User talk:MZMcBride

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Older discussions are available in the page history.

Abbreviations in SCOTUS case article titles

While well-intended, I am not sure the crusade against the use of abbreviations in Supreme Court-case article titles you started this afternoon is fully supported by policy, or indeed wise.

For one thing, you're inconsistent. You seem to feel that "Co." should be spelled out, yet "Inc." should not be (What's the difference?). Ampersands should be spelled out. Except when they're not. I could almost start a pool on what you'll do, or not do, with this one

For another, there is no blanket prohibition on using abbreviations in article titles. WP:TITLEFORMAT says "Abbreviations and acronyms are generally avoided unless the subject is almost exclusively known by its abbreviation". I would ask that you consider the latter clause in light of what these articles are about. If they were articles about the entities in question, yes, you would be right not to abbreviate them.

But they are not. They are articles about cases they have litigated, that take the form of written works with a title format that is chosen by the Court and either used as is by the popular press and law reviews when discussing and reporting it, or modified (Pickering and Brown sued different Boards of Education, after all, but we usually don't include the qualifying information. In this regard I consider them beyond the reach of our naming conventions (Would you change the title of this article?)

Per that, I think we should stick with either the Court's title or the common name if it is apparent that the legal community prefers one variant to a significant degree. If that means preserving some quaint and archaic abbreviations like "Mfg.", then so be it. Until we come up with some clearer policy in this department. Daniel Case (talk) 04:38, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

"Standardizing" article ledes

While I see the consensus at Wt:SCOTUS was overwhelmingly in favor of keeping case cites in ledes, we didn't discuss your latest idea, to wit whether we should remove the direct xlink to the case at Justia or wherever in favor of a link to United States Reports. Don't you think we should have some consensus there before we do this?

I can understand the revulsion at having an inline xlink in the lede. Perhaps we could resolve this by creating some system similar to that we use with ISBNs, where clicking the link takes you to a special page that then gives you a wide choice of external sources to look for the book on. Daniel Case (talk) 04:17, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi Daniel.

I know I still owe you a reply above, but to be honest, I've simply had difficulty summoning the energy to respond to you. Both this post and your previous post come off as really shitty. Your use of "your latest trick" in your edit summary and the use of scare quotes in your subsection header are just two examples of a writing style that I find pretty off-putting. I'm one of a dozen or so editors here who have made significant contributions to U.S. Supreme Court case articles, so I'd appreciate it if you could show at least a modicum of respect when posting here.

To the point at hand, I'm attempting to bring standardization to article leads. As outlined here, the goal is to help readers and editors alike, as well as providing a more systematic and consistent approach so that bots and scripts can be more easily employed to further improve our articles. In this case, having a consistent citation style will allow for much easier extraction of the citations of the article in question, which will allow for better future reports about each of our SCOTUS case articles.

Regarding consensus, I posted here over two weeks ago asking for feedback and help in establishing a style guide for U.S. Supreme Court case articles. There wasn't much feedback, though postdlf and I agreed that for now, it makes sense to focus only on the introductory portion of the sentence rather than rewriting some of the language that follows the case citation, until there's more agreement about how to structure these articles. (There is tangential agreement that we should use "is a decision" and "was a case," however.)

Switching from [[Case citation|XXX U.S. YYY]] (ZZZZ) to {{scite|XXX|YYY|ZZZZ}} does not prevent future changes to the output format. In fact, it does exactly the opposite: once every article lead is using the {{scite}} template, it will be a matter of a single edit to change all of the leads to include an external link (or not) or to link to case citation (or not) or make any number of other formatting changes that we may want to implement with this part of the article. It may ultimately make sense to redirect {{scite}} to {{ussc}} (an older and more established template), but having a distinct template name within the wikitext in this context (i.e., in the article lead alone) makes a lot of sense. Using a distinct name allows for, for example, retaining the external link in other case citations that call {{ussc}}, while not including an external link in the citations that call {{scite}}. From discussion with other editors, it seems that there is pretty strong consensus against including external links inline in article prose, however if {{scite}} is ultimately redirected to {{ussc}} (and consequently article leads contain an external link such as justia.com or openjurist.org), I personally don't really care. I'm more concerned with consistency than I am with whether these particular strings of text include an external link. This view is enhanced by the fact that external sites currently have significantly better coverage of the cases than Wikisource.

I think switching to a system similar to how we treat ISBN links would be a fantastic idea. Again, though, that will be a trivial change to make once the case citations are using a template. And such a feature request is, generally speaking, very low-priority and may not be implemented for another few years. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:22, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Number of watchers analysis broken?

Hi MZMcBride, (Legoktm routes me to you) trying this gives Internal Server Error (500). Is this tool switched off? Thanks, SchreyP ^(messages) 21:48, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi. The Toolserver has been having all sorts of troubles lately. In this case, its "s7" host recently went down, causing my script to not be able to pull the watcher access list from Meta-Wiki (further details here, kind of).

I've temporarily switched the script to use a different host (s3), so watcher should be working again now. Let me know if you encounter any further issues. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:00, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi MZMcBride, thanks it is working again :) Yeah, I have read about the toolserver problems. I hope they get resolution soon. SchreyP ^(messages) 07:35, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

In Firefox and IE it just never seems to log me in, only indicates a page has less than 30 watchers. but now I'm getting the same 500 error in FF and IE. « Ryūkotsusei » 20:47, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Recreating the Novels by Brandon Mull category page

When I went to create this category page, I saw that someone else had previously created it, but that you then proceeded to delete it. For what reason you deleted it I know not, but please do not do this again as I will put several articles in it.

Forty Seven Nine (talk) 06:26, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) The reason should be recorded in the deletion log. Here, "csd c1" is shorthand for "WP:CSD#C1: Empty category". The category is no longer empty, so C1 is no longer applicable; and so long as there continue to be pages in your recreated category, it will be safe from speedy deletion, although that does not prevent an entry being filed at categories for discussion. I think that's unlikely though. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:09, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Spot-on. Thank you! --MZMcBride (talk) 16:34, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

DC Meetup #33

December 10 is Ada Lovelace's birthday! Not only was she the world's first computer programmer, but also the world's first female open source developer! Come celebrate with Wikimedia District of Columbia at Busboys & Poets for an informal get together!

The Washington, DC event will be held on Monday, December 10, 2012 at Busboys & Poets on 5th St NW & K St NW near Mt Vernon Square. The area is easily accessible by the Red Line Chinatown stop and the Yellow Line and Green Line Mt Vernon Square stop, as well as by WMATA buses.

Kirill ^[talk] 14:13, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Heh, a bit short notice. --MZMcBride (talk) 15:08, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Reliability of Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub type sizes/data

Hi, concerning the reliability of Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub type sizes/data, please comment at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting#Stub type sizes reporting issues. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:55, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Wikimedia DC Holiday Party and Wiki Loves Monuments Exhibition

Please join Wikimedia DC and four other local media nonprofits—the National Press Club's Young Members Committee, 100Reporters, IRE and the Fund for Investigative Journalism—in winding down another year with a night of well-mannered frivolity.

The festivities will take place on Friday evening from 6:30 PM to 9:00 PM in the Zenger Room on the 13th Floor of the National Press Club, located on 529 14th Street NW, near Metro Center. There will be meat and vegetarian appetizers as well as a cash bar with specially reduced drink prices all night long. In addition, we will be exhibiting the finalists of the Wiki Loves Monuments photo contest at the event.

Hope to see you there! Kirill ^[talk] 04:37, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Looking for work

Hi. My name is Angel Olavarria Jr. I am willing to volunteer and perhaps obtain a full-time job. I used to work at the Bank of America Bank Headquarters in Kingston N.Y. I can type approximately 98 wpm with a 95% accuracy.

Sincerely,

Mr. Angel Olavarria Jr. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.15.199.57 (talk) 16:50, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi. This isn't the best place to post looking for a full-time job. If you're interested in (strictly) volunteer work, perhaps you want to check out Database reports? --MZMcBride (talk) 18:05, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Stalker tool

On your tool that compares the pages each of two editors have edited, is there any way you could also add the total number of unique pages each has edited? 'Cuz the numbers become misleading if at least one of the editors has edited 10,000 or more pages. Thanks, pbp 18:12, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Hmm. I'm looking at <https://toolserver.org/~mzmcbride/stalker/?db=enwiki_p&user1=MZMcBride&user2=Purplebackpack89>. I guess you'd like a "Unique pages edited" column added to the top info section? I wonder if a link to an edit count tool would make more sense. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:50, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Template:+1 listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Template:+1. Since you had some involvement with the Template:+1 redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). Tito Dutta (talk) 23:34, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Suggestion

Isn't this something a bot could do? A. V. Alexander‎; 04:23 . . (-1)‎ . . ‎MZMcBride (talk | contribs)‎ (bugzilla:42616) Apteva (talk) 04:26, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Sure. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 02:14, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

bugzilla:42616

Why are you making a bunch of edits to redirects because of bugzilla:42616? Unless I'm missing something here, it seems to me that your changes are insignificant, and all your doing is cluttering up watchlists, Recent changes and the edit history. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 01:48, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi. Sometimes the edits are significant. I posted about a few anomalies at bugzilla:42616. I assume you saw? I agree that it's kind of tedious and annoying, though.

It's mostly what I would call page normalization. There's a theory (or a principle, I guess) that a page ought to be able to have its content posted back to it and not make a difference to the page. This is called a null edit. So I'm making hundreds of edits per hour and finding that the theory fails for certain pages. Is it really bothering you? I could slow down or stop, if so. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:14, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

What's the point? Unless I'm missing something those extra two lines are harmless and insignificant. Occasionally when I edit a redirect, especially when making a compacted (for a redirect) edit such as adding or removing a redirect template or category I may add or remove a blank line or two. I's not that I try to (unless it's to put a blank line in between the first line and the line with the category) it's just insignificant "collateral damage" from my edit. I suppose I could be careful not to add or remove lines, but there's no point. "#REDIRECT [[example]]" is the same thing as "#REDIRECT [[example]]" plus a blank line of two. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk • contribs) 04:09, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

They're mostly harmless and insignificant. MediaWiki traditionally strips trailing newlines from pages when they're saved. For example, if you write into a page, "Hello.\n\n\n\n\n" where each "\n" is a newline, these newlines will all be stripped and the only content to be saved in the database will be "Hello.". (Interestingly, MediaWiki does not currently strip preceding newlines.) In fact, it should be (and as far as I'm aware, is) impossible for you to save any MediaWiki page with trailing newlines. (If I'm mistaken about this, please let me know.) The redirects I'm adjusting are largely the result of broken page move logic, the most recent case of which is described in bug 42616 involving ContentHandler.

In the process of investigating bug 42616, I've discovered that there are other anomalies in stored page text, such as pages that were saved to the database with unsubstituted "subst:" code (i.e., they were saved with the contents {{subst:foo}}). A subsequent save of pages such as these actually expands the wikitext! Kind of crazy. There are also a number of cases that indicate possible data integrity issues in the revision table, notably the revision.rev_sha1 and revision.rev_len fields. Some of this likely needs additional research and investigation. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:45, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

How about marking them as minor edits? That would help. Apteva (talk) 05:08, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Fair enough. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:21, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Yer a wizard, 'arry. Killiondude (talk) 05:59, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Mystery edit

What did this edit do, apart from clutter my watchlist? It was an automatically-created redirect after a page move. I'm puzzled, and will watchlist here for an answer. PamD 07:53, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

I can see it's discussed above, but that doesn't really shed much light. PamD 07:54, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

The tl;dr is that there are extra newlines in the redirect after a page move, however that is sometime affecting the integrity of the page text (Unsubst'ed templates, vandalism not showing up, etc.) and MZMcBride is trying to figure out how much might have gone wrong by fixing them. Legoktm (talk) 08:03, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict, on my own talk page, no less) I was just about to point you to the discussion above (and ask if you'd read the linked bug). There's a pretty thorough explanation in the section above, but sometimes you reach a point where you forget that not everybody else knows what you know or thinks like you think. :-) That particular redirect was caused by a bug in ContentHandler. ContentHandler was manually inserting a newline after redirect code when it should not have been. Because of the way it was implemented, ContentHandler edits apparently bypass some of MediaWiki's typical restrictions and sanity checks (in this case, stripping trailing newlines). My edit removed this trailing line. The edit itself simply posted back (echoed) the content (the wikitext) of the current revision at that page title. MediaWiki's usual sanity and normalization checks kicked in (because the edit was going through a normal avenue and not through ContentHandler) and the trailing newline was stripped, as it would be for any regular editor. The diff is difficult to read due to a separate reported bug: bugzilla:42669. If you can let me know which part is confusing, I'd be happy to clarify further. --MZMcBride (talk) 08:06, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. The difficulty in reading the diff is that no change is visible, and for some reason I didn't read the linked bug. I think it was because the edit summary had no "black" text, only brackets around the blue link to the bug, which made it look as if it was unlikely to shed any light. Yes, that's not logical, but it's relatively early in the morning. Perhaps if the edit summary said "(Cleanup see bugzilla:42616) " it would make it clearer that the bug link was going to be worth reading. Sorry to be a bit dense about this, but I suspect many other editors might be equally baffled (if they bothered to wonder what was going on at all!) PamD 08:19, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for December 20

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Cosmothiesm, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page National Alliance (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

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Fun bug. And the page history of Cosmotheism is pretty interesting. Thanks for the heads-up. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:05, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Redirect fix

Hey, I saw that little edit you made to the Peter Missing redirect, and then read some of the bugzilla report, but I'm still confused about it. How is that extra newline corrupting redirects? Cheers. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 16:49, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

The extra newlines break page normalization. The principle that a page can have its content echoed back at it and not add an extra revision should be absolute. The occasional mass-null editing is healthy, I believe, as it forces the underlying *links tables to regenerate. It also has the added benefit of exposing other bugs in our pages, such as the one at Cosmothiesm. Most of the tangential bugs I've discovered in the past few days seem to be related to incomplete saves to the database.

In the specific case of Pete Missing, it was caused by a bug in ContentHandler. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:02, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

bugzilla:42616 (2)

Hi. A lot of page Moves I did recently you had to address with this correction. If there is something I could do to help or prevent, please let me know. I understand it is bug-like, so not my concern really. But just in case. -DePiep (talk) 01:25, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi. Nope, nothing to do to prevent this. It was affecting all page moves here for a few months (October to December, I think). I actually noticed it in the course of doing a few article renames myself. :-) It should no longer be happening now and all of the old redirects should soon be fixed (within the next day). Thank you for checking, though! --MZMcBride (talk) 01:29, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

All OK then. Interesting thing though. Have a nice edit. -DePiep (talk) 01:33, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

I notice your Bugzilla:42616 edit and a bunch of others on my watchlist, each seeming to remove 1 character, and being not clear. I came here to ask if the edits are unnecessary minor edits, and/or if you could clarify the purpose in a more informative edit summary. I don't follow what you say here and in preceding section, exactly. But maybe still the edit summary could be better. Is there actually something to link to in the edit summary, e.g. some "bug number 42616 report" that this addresses? It's not a big deal, though. --doncram 15:59, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Well, at this point, having a consistent edit summary has actually allowed me to query the database much more easily for unusual edits of mine (select ... where rc_comment = '[[bugzilla:42616]]' ...). My hope was that a pointer to the Bugzilla bug would be the clearest indication of the purpose of the edits, but I guess this unfortunately hasn't turned out to be the case. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:04, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Why bother fixing talk page redirects at all? Shouldn't they be speedily deleted? bd2412 T 17:22, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

I totally agree. The redirects only give the impression there is something written in the talk page and it is not. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:46, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't disagree with either of you and if you'd like to speedily delete the orphaned talk page redirects, I'll certainly have no objection. (I've done several thousand such deletions in my time here.) However, in the past, I believe others have objected to similar deletions, though I can't exactly remember why.

My ultimate goal is to try to ensure that every page on this wiki has been null edited to ensure that any fragments of old code or past incomplete saves or whatever other wonkiness is eliminated from the database (i.e., normalization of all pages). I'm focusing on redirects now, but I hope to focus on non-redirects shortly. The incidence of edits saved to the database by iterating through non-redirects is significantly lower than the incidence of edits saved to the database by iterating through redirects, from what I've researched and observed. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:04, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

If such talk page redirects warranted speedily deletion they wouldn't be automatically created during a page move in the first place. They serve a useful purpose, redirecting the former location of a talk page to the current location. There are links to talk pages that deleting such redirects would break. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 20:14, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Talk page redirects should not be speedy-deleted if they are the result of a page move, and there are discussions on the ultimate talk page. There may be links to these discussions from other talk pages that were set up prior to the move, and such links will be broken if the redir is speedied. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:14, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

The topic is: bugzilla:42616. (I know, because I started it). Deleting talkpages is not. I repeat: pls MZMcBride stop these irelevant edits. -DePiep (talk) 01:15, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Redrose64: Most talk pages don't contain discussion, they just house (automated) WikiProject tags. And it's usually simple enough to check whether a discussion is (internally) linked to by using Special:WhatLinksHere. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:06, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Special:WhatLinksHere only works on pages, it can't tell you whether a particular discussion is linked or not. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:21, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm not sure I'm following. Do you mean an external link to a discussion? Do you have an example of what you're describing?

I'm curious whether you feel an orphaned talk page redirect where the target has to no discussion (only, for example, WikiProject tags) also needs to be preserved. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:06, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

I am here with second thoughts. First, MZMcBride, deletions or orpahanges is not the issue. Second, removing a \n from \n\n (all [[[whitespace]]) is not relevant. I'd say it is disturbing. Indeed, I request you stop this. -DePiep (talk) 21:41, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

eh, my edit goine wrong? [1] -DePiep (talk) 21:43, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Your signature was not expanded due to an unclosed <ref> tag added in this edit.

These edits have stopped for now. It's still unclear to me what your objection is. What do you find disturbing? --MZMcBride (talk) 03:06, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Returning to the talk page question (which is not irrelevant because these edits would be unnecessary if those pages were deleted), it is very easy to generate a list of talk page redirects with no additional page history and no incoming links. Those redirects serve no purpose, and should be deleted en masse. If people are really worried about ongoing conversations, we can add a stipulation to wait a few months to delete the redirect following the end of the last conversation before the page move. bd2412 T 20:49, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

If you can demonstrate why those talk page redirects meet WP:R#DELETE, you are free to take them to WP:RFD. Otherwise, see WP:R#KEEP and WP:CHEAP. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:38, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

That entire policy page quite plainly applies to redirects in article space, as explained in the first line. In fact, even the dropdown menu for deletion reasons for talk pages includes: "G6: Talk page is a redirect created by move of associated article". bd2412 T 02:17, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

I did a number of orphaned talk page redirect deletions in the past (as have others), as I said earlier. I can't quite remember what the objection to them was, though. You can search the archives if you're curious. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:06, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

• I'm not sure all of these edits are bad. Take a look at this for example. The inconsistencies MZMcBride posted here should be reason for concern and further exploration. Legoktm (talk) 07:02, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
  • Right. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:06, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!

GoingBatty (talk) is wishing you a Merry Christmas! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Happy New Year! 01:45, 23 December 2012‎ (UTC)

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

Thanks! A merry Christmas and a happy new year to you as well. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 03:08, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Former administrators/Long-term inactive

Hello. MBisanz said you could help me out on this page I started for the impending policy coming into place. I needed the fields filled out for when the former administrator left for 3 calendar years. I've filled out two ways it would be completed (current inactivity and former inactivity):

Former administrator	Date	Reason	Lengthy inactivity	Notes
-- April (former: t · c · b · p · d · r · meta · local)	July 3, 2011	Inactivity	since 2006-05-06
LC (former: t · c · b · p · d · r · meta · local)	July 3, 2011	Inactivity	2002-10-31—2011-08-22	Bureaucrat declined

Think you can help with the task? Regards, — Moe Epsilon 04:45, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, probably not. I'm rather busy and it doesn't sound like a particularly interesting task. It should be fairly simple to iterate through the list by hand (or perhaps some other kind soul watching this talk page will care to help you). Good luck! --MZMcBride (talk) 03:14, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Holiday cheer

		Holiday Cheer
		Michael Q. Schmidt talkback is wishing you Season's Greetings! This message celebrates the holiday season, promotes WikiLove, and hopefully makes your day a little better. Spread the seasonal good cheer by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be a newbie, a good friend, someone you have had disagreements with in the past, or just some random person. Share the good feelings. - MQS 22:17, 23 December 2012‎ (UTC)

Thanks! I hope you have a wonderful and relaxing holiday season as well. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 03:11, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

ArticleFeedbackv5 edits

Hi. I've gone ahead and begun removing Category:Article Feedback 5 from our articles. I thought I'd post here preëmptively to explain the rationale behind these edits.

This category was added to several thousand articles a little over a year ago as part of an experiment. The implementation of this feature was really poor for a number of reasons.

1. The category clutters articles with irrelevant noise, requiring thousands of edits to populate or de-populate it and mixing article (content) categories with administrative categories. There is no good reason for it to be this way, as far as I can see. It appears this implementation was chosen as a means of sampling all articles, however given the existence of page.page_id and page.page_random (and other identifiers that could be utilized), I can't see how the category approach is necessary or sane.
2. The original implementation came with no anti-abuse features. I believe this was somewhat subsequently remedied, though it appears that it's still possible for users to submit bad imput (and they regularly do).
3. There continues to be unclear consensus for this feature. It's isn't clear that any user has ever requested a "comments" section for an article like this. I searched this site for relevant discussion regarding a consensus to develop and implement this tool, but was unable to find anything substantive. (If anyone has links to such a discussion, please share!)
4. As implemented, the tool places an unfair burden on overworked volunteers to moderate feedback, again without a clear demonstration of consensus from the community that it's interested in moderating (and responding to!) the feedback.
5. It has a high noise/low signal ratio. The current implementation of the tool makes it easy for users to make a bad contribution and difficult to make a good contribution.
6. The tool inexplicably makes no effort to push editors or readers toward established venues for discussion such as talk pages.
7. It's broadly unclear what value or virtue the tool has. Every article needs improvement. Often both text and media improvement. Do we need to solicit feedback from the masses to know this? Of course not. A better tool for identifying and reporting mistakes in our articles is desperately needed. Unfortunately, this tool makes no progress in this (or any other) reasonable goal, from what I can tell.

There's also something to be said for using a bot in this manner. Often bots can be used to present a fait accompli to the community. That is, hand-reverting 22,000 edits is no simple task. Fortunately, I'm capable of undoing this mess.

After a year of experimentation and testing (which was, frankly, much too long), it's time to reflect on this feature. It needs greater discussion and—no pun intended—feedback from the community. In particular, there needs to be a discussion about the tool's design, its placement within articles, its features, and who will support and maintain the tool going forward. Editors have no shortage of backlogs currently. It isn't fair to editors (or to those leaving feedback, for that matter) to create further backlogs.

Personally, I've advocated a more TED-like approach to article tagging. Rather than a free-form text imput area, I would like to see a demonstration feature that allows readers and editors to tag articles as "interesting" or "funny" or "informative" or similar. The tool could then compile these responses into lists of the most (or least) interesting, funny, informative articles. That would likely serve a much more useful purpose than the current (almost entirely useless) feedback that we're receiving via this tool.

I'd be happy to participate in an RFC on this, if others are interested, though my availability will (likely) slightly decrease in the coming months. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:05, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Good idea! Thanks for the thoughtful explanation (especially since I had opted out in my preferences so forgot all about this), and a +1 to your tagging idea. Happy Holidays, Jane (talk) 10:18, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

I looked in here to ask what your recent changes to certain articles were all about, and now I know. I have seen some of the feedback on articles I worked on, most of which was (as you say) noise, with very little signal. But there is the germ of a good idea in a feedback facility: readers who are not editors, and wouldn't think of adding to talk pages, are more likely to add feedback if it is clear and easy. I haven't thought this through, and I take all the points you make, above; but if you do take it to RfC (or anywhere else) I'd be glad to chip in. (By the bye, I've just looked to see how many articles you've had to edit to remove the feedback category and I felt weak simply looking at the length of the list. Applause for the effort you've put in!) Regards, and season's greetings. Tim Riley (talk) 10:52, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you both for the kind words. :-) If an RFC ultimately comes to fruition, I'll be sure to let both of you know. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:28, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

However, you've also removed this category from some articles where we were getting useful suggestions from readers. I'm not sure that unilaterally removing articles is the right step either. Are you working with the feedback at all? Following the discussions at WP:Article feedback at all? Or just deciding that because you don't like it, it shouldn't be there? MeegsC (talk) 13:44, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi MeegsC. Which articles were receiving useful suggestions from readers? Do you have examples? I've done a bit of work with the extension and I've responded to a bit of feedback, but I've mostly found the tool to be completely useless. If you have good examples where the tool has worked well, I think they would be very interesting to share in an RFC. Particularly if there are, for example, subsets of articles where the tool works particularly well (or not).

As I noted above, I tried to research whether there was a community discussion or consensus prior to this tool being thrust upon thousands of articles, but I wasn't able to find anything. Do you happen to know of any such discussion? --MZMcBride (talk) 02:28, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

I found out about the feedback tool because it ended up on a page I had watch-listed: Golden-crowned Sparrow. There were a lot of comments (it had been used as an "example article") — many of the "This is a test" variety (as it was one of the articles the developers were using for their various browser tests), but also many useful suggestions. Others I can think of (off the top of my head) on my watch list which have generated useful comments include Canada Goose and Saint Paul Island, Alaska. Don't get me wrong: I don't think this version of the article feedback tool is anywhere near perfect; there are some serious flaws, and further work is definitely needed. But it's proved far more useful to me (as an editor) than the pointless star rating that is found on most of the articles, and far more helpful than a TED rating! (Saying something is funny or interesting or boring or whatever doesn't help me as an editor to improve it.) I do think the developers need to provide us with a faster way to delete the crap that gets posted. But I think we're more likely to get useful comments from casual readers that don't want to tackle learning how to edit to leave a comment on the talk page. That's just my two cents... MeegsC (talk) 02:48, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

The best rationale behind it is here. I originally came to your Talk page to complain: as although I agree that AFT5 is flawed in several respects (and development and replies from them seem to have stalled months ago) it was better than AFT4. I'd rather get some useful feedback and risk some noise, rather than no helpful feedback at all. AFT5 also has a filter to deter abuse, which AFT4 lacks entirely. But now I'm rather indifferent about whether AFT5 should be taken away, since I understand your arguments. In any case, well done on the amount of edits you're doing by hand, though you might have wanted to gain community consensus first, and then used AWB or something like that. • Jesse V.^(talk) 17:46, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

"AFTv5: not quite as bad as AFTv4." Not quite a ringing endorsement. ;-)

I'd also like to see better feedback tools. I've brainstormed about better tools at places such as Wikipedia:Kvetch. With articles, it'd be particularly helpful if readers could highlight a specific sentence or word and say "this part, right here, is wrong," I think. Unfortunately, the current implementation of this tool (in its fifth iteration...) seems to do nothing more than collect libel, spam, and patent nonsense. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:28, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

I agree that this could have (and should have) been done using a bot, but doing it by "hand" did have the benefit of pumping up your edit count with thousands of edits by just clicking every few seconds! There are few other opportunities to get so many edits per minute and this is like an early Christmas present. I know that you were doing this unilaterally, without discussion among the community, but is there any reason that these edits could not have been tagged as minor so that they wouldn't clog up my watchlist with brainless edits while still artificially inflating your edit count? Alansohn (talk) 16:12, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't know MZM's minor/non-minor reason, but by not marking them minor, no one can accuse him of attempting to conceal his activities. MBisanz ^talk 16:26, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Right. Mostly this (expanded on below). --MZMcBride (talk) 02:28, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi Alansohn. Regarding edit count, I'm just trying to catch up to you. ;-)

I operate a number of bots and could have easily used one for this purpose (flagging the edits as both "bot" and "minor"), but I chose to use my main account as I didn't want to be accused of impropriety. I made a decision to operate at an abnormally high editing rate in order to (hopefully) reduce the amount of watchlist and RecentChanges disruption. Apologies if I was unsuccessful.

In response to your comment about acting unilaterally and without discussion among the community, do you have a link to the discussion prior to this category being added to 20,000-plus articles in December 2011? I still haven't been able to locate such a discussion and I'd really appreciate any help finding it. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:28, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Well, sure. There was an AN announcement, a village pump announcement, and individual talkpage notices to everyone who had signed up for the newsletters - all of which invited people to get in touch if they had issues. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 02:38, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

You seem to have only underscored that this was a unilateral action, albeit with a few announcements. Okay, I guess that proves my point. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:42, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I was very disappointed to not see him even try to discuss it on the talkpage. We've had a large amount of feedback from users, we've done a lot of work to solicit it (the fact that you even have someone here to complain at is a positive step ;p) and we're undertaking research right now to get a more accurate picture of what the feedback is like. Max, I agree that a year is too long, and if you want to write a database sharding system for us and invent a time machine along the way I'm more than happy to correct for that ;p. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 02:26, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Discuss what on what talk page? You've lost me.

The tool has certainly received a large amount of feedback from readers. I'm not sure how much research it requires to see that the vast majority of it is useless. A simple scroll through the comments makes this pretty clear.

I haven't seen any community discussion about the virtue of adding a comments section to every article. Do you have a link such a discussion?

Database sharding, while interesting, is not the issue here. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:39, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

I would also note that this is an utter waste of the buffer you have on repetitive strain injury; we switched over to a lottery system months ago. At most you'll take 6 percent of those articles that have it off the list, something rendered completely pointless if/when it's switched on everywhere. If you feel we haven't spoken to people enough about the system, well, that we'll have to disagree on. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 02:33, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

You seem to be almost boasting about littering 20,000-plus articles with a category and then not cleaning up after your team. Are you being serious right now?

Regarding speaking to people, has there been a discussion anywhere on this site about whether implementing this feature is a good idea? If so, do you have a link? --MZMcBride (talk) 02:39, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi, I have several things to say, after reading through this boiling talk.

1. I didn't get your point: you say you don't like how somebody have put 20k categories somewhere without talking with community so you go and without talking with community you start taking them out again. Manually. @_@ ??
2. AFT5 is currently on around 10 % of 4,129,006 articles which means removing it from some 20k articles is not going to stop it at all.
3. Yes, several thousands of articles have been marked by AFT team during testing but also some other editors added those categories to articles from whose they want to get some feedback. If you want to blame somebody about placing some category somewhere, please make sure you have the right target.
4. There have been dozens of IRC sessions and long discussions around AFT page in the last months - why haven't you showed your objections there?

So now, please, stop removing more AFT categories. It can be done bot-wise and is not going to stop AFT5 just now. It also makes you seem having really strong editcountitidis, as other editors have already proposed further up. Go to talk page of AFT5 and present there your point of view.

Hope to see you at the next AFT IRC office hours. Sincerely --19:23, 26 December 2012 (UTC), Utar (talk)

P.S. to all here and around: Merry Christmas and stay calm.

Hi. You should have just stopped at "I didn't get your point." The rambling paragraphs following just re-enforced that you're posting here without any understanding of the issues involved. If you don't have anything valuable to add to the conversation, please simply go away. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:18, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm comparatively new to Wikipedia and had the AFT v5 on an article I completely rewrote recently and found it quite helpful. On the one hand the comments posted till the rewrite have shown the article had issues (and what issues), the comments since the rewrite show the article is much better now and are still helpful to get the details right. I didn't feel like the AFT did any bad to the article at all.
I was actually confused when I saw the category was removed since it wasn't discussed anywhere and I felt sad when I saw on this talk page that it actually seems like the decision of a single person after all. Maybe you should think about this decision again MZMcBride? Furthermore it seems you're taking the discussion here quite personal by mistake. -- Patrick87 (talk) 19:24, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm not really taking it personally, don't worry. :-) I think we need to have better systems in place to:

• experiment,
• evaluate those experiments, and
• to decide as a community whether we're interested in pursuing those experiments further.

In this case, there was an experiment (though it apparently never ended...) and some evaluation at Meta-Wiki, but the final step (deciding whether we want a comments section on every article) seems to be missing.

It may make sense to only put a feedback box on certain articles (only articles with a lot of activity and views, for example). It may make sense to have the feedback box be opt-in per-article. It may make sense to not use the tool altogether (the implementation is pretty poor). But nobody seems interested in that conversation. Instead, we're hearing repeatedly (from the editor engagement team) that AFTv5 will be deployed to 100% of articles in short order and the community will apparently be ready and willing to moderate and respond to article feedback. I don't believe this is acceptable.

On which article did you find AFTv5 helpful? It would be good to have examples of articles where it works well. From most of what I've seen, it either doesn't work (no feedback at all) or it works poorly (the feedback is nonsense and other noise). --MZMcBride (talk) 21:35, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

		The Surreal Barnstar
		I missed all the excitement while on vacation but thank you for jumpstarting this long-overdue discussion about AFT. Jason Quinn (talk) 19:31, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Welcome back. I hope you had a relaxing and enjoyable vacation.

Thank you for the barnstar. :-) It was my pleasure to start the discussion, though I'm hoping to now take a step back for a bit and let the process naturally evolve. The discussion seems like a good start and I'm hopeful that—following the discussion—we can move forward in a responsible and sane manner. Fingers crossed. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:58, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Season's tidings!

To you and yours, Have a Merry ______ (fill in the blank) and Happy New Year! FWiW Bzuk (talk) 20:23, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Happy holidays to you as well. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 02:44, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

ThanksLaw

Thanks for pointing out that link mistake, I went through all 90 Supreme Court case articles I created back in 2008 and found six more with a copied link where I didn't change one of the case numbers to reflect the next case. All fixed now, thanks to your note! I was using the basic outline of my previously created articles as a template for each new one, and missed changing one of the case numbers in those seven....always meant to go back and double check, but...man, time flies and there seem to be many distractions out there! Happy New Year to you and yours! Dreadstar ☥ 06:36, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Awesome. :-) Thanks for the quick (and thorough!) response. --MZMcBride (talk) 07:38, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, MZMcBride. You have new messages at Scottywong's talk page.
Message added 17:36, 2 January 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

‑Scottywong| spout _ 17:36, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Warden's drafts

So what prompted this was the recent Indian castes blowout which ended with a topic ban on an editor who had gotten in over his head in one of Wikipedia's intractable ethnic wars and the article he'd taken on being deleted - and then subsequently userfied to Colonel Warden's userspace. Have a look at his history concerning userfied articles: in all the time he's been collecting them, exactly four have ever gone back to articlespace (only one page he's worked on has ever been deleted from his userspace, so the redirects constitute the rest). Given his general record, it is more than a little generous to assume that any new page collected is ever going to see resurrection in articlespace, or indeed any work done to it at all. Now he's asking for another caste article to be userfied. Keeping a stub on a failed TV pilot around forever may not cause anyone very much harm, but do we really want editors to be working their Pokeballs on articles considered too contentious, badly-researched and generally toxic to remain in mainspace when there's a) zero evidence that said editor possesses any unique talent to address the problems in that domain and b) plenty of evidence to suggest it'll probably sit and rot there indefinitely?

As for "leeway with userspace": the free rein we give editors on userspace is not what it once was, and there's strong consensus for that. Hidden pages are a thing of the past. Novel-length articles on The Author As A Gangster Rapper or fictional episodes of The Amazing Race are a thing of the past. And, by and large, so is the inclusionist hoarding pioneered by the likes of Le Grand Roi, Ikip and ChildofMidnight (I cleaned the latter two up last year, and neither was very controversial at all IIRC) designed explicitly to circumvent AfD for no gain to the project. Userspace is supposed to supplement the building of an encyclopedia (and accompanying community), not replace it with walled gardens where one can make up one's own rules. And of course that ignores the whole "long service = do what you want" poison which has only been, like, the main locus of all wikidrama for the last year.

(Apologies for length: 1080p monitors are presumably designed to drown the world in tl;dr screeds.)

Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 23:14, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Why do you assume that only Warden can work on a userspace draft? Andy Dingley (talk) 00:01, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

• And why are you talking behind my back? It's bad enough that we now have nine separate pages for each of the MfD discussions but now this too! Next stop ANI? What's the sense in creating so many discussion pages in addition to the article draft pages? If you're concerned about clutter then this is not a sensible way to tidy up. It would have been much simpler to give me a single reminder that these pages were gathering dust and I'd have done something about it without all this drama and extraneous discussion. Work smarter, not harder please. Warden (talk) 19:26, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

To avoid adding even more fuel to an already-burning wreck on the MfD. In retrospect the MfD should have been a mass-nom, but it's too late now. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 02:27, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

breaking the ice

I,M NOT 2 COMFORTABLE WRITING RANDOM WOMEN,NEVERTHLESS,I VALUE THIER POINT OF VIEW, U MADE SENSE, ON 24/7 365 LIFE STYLE NOTA 9 2 5 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.28.243.112 (talk) 16:25, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Go on. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:59, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

I lol'd. Killiondude (talk) 18:29, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

This sounds like me.....on something. Theo10011 (talk) 01:28, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

SUL and usurption

That thread on the bureaucrats' noticeboard is rather long, so I came here to ask a question that I tend to have when these things come up. I should probably really ask Ironholds or someone else, but I would be interested in your thoughts (and those of TenOfAllTrades as well, I may drop him a note). The case with my username (well, it is not really 'mine' as we will see) is that when SUL first came in, I started the unification process, but there is someone who has the name on Commons and fr-wikipedia. So things got stuck at that point. I did try and request (or explore the option of) a usurption at Commons (my username over there is 'Carcharoth (Commons)'), but that never happened. Probably rightly as it turns out, as the user over there made an edit after years of absence. Not checked if they are also editing on fr-wikipedia again. I thought about following this up when I noticed at the time, but decided I couldn't be bothered as in practice things are fine as they are. But the comments made about how at some point eventually things will be tidied up (SUL stage 3?) got me thinking about what might happen. I should say that I'd actually be happy to rename to a new name across all projects if that was easiest. Both because I wouldn't have chosen this name back in 2005 if I'd know how long I'd end up using it for, and for a couple of other reasons I won't go into here. Anyway, I'll drop ToAT a note, and I'd be interested in any thoughts the two of you might have (or the thoughts of anyone else who might notice this). Carcharoth (talk) 22:27, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Long pages bot

The thing is that archival bots run every day so if I archive the long pages properly and you make your bot refresh the TOP LIST of long pages, then we will be getting a fresh list every day. Here's a chronology:

1. I visit long pages and see which ones are too long.
2. I setup a bot to archive them.
3. The bots archives them at some point that day.
4. The page is no longer considered long; therefore it shouldn't appear in the long pages report.
5. Your bot posts a new report showing which pages are long now without those that were recently archived.

Does that make sense to you now?

Can you please make the bot refresh the list every 24 hours?

—Ahnoneemoos (talk) 18:47, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Good job or something

	The Working Wikipedian's Barnstar
	Thanks for fixing so much shit that nobody else cares enough to. Rjd0060 (talk) 01:34, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Like MBisanz ^talk 02:14, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

:-) --MZMcBride (talk) 05:36, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Favorite blocks

I enjoyed posting this one. Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:17, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Supreme Court case template

Remind me please, what is the template for starting a new article on a U.S. Supreme Court case? Thanks, Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:02, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

{{subst:SCOTUS-case|Name v. Name|VVV|PPP|year|holding}}

We really are going to get all of these templates (and lists and categories) better indexed and organized, I promise! --MZMcBride (talk) 01:04, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. One more question: How do I populate the "court membership" field? Thanks, Newyorkbrad (talk) 19:30, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

{{Infobox SCOTUS case}} has a "SCOTUS" parameter that corresponds to keys that are defined here: Template:Infobox SCOTUS case#Court composition key. It's a pretty awful system that I hope to deprecate at some point. (When we already know the decision date, automatically figuring out the court composition at the date of the decision should be trivial.)

I cleaned up the infoboxes of both JPMorgan Chase Bank v. Traffic Stream (BVI) Infrastructure Ltd. and Connecticut National Bank v. Germain just now. I'll be filing an Arbitration case for your egregious date linking shortly. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:19, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. When I have a little more time during the week, I'll take a look at the details of what you did so that I can hopefully get it right as I prepare more articles like this. Alternatively, you can follow me around fixing things until the end of time. (My other SCOTUS-case articles are Kramer v. Union Free School District No. 15 and Lexecon v. Milberg Weiss, but I inherited the basic formatting on them from stubs someone else had prepared, so they may not have the same problems.) Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 19:22, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Incidentially, "112 S. Ct. 1146; 117 L. Ed. 2d 391; 1992 U.S. LEXIS 1531; 60 U.S.L.W. 4222; Bankr. L. Rep. (CCH) P78,009; 26 Collier Bankr. Cas. 2d (MB) 175; 22 Bankr. Ct. Dec. 1130; 92 Cal. Daily Op. Service 1971; 92 Daily Journal DAR 3080; 6 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 57" is really an excessive number of parallel citations. I understand the reasons for including the Supreme Court Reporter and Lawyers' Edition citations, and including U.S.L.W. has a certain amount of nostalgiac flavor for those of us who remember reading Court decisions before there was an Internet, but absolutely no one would even think of going to the California Daily Opinion Service or Florida Law Weekly to look up this case. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 19:25, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't disagree with your line of reasoning, though I think current best practice is still to include all available parallel citations. This came up previously here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases/Archive 3#Citations Standards. If you feel we should limit only to certain parallel citations, please feel free to update the style guide. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 19:32, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

I'll give this some thought. The problem is that cases may have dozens of parallel citations if one literally includes everywhere the case might have been reported, many of which (for older cases) may have been in reporters that don't exist any more. Before we can agree on a style point, we have to ask ourselves "what is the value of including the citations?" Is it to help the reader to look up the case? To help the reader cite the case properly if he or she needs to (whether in another Wikipedia article or off-wiki? Or something else? Newyorkbrad (talk) 19:35, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Okay, I'm a tech-dummy, which you've known since 2008, but I still can't figure out exactly how these templates are supposed to work. Was I not supposed to subst: it? What am I doing wrong? I ask because I have a few more of these articles in me, and I hate to be messing each one up with my first edit.... Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:18, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

You're adorable. I think you're doing something like this (and by "think" I mean I just tested in my sandbox and you almost certainly are ;-):

{{subst:under construction}}
{{subst:SCOTUS-case|Name v. Name|VVV|PPP|year|holding}}

When you want to be doing something like this:

{{under construction}}
{{subst:SCOTUS-case|Name v. Name|VVV|PPP|year|holding}}

It's the extra "subst:" in line 1 that's getting you (before the {{under construction}} template).

I think you've figured out the "Court membership" / "SCOTUS" parameter bit, but if not, I'm happy to explain further. Though, really, I'm hoping to reduce the overall code complexity soon, eliminating the need to think about the "Court membership" section altogether once there's a decision date in the infobox. It'll just happen automatically, as it should now. I'd like to get that done and I'd like to stop using the "CitationNew" parameter. But it's a slow, slow process when you're the only one doing these things. ;-) The whole WikiProject desperately needs some tech TLC. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:37, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

I understand your theory but generally I've been adding the "under construction" after the SCOTUS template, so I'm not sure whether that's the explanation (nor do I understand why in theory it would matter anyway), but meh, I'll try it your way next time. As for "adorable," nolo contendre. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:41, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Right. So looking at edits such as this one, it seems you're correct, it's simpler than I'm making it out to be. You appear to simply be using {{subst:under construction}} when you really want {{under construction}}. Simple enough to adjust. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 23:55, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Number of page watchers tool deprecated

Hi. It's now possible to view the number of page watchers via the "info" action. For example, at <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&action=info>, you can see that Main Page has over 76,500 page watchers. In the coming weeks, I'll be deprecating the watcher tool. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:05, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for letting us know. I've gone ahead and updated MediaWiki:Histlegend. MBisanz ^talk 19:49, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

There's no need to have the link in MediaWiki:Histlegend‎ since it's always available in the "toolbox" section of the left margin, as "Page information". --Redrose64 (talk) 20:11, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm not seeing it as available on talk page toolboxes. MBisanz ^talk 20:18, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Nevermind, I see it there now. I think think it's worth it for those used to seeing it in the page histories. MBisanz ^talk 20:19, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

There's a discussion here about this. I'd like to be able to formulate a link so that the row can be highlighted, but it'll require a software update. Plus, as Floquenbeam noted, the current link will be misleading for users without the "unwatchedpages" user right looking at pages with fewer than 30 watchers. (The current action=info behavior is to simply omit the row entirely for unprivileged users.) I agree with MBisanz that users are used to looking at the page history for this link, so keeping it there, at least in the short term, makes sense (muscle memory and/or habits are difficult to adjust). I'll poke at this later (I'm currently traveling and tethered). Thank you both for taking a look at this. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 17:33, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Article feedback

{{talkback|Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Article feedback}} Nyttend (talk) 17:51, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer, though I think we can probably safely say that I'm monitoring that talk page. ;-) --MZMcBride (talk) 18:46, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Re your comments on my talk. Thanks, I've had fun creating all those articles. I suspect the % of total articles that might behave in a contrary way because of abuse filters would be infintesimal and not worth making any exceptions for. If for some reason it turned out the filters caused a big problem, I suspect we could come up with a solution. --Mike Cline (talk) 21:01, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

EdwardsBot at English Wiktionary

Hello, I'm an admin from the English Wiktionary wishing to inform you of a problem with the operation of your global message notification bot due to our local setup. Global messages used to be delivered to wikt:Wiktionary:Beer Parlour, but the immense size of our policy discussions led to an auto-archiving system whereby only subpages are used. Therefore the correct page for messages to be added to would be [[wikt:Wiktionary:Beer Parlour/{{CURRENTYEAR}}/{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}}]] with the magic words replaced by their values, of course. At present, admin action is required every time your bot delivers a message, so if you could modify the settings, that would be excellent. Thank you! PS: I am not a regular Wikipedia editor, so please respond at User talk:Metaknowledge to ensure that I get your message. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 15:53, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi there. It looks like this was already fixed. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 17:38, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Ah, another admin dealt with it and we just lacked the requisite communication skills. Thank you for the followup and helpful links! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:57, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Poke

• [[2]]

smile : ) - jc37 23:22, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

WP:BASTARD

I do not fully understand your request on my talk page. The request as posted asks me to undelete a short and offensive redirect, which you would be able to attend to yourself if you so wished. Perhaps I am just suffering from a sense-of-humour failure?--Anthony Bradbury^"talk" 11:09, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

I am sorry, perhaps I missed something. Have you given up the mop and bucket? --Anthony Bradbury^"talk" 13:17, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Page restored at your request. I thought about it, but as you have on record half of the total admin actions ever made here I decided that your request must carry some weight, even though the page is technically an attack page.--Anthony Bradbury^"talk" 16:37, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the restore. Brandon is an old friend. It was never intended as an attack page.

I'm not currently an admin here, no. :-) I could've asked another admin to quietly restore the page for me, but that didn't feel appropriate. Thanks again. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:39, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) That is a curious request CorporateM (Talk) 00:01, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Bastard can be used as a term of affection. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:42, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Discussion on the AFT5 Request for Comment

Hey MZMcBride - this is to notify you that there is a discussion starting on the Article Feedback RfC talkpage that has ramifications for the RfC itself. Your input is much appreciated :). Thanks! and apologies if I've missed anyone Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:33, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

after

I'm finding your recent AFT input and summaries uncharacteristically unhelpful, and I'm trying to articulate why... I think I'll start by summarizing in a way that doesn't feel that way to me. – SJ + 09:08, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi. I'm not sure what you mean by summaries (or input). Diffs? --MZMcBride (talk) 09:32, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

(commentary and) synth of others' commentary. I'll sleep on it. – SJ + 10:44, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm watching User:Sj/fffff. There are some good notes there, but as I posed to Erik at WT:RFC/AFT, I continue to wonder what the underlying goal here is. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:44, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Sweetie I really like your love heart picture

It looks gorgeous, hehe umm I'm just thinking I'm having trouble with navigation would it be a crime to ask for your help you'd make my day. ;) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 101.119.27.217 (talk) 08:25, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

I assume this edit came via wmf:User:MZMcBride? Thanks for the kind words. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 04:36, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

I see you are recruiting your family :-) – SJ +

LoyaltyOne and possible COI

Hi there, regarding your editing of the LoyaltyOne page, there appears a possibility that you may be connected with this company through a PR angle, as suggested by Google Searches of "McBride LoyaltyOne". If this is the case, you should be aware of WP:COI and WP:BESTCOI. If I've got this all wrong, let me know! Thanks Murtoa (talk) 02:06, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm not connected with the company. I saw your edit and I'm not sure it's really reasonable. There's certainly a category of people for whom a separate biography doesn't make sense, but discussing their role within the company does. This seems to be one of those cases to me. I'll drop a note on the article's talk page. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:35, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Template:History of Quebec

Hello there. Back in 2008, you acted upon a CSD:T3 with respect to Template:History of Quebec. An Articles for Creation submission recently popped up in the queue at Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Template:History of Quebec. As I do not have administrative authority, nor can I easily determine if this is a duplicate of an existing template (which you claim on the original one) I was wondering if you could stop in, take a look at the submission and determine if we already have something that covers this. Thanks Hasteur (talk) 21:27, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Sorry, I doubt I can be of much assistance here. --MZMcBride (talk) 07:32, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Module settings

Hi MZMcBride, I need to settings module to work on database reports for urdu wikipedia. Could you give me this module? Thanks محمد شعیب (talk) 07:17, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi. There's an example file here. Just rename "settings.sample" to "settings.py" and you should be all set. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 07:19, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks a lot :) I want to generate this query e.g. non existing categories based on en wiki. Could you create a code? :-) --محمد شعیب (talk) 07:26, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm not sure what you're trying to do. --MZMcBride (talk) 07:33, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

categories which used in artilces in en wiki, and the same articles created ou ur wiki but do not have these categories. محمد شعیب (talk) 07:50, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Right, but the categories used on articles on this wiki will be in English, while the categories used on another wiki will likely be in another language. --MZMcBride (talk) 08:00, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

I want to generate list of such cats only. Then we will work on :-) محمد شعیب (talk) 08:13, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Error in generating

When I tried out to produce this report on urdu wiki, got following error"

ValueError: unknown url type:  trying request again in 5 seconds
ValueError: unknown url type:  trying request again in 10 seconds
ValueError: unknown url type:  trying request again in 15 seconds
^CTraceback (most recent call last):
  File "indeffullarticles.py", line 53, in <module>
    wiki = wikitools.Wiki(settings.apiurl); wiki.setMaxlag(-1)
  File "/home/shuaib/pywikipedia/wikitools/wiki.py", line 79, in __init__
    self.setSiteinfo()
  File "/home/shuaib/pywikipedia/wikitools/wiki.py", line 97, in setSiteinfo
    info = req.query()
  File "/home/shuaib/pywikipedia/wikitools/api.py", line 139, in query
    rawdata = self.__getRaw()
  File "/home/shuaib/pywikipedia/wikitools/api.py", line 224, in __getRaw
    time.sleep(self.sleep+0.5)

So what should we do? --محمد شعیب (talk) 07:56, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

What did you set "apiurl" to in settings.py? It should be set to something similar to "https://fa.wikipedia.org/w/api.php", where "fa.wikipedia.org" is the site you're trying to edit. --MZMcBride (talk) 07:59, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Ohh! Thanks. but my wiki is ur.wiki :) and should we put wiki login, toolserver etc. details in settings.py? محمد شعیب (talk) 08:16, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Okay, then it would be "apiurl='https://ur.wikipedia.org/w/api.php'". And the other settings go in settings.py, yes. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:27, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Editcounter by namespace

Could you generate a database report containing statistics of user edits in all namespaces like this? محمد شعیب (talk) 17:19, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

I can help you generate such a report. I don't have the time or patience to generate the report myself, though. It'd be a matter of selecting from the revision table and joining on the page table, doing a group by page.page_namespace, I guess. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:29, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks I will try to generate this report. I generated a report containing Users by log action on urdu wiki using this code but it dosent put a matter on wiki page properly, See. محمد شعیب (talk) 06:28, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

MarkMonitor

Hi MZMcBride. I noticed you mentioned me in a year-old string on Cla68's Talk page[3] and I posted some general thoughts and opinions (maybe more of a rant) over there. Anyways, I'm still coaching MarkMonitor through more suggested improvements and will circle back eventually (I promise!) to correct issues with promotion, WP:Criticism, post-acquisition updates, etc. etc. My work has gotten much better since then as well, so hopefully we can bring it up to higher standards.

Will you still be watching the page and interested in collaborating on it? What is the best way to suggest the changes (section by section?, with a full draft?). BTW - someone keeps adding the Priddy brothers as founders[4]. I didn't know this when I posted for a correction the first time, but it turns out there is one source that says one of the Priddy's was a founder, though most sources say either just Shah or Shah and Hepworth. Not something I want to spend a lot of cycles on if it's a controversial edit, but it seems how it is now is not right. CorporateM (Talk) 22:39, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Admit you sometimes answer your leg

I have nominated this unusual redirect for deletion. Please see WP:RFD#Wikipedia:Admit you sometimes answer your leg. Simply south...... catching SNOWballs for just 6 years 23:28, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Heh, thanks for letting me know. Commented over there. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:32, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

WP U.S. Supreme Court Cases in the Signpost

The WikiProject Report would like to focus on WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court Cases for a Signpost article. This is an excellent opportunity to draw attention to SCOTUS cases and attract new members to the project. Would you be willing to participate in an interview? If so, here are the questions for the interview. Just add your response below each question and feel free to skip any questions that you don't feel comfortable answering. Multiple editors will have an opportunity to respond to the interview questions, so be sure to sign your answers. If you know anyone else who would like to participate in the interview, please share this with them. Have a great day. –Mabeenot (talk) 13:12, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

EdwardsBot on wikidata

Just a heads up, I requested that EdwardsBot be granted a bot flag at d:Wikidata:Requests for permissions/EdwardsBot. Hope you don't mind :) Legoktm (talk) 02:56, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Scandalous. Thanks. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 04:24, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

nscounts.py

Hi Bride, when I run this code, get the following error

 File "nscounts.py", line 96, in <module>
    ns_count_r_tcol += ns_count_r
 TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for +=: 'long' and 'str'

Please help me, Thanks. محمد شعیب (talk) 16:52, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Don't you just love programming languages that let you get away with not declaring the type of a variable, and then complain when you perform an integer operation on what it thinks is a string... --Redrose64 (talk) 17:04, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Can you pastebin the code you're running? --MZMcBride (talk) 22:24, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Sure, here I put the code. محمد شعیب (talk) 01:34, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

What happend to this code? محمد شعیب (talk) 06:38, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I see the problem, it's on line 92

ns_count_r = '0'

- that forces the type to string. You need to drop the quotes, i.e.

ns_count_r = 0

so that it's numeric. Line 87

ns_count = '0'

should be fixed similarly. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:17, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I applied what did you say, but again the following error occured:

File "watchalltest.py", line 112, in <module>
    report_text = report_template % (current_of, '\n'.join(output), ns_count_tcol, ns_count_r_tcol, ns_count_gtotal)
TypeError: %d format: a number is required, not str

Now what should we do? Thanks for your valuable help. محمد شعیب (talk) 13:14, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Please re-pastebin your code. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 21:50, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

here you can see :) محمد شعیب (talk) 01:25, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

|-
%s
|- class="sortbottom"

I think that's what you need. You currently have a variant.

Generally, I think you have a mismatch between your variables (%s and %d and so forth) and what you're attempting to substitute those variables with. Take a look at this for reference. Each %s and each %d has to be substituted in the final output. If there's a mismatch between these variables and the substitutions, you'll get weird errors. And order matters. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:02, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your valueable help, now code successfully run :) again thanks. محمد شعیب (talk) 07:36, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Wither Catscan?

I seem to recall there was a MW tool, called Catscan(?) or similar, that allows editors to comb through categories to compile lists. Have you any idea where this can be located? Cheers, -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 04:02, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

WP:CATSCAN, brah. It looks like there's Duesentrieb's original tool and now Magnus has a rewrite. And maybe some others. They're all linked from that page. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:04, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Ta! -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 04:05, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of The Portland Trip

The article The Portland Trip has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Lack of notability and independent sources has been noted in banners for over 6 months. Should be redirected: List of The West Wing episodes or similar.

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Pete (talk) 15:43, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi Pete. Please see User:MZMcBride/Edit summaries#westwing. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:16, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Module:Template:SCOTUSKey - is this a good name for a module?

(this is a genuine question, not an open salvo in an argument)

Hi. i wonder about the naming of this module. do you think it's a good practice to name the module "Template:XXX" (presuming XXX is the template that wants to use/invoke this module)?

are there guidelines anywhere for recommended naming of modules?

regardless of my personal/professional preferences, if there are such guidelines, i'll follow them. if there are no such guidelines, maybe it makes sense to write some...

_{just to clarify: my personal opinion is that this isn't a sensible name for the module - IMO, if one wants to state which template is expected to use the module, one should use comments in the code, and the best name for the module is something that tells you what it actually does, rather tan where it is used. e.g., for this one, maybe something like "Module:Extract tail digits" or somesuch. it's easy to think of other templates that will want to use this extraction. same question pertains to the actual function inside this module. again, my personal preference is for module and function names that tells you what they do, instead of telling you where they are used.}

peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 17:01, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) I don't think that Template: should be included in the module name. The vast majority of Modules will be used within templates, so Module:SCOTUSKey would be a better name. Using a pagename which is identical to that of an existing template would not prevent its use elsewhere, but it would indicate it's original or primary use. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:24, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

This was actually something that was discussed in #wikimedia-tech. I think prepending "Template" makes it very obvious what the module is supposed to be used for. You could probably get away with Module:SCOTUSKey, but does that mean Module:String is used by {{string}}? Legoktm (talk) 05:58, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

at the risk of coming out as an old fart, i'll repeat both my view and my question. my view is that in software, the name should not represent where something is used, but rather what it does. let's take this specific case as an example: we call the module "Module:Template:SCOTUSKey". it is used in a template called "SCOTUSKey". at the place we actually use it, i.e. in the template called "SCOTUSKey", we have something that looks like so: {{#invoke:Template:SCOTUSKey|some-function-name|some parameters}}. since we already *know* where we are when we invoke it, the module name carries with in zero information (somewhat reminds you the old joke, where a driver opens her window and asks a pedestrian "where am i?", only to be told "in your car").

my question is, "are there any guidelines for naming modules?".

peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 14:28, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

wikilovestats.py

Hi McBride, when I run this code, get the following error:

File "wikilovestats.py", line 67, in <module>
    ''')
File "/opt/ts/python/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/MySQLdb/cursors.py", line 173, in execute
    self.errorhandler(self, exc, value)
File "/opt/ts/python/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/MySQLdb/connections.py", line 36, in defaulterrorhandler
    raise errorclass, errorvalue
_mysql_exceptions.ProgrammingError: (1146, "Table 'urwiki_p.wikilove_log' doesn't exist")

what should I do? محمد شعیب (talk) 17:41, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi. I confirmed that the WikiLove extension is installed at ur.wikipedia.org by looking at w:ur:Special:Version.

The issue you're hitting is that the Toolserver uses MySQL views in order to restrict access to certain sensitive MySQL tables or table columns. In this case, "urwiki" is the actual replicated database, while "urwiki_p" (with the "_p" suffix) is the public view of the "urwiki" database. When new database tables are added (by a MediaWiki extension such as WikiLove or in MediaWiki core), the Toolserver roots must explicitly add the table to the view(s). In this case, it looks like the urwiki_p view has not yet been updated:

(on enwiki_p)

mysql> show tables like 'wikilove%';
+--------------------------------+
| Tables_in_enwiki_p (wikilove%) |
+--------------------------------+
| wikilove_image_log             |
| wikilove_log                   |
+--------------------------------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

(on urwiki_p)

mysql> show tables like 'wikilove%';
Empty set (0.00 sec)

In order to resolve this, you'll need to file a ticket at <https://jira.toolserver.org> asking for these two tables ("wikilove_image_log" and "wikilove_log") to be added to the urwiki_p MySQL view. Hope that helps. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:13, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) MZ, you might know the answer to a slightly-related problem that I have. My Wikipedia account was created after SUL was enabled, and so whenever I'm logged in on en.wp and I visit Wikipedia in another language, I'm also logged in there. There is one exception: Urdu Wikipedia never recognises me as logged in; and it's listed separately at the bottom of [5] under "List of unattached accounts"; and no matter how often I visit Special:MergeAccount, ur.wikipedia.org doesn't get listed there either. What is preventing the linking? --Redrose64 (talk) 11:27, 27 February 2013 (UTC) Now resolved. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:07, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Tag - you're it

Hello, MZMcBride. You have new messages at Varnent's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Bot flag on French Wikipedia

Hello MZMcBride !

I think you could apply for bot flag for EdwardsBot, you should have no problem to get it Have a great day. — S t a r u s – ¡Dímelo! – 18:44, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Sure, done. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:01, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

You've got mail!

{{you've got mail|subject=Security|ts=18:59, 23 February 2013 (UTC)}}

Gilderien Chat|List of good deeds 18:59, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Aye, just replied. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:03, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Lua requests

Hi MZMcBride, I noticed you contributed some Lua scripts at Module:Bananas and Module:Template:SCOTUSKey. I just created a request page for Lua scripts at Wikipedia:Lua requests and if you write Lua scripts it'd be great if you could watchlist it. Thanks! Dcoetzee 23:18, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Thanks for the heads-up. I commented at Wikipedia talk:Lua requests. Generally, I'd like to see us get better about centralizing tech resources. I think individual wikis creating requests pages like this moves us further away from this goal. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:59, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

DC happy hour on Thursday, February 28!

Please join Wikimedia DC for Happy Hour at the Capitol City Brewery at Metro Center on Thursday, February 28 at 6 p.m. All Wikipedia/Wikimedia and free knowledge/culture enthusiasts, regardless of editing experience, are welcome to attend! All ages welcome!

For more information and to sign up, see Wikipedia:Meetup/DC 34. Hope to see you there! Harej (talk) 02:23, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Whee. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 05:52, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Great seeing you there. Cheers! bd2412 T 05:04, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, great to see you as well! I'm hoping we (Wikimedia DC) can get better about planning meetups earlier and more regularly (probably monthly). Longer discussions ahead. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 05:19, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Welcome!

Some cookies to welcome you!

OMG that seemed a joke. Consider yourself re-welcomed. lol, sorry for the wrong message, I was trying to do something with twinkle and things got messed up. Regards Eduemoni^↑talk↓ 19:41, 25 February 2013 (UTC) ps.: The plate of cookies must remain here, I hope you like it.

Thanks. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 04:40, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Template:SCOTUSKey

Just to let you know, I've updated Template:SCOTUSKey to use the match function from Module:String rather than Module:Template:SCOTUSKey. Would you mind if I delete Module:Template:SCOTUSKey now that it's not used anymore? -- WOSlinker (talk) 13:55, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Sure, feel free to delete the module if it's no longer used/needed. Thanks for all your work on these templates. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 04:43, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Article Feedback Tool (Since discussion has been closed)

Hi there,

since the discussion has been closed, I have some ideas about modification and adaption of the tool. However, not in the en wikipedia, but in the bg one. It will be a good test bed for the new modification because of the relatively small community, and thus relatively controllable environment and results.

Before, I state the ideas however, are you the right person to be asked for and who else can support me to introduce the modificated tool in the bg project?

Best regards, --Pesen S Trompet (talk) 09:27, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi Pesen. You probably want to contact Oliver Keyes or Fabrice Florin directly about this. They're the ones actively working on the article feedback tool. --MZMcBride (talk) 08:27, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

User:EdwardsBot

I'm guessing you're already aware, but just in case, I noticed it was blocked. (something about messages going to the wrong people?). Since your name is on the user page, I thought I'd drop you a note about it. Cheers. — Ched :  ?  03:11, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

I took the liberty to unblock your bot. --Guerillero | My Talk 07:48, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Related. Legoktm (talk) 08:05, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the note, Ched. I keep a pretty close eye on the bot, so I'd seen the block and unblock, but a talk page note is always nice (for me and others) and greatly appreciated. The whole situation is a bit unfortunate, of course, but no big deal. I was trying to think of a way to prevent this from happening in the future, but there weren't any elegant answers that sprung to mind. Thanks for the unblock, Guerillero. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 08:15, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Invitation to a discussion: Wikipedia and legislative data

Hi MZMcBride, since you are interested in meetups in DC, I'd like to invite you to attend the Cato Institute's "Wikipedia and Legislative Data" events on March 14. (There's also an all day workshop on March 15; let me know if you are interested, we may be able to add more people.)

There will be an introduction to Wikipedia and open edit-a-thon in the afternoon, and a Sunshine Week Reception in the evening. I hope you can make it!

• Please sign up here
• Announcement on Cato's blog
• Background from Cato sponsor Jim Harper's perspective
• Background from Wikipedian Pete Forsyth's perspective

Hope to see you there! -Pete (talk) 19:20, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Hmmmmm. I think Thursday should work for me. --MZMcBride (talk) 09:26, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Good, I look forward to meeting you! I gather from the link here you have thoughts about my work more generally. I'm always happy to discuss, but might not be able to dive deep into that at the Cato event. Feel free to send comments/questions/etc. to my talk page, email, etc. -Pete (talk) 07:12, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Please investigate broken report.

Wikipedia:Database reports/Long stubs is a weekly report that hasn't worked since late January. Please fix. Dawynn (talk) 22:55, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi.

I poked at this a bit this evening. It's a fairly straightforward query, though it's using "ORDER BY", which is requiring it to do a full table scan. And as the categorylinks table is growing progressively larger with more and more categories on more and more pages, any full scan is becoming more expensive. I tried removing the "ORDER BY", but even just trying to get the first 500 results with page_len > 14000 timed out (the query killer nailed it). I've noted the issue here. I'm not sure off-hand what a proper solution to this is.

The code is on GitHub: <https://github.com/mzmcbride/database-reports/> (look for "longstubs.py"). Please submit a pull request if you can fix the issue. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 09:34, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

I need Edwards bot for a work

Can you make Edwards bot send a letter to the rollbackers on behalf of me?--Pratyya ^(Hello!) 08:09, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi. You probably want to read User:EdwardsBot. --MZMcBride (talk) 08:37, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Fine. Can you accept my request?--Pratyya ^(Hello!) 09:11, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi. You probably want to read User:EdwardsBot. --MZMcBride (talk) 09:39, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

DC meetup & dinner on Saturday, March 9!

Please join Wikimedia DC for a social meetup and dinner at Guapo's at Tenleytown-AU on Saturday, March 9 at 5 PM All Wikipedia/Wikimedia and free knowledge/culture enthusiasts, regardless of editing experience, are welcome to attend! All ages welcome!

For more information and to sign up, please see Wikipedia:Meetup/DC 35. Hope to see you there! Kirill ^[talk] 13:58, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Hrm. We really need to get a social calendar going. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:35, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

It's high time somebody liberated calagator.org from Portland! (It's been a great thing for the tech community there, it's open source, and it's written by friends.) -Pete (talk) 01:35, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Watcher

Hello :-) I'm trying to login with your toolserver/watcher (I'm in this list): using Chrome, I log in but if I try to use the watcher, I'm not logged in; using Firefox, I receive the message "Sorry, you're not on the access list". Can you help me?? Thank you very much :-) --Delfort (talk) 08:41, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

The watcher tool is mostly deprecated. I'm not sure what issue you're encountering. It sounds like the tool is getting bad info from the Toolserver's replicated database (metawiki_p).

That said, the number of page watchers is now available from the info action. Example. Will that work? --MZMcBride (talk) 00:34, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your answer; BTW from the info action I read "fewer than 30 watchers" ([6]), so same problem :) --Delfort (talk) 13:51, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Mad hacker skillz

hacked my ip address and my email. i watched you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.87.99.87 (talk) 00:01, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

You go girl. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:30, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard

I'm going to give you one warning about this, MZMcbride: outing other users via link is not acceptable from you any more than it is from anyone else. If you're looking for amusement tonight, look elsewhere. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 00:25, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, not sure what you're referring to. Can you clarify? --MZMcBride (talk) 00:29, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Given that you've only made one edit to the page in question recently, I'm surprised you're unable to locate it, but if it helps you, your edit of 00:21:34 6 March is the one in question. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 00:35, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Also fyi, I've raised this matter for discussion among the oversight team; you may be hearing more later on if that discussion comes up with anything else you need to know. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 00:56, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

I can't wait. I wonder, though, does a hyperlink to http://wikipediocracy.com/ constitute a violation of WP:OUTING? As the home page's contents are dynamic (as opposed to static), I suppose the answer could change over time. I also wonder why it's possible for users to add links to such a bad site, if it's truly against policy. Hmmmm. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:00, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Fluffer, I'd like to know that as well. Drmies (talk) 05:33, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

What on Earth are you doing blocked, you silly sausage? --Closedmouth (talk) 04:39, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

I have no idea! I'm kind of appalled that David didn't even have the courtesy to leave a note on my talk page or e-mail me. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:40, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Quite ridiculous if you ask me.  — Statυs (talk, contribs) 04:56, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

• Facepalm ... sigh ... geesh, leave you kids alone for one second. I think you just have an innate natural ability to just piss people off MZM. What the hell are we supposed to do with you? You know the routine .. hands against the wall - spread em. — Ched :  ?  05:02, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Surely "innate natural ability" is a pleonasm. ;-) Also, you're going to need to buy me dinner first, at a minimum! --MZMcBride (talk) 05:04, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

I had no doubt that you'd pick up on the redundancy. Hey, if I can ever get back to <redacted for fear of outing>, then without a doubt I'd be honored to buy you dinner. (damn I wanna see the Air Space Museum one more time). You have one of the sharpest, keenest minds I've ever seen - can't you push the envelope without going over that line? I'm not stupid, but I would "kill" to have that grey-matter that you do. Hell, you could give the Steve Jobs legacy a run for its money. (Gates is great, but sorry - con-man and manipulator). The future ahead of you is something I can't even fathom. Keep kickin it "gangnam style" buddy. — Ched :  ?  05:39, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

{{unblock reviewed|The blocking admin refuses to provide a rationale for the block (notified here) or answer questions about what actually constitutes a violation of the outing policy (as raised here). I don't see how this block is sustainable. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:43, 7 March 2013 (UTC)|decline=The blocking administrator has provided an (additional) explanation below, but I agree with him that the reason for your block (whether you agree with it or not) was already quite clear previously. Because this unblock request does not contain any argument relating to the block's validity other than to demand a rationale for it, it is declined (see WP:GAB).  Sandstein  17:35, 7 March 2013 (UTC)}}

This is still an oversighter block, is it not? Then it falls under the same policy rules that Cla did, meaning a random admin is not allowed to just unblock you. You already know the steps you need to take and an unblock request is not it. You're just going to get some unrelated, unknowing admin in trouble. Silverseren^C 05:12, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, not sure what you're referring to. Why do you believe this is an oversighter block? The Cla68 analogy doesn't seem to match reality. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:17, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

If you're blocked for violating the outing policy and your edits were oversighted, which they were, then that's an oversighter block and you can't just be simply unblocked. You have to contact Arbcom. Silverseren^C 05:21, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

What you're saying doesn't seem to be documented anywhere. There's a very new section at Wikipedia:Blocking policy#Oversight blocks, but even that doesn't seem to match the specifics here. In any case, I guess a passing admin can decide whether or not to unblock. Given David's refusal to discuss the matter (or the surrounding underlying issues), I don't think the block is sustainable. But perhaps you're correct that no admin will be willing to unblock before the block naturally expires. We'll see! --MZMcBride (talk) 05:28, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Before that section was added, even the previous version of the policy stated, "Administrators reviewing a block should consider that some historical context may not be immediately obvious. Cases involving sockpuppets, harassment, or privacy concerns are particularly difficult to judge. At times such issues have led to contentious unblocks. Where an uninformed unblock may be problematic, the blocking administrator may also wish to note as part of the block notice that there are specific circumstances, and that a reviewing administrator should not unblock without discussing the case with the blocking admin (or possibly ArbCom) to fully understand the matter." Maybe that isn't as explicit as you'd like, but any administrator should take that into account, along with the new section already linked by MZMcBride, before attempting an unblock. Silverseren^C 05:41, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

I would think the talk page discussion would be more relevant. As it is, you seem to be blowing smoke. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 05:43, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

• FYI. Honestly, you're pretty lucky that three days was all that David decided to go for; he could have easily justified longer/indef. NW (Talk) 07:41, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
  • That's crazy-talk. I was actually talking to someone this evening about this and I said that David was smart to pick three days (a trick he likely learned from Arbitrator training). If he'd gone with a longer period or made it indefinite, I think we can say with a high degree of certainty that it would've already been lifted.

    It seems that linking to http://wikipediocracy.com/ is fine and linking to http://wikipediocracy.com/?p=269 (and other similar posts) is fine, but one particular post can't be linked to. The distinction being made? Beyond me. --MZMcBride (talk) 08:00, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

• MZM, you know exactly why you are blocked—because you continually posted links that outed editors, despite being told clearly to stop. I'm sure you have disagreements with the outing guidelines, or how they're implemented, whatever—I certainly don't agree with some of the applicable rules to how Wiki-lives connect and are influenced by actions on other parts of the internet, and how we should approach them. Disagreeing with those guidelines, and starting a discussion about them, would be the sensible thing to do. Repeatedly posting a bad link (and you can certainly tell the difference between good and bad links) is the equivalent of a child repeating curse words to get attention. You got exactly what you expected out of the equation, so let's cut the nonsense. You're more intelligent than that, and everyone on this site shouldn't have to deal with trolling from someone who can be and usually is productive and conscientious. If you want to talk about this further, my email is always open and I'll be in DC for the meetup this weekend. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 13:31, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Hmmm. The arbitrariness of what is and isn't allowed (e.g., I suppose <http://wikipediocracy.com/tag/wikipedia/> is acceptable) combined with the fact you've suppressed any evidence of alleged wrongdoing makes all of this a bit dystopian. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:01, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

{{unblock reviewed|I apparently have to explicitly say that the block rationale is faulty. There, I said it. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:13, 7 March 2013 (UTC)|decline=I am declining your unblock request because it does not address the reason for your block, or because it is inadequate for other reasons. To be unblocked, you must convince the reviewing administrator(s) that

• the block is not necessary to prevent damage or disruption to Wikipedia, or
• the block is no longer necessary because you
  1. understand what you have been blocked for,
  2. will not continue to cause damage or disruption, and
  3. will make useful contributions instead.

Please read the guide to appealing blocks for more information.
An admin needs at least to see the edits made that are questionable, at the very least before considering an unblock - since we can't see them (as they have all been oversighted), you will have to use contact ArbCom.  Ronhjones  (Talk) 00:21, 8 March 2013 (UTC)}}

Thanks for that, err, well thought-out reply, Ron. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:02, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Is there anyone connected to this saga who doesn't have a string of oversighted edits in their contrib list? It all feels a bit Orwellian. Kevin (talk) 03:45, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

There's certainly some cringe-worthy stupidity around here lately. Fluffed & Fuched. Perhaps a future bot name. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:57, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

• (talk page stalker) I notice that this template was created some 18 hours after the abovementioned block was imposed. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:14, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

These Oversight blocks are getting out of hand!. ThePhoenixReborn (talk) 00:06, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

WikiConjugal visit. <3

Fran Rogers (talk) 05:24, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

<3 --MZMcBride (talk) 05:25, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost

Your recent block is mentioned in the current edition of the Signpost. I have made a comment regarding your block and contrasting it with Cla68's block. Let me know if I have misstated anything and I will correct it. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 23:50, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Thanks for the heads-up. I'd already heard about the mention in The Signpost, but I hadn't seen your comment.

I've mostly said my piece in the section above. I think the current policy of allowing most Wikipediocracy links, but banning two(?) is a bit silly. It seems there's no admin willing to unblock me, though, so... shrug. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:58, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Your bot at da.wiki

Dear MZMcBride,

please request bot flag for da:Bruger:EdwardsBot at da:Wikipedia:Anmodning om botstatus. Regards, Christian Giersing (talk) 19:53, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Blah, done. But I'd really like to not have to maintain this bot (or at least not have to make requests on each individual project). This is a waste of my time. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:25, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

As I have written on da:Wikipedia:Anmodning om botstatus#EdwardsBot a botflag would remove the yellow box in the top of the page telling about a new message. Christian Giersing wrote about it on da:Wikipedia-diskussion:Anmodning om botassistance four minutes before requesting you to request a botflag so there is no community consensus (yet) about the necessity of having a botflag.
- Sarrus (c • t) 20:46, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Replied here. As far as I'm aware, EdwardsBot will always trigger a new messages notification, as it's not marking its edits as both bot and minor. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:48, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

FYI

I've mentioned you here. No need to comment if you don't want to.--v/r - TP 13:04, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:08, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

hmmm...

<sigh>, I guess you gotta be you :) — Ched :  ?  17:59, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

come on now Stop please? — Ched :  ?  18:02, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

You should un-watchlist that page. ;-) --MZMcBride (talk) 19:33, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

No.

If you do that again, I will indef you. AGK [•] 18:13, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

I wouldn't recommend it. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:14, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

• I've indefinitely blocked your account. There are no two ways about it: linking to that website is outing. AGK [•] 18:15, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Then why is it not on the blacklist? Werieth (talk) 18:20, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

• Like that would mean anything. Newyorkbrad told everyone where the offending blog post was without getting in trouble, the Signpost did that many times and provided direct quotes from the Examiner article by Greg Kohs, and several Arbitrators and oversighters commented in the section above where MZM linked to WO over and over. Seriously, AGK, we are beginning to end the drama and now you are just creating more of it. ArbCom's conduct in this matter has been completely incoherent and you are just making it more obvious.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 19:20, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

• To supplement my earlier message with an FYI, MZMcBride: if you agree not to link to that site's homepage again (while it prominently displays personal information about another user), I'll unblock you. Your TP is on my watchlist. AGK [•] 19:19, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Hmm. This seems like a textbook case of attempted coercion.

    Let's take a look here. The relevant edit hasn't been oversighted or suppressed. You've indefinitely blocked a long-time user without providing a block summary. And you seem to be actively ignoring literally hundreds of links to <http://wikipediocracy.com>. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:24, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

• It's even worse when you consider that searching for "Wikipediocracy" gets a link to the page as the top result. So basically any mention of Wikipediocracy, anywhere, link or not, would have the same effect.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 19:31, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

• AGK is out of control. Where do we take this? — Hex (❝?!❞) 19:36, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

• I'm not sure I'd put it that way, but this block doesn't seem sustainable. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:38, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
• Hex, please don't be so dramatic. AGK [•] 19:45, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

• Really, AGK? Really? See that section down below called "AGK's actions"? You've lost the plot. — Hex (❝?!❞) 22:39, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

AGK - You're free to add the site to the spam blacklist to prevent people from adding the site to WP. You could even set up an abuse filter. Whatever. But this block is uncalled for and I'm inclined to unblock. If the only issue is the OMGBADSITE, do something about the site? Rjd0060 (talk) 19:40, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

• (edit conflict × 3) The average editor won't know or care who the outed editor is, so there would be no value in purging the website from every page on Wikipedia. However, on noticeboard discussions (and things like the feedback page for last week's Signpost article), only our most active editors are paying attention. It is them who are likely to know the outed editor, because he is one of them—a very active editor. That they are likely to know the outed editor means the outing is all the more damaging, which is the only reason why links to the page that outs him are, in turn, all the more damaging. There's a huge difference between people who know what WO is being able to find links to it across the project, and people who don't know what it is being given a handy link and an explanation of the context by you. I'm astonished you seem to think it's okay to essentially paint "[outed editor]'s identity that way →" in huge print at the top of one of the community's busiest noticeboards. AGK [•] 19:41, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't. But if we only could control the entire internet.... But if that's all you're trying to prevent here, then there are other ways to do it. Blocking, in this case, was a very, very poor call - in my opinion. Rjd0060 (talk) 19:43, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

The point isn't that the site exists. It's always existed. It's that MZ is quite effectively advertising the homepage of that site across the community's noticeboards. That homepage currently contains precisely the same kind of outing that's already earned another otherwise-good contributor an indefinite block. He's also linking to the Special:LinkSearch feed for the page, which is just as damaging and can't be blocked by other means. That's why he was blocked. AGK [•] 19:45, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

• Except, just saying "Wikipediocracy" is as good as giving someone a link to the site as I explained above. Is Wikipediocracy going to become by decree "the site that shall not be named"? That would just be silly.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 19:47, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Above you write, "if you agree not to link to that site's homepage again (while it prominently displays personal information about another user), I'll unblock you." What about <http://wikipediocracy.com/tag/wikipedia/>? Or <http://wikipediocracy.com/2013/02/20/a-compendium-of-wikipedia-criticism/>? You don't seem to have a coherent policy in place, but you seem to be willing to indefinitely block long-time users for violating it. :-/ --MZMcBride (talk) 19:49, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Both of those links mention the outed editor, and are explicitly not okay. I think you know that was always the rule of thumb, and that publicising those links is really not okay. AGK [•] 19:54, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Hmm. So you seem to be declaring all links to <http://wikipediocracy.com> as unacceptable, but without any community support for doing so and without utilizing any technical means (other than user blocks) to prevent links from being added here (e.g., the spam blacklist or the abuse filter). You also seem to be a participant in Wikipediocracy's forum (there's a broken link from User talk:AGK/Archive/73 to <http://wikipediocracy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1993#p1993>). A site so vile that you're willing to indefinitely block a user for simply linking to it, but you have no issue participating directly on that site?

I have to say, I can't really see any part of this block that puts you in a favorable light, AGK. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:02, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Nice non sequitur, but many sound contributors are (or have been) contributors to that website—which isn't the point. Rather, the point is that the site has recently taken to circulating "outing" op-eds on their homepage, and almost as recently you've taken to pushing as many editors as possible towards the website—which is not on. When you know that site has one of those pieces up, and you go out of your way to link to it as many times (and in as many different ways as possible), you can't really be surprised when somebody revokes your editing rights. AGK [•] 20:09, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

What about all the people saying, "Wikipediocracy! Wikipediocracy! Wikipediocracy!", including one of your fellow Arbs? That's fine because they didn't provide a link?--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 20:11, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, AGK, but we really can't have it both ways. Either it's blacklisted and linking disabled, or it's not. Instead of one link, we now have multiple links (above) and more eyes on them. You also have more editors (including yourself) posting the name of the site in plaintext, which is just as good as a link in the eyes of the google machine. I agree that there needs to be a discussion about whether to blacklist this site's links, if and when, but this isn't how we have that discussion. UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 20:13, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

MZMcBride, I will give you two options. Quit posting links that have the outing information on the link that you have, or I will remove your talk page access. SirFozzie (talk) 20:16, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Just a FYI, I've removed the three links to where the OUTING information that's currently at WO. SirFozzie (talk) 20:23, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Why are you injecting even more drama into this situation, Fozzie?--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 20:25, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

…Why are you manufacturing drama where there should be none? AGK [•] 20:32, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

You are the ones doing that actually. Starting with the block of Cla68 it has been just a continuous line of drama-inducing actions by Arbs, admins, and activist editors, who are badly missing the purpose of the policies on harassment. WP:OUTING exists to protect privacy, i.e. things that people make a credible effort to keep private, not so that editors can fancy themselves super-heroes with secret identities even when they use terrible disguises.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 20:43, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Then work to change the policy. Just because you don't agree with how the policy stands doesn't mean it's a good idea to violate it. SirFozzie (talk) 20:46, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Honestly, I don't want drama. But folks seem to want drama no matter what. Either we take down the links, per OUTING,etcetera, and there's drama, or we violate our own rules, and there's drama as people demand we enforce our rules. I don't want MzMcBride to remain blocked... but that's his choice, not mine. As I said over there, WO has a lot of value as a criticism site, but they went too far with the outing post, and until such time as that outing information is no longer readily available (such as it was on every link that I've redacted from MzMcbride's posting), then it is sadly necessary. And before you say "Then why don't you put it on the meta-wiki spamlist?" I've made a request to do just that. I hope WO do the right thing, take down the outing article, and replace it with one that points out the flaws that that user has, without crossing the line, but I can't do that for them. SirFozzie (talk) 20:34, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

The links have been restored (as has my talk page access). It's been a wild ride! --MZMcBride (talk) 07:19, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

This thread shouldn't make it into a talk page archive without the keyword "ham-fisted" (or "ham-handed"), a description of SirFozzie's link removals here. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 02:49, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

• "Either it's blacklisted and linking disabled, or it's not." Ding ding, we have a winner!  — Statυs (talk, contribs) 21:42, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

AGK's actions

I have to run to dinner myself shortly, but let me just get this straight. Today, AGK:

1. has indefinitely blocked a long-time user without providing a block summary;
2. has added wikipediocracy.com to the spam blacklist with a highly misleading edit summary;
3. did not log his addition to the spam blacklist, as directed on both MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist and MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist in large, red, bold font; and
4. added the blacklist entry in direct defiance of consensus from an explicit discussion about this particular site.

Hmmmm. AGK is really having a gold star day, eh? --MZMcBride (talk) 22:05, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Hello. There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. (I took the liberty of copying your list to the post. Have a good dinner.) — Hex (❝?!❞) 23:16, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

It should be noted that AGK removed the blacklist entries shortly after this post was made. Thank you, AGK! --MZMcBride (talk) 00:23, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

From what I now understand, AGK concurrently attempted to ban every mention of the word "Wikipediocracy" on the English Wikipedia (cf. Special:AbuseFilter/history/537/diff/prev/10784). Incredible. Prior to the AbuseFilter being enabled here, I wrote about the possibility of this kind of thing happening in the future. A tool designed for vandalism and abuse being used for censorship and Arbitration enforcement (among other things). Look how far we've come.... --MZMcBride (talk) 04:08, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Thankfully, someone saw fit to delete AGK's kneejerk change. Let's just forget whether it's those nasty sites WR or wikipediocracy, this is like trying to crack a walnut with a ball and chain. Never mind what collateral damage such action does to the project. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 04:38, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

If you agree not to link to http://wikipediocracy.com again he will unblock you.

The polandball is now in your corner. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 23:10, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Hah. Cute. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:23, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Moving forward

{{unblock reviewed|1=Please unblock my account. AGK left no block log summary and has made it clear that this was a normal administrator block. This block is not sustainable. Thank you. --MZMcBride (talk) 3:13 pm, Today (UTC+0)|decline=Unfortunately MZMcBride, I see no valid reason in your unblock request why you should be unblocked. Whilst AGK made an unfortunate mistake in not leaving a block reason, he did give his reasons for doing so on your talk page. A future unblock request from yourself should concentrate on the substantive issues, namely a commitment not to link to wikipediocracy, or make any other attempt to out an editor. Should you make these two commitments, I will unblock you immediately. Ryan PostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 23:32, 13 March 2013 (UTC)}}

---

Hi Ryan.

Hmmm. I'm not sure what you mean by "not to link to wikipediocracy, or make any other attempt to out an editor." The community seems to have now twice-rejected blacklisting <http://wikipediocracy.com> (here and here). It's used in a few hundred places. Am I really supposed to promise to never add a link to it again? Including the forum and other parts? That seems kind of insane.

As for outing editors, if the English Wikipedia thinks this link is so inappropriate, it tracks its usage and has implemented the ability to prevent linking to it (with blacklists and edit filters). However, the English Wikipedia community has decided that this link isn't problematic enough to warrant special designation.

Anyway, I appreciate you taking a look at this, Ryan. I really do. AGK seems to have overreacted here with an indefinite block, but I've got plenty of other things I could be spending my time on (both wiki-related and not). If no admin is willing to unblock me, that's the way it goes. I'll go find something else to do. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 23:50, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

P.S. And to answer your question, the relevant diff is here.

Thank you for your thoughtful responses. I do respect that the blacklisting of Wikipediocracy is a controversial issue and hasn't exactly been accepted by the community, but there is clearly an issue with the context that you linked to it in. I have to stand by my request that you made a commitment not to link to Wikipediocracy on the project at all in the future. Whilst it is clearly a hot issue at the minute, your involvement in the issue isn't conducive to a collaborative editing environment and is causing far more problems than it is solving. Make the commitment not to link, and you can get on with editing on the project right away. I would also suggest stepping away from this issue entirely. You do a lot of good work here, and there's surely more interesting things you could be getting on with! Ryan Postlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 00:00, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Yeah... I don't think I'm willing to make that commitment. I try to make it a rule (in life) to not agree to anything (an explicit "yes") without being as confident as is reasonably possible that I can fulfill the agreement. For example, this is why I mostly don't respond to Facebook invites (or I'll respond "maybe" instead of "yes"). If I'm say I'm gonna do something, I do it.

In this case, I'm not willing to say I'll never again link to <http://wikipediocracy.com>. I haven't participated there, but I certainly could in the future. If it continues to grow (particularly its wiki), one day it might have its own interwiki prefix, even. I'm fairly involved in Wikimedia projects (sometimes as a critic), so to try to elicit a commitment that these two sites won't ever overlap in my life again... well, no, I'm sorry, I just won't make that commitment. That's the way of the Web. Thanks again for looking into this for me. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:09, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

I understand your point. Would you be willing to make a 6 month commitment not to post links to the site? That's not too long and would give the community time to come to a consensus about whether or not the site should be linked to. To be honest with you, I think that's a fair compromise for us all. Ryan Postlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 00:17, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

No, I'm sorry. I think it would set a terrible precedent for future situations of this kind and I think it could possibly have chilling effects on criticism of Wikipedia. I don't think either of these situations is acceptable. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:23, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Personally, I don't give a shit about a link to Wikipediocracy.org ... now, linking to potentially inappropriate pages/threads/whatever on that site is problematic. So, I don't see any need to restrict (other than for promotional reasons ... which is unlikely) linking to the main url. (✉→BWilkins←✎) 00:20, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, but given the problems that this has caused, any future links (at least the near future) to the site from MZMcBride is likely to cause unneeded drama, hence my offer terms. Ryan Postlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 00:22, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Right, but Ryan, there's nothing illegal or contrary to policy with linking to wikipediocracy's main url ... yeah, it might have been a little WP:POINTy, but if we indef-blocked everyone for being pointy every so often we'd be a pretty empty place. As far as I can tell, MZ has never linked to a specific attack page (show me I'm wrong). (✉→BWilkins←✎) 00:28, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

The issue is essentially that the English Wikipedia doesn't control what content the wikipediocracy.com domain serves. The main page (<http://wikipediocracy.com/>) and other pages (such as <http://wikipediocracy.com/tag/wikipedia/>) are dynamic (i.e., their content is based on, for example, whatever posts were most recently made or whatever posts were tagged with a particular keyword), but any page on that domain is potentially problematic.

You could possibly envision a scenario in which certain URLs were changed (by a nefarious sysadmin) after being posted to this wiki to redirect to a nasty place (e.g., <http://wikipediocracy.com/?p=269> could be changed to redirect to a different post or to a different domain altogether). Or, even more nefariously, a sysadmin could take old links found on this site and only redirect to a nasty place based on being clicked by a user on the English Wikipedia (using an HTTP referer). It's trivial to redirect URLs; for example <http://pruebita.com/loldong.jpg> appears to be a JPEG image URL, but it redirects to a completely different site. All of this is as true of wikipediocracy.com as it is of nearly any Web domain.

As I see it, the English Wikipedia community has repeatedly decided not to ban links to this site (as opposed to, say, encyclopediadramatica.se, which is blacklisted locally), so indefinitely blocking users for linking to wikipediocracy.com seems a bit crazy. Again, I think AGK simply overreacted. That said, there's an essay somewhere around here describing a "no admin willing to unblock" scenario. I can't remember exactly where, but it may apply here. We'll see. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:22, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Hmmm, I suppose Wikipedia:Community ban is what I was thinking of. Hmmm. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:45, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

BWilkins: He linked to the site's front page, a couple of days after it ran a second story about the outed editor's identity (and a couple of days after he was blocked for the same thing). As if to prove he didn't do so accidentally, he then linked to the same URL with /tag/wikipedia appended; even if an unrelated story took over top spot on the homepage, that URL would still take somebody directly to the offending WO blog posts. Cf his recent contributions to this page (other sysops have redacted his comments, I believe). I'm not asking him to abstain from linking to any WO page. I'm simply asking him not to do so in such an abjectly disruptive manner. This whole drama has been of MZ's making, which is disappointing; he used to know which fights to pick and which to leave. AGK [•] 09:31, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

But why?

Re your deliberate linking which got you blocked, did you do so to tip shit on Wikipedia, to out someone, to make a point, a combination of those, or some other reason. There would be quite a few observers like me who are a bit puzzled by it all. Moriori (talk) 00:03, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi. I somewhat addressed this above when I wrote, "You don't seem to have a coherent policy in place, but you seem to be willing to indefinitely block long-time users for violating it." To me, AGK's actions today are a classic example of cowboy adminship. Shoot first, ask questions later. (Though in his mind, threatening to indefinitely block someone is equivalent to asking him or her to not do something.) Hmmm. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:18, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Blasphemy! You have violated our sacred edicts. Henceforth your only recourse is to commit seppuku so you may restore honor to our endeavor.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 01:20, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Or commit sudoku whichever is easier. Collect (talk) 01:22, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

How about simply committing to not being pointy in the future so that one of us can actually unblock you. I have no horse in this whole wikiwankery.org website, so let's just stop worrying about principle and worry about getting productive editors back doing what they should be doing, which does not include dramah. (✉→BWilkins←✎) 23:35, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree with everything Bwilkins just said. -— Isarra ༆ 03:55, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Proposal

Hopefully with a good nights sleep, some hindsight and a bit of reflection you and AGK can come to some sort of meeting of the minds at the dawn of a new day. Ya can't change anything from the outside. If that can be worked out, and you'd like to collaborate on some sort of RfC regarding the matter (WP:BADSITES 2.0 or whatever), I'd be honored to work with you. — Ched :  ?  08:14, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

I have no interest. --MZMcBride (talk) 15:09, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

He would prefer not to. --Closedmouth (talk) 15:46, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

I would like to say that I love literary allusions and closedmouth in general. Killiondude (talk) 17:37, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

A note

MZMcBride, I dropped a note at NE Ent's page the other day. I would certainly extend the same offer to you and any other editor who genuinely sees a way forward for improvement. Unfortunately, everything kicking off over the past few days has come at a poor time, as I decided to try for a featured article for the first time and this whole saga has been more than a ltitle distracting. But hey, that's what I signed up for when I joined ArbCom.

Now, specifically on this case, we've got two conflicting issues. Firstly, the site that is linking a person to a username very clearly on its front page. This is considered WP:DOXing or WP:OUTING or whatever it's called today. It's off-wiki, and therefore generally considered out of jurisdiction. The community rejected BADSITES a while ago, so discussing the site or linking to it is not against policy. I know that you understand these points. We also expect people to act with a little discretion, to use common sense when posting - in other words, not to create "drama" and distract everyone from what they should be doing. Your actions were designed to cause a reaction. Call it what you like, Trolling, WP:POINTy behaviour, Disruptive editing - I don't care, you knew that making that edit would likely end up with us in this mess.

I'd like to see you unblocked and I'm happy to discuss it. The arbitration committee isn't a homogenous group, so feel free to look into my actions, my comments and my !votes in this recent matter. As Ched stipulates above, proper discussion could lead to sorting everything out, and you need to be on the inside to join in that discussion. If, after a good night's sleep, you fancy climbing down off this parapet, I'm watching the page and I'm willing to discuss things with you. I'm also willing to receive emails from you if you'd prefer to discuss that way. Can we please try and move forward without all the shouting and squabbling? Worm^TT(talk) 11:13, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi. You seem like a pretty good guy and I appreciate the note, but I'm rather busy and I have no intention of adding a protracted discussion about these idiotic pseudo-policies to my agenda. --MZMcBride (talk) 15:11, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

No problems, you know where I am if you change your mind. Worm^TT(talk) 15:12, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Talk page access revoked

Given that you've continued to post links to the same website that you were blocked for, I've revoked your talk page access. I make no comment on the original block, but your conduct is disappointing given our previous constructive dialogue. Once again, I maintain that I will unblock you with reassurances (which will now have to be via email) that you will not post links to the site. I must note however that should you post a link after being unblocked, any future block will likely be for a considerable length of time. Ryan Postlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 02:48, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

And restored.

Absolutely insane. You re-blocked me while overlooking that the exact same links already appear on this talk page in other sections. You also overlooked that several admins and oversighters have already declined to delete these revisions. And to make matters even worse, you didn't even properly suppress the revisions. Good grief, man. Please undo your revision deletions in the morning. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:45, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

While I appreciate that we are reviving the dead in handling this situation, can I please please remind those reanimated beings that while we really really want them back on Wikipedia, wading into complex controversial situations might be better left to more recently active admins. MBisanz ^talk 03:57, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

• Seems to be a little too much heat and smoke going on here. I fail to see what the problem is with mentioning WR or Wikipediocracy. It didn't seem that he was repeating the 'outing' episode with specific links thereto. I can understand MZM's anger and frustration at apparently having been shat upon from a great height, but perhaps he may be allowed to cool it within the confines of his own talk page. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 04:01, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
  • I'd say I'm much closer to baffled, bemused, or boggled than I am to angry or frustrated. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:03, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Personally - I am MOTHER FUCKING PISSED OFF TO THE MAX — Ched :  ?  05:55, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Sigh. I guess your hasty departure is related to this. I hope you'll return when you're ready. I'll be here waiting. :-) Take care. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:10, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

There have been times I didn't understand the "why" ... but I never for a single second doubted that you had wp:clue. — Ched :  ?  10:15, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

• But he keeps saying 'Jehovah'! Stone him! *Dan T.* (talk) 14:59, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

A suggestion

This may be seen as seriously naiive, and if you think it so please tell me. MZMcBride is, as we know, by far the biggest contributor here in terms of admin actions. His total, in fact, approaches the combined total of all other admins past and present. I feel that this degree of commitment deserves some degree of forbearance, within the rules, here. I propose that he be unblocked, if he gives the community a categorical assurance that whatever his personal opinion of the website to which he linked, he will in no circumstance link there again. --Anthony Bradbury^"talk" 17:17, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi Anthony.

I have more than a few edits as well. ;-) But the numbers are probably less meaningful (particularly in a vacuum) in the context of automated and semi-automated scripts. Outside of this vacuum, I'm a pretty vested contributor (and at times, a VestedContributor), so I can certainly agree that an indefinite block here is more unusual, particularly for edits that don't seem to be in violation of any policy.

Ryan P. offered this same linking deal above. I rejected it, as I felt it would set a bad precedent and possibly have chilling effects on criticism of Wikipedia.

There's an ongoing discussion here: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/ExternalSites#See no reason to continue the block that I'm keeping an eye on. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:37, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) In point of fact (and not wishing to take sides here, nor to cast doubt on MZ's integrity), MZMcBride is not an admin, and hasn't been since 19 January 2010. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:38, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Right. Anthony was saying in terms of admin actions. I don't think he meant to suggest that I'm an admin currently. This actually came up recently in the context of a redirect I asked to have undeleted (discussion here). Anthony knows I'm not an admin, he was just referring to the logged action stats. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:45, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, good for you for not taking a demeaning deal that preserves the concept that one can be blocked or banned merely for linking to a heretical site, but then gives you limited forgiveness for your past sins along those lines simply because of your past position of power. *Dan T.* (talk) 18:36, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Past position of power? If I really wanted to, I could unblock myself. You don't play this game as long as I have without having a plan B (or C or D or...). But I'm not supposed to do that and it wouldn't really be fair. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:38, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Unblocked

We seem to have reached an impasse, with me requiring that you not out other editors and you refusing to not do so. One of us has to budge. I consider the protracted drama that has emerged over this block, and the wider issue of linking to attack sites, to be a greater disturbance to the project than what you were doing before I blocked you (as outrageously disruptive and disrespectful as that was). It will therefore be me who budges. The drama that has emerged over this has essentially revoked my ability as an administrator to enforce our policies to any meaningful degree, so at this point I can only implore—rather than require—you to not draw attention to pages that outs another editor in such a deliberately obvious manner. Whether you choose to continue to do so is your choice (and you can certainly now make the argument, though I don't think you could before I blocked you, that everybody else is basically doing it too). Regards, AGK [•] 22:52, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

To clarify, what I find "outrageously disruptive and disrespectful" is what you were doing before I blocked you (although that reminds me that I didn't leave a block log summary, which was also disrespectful—sorry for not doing that). AGK [•] 22:54, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the unblock. :-) It's all bridge under the water now, as far as I'm concerned.

That said, I had a few thoughts and here is as good a place as any to post them, I suppose. I think regentspark pretty much nailed it in this post. Generally, I think you would've had a much stronger argument if you'd gotten into a revert war (perhaps with another user) and gotten me to violate a bright line rule like 3RR. That is, if you can find two editors willing to make three reverts between them, they'd trump a single other editor who's trying to make a particular edit. 3RR has definable rules and a clear enforcement procedure, unlike some other policies or pseudo-policies around here.

I also think you probably could've cited the global "don't be a dick" policy, perhaps, as a justification for a block. It's an old (wiki) principle. Perhaps lessons for the future. ;-) A blank block summary is both a blessing and a burden, I suppose.

You advocated for a "revert, block, ignore" (RBI) approach, which would typically work, except the "B" part (blocking) doesn't work with vested contributors. It works with throwaway accounts and single-purpose accounts and others. It doesn't work with long-time editors and never has. Now... revert, ignore, and block if an editor violates 3RR... well, we even have administrators who are occasionally blocked without any drama for violations of that.

If a passing admin could restore the revisions to my talk page that Ryan P. deleted, I'd appreciate it. Otherwise, I can file a formal undeletion request in a few days when the dust settles.

Thanks again for the unblock. Hopefully we can all move forward now. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:15, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the revision visibility restorations, Spartaz. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 07:07, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Now, what about User:Cla68, still a loose end in this whole business? *Dan T.* (talk) 12:34, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

This isn't the page to discuss Cla68, but when last I checked Cla had told us he did not wish to be unblocked. I understand his edits to WO illuminate his motives in not wishing to have his block lifted. AGK [•] 13:35, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Quite frankly, Cla can stay blocked given his role in this. To be honest, I couldn't care less if we got assurances that it won't happen again. The severity of his misconduct on this matter means that he needs a long block to ensure that he realises that he can't do things like that again.

Oh, and welcome back MZMcBride :-) I'm pleased to see that things have been resolved and you're back. Ryan Postlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 13:47, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

I hadn't realized Cla68 wished to remain blocked. I'd made a note to investigate his indefinite block. Okay.

Thanks, Ryan. It's good to be back. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 14:04, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

The statement of his that I'm aware of says "I won't be asking ArbCom if my block can be lifted until the situation with MZMcbride's block is resolved", so that would imply that now that the latter situation does seem to have been resolved, it would now be time to reopen the former one. *Dan T.* (talk) 14:11, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

FWIW

Note the essay I referred you to and this edit: [7]. Cheers. Collect (talk) 02:21, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Spartaz wisely reverted in this edit.

I tightened up some of the language in your essay in this edit. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 07:31, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Many thanks! Collect (talk) 11:38, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Approved! The significance between "one" and "individual" is that one may be one, or one may be another one, at another time, unless they are both observant and doubtless "an individual", even during sleeping hours, up to say 24/7/364. If so, then indeed they must enact the power that is to them of course that rare "wholeness".— CpiralCpiral 22:40, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Things to do

Now that you're unblocked, I understand there are some things you needed to do? :) Legoktm (talk) 03:08, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

howdy!

Nice to see you in the flesh, even if only for a little bit. Cheers, tedder (talk) 03:18, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, very nice to see you as well. :-) I may be able to sneak over on Friday toward the end of the day. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:20, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

I think I'll unfollow your page. It's like being on ANI :) Hope to see you here. tedder (talk) 14:13, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Hah, perhaps I'll unfollow my page as well. ;-) It's not usually so bad, I swear! --MZMcBride (talk) 14:17, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Don't let him kid ya tedder - people flock from all over the globe just to see what he's gonna say next. :P (jk w/ya MZM) — Ched :  ?  19:38, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Restricted-use media list

An RfC that may interest you has been opened at MediaWiki talk:Bad image list#Restricted-use media list, so please come and include your opinion. – PAINE ELLSWORTH ^CLIMAX! 10:01, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up. I will try to poke some people about getting gerrit:53190 approved. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:25, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Database reports/Meta-Wiki rights changes

Hi. Could BernsteinBot format the timestamps so that they appear in a more legible format? Thanks. It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 17:04, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Sure, sounds simple enough to adjust. What format would you prefer? --MZMcBride (talk) 19:25, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, anything more legible than a long string of numbers really, hehe. If it helps, for me personally, contribs, logs etc. read e.g. "15:24, 20 March 2013". It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 17:22, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

WP:ADMINSTATS

Hi MZ, I was having a conversation about WP:ADMINSTATS and a question came up that I thought might be he sort of thing you'd know the answer to. An oversighter and a former oversighter were involved in the conversation, and both were wondering what an "event suppression" was for the purposes of that page. I always assumed it was the suppression (or perhaps an "oversight", using the old-fashioned method) of an edit or log entry, but both believed they ad made far more actions than that page reports. Would you be able to satisfy my natural curiosity? Thanks, HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:03, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

I believe it's suppression/deletion and/or block with suppression of username (the latter of which then cascades into logs). On looking at my own numbers on that page, it is far too low for it to represent edit suppressions, and probably too high for direct suppression of log entries, but would be about right for either or both of delete/suppress or block with suppression. Risker (talk) 20:11, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi. I think WP:ADMINSTATS uses the same logic as WP:LOGACTIONS. The latter's configuration is available here: Wikipedia:Database reports/Users by log action/Configuration. From that page: {'name': 'Event suppressions', 'short_name': 'ES', 'type': 'suppress', 'action': 'event'}.

This refers to mw:Manual:Logging table, where log_type = 'suppress' and log_action = 'event'. I have no idea what this means. I did at some point, presumably. I think it's log suppression (for example, suppressing part of a deletion log entry). I pasted info about the ten most recent event suppressions below, for reference. Hope that helps. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:08, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

mysql> select * from logging where log_type = 'suppress' and log_action = 'event' order by log_timestamp desc limit 10;

+----------+----------+------------+----------------+----------+---------------+-------------+------------------+-----------+-------------+------------+----------+
| log_id   | log_type | log_action | log_timestamp  | log_user | log_namespace | log_deleted | log_user_text    | log_title | log_comment | log_params | log_page |
+----------+----------+------------+----------------+----------+---------------+-------------+------------------+-----------+-------------+------------+----------+
| 47856187 | suppress | event      | 20130311180709 |     5190 |            -1 |           0 | Fred Bauder      |           |             |            |        0 |
| 47838389 | suppress | event      | 20130310174302 |   353669 |            -1 |           0 | Avraham          |           |             |            |        0 |
| 47758725 | suppress | event      | 20130306050028 |  3315180 |            -1 |           0 | Someguy1221      |           |             |            |        0 |
| 47758711 | suppress | event      | 20130306045929 |  3315180 |            -1 |           0 | Someguy1221      |           |             |            |        0 |
| 47666360 | suppress | event      | 20130301003458 |    12013 |            -1 |           0 | Coren            |           |             |            |        0 |
| 47666354 | suppress | event      | 20130301003429 |    12013 |            -1 |           0 | Coren            |           |             |            |        0 |
| 47580758 | suppress | event      | 20130224104704 |  3315180 |            -1 |           0 | Someguy1221      |           |             |            |        0 |
| 47460161 | suppress | event      | 20130217195911 |     5190 |            -1 |           0 | Fred Bauder      |           |             |            |        0 |
| 47460121 | suppress | event      | 20130217195511 |     5190 |            -1 |           0 | Fred Bauder      |           |             |            |        0 |
| 47424322 | suppress | event      | 20130215184517 |   488996 |            -1 |           0 | Timotheus Canens |           |             |            |        0 |
+----------+----------+------------+----------------+----------+---------------+-------------+------------------+-----------+-------------+------------+----------+
10 rows in set (0.74 sec)

• Okay, taken a look at a couple of them, and they are actions that suppress an entry on the Special:Log/* , where * can be a number of different actions (move, rename user, delete, etc.) Risker (talk)
  • Thanks (both) for looking into this. It's interesting, even if only to satisfy my curiosity. Best, HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 14:55, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Database reports/Unused non-free files

Hi MZMcBride, I noticed that orphaned fair use images aren't getting tagged any more and it was pointed out to me that the bot tagging them is based on this report, which hasn't been updated in a few days, so I wanted to bring it to your attention. Thanks. --B (talk) 22:40, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi. I just ran the script manually and the report seems to have updated. Bizarre. I re-added myself to the list of users who receive e-mail when these reports fail, so perhaps future issues will surface to my inbox. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 23:04, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you - I appreciate it. By the way, as a random side note, we used to have a special page that listed all orphaned images. (Now, it's capped at 1000 presumably because it absolutely kills the server to list all of them.) Is it possible/feasible to do that list as a report? Or, to build on that concept, could we have a few reports for orphaned images that meet certain criteria, for example (a) orphan images from users who have few or no other contributions (under the assumption that the images were uploaded solely for a deleted article), (b) small orphan images (a disproportionately large number of web-resolution images tend to be copyvios), or (c) orphaned images that have a URL other than a site from which we frequently get free images (.gov, .mil, flickr, etc) - the idea being that if there's a URL, it's highly likely to be a copyvio image. --B (talk) 23:51, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

If you want a list of all orphaned images, then you should ideally only have to look at Category:All orphaned non-free use Wikipedia files (unfree files) and Category:Wikipedia orphaned files (free files). The second category (with free files) is meant to be updated by User:ContinuityBot once in a while, but I don't know how often that bot updates the orphan tag.

Wikipedia:Database reports/Unused non-free files is strange again. Although the bot has updated the page every day, the list of files has been empty for three days. This is unusual: there are usually at least a few images there, for example because new users don't understand how to add files to articles, or because someone uploaded two copies by mistake. I suspect that something isn't working properly. --Stefan2 (talk) 16:02, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi MZMcBride, can you kick the script off manually again? There don't seem to be any new orphans showing up in the list. Thanks. --B (talk) 15:48, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi. I noticed this report wasn't updating over the weekend. I tried to run the database query manually, but it got killed quickly. The Toolserver has had transient (or intermittent) issues like this for years now. Sigh.

The report likely needs to be rewritten. I was looking at the underlying code (available here: Wikipedia:Database reports/Unused non-free files/Configuration) and it seems like it wouldn't be too much trouble to rewrite the report. I'll do it this week unless you beat me to it. ;-) --MZMcBride (talk) 03:49, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm a C#/C++/VB kind of guy - obviously, I can follow the code and the SQL statements, but I wouldn't have a clue what to do to rewrite it. :( --B (talk) 13:13, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Also, in case you haven't noticed, it seems that there are other file database reports which haven't been updated recently. --Stefan2 (talk) 13:43, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Sitting in a tree (or perhaps it's tree sitting...)

		The Original Barnstar
		For refusing to cave in to bullies and for standing tall for principle with an eye to precedent in spite of threatened and real negative consequences. Where I come from they call that "courage" and I salute you for it. Carrite (talk) 03:16, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. You know this is two in the past year from you. If I get a third, I think we'll be considered married in some cultures. ;-) I'm not sure I ever said so, but sorry about your RFA. Of course, it was kind of to be expected. I think you'd be a good admin, but I think you probably wouldn't want the associated pain-in-the-ass that comes when you do things while also happening to be an admin. Being able to do things as a regular user (even commenting) has its perks. (And if you still don't believe, just go look at the grief Alison has to put up with.) I'd almost considered running for admin again here recently, but the indefinite blocks kind of put a damper on that plot. Maybe in 2014. :-) I've been doing a bunch of work at wikimediafoundation.org lately, if you're into that kind of thing. The wiki could always use new (clueful) users. (This applies to anyone else stalking/lurking. If you'd like an account there [it's currently a fishbowl wiki], request one at m:WMFACCOUNT or e-mail me or some other admin.) --MZMcBride (talk) 05:32, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

You are invited to a Women in the Arts Meetup & Edit-a-thon on Friday, March 29

In honor of Women's History Month, the Smithsonian and the National Museum of Women in the Arts are teaming up to organize a Women in the Arts Meetup & Edit-a-thon on Friday, March 29, 2013 from 10:00am - 5:00pm. The event is focused on encouraging women editors while improving Wikipedia entries about women artists and art world figures. This event is free of charge, but participation is limited to 20 volunteers, so RSVP today! Sarasays (talk) 23:13, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Hmmm. An event from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on a Friday. Hmmm. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:28, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

DBR missing fields

Wikipedia:Database reports/Meta-Wiki rights changes has been missing the previous/subsequent rights changes for a few months now. 194.75.236.70 (talk) 14:38, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Now that local bureaucrats have the ability to remove adminship (cf. Special:ListGroupRights), most adminship removals are done locally instead of at Meta-Wiki these days. So the report is up-to-date (as is its underlying log), it just may not contain the information you happen to be interested in. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:27, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

One additional minor note: rows are records, columns are fields. "DBR missing fields" is slightly inaccurate. ;-) --MZMcBride (talk) 16:34, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Popcorn!

	Popcorn!
	Reading your talk page is always a pleasure. And just when your block log was beginning to look respectable. tssk tssk. On with the drahma! Theo10011 (talk) 14:56, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, my block log has been re-sullied. I'm glad my travails could provide adequate amusement for you! --MZMcBride (talk) 16:30, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

can you delete this page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Visby_(activitst)

there's a spelling error on activist

and leave the new version

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Visby_(activist) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.45.178.23 (talk) 21:29, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi. It looks like Adrian Visby (activitst) was deleted and it looks like Adrian Visby (activist) may be deleted as well. --MZMcBride (talk) 09:08, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Checker

Not sure if you're watching your Wikisource page, so posting here instead. Regarding [8]. Would it be possible to add a "last reviewer" column to the table? Relates to a discussion here. Moondyne (talk) 07:05, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi. I've asked Billinghurst to weigh in here. I wrote checker for him a long time ago and I barely remember much about it. As long as he's okay with a "Last reviewer" column, I'd be happy to add it. (I didn't really follow the linked discussion on his talk page at all, sorry.) I can't imagine it'd be too difficult to add the column (though I say this without remembering much about the Proofread Page extension except that it's pretty wonky...). --MZMcBride (talk) 09:04, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

It isn't an issue, the purpose of the tool was to identify pages from a work that had not been transcluded. If checker can also serves the purpose to provide further information, that is no issue at all. To note thoug that it isn't last editor data that we wish to have, we are after the editor that set the pagequality status which is at the top of the file, and is concealed by the javascript, eg. we want the user from <pagequality level="3" user="Billinghurst" />. I don't think that that information is retained in the API, and would need to be grep'd. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:26, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

I didn't understand what you were saying until I saw this diff. Jesus Christ. Is it really stored like that? --MZMcBride (talk) 19:34, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Nullum crimen, nulla poena sine praevia lege poenali

Hallo there MZMcBride (talk),
I have noticed that we reached pretty quickly wp:3RR in Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2013_March_25.
An answer from you would be deeply appreciated:
if you could kindly tell me where is this "No Animated Gifs rule" mentioned.
Thanks.
  M aurice   Carbonaro  10:15, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi. No crime, it's just that including animated GIFs in deletion discussion comments or votes is not something we do. It disrupts the page for others. :-) The discussion seems to be going well (and surprisingly that redirect may be kept), but your recent editing here... take extra care with the article namespace. Internal bullshit is fine (e.g., WP:LIGHTBULB, which you seem to really enjoy). However, when edits start affecting the encyclopedia (the content namespaces), it stops being bullshit and turns into something more serious. I hope you can see that. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:33, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Preview page with this template

How does "Preview page with this template" work? How can one preview unless the template under test has a fullpagename parameter? — CpiralCpiral 03:31, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi. It's kind of a confusing feature, yes. Perhaps a demonstration would be easier.

1. Go to <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Infobox_SCOTUS_case&action=edit>.
2. Change "| bodystyle = line-height: 1.2em" to "| bodystyle = line-height: 10.2em" in the edit window.
3. Below the edit window, next to "Preview page with this template", enter "Roe v. Wade" and then click the nearest "Show preview" button.

The resulting page will have a ridiculous-looking infobox, as you've changed the infobox's line-height from 1.2em to 10.2em. But you can (hopefully) see that the "Preview page with this template" feature works by showing you (the editor) what an article (Roe v. Wade) would look like if you updated a particular template (Template:Infobox SCOTUS case) that the article uses. Hopefully this makes sense. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:38, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you MZMcBride, I now see its utility compared to sandboxing, and you've saved me time.

But can you see how "With this template" could mean two things? ("Will use"/"Has use of", "this code"/"the code")

How about "Sandbox a view of a page (below)." and under that
"Page title that uses {{Infobox_SCOTUS_case}}:Roe v. Wade                                   "

i.e. "Page title" could say more: "Page title that already uses this template:".

e.g. "Preview page with this template" could say one of:

• For a page having this template, preview with this version.
• Preview with this version.
• Sandbox a page.

The facts seem to be 1)The page must already use the template 2)The template must graphical, and 3) It's offered on all template editing, even on /doc where it's useless, and even on template code where it's not graphical. If so, it should be an opt-in widget, being misleading more than half of the time? For example it should not be offered at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:DISPLAYTITLE/doc&action=edit where "Page title" is triply confusing. — CpiralCpiral 22:17, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

logactions.py

Hir Bride, I have created userlogs database report in urwiki using logactions.py. But this code put the text in wiki page in a wrong way See that page. I pastebin the code here. Whats going wrong? Muhammad Shuaib (talk) 09:22, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure. Bi-directional text issues always give me a headache. :-( --MZMcBride (talk) 05:50, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Article count in Main Page's header

Hello, MZMcBride. You have new messages at David Levy's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

—David Levy 03:16, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Mr Bernstein's much deserved Easter holiday.

Hi MZ, hope your bot has enjoyed himself over Easter and not eat too many Easter eggs. His usual updates have been missed at Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits and we will be delighted when he returns from holiday:) ϢereSpielChequers 17:48, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

The Toolserver is very unstable. Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits/Age reads "10 April 2013" right now, though. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:48, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
	For your nomination at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hitler (retail store). Bearian (talk) 19:56, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 05:45, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

hi janel

Hello my love

Tom guiry (talk) 03:36, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Sup? --MZMcBride (talk) 05:43, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

WikiProject U2 invitation

Hello! This message is to inform you that Wikipedia:WikiProject U2 needs your input! Please, join this discussion on this talk page!

You may add yourself to our member list below by clicking here!

Project U2 member list

Melicans (talk · contribs) 14:11, 21 June 2007 (UTC) Dream out loud (talk · contribs) 16:35, 21 June 2007 (UTC) Pjoef (talk · contribs) 16:43, 10 February 2008 (UTC) The 80s, from Boy to Rattle and Hum plus the ONE Campaign Y2kcrazyjoker4 (talk · contribs) 03:05, 22 April 2010 (UTC) Lemurbaby (talk · contribs) 03:01, 19 November 2010 (UTC) Difop (talk · contribs) 20:26, 19 October 2012 (WEST) Miss Bono (talk · contribs) 11:53, 14 November 2012 (UTC) The entire career of the band plus Bono and Ali Hewson. Cullen328 (talk · contribs) 22:10, 3 April 2013 (UTC) Teancum (talk · contribs) 14:08, 6 April 2013 (UTC) PBASH607 (talk · contribs) 03:13, 18 June 2013 (UTC) Mayast (talk · contribs) 19:32, 5 February 2014 (UTC) Upcoming songs and album (2014) c_meindl (talk · contribs) 10:45, 6 February 2014 Taking a WikiPedia class and had to join a WikiProject. I am interested in supplementing song stubs and articles! atuldeshmukh1 (talk · contribs) Calidum (talk · contribs) Wish I had seen this sooner. 01:00, 11 September 2014 (UTC) Fylbecatulous (talk · contribs) returning to active status; just based on a feeling... Fylbecatulous talk 15:44, 6 November 2017 (UTC) [[User:<Pushandturn>|<Pushandturn>]] ([[User talk:<Pushandturn>|talk]] · [[Special:Contribs/<Pushandturn>|contribs]]) 00:57, 1 May 2019 (UTC) optional: Im a longtime U2 fan and I went to the U2 360 tour and love sharing their music!

–pjoef (talk • contribs) 12:11, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Hmmm. I wonder what I did to deserve this. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:43, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Hey...

Jump in here at a larger level and feel free to format, add, sort, organize, or just say what you think. I'm going to read through that whole "microformat" thing later today. You're help is ALWAYS appreciated MZM, you know that. — Ched :  ?  17:48, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

• 2.5 questions

• 1. What was that meta site for wiki to request a user name? (I'll scroll through your talk after posting) found it .. ygm
• 2. Is there a way to scan all the articles and see how many have infoboxes?

• 2.5 IF that can be done, can it say what class the articles are? (1m start w/infobox, 3m w/o infobox - 3m GA w/infobox, 1m w/o infobox)

• how hard would it be to do? — Ched :  ?  11:04, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
  • (talk page stalker) #2 would be pretty easy to do, you just need to go through Category:Infobox templates and get the transclusion count for each.

    2.5 is also doable. (It's much easier for GA/FA, than start class though). Legoktm (talk) 12:35, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

    • Thanks for volunteering to gather these stats, Legoktm. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 12:38, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
      • I, er. Whaaaaat. Fine. Legoktm (talk) 12:50, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

LOL ... sorry folks. But thank you. Not anything important, and I'm certainly in no rush for it - I'm just trying to wrap my head around a pretty big picture at the moment. — Ched :  ?  20:26, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

gabe

gabe — Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.212.219.175 (talk) 00:48, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

He makes a compelling point. --Closedmouth (talk) 15:38, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

gabe --MZMcBride (talk) 05:42, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

DC meetup & dinner on Saturday, April 13!

Please join Wikimedia DC for a social meetup and dinner at Vapiano (near Farragut North/Farragut West) on Saturday, April 13 at 5:30 PM All Wikipedia/Wikimedia and free knowledge/culture enthusiasts, regardless of editing experience, are welcome to attend! All ages welcome!

For more information and to sign up, please see Wikipedia:Meetup/DC 36. Hope to see you there! Kirill ^[talk] 19:03, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Dinner at 5:30 p.m. is a bit... we'll fix that in the future. :-) Otherwise, great meetup. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:41, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Bug 46086

It's good to see you and others getting things going over there. I just wanted to note that I meant my response to be to comment #17 rather than yours. INeverCry 21:54, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. :-)

It wasn't clear to me (and others) that this bug is so prevalent/annoying until recently, I don't think. Otherwise it would've been triaged more appropriately sooner. Hopefully it'll be fixed up by midweek next week. I'll poke people as necessary.

Generally, the bug classification system is ignored by most developers. There's a general theory that the actual critical bugs (such as the site being inaccessible or active data loss/corruption) will be resolved as soon as possible and every other bug will be resolved as soon as someone has time/inclination to resolve it. (That is, the bug classification rarely determines what actually gets worked on.) In a case like this, it's a matter of poking the appropriate people (Greg G., Tim S., Rob L., and Sam R.), namely people capable of debugging this from the server side to figure out why this deletion-related database query is erroring and how to fix it. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:56, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for helping. I'm just a button pusher pretty much, so I'm glad some expert eyes are on this now. INeverCry 07:07, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

A fellow admin on Commons just posted this error message:

A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was:

    (SQL query hidden)

from within function "WikiPage::updateCategoryCounts". Database returned error "1213: Deadlock found when trying to get lock; try restarting transaction (10.64.16.27)".

Should this be shown to someone? INeverCry 16:51, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

You're always welcome to file a bug at <http://bugs.wikimedia.org>. Try to include as many details as possible when filing a bug (URLs, actions being performed when the error occurred, etc.). --MZMcBride (talk) 16:54, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

I only mentioned it because it was suggested to maybe be part of 46086. If it's another bug, and doesn't bother my deletion tools, then "frankly my dear, I don't give a damn." INeverCry 16:59, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

And I don't delete files on Commons. ;-) We have to look out for each other, of course. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 17:45, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

I hear ya, but if you've got me looking out for you on technical matters, you're in trouble. INeverCry 18:23, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

I think you hit bugzilla:13921. Legoktm (talk) 17:35, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Indeed. Good find. Cross-referenced at bugzilla:13921#c15. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:42, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

I've noted this at COM:AN, where my fellow admin had posted about it. Thank you both. INeverCry 18:30, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

toolserver

For the last couple days I've been getting a bunch of "NOT FOUND. The requested url was not found on this server" messages from toolserver.org. Any idea why? Something to do with the above thread? — Ched :  ?  09:23, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

You're not alone, it's been happening to everyone the past few days. The Toolserver isn't in great shape. --MZMcBride (talk) 10:16, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Ahhh .. gotcha. Thx for the link. Long as it's not on my end, I'm not gonna worry about it. — Ched :  ?  10:38, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

DC meetups on April 19 and 20

Wikimedia DC invites you to join us for two exciting events this weekend:

On the evening of Friday, April 19, we're hosting our first-ever WikiSalon at our K Street office. The WikiSalon will be a twice-monthly informal meetup and collaborative editing event to help build the community of Wikimedia enthusiasts here in DC; please join us for its inaugural session. Light refreshments will be provided.

On Saturday, April 20, we've partnered with the George Washington University to host the All Things GW Edit-a-Thon at the Teamsters Labor History Research Center. Please join us for behind-the-scenes tours of the University Archives and help edit articles about GWU history.

We look forward to seeing you at one or both of these events! Kirill ^[talk] 20:08, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Arb comments

I realize that my shouting edit summary was over the top and I was considering restoring the discussion myself (I was away for a while), but would you please explain how your comments could possibly be perceived as helpful? AutomaticStrikeout (T • C • Sign AAPT) 21:20, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Sometimes the most obvious solutions are overlooked. I was pointing out a very simple solution to the problem, of course. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 21:23, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

For the curious: Wikipedia talk:Arbs are people too#Simple solution. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:32, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

LaraBot

From the looks of the page, I'm not sure if you're watching LaraBot's talk page, so I wanted to draw your attention to this comment I made there. Thanks. jcgoble3 (talk) 01:04, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Lua and subpages

I have provided a subpage iterator over at Meta, which you may wish to use:

local subpages = require('Module:Subpages').subpages

for page in subpages('Global message delivery/Targets') do
  -- do whatever with page
end

--darklama 23:32, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Hah! That's insane. Both impressive and cringeworthy. :-) Thanks, I'll take a look at using it over at Meta-Wiki (I'm still wrapping my head around Lua). I went to comment on bugzilla:47137, but you beat me to it. Very nice. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:37, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:GTFO listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Wikipedia:GTFO. Since you had some involvement with the Wikipedia:GTFO redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). Thryduulf (talk) 06:52, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for the note, Thryduulf. Without it, I probably would've missed the entire deletion discussion. It seems to me that (redirect) deletion discussions opened without notifying the page creator should be automatically closed as invalid. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:38, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

nie — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.238.179.116 (talk) 11:29, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

You're telling me, girl. You're telling me. Happy Monday! --MZMcBride (talk) 13:54, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Your closure

I would appreciate it if you would adjust the inappropriate tone in your closure and other comments. I would also like for you to explain why my position is an "extreme view", as it is most definitely not. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C • Sign AAPT) 20:48, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

No and no. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:52, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

I understand your perspective, I just try to keep the peace, hoping we all just live and let live. He's really a good guy, and I think he showed that by changing the image first, instead of requiring you make the first move. I sincerely appreciate you returning the olive branch there. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 22:05, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Urgent page restoration

Hiya, is there any chance you could restore this page on the Foundation Wiki. You prodded it last month, but it is not unused :) it is currently the main directdebit landing page for Wikimedia UK. We're working on replacing it (it's only just now been noticed!) but if you could restore it in the interim that would be really helpful! --Errant ^(chat!) 21:35, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Sure, done. Please request an account on wikimediafoundation.org when you get a chance so that you can undo edits like these yourself. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 21:47, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks and thanks! I'll do that :) --Errant ^(chat!) 21:51, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

my subpage

OK, I unprotected it but why does it matter if the protection has no effect? Carlossuarez46 (talk) 23:02, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

I was asking myself the same! Thanks for the unprotection. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 23:04, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

I thought blocking the bot, which for all I know is only going wrong for me, seemed more drastic that just protecting my page, I'll just unprotect for now and see what happens Jimfbleak - talk to me? 05:12, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you! Sorry to be a bother. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:17, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Hello

Re your message concerning the protection of User:Sango123 s page in March 2007, she stopped editing 1 October 2006. At the time I protected it there was a vandalism problem. If you wish to undo the protection I will not object. I must add she is long gone and I miss her. I would hate to see her page defiled but sentiment lacks value in these matters.--Theda 04:00, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Semi-protection seems to be favored for pages like this, from what I've been reading and seeing. Full protection is pretty nasty and anti-wiki, so any pages we can shift from full protection to semi-protection would be a step in the right direction, in my opinion. Thanks for getting back to me. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 16:23, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Changed to semi-protection, I totally agree. Thanks for the feedback.--Theda 20:57, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Phenomblue

It appears that you deleted this before. Do you want to send it to WP:AfD? It was also mentioned in today's Signpost newsletter. Bearian (talk) 15:08, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Eh? I don't see my name in the page's log. Perhaps I deleted a redirect to it? --MZMcBride (talk) 15:28, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Life Online

Listeners:

My dreams of just being normal feel lost, I have had the sorest experience . I switched places because I can't trust anyone. Now I am left homeless, jobless and possibly lost the job I always wanted to work. All due to my accounts being messed up. I did cause this on my own and it just leaved me with nothing. My family is no longer, my life as I knew it is gone from people using my information and accounts. People now think I am insane and sick because all this stress all this has caused me. It's gas been awful and I was very excited. I have not put adds on my accounts they were merge by my brokerage and now I am in serious trouble and don't know what trust! Heart broken. And now I loss my accounts as well.

What I haven't even meant to do anything now I am left with nothing and have affected others losses my home. Because I was unaware of the difference between two accounts. No one told me they are linked and I didn't want things posted that were.

I am being threatened by others I'm going to have to move from here due to all of this and possible go to jail in the us. People have gotten my information and I feel that there has been know support from anyone.

How does this happen??? Accounts should never be linked, there should be one for work and one of your own. My emails, phone and computers have all been out of commission and I have no contacts for anything. I thought I had a friend? This just is not fair.

I have taken computer classes and all my accounts are on freeze so really if you invite someone into your group why not make them aware of this in simple terms so if say you on you phone you can feel safe using fb, not having to worry about being charged daily for copyright notices for anything I do on my phone or computers. Something to think about. I just started my career and it's now over before I even got to start not to mention the lost of my family! For something that I should have been informed more clearly. I have had people throwing agreement after agreement in front of me and just but yet know one gives any answers. Very sad.

This has effected my life on every way possible. I have nothing left now but embarrassment! Amber -Leigh Teeple Keller Williams Solid Rock Realty — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.151.114.39 (talk) 07:26, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Your post reminded me of <http://xkcd.com/810/> a little. Though it appears you exist. Or at least someone has gone through the trouble of creating two LinkedIn profiles for you that match your story here.

I'm sorry to hear you're having a rough time lately. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help. --MZMcBride (talk) 13:40, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Database reports/Articles containing links to the user space

I see the above posted an updated report last night, but from the first couple of dozen I checked there seems to have been a good number of false positives, several of which did have such links but were removed already some time ago--Jac16888 ^Talk 10:14, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Yeah... the Toolserver is slowly dying and this report probably needs to be rewritten (again). :-( --MZMcBride (talk) 18:56, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Database reports/Most-watched pages by namespace

Hi, Could your Bot do the same for the german wikipedia? E.G. at de:Wikipedia:Meistbeobachtete Seiten nach Namensraum. Thanks in advance --Zulu55en (talk) 19:10, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi. I don't have the time/energy to set this up, but the code is available on GitHub if you'd like to set up these reports yourself. I hope that helps. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:55, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Advice

I hope you don't mind a quick deletion question. I noticed all the G8s you just did. I wanted to batch delete them, but I can't seem to get the D-batch function in Twinkle to work. The P-batch function calls up a list in seconds, but with D-batch all I get is "Grabbing list of pages: loading..." with no result (atleast within the 5 minutes I left it going). I'm sure I'm probably doing something wrong. Thanks for your time. INeverCry 18:52, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Hmmmm, sorry, I'm not sure. I don't use Twinkle very often. Which page are you trying to run a batch deletion on? Wikipedia:Database reports/Broken redirects? --MZMcBride (talk) 18:54, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Category:Candidates for speedy deletion. Is there another tool/script for batch deletions from a page or cat? I'm used to using DelteLinks on Commons. INeverCry 18:57, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Honestly, it's been over three years since I've deleted anything here, so I'm not sure. And even when I was active in an admin capacity here, I mostly used browser tabs and a custom script or two (no Twinkle). :-) AN or VPT would probably have much better answers for you.

I neglected to say thank you for the deletions you've been doing. I realize (better than most) how tedious administrative work like this can be, but I certainly noticed and appreciate the work. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:03, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm sure I'll find a tool to use, or some other method of not having to do these one at a time. Unfortunately I'm a technical novice, so I can't write my own tool or script. INeverCry 19:25, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

DC meetup & dinner on Saturday, May 11!

Please join Wikimedia DC for a social meetup and dinner at Vapiano (near Farragut North/Farragut West) on Saturday, May 11 at 5:30 PM. All Wikipedia/Wikimedia and free knowledge/culture enthusiasts, regardless of editing experience, are welcome to attend! All ages welcome!

For more information and to sign up, please see the meetup page. Hope to see you there! Kirill ^[talk] 23:08, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Rogue EdwardsBot run

Hi, is there any means for starting EdwardsBot (talk · contribs) other than by altering User:EdwardsBot/Status to "Start"? Please see User talk:EdwardsBot#This month in GLAM. --Redrose64 (talk) 06:41, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

m:Global message delivery/Spam --MZMcBride (talk) 13:11, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

EdwardsBot

Hi. I notice you that your bot seems to have problems on occitan wiktionary (it inserts repetitively the same message, see here), so maybe elsewhere too. It would be a good idea to indicate clearly links to your main account on all wiki's user pages of EdwardsBot. Regards. Xic667 (talk) 17:50, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Definitely elsewhere too; the same user (but at Occitan Wikipedia) got two copies of that message. The request is here and the recipient list that was used is here. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:18, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

On clouds

I'M SCATTERING CLOUDS AROUND

FOR NO REASON

Killiondude (talk) 00:45, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Dominic McDevitt-Parks

Closing an AfD that you nominated, after less than four hours, with only three supporters? I invite you to undo that, otherwise I shall take it to deletion review. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:27, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

To be clear, Pigsonthewing, are you objecting because you believe the article should be kept, or because you think it should be deleted, or purely as a matter of process? Newyorkbrad (talk) 18:49, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

I thought this matter was resolved. It's fairly well-established that a deletion nominator can choose to withdraw a deletion nomination. Given that the page author, deletion nominator, article subject, and all others who had commented agreed that an article was inappropriate, it seemed rather silly to engage in a protracted deletion discussion when the normal wiki process (redirecting the article) is completely sufficient. Echoing Newyorkbrad's comment, what's the actual objection here? --MZMcBride (talk) 20:23, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

My motivation is not the issue. Are you going to reopen the debate, or shall I take it to DR? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:35, 13 May 2013 (UTC)