User talk:Tim Starling/Archive 9

Question From Japan

開発者Tim Starling様、私はWikipedia日本語版ユーザーのFamsisです。

Wikipedia日本語版管理者であるしるふぃ氏が、Tim Starling様から通知された日本語版ログインユーザー、利用者:東村慎吾氏・利用者:災難氏・w/in利用者:007氏のIP情報を開示しています。Tim Starling様は、IP情報がWikipediaに於いて開示されることを承知の上で、ログインユーザーのIP情報を管理者しるふぃ氏に通知したのでしょうか。

Dear Mr. Tim Starling:

I am Famsis, a Japanese Wikipedian.

Did you provid IPs of User:東村慎吾, User:災難,User:007 to User:しるふぃ(a sysop), with awareness that he would open them to the publicon Japanese Wikipedia?

Yours respectfully,

Famsis.

18:08, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Has Autoblock ever displayed a blocked registered user's IP address?

Hi Tim. This concerns an ArbCom case that I'm gathering evidence for. A user claims that he was able to view the IP address of blocked registered users by clicking on the autoblock link in the block log. Has this ever been the case? I wasn't able to find any record of this bug in Bugzilla. This user has only be around since early July, so that's time period I'm mostly concerned about. He claims that the bug has now been fixed. I'd also like to know whether any user (other than developers or David Gerard) could have knowledge of registered users' IP addresses through any technical means. Thank you! Carbonite | Talk 03:48, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

There was a bug introduced by Brion on August 23 that allowed users to search for autoblocks by IP. It was fixed on August 27. I'm not aware of any similar bugs. See [1] -- Tim Starling 01:00, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, Tim! Carbonite | Talk 02:22, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Blocking policy proposal

Hi Tim, we are trying to develop a new blocking policy, and as it has technical implications for Wikipedia and the software, your opinions would be greatly valued, see Wikipedia:Blocking policy proposal. thanks - Martin 09:53, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Possible problems with the diff engine

Hi, Tim. I posted this topic to the Help Desk and was referred to you. In summary, it seems like the diffs being generated recently (as exemplified here) are not very useful in some cases where it should be possible to generate a very clear diff. See my original post for more information. If it would be more helpful for me to file a bug or something like that, just let me know! —HorsePunchKid→龜 03:55, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Slovene Wikipedia

As you're one of the developers I'm turning to you with request to translate some on MediaWiki software, used on :sl. As of now we're still using english command for categories, but we wish to use slovene version (Kategorija instead of Category); some of associated commands were already translated, but this wasn't. Another translation is of Template to Predloga. Regards, --Klemen Kocjancic 19:25, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Hi! Did you get this message? If you can not help us with this, could you please direct me to right person? TIA! Regards, --Klemen Kocjancic 08:30, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Delete my account

You are an developer, right? Please, delete my account on the german wikipedia http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:French.tarragon - or tell me where i could ask for it, THANK YOU!

We can't delete your account because we can't delete your contributions. I suggest you remove any identifying information from it and request it be renamed, instead. -- Tim Starling 09:43, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Ok, thanks!

Sockpuppet check on Timewarp

Tim, Could you check to see if User:Timewarp is Special:Contributions/69.141.3.180 or Special:Contributions/Watchdog? Timewarp is currently edit warring on the John Lott article, trying to remove all criticism of Lott. Based on writing and argument style, he is almost certainly John Lott's sockpuppet, although he has denied this. Oddly enough, one of the things that Timewarp is trying to remove from the article is the details of Lott's use of a sockpuppet on Usenet. Because of Lott's sock puppet activities elsewhere, I have already tied IP address 69.141.3.180 to him, so if Timewarp has used that IP address, the case is proven. --TimLambert 06:54, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Celebrate!

Happy Tim Starling Day, Tim! (OK, OK, I'm about an hour and a half early, but...) We all deeply appreciate your efforts in developing Wikipedia to make it run more efficiently and better. Secure and split! Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk | W_S 23:21, 30 October 2005 (UTC) (P.S. I hope you don't mind The Wikipedia Signpost doing a short blurb on your holiday.)

Thanks Flcelloguy :) -- Tim Starling 03:59, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Happy Tim Starling Day! And Thank you! --A Chinese Wikipedianzh:User_talk:Coolgene

Happy Tim Starling Day and thank you for your continued efforts here. :) Angela. 04:03, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Eat up.

Happy Tim Starling Day! --Merovingian (t) (c) (e) 13:01, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Looks like I am not the first, but just want to wish all of us a happy Tim Starling day!! Donama 13:17, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Singapore ISP proxies: an NTL-like solution to discover underlying IP?

There seems to be an increasing volume of complaints from Singapore-based users about being affected by IP blocks (or underlying-IP blocks of usernames). Two recent IPs involved: 165.21.154.14 ([ 1 ]) and 202.156.6.54 ([ 2 ]).

I know that with NTL there was a solution found where we they cooperate by providing the underlying IP and we block on that instead of the ISP's proxy IP (I think it was you that implemented that?). If so, is there any possibility of the same thing for these Singapore ISPs? -- Curps 15:10, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes, it should be possible. I'd like to implement the ability to list entire subnets first though. SingNet in particular has quite a lot of proxies, currently we'd have to list them all individually. -- Tim Starling 02:16, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Wikispecies

Hi Tim, can you please have a look at bug 3578? This is really important for Wikispecies; it will be much easier to keep links to Wikipedia up-to-date with this feature. Thanks a lot, Ucucha (talk) 06:22, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

User:Username Glitch

How are these even possible: [2][3] When I try to do similar in the login page, it fails. Blocking at Special:Blockip also encounters a small glitch... try it. -- Curps 02:46, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

New Zealand ISP proxy and Grutness

Grutness is squawking about his ISP's proxy (New Zealand) getting blocked. [4] Can an NTL-like solution be implemented here as well (see Singapore comment above)?

Based on his unblocking history [5] it seems to be just this one IP, not a range. Could a quick solution be implemented? -- Curps 02:18, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Big problem

I assume you've been told this already, but </span>, </font>, etc. tags are not working. See Wikipedia:Recently created admins for a good example of it. Is there any way that this can be fixed, preferably quickly? Ral315 (talk) 01:21, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Noinclude considered harmful

Hello Tim Starling, I would like to bring the attention of developers such as yourself to Wikipedia talk:Noinclude considered harmful. A lot of Noinclude and Includeonly information has been added to templates lately to provide "helpful" information. The conflict occurs when one wishes to subst such a template and would result in some unwanted Noinclude and Includeonly leftovers. Should the Mediawiki software be fixed to accommodate this by omitting such tags? -- Zondor 06:56, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

You response was "fixed in CVS" - do you mean that it's fixed now? Or that a fix exists and will be added in the near future? Or something else?

As a side point, what would happen if a template with "includeonly" sections was subst'ed? I believe at present that it's copied verbatim, which means that the section is there but won't be visible. Intuitively, I'd prefer it to be both there and visibile. Radiant_>|< 11:29, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

It means it's fixed in CVS. It's now also fixed on this site. I let it sit in CVS for a couple of hours for the purpose of pondering possible bugs. Any <includeonly> tags in the template will be stripped, leaving such sections both there and visible, as you suggest. -- Tim Starling 12:45, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

• Thank you for the quick response! Radiant_>|< 16:15, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

RfC on Verifiabilty, Reputable Sources

Please check out and comment on the Rfc filed against me for trying to have NBP libel about me removed. Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/69.253.195.228

Greetings from the United Federation of Planets

Hey, I was wondering whats up with image servers, text comes almost instantly but images takes forever (as in often never download and instead timeout)... I do not believe this is because of wiki-traffic, but then again you are the expert :P. Just curious... --Cool Cat^Talk|@ 20:46, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Email

Why not simply upload an image of text which spambots can't read? --Cool Cat^Talk|@ 20:51, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

What are you talking about? -- Tim Starling 13:58, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Your email adress on your userpage is written inverse so spam bots cant "read" it right? --Cool Cat^Talk|@ 18:47, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Bringing my old edits home...

Greetings, oh wise and mighty developer. I am told that one such as yourself may know a way to merge my anonymous contributions into my existing edit contribution history... I've confirmed over two dozen anon edits of mine primarily by identifying articles that I started, beginning with this cluster of edits, as well as this fairly large cluster, and including these three, these five, these two, these five, these two, this one, and this one. I would be most grateful if you could light the path to inclusion of these edits so as to make whole my record here. Cheers! BD2412 T 22:55, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Image deletion warning

I have nominated Image:Beer in glass (small).jpg, the file you have uploaded, for deletion. It is not used in any articles, and its copyright status is unknown. (The link in its upload history is not working.)

Unknown to you maybe. As I said on the IFD subpage, it could have easily become known if you did a bit of research.

If you do not want the image to be deleted, you should mention its actual source and copyright status at the image's description page. Please note that per Wikipedia:Copyright and Wikipedia:Copyright FAQ, only images which are in public domain, licensed under terms compatible with GFDL license, or included under fair use laws are permitted on Wikipedia.

Sorry for any inconvenience. Regards, Mike Rosoft 17:23, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes, thank you for that insight into Wikipedia's copyright policy. Perhaps I can repay you with a barely relevant rant. For years I've been arguing against the inclusion of fair use images except those allowable under the Berne Convention. I don't particularly want to get sued for distributing Wikipedia in my country of residence. The laws of a country which is neither the location of the copyright holder nor the location of the infringer are probably irrelevant. -- Tim Starling 09:51, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

And I thank you for explaining the status of the image. I have updated the links at Image:Beer in glass.jpg, using the Internet Archive (as you have suggested). I also apologize for explaining to you what you already know; I quite frequently deal with new users who have no idea what is allowed on Wikipedia and what isn't, and I have mistakenly taken you for one. Regards, Mike Rosoft 18:35, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

The Bush

G'day, just noticed your long ago comments about 'the bush' -in outback talk from a year or two ago. The outback is one of the poorer arts I have found to date on such an issue, so i dont know if you're still of the same opinion - but I have started one (the bush' that is, and would appreciate if you could give some feedback on that one sometime down the track as technically I am on wikibreak for a while and plan to put a variety of refs specifically cultural history stuff which I reckon will justify the entry, but not in the short term. vcxlor 09:44, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Conversion script

Hello Tim,

Would you switch off the automatic modus of uppercase for the title of article on Ko Wiktionary. I think, it's necessary for the Wiktionary. -- 아흔(A-heun) 17:09, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

URL spam

How do we add the following site to the spam filter? I can't actually remember. Site is http://gallys.nastydollars.com/sl/107/katie-227.jpg - Ta bu shi da yu 08:05, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Edit m:Spam blacklist. I can do it for you but I need to have a diff showing the spam occurring. -- Tim Starling 09:35, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

OK, here you go! - Ta bu shi da yu 14:13, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Error on IE

Line: 357
Char: 5
Error: Object required
Code: 0
Url: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cool_Cat

Something seems to be wrong, the page does appear to load correctly... Ideas? --Cool Cat^Talk|@ 13:31, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Database Download as Torrent

Will Database Downloads ever be available as torrent files? - Xed 14:47, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

A thought I had...

Copied from my post at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation pages with links: Frankly, I think the developers should have a program that regularly crawls through and touches all Wikipedia pages. (to eliminate false positives from transclusions, that is) BD2412 T 20:43, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

How did you produce the torque diagrams?

Hi, I have created an article on the Elitzur-Vaidman bomb-testing problem and I would like it to feature a diagram similar to the elegant ones you've produced for the Torque article. How were these created? Thanks. RCSB 08:52, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Screenshot from Microsoft Word. -- Tim Starling 11:33, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

SkepticWiki

Hi Tim, thought you might be interested in this new project: SkepticWiki - Zuytdorp Survivor 12:55, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Request for help from User:Iwanowicz

Hi Tim -- I hope all is well -- it's been a long time!

I'm "forwarding" a request from a relatively new user -- User:Iwanowicz -- who is requesting that his name and home phone number be removed from the edit history of a few pages: Special:Contributions/24.74.14.75. As you can see from this sample diff (Revision of Mount Holly Spring, Pennsylvania as of 05:52, 4 December 2005), User:24.74.14.75 has been up to no good. The request is on my talk page here.

Thanks, BCorr|Брайен 23:38, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Checkuser request

I was told that you might be able to do a check user request for me. I am an admin who mainly edits literary articles. A few weeks back, I discovered in a news account that Robert Clark Young claimed he had written his own article on Wikipedia. While Young did deserve an article, obviously his actions irritated me so I went in and removed the extremely POV language he had crafted and also removed the hundreds of links he'd inserted to his article in other wikipedia articles (he'd inserted links where they didn't belong, such as in identity theft). Anyway, a newly created Wikipedia editor account, User:Berenise, has begun making POV edits to the article. I've been discussing this issue with the user but wanted to make sure this wasn't Young coming back under another name. Is it possible to check and see if the earlier anonymous IP addresses that Young used (see the history of Robert Clark Young) tie in with this new editor? Or is that not appropriate? Thanks for any info. --Alabamaboy 02:16, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Many thanks for the advice.--Alabamaboy 12:14, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Please contact the Arbitration Committee or a member of this list. -- Tim Starling 05:03, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Mcfly85

Hi there Tim, Im Moe Epsilon. I am informing all the users with the checkuser ability under "advice" given by Celestianpower to run a CheckUser on Mcfly85. This user "claims" to have NEVER once opened an IP address to vandalize; list of IP addresses that vandalized my user page are suspects. I also suspect he created/opened accounts to vandalize too. (ex. Rock09, 4benson3, Capnoh, Oneandon, Sigma995, Sven66 and Pwner.) A few days ago I was running for adminship and he got on there and edited. Mcfly85, Rock09 and Sigma995 all voted oppose when well noted administrators and others voted support. I suspect Mcfly has vandalized my user page 9 times. You can see conflicts there at my talk page, my RFA. I posted these accusations at the Administrators' noticeboard and nothing was done because of lack of evidence. Well, today Banes noticed something interesting. He posted:

You may want to look at the history of Frank Beard. And, less interestingly, the history of Wayne Newton. I just thought this might interest you.

It was where Mcfly85 and Rock09 edited the same articles simultaneously. Rock09 vandalized the articles and Mcfly85 does clean-up. Suspicious that an article like Frank Beard, an article with 11 edits has edits by Rock09 and Mcfly85 simultaneously. Can you please run a CheckUser on him? — Moe ε 18:56, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Please contact the Arbitration Committee or a member of this list. -- Tim Starling 05:03, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Simple

Tim, I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but over at simple English Wikipedia, when you type in something that doesn't have an article already in the search bar and press go, it doesn't have a link to create the article. Instead, it displays You can <a href=":Roosevelt" class="new">create an article with this title</a> or <a href="/wiki/Wikipedia:Requested articles">ask for someone to write it</a>. Is there any way this could be fixed? Many thanks! Also, I heard that you were working on a feature to be implemented in January regarding having a stable "good" version that is viewed. Could you provide some details on this? Thanks again; your work is greatly appreciated! Flcelloguy (A note?) 16:17, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

To change the text displayed when "go" fails, edit simple:MediaWiki:Nogomatch. The stable version feature is Salvatore Ingala's "show verified" feature, plus a few improvements. Read this mailing list post and the associated thread.

Thanks for the reply! Flcelloguy (A note?) 23:15, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Checkuser Request

Hi,

Some other users and I are having a dispute here over whether Methodology and Grye are both me. I was wondering if you could check for all of our true IPs and tell the skeptics that they're not me. If you could, I would be greatly in your debt.

Sincerely,

Primetime 13:38, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Please contact the Arbitration Committee or a member of this list. -- Tim Starling 05:03, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Bad image list

Hi,

Due to a similar discussion now occuring at Doggy_style (although that one is now turning on copyright issues re the image) that caught my eye, I dug deeper into that discussion and the one concerning the Autofellatio image. After spending a great deal of time reading, I can't seem to find any consensus for moving the autofellatio image to your Mediawiki:Bad_image_list, although you state such a consensus as your reason for including it. I've searched through the old polls and talk page discussion there, and I just can't find such a compromise or consensus reached. Could you point me to where you believe this occurred, or further explain why this image should not be removed from this bad image list?

Thanks very much, --Krich 03:13, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

The image was linked rather than displayed inline at the time the feature was introduced, no discussion or edit war was taking place. Thus, there was an implicit consensus by those who were actively editing the article. I am not interested in debating the subject at the moment (nor was I then), so if you think the list should be changed, please find a sysop to change it for you. -- Tim Starling 04:57, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

I appreciate the reply, and I wasn't attempting to draw you into a discussion on the value of the image itself. I wanted to know how the image ended up in Mediawiki:Bad_image_list. It appears from your answer that it's in that list because you decided it should be. Am I reading that incorrectly? From reading the history of the discussion, it doesn't appear to me that a real consensus was reached on the image, altough it reads to me that opinion was leaning well toward non-censoring of the image, and towards the image having real value to the article. The image has been included on the Autofellatio page for months now, although it doesn't display inline because your inclusion of it in your bad image list.

Pardon me, I'm not trying to be contentuous, it just looks to me as if this is a mechanism for intituting a "policy" of censoring (to a degree) images without actually going through the trouble it would be to get such a policy passed (if it were indeed possible at all).

Thanks for your suggestion about how to proceed - I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but the prospect of trying to get administrators to undo another admin's actions doesn't seem like fun to me. Thanks again for the response. --Krich (talk) 05:19, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

I made my position on this quite clear in my original VP post, now at the top of MediaWiki talk:Bad image list. The feature is an anti-vandalism feature, any use of it for censorship is inappropriate. -- Tim Starling 07:47, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

I read what you wrote in that VP post - but despite your intentions, that doesn't appear to be how the feature is being applied. In the wording that you now have at the top of Mediawiki:Bad_image_list you state that you did this because it was "amenable" to the then-current dispute at Autofellatio- but again, I don't see any evidence of such a consensus around any amenability toward this solution, in this case. From what I can find in the history of Autofellatio, there was no discussion of your feature at all there. Despite what you may have intended, the bad image list is currently having the effect of censoring some images from displaying inline, with no consensus shown that this is what editors at articles effected want. I ask you to reconsider your position here, and how appropriate it is for an administrator to keep images many feel are valuable and instructive in their articles from being displayed, despite any clear consensus or official policy that allows this.

Thanks again for taking the time to respond - I realize it may seem I'm trying to stir up trouble (or that I'm a fan of that particular photo), but I honestly feel there is a real principle worth discussing here. --Krich (talk) 08:02, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Image name conflict policy

For uploads the policy should be reject rather than replace. There are issues with the status quo that really, really should be addressed and I think the best way would be to change the handling of name conflicts as a fairly high priority. -- Curps 05:00, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorry if the above was cryptic, for more details see here. -- Curps 07:14, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Merry Christmas, Tim!

Nice to meet you, Tim. I've been hearing about you being Wikipedian, I used to be an anon user until I registered in November 2005. I've had some anon edits since like around around late 2004. Anyway, I just also thought to stop by and wish you a Merry Christmas to you and your family. Alex 101 00:30, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Special:Ipblocklist listing truncates non-ASCII usernames

The Special:Ipblocklist listing severely truncates non-ASCII usernames (eg Russian usernames).

This can lead to severe confusion and can lead to mismatches between block and unblock listings in the Special:Log/block listing, making it appear that a non-existent username was unblocked and making it difficult or impossible to tell the actual username that was unblocked (unless you can deduce it by guessing). See discussion at [6]

-- Curps 06:02, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Dealing With Information That Presents A Security Risk

I feel this template below is an important and integral part of the development of Wikipedia. As an important part of WP, would you please comment on the matter? The ongoing addition of information that may cause serious security risks to the safety of not only Wikipedians, but citizens of the non-digital world as well is in need of addressing. PeterZed 22:50, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

{{Security Risk}}

Regarding the making of a Refrence desk.

Hello, I use media wiki on my website and I was wandering how I can make a refrence desk like the one here at wikipedia for my self. Thanks --(Aytakin) | Talk 00:07, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Reddi?

Are you aware of Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Reddi_2? William M. Connolley 17:56, 2 January 2006 (UTC).

Help for Malayalam Wikipedia

Hi ,

I don't know if it is the best place to ask this doubt. I am a Bureaucrat with Malayalam Wikipedia. Numbers displayed in Malayalam Wikipedia are not understood by most of the people who use it eventhough it is in Malayalam itself. The sad irony is that no one in Malayalam uses Malayalam digits at present(Eg.൦(0), ൧(1), ൨(2), ൩(3), ൪(4)). They insted use Arabic digits ( 1,2,3...). Hence most of the users need the numbers to be displayed in Arabic or universal digit system (1,2,3,,,,.)

When we use number of articles template the result displayed cannot be understood by the readers!. I tried to find out from where these digtis come?. Is there any way to change the default settings. I thought you could help me.... Manjithkaini 05:59, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Abrasion

I noticed a "rv vandalism" edit to Abrasion in which you removed the disambiguation link. Can you explain that edit? I'm inclined to revert it, or at least re-add the disambiguation. —BenFrantzDale 13:06, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, didn't realise I was editing an old revision. I can't believe nobody questioned before now the assertion by an anon that non-stick padding should be used so that blood will attach to the bandage and cause extreme pain and suffering. -- Tim Starling 13:14, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Special:Whatlinkshere

Hello,

A problem was reported on the French village pump fr:Wikipédia:Le_Bistro/4_janvier_2006#Suivi_des_modèles... : fr:Special:Whatlinkshere/Modèle:Portail_HZB is showing only a few hundreds of pages instead of more than 1600 as it should. A former template fr:Modèle:HZB was renamed in November fr:Modèle:Portail HZB, thus creating a redirection. All the pages using the former template seem to have been erased from the "whatlinkshere" page. This seems to be connected to the « Special:Whatlinkshere for certain templates showing only half the requested number of pages, bug » you talked about on the wikitech list, although you say this problem is fixed. Should I report this on Bugzilla? As a new item? --Teofilo talk 16:33, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

The pages using fr:Modèle:HZB should be listed on fr:Special:Whatlinkshere/Modèle:Portail HZB, without any mention of a redirect. Whether you consider it a bug or not is up to you, it was the behaviour I observed when I was testing it and I considered it a non-issue. If there are any pages containing {{HZB}} that don't show up on fr:Special:Whatlinkshere/Modèle:Portail HZB, please tell me what they are. -- Tim Starling 08:40, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Most of the biographies of botanists and zoologists should show up, and don't. For example, using fr:modèle:HZB : fr:Adolphe Brongniart, fr:Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck, and using fr:modèle:Portail HZB : fr:Adrien de Jussieu, fr:Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu, fr:Bernard de Jussieu, fr:Joseph de Jussieu, etc. I was wrong yesterday when I suspected the problem to be limited to only the former template. The user who mentioned the problem says that she usually counts the number of articles in the list, and by comparing with her previous count, knows instantly if new articles were created in the meantime. It is quite obvious she cannot rely on this method any longer. --Teofilo talk 12:53, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

One way of solving the problem would be to order a bot to make dummy edits on each of the 200000 articles of the French Wikipedia. --Teofilo talk 13:55, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

A bot was sent on the articles to make dummy edits. Now the problem is solved and the articles I mentioned above have probably come back into the list. --Teofilo talk 15:44, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

still a problem with Recent changes "Show new changes starting from..."

Hi,

The problem I reported earlier is still occurring; the largest gap I've seen is 8 Recentchanges entries missing between the top of the previous screen and the bottom of the next screen, although usually it's just one or two or zero.

Is there any way to specify the "from" parameter as a version id rather than a timestamp? Ie, instead of:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&from=20060104205710

it would be some syntax like:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&fromversion=33885462

Presumably this would avoid the problem with the gaps. -- Curps 21:07, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Creating is.wikisource.org

Hi, sorry for pestering you here, but it was suggested to me on irc that you were the person to ask the get is.wikisource.org up and running. I have filed a bug for it number 4471 and see also the discussion at wikisource.org. Respectfully, Stefán Ingi 22:55, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

It's up now, thanks for your time. Stefán Ingi 15:32, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Again

2006-01-05 08:08:25 UTC Jonathan Cary USD 20.00 -0.68 19.32 for TimStarling's assistance tracking down my MediaWiki issues

Red Hot + Riot

Thank you very much for the Red Hot + Riot correction. How did you make it happen? Folajimi 13:05, 5 January 2006 (UTC)^talk

Happy New Year

Regards, Arno 09:39, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

CheckUser status

How would I go about applying for CheckUser priviledge? I'd find it very useful, and I believe I can be trusted not to abuse it. - Ta bu shi da yu 07:12, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

So, interesting bug, no? - Ta bu shi da yu 08:51, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Request for help

Hi Tim. Could you possibly delete User:SP-KP/ToDo/Bird_species for me? I'm not able to open (presumably because of its size). Sorry to bother you with a menial task like this, I tried an admin but he wasn't able to delete it. Steve. SP-KP 19:16, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Image on your user page

Hi Tim, the image on your user page has now been listed as "orphaned fair use" for over seven days. Furthermore, the {{PermissionAndFairUse}} template is deprecated, so you should change the license of the image. Maybe you could use a Creative Commons license. If you still want to license it under fair use, please use {{Fairusein}}. Thank you. Mushroom 22:11, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

File:Tim Starling.jpg

Men wear sunglasses to keep the light out of their eyes, or to just generally look cool.

---

The above file's purpose is being discussed and/or is being considered for deletion. See files for discussion to help reach a consensus on what to do.

If I license it under CC, then 5 seconds later it'll be in the Sunglasses article. Nobody wants that. Read [7]. -- Tim Starling 12:36, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry Tim, I made at least three mistakes:

• I didn't read the licensing rationale.
• I suggested the use of a Creative Commons license.
• I wrote that {{PermissionAndFairUse}} is deprecated, but your image uses {{Fair use}}.

So I will humbly ask you to forget that message and I will rewrite it:

Hi Tim, the image on your user page has now been listed as "orphaned fair use" for over seven days. I have removed the tag since it's not orphaned and there's absolutely no reason to delete it. Since the image is on a small number of pages (4), I suggest that you use {{Fairusein}} instead of {{Fair use}}. Please put the image in your watchlist and remove any future "orphaned" tag that is added by a bot. Thank you.

Post scriptum: the image was not "incorrectly marked" by the Roomba bot. It was correctly marked, since that bot tags every image that is fair use and is not used in the Main: namespace. All those images should be deleted according to the fair use policy. Obviously there are exceptions, but it' not Roomba's fault. He's a good bot. Mushroom 21:38, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

The {{Non-free fair use in}} template does not adequately describe the situation. I'm going to sort out the licensing of the image and make a new template for it. -- Tim Starling 00:18, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

That's a really good idea, other users could benefit from it as well. Mushroom 06:21, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

I've nominated it for deletion at Wikipedia:Images_and_media_for_deletion/2006_February_23. The current license for this image is incompatible for Wikipedia use. Thanks for understanding. Jkelly 22:33, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

User:Tim Starling/List of crackpot theories

I don't know if you want User:Tim Starling/List of crackpot theories; I've been reverting the aetheometrists there recently. William M. Connolley 23:34, 22 January 2006 (UTC),

Hmmm...Engrams...would you mind looking at Neuro-Linguistic Programming?Voice of All^T|@|ESP 21:41, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Forgot password + no e-mail. Request Help!

I've registered under the username Michele.B and then forgot my password, unfortunately I did not supply an email! On this page it's stated that a developer might be able to help in this problem. I found your name on this page.

I have a fixed IP address (145.94.41.95 | Contributions) all edits before July 2 were made by a friend of mine, now registerd under the name DelftUser (talk).

I hope you can help me, thank you very much. --145.94.41.95 21:39, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

So you are not going to help him? Should he just re-register under a different name? --DelftUser 10:03, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, he should. We have no logs of IP addresses going back that far, and no other personal information is given in connection with the Michele.B account, so there's no way to connect the account with the requester. -- Tim Starling 23:23, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

URL spam II.

Hello. I'm Louis and Wikipedian for about a half year. I would really need some help, because it is my first time I confronted with a spam prevention error. How can I add a new link to a page that contains partially a word enlisted in the blacklist? The article would be on Snoop Dogg's Doggystyle, Snoop's first and breaktrough x-rated DVD, and some reference could be added to it from a Jimmy Flynt II interview providing valuable information about the sales of the DVD that can be found on adultvideonews.com, which is an acclaimed site that gives away awards each year (its importance is represented by IMDB with an up-to-date awards coverage [8]).Lajbi 00:45, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Should be fixed now, let's test: http://adultvideonews.com/ -- Tim Starling 01:47, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Appreciate it.Lajbi 01:58, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikicities stats pages

Hi Tim: I'm from Muppet Wiki on Wikicities, and I've been having a hard time trying to find out what's going on with the stats pages. As far as I know, they haven't worked right for a month or so. Our stats page has actually never worked since we started the wiki two months ago.

Anyway, I hope you're still working on fixing things at Wikicities. You helped me out a lot on the IRC a while ago, and it seems like you really know what you're doing. Can you check on the stats pages? I've asked Angela and Jason about it a few times, and they keep blowing me off. I'd appreciate anything you could tell me. Thanks! -- Danny Toughpigs 04:27, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Apparently the correct URL is http://www.wikicities.com/wikistatsnew/EN/TablesWikipediaMUPPET.htm not http://www.wikicities.com/wikistats/EN/TablesWikipediaMUPPET.htm . Is there any problem with wikistatsnew? -- Tim Starling 14:09, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, the Muppet wikistatsnew page doesn't seem to actually update. The table at the top might, but everything after that doesn't. I've been looking at that page for a week, and the active contributors table -- which is the one I'm really interested in -- hasn't updated.

There's also a general problem with the wikistatsnew pages. I can get to http://www.wikicities.com/wikistatsnew/EN/TablesArticlesTotal.htm, but if you use the drop-down menu to try to switch from there to another table, it doesn't work. Also, the wikistatsnew pages aren't linked from the main Wikicities site -- I forget how I even found them. The stats links on the site still go to wikistats.

Actually, now that I look at it again, those don't seem to update either. That "Article count" page says that we have 3700 articles, and right now we have about 5100.

I asked Angela about the wikistatsnew pages, and she said she didn't know anything about them. So if those are the new stats pages, then she should probably get a heads-up. Thanks for your help! -- Danny Toughpigs 16:01, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Email

Developer dude! Question. Can emails sent through Wikipedia be retrieved? The recipient (Fred Bauder) of an email of mine lost it along the way, and I spent a fair bit amount of time on it, foolishly neglecting to save it somewhere safe. I'd like to have that email re-sent, possibly CCed to me, if it's at all possible. Thanks in advance! (If I'm asking you to do a lot of work to retrieve one silly email, please decline my request and I'll just rewrite it. I don't want to create a big ol' hassle for anyone.) —BorgHunter ^ubx (talk) 00:33, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

No they can't. -- Tim Starling 23:04, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Per your request

Confirming my identify. --Durin 23:05, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Re my editing Wikipedia talk: Uk Wikipedians' notice board

Tim, can you check this out? Something weird is happening when I edit this talk page. I seem to be removing someone's contributions. I would never in my life do that knowingly, is there a way you can check if there may some interference in any way? Yes, granted I was somewhat facetious pointing to the spelling of toilet humour, but vandalising? Never. Certainly not in my three years editing. This has happened twice this evening, and twice I was pulled up about it (quite rightly, if it had really been vandalism). This really needs investigating. Sorry, about springing this on you. Thanks. Dieter Simon 00:25, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Request

Tim, are you around? If so, would you mind taking a look at WP:AN, which was apparently deleted by another administrator because of "personal information" in an edit summary. However, the page is taking forever to view, and I'm sure, restore as well. Would you mind taking care of this? Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 00:59, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Never mind; it's fixed now. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 01:10, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't think PNG thumbnailing is fixed

See my last message in Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#PNG thumbnailing is not just merely bad, but actively horribly sucks ... Churchh 20:22, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Ok, now I understand that it's as fixed as going to be in the near future (and how to get around the legacies of past failures), thanks. For my last remarks (on the scope of the problem, which didn't affect just greyscale PNG), see Village pump (technical) again. If you're thinking of deleting all PNG thumbnails, now might be the time... Churchh 02:50, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Some sort of bug. Just curious what.

Hi Tim, we have had some sort of little bug on the Limburgish Wikipedia for quite some time: when you try to store an extended edit (say, a new article, or a de-stubbing) or just one that takes some time, you don't get the edit stored in one time. I experienced the same problem on nl:, but after a routine database maintenance the problem was completely solved. On li:, however, the problem has worsened the last few days: more often than not I can't even store minor edits in one try and big edits may tike five times trying before they get stored. Meanwhile, the user messages interface shows its default versions, which usually means a developer has been around. If anything, can you tell me what problem I'm facing? And if it can be solved relatively easily? Thanks in advance, Caesarion 20:56, 12 February 2006 (UTC) (li:Gebroeker:HaafLimbo)

The worst problems are over now, the rest can wait.

By the way...

...Could you change the names of the category, the image and all talk name spaces on li:? The current names are misspelled, dialectical or unfortunate borrowings from Dutch. This should include the following changes:

"Talk" from euverlik to euverlèk.
"Image" from aafbeilding to plaetje.
"Category" from kategorie to categorie.
"User talk" from euverlik gebroeker to euverlèk gebroeker.
"Image talk" from euverlik aafbeilding to euverlèk plaetje.
"Category talk" from euverlik kategorie to euverlèk categorie.
"Wikipedia talk" from euverlik Wikipedia to euverlèk Wikipedia.

These changes have been discussed and agreed on at the Limburgic village pump. By the way, we do not yet have the portal namespace, as do the Dutch and German Wikipedias. If it doesn't take too much time, please consider creating it on li: too. The local names should be portaal and euverlèk portaal.

Thanks in advance! Caesarion 12:41, 25 February 2006 (UTC) (li:Gebroeker:HaafLimbo).

Sorry, I forgot to ask you this: Please mention these adaptations immediately after you did them on my local talk page or at local village pump. It will urge us to run bots in order to make pictures and categories that were previously added work, preferably as soon as possible. Caesarion 13:07, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Java script

I have my "vandal revert" button on diff pages...and I would like to have that take me to the vandal's contributions page after reverting...how can I change the script to do that. The lines:

"window.open('http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/' + vandal,
            'status,toolbar,location,menubar,directories,resizeable,scrollbars');

Are there to show where this command needs to be...obviously they don't work though. What should the script be? Thanks.Voice of All^T|@|ESP 01:22, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Nevermind...I just got it.Voice of All^T|@|ESP 04:20, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia in Tetum

• Help building a Wikipedia in Tetum, the national language of East Timor. Give your contribution to the improvement of its test page -- Regards, 195.23.53.121 11:27, 15 February 2006 (UTC) Manuel de Sousa

Urgent CheckUser request

Please see WP:RCU regarding User:Bowlhover. Thanks. --Nlu (talk) 08:08, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Patrolled edits request

Tim, over at the simple English Wiktionary, we've decided to try having patrolled edits for sysops. 100% of the administrators (a whopping four) and the sole bureaucrat (pretty much the only active users) have decided to give it a try: see wiktionary:simple:Wiktionary:Administrators#Patrolled_edits?. I've read Help:Patrolled edit, and it seems like it requires a developer to enable this for sysop-patrols (because I can't seem to find LocalSettings.php...) . Would you mind taking care of this? Many thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 20:38, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Image:Tim Starling.jpg listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded, Image:Tim Starling.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion. Please look there to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you.

Jkelly 22:28, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

WP:RCU

I am leaving this message to all 10 people at Special/checkuser list. Therefore forgive me for its being impersonal. Please take a look at Wikipedia talk:Requests for CheckUser#cleanup needed. Your response and/or actions there would be very much appreciated. Thanks! --Irpen 23:30, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Attribution change request

Hello. Can you attribute this edit to my username? For privacy reasons I wouldn't like my IP address to be publicly known. I believe you have the ability to determine that my account matches it. Much thanks in advance. -- Dissident (Talk) 05:07, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

E-mail password reminder "feature"

Just how long does the "new password" remain valid? Does it expire eventually, or does the account now have two valid passwords? And is there some way to turn off this feature and disable such "reminders"? -- Curps 02:06, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

It remains valid until you change your password, including if you "change" it to the same thing as it was before. There's no way to disable the feature, apart from removing your email address. -- Tim Starling

There are various possibilities for vandal mischief here. It really should expire within no more than half an hour after being sent, or it should be automatically expired if the user is already logged in and performs any action while logged in. And there should be a way to disable it in the preferences. -- Curps 02:32, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Image:Tim Starling.jpg listed for deletion

Your image is about to be deleted by consensus from WP:IFD. Would you care to change the license or do you prefer to have it deleted rather than change the license? -Thanks Nv8200p talk 16:24, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Delete it. I'll find some more appropriate place to host it. -- Tim Starling 01:56, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Leave the image description page though. -- Tim Starling 02:04, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Check user

I've made a checkuser request here, but am not sure if I need to do anything else at this point...saw your name on the list. Please let me know if I need to do anything else...thanks...KHM03 21:01, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Checkuser backlog

The checkuser backlog is growing without bound; I guess that might be related to Diva being ill. Maybe it's time to give a few more admins the necessary privs? — ciphergoth 09:31, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind a accational check. Though I don't know how to even get checkuser, perhaps at Meta.Voice-of-All^T|@|ESP 05:00, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't have anything to do with this anymore, why are you all asking me? -- Tim Starling 05:14, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Probably because you're listed at m:CheckUser Policy#Everywhere. :) Angela. 05:48, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Likely ISP proxy used by Squidward

A user asked about the IP 210.0.201.213 (talk · contribs). Apparently a Hong Kong ISP address (Hutchison), a known open proxy (tested by fvw Sep 2005), used by Squidward, now blocked. Is there an XFF solution applicable here? -- Curps 16:44, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I am currently using this IP at my workplace. The ISP is from Hutchison Global Communications and I don't known why it was classified as an open proxy.--Hello World! 02:45, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Note also 203.186.238.128/25, the ISP range of another Hong Kong ISP, which I mentioned earlier. -- Curps 16:44, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Latest batch of Squidward IPs

59.124.152.142 61.73.225.19 61.76.202.205 66.198.41.151 80.72.197.18 80.249.7.250 83.19.168.148 155.230.7.98 165.246.110.176 194.151.99.134 201.17.219.38 202.41.148.5 203.124.149.164 203.177.102.212 210.87.251.41 210.87.251.106 210.87.251.107 210.87.251.111 211.55.107.61 212.92.0.135 212.126.5.130 216.125.119.99 221.93.20.156 222.98.234.247 -- Curps 17:21, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Another proxy address

24.71.223.140 (talk · contribs) is a frequent source of vandalism and has been blocked and autoblocked many times in the past. At least one administrator uses it. Is there an XFF solution? There are at least two more similar situation if I can recall: User:Celestianpower and 62.171.194.0/26, and User:Grutness and 202.180.83.6. -- Curps 18:32, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

24.71.223.140 and 202.180.83.6 are both fine, I've listed them. The computers behind 62.171.194.0/26 have 10.0.0.0/8 addresses which MediaWiki will reject, so there wouldn't be any point in listing it. -- Tim Starling 10:19, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Another Australian ISP transparent proxy

220.245.179.130, used for Squidward back in February.

I've listed that, plus another 15 TPG proxies in that /16.

There are also still the Singapore ISP I mentioned back in November (see earlier on this same page), I don't know if they were ever handled. -- Curps 02:17, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Listed the whole /24 just now. -- Tim Starling 11:12, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

PLEASE HELP Mr. Starling

In the article Alternative Parsers, it was mentioned that you created a script to dump wiki contents to a static site. Can you help me how to use your script? -- Dbb2001 08:40, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Australian high school proxies

Please add 203.166.99.233 - 203.166.99.252 to the XFF list. These are also Australian high school proxies. See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#NSW/Ozemail proxies. The only other option is range blocks. These IPs appear to have come online within the last few days, and have been a constant source of vandalism. Probably an instance of vandalism every couple minutes during the school day. Rhobite 23:20, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

The computers behind those proxies all have private (RFC 1918) addresses. MediaWiki does not support such addresses at present, so adding those proxies wouldn't do any good. -- Tim Starling 23:38, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Question

just a few questions for you at the momement Tim, the first one is how exactly did you fix the IP block so my tafe could access editing? mainly cause i'd like to learn to do the same. another thing i'd like is maybe if you sent me a programming exercise or goal or something, something that will at least make me motivated to do something, if you're wondering why this is here and not an email it's because you don't ANSWER emails. I'm sure i can make this wikipedia related eventually. --Ben starling 23:57, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I'll talk to you on MSN, OK? -- Tim Starling 23:38, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Schools, user pages, etc.

Hi, i'm a little ticked off about the hole blocking of editing on me, but from what i can see it's due to the fact that i edit from the australian education server or something. Would it be possible for people to still be able to edit their own user pages while blocked, I would feel that this would be a good idea, because they're just editing themselves, not any important articles. --Bishamonster 01:13, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

I'll see what everyone else thinks about it.

just another small question, do you think the highschool vandalists actually realise that they're getting the entire school system blocked from editing?--Bishamonster 01:16, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

No, probably not. -- Tim Starling 23:38, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

== Please help to save the truth ===

It's the german part... In most political Articles there are Administrators or Sysops, who deletes free opinions in discussions. User like 790, Balbor T'han and others deletes even quotations from politicians, for who the article is wrote (for example: Ahmadi Nedjad).
They edit the article in a way, that even a child will laugh because of their logic ("the poor peaple of the country has elected him in hope for more money...?!?" - Heck, how did they know that?!?). They intimidate newbies and delete text they don't like - even if you prove your opinion (...or especially then).
Is this Wikipedia? With all the lies and the suppression without the chance to discuss and find the truth???

As effect of all the suppression, they earn a lot insult. Please help to break this lobby, or Wikipedia will be abandoned by them who are willing to meet in dialogue and will be left only with garbage of liars and suppressors. You are the last instance I write to: Please help to keep serious opinions in the discussions!!!

Help

Tim. User:Lefty on campus has been making personal attacks against me. User:Lefty on campus and User:PSYCH have both been active today. Can you check if they are the same person please. Thanx Xtra 00:22, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

I take this as a personal attack. Please do not spread lies about me to other people, and have the nerve to accuse me of an attack. Lefty on campus 00:29, 12 March 2006 (UTC).

Lefty, if these two people are not you, then why are you being so defensive about it? if Tim can find out that you are in fact different people, then everything will be fine. --Bishamonster 23:35, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

The reason Bisha is that I don't want people spreading lies about me on wikipedia, especially by a user that has already been blocked for vandalism ( that being User:Xtra )- Wouldn't you respect the right to protect your own reputation from bigotted allegations? Lefty on campus 02:22, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

See above under #Checkuser backlog -- Tim Starling 23:39, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Mapping

Hi Tim, given your interest in mapping, I was hoping you could put me in touch with someone who can map sea level rises in NZ. Thanks Mccready 06:33, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't really have an interest in mapping. -- Tim Starling 23:38, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Thai language word breaking and spacing issues

Hello Tim. I'm Chaiwat, a Thai wikipedian. I've just add a response about word-level diff/search on Thai language to [9]. Please check it. Thank you. -- March 17, 2006 Chaiwat

WP:RCU—anybody home?

Is anyone currently working WP:RCU? As I type this, the backlog is at 88 requests. RadioKirk 13:57, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Maybe because whoever it is who invented that page is too shy about telling people to get lost when they make frivolous requests. I don't know what it has to do with me though. -- Tim Starling 07:34, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Maybe—just maybe—it's because you're listed here. If, however, it's your assertion that all CheckUser requests are "frivolous"—or, worse, that I intended to "spam (your) user talk page"—then perhaps you should make the effort to insure you're not bothered like this again by removing yourself from the list of people who want any responsibility. RadioKirk 20:13, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Images and the link table

Tim, I don't know if that's a known issue or whether it is intentional: when images are just linked to in an article using [[:Image:...]], they still show up as orphans. Only when linked to using [[Media:...]] does the image description page show the articles the image is used on. However, "Media" goes to the file directly, bypassing the image description page with all the source and license info. For an example, see e.g. the "Us Census" images linked in Rufus_Porter#Timeline. The "1850 census" uses "Media", the others use ":Image:". I prefer using ":Image:" for images because I don't like bypassing the license info. Is this a bug or a feature? Either way, would it be possible to have the file links set also for images linked only through [[:Image:...]]? Lupo 08:47, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

My block log

Hey, Starling.

In January 18 I was blocked by administrator Nv8200p. Fortunatelly I asked for administrator Bratsche's help and he managed to prove I had been unfairly blocked -- as you can check on Nv8200p talk page/Revision as of 04:26, 18 January 2006/Blocking of Lesfer

However, I was taking a look at my block log and the block record is still there. Plus: the record makes it look as if I had been blocked and forgiven, which, obviously, wasn't the case.

It's pretty unfair that I get a "dirty record" due to an administrator's mistake. I would like to ask you to, please, erase that record. Regards, Lesfer ^(talk) 19:31, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

How could we investigate claims of abuse of administrator privileges if we covered their tracks for them every time they did something wrong? No, I'm not going to erase the logs. It's not a dirty record, it's evidence of what occurred. -- Tim Starling 01:16, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Even if the administrator abuse makes it look I was kindly forgiven for breaking 3RR and I deserved a second chance ? Ok, how great. So, what do you do with this evidence of an administrator abuse? Lesfer ^(talk) 03:23, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Is Google an ISP now?

I blocked a username for vandalism and got a large number of autoblock-related e-mails. The ones who gave an IP address reported it to be 72.14.194.26 or 72.14.194.32, which according to ARIN belongs to Google. I didn't investigate further... is Google running a proxy, and is it applicable to your XFF Project? -- Curps 06:46, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Nikola Tesla and languages

Tim,

you should know that Croatian and Serbian aren't the same language, although some western linguists think as that. So you can not revert to the part "Serbian and Croatian" as that seems that we're talking about the same lang. It is absurd as much as it would be if someone today recognise "Czecho-Slovakian" language and claim that these two languages are the same one. However, some still frowardly repeat that the Croatian and the Serbian are the same language, or, so- called "Serbo-Croatian" , which is totally false, hence this term is artificial and used for the political purposes in Ex- Yugoslavia ( for the so- called " brotherhood and unity of nations"), but we do know perfectly how this ended!

Claiming that these two languages are the same, can be easily regarded as a insult in Croatia, also sometimes in Serbia.

For instance, people in the Cro. doesn't write with a cyrilic script, and that was never practice. Also in a vocabulary, there are many diferences, as same as in a construction of sentences, accent... There are many differences in a orthography, basic history of these two languages, and so on, so on...

There is a link to Wiki article about Croatian language( if you're interested to learn something new), where you can find much more about history of Croatian language, with many linguistic arguments why is "Serbo-Croatian" language artificial.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatian_language

Greetings

via Pula, Croatia

Are you talking about this?Are you telling me the correct spelling for Croation is now "Clllroatian", and that I shouldn't have reverted the change? -- Tim Starling 17:35, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

No, I'm sure that you got the whole picture well.But, there's another problem.It can't be "Serbian or Croatian", since these are two different languages, although closely related. It would be as same as someone write "Czech or Slovak" (this two languages are also closely related!). that "or" isn't irrelevant, hence it suggest that it is a same language, which is not the case!

Greetings from

Pula

Waiting for Starling

If you create a new account, then you'll start out with a clean record in the eyes of the community. You can also request from a developer to have some block edits rolled back, however that can take considerable time as they have a backlog of tasks to complete. If you feel you are the victim of administrator abuse, you would best be served filing an RFA, although due to the age of the block the admins reviewing your case will most likely perceive it a dead issue at this point. Netkinetic 00:51, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Lesfer, please do not remove other user's comments from another's talk page. It is considered rude and unproductive. The above was simply suggestions to try and assist you. Netkinetic 02:53, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Again: my block log

So, Starling, you said you wouldn't erase the logs "because it's evidence of what occurred". Even if the administrator abuse wrongly makes it look I was kindly forgiven for breaking 3RR and so I deserved a second chance ? And what are you going to do with this evidence of an administrator abuse? Lesfer ^(talk) 03:15, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

User Lesfer's violation

Tim, in response to editor Lesfer (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)'s request above, I kindly offered him some suggestions. However, he has then proceeded to [10] to erase my contribution to this page. He requests that his history be cleared of being blocked, and yet he is just this evening persisting in problematic edits. It would appear his behaviour has not improved since his initial block. Removing another editor's comments from a talk page which isn't his own is a clear violation of standard protocol.Netkinetic 04:07, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Get off my talk page, both of you. -- Tim Starling 04:31, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Just ignore the kid above, Starling. And I'd be glad to get off your talk page. But unfortunately I'm still waiting to know about that evidence of administrator abuse which you have not respond me yet. Lesfer ^(talk) 05:09, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

IP 169.244.143.115 and its ISP

I saw your message on the wikien-l mailing list, and I was wondering if you'd made any progress. Did you talk to MSLN, or reach anyone who could get the ball rolling on XFF headers? Phoenix-forgotten 17:40, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I tried emailing them but didn't get a response. I'll try another email address when I get around to it. -- Tim Starling 00:17, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Maple Leaf Rag

Hey, I see you uploaded Image:Maple leaf rag.ogg and tagged it pd. Since you made it yourself, does that mean you released it into the public domain? If so, can you change the tag to {{PD-self}}? I've used it at music of the United States, which is on FAC so the tagging needs to be clarified. Thanks! Tuf-Kat 06:54, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Tagged {{PD-old-70}}, see the description page for justification. -- Tim Starling 01:03, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Conversion script ran amok

It seems that Conversion script (talk · contribs) started to randomly blank articles and was blocked by two administrators. Could you please check what's going on? thanks. --Ixfd64 03:45, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

MTGS Wiki

How do you go into the wiki and add the tag {{c|NAME}} just like the basic tag [[NAME]] so that it makes a link that opens something in a new window? The only other way is to put html/java right into the page, which the MediaWiki softwar does not allow.Voice-of-All^T|@|ESP 21:09, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Actually, a simpler question is: are there any tags that convert all inside spaces into underscores. Like {{NOSPACE:T E X T}} creating T_E_X_T?Voice-of-All^T|@|ESP 01:20, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

There is no way to do either. -- Tim Starling 01:05, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for the help on the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies article!

Thanks for your prompt help! It is much appreciated! Indiana Fats 01:02, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Re: Builtin conditionals and mathematical expressions enabled

Awseome! Thanks much! —Steve Summit (talk) 22:24, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Username change script

User:JarlaxleArtemis was previsously banned for username mischief across Wikimedia projects, and is now under both probation and a mentor requirement. In light of that, do you think there is any cause for concern with this[11] apparent username-chage script? Thanks for your time. -Will Beback 08:18, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

No, there is no cause for concern. It's not like the script is a secret, it's also available here. -- Tim Starling 12:29, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, -Will Beback 21:54, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I actually found it here, which is linked to from Meta:Renameuser, which is linked to from Special:Version, which is linked to from Special:Specialpages. ⇒ JarlaxleArtemis 22:17, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Netscape 4.75 browser garbling Unicode, can the Lynx workaround be implemented?

User:Johnnyfrank's edits are garbling Unicode. I talked to him and he says he's using Netscape 4.75 on Windows. I suggested he upgrade to a newer browser, but any computer that has original Netscape 4.75 installed is probably fairly old and might not have enough memory or CPU power to run more modern browsers. The MediaWiki software special-cases Lynx browsers to avoid Unicode garbling, can this be done for Netscape 4.75 as well?

Talk page discussion is at User_talk:Johnnyfrank#Garbling_Unicode.2C_please_update_your_browser

-- Curps 06:08, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

This is fixed in svn. -- Tim Starling 04:14, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

OK, great. What can I tell the user about approximately when the fix will be live (he says he's holding off editing for the time being)? Presumably since 1.7alpha is in rapid ongoing development it won't be too long? -- Curps 20:11, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

It's live already

Watchlist limited to 500

Is the watchlist still limited to 500 entries? I put a temporary limit in place yesterday then removed it shortly after, but I may have forgotten to sync the file. I did so after I saw your comment on #mediawiki. By the way, don't assume that the few idiots hanging around in that channel speak for everyone. In any case, try #wikimedia-tech next time. -- Tim Starling 05:19, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Looks OK now, thanks. I went to #mediawiki because that is where someone on #wikipedia told me to go.

You might want to weigh in at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(assistance)#Watchlist_problem and make it clear if this was, indeed, just a mistake. - Jmabel | Talk 05:25, 19 April 2006 (UTC)