User talk:MZMcBride

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Older discussions are available in the page history.

Name-dropped you

here. Cheers.--chaser - t 02:40, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Replied there. Thanks for the heads-up. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 02:46, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Coordinating task forces

Hello, I was wondering if we could coordinate WP:UBLP with WP:UNCAT somehow. At WP:UNCAT under "Other tasks" there's some BLP-related tasks that may be useful. Have any ideas for coordination? ~EdGl ★ 18:52, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, the easiest way to intertwine the two is to include a "See also" section or something that links between the two pages. Feel free to do that. I'll try to come up with some other ways to coordinate them a bit. If you come up with anything, feel free to drop a note here. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:57, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Redressing grievances (2)

Re-posting for further comments. Old comments available here. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:22, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

With a project this large, there are bound to be people I've upset or pissed off in one way or another. This becomes especially true with the unusually high number of actions and edits I've made. I'd like the opportunity to redress any grievances that people may have.

Please feel free to post below if you have any concerns with my past behavior or actions. Or, if you'd feel more comfortable, feel free to send me an e-mail.

I promise, you won't hurt my feelings by being honest. I want to improve, but the only way that can happen is if people make constructive criticism.

Thanks! --MZMcBride (talk) 21:34, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Addendum: I want to ensure that everyone had an opportunity to speak their minds and that the more playful nature of the previous thread didn't scare anyone off (or make them think I wasn't serious).

Comments from Ched

Ahhh, WTH, I'll take a shot here. My comments aren't really "grievances" though, more a "here is my point of view". We have to go back to the whole "Sekrit Pages" thing though. I still feel the way you just deleted them outright was wrong, but I have to admit that my feelings about it have mellowed somewhat now that I've been exposed to more ... ahhh .. let's say "less than productive" editing. I still think that we need to be somewhat tolerant of new users, even the younger ones who may one day be our editors. I still think we need to be careful of not biting new users. I have come to the conclusion however, that we don't need to be babysitters if someone just isn't ready for this type of project. Basically MZM, I think we need to be open to evolution and change. We need to accept the next generation, at least in being willing to listen to their ideas - even if we don't adopt those ideas. I'm not suggesting that we become pogo.com, facebook, or myspace - but I don't think we need to be so rooted in the status quo that we won't consider new methods of communication. Perhaps the idea would be to approach Brion and ask about some sort of "diskquota" for new users that have < X-number of edits. That way, they can still work with the editing capabilities, but it becomes clear that the idea here is to build and maintain an encyclopedia. I think if you would have just "tagged" the secret guestbook pages (easily found with prefindex), and prompted a discussion, there never would have been the whole mess. I agree, that most 12-year olds aren't ready for Wikipedia, but if we bite them now - they won't want to come back when they are ready. Actually, I wanted to get a lot of this out back when the AN thread started, but when it turned into a lynch mob - I just didn't want any part of a "let's get him" movement. This segue leads to ....

Part 2: At the time I think if you'd have listened more to those around you - that whole "Sekrit Pages" thing would not have snowballed like it did. I noticed that you now seem to make great efforts to listen to others, so I really don't know what else to say here. Good Job?

That's basically pretty much it - My ESP powers tell me that it's only a matter of time before you take your "bit" back, and I realize that not having it really has you working with one hand tied behind your back. I guess I could blubber out some stuff about how I envy your abilities, and admire your work here; I could probably even mention that I might have gained an appreciation for your sense of humor ... but like LHVU said - why waste my fucking time? ... lol. Just be open to accepting change, and a new generation. Best. — Ched :  ?  09:13, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the comments. You're relatively new, so you won't be as familiar with a lot of, erm, more significant events. Things that are a fair bit more exciting than secret pages, to be sure. Perspective helps, I think.

You're very right that we need to be open to new editors. Though I'm not particularly sure that we can't be firm and still not bite. Oh well.

Again, thanks for your comments. If you have any other issues, you know how to reach me. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:36, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Hey, I appreciate you offering a chance to talk. And, Yep! Without a doubt, reading through archives just doesn't have the same ... ahhh (flavor?) as actually being around for the events as they unfold in real-time. Makes me wish I'd have bumped up my "read" access to "read/write" years ago sometimes. And actually, I'm glad I'm welcome here, given your abilities with coding, databases, (which I love working with), and your knowledge of WP in general, I can envision stopping by to ask for some help rather often. Best. — Ched :  ?  14:25, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Can you restore Greetings From...

The album is now notable, as it has peaked at #21 on the Billboard Heatseekers Chart [1] --Russ is the sex (talk) 14:37, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

At the high point, the deleted content of the article was ...

deleted content

"Greetings From..." is an EP by A Rocket To The Moon. A Rocket To The Moon's debut EP on Fueled By Ramen is powerful and honest. Working with producer Matt Grabe from Alive In Wild Paint, A Rocket To The Moon has flawlessly advanced its sound from bedroom electronic-backed acoustic tunes to that of a full band. The EP features the songs 'Dakota' and 'If They Only Knew.'

Fueled By Ramen

I would suggest recreating the article entirely (with reliable sources and an assertion of notability), and posting it to the mainspace. –xeno ^talk 14:45, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

• Actually, I notice now that MZM had just deleted the redirect to Greetings from...

deleted content

Untitled

Greetings From... is the debut EP from Massachusets one-man band A Rocket to the Moon, released through Fueled By Ramen. The album was released on October 14, 2008.

==Track listing==

1. "If Only They Knew" – 2:33
2. "Dakota" – 3:31
3. "I'm Not Saying Goodbye" – 3:18
4. "Fear Of Flying" – 3:56
5. "Just Another One (Featuring John O'Callaghan from The Maine and Justin Richards from Brighten)" – 4:19

Category:2008 EPs Category:Debut EPs

which was deleted per Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/A Rocket to the Moon. Ensure that you adequately address the concerns at AFD before recreating the article. If you recreate it based on the above, you should request the old history be restored for GFDL attribution. –xeno ^talk 14:49, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Hah, nice username. Thanks, xeno. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:16, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

List of Java APIs

Hi MZMcBride, I was wondering why the talk page at the above was deleted. I suspect their was probably pages and pages of it, and why their is so few API's listed. For instance their is nothing about web services, JAXB etc. scope_creep (talk) 19:15, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Talk:List of Java APIs was deleted as it contained only nonsense, I imagine. It had one revision whose content was:

javax.mail ?!?

Feel free to re-create the talk page with appropriate WikiProject tags or what not. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:18, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi MZMcBride, I thought their might be interesting discussions about the page itself, but its more the missing api's from the article i'm looking for. Thanks. scope_creep (talk) 13:26, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

I feel like I should grovel suitably before asking my question

Is it possible, without an unreasonable waste of computing resources, to get some stats on some standard appendices?

I have several questions about the relative prevalence of level 2 section headers for reference sections (e.g., what are the most common section headings under which you will find {{reflist}} or <references />?) and about the order of such headers (e.g., in what proportion of articles containing ==External links== does that section appear last? In what proportion containing both ==See also== and an identifiable ref section does ==See also== precede the ref section?).

Are these questions that could be trivially answered, say, by a survey of perhaps 0.1% of Wikipedia's articles, or should we stick with the personal impressions of individual editors? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:45, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I was actually going to do some sampling of articles (looking for "plainlinks" and "prettytable") anyway, so I can probably throw this in there too. Though some of your questions aren't about sampling all articles, they're more about sampling specific pages (like all articles using {{reflist}}). Overall, you might be better off doing manual sampling (browser tabs + Special:Random). A script could go through and find the headers, but you're more interested in the context, which quickly gets messy. Let me think about this for a bit. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:08, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

By the way, no need to grovel or anything like that. God knows I have more than enough free time on my hands (esp. now that I'm in exile from adminship). :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 23:26, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps I should pretend I'm talking to tech support, and answer the most important question ("Why the heck would you want to do that, anyway?") first. WP:LAYOUT and WP:CITE frequently get into discussions that run like this:

1: "My English lit teacher says that "References" should be called "Bibliography".

2: "Well, my English lit teacher says that it should be titled "Works cited".

3: "Personally, I like "Citations", followed by level 3 headers "Footnotes" and "General references", but I really think that "See also" should be at the end of the page with the navboxes, instead of next to the main article content."

and so forth.

Both pages hope to document the actual practice, but an individual editor, especially someone with 'median' experience, frequently has dealt with so few individual articles that their view of common practice is decidedly skewed -- particularly if those articles are in the same general area. One prolific editor, for example, was titling ref sections "Bibliography and further reading" last year, which is remarkably uncommon overall, but if you only read articles about US lighthouses, you would think that was normal.

The two common debates are (1) what section headers are used for references and (2) what order are the appendices presented in.

For (1), it seems to me that a bare count of section header frequency could be useful, although ==Citations==, for example, can be used for either footnotes or for military citations (e.g., Australian_Honours_Order_of_Precedence#Citations, and ==Bibliography== might be "books written by this novelist" or "reliable sources used to construct this article). If we (as I speculated on above) limit it to which ones collate inline refs, then we lose, as well: we'll pick up "Footnotes" used for short citations, but then we'll miss the hand-typed alphabetized list under "References", as well as all articles using parenthetical refs or general refs.

For (2), if we had a list of what the relevant section headings were, then tabulating the order that they're used in doesn't seem too complicated. There are five typical types of appendices, and these are probably the most common headings:

• {Works | Publications | Bibliography* | Books}
• See also
• {References | Notes | Footnotes | Citations* | Works cited}
• Further reading
• External links

Twelve common headers, with no more than seven possible in any given article (you might have two for the refs, if short citations are used, and three if the editor ignores the injunction against nesting headers in the refs [typically resulting in "Citations" as level 2, with "Footnotes" and "General references" as level 3 headers), gives us -- well, about a million possible combinations in theory, but probably dramatically less than that, and something that might be possible to scan for conformity to the listed order. (The starred* ones are the most likely to create an exception, as they do have other discouraged-but-legitimate uses; some work by hand may be inevitable. Oh, and a few people inappropriately use level 3 headers under "External links" to divide up, say, "pro" and "anti" websites.)

It might be better to handle these separately, with the results from (1) informing the list of headers checked in (2). Also, I think it's worth mentioning that I'm hoping for "good enough" data, not a perfect and definitive answer. I'd be perfectly happy, for example, in (2) to hear that "X% of articles appear to conform to the recommended order." What do you think? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:33, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

All right, so here's the plan. I'm going to take a random sample of 2,000 articles and I'm going to go through each with a script using a regex sort of like this:

^=+[ ]*(works|publications|bibliography|books|see also|references|notes|footnotes|citations|works cited|further reading|external links)[ ]*=+

The idea is to get output for each page that looks something like this (for two random articles):

Page	Headers
Marianów, Gmina Głowaczów	== References ==
Dumbarton Oaks Conference	== See also == == References == == Further reading == == External links ==

With a large table of results, it should be possible to analyze patterns and trends, no? Sound reasonable? --MZMcBride (talk) 03:11, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes. Determining frequency for a given header will be trivial, and if the list is "only" 2,000 articles, I can count for order compliance by hand. Thanks, WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:55, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

results

Results available here: User:WhatamIdoing/Header frequency. I put some notes about the data on your talk page. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:17, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm processing by hand at the moment. Is it possible to get the list of the 453 articles containing none of the target headers? (No rush, and it's not a big deal if the list is no longer available.) Thanks, WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:00, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

A quick look at Charles Claude Selecman suggests that we may have a problem. Here's the output for it (I added the fourth column):

No.	Page	Headers	Order
44	Charles Claude Selecman	==Publications== ==Notes==	Yes

But the article itself has three headers, including ==See also==, which is absent from the output. Any idea what happened? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:13, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Fuck. Sorry about that. The original data was correct, but when I manipulated it to make it into a table, it got screwed up. I've updated User:WhatamIdoing/Header frequency and created User talk:WhatamIdoing/Header frequency with the list you requested. You may want to sample the new list, but it should be accurate. Again, my apologies for the confusion. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:37, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Oops

Oops, thanks. :) – Quadell ^(talk) 01:40, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

IRC

Ah, I see. The things I miss by not being on IRC! – Quadell ^(talk) 19:05, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Indeed. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 19:06, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

DYK for John Phillip Santos

On 7 May, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article John Phillip Santos, which you recently nominated. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Awadewit (talk) 17:51, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

wtf

not sure why http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Xenobot/sandbox&oldid=288579450 doesn't edit Berric still ? –xeno ^talk 00:20, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

lern2regex. :P You had:

== [ ]*References[ ]* ==

That says you explicitly what a space followed by 0 to infinite spaces. The problem is that by explicitly saying you want a space on both sides, you don't match ==References==.

==[ ]*References[ ]*==

That catches ==References ==, ==    References ==, etc. Updated your code appropriately. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:09, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

God I suck. Thank you. –xeno ^talk 12:34, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

LOL - You know what happened? When MiszaBot took these threads from my page and archived them, it added the space after the =='s. *sigh* The bots, they be takin' over!!! –xeno ^talk 12:37, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Hahaha. Damn bots. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:33, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Where is my secret page?

What have you done with my secret page? Why have you deleted it? Gaia Octavia Agrippa ^Talk | _Sign 19:53, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Got a link (or links)? --MZMcBride (talk) 19:54, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I found it! I gets barnstar now? ;> –xeno ^talk 20:02, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

No german photographers in the Americas?

Why did you delete this list (and more important who was on it)?--Radh (talk) 13:56, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

A link to the page in question would help . . . –xeno ^talk 13:58, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

I deleted German_photography_in_America, which was a broken redirect to List of German-speaking photographers in the Americas. The actual content was deleted following a deletion discussion here. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:28, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks.--Radh (talk) 16:54, 12 May 2009 (UTC) I am puzzled by this deletion debate, I can see that the list perhaps was not that good, but the concept is not that idiotic. I am interested in 19th century photography, esp of the Hopi, but of all American "Indians", a german disease, I know. Fact is that there are a lot of german or german born photographers in the Americas at that time. Arnold Genthe, but many others. It would be nice to have a list, why not. There are so many lousy articles here, would it not be more productive to built up Wikip, than to erase other people's work? --Radh (talk) 17:03, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

That question is probably better directed at the people who participated in the deletion discussion. I was merely doing some housekeeping by deleting a broken redirect to the page. Personally, I think trying to list all German-American photographers is a job suited for our categorization system, but that's just my personal opinion. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:07, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

No, sorry I can be pampig some times. I found the list via google and it is a bit of a mess. I have written an e-mail, so will see what happens then. The argument against singling out german photographers: it would be better to simply have all photographers of Native Americans is theoretical correct, but I think I might find 50 if not 100 photographers for the Hopi alone (up to 1920).--Radh (talk) 19:25, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Redirect on r.c.h.

I thought it better to send it to RfD and get a definitive community discussion. As for deleting it, I agree with you. DGG (talk) 02:51, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough. Thanks for filing it. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:59, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Click

See Template talk:Click#Title field broken. Thanks. - ALLST✰R▼^echo _{wuz here @} 07:33, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Request to restore the "TV Tropes" page (Reason: Multiple sources now available that satisify notability standards)

Hello, I was not a participant in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/TV Tropes Wiki (2nd nomination) but I have read it over before. I was reading a two page website article from a college newspaper, published in February of this year on the topic of TV Tropes: [2], and was reminded of this debate. I recalled that the main argument for deletion had been that the TV Tropes wiki did not meet the standards of notability for a website set forth under WP:WEB, mostly due there being no known reliable sources that made anything more than a passing reference to the site. Curious, I looked to see if there were any other articles published that went in depth on the topic and found an extremely in depth article on a website related to semantic computer science that talks about the site in an immense amount of detail. [3]

Also Bruce Sterling devoted an entire posting to it on his Beyond the Beyond blog on WIRED. Yes. That Bruce Sterling, and that WIRED. (Mind you, Much of it appears to be website analysis that Allen Varney sent to Sterling to be posted in the blog, with responses written by Sterling highlighted in triple parenthesis, but looking over other entries in the blog, this is not an uncommon way for Sterling to make a posting.)

[4]

Reading over WP:WEB I very much think the initial issues for which the article was deleted are no longer valid. The site now fits the standards of notability for website related articles on wikipedia. I could look for more sources. If you think they are still necessary, I can find them. (After the Bruce Sterling/Varney one, I sort of didn't see a need to look for any more sources. The two articles I had already gotten seemed to fit well under WP:RS They were not self-published, they were independent and neither of them appeared to be trivial, but the Sterling/Varney WIRED article seemed to push it over the top)

Thank you (I hope you were the appropriate person to contact. Wikipedia:Deletion Review says to bring the issue up with the deleting admin before doing anything else. If not I am sorry, please let me know, and again thank you.)

-Sgore (talk) 22:15, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Seems reasonable to me to have an article if there are sufficient reliable sources. If you look at the log at TV Tropes, you can see that another admin deleted the page and said to go to Deletion review. That's probably the best option. The best thing to do is a create a user space draft of the article (User:Sgore/TV Tropes or something) and then file a deletion review. (This helps people at deletion review make a reasoned decision—having something concrete to look at and evaluate.) Throw me a link to the deletion review when you file it and I'll comment there. :-) Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:29, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks!-Sgore (talk) 22:33, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

The entry is up, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2009_May_15 Thanks again for your help!-Sgore (talk) 03:33, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Actually, here's a more direct link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review#TV_Tropes -Sgore (talk) 20:52, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Commented there. Thanks for all of your hard work. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 23:00, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Right back at you!-Sgore (talk) 03:05, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Coordinates query

Hi. If you have a moment, would you be so kind and re-run the query? To include additional templates, I made a new category Category:Templates with coordinates fields replacing Category:Templates_generating_hCards_and_Geo. -- User:Docu

I'm lost. Do you want to use the new category in place of the old one or in addition to it? And you wanted a RIGHT JOIN somewhere, too, right? --MZMcBride (talk) 20:11, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I updated it on the query page (I should have put it on a subpage to begin with). - User:Docu

Sorry for the delay. tools:~mzmcbride/docu-2009-05-20.txt is the results using this query. (Note, you may want to save link as; it's a large text file and may make your browser sad.) --MZMcBride (talk) 22:34, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

That was still very quick. Thanks. -- User:Docu

Notability question

This article was introduced in March. Does it really belong on Wikipedia? I'm sure there have been plenty of similar cases in the past. How are they generally handled? Thanks, Enigma^msg 23:50, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Ugh. Nasty man. From what I can gather off-hand, notability seems to be a borderline case. You could try AFD to see what others think. Or maybe even Prod. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:53, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Done. Those articles are very frustrating. People add them and then they're very difficult to dispose of. Enigma^msg 01:09, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Margarine or butter?

Please reword your arbitration statement to avoid gratuitously offending people. Thank you. Jehochman ^Talk 20:23, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

I second this request. — Aitias // discussion 20:25, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) It's an incredibly common expression on the Internet (cf. this and this). I see no concerns to be had. I doubt we have many ten-year-olds reading Arbitration pages. Aitias: Strongly suggest you take a step back here. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:28, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Parkay. Jehochman ^Talk 20:33, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!. –xeno ^talk 20:40, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Spray! --MZMcBride (talk) 20:42, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

MZM, did you really mean to direct the request for taking a step back to me or was that done by mistake? Just asking as I don't think I've been particularly involved here. :) Best wishes, — Aitias // discussion 20:56, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Thought you were about to jump in. My apologies. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:03, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification. :) Also, I did honestly not plan to “jump in”. I'm sorry if it did sound that way. Best wishes, — Aitias // discussion 21:10, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Statement by MZMcBride

Hey, I hope you are doing well. Can you do me a favor and please refactor or remove your above section? Thanks. KnightLago (talk) 20:45, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

*sigh* Done. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:48, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

I understand. Thank you. KnightLago (talk) 20:56, 21 May 2009 (UTC)