User talk:MZMcBride

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Older discussions are available in the page history.

Request for a re-creation of a list by Tim1357

Oh ye who are the master of all lists :) - I've been working off of a list created by Tim1357 who is no longer active, and would like to see if it would be possible to get this list User:ImageResizeBot/List1 recreated? I have been working on the oversized non-free items & that list was extremely helpful! Or, if there's already something out there that you know is tracking these, a link to that would be appreciated as well. Thanks for all you (and your bots) hard work :) Skier Dude (talk) 20:39, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

This is probably simple enough to create as a database report. What are the parameters of the list? All files in Category:XXX with a size greater than YY? "Oversized non-free files" would probably be a decent report name. Pagination might also be nice, if the data set is large enough (that subpage took quite some time to load). How often would you need such a report updated (monthly, weekly, daily)? If you can answer some of these questions, I can probably get to this tonight. And thanks for the kind words. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 21:16, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

The parameters that the resize bot is using are at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/DASHBot 9 - generally, they come down to:

• If its longest side is more then 400px, proceed
• If the aspect ratio is greater then 1/3, proceed
• Rescale the image so that the width is 325 px.

The category would be Category:All non-free media - I'd say after the initial run, it might be nice to include this in the 'database reports' under the file category, maybe on a monthly basis? Skier Dude (talk) 04:04, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

So basically you want to go through every file in Category:All non-free media and find the files where img_width > 300 or img_height > 300? I'm not sure what the aspect ratio is about. And this bot would only output the files matching the specified criteria, it wouldn't be doing any (re-)uploads. Sound reasonable? --MZMcBride (talk) 05:51, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Is Wikipedia:Database reports/Oversized non-free files/1 what you want? --MZMcBride (talk) 06:20, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, however, I'm thinking that in initial runs we might want to set the parameters for larger images to get the worst offenders; then when they're cleared, start reducing down to 400x400. Skier Dude (talk) 04:35, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

I bumped up the threshold. You can see an updated report at Wikipedia:Database reports/Oversized non-free files/1.

Do you think it makes sense to exclude all SVGs?

What do you think about files such as File:Private message flood 2006 freenode.PNG? Do you think looking at width × height makes more sense rather than looking at width or height being greater than a certain value? --MZMcBride (talk) 04:47, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

The .svg and .png files are the oddities - the one you noted is a prime example of a small (kb-wise) file with large dimensions. Ergo, I'm thinking that both of these file types can be excluded initially, until a way to validly and consistently determine the 'oversized-ness' for them. Skier Dude (talk) 20:36, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bad Idea Machine

[some silliness that resulted in a failed speedy deletion attempt] Nat682 (talk) 05:43, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

DC-area Meetup, Saturday, August 6

National Archives Backstage Pass - Who should come? You should. Really.
	On Saturday, August 6, the National Archives is hosting a Wikipedia meetup, backstage pass tour, and edit-a-thon in College Park, Maryland. Meet staff and fellow Wikipedians, go behind the scenes at the National Archives, help digitize documents, and edit together! Dominic·t 21:28, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Spammer. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:54, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

watcher broken

Hi MZMcBride, watcher.py is broken at the moment. Also, I've put a request on meta:Talk:Toolserver/watcher as I'd like to specifically hunt down vandalism on unwatched or underwatched pages. Thanks. —Tom Morris (talk) 08:10, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, the metawiki_p and toolserver datbases on sql-s3 are currently inaccessible. I tried poking someone about this, but nobody's really around.

If you want access to watcher, a Meta-Wiki admin will take care of it. --MZMcBride (talk) 08:30, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Just spreading wikilove...

...like an STD!!!

Theo10011 (talk) 17:55, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Gay. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:07, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Please don't be intolerant. Killiondude (talk) 04:06, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Backtalk

Template:Backtalk has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Nathan2055^talk 00:23, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

National Archives Backstage Pass

Not joking about the chocolate!

This is a reminder that the National Archives Backstage Pass is tomorrow at 11 am. National Archives-themed chocolates and temporary tattoos await! Also, historical documents. :-) Please see the meetup page for updated information on transportation, security, and other other event details. Dominic·t 22:27, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Spammer. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:53, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Categories Wiki ar

Hi, How are you ? I m just windering why did you stop using your bot in searching categories without interwiki in wiki ar [1]? We still need your help. If for any reason you can't go one, please give us the source code of that special bot. Thank you.--Helmoony (talk) 20:04, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

More Toolserver brokenness. sql-s7 is the new sql-s3? Or something. Fixed. Thanks for the note. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:19, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Access list of watcher tool

Hi MZMcBride! There seems to be a problem with the login of the watcher tool (since a week or so). When trying to log in I'm getting the response that I'm not on the acces list, which is obviously wrong. Any idea? -- Greetz Sir Gawain (talk) 10:19, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

It seems MZMcBride has no idea... I have the same Problem und it does not look that there is a solution. greetings from germany -- Astrobeamer (talk) 16:02, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

It should be fixed now. The Toolserver has been having some problems and seems to have moved some databases around. This screwed up a few scripts. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:26, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Great! Login works for me. Thank you! -- Greetz Sir Gawain (talk) 11:53, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Mangina

You protected Mangina. (The other two admins to protect it have no contributions for several months.) So why is it a protected deleted page instead of a protected redirect to Phyllis Mangina? --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 00:51, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Hi. I was batch-converting the old protection system to a newer (built-in) system. I have no idea what the backstory behind that particular page title is. Feel free to re-create the page as a redirect if you think it'd be appropriate. I would honestly think a disambiguation page would be better than a redirect (if there's to be anything at all). --MZMcBride (talk) 01:58, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

It's protected, and I'm not an admin. Should I take it to WP:DRV as a "protecting admin has left Wikipedia" case? And I agree that a disambiguation page would be better, but only if I can find two reliably sourced meanings, and I don't have any on hand for the man-parts-between-leg meaning. A disambiguation page with one entry is called a "soft redirect". --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 02:47, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Oh, sorry. I thought you were an admin... you really ought to be. I threw a request on the talk page. No idea if it'll be fulfilled. Just depends who stumbles upon it, I suppose. Some people are major policy wonks and will want it to go to DRV; others will use common sense. I'd wait to see what happens with the talk page request. If it doesn't get resolved, sure, file at DRV. I haven't left Wikipedia and I don't think any of the other admins from the page's log have, for what it's worth. And I think you'd be able to find plenty of cites for the term, I'm just not sure how classy they'd be. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:02, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

As for my adminship: Thank you for the support. But it hasn't happened yet because I haven't been able to think of solid answers for the most common RFA questions. If you would like to help me build such answers, go ahead and revive this topic on my user talk page. As for undeletion discussion on talk pages: Those tend to get speedily deleted as "Pages dependent on a non-existent or deleted page" in my experience. And even "cites for the term" would probably be more appropriate on the Wiktionary entry. Will take to DRV. Thank you. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 04:10, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

It turns out that someone unprotected it. Thanks again. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 04:16, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

User talk:Drmarilyn

Hi there,

I see you deleted User talk:Drmarilyn at the author's request. I was going to welcome this user as a potential useful editor, but I first want to know the history of the talk page. Can you help out here? --Slashme (talk) 17:47, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't worry about the deleted revisions. Welcome away! --MZMcBride (talk) 03:11, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

No, I'm not Nell, just curious about Wikistalk.

Hi! Peridon suggested you may be able to explain to me the numbers on this chart. Who may use the tool? What is it's purpose? Good grief! Here I go tearing off with my endless questions and we've not even properly met. My username isn't "Curious," but it's close: Yopienso (talk) 00:10, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

The numbers largely indicate that I need to rewrite the tool to not be so awful. The "No." column is supposed to be simple enumeration of the results. It's clearly broken. It's been broken for quite some time and needs to be fixed. Maybe this week? I don't know.

Any user with a working Internet connection can use the tool. Its purpose is to compare the contributions of two or more editors.

My name is also not "Curious."

And, I imagine the majority of Wikipedians are very similar to Nell. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:17, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. Yopienso (talk) 01:45, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

You're welcome.

I cleaned up stalker (né wikistalk) just now. It should be less horrible. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:06, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Real Life Barnstar
	Fucking hell! I've never seen such a person, who can be SO REAL LIFE - this is incredible. You know why I'm giving you it, but for reviewers - thanks an infinite per cent about both understanding and refusing to compromise on real life and so called "gender rolls" Egg Centric 23:19, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

:-) --MZMcBride (talk) 20:09, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

User creation report questions

Greetings MZM I hope things are going well for you. There has been some issues with various users creating multiple sleeper accounts lately and I was wondering if, without violating the checkuser criteria, a report could be created to show:

1. If a user has created other user accounts (maybe just a number of accounts created)
2. If the other user accounts have ever been used (Maybe just a number of accounts used version unused and if any are blocked)
3. Particularly if the creating user has been banned and the sleeper accounts have not.

Thank you in advance for your help. --Kumioko (talk) 14:58, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Unless the sleeper accounts are being created by a logged-in user (and are consequently logged at Special:Log/newusers as attached to a particular master account), only CheckUsers doing individual checks can obtain the information you're after. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:08, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

The problem as described to me is that some users are creating accounts. Then while logged into those accounts they create a bunch of other accounts and don't use them. Apparently the checkusers can only see if the account is associated if its been used to make at least 1 edit. If its never been used there essentially invisible. I was thinking that someone like yourself might be able to see based on edit history if a user account had created a whole bunch (maybe a threshhold of ten or more) accounts and never used them. I wasn't really sure that it could be done anyway I just thought I would ask. --Kumioko (talk) 23:11, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

If these bad actors are creating accounts while logged in, it's easy to find them and aggregate them into a report. If you create an account while logged in, it's logged. For example, my log of account creations is here. But most bad actors are wise enough to not leave a paper trail like this. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:34, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Ok thank you for the help. --Kumioko (talk) 17:36, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Whoa

That was really weird. I figured it out by looking at your contribs, but there was some serious cognitive dissonance for a few minutes. howcheng {chat} 18:02, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

:D --MZMcBride (talk) 18:04, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Milhist newsletter question

Hey MZM, Cbrown1023 has let me know that he can't deliver the Milhist newsletter anymore due to real-life commitments. I can figure out how to use Edwardsbot, but we've had a weird system of delivering that I don't think will immediately work with your bot – we need to deliver it to Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Members, but not to the ones listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Strategy/News and editorials/Delivery options#Members who don't want delivery, yet also to the editors listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Strategy/News and editorials/Delivery options#Non-members who want delivery. Could you possibly help me? Thanks, Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 05:15, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

My suggestion would be to create a page that contains a proper list of who wants delivery. That's what the Signpost does. Trying to exclude specific lists of users isn't a feature that EdwardsBot will likely ever support. EdwardsBot does have an opt-out list here: Wikipedia:Bots/Opt-out/EdwardsBot. But if you list users there, that will opt them out of all deliveries from EdwardsBot, obviously. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:24, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks very much for the quick reply! I'll kitbash a list sometime in the next few days. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 15:27, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

[2] Heh, you edit conflicted me in doing the same thing. :-) Thanks! Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 17:14, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

For reference, other links are fine. The bot only looks at User/User talk page links and excludes subpages [subpages are included because some people like getting the Signpost on a subpage]. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:16, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

A possible query request

Greetings good sir.

I have found a couple of anomilies in the user name space and I was hoping you might be able to pull a query for me. I have seen a couple of user subpages recently where the account didn't exist or was deleted so would it be possible to see a report of subpages for nonexistant accounts?

The second would be for a report to see the subpages of indefinately blocked accounts.

A third one might be for a listing of IP's with subpages. there seems to be a lot of crap like this

I have noticed a lot of these indefinately blocked accounts have several subpages and I just don't think we need these so I was going to submit a group delete request to clean this up. If these lists are large then if it would be possible to limit the lists to the top 100 or so that would be a good place to start.

Thanks in advance for the help. --Kumioko (talk) 20:27, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

A few of these ideas are partially implemented already, I think. And I started work on the subpages of indefinitely blocked users... somewhere. I think Ownerless pages in the user space (configuration) excludes any subpages currently. And User pages for inactive IPs (configuration) and User talk pages for inactive IPs (configuration) are similar to part of what you've described. I'll take a deeper look at this at some point. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:46, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Thank you very much. --Kumioko (talk) 10:58, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Re:About this report

Re:About this report

Can you regenerate this list? And "Removed all templates containing "/sandbox", "/testcases", "/meta/shortname", "/meta/color", and all ending with "/doc". So what happened with Template:/doc? Thanks. Bulwersator (talk) 03:54, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Unused templates (configuration)? I don't think this report excludes pages in a particular category, but take a look at the current list and see if it needs improvement. If so, you can leave a note here or elsewhere and I can get around to fixing it... sometime. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:42, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

The official unused templates report is limited to the first 800 items (there are thousands of unused templates); it excludes subpages (my list includes most subpages); it includes templates tagged with {{substituted}} (my list excludes these); also, my version of the list has other exclusions that (in my view) make it more useful. These limitations exist in the automated report to reduce load on the server, so they are certainly most justified.

I plan to ask for my list to be refreshed one year after it was first generated (i.e. late January). I think requesting more frequent updates is unnecessary - I go through the list and remove redlinks manually, from time to time. — This, that, and the other (talk) 08:04, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

The limitation is to avoid pagination or excessively large pages. The idea here is that, given that the report updates regularly, a smaller set size is fine, as the top templates will be removed upon next update if they've been deleted or transcluded.

Your suggestions are all feasible for a regular report, it's just a matter of implementing them. I don't think that the current report is very useful, so it makes a lot of sense to make the current report better. It looks like you've already outlined some parameters (removing the "/" limitation, excluding specific subpages, and checking for particular templates) that would improve the current report. There's no point in having a report that's so limited in size if it's largely noise and little signal. If you can create a concrete list of ways to improve the current report (including possibly listing some current false positives), I can devote some time to making the report better. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:20, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

I think that most of the ones from the first 800 that can be removed have been. Would it be possible to break it into multiple pages 1-800, 801-1599, etc.? --Kumioko (talk) 19:33, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

The most important exclusion is templates in Category:Wikipedia substituted templates. These templates are not meant to have any transclusions, so they should be excluded from the list. Exclusions of secondary importance are templates ending in "/sandbox" and "/testcases" (again, they are likely to be useful even though they lack transclusions); subpages of Template:Editnotices (as they are not intended to be transcluded); and subpages of Template:Cite doi and Template:Cite pmid (as they may become useful again in the future). I also excluded all POTD templates from my list, as I didn't know what to do with them - I'm not sure if this is a good criterion for exclusion.

Template:Convert has a huge number of subpages with no transclusions, but I don't understand that template well enough to know whether they should be listed or not.

As well as removing the exclusion of subpages, I think the exclusion of stub templates should be lifted, too - I think the stub folks like to get rid of empty stub categories/templates via WP:SFD. — This, that, and the other (talk) 01:54, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree with the stub comment above but I also agree that excluding certain templates like Sandboxes, testcases and Category:Wikipedia substituted templates would be beneficial. If these were done as well as my suggestion of breaking them into groups of 800 I think we could make a lot of headway. --Kumioko (talk) 16:21, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Stubs are split off into a separate report: Unused stub templates (configuration). The rest of your suggestions are good. Hopefully I'll get around to updating this report very soon. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:55, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Any news on this? I'm champing at the bit for a fresh list of template-space junk (or, now I think of it, template space junk). — This, that, and the other (talk) 08:54, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for poking me about this. I worked on the code a bit tonight and the new code is running now. It should update the report at Unused templates (configuration) when it finishes.

Having looked at some of the full output, I removed some prefixes and suffixes. The current logic is below. Some of these exclusions could probably be lifted, though. For example, I think the templates below Child_taxa// are legitimately unneeded. And by excluding pages such as Template:Adhd/doc, you miss the fact that the template has been moved without its corresponding /doc page. (Not that the /doc page looks particularly helpful, but still....)

Anyway, just something to consider. The unfiltered list was about 31,533 results (that's excluding redirects and limiting to only the Template namespace). The filtered list should be substantially smaller. It's set to paginate, so it won't break anything, but it might end up being quite a few subpages. Let me know what other exclusions you'd like to see. I'll get around to the category membership at some point. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:35, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

    if (not page_title.endswith('/doc') and
        not page_title.endswith('/testcases') and
        not page_title.endswith('/sandbox') and
        not page_title.startswith('Editnotices/') and
        not page_title.startswith('Cite_doi/') and
        not page_title.startswith('Cite_pmid/') and
        not page_title.startswith('TFA_title/') and
        not page_title.startswith('POTD_protected/') and
        not page_title.startswith('POTD_credit/') and 
        not page_title.startswith('POTD_caption/') and
        not page_title.startswith('Did_you_know_nominations/') and
        not page_title.startswith('Child_taxa//')):
        output.append(table_row)

Thanks for your hard work on this. The crucial element is really the category exclusion: you wrote a nice little sub-query for this back in January, which I have stored at User:This, that and the other/Unused templates. You might want to take a look at that, although it might be too slow for an auto-generated report. — This, that, and the other (talk) 10:02, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

(de-indent) I'm not sure I'd call it crucial, but okay, done. Or it should be, at least. Let me know if you notice any issues (links are always helpful).

Subqueries have had (serious) performance regressions in recent versions of MySQL, so I'm trying more and more to avoid them. I think I'm going to have to rewrite some database reports to remove their subqueries as it is. This is the code update, if anyone's interested. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:23, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks once again. Now, all we need to do is hope the query-killer keeps its hands off... — This, that, and the other (talk) 11:02, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Is it possible to generate similar list also on plwiki? Bulwersator (talk) 20:56, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Regularly or once? --MZMcBride (talk) 22:55, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Regularly but even once will be useful. Is it possible to exclude "/opis" subpages (documentation, like pl:Szablon:Bots/opis)? Exclusions "excluding those meant to be substituted", "sandboxes", "Removed all templates containing "/sandbox", "/testcases", "/meta/shortname", "/meta/color", and all ending with "/doc"" and "Also removed all subpages of these templates:" is impossible or useless. And it may be generated on pl:User:Bulwersator/Nieużywane szablony or pl:User:MZMcBride/Unused templates Bulwersator (talk) 06:51, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Is it possible to generate this on plwiki? Bulwersator (talk) 06:05, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't mean to keep you waiting. The current architecture of database reports really doesn't adapt well to non-English projects. A major rewrite is needed in order to simplify the code and properly support localization/internationalization (whatever the difference between the two is). I can run the query and output the results to a text file. Would that work? --MZMcBride (talk) 22:22, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, no problem Bulwersator (talk) 10:26, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

? Bulwersator (talk) 15:05, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

https://toolserver.org/~mzmcbride/bulw-unused-templates.txt is all unused templates on plwiki_p, I think.

I was making progress on getting a proper architecture in place for database reports on any MediaWiki wiki, but life has other plans right now. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 02:00, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Unprotecting Hedonic tone

Can you unprotect this page so I can make it a redirect to Valence (psychology)? —Saric (Talk) 15:51, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm not an administrator here. You'll have to use the talk page (with the {{sudo}} tag), file a request at RFPP, or hope an admin notices this section on my talk page. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:24, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits/1–1000

For some reason the bot did not run on Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits/1–1000 last night. It has been doing Tuesday night/Wednesday morning updates every week for many months before last night.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 00:00, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, it got killed by the query killer:

Hello mzmcbride,
a MySQL-query of yours was killed because you marked it as SLOW_OK, but it have run for 4716 seconds which was longer than allowed.
You can find the query below. Please have also a look at [1] to find information how you can avoid killings of your queries. Maybe you can optimze the query too?
The replication lag at kill-time was 120s.

Sincerly,
Query-Killer.
This eMail was sent automaticaly, please don't reply.

/* editcount.py SLOW_OK */
SELECT
  user_name,
  user_editcount,
  GROUP_CONCAT(ug_group)
FROM user
LEFT JOIN user_groups
ON ug_user = user_id
WHERE user_id NOT IN (SELECT
                        ug_user
                      FROM user_groups
                      WHERE ug_group = 'bot')
AND user_editcount > 0
GROUP BY user_name
ORDER BY user_editcount DESC
LIMIT 11000


[1] https://wiki.toolserver.org/view/Database_access#Slow_queries_and_the_query_killer

I guess the best option right now is to see if it runs successfully next week. If not, I'll have to rewrite the report somehow, I suppose. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:04, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Two weeks in a row.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 12:43, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Looking forward to the report running again. Not that I have to feed my editcountitis or anything. --Wtshymanski (talk) 15:38, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

It just ran.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 01:06, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry. I meant to post here earlier, but got distracted. I updated the code throughout the day today and it seems to be working again now. You can see the code update here, if you're interested. Some of the architecture changed, but the output seems to be consistent. Let me know if anything looks off. Thanks for keeping track of the page and reminding me about its problems so that they could be resolved. I know it's a fairly popular report. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:37, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Are there any benefits to running this early Sunday mornings as opposed to the middle of the week? I suppose Wikipedia never sleeps, so perhaps not. Thanks for fixing it. Now the itching has stopped...--Wtshymanski (talk) 15:43, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Not really, no. The only time you'll generally see a noticeable load spike on the Toolserver is around 0:00 UTC each day, as a lot of people use cron and set scripts to run at midnight. I'm not really sure why this report updates in the middle of the week. I guess I just picked a day. The main query has been simplified now and this report could probably be run daily, but that seems a bit excessive. If you'd like the report update frequency changed or moved, just let me know. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:30, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Once a week (any time in the week) seems to be plenty. Thanks. --Wtshymanski (talk) 18:45, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Is the bot running, or not? It seems not. --DThomsen8 (talk) 03:05, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Documentation of your tools

Hi MZMcBride, is there any documentation/manual for your tools? Thank you very much. --92.74.121.96 (talk) 00:10, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Heh. --Closedmouth (talk) 12:46, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Not really. You could write some. :-) Is there a particular question you have? --MZMcBride (talk) 22:54, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Help with Edittools

Hi. In the ar-WP Edittools, when I switch between drop-drow list content using downward pointing arrow, the content doesn't appear unless I press Enter. My knowledge of JS is quite limited, so can you fix this please? --Zack (talk) 16:00, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't really have time to debug this. Especially not when it's all in Arabic. I'd try WP:VPT or Bugzilla. --MZMcBride (talk) 15:15, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

You're invited! Wikimedia DC Annual Membership Meeting

DC Meetup 23 & Annual Membership Meeting

Wikimedia District of Columbia, the newest officially recognized chapter, is holding its Annual Membership Meeting at 1pm on Saturday, October 1, 2011 at the Tenley-Friendship Neighborhood Library. Agenda items include: election of the Board of Directors for the next two years approval of a budget for the 2011-2012 fiscal year report on the activities and accomplishments of the past year social gathering afterwards at a nearby restaurant Candidate nominations are open until 11:59pm EDT on Saturday, September 24. We encourage you to consider being a candidate. (see see candidate instructions) The meeting is open to both the general public and members from within the DC-MD-VA-WV-DE region and beyond. We encourage everyone to attend! You may join the chapter at the meeting or online.

---

Note: You can remove your name from the DC meetup invite list here. -- Message delivered by AudeBot, on behalf of User:Aude

RFB

*cough* — Kudu ^~I/O~ 20:52, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:54, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

I lol'd. Killiondude (talk) 06:28, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Arbcom elections are soon, that might work better. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 11:48, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

I'd just like to take the old-fashionedness out of these high-profile events. — Kudu ^~I/O~ 01:20, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

We could have had it all,
rolling in the deep.
--MZMcBride (talk) 01:22, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Dammit, I say you go for it. You have my vote. Trusilver 03:02, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Your deletion of talk page

MZMcBride, I saw that you deleted Talk:Chickenhead (sexuality). I expanded the article and I would like to create a talk page. Is that okay with you? --Sonicyouth86 (talk) 23:31, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Go for it. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:33, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Could you please give your view?

I have raised the issues of unsourced content being put into David Axelrod on Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard#David Axelrod that you have reverted previously as well. Can I ask you to swing by and give your opinion? --Deadly∀ssassin 02:57, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Commented over there. Thanks for looking into this. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:02, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Ideas for extracting statistical data about pathology content in WP (???)

Hi,

I was told you might be able to help me extract some statistical data from WP, as you're familiar with the tools server.

I've tried magnus' tool and got Maximum potential result objects exceeded, aborting.

I am looking for data on pathology information in WP; specifically I would like to know (1) the number of medicine articles that have micrographs, (2) number of medical articles that have a "Pathology" or "Pathophysiology" section, and (3) the number of articles in the category Pathology - including all the subcategories.

Conceptually I have an idea of how it might work -- I would search for articles within the WikiProject Medicine (defined by the template on the "Talk" page -- Template:WPMED) and then the the heading "Pathology", i.e. "==Pathology==" and "===Pathology===".

Is there a way to run a SQL query on the database?

More discussion on this is here: Wikipedia doctors' mess.

Thanks, Nephron  T|C 16:53, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi.

Recursive category membership is a bitch. I still don't have a good script to get all members of a category, including subcategories. AWB can do it, I think. But that requires using AWB... *horrors*.

I don't think you really need SQL access, though having a Toolserver account can be handy for other projects. The Toolserver doesn't provide access to article text. Users simply use the public MediaWiki API. The API can get you parsed HTML, wikitext, and category membership, so that's probably all you need here. I wrote a similar script for User:WhatamIdoing at some point, I think. He was looking for == References == headers and a few others, maybe? I may have that script lying around still, if you're interested.

I don't know what level of skill you have (or what you're willing to invest in this quest of yours). But I may be able to help, assuming I can sit down for a few minutes and focus. Harder these days than it used to be. Let me know. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:09, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

I looked at the Toolserver. It looks interesting... and I have a background with which doing that sort of work may be within reach. (Last year, I ran a private Mediawiki wiki on a Debian server I set-up to help finish-up a journal paper about Wikipedia, a bunch of us did at WP:MED.) Unfortunately, I'm short on time this year. AWB looks like a can of worms I don't want to open.

In the little project I am doing I want to argue Wikipedia is the biggest wiki for Pathology info out there. With the numbers in WP:Pathology... it is hard to argue that. I would be interesting in looking for == Pathology == and == Pathophysiology == headers. If you have the script you mentioned -- I'd be interested. Nephron  T|C 23:51, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I went looking for this script and couldn't locate it. (This is why I put scripts on wiki pages generally....) What you're trying to do sounds fairly trivial. What subset of articles are you looking to check? I can probably just write a new script.

One method is to get a list of category members (recursively or not) and then check each of their current wikitext for certain headers. A second method is to scan a dump containing the wikitext of every article looking for particular headers. I have scripts lying around to do dump scans; I can easily write a script to implement method one. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:13, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

I'd check everything with a disease infobox -- Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Infobox_disease for "==Pathology==", "===Pathology===" and "==Pathophysiology==". There are approx. 5500 articles with a disease infobox. Nephron  T|C 02:04, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, that took about a thousand times longer to run than it took to write. Probably because I'm stupid and had to iterate through the article list twice (after noticing a typo in the code).

The script checked 5,452 articles (non-redirects in the article namespace that call Template:Infobox disease). Of those, 686 contained the headers you were looking for. Data is here; script is here. I should note that, given your parameters, articles with headers such as == Chemical pathology == (or other variants) were not included in the results.

Let me know if you have any questions, concerns, etc. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:15, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Many thanks! I am bit surprised that the number is ~700 -- I thought it might be twice that. I wish I could wrap my head around the script in short time... as I would play with different search terms to better understand what is there and what isn't. I assume the script runs locally... and queries the server --though I may be mistaken in that impression. I am haven't installed the 'wikitools' module-- the other stuff required (python, python-mysql module) I have. Nephron  T|C 04:04, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Installing wikitools is fairly trivial. You just check it out with SVN and then add its path to your PYTHONPATH. Easy enough to test if it worked properly by running "python -c 'import wikitools'". Your issue would be that the current script requires a Toolserver account, as it reads from the Toolserver's replicated copy of the English Wikipedia database directly for the transclusions list, rather than using another method such as the API. I suppose that could be rewritten if there were actual interest. The whole script is very simple. The only line you'd really need to worry about is the regex line ("^=+[ ]*(pathology|pathophysiology)[ ]*=+" is a fairly basic regular expression). --MZMcBride (talk) 04:11, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't think installing the wikitools is a big barrier... I am just short on time at the moment (I have a heueuge exam to study for). In any case, I have the short answer I was looking for. I would be interested in playing with the API at some point later - when the exam is behind me. The direct motivation here... was getting stats for a poster I am doing about wikis in about two weeks. I would be happy to give you a short credit - if you let me know how I should name you. Also, I can send you an email of the poster if that interests you. You can send me a quick email. Nephron  T|C 04:26, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

The code is released into the public domain, so I'm not too fussed about receiving any kind of credit. If you'd like to mention me, "MZMcBride" is fine. Glad I could help. Good luck on your exam(s). --MZMcBride (talk) 19:26, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

DC-area Meetup, Saturday, October 8

National Archives Backstage Pass - Who should come? You should. Really.
	You are invited to the National Archives in College Park for a special backstage pass and scanathon meetup with Archivist of the United States David Ferriero, on Saturday, October 8. Go behind the scenes and into the stacks at the National Archives, help digitize documents, and edit together! Free catered lunch provided! Dominic·t 16:23, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Spammer. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:46, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Removal of templated {{

Hello! As you apparently were the user who added the templated {{ to the MediaWiki:Ipbreason-dropdown page (Prodego has removed them now), I'm inviting you to this discussion, which you are welcome to participate in. Thanks in advance, HeyMid (contribs) 08:59, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up. I'll comment at Prodego's talk page. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:24, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Don't

I think I know a little better than you where it is that I want to post [3]! On and give my love to your daddy, and Nebraska, and Jesus Christ. Giacomo Returned 21:01, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

I forgive you. <3 --MZMcBride (talk) 21:19, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Well I don't forgive you. I was making a point in one place because I did not want to make a big issue of it in another; it's a great pity that poeple like you are unable to mind their own business. Giacomo Returned 21:47, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

So you looked at the two threads on the talk page and then deliberately posted in the one that was unrelated to your comment. Well, that makes perfect sense. I accept your apology. But do try to be more careful in the future. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:26, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

about this tool [4]

Can it show how many watchers the page has which has fewer than 30 watchers?

because i want to know how much watchers watch the page,even just a few of people.

think you

--Cwek (talk) 04:55, 6 October 2011 (UTC),contact me in zh:User_talk:cwek

It's a restriction imposed by the Toolserver administrators. It can be bypassed via m:Toolserver/watcher. --MZMcBride (talk) 15:12, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Page didn't get updated

The page, Wikipedia:Database reports/Recently created biographies of living people didn't get updated yesterday. Is there anyway you could manually update it? Bgwhite (talk) 07:35, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Your "cron" job on willow
PYTHONPATH=$HOME/scripts python $HOME/scripts/biobot/newbios.py > /dev/null

produced the following output:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/mzmcbride/scripts/biobot/newbios.py", line 88, in <module>
    talk_page.edit(text=wpbio_template, summary=settings.newpageeditsumm, bot=1, skipmd5=True)
  File "/home/mzmcbride/scripts/wikitools/page.py", line 539, in edit
    result = req.query()
  File "/home/mzmcbride/scripts/wikitools/api.py", line 149, in query
    raise APIError(data['error']['code'], data['error']['info'])
wikitools.api.APIError: (u'internal_api_error_DBQueryError', u'Database query error')

Some API fluke, I guess. Perhaps related to the 1.18 upgrade? Dunno. Anyway, the data from October 5 is here: <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=454553571>. Hope that helps. --MZMcBride (talk) 14:53, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you Sir. I don't think it was related to the 1.18 upgrade as it doesn't run every once in awhile. It is infrequent when it doesn't run, so probably not worth digging into to see what the problem is.

I do have a question. Can a list of recently created biographies of NON living people be made? This way your Larabot can atleast tag these with the bio banner. I don't think there is any other bot tagging these and can go years without being tagged. Bgwhite (talk) 21:32, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, the Toolserver and MediaWiki API are largely stable, but occasionally there are hiccups (database server down, no connectivity to the rest of the Internet, power outage, maintenance, etc.). It looks like the report updated every day in September, though. So it seems to be good enough.

Identifying biographies among new articles is difficult work. There are some lists at WP:DBR#BLP (Potential...) and WP:DBR#BDP, but it's not an exact science and there are various methods of attempting to find biographies (of the living and the dead) that each have varying levels of success. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:56, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

"find biographies (of the living and the dead)" You are missing a very important category. Living, dead and the undead. Is there a way to check for Zombies? :)   Bgwhite (talk) 06:44, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

:-) --MZMcBride (talk) 07:37, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Further stupidity

Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, we would like to remind you not to attack other editors, as you did on Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard. Please comment on the contributions and not the contributors. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. You are welcome to rephrase your comment as a civil criticism of the article. Thank you. this edit summary Off2riorob (talk) 18:30, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Off2riorob&diff=454428514&oldid=454423057 --MZMcBride (talk) 18:33, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

I didn't want to escalate this on WP:BN, but I feel Rob had a point here (even if I don't condone his equally combative and sarcastic warning). —WFC— 18:39, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

After your further attack on my talkpage - please do not post on my talkpage again - if you continue I will request your editing privileges are restricted. - Off2riorob (talk) 18:36, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Never mind, I'll find someone like you. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:15, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

User talk:220.245.95.218

IP editor 220.245.95.218 made an unhelpful edit today[5]. I was going to post a welcome message on his talk page, but it said that you had deleted his page in 2009, and I should contact you before recreating it.--Toddy1 (talk) 11:03, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Welcome away! --MZMcBride (talk) 14:44, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Global delivery error

Sorry, I just saw your message. I hardly ever visit Meta. That change was done by a bot, not me. I will inform Jarry, the owner of the bot. Thanks for alerting me. --SMasters (talk) 12:42, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Well, if you're going to be editing at Meta-Wiki (through a bot or not), you should visit a bit more often. And make sure that your e-mail notifications are working properly. I'm not sure how the bot suddenly broke, but that particular issue causes a flood of e-mail with the current script, so it'd be nice if people stopped screwing it up. --MZMcBride (talk) 14:38, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

As I've mentioned, I do not work at Meta. My email notifications are working properly, but I did not get anything about this for some reason. The bot is for the publication of The Signpost as I'm sure you're aware. This is only the second time I'm using the bot. I will alert the bot owner about this. I'm very sorry for the error, but I'm not a technical person and do not know how to fix it (otherwise, I would). Thanks for your understanding. --SMasters (talk) 16:54, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Yo MZ, another bit of bother with EdwardsBot delivery of the Signpost; it doesn't seem to recognise LivingBot, SMasters or myself as authorised to initiate a run, although we seem to be on the access list. Any ideas before I go manually distribute it to the far corners of the globe like some sort of enthusiastic cyber messenger canine? Skomorokh 10:15, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

The better question seems to be why it ever worked with LivingBot, as the bot is not on the access list at all. I'm looking into the delivery issue now. --MZMcBride (talk) 12:34, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Okay, figured this out. I can't remember why the logic is this way, but the top user (user who most recently edited the page) of m:Global message delivery/Spam must be on the the access list (m:Global message delivery/Access list). It doesn't check who edited the /Status page. Maybe this is a bug. In any case, LivingBot never made a delivery previously due to a syntax error that I fixed. Once I fixed the error, I was the top user and the bot (EdwardsBot) ran fine. I've added "LivingBot" to the global access list. That should resolve both issues. It may make sense to change the code to check the top user of the Status page, but as I recall, there was some sort of attack vector there. I vaguely remember there being a reason I had it check the /Spam page.

In short, if you want to use a bot to make deliveries, make sure it's on the access list. :-) Cheers, sneers, jeers, &c. --MZMcBride (talk) 12:44, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

You the man, man. Skomorokh 12:49, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

I remembered why it checks the top user of /Spam instead of /Status. The bot only checks the /Status page every five minutes. If a user (who's on the access list) edits /Spam and then /Status, there's a brief window where a (bad) user could change the contents of /Spam and have the bot deliver it. To avoid this possibility, the bot ensures that the top user editing /Spam is a trusted user (any user on the access list). Any user can start the bot, but the message (/Spam) must have been last edited by someone who's on the access list. Generally this isn't a problem as the whole delivery process is (generally) a one-user workflow. Using a bot like LivingBot slightly complicates this, but only when the bot isn't listed on the access list. --MZMcBride (talk) 15:17, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

It's Mailtime

{{YGM}} -FASTILY ^(TALK) 21:28, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

You make a poor substitute for a mail client. I'm not sure why you e-mailed me rather than posting here (or at m:Tech!), but I replied with what I think you wanted. gl;hf --MZMcBride (talk) 01:28, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

That was exactly what I wanted. Thank you very much! It would be nice if you could update it once so I can see if I missed anything. Cheers, FASTILY ^(TALK) 10:37, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

No problem. I just re-ran the query and sent you updated results. (By the way, it's secret queries that have gotten me into trouble in the past. That's why I like do things in public. ;-) --MZMcBride (talk) 13:30, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Alright, thanks! :) Cheers, FASTILY ^(TALK) 22:26, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

More unupdated DBR's

• Wikipedia:Database reports/Orphaned talk pages
• Wikipedia:Database reports/Short single-author pages
• Wikipedia:Database reports/Blank single-author pages

What's happening? Same thing regarding the category trackers, something seems to be up with the various bots you run. — Train2104 (talk • contribs • count) 21:55, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

It's a combination of things, I imagine.

1. There's no monitoring of current database reports. This means that if a report stops updating, I generally won't know until someone points it out to me or I notice that it hasn't updated in the index. The index can be tricky to read, though, because some reports only update, for example, monthly.
2. The Toolserver is a bit overloaded. They're working on getting this resolved, but it's really an administrative/human resources issue (not enough people to actively maintain the servers and/or purchase and install new servers). Because of the servers becoming increasingly loaded, the Toolserver admins have enabled or re-enabled the query killer, which some of the reports are falling victim to.
3. MySQL is a bitch. Point releases and upgrades of MySQL seem to have affected how it interprets and executes subqueries, making some reports abnormally and inappropriately slow to return results. There's also some sort of underlying issue that I've encountered where a query hangs and/or locks, and then builds up a queue of queries behind it that are unable to execute. This queue quickly grows (as people use watcher, etc.) to the point that my account exceeds its maximum user connections (currently 15), with no way for me to access the server to kill the queries or examine the issue closely. Pretty annoying.

People have previously joked that we need a Wikipedia:Database reports/Broken database reports. I'll try to take a look at these reports this week and figure out why they're misbehaving.

I'm not sure what you mean by "category trackers." I'm also not sure what you meant by "various bots." As far as I know, only BernsteinBot is having issues (and only locally).

Feel free to post any other broken reports you find here and feel free to nag me if you need any particular report updated sooner. The broken reports really ought to be fixed, if possible. (It may turn out that some of them must be permanently disabled, but that should hopefully be avoidable in most cases.) --MZMcBride (talk) 22:12, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Recently created biographies of living people also hasn't run the past two days. Personally, it was nice to have a break from it yesterday. If you get a chance to run today's (Oct 17) report, it would be appreciated. Bgwhite (talk) 00:44, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Sorry for the mention of category trackers and multiple bots, I was thinking of User:MiszaBot. Another list:

• Articles containing invalid template parameters
• Articles containing links to the user space
• Categories categorized in red-linked categories
• Duplicate files
• File description pages containing no templates
• File description pages containing no templates or categories
• File description pages without an associated file
• Files with conflicting categorization
• Large non-free files
• Mistagged non-free files
• Pages containing an unusually high number of non-free files
• Templates containing non-free files
• Orphaned single-author project pages
• Ownerless pages in the user space
• Orphaned talk subpages
• Talk pages by size
• Talk subpages with redirect parent
• Tiny disambiguation pages
• Redirects containing red links
• Most-watched pages by namespace
• Pages with the most revisions
• Long stubs
• Stubs included directly in stub categories
• Templates containing links to disambiguation pages
• Templates containing red-linked files
• Transclusions of deleted templates (to reduce query size, I wouldn't mind the restriction of this DBR to non-talk page transclusions, since I requested it anyway)
• Unused templates
• WikiProjects by changes
• Short user talk pages for IPs
• User talk pages for inactive IPs

There are also a few requests waiting on the talk page. — Train2104 (talk • contribs • count) 19:34, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Was this you being passive-aggressive or did you find an alternate solution?

See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Fbot 8. — Train2104 (talk • contribs • count) 20:19, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

I started working on a database reports rewrite (it's badly needed), but working up the energy to finish it has proven difficult. There are a lot of reports and it's a bit overwhelming to do a major rewrite. There's also a separation between what needs to be rewritten to conform to a better style/architecture and what needs to be rewritten for optimization reasons. Both types of rewrites are quite tedious, particularly with long-running queries (testing can be drawn out over days). Bleh. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:27, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by article count

When is this list going to be updated? It hasn't been updated for 11 days, usually it is updated once per week according to the history of the data page. I notice your bot has been active since 12 October, when the last update took place. S_peakF_ree ^(talk)_(contribs) 21:46, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Toolserver had problems last Tuesday which is why it and alot of other reports didn't run. Hopefully this Tuesday things will go better. There is a report in this week's signpost about some of the problems toolserver has had the past month. Bgwhite (talk) 05:58, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Please stop bot

EdwardsBot has noticed about Terms of Use update on Thai Wikipedia and I already moved the message to the appropriate Embassy page. But your bot still posted the same message again after me. [6] Please stop bot posting on that page. Sincerely yours. --Octra Bond (talk) 02:39, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi Octra Bond, this appears to have been an unfortunate coincidence: The bot had to be restarted due to a technical problem. In that case it checks each page on the recipients list whether the message has already been posted there, which usually prevents this kind of double posting, but because the removal happened to occur right inbetween these two runs, the bot mistakenly thought that the page had been left out in the previous run. In other words, this is a rare problem that is not likely to happen again. Sorry! Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 03:31, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

For your information, please let the bot post any non-Thai notification at th:วิกิพีเดีย:สถานทูตวิกิมีเดีย (the Embassy page) of Thai Wikipedia instead --Octra Bond (talk) 04:51, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

OK, I'm trusting your judgment that this is the best page to notify (in English) as many users of the Thai Wikipedia as possible about an important change that is affecting them all, and have updated the list accordingly. Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 07:23, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

You're invited! Wikipedia Loves Libraries DC

Wikipedia Loves Libraries DC & edit-a-thon
Wikipedia Loves Libraries comes to DC on Saturday, November 5th, from 1-5pm, at the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial Library. We will be holding an edit-a-thon, working together to improve Wikipedia content related to DC history, arts, civil rights, or whatever suits your interests. There may also be opportunities to help with scanning historic photos plus some swag! You're invited and we hope to see you there!
RSVP + more details!

---

Note: You can remove your name from the DC meetup invite list here. -- Message delivered by AudeBot (talk) 18:59, 31 October 2011 (UTC), on behalf of User:Aude

EdwardsBot and the Signpost...

...EdwardsBot is posting "The Signpost: 7 November2011" instead of "The Signpost: 7 November 2011" on talk pages. HurricaneFan25 13:39, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes. This would explain it. --MZMcBride (talk) 13:52, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits/1–1000 redux

The Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits/1–1000 update failed to occur again.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 14:13, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

:-( --MZMcBride (talk) 15:53, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

All good.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 16:19, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

A pie for you!

HI GUDBYE DU U LIKE CHERRY PIE? WHITES FAN (talk) 15:27, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

It seems you've been blocked.

I would say I'm  neutral toward cherry pie. I don't dislike it, but I also wouldn't really go out of my way to get some. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:48, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

EdwardsBot

Greetings MZMcBride. The Ambassador Program is looking into sending out its newsletter again. In the past, sage sent it out via your bot. I was wondering if you would be willing to let us use your bot again for this purpose? On behalf of the Wikipedia Ambassador Steering Committee Guerillero | My Talk 04:30, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Go for it. There are instructions at User:EdwardsBot/Instructions. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:13, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

That you. Would you be willing to add me to the Access list please? cheers --Guerillero | My Talk 15:16, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm not an admin. Try {{sudo}} on the talk page? --MZMcBride (talk) 17:11, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Signpost missed

Somehow I didn't receive the 2011-11-14 issue of the signpost to User talk:Toshio Yamaguchi/Signpost? I am still subscribed at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Subscribe, so I don't understand why this is. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 09:10, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure why it failed, but you weren't the only one. From the log:

Edited: TomasBat
WTF1 Tommyang
WTF2 Tommyang
WTF1 Tony1
WTF2 Tony1
WTF1 TonyTheTiger
WTF2 TonyTheTiger
WTF1 Tony_Fox
WTF2 Tony_Fox
WTF1 Tonywalton
WTF2 Tonywalton
WTF1 Tooga
WTF2 Tooga
WTF1 Torritorri
WTF2 Torritorri
WTF1 Toshio_Yamaguchi/Signpost
WTF2 Toshio_Yamaguchi/Signpost
WTF1 Totie
WTF2 Totie
WTF1 Tpbradbury
WTF2 Tpbradbury
WTF1 Trampikey
WTF2 Trampikey
WTF1 Trex2001
WTF2 Trex2001
WTF1 Triwbe
WTF2 Triwbe
WTF1 Turbokoala
WTF2 Turbokoala
WTF1 Turco85
WTF2 Turco85
WTF1 Twsx
WTF2 Twsx
WTF1 Tydus_Arandor/Signposts
WTF2 Tydus_Arandor/Signposts
WTF1 U5K0
WTF2 U5K0
WTF1 Ukexpat
WTF2 Ukexpat
WTF1 Ularevalo98
WTF2 Ularevalo98
WTF1 Umrguy42
WTF2 Umrguy42
WTF1 Underneath-it-All
WTF2 Underneath-it-All
WTF1 UpstateNYer
WTF2 UpstateNYer
WTF1 Useight
WTF2 Useight
WTF1 Utcursch
WTF2 Utcursch
WTF1 Uzma_Gamal
WTF2 Uzma_Gamal
WTF1 Valfontis
WTF2 Valfontis
WTF1 Valley2city
WTF2 Valley2city
WTF1 Van_der_Hoorn/Signpost
WTF2 Van_der_Hoorn/Signpost
WTF1 Vensatry
WTF2 Vensatry
Edited: Venudxb/Signpost

It looks like the bot was unable to edit for a short period of time. Wikimedia did some database upgrades recently (cf. this blog post), which required setting the databases to read-only for a bit. My guess would be that it's related to that? Dunno. The bot should have a public log and better error reporting, but ... it doesn't. Let me know if you miss any future deliveries. For now, I'm assuming this was a fluke. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:16, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Signpost failed delivery

Why did EdwardsBot fail to deliver the WP:POST this week?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 22:04, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Look at the section directly above (you're mentioned). :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 22:19, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 22:23, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Horizontal list formatting

Hi, I'm writing to ask you to change the format of Signpost updates, to use the more accessible and standards-compliant markup that is now available. For example, in last week's notice, you would write:

{{Flatlist|
* '''[[Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost|Read this Signpost in full]]'''
* [[Wikipedia:Signpost/Single|Single-page]]
* [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Subscribe|Unsubscribe]]
* [[User:EdwardsBot|EdwardsBot]] ([[User talk:EdwardsBot|talk]]) 23:05, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
}}

instead of

'''[[Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost|Read this Signpost in full]]''' · [[Wikipedia:Signpost/Single|Single-page]] · [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Subscribe|Unsubscribe]] · [[User:EdwardsBot|EdwardsBot]] ([[User talk:EdwardsBot|talk]]) 23:05, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

The rendering should be near-identical. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 19:16, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't control the Signpost format/output. Check the page history of User:EdwardsBot/Spam to see who you'd need to talk to about changing it. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:34, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

OK, sorry - I've applied the changes myself. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:03, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Documentation heading levels

May I - again - draw your attention to Template talk:Documentation#Heading fix redux. I can't believe this is still dragging on..! Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:53, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Tag at Marwan Khoury

Yes. Thanks for spotting it.AlexGWU (talk) 22:19, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi. In this edit, you meant "{{", not "((". :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 17:53, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

An image you removed...

...from Negative resistance was incorrectly speedied F1. I need to know if you removed it from any other articles. Thanks, SpinningSpark 23:19, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

I was working from this list. Looks like the image is only listed there once. The image is still deleted, so you've essentially restored a broken file link into a live article. I really wish you wouldn't do that, though I understand that you dispute the speedy deletion. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:32, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

It is not so much that I have restored a broken file, it is more that the file deleter has broken the article. It is infinitely more important to the purpose of Wikipedia to deliver information to our readers than to keep a tidy filing system. The correct action now is to restore the file, not to winge at me for disrupting the file tidying. SpinningSpark 00:02, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I just looked at both images and S.jpg looks to simply be a resized version of M.jpg. A visual examination indicates this when both images are overlaid at the same width (640px) and the deleted file description page of S.jpg indicates that M.jpg is an "other version". Seeing that S.jpg is (was) the smaller copy of the two, I'm not sure why you're clamoring for an undeletion here, but perhaps there's something I'm missing, so I'll defer to you. (Materialscientist re-removed the broken file link in any case, so it's all rather moot.) --MZMcBride (talk) 00:30, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

My clamour was not so much to have a duplicate undeleted, but rather to have the article restored to its former position. The replacement (which has now been put in the article) was not linked in the edit summary by either you or the deleting admin so it is not particularly straightforward to find it, and in my opinion it is only fair that the those who caused the mess should be doing the fixing in any case. SpinningSpark 19:12, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Fine Art Edit-a-Thon & DC Meetup 26!

Fine Art Edit-a-Thon & Meetup - Who should come? You should. Really.

FINE ART EDIT-A-THON & DC MEETUP 26 is December 17! The Edit-a-Thon will cover fine art subjects from the Federal Art Project and the meet up will involve Wikipedians from the area as well as Wiki-loving GLAM professionals. You don't have to attend both to attend one (but we hope you do!) Click the link above and sign up & spread the word! See you there! SarahStierch (talk) 15:41, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks!

For cleaning up the meetup page - things have been a bit hectic on my end so I threw it together rather quickly. Much appreciated =) SarahStierch (talk) 02:47, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

No problem! Thanks for organizing and coordinating. It looks good. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 02:49, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Re: Quick question

{{talkback|Kirill Lokshin|Quick question}}

User talk:MZMcBride/watcher#female userpages

Hello MZMcBride!

Is there a chance that this problem get fixed? --Knopfkind (talk) 19:08, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi. Sorry for the delay. I need to put the code for watcher into revision control. There's already infrastructure in place for it (here), but I haven't gotten around to it quite yet. I'm making a note right now to look at this tomorrow. Thanks for poking me. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:46, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Question about a template parameter query

Greetings MZM, sorry to bother you but I have a task and I'm not sure if its even possible. Was wondering if its possible to determine all the parameters in use on a template for the articles that links to it. For example, WikiProject United States has a group of valid parameters available (such as small, class, importance, etc.) but some articles have parameters in use that do not appear on the template (this includes misspellings of the correct ones such as clas, iportance, snall, etc., parameters that don't exist for the template such as biography, bio, etc., parameters that have been eliminated from the template, etc.) Do you know of any way to do that? --Kumioko (talk) 17:33, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

It's not easy work, but it's possible. The main issue is that template parameter names aren't necessarily static. You can have a template parameter such as {{{foo{{{bar}}}}}} where the value of bar can change the parameter name that begins with "foo". For example, let's say you have a template named {{variable}} with the following content:

{{{foo{{{bar}}}}}}

You can then call the template using something like this:

{{variable | bar = bing | foobing = baz}}

The "foobing" template parameter doesn't appear in the template code and is a variable construct based on the value of bar.

Why is this relevant? Because it means that you can't easily determine a fixed list of valid parameter names! Without a list of parameter names to validate against, it makes spotting invalid parameter names very, very difficult. (Does that make sense?)

If you provide the script an input list of all the possible valid template parameter names, it makes life a bit easier, but there's still no guarantee that you'll catch every invalid template parameter. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:11, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Its based on 2 separate issues actually. ON one hand I have found quite a few articles with invalid parameters in the WikiProject banner and I would like to fix them either by adding code to the template to accept that (for example to make it accept Class as well as class) or by replacing the parameter with the correct one (mostly due to misspellings here like clas instead of class or things of that nature). The second is based on a discussion about the Citation templates that have dozens of vairations of parameter problems causing things to not display correctly or not at all. I was hopeing that there was a tool or fairly easy way to look at a template and see what parameters were displayed with maybe even a number of articles affected. But if its a huge pain then its not a major issue ill just keep tweaking them as I find them.--Kumioko (talk) 19:54, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

I forgot to mention that I currently have a database report that lists invalid template parameters: Articles containing invalid template parameters (configuration). It's limited to Template:Infobox officeholder currently, I believe.

Template parameters can be made case-insensitive or have aliases. So it would be possible to accept "clas" or "Class" without editing any uses of the template and just updating the template code. You have to do a cost–benefit analysis to figure out whether the additional code complexity is worth catching more and more obscure edge cases.

I'd be interested in examples of broken citation templates. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:05, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, That's a great report. I agree that in many cases it would be better and easier to change the template to accept upper or lowercase (at least for the first letter anyway). I sort of don't agree that we should build in a million different variations just in case someone messes it up. I would rather do the change but that's just me. Of course if we are talking hundreds or thousands of articles with a certain parameter spelling then I might be inclined to say just create an alias for it.

In regards to the Cite question. If you take a look at the talk page for {{Cite news}} I posted a large list of possible invalid parameters. This list was originally created by Rjwilmsi for his bot but then when he create the AWB page for renaming invalid template parameters he posted a massive list of parameters. So I thought it might be easier to cull that very long list, by adding these invalid parameter possibilities to the Cite news template logic a group at a time and then as we eliminate them from the list we can remove them from the page. But they declined on the grounds the template was too widely used and too complicated to do this type of change. As you can see by this list, just for Cite news there is a giant listing of invalid fields, many of which IMO, are likely already fixed by his bot. I hope this helps. --Kumioko (talk) 05:48, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Now that I've had a chance to think about this a little more. The report is good but I'm really just looking for a listing of the parameters that appear for the articles the template is on with a count of the number of articles its on. I can sort out which ones work manually by adding a few at a time to a sandbox to see if they work and then take action as necessary. Using the Cite news template as an example I am pretty familiar with the parameters that are in use for that template and will be able to tell if its a valid one or not. Of course if your too busy with other tasks or if this is impractical I certainly understand. --Kumioko (talk) 01:50, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

re Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Rind et al

You deleted this under "R1", but there is no "R1" (it starts at R2) and anyway it's not a redirect. I don't suppose you remember what the reason was? Herostratus (talk) 03:49, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

There was a WP:CSD#R1 when I deleted the page. It got merged with G8, which is why it points there now. Perhaps that should be made clearer, but not my problem or concern, in any case.

The page was a redirect to Talk:Rind et al./Delete. HTH. HAND. &c. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:11, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Oh, OK, that's an odd redirect... oh, well, probably not worth pursuing further I guess. Thanks. Herostratus (talk) 02:31, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

re: User:EdwardsBot/Spam

{{Talkback|Peppage|User:EdwardsBot/Spam|ts = 22:52, 5 December 2011 (UTC)}}

Nomination for deletion of Template:Nobel icon

Template:Nobel icon has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Bulwersator (talk) 05:43, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	REXGOBLIN. JEMIMAJASMIN 01:48, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

A cupcake for you!

Thanks for improving my userpage! :) Frap (talk) 18:45, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

No problem. There's some extra whitespace above the intro ("I am the divine...") that I wasn't sure was intentional. It's a bit unsightly. If you'd like me to kill it, let me know. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:56, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

Infected kittens again!! <3

Theo10011 (talk) 23:33, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Am I being punished? --MZMcBride (talk) 16:29, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Lists of Wikipedians by page count

It seems that your bot runs the code to update Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by article count. Is it feasible to create parallel pages for template space, image space, category space and project space? Also, can you confirm that unexpanded redirects are ignored in this count. Does it ignore dab pages? Maybe a dab and a redirect list would be useful as well if they are ignored.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 13:09, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

The work on database reports is already so backlogged that I can't commit to any further reports at the moment.

Are you referring to a programming or a processing backlog?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 15:42, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Programming. I have something like 1,000 unread e-mails in my Toolserver folder right now. A lot of them are garbage or duplicates, but a fair number are reporting legitimate issues with the current reports. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:07, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

That page (Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by article count) is based on the current state of an article. For example, if you (Tony) created a redirect ("A") and that redirect was later expanded by someone else ("A is the first letter..."), you (Tony) would be credited as having created an article. Similarly, if you created an article that was later turned into a redirect, that would not be counted as an article creation in the stats. Disambiguation pages are included in the current stats. --MZMcBride (talk) 13:55, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Nomination of Like button for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Like button is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Like button until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on good quality evidence, and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. Fluttershy !xmcuvg2MH 01:55, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Template:Dramedy

If this is the first article that you have created, you may want to read the guide to writing your first article.

You may want to consider using the Article Wizard to help you create articles.

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. This is a notice that the page that you created was tagged as a test page and has been or soon will be deleted. Please use the sandbox for any other tests you want to do. Take a look at the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, contest the deletion by clicking on the button labelled "Click here to contest this speedy deletion". Doing so will take you to the talk page where you will find a pre-formatted place for you to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. You can also visit the page's talk page directly to give your reasons, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the page meets the criterion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the page that would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, you can contact one of these administrators to request that the administrator userfy the page or email a copy to you. Bulwersator (talk) 09:12, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Dramedy

Template:Dramedy has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Bulwersator (talk) 09:35, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Nomination of Colloquy (company) for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Colloquy (company) is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Colloquy (company) until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on good quality evidence, and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. SL93 (talk) 00:56, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

tb

{{tb|Ludwigs2}}

userspace links?

I just realized this list isn't getting updated. Can you do something about that? tedder (talk) 18:36, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I dread to think how long that list will be after 3 months gap--Jac16888 ^Talk 18:41, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

National Archives ExtravaSCANza

You are invited to the National Archives ExtravaSCANza, taking place every day next week from January 4–7, Wednesday to Saturday, in College Park, Maryland (Washington, DC metro area). Come help me cap off my stint as Wikipedian in Residence at the National Archives with one last success! This will be a casual working event in which Wikipedians are getting together to scan interesting documents at the National Archives related to a different theme each day—currently: spaceflight, women's suffrage, Chile, and battleships—for use on Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons. The event is being held on multiple days, and in the evenings and weekend, so that as many locals and out-of-towners from nearby regions1 as possible can come. Please join us! Dominic·t 01:28, 30 December 2011 (UTC) 1 Wikipedians from DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Newark, New York City, and Pittsburgh have been invited.

Spammer. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:45, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Bully. Dominic·t 19:21, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

sbm --MZMcBride (talk) 19:26, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Like —Emufarmers^(T/C) 20:06, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

J Milburn being very silly

Hi. Just wanted to let you know that, because I made a mistake in a message, I temporarily blocked EdwardsBot. It's unblocked now, and, though I had to do a second run because it was unable to deliver messages to a hunk of the list, it's working fine. Sorry! J Milburn (talk) 01:50, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Twice now... --MZMcBride (talk) 18:36, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Have you considered previewing your message first before sending it out? You can copy and paste the text into the browser and hit "show preview" or you can use yourself on a test input list (in a sandbox somewhere or something). All the bot does essentially is copy and paste the text and then lets MediaWiki do all the magic expansion. That's why "~~~~" expands as the bot.

There's no real stop feature in the bot (it even ignores blocks and just continues to run through the list, I think...), so it's good to be careful. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:42, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm really sorry about that. I've been using the bot for a while without problems this bad (I was panicking and rushing when I blocked it a few minutes ago), and I always save the message elsewhere first to look through it; I just cocked up. I'll certainly be more careful in future. Thanks for allowing us to use the bot, by the way- it's an absolute life-saver when I can use it correctly. J Milburn (talk) 19:07, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

No worries about the blocks. Though if this continues, EdwardsBot's block log will be longer than mine... I'll have to catch up. Happy new year! :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 22:48, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free image File:Colloquy.gif

⚠

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

Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Skier Dude (talk) 03:47, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

watcher and women

you remember? ;) if it annoys you that i poke you monthly let me know ;) by the way: happy new year! --Knopfkind (talk) 12:33, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

bot scripts list

I talked with Doug about User_talk:Doug#bot_scripts. Unfortunately, i do not know how to make this kind of list through TS: TS didn't have stored pages texts, isn't it? So, how could i make this kind of list?--Nickanc (talk) 14:42, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Doug and I briefly talked about database dumps, I think. I was saying that if you have a Toolserver account, you don't usually need to download the dumps locally, as they're available in /mnt/user-store/ (in "dumps" or "dump"). If they're not there already, you can easily wget them on a fast connection. If you have other questions about something you're working on, best to ask them here directly. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:02, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Tamanu oil

Howdy, and happy New Year. I think I was asleep at the wheel, but I've just noticed that tamanu oil was deleted back in 2007. I probably wrote it to flesh out what list of vegetable oils has regarding it. I have no memory of it being deleted, and don't want to put my foot in a mess by recreating it, but I can't see any reason why it would have been deleted. It's just another plant oil, after all. Is the reasoning for deleting it still retrievable? And could you pass on what it contained, to give me a bit of a head start on rewriting it? Waitak (talk) 17:33, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Happy New Year. You created a redirect to Tamanu Oil, with the target being deleted in 2007 because it was a copyvio and the redirect being deleted because there was no article at the target. Hope that helps. I don't see an issue with you recreating it (though the proper page would probably be Tamanu oil). Killiondude (talk) 19:30, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

I may have broken something

Hi MZMcBride. I was playing with your watcher tool and all went well until I accidentally asked how many watchers there were for a page that doesn't exist, which seems to have made it stop calculating how many watchers a centijimbo is. Sorry about that if I did it. (Or possibly you've been doing work on it and this is a complete coincidence, in which case never mind.) 28bytes (talk) 17:47, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

I haven't touched the script in months. But if regular users can break a script with bad input, it's the programmer's fault, not the users'. :-)

watcher seems to be working fine right now. It's perfectly acceptable to see how many people are watching a non-existent page (example). Let me know if you have any problems with watcher. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:19, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. When I click your link, I see "1 centijimbo is 25.43 watchers" at the top, but when I change "JzG" to "JzG/0", that changes to "1 centijimbo is 1.69 watchers". Similarly checking User:A! vs User:A!! gives 25.43 vs 1.69 for some reason. Previously it gave me internal server/500 errors after the first time it said "1.69" but it seems not to be doing that now. 28bytes (talk) 21:22, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

ULA — Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.0.9.138 (talk) 09:36, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Toolserver error message

From [7], I got the following error message:

Internal Server Error (500)

The server encountered an internal error and is unable to complete your request at this time. If the problem persists, please contact the owner of the tool you are trying to use and inform them of this error, quoting the following information:

• Request host: toolserver.org
• Request path: GET /~mzmcbride/cgi-bin/watcher.py

The owner of this tool is: mzmcbride [at] toolserver [dot] org.

---

HTTP server at toolserver.org - ts-admins [at] toolserver [dot] org

Can this be dealt with (or is it toolserver's fault? ;)HurricaneFan25 02:20, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Any disambiguation nerds,

I wrote a query to list pages in Category:All disambiguation pages that contain links to deleted articles. There are 100 results available here.

I've been reading up a bit at MOS:DABRL about this. Fascinating stuff. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:25, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Additionally, we have Wikipedia:Disambiguation dos and don'ts and tools:~dispenser/logs/mosdab-enwiki.log. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:34, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

BOT flag in dewiki

Hello MZMcBride. Please request bot flag for EdwardsBot in dewiki. It would make things easier and avoid misunderstandings. Best regards, Siech•Fred ^Home 10:57, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Done: <https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=98203264&oldid=97993723>. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:41, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of several articles

Hi. I've proposed deletion of the following articles as they are unreferenced articles that fail to credibly assert notability of the subject and/or fail WP:PLOT:

• 100,000 Airplanes
• 17 People
• 18th and Potomac
• 20 Hours in L.A.
• 2162 Votes - added 13 January 2012
• 365 Days - added 13 January 2012
• A Change Is Gonna Come (The West Wing) - added 13 January 2012
• A Proportional Response - added 13 January 2012

AussieLegend (talk) 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Personally, I'd like to see all of the individual episode articles merged into lists by season. Do you have any thoughts about doing that, or is this simply robo-shit dropped on my talk page? --MZMcBride (talk) 18:35, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

For some reason, season articles for the last two seasons had been created, but not for seasons 1-5. Season 6's article wasn't even acknowledged at List of The West Wing episodes and, while Season 7's was, the episode list wasn't transcluded from The West Wing (season 7), meaning there were two different episode lists for the same season at two different locations. I've now created articles for every season and reworked List of The West Wing episodes, The West Wing (season 6) and The West Wing (season 7). I'm currently going through every episode article to determine which establish notability and which don't, but it's a big job. --AussieLegend (talk) 10:31, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Empty categories report

Hey, long time no talk. Is Wikipedia:Database_reports/Empty_categories broken? It's supposed to be updating daily but hasn't for over a week. It's pretty much the only admin tasks I still regularly undertake so I'm having withdrawals. VegaDark (talk) 08:29, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Global message delivery

Hi, there's a new message on Talk:Global message delivery. Thanks Candalua (talk) 21:10, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Hi. I don't have much involvement in the distribution lists. It looks you posted the list to the correct place. It'll be Tilman that you'll want to talk to about specific logistics of global message delivery. Hope that helps. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:14, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

{{talkback|The ed17|ts=00:11, 16 January 2012 (UTC)}} Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 00:11, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

EdwardsBot on ar.wikisource: global message delivery

Hi,

Could you please tell you bot that messages need to be added before categories and interwiki links? And, less important but still desirable, could it enclose the messages on right-to-left language wikis (e.g. Arabic, Farsi, etc.) between <div dir="ltr"> and </div> tags so that the messages appear with correct text direction?

Thank you,

-- Lanhiaze (Reply) —Preceding undated comment added 08:14, 16 January 2012 (UTC).

Why are interwiki and category links at the bottom of the page? Doesn't that get screwed up every time someone uses the "new section" functionality? --MZMcBride (talk) 14:52, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

That seems a really bad choice. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 16:50, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Nomination of Drought Conditions for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Drought Conditions is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Drought Conditions (2nd nomination) until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on good quality evidence, and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. AussieLegend (talk) 11:11, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

You know, you could spend time merging these articles into season lists rather than finding ones to nominate for deletion. --MZMcBride (talk) 14:58, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

You know, I'm already doing that, which is why this article was nominated. --AussieLegend (talk) 15:01, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Then why not just redirect the page? I'm confused. --MZMcBride (talk) 15:21, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

In opposition to the SOPA blackout

Wikipedia is a wiki encyclopedia. Disabling editing and turning the site into a soapbox is a very poor idea. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:19, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The Original Barnstar
		This barnstar is awarded to everyone who - whatever their opinion - contributed to the discussion about Wikipedia and SOPA. Thank you for being a part of the discussion. Presented by the Wikimedia Foundation.

It was a fairly jackass move to go around spamming people with barnstars using AWB. Please don't ever do that again. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:08, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Help with Infobox

Hi. Could you shed some light on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases#How remove from "Flagged U.S. Supreme Court articles" category?? Thanks. --Noleander (talk) 05:45, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Commented there. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:58, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Report not updated: Stubs included directly in stub categories

Hi, regarding Wikipedia:Database reports/Stubs included directly in stub categories which is built by BernsteinBot (talk · contribs), please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting#Help with report refresh. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:13, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Fellows v. Blacksmith/archive1

I made some tweaks to the article and responded to your comments. Savidan 01:36, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Speedy, speedy. Replied. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:43, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Would you mind revisiting your comments are clarifying whether my responses and changes were adequate? Savidan 08:05, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Template:Wikipedia category

{{Talkback|Richardguk|Template:Wikipedia category|ts = 03:11, 23 January 2012 (UTC)}}

SCOTUS work

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=472507126&oldid=472235539, if interested. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:55, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Hmmm, and kill the "SCOTUS" parameter. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:46, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Transclusions of deleted templates

Would it be possible for your bot to update this one? Thank you. 198.102.153.2 (talk) 16:19, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Done. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:18, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Could you update it again? Thank you. 198.102.153.2 (talk) 18:50, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Running now. Is the current update frequency inadequate? --MZMcBride (talk) 22:19, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

It says "weekly", but it hasn't been updated since October 6? 198.102.153.2 (talk) 20:55, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

It's now been over three weeks, and I see you are working on rewriting things, but it would be very helpful if you could run this one again. Thank you. 198.102.153.2 (talk) 23:48, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Trying again now... fingers crossed. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:29, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

And now done... wtf. Maybe it's load-related? Who knows. Computers are the fucking worst. Thanks for pinging me about this. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:10, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. It would be great if we could get another update (and perhaps for the unused templates page as well). Thank you in advance. 198.102.153.2 (talk) 23:58, 2 December 2011 (UTC) Ping. 198.102.153.2 (talk) 22:05, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, not ignoring you. I tried running this when you pinged a few weeks ago and I tried running it again after your most recent ping. The query keeps getting killed. I briefly looked at the code for the report and didn't see any obvious optimizations. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:48, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Strange. I wonder if it is due to database lag or something. It's strange that your other jobs have been running fine. Thanks for trying, and hopefully you can run it again soon. 198.102.153.2 (talk) 00:34, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

If possible, it would be great to try again. I recently found a bunch of transclusions of some French templates (e.g., template:Er). Thank you. 198.102.153.2 (talk) 23:02, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:User pages#RfC: Should "new messages" banner hoaxes be prohibited?

Hi MZMcBride. You participated in the discussion at Wikipedia talk:User pages#Simulating the MediaWiki interface (joke banners redux). I have started an RfC about the issue: Wikipedia talk:User pages#RfC: Should "new messages" banner hoaxes be prohibited?. Cunard (talk) 05:14, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Poke

Wikipedia:Database reports/Potential biographies of living people (2) needs to be run again. It also needs to exclude articles in Category:Missing people and articles like Jarosław Ziętara (Category:Murder victims?). Thanks hun. --Closedmouth (talk) 17:28, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

WP:BEAR --MZMcBride (talk) 19:10, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

WP:TWINK --Closedmouth (talk) 19:30, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Okay, it runs about a trillion times faster now. I updated the on-wiki code as well. The report was already excluding Category:Missing people and some other categories. I expanded those lists and made a few other corrections. YOU'RE WELCOME. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:14, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

CHEERS BRO --Closedmouth (talk) 05:56, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Access to User:EdwardsBot

Hello!

I wanted to ask you if it would be possible to grant me access to your bot (e.g. add me to User:EdwardsBot/Access_list) also. I am running User:DrTrigonBot on several wikis (mainly dewiki) and the usage of your bot would be very useful at some point (at the moment mainly for some testing, e.g. on my sandbox). Thanks and greetings --DrTrigon (talk) 20:25, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

List is here: User:EdwardsBot/Access list. I can't edit it. :-) Ask an admin? The {{sudo}} template usually works. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:47, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

{{sudo}}  Done MBisanz ^talk 20:51, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks a lot to both of you! Btw.: What about using a page ending on '.css' or '.js' they are write protected for all users but you (and admins - as usual)... This is the way I store bot config that should not be edited by other users... ;))) Greetings and thanks again --DrTrigon (talk) 21:24, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Request from GOCE

Hi MZMcBride, the Guild of Copy Editors are looking for a more efficient way to deliver its newsletters to its members. Firstly, I am wondering if you would grant access to your bot for this. Secondly, if access is granted, the mailing list of the Guild is currently slightly fragmented. We send mail to those found on Category:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors members, Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/List of participants and Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Mailing List. We then have to remove those who are listed on Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Mailing List/Exclude. As you can see, this is a bit of a nightmare for me, especially since I do this manually using AWB. If access is granted, perhaps you could suggest a better way for us to organize this. Look forward to your thoughts. Cheers! --SMasters (talk) 05:49, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

I was also wondering about "Exclude" lists. Is there functionality to support an opt-out list? – Lionel ^(talk) 12:23, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

You're more than welcome to use the bot. The access list is here: User:EdwardsBot/Access list. It looks like you're already listed.

Regarding an input list, this seems to be a bit overly complicated. You have a mailing list at Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Mailing List. Is there some reason you can't simply use that? New members wishing to receive the newsletter can sign up there. People who don't wish to receive the newsletter can simply not be listed there. The bot supports delivering to a category, but it doesn't support exclusion lists (beyond a blanket opt-out list available here: Wikipedia:Bots/Opt-out/EdwardsBot). The simplest and sanest method of doing deliveries (of any kind) is to have a (canonical) list of people you're delivering to and simply maintain that list. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:50, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Hi, MZMcBride. I am also affiliated with the GOCE, and have gone ahead with updates to the master list as suggested in this thread. I was wondering if I could get access to the bot as well? That way I could send out newsletters for the Guild without having to ask SMasters, who is unfortunately not available as much as he used to be. Please let me know. Thanks. --Dianna (talk) 13:19, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

{{sudo}} User:EdwardsBot/Access list is the page that needs updating. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:46, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

No, but really... --MZMcBride (talk) 18:27, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

 Done, see here. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:01, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Awesome, thank you. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:40, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I am gonna send out some drive invitations soon and will let you know if things go awry. --Dianna (talk) 04:22, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

You generally want to include a timestamp somewhere in a talk page post, otherwise the archive bots (and their users) get confused and upset. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:26, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
	Thanks for cleaning up after me in several Supreme Court case articles. I'll figure it out eventually :-) Noleander (talk) 21:57, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

No problem! I secretly find it relaxing to fix up these articles. :-) Thank you for all of your hard work creating these pages. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:05, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

An old deletion

I was considering making a redirect and noticed you deleted this title some years back. [8] I was curious as to what criteria R1 is or was, and if you have any reason to believe this would not be a proper redirect. My76Strat (talk) 18:37, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi. "R1" refers to CSD R1: a broken redirect. The page title previously redirected to Soulive. It looks like Soulive now exists, so feel free to re-create the page as a redirect or as a legitimate article. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:50, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. I do have a few considerations to fairly determine this subject is a likely search term and if I do feel restoring the redirect is proper I certainly will, and feel comfortable that you don't object. Cheers. My76Strat (talk) 19:00, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

stalktoy

is blowing up.

Extended content

</font> </font> </font> </blockquote> </pre> </table> </table> </table> </table> </table> </font> </font> </font><body bgcolor="#f0f0f8"> <table width="100%" cellspacing=0 cellpadding=2 border=0 summary="heading"> <tr bgcolor="#6622aa"> <td valign=bottom>&nbsp;<br> <font color="#ffffff" face="helvetica, arial">&nbsp;<br><big><big><strong>&lt;class '_mysql_exceptions.OperationalError'&gt;</strong></big></big></font></td ><td align=right valign=bottom ><font color="#ffffff" face="helvetica, arial">Python 2.7.1: /usr/bin/python<br>Thu Feb 2 19:55:07 2012</font></td></tr></table> <p>A problem occurred in a Python script. Here is the sequence of function calls leading up to the error, in the order they occurred.</p> <table width="100%" cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 border=0> <tr><td bgcolor="#d8bbff"><big>&nbsp;</big><a href="file:///home/mzmcbride/public_html/cgi-bin/stalker.py">/home/mzmcbride/public_html/cgi-bin/stalker.py</a> in <strong><module></strong>()</td></tr> <tr><td><font color="#909090"><tt>&nbsp;&nbsp;<small>&nbsp;&nbsp;202</small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;domain&nbsp;=&nbsp;None<br> </tt></font></td></tr> <tr><td><font color="#909090"><tt>&nbsp;&nbsp;<small>&nbsp;&nbsp;203</small>&nbsp;<br> </tt></font></td></tr> <tr><td bgcolor="#ffccee"><tt>=&gt;<small>&nbsp;&nbsp;204</small>&nbsp;namespace_names&nbsp;=&nbsp;get_namespace_names(db)<br> </tt></td></tr> <tr><td><font color="#909090"><tt>&nbsp;&nbsp;<small>&nbsp;&nbsp;205</small>&nbsp;<br> </tt></font></td></tr> <tr><td><font color="#909090"><tt>&nbsp;&nbsp;<small>&nbsp;&nbsp;206</small>&nbsp;print&nbsp;"""\<br> </tt></font></td></tr> <tr><td><small><font color="#909090">namespace_names <em>undefined</em>, <strong>get_namespace_names</strong>&nbsp;= &lt;function get_namespace_names&gt;, <strong>db</strong>&nbsp;= 'enwiki_p'</font></small></td></tr></table> <table width="100%" cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 border=0> <tr><td bgcolor="#d8bbff"><big>&nbsp;</big><a href="file:///home/mzmcbride/public_html/cgi-bin/stalker.py">/home/mzmcbride/public_html/cgi-bin/stalker.py</a> in <strong>get_namespace_names</strong>(db='enwiki_p')</td></tr> <tr><td><font color="#909090"><tt>&nbsp;&nbsp;<small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;82</small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;conn&nbsp;=&nbsp;MySQLdb.connect(host='sql-s3',<br> </tt></font></td></tr> <tr><td><font color="#909090"><tt>&nbsp;&nbsp;<small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;83</small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;db='toolserver',<br> </tt></font></td></tr> <tr><td bgcolor="#ffccee"><tt>=&gt;<small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;84</small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;read_default_file='/home/mzmcbride/.my.cnf')<br> </tt></td></tr> <tr><td><font color="#909090"><tt>&nbsp;&nbsp;<small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;85</small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;cursor&nbsp;=&nbsp;conn.cursor()<br> </tt></font></td></tr> <tr><td><font color="#909090"><tt>&nbsp;&nbsp;<small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;86</small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;cursor.execute('''<br> </tt></font></td></tr> <tr><td><small><font color="#909090">read_default_file <em>undefined</em></font></small></td></tr></table> <table width="100%" cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 border=0> <tr><td bgcolor="#d8bbff"><big>&nbsp;</big><a href="file:///opt/ts/python/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/MySQLdb/__init__.py">/opt/ts/python/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/MySQLdb/__init__.py</a> in <strong>Connect</strong>(*args=(), **kwargs={'db': 'toolserver', 'host': 'sql-s3', 'read_default_file': '/home/mzmcbride/.my.cnf'})</td></tr> <tr><td><font color="#909090"><tt>&nbsp;&nbsp;<small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;79</small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"""Factory&nbsp;function&nbsp;for&nbsp;connections.Connection."""<br> </tt></font></td></tr> <tr><td><font color="#909090"><tt>&nbsp;&nbsp;<small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;80</small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;from&nbsp;connections&nbsp;import&nbsp;Connection<br> </tt></font></td></tr> <tr><td bgcolor="#ffccee"><tt>=&gt;<small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;81</small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;return&nbsp;Connection(*args,&nbsp;**kwargs)<br> </tt></td></tr> <tr><td><font color="#909090"><tt>&nbsp;&nbsp;<small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;82</small>&nbsp;<br> </tt></font></td></tr> <tr><td><font color="#909090"><tt>&nbsp;&nbsp;<small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;83</small>&nbsp;connect&nbsp;=&nbsp;Connection&nbsp;=&nbsp;Connect<br> </tt></font></td></tr> <tr><td><small><font color="#909090"><strong>Connection</strong>&nbsp;= &lt;class 'MySQLdb.connections.Connection'&gt;, <strong>args</strong>&nbsp;= (), <strong>kwargs</strong>&nbsp;= {'db': 'toolserver', 'host': 'sql-s3', 'read_default_file': '/home/mzmcbride/.my.cnf'}</font></small></td></tr></table> <table width="100%" cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 border=0> <tr><td bgcolor="#d8bbff"><big>&nbsp;</big><a href="file:///opt/ts/python/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/MySQLdb/connections.py">/opt/ts/python/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/MySQLdb/connections.py</a> in <strong>__init__</strong>(self=&lt;_mysql.connection closed at 8311f2c&gt;, *args=(), **kwargs={'db': 'toolserver', 'host': 'sql-s3', 'read_default_file': '/home/mzmcbride/.my.cnf'})</td></tr> <tr><td><font color="#909090"><tt>&nbsp;&nbsp;<small>&nbsp;&nbsp;186</small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;kwargs2['client_flag']&nbsp;=&nbsp;client_flag<br> </tt></font></td></tr> <tr><td><font color="#909090"><tt>&nbsp;&nbsp;<small>&nbsp;&nbsp;187</small>&nbsp;<br> </tt></font></td></tr> <tr><td bgcolor="#ffccee"><tt>=&gt;<small>&nbsp;&nbsp;188</small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;super(Connection,&nbsp;self).__init__(*args,&nbsp;**kwargs2)<br> </tt></td></tr> <tr><td><font color="#909090"><tt>&nbsp;&nbsp;<small>&nbsp;&nbsp;189</small>&nbsp;<br> </tt></font></td></tr> <tr><td><font color="#909090"><tt>&nbsp;&nbsp;<small>&nbsp;&nbsp;190</small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;self.encoders&nbsp;=&nbsp;dict([&nbsp;(k,&nbsp;v)&nbsp;for&nbsp;k,&nbsp;v&nbsp;in&nbsp;conv.items()<br> </tt></font></td></tr> <tr><td><small><font color="#909090"><em>builtin</em> <strong>super</strong>&nbsp;= &lt;type 'super'&gt;, <em>global</em> <strong>Connection</strong>&nbsp;= &lt;class 'MySQLdb.connections.Connection'&gt;, <strong>self</strong>&nbsp;= &lt;_mysql.connection closed at 8311f2c&gt;, ).<strong>__init__</strong>&nbsp;= &lt;bound method Connection.__init__ of &lt;_mysql.connection closed at 8311f2c&gt;&gt;, <strong>args</strong>&nbsp;= (), <strong>kwargs2</strong>&nbsp;= {'client_flag': 196608, 'conv': {0: &lt;class 'decimal.Decimal'&gt;, 1: &lt;type 'int'&gt;, 2: &lt;type 'int'&gt;, 3: &lt;type 'long'&gt;, 4: &lt;type 'float'&gt;, 5: &lt;type 'float'&gt;, 7: &lt;function mysql_timestamp_converter&gt;, 8: &lt;type 'long'&gt;, 9: &lt;type 'int'&gt;, 10: &lt;function Date_or_None&gt;, ...}, 'db': 'toolserver', 'host': 'sql-s3', 'read_default_file': '/home/mzmcbride/.my.cnf'}</font></small></td></tr></table><p><strong>&lt;class '_mysql_exceptions.OperationalError'&gt;</strong>: (2013, "Lost connection to MySQL server at 'reading initial communication packet', system error: 0") <br><tt><small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</small>&nbsp;</tt>args&nbsp;= (2013, "Lost connection to MySQL server at 'reading initial communication packet', system error: 0") <br><tt><small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</small>&nbsp;</tt>message&nbsp;= ''

Hurricanefan25 (talk · contribs) 19:56, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

What URL? --MZMcBride (talk) 23:27, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Wong Kim Ark FAC

Hi. The second FAC for United States v. Wong Kim Ark is still under way, but the number of participants has been small, and I believe it would be helpful to get constructive comments from more people. If you have the time and interest, please consider reviewing the article, then go to the FAC page and offer your comments as appropriate. Note that some extended discussion involving two opposers has been moved to the FAC talk page in order to keep from overloading the main page. Since Wong Kim Ark would, if promoted, become just the second featured SCOTUS case article — and the handling of this FAC may set precedents regarding the standards other SCOTUS articles may need to meet in order to become featured — I think it's important to give this FAC proper attention. Thanks for any input. — Richwales 20:02, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Commented over there. Overall, the article looks good. I just had a few thoughts, most of which can likely be ignored. Good luck with the process. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 20:32, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

You've got mail re: wiki research

{{you've got mail}}

You have my permission to use my Wikipedia username in your work. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:38, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

#7

Te perdono. Killiondude (talk) 23:56, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

You just got userpaged. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:58, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

I can feel the love. Killiondude (talk) 07:52, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Aaycock

Walmarting article. Not sure why you deleted this user as he is an anthropologist, Alan Aycock, Ph.D. who coined the term and indicated on my talk page back in 2006 that he had edited my work to clarify the concept when the article was in danger of deletion.

(cur | prev)  09:49, 30 April 2006‎ Aaycock (talk | contribs)‎ (5,725 bytes) (→Background) (undo) 
(cur | prev)  07:54, 30 April 2006‎ Aaycock (talk | contribs)‎ (5,692 bytes) (→Background) (undo) 
(cur | prev)  07:40, 30 April 2006‎ Aaycock (talk | contribs)‎ (5,639 bytes) (→Background) (undo)

He even wrote about the experience of editing in this article: http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/EJ854850.pdf

I'm sorry, I'm not sure what you're talking about. What do you think I deleted? --MZMcBride (talk) 19:29, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Stub Type Sizes page code

Could you please look into how this page is generated? I noticed, even on February 10, several of the page counts seemed to be way off (more significantly than would occur through normal editing). In fact, the first two categories listed have negative article counts. Dawynn (talk) 23:04, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Yet another database report idea

Pages where XXXX_births is greater than YYYY_deaths. E.g., <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Charles_Semon&oldid=475900367>. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:57, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Bot hiccup?

The last couple of reports at Wikipedia:Database reports/Non-free files missing a rationale have been null - possible hiccup? Thanks for everything! Skier Dude (talk) 23:59, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

EdwardsBot to Outreach wiki?

Hi MZMcBride -- I understand you run User:EdwardsBot, and I'd like to have a similar bot in action on the Outreach wiki, so that I can deliver notifications of the date of an upcoming meeting to a list of users' Outreach wiki talk pages. Would you be willing to migrate the bot to the Outreach wiki? Anything you need me to do to help? -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 17:29, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi LiAnna. For historical reasons, there's a local bot (User:EdwardsBot/Spam) and a global bot (m:Global message delivery/Spam). The global bot came second and now serves any Wikimedia wiki. So rather than creating a third bot to serve outreach.wikimedia.org, you'll probably just want to use the global bot. :-)

It's a fairly straightforward process (laid out here: m:Global message delivery/Instructions). Basically you'll need to get yourself on the global access list, set up your message, and then tell the bot to start. If you need any help, you can leave a note here (on this talk page) or at m:Talk:Global message delivery. Tilman (in your office) has a bit of experience with global message deliveries, as do Guillaume and a few others. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:35, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Perfect! Thanks so much. I didn't know the global one existed; that's just what I need. Thanks! -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 23:03, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

RTL on talk pages

Hi,

EdwardsBot sends messages in English to village pumps of wikis. It would be nice to have it delivered with correct directionality to right-to-left wikis.

Put simply, if the message is in English and the wiki is RTL, put the content in <div class="mw-content-ltr">. See this for an example.

Thank you. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 09:16, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi. The bot echoes what it's given. It's controlled by m:Global message delivery/Spam. I don't believe there's any programmatic way of knowing the directionality of the target site and/or the message content, so I think you need to bother the users who are sending these messages (guillom, Nemo_bis, HaeB, et al.). That is, the bot could, in theory, add the wrapper automatically, but I don't think there's a great way to do so. Instead, the people controlling the bot should add the wrapper as appropriate. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:33, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Cross-reference: <https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=3445479#Marking_directionality_of_messages>. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:42, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Apache Kid

I know this was unintentional, and done in good faith, but a mess has been made of redirects involving Apache Kid, the person, and Apache Kid, the comic-book character. After your changes, which as far as I know were not discussed on any talk page (if they were and I missed them, I apologize), "Apache Kid (comics)" now redirects to Apache Kid, the person.

WikiProject Comics has a consistent titling format, and "Apache Kid (comics)" is the correct for when there is a real-life person or other eneity with the same name as a comics character. "Apache Kid (character)" cannot be moved to "Apache Kid (comics)", where it needs to be for Project consistency, so that's now misdirecting.

Is there any way you could undo your moves so that we can straighten them out. I'm sure you don't want "Apache Kid (comics)" misdirecting to the person, and WikiProject Comics needs to change "Apache Kid (character)", so Im sure we can work this out together.--Tenebrae (talk) 01:31, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi. I'm not sure I follow most of your post. I updated most of the redirects and other links. I missed one ("Apache Kid (comics)"), which I just fixed.

The moves were made to give the person (after which the comic character was named) preference for the main title. This is similar to the practice with books that have been made into movies. The book gets "Title" while the film about the book gets "Title (film)". --MZMcBride (talk) 01:35, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Oh, of course, no question about that: The real-life person gets primacy. My only concern was that the comics character's article be titled "Apache Kid (comics)" rather than "Apache Kid (character)", for consistency within WikiProject Comics. Now that you've graciously made the redirect change, I'll see if I can get an admin to switch "(character)" and "(comics)". Thanks for your help! With regards, Tenebrae (talk) 15:32, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Ohh, I understand now. Sorry for the inconvenience. Let me know if you need any help finding an admin. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:23, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Scroogle

Hi, I want to give a go at the article Scroogle. Can you undelete it? Or otherwise move it to my user space? Thank you. -- Honorsteem (talk) 12:17, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

No. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:22, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Why not? I want to see if I can improve it. -- Honorsteem (talk) 19:31, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, I can't really help you, as I've got no admin powers. But if I did have admin powers, I still wouldn't go poking that bear. Clean start, my ass, you're trouble looking for trouble. Go find somewhere else. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:33, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry that you don't appreciate my clean start, I put the notice there so that other editors know I'm not 100% green, but beyond that I don't mean anything with it. Anyway. There is a lot of mystery around the Scroogle lemma, and the guy who started it, Brandt, but I have nothing to do with that, and I thought Wikipedia was free of censorship, so yeah I poke. But you were the admin who once deleted it, right? Just to know when I want to do a deletion review, I should go first to you. Afteral, it has been a few years, so maybe now the community has a different view about it (For exmaple, a lot was argued that Scroogle was already in Brandts article, but that has been 14(!) times deleted already...), so now there is nothing regarding Scroogle. -- Honorsteem (talk) 21:20, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

The problem is that your clean start doesn't appear to be a clean start. You have followed neither the letter or the spirit of WP:CLEANSTART. MZ, sorry for poking this particular bear here, but the editor in question seems unwilling to engage in the conversation at ANI. Honorsteem, you can easily dispel at least some of the cloud surrounding your clean start. As far as I can tell you have little to hide--unless there is something that has escaped me. Drmies (talk) 00:51, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Look who's stalking -- Honorsteem (talk) 08:40, 21 February 2012 (UTC)