User talk:Brion VIBBER

I have declared talk page bankruptcy! All old messages deleted. :) --brion (talk) 21:00, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

How to get in touch with me

Feel free to leave me messages here about articles and such on Wikipedia, but if you need to prod me about a tech issue I might not see your message here. You'll get a speedier response if you track me down elsewhere...

• Most software issues should get added to our bug tracker.
  Even if you grab ahold of me another way, it's going to be easier for me to keep track of it if it's in here!
• IRC chat - you'll often find me in #mediawiki or #wikimedia-tech during work hours
• direct e-mail... if you're really sure :)

Images

hi Brion VIBBER,

I wanna be an uploader. What should I do to be a?-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 09:59, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Wait until your account is autoconfirmed. --brion (talk) 21:00, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Random obesrvation

Is it just me, or do server problems occur in bundles? Seems like we've had server trouble every day since MJ's death. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Many otters • One bat • One hammer)} 02:11, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

• My random observation is that you, sir, are now a double talk page bankrupt! ;> Just FYI I asked Lar to take care of that "uploader" userrights issue I queried you about a while back [1]. He suggested I drop you a courtesy note. best regards, –xeno^talk 02:13, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
  • Just to follow up, I removed the permission (Heather hasn't been editing since November 2008), but if you disagree with that feel free to ask me to put it back or do so yourself. ++Lar: t/c 00:50, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

It sure does seem like that sometimes. :) --brion (talk) 18:20, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Russian Spelling for Your Name

Dear Brion,

I'd like to ask you about correct spelling of your name in Russian.

As far as I remember it was your yourself who spelled your name as "Брион Вибур".

However, it look like "Брайон Виббер" would be more correct one. Could you please advise? Thanks! Dr Bug (Vladimir V. Medeyko) 19:54, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

• I would like to note that according to modern Anglo-Russian transcription rules for names, it should probably be "Брайон Виббер", with two "б"'s in Vibber (see ru:Англо-русская практическая транскрипция). --Tetromino (talk) 21:06, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
  • Виббер sounds ok to me; for 'Brion' just use whatever's standard transcription for 'Brian', as it's pronounced the same. --brion (talk) 18:18, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

ref is too imprecise

I tried to use the ref element to integrate footnotes. However, there seems to be no possibility to indicate if the footnote references to the sentence in front of the ref element or the paragraph in front of it. In example:

This is a first sentence. This is a second sentence.<ref>Miller (2009), p. 7.</ref>

Instead, it should be as follows:

This is a first sentence. <ref text="Miller (2009), p. 7.">This is a second sentence.</ref>

Now, it is clear, that Miller is based on the second sentence only. Is there any possibility, to indicate that? If not, it should be programmed, because it opens new possibilities, e.g. mouse-ever effects when having the mouse pointer over a sentence. Then, a pop-up box could show "Miller (2009), p. 7". Furthermore, it is much more helpful for future editors to know, if sentence 1 has a reference already and can be relied on. Bugzilla didn't help to find a solution for this problem so far. Can you help to find a solution? 78.53.37.113 (talk) 10:28, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

As the top of the talk page says, you probably want to file a bug in Wikimedia's bug tracker: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org --MZMcBride (talk) 03:14, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

I already did that, but the topic is not discussed there anymore, although it is a very necessary bug. 78.53.43.218 (talk) 21:07, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Substituting surname

Any idea how you can {{subst: a surname in the page title to DEFAULTSORT sort the categories? Its just I have a large batch of German politicians to transwiki and I want to do it more quickly. So basically when you create the page it automatically places e.g Fritz Baier as Baier, Fritz in the categories. If not I gather there is a bot that can default sort the categories by surname and fix it afterwards?

I'd imagine it is something like {subst:PAGENAME} but with a little programming to read the last word of the title and place it first. It would save a great deal of time anyway. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 12:35, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Brion -- Dr. Blofeld asked me this question, and I suggested that it could be done, except that it appears that the string functions are disabled. Is that the case, and if so, why? My guess is that they would suck up too much CPU power on Wikimedia's end... Thanks, Mikaey, Devil's advocate 01:23, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Quick bar

Hi. I'm left handed and I've only noticed that cologne blue and classic or one other has the option to change the quickbar from left to right and fixed or moveable. Given that I mostly use modern and occasionally mono, would it be possible to be able to add the quickbar option for modern so the navigation bar can be moved to the right hand side. I think you should give people this option for all skins givne that some people are left handed and might find it more natural to have it on the otherside. I also think there should be a shrinkable option on the nav bars like we have with big templates for instance as if we could conveniently shrink the task while reading or at least have the option to this would ease useability I think. Also for the task bar on modern does it have to be so wide? There is at least a centimetre gap, it could be trimmed easily by 1-2 centimetres. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 13:41, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

I'll pass it on to the usability team working on the skin updates, thanks for the feedback! Note we're considering actually using sidebars on both sides for some extra navigation tools, but that's still a ways away. --brion (talk) 18:17, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Renames

So, you don't mind if we try a quarter-million rename, then, since the limit is not invoked? Just triple checking. -- Avi (talk) 00:02, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

test test... test test...

Welcome and thank you for experimenting with Wikipedia. Your test on the page User talk:Brion VIBBER worked, and it has been reverted or removed. Please take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. If you would like to experiment further, please use the sandbox instead. Thank you.

Lossless image compression and website optimization

Have a look at yahoo's smush it. It can losslessly compress images (that are greater than 1kb)...it can save you guys quite a few bytes in bandwidth.

Looking at the mediawiki svn branch, I can see that most images can be losslessly compressed. Is there any reason you haven't compressed these images...or do you simply need some help^.^.Smallman12q (talk) 18:57, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

1.13 is pretty old; we've been more aggressively recompressing things in more recent work. --brion (talk) 20:38, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

File copyright problem with File:Fourth_test_file_investigating_bug_-_do_not_delete.png

Thank you for uploading File:Fourth_test_file_investigating_bug_-_do_not_delete.png. However, it currently is missing information on its copyright status. Wikipedia takes copyright very seriously. It may be deleted soon, unless we can determine the license and the source of the file. If you know this information, then you can add a copyright tag to the image description page.

If you have uploaded other files, consider checking that you have specified their license and tagged them, too. You can find a list of files you have uploaded by following this link.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thanks again for your cooperation. Chris G Bot (talk) 00:19, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Pie for you!

		Have a Pie!
		You are hereby awarded ONE PIE for all you've done for Wikipedia and the WMF. Best of luck in your future endeavors!

Arakunem^Talk 14:07, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Nom nom nom -- thanks! --brion (talk) 17:09, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Lossless image compression/conversion

Hi, I was wondering if there are any plans to compress the images in the mediawiki trunk? Some images can be losslessly compressed by 20% such as the document.png to File:Document.png.Smallman12q (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 15:52, 3 October 2009 (UTC).

impact on fr.wp renamming file on commons

Resolved

Bonsoir, Il semble que sur la wikipédia francophone nous avons le même problème que la wikipédia anglophone avait. Par exemple:

• [2]
• [3]

Mais il est curieux de voir que [4] fonctionne.

Merci de ton aide.

Regards, Otourly (talk) 18:38, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

De plus [5] est devenu incohérent. Otourly (talk) 18:42, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, the Commons file redirects seem to be working on English sites (Wikipedia, Wikinews, etc) but not in other languages (checked French and German). Might be something incorrectly using the local namespace name in queries or cache lookups... --brion (talk) 19:21, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Sticking this in bugzilla:21026 to track -- hopefully an easy fix. --brion (talk) 19:27, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

...and fix is deployed. Thanks for the bug report! --brion (talk) 20:29, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

and thank you for [6] Otourly (talk) 20:42, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Vandalism bug

If you can't see vandalism on Maya civilization then please log out, delete coockies, give google search to access this article. Also see talk page of article. How this vandalism went unnoticed for such a long time? 117.98.79.156 (talk) 15:29, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Sequence of files (bug test)

There is a sequence of file redirects with (do not delete) in the file name, which date from September. Is it now OK to delete these redirects?

• File:Third test file investigating bug - do not delete.png
• File:Second test file investigating bug - do not delete.png
• File:Test file investigating bug - do not delete.png

— This, that, and the other (talk) 06:19, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!

December21st2012Freak ^{Happy Holidays!} is wishing you a Merry Christmas! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Happy New Year!

Spread the cheer by adding {{subst:Xmas2}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

December21st2012Freak ^{Happy Holidays!} 00:15, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Bureaucrat discussion for Juliancolton RfB

A bureaucrat discussion has been opened in order to determine the consensus in this request for adminship. Please come participate. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 02:01, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Categories

Hi, Brion, and Happy New Year's (& Decade) to you! I have brought this to Tim Starling's attention, too. Constantly when a new edit is being made to any article lately that has categories, the category box at the bottom of the page comes into contact (and sometimes conflict) with either a template or some other various print that is nearby (see The Beatles for example). Since around last early-mid December, this has been happening often, maybe something to do with the article's change in parameters. So far, as I know, nothing has become of this situation. If you could please have a look into this, and possibly resolve this problem once and for all. Thanks Brion! Best, --Discographer (talk) 13:53, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

SF Meetup #11

In the area? You're invited to
San Francisco Meetup # 11
	Date: Saturday, February 6th, 2010
	Time: 15:00 (3PM)
	Place: WMFoundation offices
prev: Meetup 10 - next: Meetup 12

This is posted to the groups by request. Please sign up on the Invite list for future announcements. Thanks. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 23:45, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Ask for protection, how?

Dear adminstrator, one of users of Persian wiki has insult me in my English talk page (in Persian language). How can I ask for protection of my User page and talk page and all sub pages against that I.P address? I have some valuable photos in my pages I dont want let him/her to damage them. Regards Pournick (talk) 00:55, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Add a "public interest" clause to Oversight

A proposal to add a "public interest" clause to Wikipedia:Oversight has started at Wikipedia_talk:Oversight#Proposal_for_new_.27public_interest.27_clause. SilkTork *^YES! 10:40, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Bug 20246

Hi. Bug 20246 ("Install Extension:Transliterator on fr and en.wiktionary") has been sitting around since August, and you posted a comment on it saying "Assigning to myself for review." quite a long time ago. Is this going to get done any time soon? Are you even still doing work on bugs since you stepped down from being WMF CTO? If not, where does this go from here? Thanks in advance. --Yair rand (talk) 00:44, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Major flaw in New Features

Hi Brion, I've had to go back to Take Me Back from New Features because New Features does not accept the wiki "dot" when editing templates which separates titles. Please try it yourself, and you will find I'm (unfortunately) correct. Best, --Discographer (talk) 22:03, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Usability

Not sure how quickly you would see this, so just fyi. Thanks  7  00:52, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Saluton!

Bona vin tagon! :D - UtherSRG (talk) 14:47, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Dankegon! :) --brion (talk) 16:36, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Quoted on, um, BRION

Hey Brion. Just a quick note to say that I've chopped up your recent comment on phoebe's blog to make a nice little item (well, I think so anyway) for next week's BRION report in the Signpost. Inevitably, this meant shortening areas slightly, and I'd be grateful if you might check to make sure I haven't misrepresented your thoughts or if you have any suggestions about their presentation. Thanks, - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 18:54, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Login unification - odd snag with Japanese WP

Brion: Sorry to bother you about this (please redirect me if appropriate), but my login unification was unsuccessful for reasons I don't understand, and the Help page on this suggests contacting a beaurocrat or steward. The holdout is the Japanese wikipedia (I'm confident that I never logged in there), where there's a userpage that looks like it was copied from an old version of my English wikipedia userpage. My English WP password doesn't work there. When I click the "send me a new password" button, I don't get anything in my email Inbox. Any suggestions on how I can finally unify my login worldwide (thus removing a nagging reminder in my Preferences)? -- Scray (talk) 05:29, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

I herd u can

Hi. I heard you are the former "Chief Techincal Officer of Wikimedia" and you are good at wikicodes, so i am asking you a question that has been [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Thread:Project:Support_desk/Transcluding_onlyinclude_and_includeonly_tags unanswered on wikimedia for a quite long time. I hope you know the answer. To make it easier to see, i am posting the problem here too:

short question

Is there a way to let a template include <includeonly><onlyinclude>{{{date}}}</onlyinclude></includeonly> when transcluded?

longer explaination for question

I'll try to explain it with this table:

Page name:	Template(in this case: "template:update")	Page between(in this case: "update page")	Final page(in this case: "item page")
use:	add a notice to "update page"	show information about the update, and when transcluded show the date of it only	Only have the text between the onlyinclude tags included

This is because at the RuneScape Wiki i am trying to automate the update date. Because there is always a link to the update page on the item page, and the update page has the date on it, i want the update page to have an additional note with the date entered(between onlyinclude tags) and i don't want it to appear on the update page itself(between includeonly tags). All update pages have the template:Update on it, with the parameter {{{date}}} so I want template:update to add <includeonly><onlyinclude>{{{date}}}</onlyinclude></includeonly> to the update page so that when the item page has {{#time:j F Y|{{Update:(updatename)}}}} on it, it shows the date in "dd month yy" automatically without needing to add that yourself.

I hope you can help me. Joeytje50 (talk) 17:56, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Plans?

I've read that you are a lead designer. I wonder whether there is anywhere we can see your design ideas for the Wikipedia, and possibly contribute to them? I didn't see anything about that on your user page (I aim to promote a sticky note system).-Tesseract²(talk) 19:50, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Unable to delete particular revision, blocked by interwiki shortcut

Hi there. Your Commons page points here; though you might be interested in this weird glitch. Kind regards. Rehman 10:17, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

hi!

how come there's no article about you?

you have been in the news [7].

89.216.196.129 (talk) 13:32, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Problems with my Wikipedia name

Hello. :)
I cannot edit the page User:ℜepress/vector.css. I think the problem is my name. Quote: "Wikipedia does not have a user page with this exact name." Can you change my name to "Repress"? – ℜepress (talk) 14:12, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

The Great American Wiknic

Hi there! In the past, you've expressed an interest in local meetups of Wikipedians. Well, here's your chance! On Saturday, June 25, we'll be joining Wikipedians in cities all over the country for the first annual Great American Wiknic -- the picnic that anyone can edit! We'll meet up at a park in SF -- hopefully in the sun -- all other details are still in deliberation!

If this sounds fun, please add your name to the list: Wikipedia:Meetup/San Francisco/Wiknic and add that page to your watchlist. (And of course, feel free to edit that page with your ideas, questions, etc.) I look forward to wiknicking with you! -Pete (talk) 00:28, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Your opinion would be appreciated

As a member of WikiProject Countries, I'm seeking your opinion on a possible issue identified at List of sovereign states. If you have some spare moments, please contribute a comment at the Discussion of criteria. Best regards, Nightw 04:52, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

A funny kitten coming from JanPaul123 and demonstrate the WikiLove functionality (plus, you deserve a kitten).

Hashar (talk) 20:29, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Yay kittens! --brion (talk) 20:41, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Feel free to clean it up or put it somewhere else :-) Hashar (talk) 06:18, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free image File:Fifa world cup org.jpg

Thanks for uploading File:Fifa world cup org.jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently orphaned, meaning that it is not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

PLEASE NOTE:

• I am a bot, and will therefore not be able to answer your questions.
• I will remove the request for deletion if the file is used in an article once again.
• If you receive this notice after the image is deleted, and you want to restore the image, click here to file an un-delete request.
• To opt out of these bot messages, add {{bots|deny=DASHBot}} to your talk page.
• If you believe the bot has made an error, please turn it off here and leave a message on my owner's talk page.

Thank you. DASHBot (talk) 06:07, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Reasons To Delete J1c3d (Y-DNA)

1. Articles that cannot possibly be attributed to reliable sources, including neologisms, original theories and conclusions, and articles that are themselves hoaxes (but not articles describing notable hoaxes)
2. Articles for which thorough attempts to find reliable sources to verify them have failed
3. Categories representing overcategorization

JohnLloydScharf (talk) 02:31, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
The hold on editing has been taken off without explanation, to my knowledge, as of this moment, without justification.
JohnLloydScharf (talk) 00:42, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
The one who took this off the edit hold did so without reading the talk page.
JohnLloydScharf (talk) 01:17, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
I refer to the article for J1c3d Y-DNA haplogroup as is indicated in the very first section of my User talk page.
Please see:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Haplogroup_J1c3d_(Y-DNA)
  
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_J1c3d_(Y-DNA)
  

JohnLloydScharf (talk) 02:17, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

User:Stinky New User

Just saw this come across the user creation log and wanted to confirm that it is indeed you. Cheers! TNXMan 16:01, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Sure is! See bugzilla:30226 for the bug I found while creating it. ;) --brion (talk) 23:49, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Re: External link icon bug

Hi Brion, I hope you don't mind the reply here. That would be the classic monobook skin. Hope this helps. :)  -- WikHead (talk) 18:50, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

• Perhaps I should add, that when I view the raw HTML source of a page, I see no <img src=, or anything else that would indicate that an image is supposed to be loading into the blank space.  -- WikHead (talk) 19:11, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
  • Ok... you actually shouldn't see an <img> or anything as it's added in the CSS stylesheets -- so that's normal. :) I'll see if we can narrow down the bug checks on Monobook skin, thanks! --brion (talk) 20:59, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Great, thanks for the reply! If the new plan is to remove the icon, I really don't mind that so much. What's weird to me however, is seeing the (space) tail-padding before the punctuation. If the padding was removed, I'd be just as happy. :)  -- WikHead (talk) 21:09, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Oversize upload

Hi. Can you upload this 1592 dictionary PDF (alternatively) to Commons:File:Hieronymus Megiser - Dictionarium quatuor linguarum.pdf? The problem is it's 125M size. --Sporti (talk) 09:26, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

I can't -- I need to ask server people to do those kinds of uploads for me too. It's not a fun situation, and hopefully we'll get the chunked upload system going soon so we can all do these ourselves... --brion (talk) 19:36, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

So does soon mean I should wait or file a bug report?--Sporti (talk) 16:12, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

File a bug. --brion (talk) 19:50, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Request for uninvolved admin to review page deletion discussion

Hello, I was wondering if you could lend a hand. I am currently in a discussion about a page deletion for the article Big Brother Australia 2012 and as an uninvolved administrator, I was wondering if you were able to review the discussion? Thank you. Bbmaniac (talk) 10:42, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Your user page

I killed some of the ancient content on your user page. It could use a bit of sprucing, though. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 21:08, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks... I gotta spend more editing time on this wiki. :D --brion (talk) 21:11, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your recent work with portals !!!

Thanks so much for your help with portal coding, especially {{Related portals2}}. Much appreciated. ;) Cheers, — Cirt (talk) 06:03, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree. However, can you please fix {{Related portals2}} so that the contents float in the center of the section they are in instead of left aligning? I can't seem to figure out how to get it to do that. something somewhere in the code is preventing everything I try. Thanks! ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 08:27, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Ideally that would be nice! Not sure offhand how though; I think I tried something basic like setting text-align: center.... possibly using inline-block instead of floats would resolve this. --brion (talk) 18:36, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

proper semantic constructs

• Template talk:Navbox#Another hlist construct to consider

I'm sure you're busy. If you or one of the people you work with has time, we could use some input on improving the generated markup in things like navboxes. This is mostly about the new class=hlist in common.css (and bits of common.js). Things like {{flatlist}} and {{plainlist}} (and class=plainlist), too. And see Horizontal lists have got class in the Signpost.

In a nutshell, I'm looking at this as something that will end-up folded into MediaWiki itself and made available to all projects and external wikis. Part of this may involve (wishful) tweaks to wiki-text syntax ;) Alarbus (talk) 01:40, 17 December 2011 (UTC)