Hi, some issue may needs your help. My name has been added to the list mentioned above, but the system still say i am not in the access list. Is it the system having problem to recognize the Chinese characters? -- [[User:白布飘扬|白布飘扬]] ([[User talk:白布飘扬|talk]]) 00:15, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
Hi, some issue may needs your help. My name has been added to the list mentioned above, but the system still say i am not in the access list. Is it the system having problem to recognize the Chinese characters? -- [[User:白布飘扬|白布飘扬]] ([[User talk:白布飘扬|talk]]) 00:15, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
:Almost certainly. I'll try to take a look at this later. --[[User:MZMcBride|MZMcBride]] ([[User talk:MZMcBride#top|talk]]) 04:02, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
:Almost certainly. I'll try to take a look at this later. --[[User:MZMcBride|MZMcBride]] ([[User talk:MZMcBride#top|talk]]) 04:02, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
:I think this is fixed now. Please let me know if you continue to have problems. --[[User:MZMcBride|MZMcBride]] ([[User talk:MZMcBride#top|talk]]) 01:47, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
==Pet rabbits==
==Pet rabbits==
Revision as of 01:47, 16 January 2011
Older discussions are available in the page history.
Your assistance is requested
Hi MZM - I want to go back and review all of the articles I put on to pending changes during the trial so that I can determine whether PC remains appropriate for those articles.[1] For better or worse, I had the highest number of configurations[2], so I know I've got my work cut out for me. I'm trying to think of a way that will allow me to do so with the least amount of effort and with the greatest amount of information that would be useful to the community. I'm wondering if it might be possible to create a pre-populated table that would include all the article names, the date entered into the trial, the date taken off trial (if applicable), total days on trial, the number of pending changes reviewed during the trial period, and then a blank space allowing editing, where I could identify what action I have taken (return to semi-protection, leave on PC, remove all protection, or "other"). Any idea how to do that? Risker (talk) 22:39, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
List of Users by Articles created
I know you have a million things going on but I was wondering if it would be possible to create a list of users by articles created, similar to the List of Edits? If possible adding a column to the existing list would, in my opinion be best, if this request is even reasonable or possoible. --Kumioko (talk) 15:15, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Also, shouldn't the opt out list apply to these as well?,
As well as the rule that typically excludes bot edits?
My last question is something of a curiousity one.
Wouldnt it be better to just add a column to the List of Edits list for "Recent changes" and "Articles Created"?
I know this would add time to the generation of the list but then it would only be one list that needed to be updated? thanks again--Kumioko (talk) 10:15, 2 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The lists couldn't easily be merged. It's perfectly possible for someone to have the most recent edits in a week but not have a high enough edit count to hit the list for all-time edits. The data would become completely meaningless. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:30, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I see your point on the recent edits list and truthfully I thinks its pointless. Frankly I have months with over 7000 and some where I dont edit at all due to work, vacation etc. --Kumioko (talk) 23:54, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia:Database reports/Transclusions of deleted templates
The transclusion counts appear to be a bit off, is this a bug? I was going to have SporkBot help orphan some of these, but then noticed that there actually weren't as many transclusions as are listed. The top one on the list is correct, but many after that seem to be a bit off. Thanks! Plastikspork (talk) 00:09, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, some of transclusion counts are wrong. I believe this is mentioned on the Database reports talk page. It's an underlying issue in the database itself where the templatelinks table is referencing non-existent page IDs. If you look at this paste, you can see that {{spoiler}} is allegedly being used on 76 pages (tl_from is a key to page_id). Most of these tl_from's reference non-existent page_id's. Oddly, it's listed on the database report as having 760 transclusions. So who the hell knows what's up with that.
A join against the page table might fix this. I'm not sure why I didn't do this initially. Probably some combination of laziness and stupidity. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:23, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds like you want a wiki. MediaWiki is a popular piece of wiki software, but you don't necessarily need to install it on your own. You can use a service like Wikia, which lets you set up your own MediaWiki installation pretty easily. There are similar services to Wikia. There are also other types of wiki software that you can play with. Try List of wiki software. If you do want to install MediaWiki on your own, there's plenty of help available (cf. mw:MediaWiki on IRC). --MZMcBride (talk) 01:31, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Dear MZMcBride, I want to create the page for Farassoo but it has been protected by you due to previous advertising contents on that. Would you please kindly unprotect the page? I work for Farassoo and I want to create a neat wiki page for our company. Thanks
Bahadorjn (talk) 08:17, 7 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"How come"? What are they teaching in school these days? ;-) If you visit User:MZMcBride/watcher, it explains that the limit is in place due to concerns the Toolserver admins had. I think you have to complain to them, but I doubt that will accomplish much. Killiondude (talk) 06:05, 9 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
How is your userspace links report generated? I assume it's done from toolserver, but how do you query against the page text? Can I see your script/query? tedder (talk) 18:03, 9 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Speaking of this report, any idea why every article which has {{Mantidae-stub}} has been listed for the last few reports? It did have a user link but it was removed before the first time they were all listed--Jac16888Talk23:30, 9 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
For whatever reason, you have to null edit the pages in order to make the links update. I have a script called "touch.py" that can do null edits to a list of pages. I'll run it on the list and then re-run the database report. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:10, 10 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for reminding me about permalinks. I'll add the appropriate one to the discussion at the Village Pump. For the record, though, I think it is ridiculous to characterize my edit as compromising the quality of the article, especially since that is essentially what your edit has done. – Zntrip04:35, 12 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It appears to be recreating recreating BLP articles deleted at AfD. --Kudpung (talk) 07:56, 15 October 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, that was wrong - but it appears to automatically creating talk pages for articles that were originally deleted.--Kudpung (talk) 08:04, 15 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Any way you can edit the text on all the portal pages and subpage - search for "Children and Young Adult Literature" or "Children's and young adult literature", and replace all instances of those 2, with "Children's literature" ? -- Cirt (talk) 09:16, 17 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, that helped me understand that the bots cross check and update "within pages". But do any of them access external sources? For instance, I had complained to myself before that pages such as CAC Mid 100 are almost always incorrect. In fact I just checked and it was last updated in May 2010, so it is probably incorrect now. One day these pages just need to read the public databases. Is that done anywhere now? I thought Lars Svenonius's death might have been picked up from the web automatically, but it does not look like it now. Anyway, one day, one day... History2007 (talk) 16:55, 18 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There are a lot of bots running around the site. They do various things. I don't know of any off-hand that update articles from public databases regularly, but I also wouldn't be surprised if one or two did. I favor a reporting system because it allows for human review. So, for example, you could query public databases, compare to our articles, and then output lists for humans to check over. If you have ideas for database reports (or dump reports), feel free to make a section on the respective talk page. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:59, 18 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Certainly a semi-automated version will be the start, e.g. check all living people over 60 against obituaries in the NY Times, etc. and suggest updates. Or check the composition of CAC/DAX/NASDAQ, etc. I have plenty of ideas... time is another issue however. But I am writing these things up, gradually. I am still looking for the 1st bot that updates from public sources. I may just write it anyway, just to get things started. I do have Wikipage-generation software I wrote to format image galleries, so I can just modify that one day. If you do see an external bot, please do let me know. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 17:38, 18 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hi there MZMcBride. I saw LawBot made a large number of moves a few days ago, following a request at BOTR. I don't see that the bot has been approved at BRfA to make these moves (the only BRfA I can find for this bot is Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/LawBot). So I was just wondering if you actually had approval for these moves? - Kingpin13 (talk) 13:20, 20 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I guess you don't know who the bot was named after. :-)
I thought its approval was broader than it is (could've sworn I slipped something in there about general non-controversial tasks). Oh well. Is there a problem with the moves? --MZMcBride (talk) 16:16, 20 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I meant to mention above, the only problem I had was you maybe went a little bit too fast here (about 50 moves a minute). But regardless you should still get bot approval for these, just a matter of procedure really (although it is necessary and I find nearly always beneficial, as more often then not something is fixed/improved at BRfA). Of course BRfA is especially backlogged at the moment, so every thing is going a bit slow :/. Uhh.. no, but User:Law? Just a wild guess :D. Heh, I almost named the section "Unlawful use of LawBot?" ;). - Kingpin13 (talk) 21:02, 20 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I was wondering if you knew of any tools or scripts that can help analyze an editor's contributions besides Soxred93's counter? Specifically, I was hoping to be able to single out large byte changes or something along that line. I need to be able to separate WikiGnome edits from actual content changes done by a certain editor. bahamut0013wordsdeeds01:17, 23 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know of any tools that do that. It depends whether you want to focus on the past 30 days of edits or further back. The past 30 days is trivial because the database stores the current page length and the previous page length for each edit (making a quick substitution of the two values painless). If you want to go back further than 30 days, you have to take each edit, get its current (stored) page length, and then get the length of the previous revision (assuming that previous revision isn't something bizarre like a page protection entry). If you provide the user's name, I can likely write and run a query. It's also possible to write a rudimentary tool, I suppose. It kind of depends how fast it is to analyze (which would probably mean limiting a potential tool to users under a certain edit count). --MZMcBride (talk) 01:54, 23 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It's kind of annoying to do, as I recall. Someone asked me earlier about doing this. I don't really remember why it's annoying, but I remember that it is. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:59, 24 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, the report updates daily. If you're adding rationales, those non-free file entries should be removed in the following day's report update. Would a more specific list of only albums/films work for you? --MZMcBride (talk) 05:21, 25 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Abuse Filter question
Hi. I want to set up an abuse filter which matches a set of badwords (using contains_any()) in the text. I want it to prevent saving the page if a badword exists in the new wikitext of the new version of THAT SECTION of page the user is editing. So for example if page is like this:
== Section 1 ==
Text text badword.
== Section 2 ==
Text text.
== Section 3 ==
Text text badword.
And the user is replacing "text" with "test" in section 2, nothing should happen. However, if he is editing section 3 and NOT removing the badword from that section, he should be warned and saving should be disallowed.
I really don't deal with the AbuseFilter much. The way it's implemented (particularly its bizarre syntax) frustrate and annoy me. Prodego might be able to help you. If not, there's an AbuseFilter requests page somewhere or there's always the technical village pump if you get desperate. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:57, 24 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I might find one or two other articles. Those are, I think, old. If I find them, is it possible to upload Pdf files? Or are the only articles suitable, those that already are on the web? Cecilia Anderson (talk) 20:02, 25 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This image does not have a direct link to its source. I saw that you deleted the talk page for the file, so I wanted to ask you about this first. Do you know the source for this image? Hamsterlopithecus (talk) 14:54, 25 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Huh, I read the title and totally thought it was an RFC about me!
Thanks for the heads up. :-) I commented in one of the sections (regarding a "none of the above" option). I'm still not sure which way I lean regarding open/closed ballots. I trust a lot of the people on the closed ballot side, but it feels a bit ... wrong to me still. I suppose I'll simply abstain from voting. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:55, 27 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
[Chuckle]
I expect it'll evolve a bit over the years as the technology develops. The difficulty over changes though is getting enough interest sufficiently far ahead to implement in time for the election :) Rogertalk05:58, 27 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
List favor
Can you come up with a list of baseball, basketball, and american football unsourced BLPs so I and people from the relavent wikiprojects could take care of them. Thanks Secretaccount01:49, 28 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think we've supplied Secret with the lists. But I have a question for you. Is there a tool/database list that you can use to analyse the article creation date (not the tagging date) of all articles in Category:All unreferenced BLPs? Basically we want to know how many of the "tagged since XXXXXX 2010" were created after the magic March 18 date that the BLPPROD came in.The-Pope (talk) 16:09, 28 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Great, any chance of making this one of your regular reports? We suspect there could be several hundred out there that are eligible for sticky prods but not yet prodded. ϢereSpielChequers17:15, 28 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I've been pretty busy lately, but if you can throw some specifics (like template names, exact date you're looking for, category names, etc.) on WT:DBR, I should be able to get to it at some point. Being specific (and clear) is always helpful to me. For example, "I want all non-redirects in namespace 0 [instead of "articles or "pages"] in Category:Baz that were created before October 1, 2010 that use Template:Spam and Template:Eggs." If you want a regular report, try to come up with a decent report title and provide an update frequency. Providing these kinds of details lets me handle these requests in a much quicker manner because I don't have to ask follow-up questions or debate these details myself. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:23, 28 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hi there MZMcBride. Just letting you know I've removed your account from the AWB list of bots (you added yourself here). You should not run bots on your main account, I've added you to the users list, so you will still have access to AWB's non-bot functions. If you wish to run an AWB-bot, please go through a BRfA to obtain approval. Cheers, - Kingpin13 (talk) 00:56, 1 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Good morning, young MZMcBride. Your Bot tells me I should give references to the biography of Gabriel Fragnière. I wonder what you mean by that. My text seems convincing to me and verifiable, if someone did contest one or other detail.
My text is based on my own research and on information I have received from Fragnière himself. Would you find it useful that I add as reference 'information given by Fragnière - research done bij A. Van den Abeele?' I suppose not.
Much of the 'references' on the English version of wikipedia are newspapers articles to be found on the internet, which I consider as a not very reliable reference and one which will sooner or later disappear from the internet. It seems rather disparaging for wikipedia that it cannot be considered as a prime source and has to refer to what others have written already. If others didn't, well than Wikipedia should be considered as a prime source. It is then up to the critical reader to decide if the information is plausible and trustworthy or not.
I am a keen reader of footnotes and references in historical books. But when it comes to an encyclopedia, this seems to me superfluous and often rather pedant. Like in this biography e. g., which I consider as speaking for itself. Nevertheless to please the adept of references I added a couple of these.
I'm just a bit lost. According to this, you were abusively using alternate accounts. For most users, that would result in a ban. You resigned your tools and I thought you had left altogether (effectively implementing a self-ban). I was surprised to see you editing with yet another account. I'm sure there's an interesting back-story here. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:15, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I wasn't abusively using multiple accounts. I was using one or two of them not strictly in accordance with letter of policy. After I handed in my bit I scrambled my password and hopped about a bit but I didn't try to hide who I was, I just wasn't as above board as should be expected by policy. Hence Arbcom passed a motion restricting me to a single account and forcing me to undergo an RfA if I wanted the bit back. I am fine with this. I think they were mostly pissed off with me turning up at the proposed decision talkpage under different names as they found it confusing. I was pissed off because they went into whack a mole mode and also started clamping hundreds of IP addresses rather than just saying, "hey Polargeo chill". Ultimately there is only one winner in that situation and that is the boy with the biggest stick. Polargeo 2 (talk) 10:40, 3 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Watcher
Hi, as a project to improve our coverage of problem edits to BLPs I've started lumping BLPs arbitrarily into tranches of 5000 articles each, providing a reasonably sized subset that a single Wikipedian has a chance of monitoring using "related changes". See User:Tony Sidaway/Living people/tranches.
Off2riorob pointed me at your "watcher" tool which takes a bumch of pages and returns the number of page watchers for each of them. Obviously it would make sense to use the information to prune the list by removing articles that seem to be adequately covered. It looks like it will be suitable for my purposes. I have one or two questions though.
Does it only produce HTML output, or can it also respond, say, with XML?
Does it accept POST requests?
Is there a limit to the number of titles it can handle in one request?
I'm contemplating running this tool against the entire half-million articles about living people on English Wikipedia, though obviously not in a single afternoon!
If there are already reasonably up-to-date static lists with the same data, obviously I would prefer to use them rather than hammer the tool server. --TS18:03, 4 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
To answer your questions:
Only HTML output.
Only GET requests.
The limit is based on max URL length; I don't believe I hardcoded any value in the tool itself.
That said, it's an insane way to do mass-querying. You have a Toolserver account. Just produce a dump of the aggregate data (page_title \t watchers), output it to a file, and read the file. Querying over HTTP is going to be slow as shit. A query run on the watchlist table should take about 15 minutes. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:08, 4 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'll do it from the toolserver side. The MediaWiki people sounded doubtful that the watchlist data was generally available on tool server (yes, #mediawiki was the wrong place to ask and the response left a big question as to how your tool manages to do it!) Thanks. --TS18:14, 4 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It wasn't always a public table. I petitioned for it to be made public in an anonymized form and then wrote the watcher tool once it was. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:27, 4 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You publish that godawful blurb from The Signpost that craps up so many talk pages? I don't hold any personal animus on this, but why can't you just tell people which page they need to watchlist, and update the page to point to the latest edition? This isn't rocket science, and if you did that you'd be reducing the sheer amount of unbelievable crap we humans have to wade through just to say something to another editor. --TS22:50, 5 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You don't see it delivered to this talk page, do you? ;-)
I run EdwardsBot, the bot currently tasked with delivering the Signpost to various talk pages. EdwardsBot also handles m:Global message delivery.
I agree with you in principle. People really ought to be using RSS and a proper blog to write and read the Signpost. The current delivery system makes no sense. That said, there is a demand for it, and if it's going to be done, it may as well be done well. The current bot has an on-wiki access list and control system, making it a lot better than the AWB monsters used previously. And the EdwardsBot system is obviously adaptable to other types of deliveries (the WikiCup uses it, for example). --MZMcBride (talk) 23:02, 5 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah. Just so you know, I even object to long cluttery signatures. My principle is that content is king and there should be one location and lots of pointers. I can understand why that might be hard to establish on a wiki where the principle is that "wiki is not paper." --TS23:12, 5 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm the person which makes EdwardsBot post around 1100 of these "godawful blurbs" each week, although I didn't invent this system - I merely inherited it when I took over as the editor of the Signpost some months ago. The messages are in fact just pointers to a central location (templates transcluding the contents page), but it's true they still take up some space. Just this week I removed a little bit of useless code from the distributed message (which had been sitting there since 2009), saving the servers around 65kB of wikitext each week ;)
There is actually a page which you can watchlist to see when a new issue is published (Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Issue - judging from pageview stats, around 100 people use this to view the contents of the new issue each week). And we do have a blog too, where you can subscribe via RSS, and you can also get notified of new issues via our Identi.ca and Twitter feeds. But it seems that despite all these shiny superior technologies, many users prefer to get notified via the same public messaging system they are already used to for other Wikipedia communication, namely their user talk page.
I just want to put it out there that I love the Signpost, even if I don't really love its delivery methods. I think Michael did an awesome job, I think Sage did an awesome job, and I think HaeB is doing an awesome job (among many, many others who contribute individual pieces, weekly columns, help with copy-editing, and more). Producing the Signpost is a sizable amount of work each week that a lot of people appreciate, and I hope my comments here don't suggest otherwise. I was merely speaking from a technical perspective regarding the bot. (A bot that I'm happy to run, by the way. I view it as my small contribution to a shining part of Wikipedia.) --MZMcBride (talk) 04:05, 6 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Don't worry, I hadn't conceived your comments in any other way. And thanks for the compliments - having seen in other contexts that you don't shy away from public criticism when you consider it necessary, I suppose they mean something ;)
About the talk page clutter: Users who consider this a problem might appreciate an alternative subscription method where the bot replaces an existing message each week, instead of posting a new one (this could look exactly like Template:Signpost-subscription, except that instead of being updated via transclusion, the date would be changed explicitly by the bot for each new issue, so as to generate "you have new messages"). Just thinking aloud here, not actually suggesting this should be implemented at this point. I don't know how difficult it would be technically to search and parse such a template on subscribers' talk pages. And such updates might get lost among other messages. And it seems that at least some subscribers like that the current system enables them to treat the messages similar to open browser tabs, clearing them out from their talk page after they read the corresponding issues.
There isn't much info on him in English (sorry). While I've managed to get a degree of good info off the Egyptian State Information Service, I must confess that one of my main sources of info on him are his near-ubiquitous campaign posters for the upcoming parliamentary elections (which all list his rank, name, and district, and often his ministerial position as well). I'll try to get a photograph up if I can get my hands on a camera by 28 November, if I can't find another source. Lockesdonkey (talk) 17:31, 8 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hi MZMcBride, this is user:Agradman, an acquaintance from WP:Law (my memory is failing me -- I can't find your footprints at WP:Law), editing as an IP due to a long-term (school-related) Wikibreak.
I enjoyed reading your comments in the Foundation-I mailing list regarding Wikimedia Foundation office switching to Google Apps. And I am surprised to see that the Signpost article has gotten zero comments. Regardless of whether the Foundation's decision is "right" or "wrong", I expected it to stir up controversy. Merits aside, there is something symbolic in the idea that the standard-bearer of a "free" internet is moving away from the flagship "free" products.
In a poetic moment, it made me think of two poignant paragraphs by Peter Drucker, where the gentle Brenner Pass in Italy is used to illustrate how a small change can forebode big changes to come. And so I'd like to ask your opinion, since I am not a close follower of free software issues: Should we be troubled by this change? Do you think it is foreboding of ... troubles in the "free" world?
Sorry its taken me so long to get back to you about this.
Our paths have crossed previously at WP:SCOTUS and at WP:5P, I think (among other places).
I raised the questions on foundation-l because I thought it was curious that Wikimedia's position on the issue had seemingly (quietly) changed. I'm not sure if you're aware, but a bit of background as far as I understand it: Wikimedia has prided itself on using free and open source solutions for a nearly all of its user-facing code. MediaWiki, the Apache web servers, MySQL, etc. are all free and open source software. There are very limited exceptions to this policy and it has led to the rejection of plenty of technologies due to the rule. I'm not particularly sure whether this rule is codified by the Board of Trustees or any other Wikimedia group, but it's certainly longstanding practice.
From what I understand, Wikimedia's IT department has been taking a rather hardline approach, in general. They're attempting to assert their power in a variety of ways, e.g., restricting who can make accounts on wikimediafoundation.org, pushing for the adoption of Linux laptops instead of Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows, etc. One of the big pushes (at least in one direction) has been to eliminate the non-open source solutions currently in place. This made the decision to switch to Google Apps all the more curious.
You also have to look at the decision in context. Quite recently, Google donated $2 million to the Wikimedia Foundation ("strings free"). The reality is that nothing in life is free. Whether or not it made the most sense from an IT standpoint to switch to Google Apps, the PR standpoint is bad enough that I personally wouldn't have made the decision to switch. Beyond that, Google has tried to compete directly with Wikimedia/Wikipedia (remember Knol?), which adds an extra dynamic that's certainly not very good. I don't think, given Google's track record in this area, that it's particularly far-fetched to think Google might use its access to Wikimedia's internal communications to its business advantage.
Regarding non-free vs. free software, personally, I use non-free software regularly and generally enjoy it. Anyone who has used Adobe Photoshop and tried to compare it to GIMP knows that sometimes proprietary software is proprietary (and popular) for a reason. I'm also a big fan of the Microsoft Office suite. That said, I'm not running an organization that prides itself on the virtue of using FOSS solutions. From Wikimedia's perspective, switching to Google Apps seems like a fairly clear and large betrayal of its principles.
Do I think it bodes poorly for the future? Not really. I do think that people ought to be worried about giving all of their e-mail/documents/contacts/calendars (read: private and valuable information) to Google, Facebook, or any other large company that passes itself off as "not evil" or as your "friend" and pushes its "free" services forward. People need to remember that nothing in life is free. These are businesses intent on making money—lots of money. They will stay in power and in the green by selling private user information to advertisers, and consumers don't really have any recourse given that it's a "free" service and they're signing away their rights in the fine print. I don't think this specific decision (Wikimedia choosing to use Google Apps) has very much impact or significance for the free/open culture movement. I just think it's a poor decision. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:42, 21 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Can you please revise the program so that updates will leave the shortcuts intact? (I am adding this talk page to my watchlist, and I will watch here for a reply or replies.)
—Wavelength (talk) 16:26, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, the configuration for the intros to these reports is still kind of nasty. I suppose I could add the shortcuts at some point. So much to do and so little time (or maybe so little will). :-( --MZMcBride (talk) 20:22, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your reply. I respect your limitations. I have added them back for now.
It took me a minute to figure out what "MMOB" was. Then your message made so much more sense. The template description page looks a little goofy because it's trying to do math without having any real input. Once the template has input (e.g., here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Essays/Assessment/Links), it works fine. HTH and HAND. TTYL! --MZMcBride (talk) 20:20, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
MMOB = Mind My Own Business. And yes -- Hope this helps. Have a nice day. -- it did. OK, I may be in the process of generating more problems : ). I think BernsteinBot is used by WikiProject Essays banner to rate the impact of essays. That is brilliant, by the way. I've edited WikiProject Essays banner, but I am unsure whether it will mess up the bot. Would you please reply at WikiProject Essays banner. Thanks! -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 15:18, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ekram Ahmed Lelin
Hello !! I am trying to write about the profile of Ekram Ahmed Lelin ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekram_Ahmed_Lelin ). He is one of the popular bengali writer of Bangladesh. Publisher already published his seven books those you easily get any books shop of Bangladesh. "BOI-MELA" is the yearly public fair in Bangladesh for books where he got reward from them. Bangladesh is not well enough to proof everything in website. I am his very fan thats why writing his profile in wikipedia. If you kindly help me to develop his nice profile in wikipedia, I'll be very happy for it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mrkshahin (talk • contribs) 14:20, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, I went through the process of creating a TUSC account, but when I tried to login it said that I am not on the access list. Can you help, please? Hpvpp (talk) 22:24, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hi there, I just wanted to let you know that I have reverted your bot which added a second WP:BIO tag to Talk:Nico Lazaridis. Please see the history. I don't know why the bot did this, maybe it has something to do with the latest change to the {{WikiProject Biography}} template (maybe with the direct link not being recognised). Jared Preston (talk) 15:44, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hi MZMcBride. This is a generic message so please bear with me if you are already aware of the situation. In early September changes were made to an infobox template that affected the display of hundreds of school crests/logos in the UK schools infobox. This is now being taken care of and you may find the discussions on this page interesting: Template talk:Infobox UK school, do however leave a message here or here if you come across any that are still not displaying correctly. If you are still actively interested in schools and would like to help out on school pages and school templates, you may wish to consider joining the WP:WPSCHOOLS project where you can also stay abreast of developments by adding its talk page to your watchlist. Happy editing!--Kudpung (talk) 03:16, 22 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
WikiProject Banners cleanup
I have been working with Magioladitis and Rich Farmbrough on compiling a list of Wikiproject banners and their redirects so we can cleanup the multitudes of forms, shapes and configurations they appear in. Since you also seem to deal a fair bit with talk page edits I thought you might be interested in the most recent update here. A summery of some of the changes:
More projects added
Some projects disabled that didn't have any redirects
disabled some that dont appear to be valid.
Added some other talk related templates.
Verified that some were correct
Added comments about what I did and or the status of the banner
Im still working on it and I will have another update in a couple days but please let me know if you have any questions, comments or suggestions. I also sent this to Xeno but if there is anyone else you think might find this interesting please let me know. --Kumioko (talk) 18:24, 21 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for making that more readable. I got a couple complaints about it generating maintenance categories so I through nowiki brackets and walked away. I figured Id make it work later. I didn't know the source thing you did so Ill throw that one in the tool box. Still learning. --Kumioko (talk) 04:07, 22 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Need Help.
I made a mistake.
a. I want to set now "Ekram Ahmed Lenin" instead of "Ekram Ahmed Lelin" in his Biograpy profile. Even I want to see the change in catagory lists.
Hello, MZMcBride. Can you construct a database report for all redirects in the file namespace which have no incoming links? And then have separate tables for those that match Titleblacklist and those that don't? Thanks in advance, :| TelCoNaSpVe :|01:54, 24 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Can you please retrieve this page of "Ekram Ahmed Lenin" from deletion ? I am really getting less hope and lost my faith to Wikipedia because peoples here work as administrator who delete the articles without justify it. The writer ""Ekram Ahmed Lenin"" has written seven books in Bangladesh and please see the cover page of one book http://covers.openlibrary.org/b/id/6670577-L.jpg
I am trying to include his all books in Wikipedia. Wikipedia team may ask me for resources for verification or give me scope to bring those proof they required. I should not write or contribute anything from today either it is not resolved. Please solve it.Mrkshahin (talk) 18:48, 26 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia:Identification
Wikipedia:Identification is currently not really linked from anywhere (as of the date of writing). If it is to be read by those who need to read it, linking from some places would help! I would suggest from some of the places mentioned on that page, and/or where identification is needed. I think you got them all. Technically, WMF staff identify (probably anyone who applies for any work, voluntary or otherwise, with the WMF has to give their real name, but you might want to check that), though that doesn't relate to the meta board as such. Carcharoth (talk) 12:41, 28 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You're lucky I linked to it from anywhere at all. Sometimes I'll create a project-space page and not tell anyone. ;-)
I added a few links to a few other project-space pages. I imagine staff "identify" in order to get paid. Other in-person volunteers would always give their real name, I imagine. Remote volunteers are the real toss-up; probably no clear answer there. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:56, 28 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
A requested favor
I'm considering re-blocking te range of 149.254.0.0/16, which had been blocked until early October (October 9th, 12:51 UTC). In order to decide if this is necessary (and f a smaller range is better), I would like a list of all IPs from that range which have done any anonymous edits since the expiry of the block, regardless of whether or not they were deleted (I see that toolserver users have some access to this data; to get it manually is too much work to be worth it.) עוד מישהוOd Mishehu08:01, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
What I want is edits (regardless of deletion status, which I understand isn't a problem on the tool server) since October 9 12:51, not blocks. And please don't list the actual pages (when deleted), as some are highly disruptive. And you are correct about the IP addresses I want here. עוד מישהוOd Mishehu09:19, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, some issue may needs your help. My name has been added to the list mentioned above, but the system still say i am not in the access list. Is it the system having problem to recognize the Chinese characters? -- 白布飘扬 (talk) 00:15, 1 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Howdy. I made a change to Long pages' preamble to bring it in line with Talk pages by size & its MfD, customized for Long pages obviously. It's composed of: For foo see bar_page; $this_is, $purpose, $reporttype_plusSGMLcomment, $author; a Toc magic word; & see also/cats. I'm sharing this scintillating detail as I think it can still be overwritten by your pet, and might need adding to the source code in the Git repo? –Whitehorse111:58, 1 December 2010 (UTC)[reply] P.S. The Configuration subpage specifies "Talk pages whose page length is >175,000 bytes" rather than 140,000. Might need updating. Looks like a couple've limit changes in July & August changed it.
Hi. I was going through various pages in the Wikipedia:Database reports, and I noticed that some of the counts were off for things like transclusions of deleted templates. I posted this to WP:VPT, and Dispenser said (see here) that if you were to add JOIN page ON page_namespace=tl_namespace AND page_title=page_title to the configuration file then the counts might match up. I don't know if you had noticed this problem. I must be really bored to be browsing these pages, but it is my lunch break. Cheers. 134.253.26.9 (talk) 18:57, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Talk page template redirect cleanup
I am done verifying the talk page templates and I converted it from individual find and replaces to a C module. There are pluses and minues to doing this but I think its an improvement. For me it seems to work about twice the previous speed but it may be different for you. I added the code that I think you would be interested in here. A couple notes:
It seems to be a bit faster
It allows things to be processed in a certain order. This may not apply to your needs but it provides a better method for me to change the WikiProject redirects first and then perform other tasks in succession such as moving templates (like Talk header, DYK, Image needed, etc) out of the Wikiprojectbannershell), moving the BLP=yes from the bottom of the WPBS to the top, move templates above or below WPBS as appropriate, etc.
I included projects that have no redirects, had been deleted or merged into other projects. They are commented out so you can delete that section if you want. I did this in case they come back or become an issue later.
I included a section with redirect fixes for some other types of templates that appear on talk pages as well.
I am still trying to figure out how to make the diacratics fix in regex so the dozen that have them will still have to be done manually as well as the WikiProject Wierd Al Yankovic but that one is hardly worth the words to mention.
One downside; this method doesn't automatically detect upper and lower case which means I have to program it in. Not a hard thing but it will take some time. This means that the coding doesn't always recognize lower case for all the projects. I will continue to refine the logic and put out an update in the next couple days that should fix most of the common ones as well as reduce some of the code.
It looks like the 3 See also links link to 1014 distinct pages (most are on more than 1) so I could tackle that in a day or so pretty easy. The problem is I am not familiar enough to tell whether there are occasions when the links would be appropriate and I hesitate in waxing them all. But, what I could do is create a list in one of my sandboxes for you or someone in your project to glance at and see if there are some it should stay on. Then we can take it off the others. --Kumioko (talk) 03:52, 19 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Those pages are such a maintenance headache. I've long wanted to standardize them using more templates. I think I worked on a footer links template at some point... {{SCOTUSLinks}}? It looks like it's already used on a bunch of places. That FLPTrainor guy sure is a pain in the ass. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:04, 19 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Now that I look, I see other links. I'm thinking maybe I'll go through some of these by hand over the next few weeks and revisit removing the see alsos and standardizing with templates so that both can be done at once. I like the template idea.--Chaser (talk) 05:19, 19 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As an operator of a newsletter-delivery bot, you may be interested in my post here. On a side note, I am also looking for a bot that would deliver newsletters for WikiProject Sociology; could your bot help us? PS. If you know any other newsletter-bot operators, could you inform them of this discussion? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 14:23, 19 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. For a massive schools clean up campaign for 2011, we need a list of creators of many school articles. Is this something you can generate for us if I give you the search criteria? Or explain to me how I can do it? Thanks.--Kudpung (talk) 05:30, 25 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry if I misphrased that request. I'm basically a content and backlog editor and know nothing about information technology except for creating Wikipedia pages and simple housekeeping chores. I don't have a special account for toolserver, what I (we) needed was a one-off list of creators of school articles that are in any of the cats for schools, since 01 Jan 2008 to now. The list will never be needed again and is intended to kick start a massive clean up campaign for all the school articles, the vast majority of which appear to be in very poor condition. I asked you personally because you were highly recommended by another admin. A destination page for the result exists at Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools/List of school article creators. I have no idea how time consuming such an operation is - if it is a lengthy process, do confirm that you would not have time to do it for us, and I'll keep looking for someone. Cheers, --Kudpung (talk) 14:36, 26 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think you mis-phrased your initial request. If you can provide a somewhat concrete list of categories, it should be trivial to pull the page creators and page creation timestamps of the categories' members. It shouldn't be a lengthy process, assuming that the initial input is reasonable. (The only hitch you might have is if the list creation involves subcategories and the like. Those can be painful.) I would say that sometimes it makes more sense to look at active contributors to a page rather than page creators (anyone can create a one-off page, but people who have been active in the last six months with more than five edits to a particular article, e.g. are a more narrow group), but that's outside my scope. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:48, 26 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Recently Larabot tagged Talk:I Love You (Megumi Nakajima album) with the WPBio banner. While the project considers some very strange things to be people, albums are not among them. Could you be a little more careful in the future?
Also, while you are applying the WPBio banner could you check the article and see if there is a sort value in either {{DEFAULTSORT}}, {{lifetime}} or {{BD}} and insert it as the |listas= in the banner? Thank you. JimCubb (talk) 02:07, 28 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding the banner's listas parameter, that isn't a feature I currently want to deal with. Really that's something that MediaWiki should be doing on its own. If you'd like, I can provide the source code and you can hack at it, but I've got way too many other commitments currently (or rather I'm already desperately trying to avoid a number of other commitments ;-). Sorry. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:18, 28 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I am not asking you or your bot to construct sort values merely copy them. If you are using the Category:Living people from the article to add |living=yes to the banner, just copy whatever sort value is on the article and place it after |listas=. I don't see what role MediaWiki would have in the matter. JimCubb (talk) 18:16, 28 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I realize what you're asking. My point is that requiring human editors (or bot-assisted human editors) to input the sortkey value more than once indicates a broken design. If the article already contains the information, MediaWiki should have a means of populating the template's "listas" parameter without intervention, at least as a default. --MZMcBride (talk) 10:03, 29 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It seems to me that you are asking a lot of free software. If MediaWiki could populate |listas= without intervention it would also be able to apply the WPBiog banner (determine that the article was about a person) and populate the |living= correctly or at least err on the side of caution. That is to say, MediaWiki should be able to do what your bot is doing. As it is not able to do so, you have a bot running.
I do not want a bot or AWB. I have enough to do both here and IRL to have the time to deal with bot or AWB errors. I envy those who do have the time. JimCubb (talk) 17:20, 29 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
WikiXDC: Wikipedia 10th Birthday!
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
Description: There will be a behind-the-scenes tour of the National Archives and you will learn more about what NARA does. We will also have a mini-film screening featuring FedFlix videos along with a special message from Jimmy Wales. In the afternoon, there will be lightning talks by Wikimedians (signup to speak), wiki-trivia, and cupcakes to celebrate!
Details & RSVP: Details about the event are on our Washington, DC tenwiki page.
Please RSVP soon as possible, as there likely will be a cap on number of attendees that NARA can accommodate.
Thanks. tedder (talk) 19:52, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
Template:Userspace BLP has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. PC78 (talk) 19:25, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
