User talk:Werdna

If you are here to tell me you replied to a comment of mine in a discussion, don't bother unless it's been a few days. I've probably got it watchlisted.

Tog-editwidth

Hi Werdna,
someone correctly noted at WP:Requests for comment/May 2010 skin change/Bug reports#Widen the edit box to fill the entire screen that the preferences option "Widen the edit box to fill the entire screen" doesn't actually do that. I notice that you changed the wording of that option one year ago, in rev:49553. Two questions:

• Was that requested or discussed anywhere, or more an ad-hoc wording and we can just tweak it to something like "Widen the edit box to fill the available space"?
• Why is that option in there in the first place? Seems to me that width:100% would be a good default for all installations, and site admins can just tweak it in their installations' CSS if they want.

Cheers, Amalthea 12:16, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Meetup

You may well have seen a site notice about the next Cambridge meetup, this Saturday 29 May. I thought those who have been in the past should have a personal invite, too. Charles Matthews (talk) 21:43, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

What the hell?

What the hell is "It is my polite recommendation that you continue to contribute in areas in which you can make constructive contributions (like RfA) instead of making provocative comments in lieu of contributing to others" supposed to mean? I have virtually no involvement with RFA, and AFAIK am the single highest contributor of FAs to WP:LONDON; have you confused me with someone else?

As per my initial comments when the BM scheme was announced, I have serious reservations about creating formal ties between Wikipedia—whose prime selling point is editorial independence and a neutral point of view—and with any one museum, university or other institution. Quite aside from the glaring COI issue of an organisation paying people to promote their exhibits, nobody has even touched on the tax issues of paid editing being channelled (directly or indirectly) through the WMF. As you may know, I'm generally supportive of the idea of paid editing—I don't see how someone paid to promote an organisation differs from a fan of a band writing about said band, provided the COI is declared and the writer adheres to NPOV—but the talkpage of an almost moribund WikiProject is certainly not the place to unilaterally overturn what was a pretty overwhelming consensus at WP:Requests for comment/Paid editing. – iridescent 21:47, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

So you had serious and substantial reservations, and you decided to express them by making provocative comparisons? It's like the Wikipedia version of Godwin's Law.

I've already made my own arguments about the importance of intent and outcome in "paid editing", on the discussion page itself. Saying that the British Museum is "paying people to promote their exhibits", is at odds with the facts of this situation (as Liam has explained). I have no comment on "tax issues", and consider that outside of the community's remit in any case — it can be dealt with by the Foundation, if indeed money is being "channeled through" the latter. Your comments on circumventing community consensus have no relevance to me; if you'd like to make a big drama-fest out of somebody offering incentives to write featured-quality articles about notable historical artifacts, then I invite you to do so and see what response you get. — Andrew Garrett • talk 07:28, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

No, I had serious and substantial reservations, as did David Cane, and we listed them in great detail at the time the proposal was announced; to his extreme credit and unlike you, Liam paid the courtesy of answering them in detail rather than posting a rambling personal attack. (Still waiting for that explanation of what "It is my polite recommendation that you continue to contribute in areas in which you can make constructive contributions (like RfA) instead of making provocative comments in lieu of contributing to others" is supposed to mean.)

And no, I don't see a difference between Kohs, Shankbone, Sam Blacketer… (insert your personal favourite COI case), and this proposal. There are two completely unrelated issues. First, the "wedge in the door" unilateral acceptance of paid editing (if the BM pays me £500 to edit on their behalf, how do we then tell Laura Abbott of the British Medical Journal's marketing department that she's banned from editing articles on medical journals?). I use the name of Kohs because he was the "test case" that determined our rules on this kind of thing, not because he's some kind of sacred totem. Secondly, there's the issue of the sheer illegality of it. Payments to volunteers, other than genuine and receipted expenses claims and whether in cash on in kind, are flat-out illegal; either someone's a contract worker and gets paid minimum wage (and taxed accordingly), or they're a true volunteer and don't get paid. (There's a single exception, for one-off ex gratia honoraria to long-serving volunteers, which HMIC sometimes accept as non-taxable gifts, but even they still need to be declared and will still be deducted from any means-tested benefits.) Has Mike Godwin, the WMF board or even Alison Wheeler signed off on this arrangement? – iridescent 19:19, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

If you'd really enjoy a protracted tone argument, I continue to contend that posting unhelpful and provocative comparisons is not a constructive contribution to discourse, especially when you had detailed commentary available to link to. For my part, neither is the backhanded insinuation that RfA is your primary "contribution".

Leaving that aside, I'll refer you to the British Museum's legal department to raise any legal concerns — I don't have any reason to believe that the Foundation has any role at all in this initiative, nor that the role of Wikimedia UK extends beyond an advisory one. I'll presume for the sake of my own sanity that they know what they're talking about.

My contention is that these facts work in the favour of the Museum: It accepts Wikipedia's quality standards, it distances itself from editorial control over article content, it is a non-profit with a shared mission with the Wikimedia Foundation, and it involves writing about objects with real providence and public interest. You might not be able to see a bright-line distinction, but a distinction definitely exists — these issues are always about trading off advantages and limitations of different approaches, and it's my contention that in this case there is a real, tangible benefit to Wikipedia's quality, and mitigated, comparably minuscule, conflict of interest concerns. I definitely don't agree that "If we let them do it, we have to let others do it!" is a cogent argument — the trade-off works out differently in all situations, and there's no reason to think that other situations can't be handled with thought and judgement instead of a hard rule for or against any editing for monetary benefit. — Andrew Garrett • talk 14:51, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

That's fair. Regarding my point 1, I think we're going to have to disagree about the COI issue. I am using MyWikiBiz as an example for a reason; while I know you were around back then I'm not sure how involved you were in the whole saga around it, and it can't be repeated enough that (a) the case set a very clear "no paid editing ever" policy on Wikipedia, and (b) the proposed arrangement—in which paid-edits would be written off-wiki or in a dedicated space, and only moved into mainspace once they'd been "signed off" as neutral by someone completely uninvolved—was more open and accountable than the proposed BM model. (Greg Kohs may be a disruptive loon now, but back then he was just a developer at Comcast who thought he'd stumbled on a mutually beneficial way to improve Wikipedia's coverage of corporations, and give corporations a first foothold on a rapidly growing new medium that was incomprehensible to most advertising departments. This article gives a pretty good background to the thinking behind the MWB plan and Jimbo's killing it off.)

To me, I genuinely can't see a bright-line distinction; if we allow the British Museum, why not Bruce Castle Museum? If we allow Bruce Castle, why not its owners, Haringey Council? If Haringey Council, why not one of the private contractors who operate services on their behalf? And if one private company, why not all of them? That's only a very few steps from the BM to MyWikiBiz, and I can see no place on that spectrum to draw the bright line. (If one takes "charitable body" as the bright line, I'm sure the Church of Scientology has some cash they'd love to send our way.)

Regarding the second point, about legal issues, ordinarily I'd agree that it's none of our business. However, this is a very high-profile scheme (the BM's press machine is milking this one already), and when these payments are ruled illegal by HMRC (they almost certainly will be), it'll be the Virgin Killer fiasco all over again, as Seth Finkelstein and Larry Sanger line up to take pot-shots in the press at "Wikipedia's irresponsibility". – iridescent 22:24, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

You're missing the point. I'm saying that there *is* no bright line, as there seldom is with normative claims. This is known as the fallacy of the beard — even if there is no one place on a spectrum to draw a line, one is not justified in using this fact to conclude that its ends are equivalent. As I said, these sorts of things need to be taken with thought and consideration and on the basis of their own merits and limitations. Your "slippery slope" argument is unimpressive: I've already offered reasons why the trade-off works out in favour of the British Museum in this case, and there are good reasons to think that it works out in a different direction for MyWikiBiz and other programs.

I encourage you to seek legal advice from somebody well-versed in UK tax law if that's an issue you really want to push. I attribute little currency to your armchair view of British Tax Law, especially since it fails the plausibility test in (for example) competitions and contests. — Andrew Garrett • talk 14:23, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

It's a long time since I studied UK tax law, but it used to be that prizes for competitions "involving an element of skill" were exempt from tax. Hence the "tie-breaker" on the back of the cereal packet. I think we can agree that writing an FA involves "an element of skill", and this certainly has the attributes of a competition - success, or any reward, is not at all guaranteed to competitors. Special laws had to be passed for the lottery precisely because it has no "element of skill", but the courts have been ready to interpret the phrase very widely indeed - see the quizzes at the end of tv programmes. This is a complete red herring. Johnbod (talk) 23:32, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Jeff Merkey back at it again

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#Jeff_Merkey_back_at_it_again

A little help please 64.139.4.129 (talk) 05:13, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Sydney Meetup :-)

See the meetup page for further information - short version is that we're hoping to meet in a fortnight in the city for a beer and a chat. Minors and Miners are welcome, with a responsible adult and a minimum of coal dust ;-) - do try and get out if you can, it's been a little while since wiki folk met in Sydney :-) cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 05:27, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:AR report

Template:AR report has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:41, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

JVM

JVM surfaced as an IP that I have blocked, he signed one of his posts as JVM so he was an admitted sock, I blocked the IP. --WGFinley (talk) 22:22, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Edit filter

Hi! I have admin rights at pt.wikibooks and I have two questions about the edit filter:

• Who should I contact here for help about filters?
• Is it possible to get permission to view the private filters from en.wikipedia, so that I can use then as basis for our own filters at pt.wikibooks?

Best regards, Helder (talk) 17:25, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Is there a way to make a regex case insensitive, for example to replace the code

rlike "^#[Rr][Ee][Dd][Ii][Rr][Ee][Cc]([Tt]|[Cc]?[Ii][Oo][Nn][Aa][Mm][Ee][Nn][Tt][Oo])\s*\[\[.+?\]\]$"

or is it good enough to use

lcase(added_lines) rlike "#redirec(t|c?ionamento)"

? This is used at our filter 1. Helder (Talk) 23:02, 23 October 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Helder.wiki (talk • contribs)

Account loss

In a silly moment I handed in my administrator rights and scrambled my password for User:Polargeo. I now edit under the account User:Polargeo 2 which was set up after emails to arbcom and from which I am sending you this message. I have no intention of claiming my administrative rights back and arbcom have said that I should undergo an RfA to do this anyway. However, I had nearly 10000 edits as Polargeo and I am finding all sorts of barriers to my participation on wikipedia because of editing from an alternate account (Polargeo 2). After some conversation with Newyorkbrad User talk:Newyorkbrad#You mentioned a sincere request and specifically his comment at the bureaucrats noticeboard [1] I have been pointed towards yourself. Is it possible to regain access to my main account as there is no dispute from arbcom via emails that I am User:Polargeo, my real identity is also known, thanks Polargeo (talk) 15:03, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Werdnabot-archivenum

Template:Werdnabot-archivenum has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. Mhiji (talk) 00:48, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Mail

Hello, Werdna. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

DieWeisseRose2 (talk) 20:42, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Photo requests

Werdna, do you do photo requests?

If so, would you mind taking the Qantas head office at 203 Coward Street, Mascot, NSW?

Thank you, WhisperToMe (talk) 07:29, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

toolserver lag

I see that you are an admin on the toolserver, so I hope you can help. For the past day or so, the toolserver replag has been >10 hours. This is causing issues with some bots (see User_talk:DASHBot that got it blocked) and things like WP:CATSCAN are running off old articles. I have searched around at toolserver.org, and posted at the Village Pump, but I have no idea where else to ask the question - what is going on and when will it be fixed? The-Pope (talk) 15:45, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Werdnabot/Interface/Oldsyntax

Template:Werdnabot/Interface/Oldsyntax has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. mabdul 20:34, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

LiquidThreads

Hi Werdna, I started a discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Enable LiquidThreads which I assume you would be interested in anyway, but the fact that the current LQT 2.0 may not be deployable at all seems to have come up. Your input on that would be helpful. Thank you.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 14:29, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Sydney Meetup

You are listed here as interested in Sydney meetups, so I thought I'd let you know about one on this Saturday at 5pm at the Alexandria Hotel. Details here: Wikipedia:Meetup/Sydney/November_2011. It would be great to see you. --99of9 (talk) 00:58, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

To power your cooking

	To power your cooking
	The werdna way Nimish Gautam (talk) 21:13, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Would You like to Help?

Hi, I am starting Wikipedia:WikiProject Ravidassia. I would like to get help from people who are interested. You may sign up for the project on the [[2]]. McKinseies (talk) 15:38, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Externally hosted scripts

Please don't add externally hosted scripts to MediaWiki:Common.js without discussion at MediaWiki talk:Common.js first. Thanks. -- WOSlinker (talk) 22:17, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

MSU Interview

Dear Werdna,

My name is Jonathan Obar user:Jaobar, I'm a professor in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University and a Teaching Fellow with the Wikimedia Foundation's Education Program. This semester I've been running a little experiment at MSU, a class where we teach students about becoming Wikipedia administrators. Not a lot is known about your community, and our students (who are fascinated by wiki-culture by the way!) want to learn how you do what you do, and why you do it. A while back I proposed this idea (the class) to the communityHERE, where it was met mainly with positive feedback. Anyhow, I'd like my students to speak with a few administrators to get a sense of admin experiences, training, motivations, likes, dislikes, etc. We were wondering if you'd be interested in speaking with one of our students.

So a few things about the interviews:

• Interviews will last between 15 and 30 minutes.
• Interviews can be conducted over skype (preferred), IRC or email. (You choose the form of communication based upon your comfort level, time, etc.)
• All interviews will be completely anonymous, meaning that you (real name and/or pseudonym) will never be identified in any of our materials, unless you give the interviewer permission to do so.
• All interviews will be completely voluntary. You are under no obligation to say yes to an interview, and can say no and stop or leave the interview at any time.
• The entire interview process is being overseen by MSU's institutional review board (ethics review). This means that all questions have been approved by the university and all students have been trained how to conduct interviews ethically and properly.

Bottom line is that we really need your help, and would really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you. If interested, please send me an email at obar@msu.edu (to maintain anonymity) and I will add your name to my offline contact list. If you feel comfortable doing so, you can post your nameHERE instead.

If you have questions or concerns at any time, feel free to email me at obar@msu.edu. I will be more than happy to speak with you.

Thanks in advance for your help. We have a lot to learn from you.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Obar --Jaobar