User talk:Amalthea

The TW RFPP issue

Hi! Was the TW RFPP issue this? If it's true, then it was a very simple issue. /HeyMid (contributions) 17:30, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

If you know where to look … Amalthea 17:34, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

No problem with RFPP directly after your TW RFPP fix. However, regarding the speedy deletion U1 issue, my attempts without rationale were still aborted. I am using Firefox, and I was forced to clear my cookies and/or restart my browser and/or log out and log in again for your fix to take effect. The main thing is that it works now, so no problem at the moment. Also, feel free to remove the U1 rationale window box, because I agree with you, U1's are non-controversial, except for cases when other users tag other user's user- or user talk pages for U1 deletion. Maybe it could be possible to write a script which checks if it's the real user who requests U1? It would (technically) be possible to do so by checking {{REVISIONUSER}}. If the revisionuser value does not match with the username of the user's user- and/or user talk page, the action should be aborted. /HeyMid (contributions) 19:46, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Hidden (UTC)

Hi Amalthea. I saw the discussion at Template talk:Unsigned#Seamless version. It points to your script User:Amalthea/History hidden UTC.js, which I tried using. What do you actually *do* to get access to the 'hidden (UTC)?' I imagined you could cut and paste from the page history, and feed the arguments into {{unsigned2}}. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I never get the (UTC). I'm wondering why they didn't put a *real* (UTC) into unsigned2 in the first place. Thanks for any advice, EdJohnston (talk) 02:14, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

I just select, copy & paste it from the history page. What browser are you using? I just tried with FF & IE8 without problems, but seem to remember that I had a version that didn't copy any "display: none" text.
Merely adding the " (UTC)" wouldn't be enough since you'd still need to fill in the pipe, but such an alternative could of course be created at {{unsigned2u}} or some such. Two other possibilities:

1. The hidden " (UTC)|" text could be made visible for any browsers that have a problem with it, which is ugly, but would work
2. You could also use xeno's smart {{xsign}}, which takes the history string as is and works some magic on it to split it properly ({{xsign|02:14, 16 September 2010 EdJohnston}} → — Preceding unsigned comment added by EdJohnston (talk • contribs) 02:14, 16 September 2010 (UTC)).

Cheers, Amalthea 11:48, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I have Safari on a Mac. Anyway, that 'xsign' template seems to work great, and I will probably switch to using it instead of 'unsigned2' in the future. The code for 'xsign' appears large (~2K bytes), since I assume everyone will use 'subst:xsign', the size of the template shouldn't be a problem. I noticed the discussion at User talk:Amalthea/Archive 5#Blah substing hates me. Maybe it's time for a new template language! EdJohnston (talk) 21:49, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

All unsigned templates are supposed to be substituted. And yes please, a new template language defined by a proper grammar would be a huge step forward. Another idea that is tossed around from time to time is adding support for a programming language (php, lua, python, javascript, …) in addition to the existing template system. Amalthea 10:14, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

← I'm going to tuck this in here because I gather it would be a similar script - how hard would it be to have any instance of "oocities" emit as "geocities" ? (User talk:Xeno#Bot question) –xeno^talk 12:56, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Greenock125/Andy593

Is there anything interesting in Heymid's fascination with Andy593? User talk:Andy593.—Kww(talk) 17:02, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't think so. He's involving himself in lots of issues, and anything else would quite certainly have come up at the time. Cheers, Amalthea 09:58, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Kww, you may want to consider removing User talk:Andy593 from your own watchlist. I simply reverted those edits, because I believed my message didn't provide anything good, mainly because he was already blocked (and from editing his own talk page). HeyMid (contributions) 13:47, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Oi!

Thanks! Still getting used to using the secure server for everything. Despite my claims to be not that technical, I do have an ongoing plan to create a userscript that dumps an oldid string into the copy/paste buffer or something similar. I don't think I've encountered oldid2 before, so I may just use that instead...

In other news, not seen you around? I thought you'd be more active at the great PC debates? TFOWR 10:06, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Bad timing for the "not seen you around" comment: you've just posted on my talkpage... Sorry, still catching up... TFOWR 10:08, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, I'm short on time, pretty indifferent about the issue, and annoyed by the style of "discussion", so I'm just staying out of it completely. :\ Amalthea 10:20, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough! You mean the votes, in which both sides focus on drama? I loves it! Aye, it's a lot more heat than light. I've tried to restrict myself to stating my view and moving on. TFOWR 10:24, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

To be fair, I don't think an actual discussion would have been much more fruitful. The costs and benefits of the concept are hard to define, and we have two very entrenched crowds – there is no argument you can make to persuade a significant number in those crowds. A straight vote or decision by fiat might ultimately be the only way forward. But I loathe that from the looks of it the premise of the trial is now reversed by just letting PC continue – that's too much of a bait and switch, and it will hurt our decision making process down the road, and the communities willingness to try out any fundamental new feature. Amalthea 11:39, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Have unwatched your page again, by the way, way to busy for me ATM. :) Amalthea 14:40, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Way too busy for me right now ;-) I'm flitting between 2 and 3 days for archiving - not that long ago I'm sure it was at 90 days... TFOWR 14:45, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

That template saves bytes! Making it faster for users to load the page! HeyMid (contributions) 10:33, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

You won't notice that, and in return any template makes page rendering slower. Main advantage of the template I see is that it properly generates secure and non-secure links no matter which server you are on, that the page source looks neater, and that it's not as unwieldy as {{oldid}}. Amalthea 11:39, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Why does it take longer to load if there are templates instead of raw code? HeyMid (contributions) 12:47, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Because they have to be parsed. –xeno^talk 13:06, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

(ec) Once it's rendered it won't be slower, but templates are the number one cause for slow page rendering. E.g., the Barack Obama page can be served in a fraction of a second if it's coming from the cache, but if you ask it to be re-rendered by it slows down to around 50 seconds (depends on which Apache you get). Throw out all templates and you're at about five seconds. MediaWiki doesn't work well with huge numbers of templates. Amalthea 13:09, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

If I try purging the Barack Obama article using the secure server, it fails for me (502 Proxy Error; no proxy), because it takes too long time to load. HeyMid (contributions) 13:23, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Block

FYI. Feel free to change it as necessary. T. Canens (talk) 15:39, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Good block. Amalthea 15:45, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

please make it

please make it for me--125.25.34.128 (talk) 18:31, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

I asked for a policy-based rationale, one that hadn't been discussed in the last AfD, placed on the article's talk page. Without that I can't do anything. Amalthea 20:05, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

List of Cambodian singers

Hi. Just to let you know that User:125.25.34.128 is one of a small number of dynamic IP editors based in Bangkok who have been causing all sorts of trouble for a good while, by continuing to blatantly act in defiance of Wikipedia policies - unsourced additions, adding clear nonsense to articles, blatant vandalism, using Talk pages for chat, making "fun" edits to User talk pages, taking part in page move vandalism (with the help of one registered editor who is now banned), and now attempting to re-AfD an article that has only just survived. Their actions and writing style are almost identical, so I'm really not sure whether the are the 3 or 4 of them that they claim, or how many are the same person. Anyway, my approach to them now is to no longer try to engage with them in discussion, to delete anything they add to my Talk page that is not appropriate there, revert any improper additions they make to articles that I encounter, and ask for page protection for articles when it gets too bad - just thought I'd let you know. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 19:39, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, OK. Thanks, Amalthea 20:05, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

There's a whole load of weirdness happening around there, I was involved earlier and am happy to help out if you need me :) GedUK  20:07, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Then should I move away to another country? I can't help this. As I can remember, I didn't using talk pages for chat, and in April, Paul_012 is trying to say that I'm 2 other Thailand editors. And only TODAY that I did "fun" edits to talk page, but that wasn't fun. I was just adding the timestamp to Boing's comment as the signature must have time and date. And why should List of Cambodian singers stay without deleted. And if it should stay, then we must change to the alphabet style like List of Afghan singers, or maybe spliting male and female like List of Mexican singers, but not sorting by the year and split by both gender and time period. Some singers like So Saveun works both before and after the Khmer Rouge. She moved to France but still singing. And sorting by names are better and used by many lists on Wikipedia--125.25.34.128 (talk) 21:03, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

&wpWatch=0

On the (0) button shown on WP:USURP requests (the move pages magic), do you have any idea why this isn't properly unchecking the "watch source and target pages" box? Are my prefs overriding it? –xeno^talk 14:06, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, yes and no:

• As long as your preference is set to watch pages you move, there's no way to get MediaWiki leave that checkbox unticked. That's stupid, but MediaWiki is at least consistent that way: Those watchlist settings are always that aggressive.
• SpecialMovepage doesn't check for "0" or "1" in wpWatch, it checks for existance. Why I don't know, but it means that even if you change your preferences to not watchlist pages you move, a "wpWatch=0" will tick the ckechbox since the parameter exists. It needs to be removed completely.

No idea whether there are bugzilla issues for any of this. FWIW, you can of course use javascript:

if (wgNamespaceNumber==-1 && wgCanonicalSpecialPageName=="Movepage") addOnloadHook(function() {
  if (getURLParamValue("reason")!="WP:USURP") return;
  var node = document.getElementById("watch");
  if (node && node.checked) node.checked = false;
});

Amalthea 14:45, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be easier just to untick the box, or does that javascript do something special to know that I'm in the middle of a usurp request and don't want those pages watched (meanwhile if I am moving a page for other reasons, I do)? –xeno^talk 14:56, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Now it does (bit hackish). And err, yes, it doesn't do more than untick the box. :) Yes, you could do with a document.getElementById("watch").checked = false in your user script, more or less, but the code above is a bit more robust. Amalthea 15:06, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Works great =) Thanks! Isn't it silly we have to do so much just to get the software to do something intuitive? =] –xeno^talk 15:13, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Template:Diff2

Why is this needed? HeyMid (contributions) 15:06, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

It's noted in the history of the template: WP:NAVPOP doesn't work if the link doesn't have a title. Amalthea 15:31, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

ANI notice

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Timmy Polo regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Eagles 24/7 (C) 20:29, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Template:Multibox

Hi, I'm just wondering what this template is? I'm only seeing two actual uses of it, and it's not at all clear what the advantage is over using {{editnotice}} or {{fmbox}}. PC78 (talk) 22:31, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

The goal was to use the same text both in an editnotice and in a talk page banner (specifically Template:Editnotices/Group/Wikipedia talk:Contact us and Wikipedia talk:Contact us/header), without having to maintain it in two places, while showing them in the customary styles of each context (most notably 80% width on talk page, 100% width in editnotice). There are a couple of ways to do that, like extracting the text into a third template and transcluding from there, or passing a fixed width in the talk page transclusion. I think the cleanest and easiest way is to pass in the box type on the talk page header transclusion, so that all the styles and features of either box are automatically used, and all future template changes are automatically applied. That's what multibox does.
That's also pretty much the only place I can think of where it is useful: In editnotices, if you want to use the same text in another context.
Amalthea 22:55, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

That may be useful for keeping {{BLP}} and {{BLP editintro}} in sync. But could this flexibility not be added to {{mbox}}? PC78 (talk) 23:12, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

That would be nice, but from the top off my head I can't think of a way to figure out whether a template is currently displayed in an editnotice, let alone arbitrary header message. Mbox only switches on namespace, at the moment, and I don't think we want to allow passing in a box template variable there. Amalthea 00:00, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Amalthea. You have new messages at Template talk:Talkback#Edit request.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Also, has TW been fully merged with Friendly yet? I tried disabling Friendly and the opposite way, but the buttons disappeared for the specific tools. HeyMid (contributions) 10:27, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

You'll have to talk to SchuminWeb about the plans there. Amalthea 15:55, 2 October 2010 (UTC)