point where it becomes difficult to find the pre-formatted message one is looking for. I don't think we need to make an effort at getting all Category:User_warning_templates into STiki's AGF box. West.andrew.g (talk) 14:45, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Added another two, now there's total twelve...hmmm how about some trimming? I think "Joke edit" and "Talk in article" are fairly redundant and must be rarely used...any reasons to keep them? Ugog Nizdast (talk) 18:42, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

I use "Talk in article" and "Joke edit" pretty often, personally. Epicgenius (talk) 19:13, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

I am a active user and make most of my contributions on the New York City Subway. This program here will be a great help to me. My account may look young, but I have made 100+ edits and made some edits that contributed to the overall article. Some include Assassins Creed 4, 6 Train service and my old high school. Most of my edits go towards the layouts and yhe services, but the program will enable me to revert them automatically. DePeeper (talk) 02:48, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

In instances like this, using WP:TW seems like a better idea, as STiki pulls up a much larger variety of pages to revert. Epicgenius (talk) 03:02, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Agree with Epicgenius here. I'd suggest some Twinkling, maybe get Rollback rights after that. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 17:00, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Greetings STiki-ers! This release was forced somewhat by an (unannouced?) WMF change to diff representation. This screwed up my parser and was causing some STiki diffs to be incorrectly colored. Given that this is inaccurate behavior that could decrease revert quality, I was eager to push out the new version. Hopefully this haste hasn't led to any errors. Changes include:

• The colors and font faces used in the diff presentation panel can now be changed via the "options" menu (T#037).
• Per user request, larger font size options are now available (T#035).
• Plurality switches ("#s#") are now utilized in the default AGF messages, making them more customized to specific revert cirumstances. Articles are also now linked in default AGF messages.
• The above referenced error, regarding diff parsing, was fixed on both the front-end (where it affected coloring) and back-end (where it was causing infinite loops and is used to determine "text added" and "text removed" for analysis).
• This version has been checkpointed. If the "coloring" issue becomes extremely prevalent, I am able to disable old versions of the software and force users to upgrade to this version.

As always, thank you for your continued support. West.andrew.g (talk) 05:58, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Downloaded and used it. No obvious problems so far. --Greenmaven (talk) 06:56, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

When processing Revision-ID 6000751033 on Prime Minister of Italy, the diff-screen is just white. See screenshot below.

Picture. (t) Josve05a (c) 16:40, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

@West.andrew.g: Ping. (t) Josve05a (c) 16:42, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Its a known issue, see T#038 above Fraggle81 (talk) 16:56, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Yep, presumably to be fixed at the next release. It's not leading to inaccurate classifications, so no emergency. West.andrew.g (talk) 14:50, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

These seem to be describing the same problem. Epicgenius (talk) 13:12, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Ahhh! This was quite the thread to wake up to, and it seems to have developed quite quickly! I also noticed that overnight when my scripts went to update the revert-count/milestones/leaderboard that it also did not use my login credentials, but associated the edits to the machine's IP address. My first inclination is that the WMF has changed the login protocol, breaking STiki's code. It last did this a couple of months ago to cover itself after a major vulnerability was found in the login process. I will begin the investigation promptly and report back here -- I suspect an emergency release will be needed. West.andrew.g (talk) 14:52, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

The problem has been identified. The WMF extended its cookie format ever so slightly, breaking STiki's login code. It seems they now pack in a user's geo-location information to the cookie. Previously it contained only session identifying information. My code was not generic enough to anticipate multiple fields. A fix is being coded and I will need to push out a new version. Expect that within an hour or so. I will need to break old versions. West.andrew.g (talk) 15:23, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your prompt reply. Looking forward to the new version. ALittleQuenhi (talk to me) 15:54, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

 Done -- A new version is posted. Could everyone please confirm this works? Also, if you could run your old version one more time, can users confirm that a dialogue does pop up with a note mentioning that an upgrade is now required? Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 15:58, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

I got the required upgrade dialogue, and the new version works great. Thanks! — MusikAnimal ^talk 16:02, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

That's great! Time to stick more vandals onto "STiki" vandal-paper.... hahaha! K6ka (talk | contribs) 16:35, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Probably... or maybe put some editors onto that vandal-paper! (Nah, just kidding.) Epicgenius (talk) 16:50, 25 March 2014 (UTC)