User talk:Banaticus/archive2013a

This is an archive page of my user talk page. If you wish to reopen an archived discussion or otherwise respond to me, please do so on my user talk page. Thanks! :)

Editor Review

I am currently cleaning up the backlog over at Editor Review and I found this in the backlog. As it is no longer posted on the main page at Editor Review, I was wondering if I should remove it from the backlogs and put it to rest or if I should repost it for community review. I will remove it from the backlogs three days from now if I am not given a response.—cyberpower _Offline^{Happy 2013} 19:36, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Feel free to repost it for community review if you think it'll get any comments this time. As far as I'm aware, nobody even really looked at it the last time. That's life, right? :) Banaticus (talk) 09:41, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

I'll repost it, but you might want to advertize it.—cyberpower _Offline^{Happy 2013} 13:40, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

I've readvertised it now. I still had the link -- I'd stopped advertising it when it was autoclosed after a month or so of no comments. Banaticus (talk) 14:34, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

It's posted but you may want to add a statement and update your answers.—cyberpower _Offline^{Happy 2013} 14:38, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Feel free to comment on it there and to say on that page what further information or updated information you'd like to see there. :) Banaticus (talk) 14:43, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia Ambassadors update

Hi! You're getting this message because you are or have been a Wikipedia Ambassador. A new term is beginning for the United States and Canada Education Programs, and I wanted to give you an update on some important new information if you're interested in continuing your work this term as a Wikipedia Ambassador.

You may have heard a reference to a transition the education program is going through. This is the last term that the Wikimedia Foundation will directly run the U.S. and Canada programs; beginning in June, a proposed thematic organization is likely to take over organizing the program. You can read more about the proposal here.

Another major change in the program will take effect immediately. Beginning this term, a new MediaWiki education extension will replace all course pages and Ambassador lists. (See Wikipedia:Course pages and Help:Education Program extension for more details.) Included in the extension are online volunteer and campus volunteer user rights, which let you create and edit course pages and sign up as an ambassador for a particular course.

If you would like to continue serving as a Wikipedia Ambassador — even if you do not support a class this term — you must create an ambassador profile. If you're no longer interested in being a Wikipedia Ambassador, you don't need to do anything.

Please do these steps as soon as possible

First, you need the relevant user rights for Online and/or Campus Ambassadors. (If you are an admin, you can grant the rights yourself, for you as well as other ambassadors.) Just post your rights request here, and we'll get you set up as quickly as possible.

Once you've got the ambassador rights, please set up at a Campus and/or Online Ambassador profile. You can do so at:

• Special:CampusAmbassadorProfile
• Special:OnlineAmbassadorProfile

Going forward, the lists of Ambassadors at Special:CampusAmbassadors and Special:OnlineAmbassadors will be the official roster of who is an active Ambassador. If you would like to be an Ambassador but not ready to serve this term, you can un-check the option in your profile to publicly list it (which will remove your profile from the list).

After that, you can sign on to support courses. The list of courses will be at Special:Courses. (By default, this lists "Current" courses, but you can change the Status filter to "Planned" to see courses for this term that haven't reached their listed start date yet.)

As this is the first term we have used the extension, we know there will be some bugs, and we know the feature set is not as rich as it could be. (A big wave of improvements is already in the pipeline. And if you know MediaWiki and could help with code review, we'd love to have your help!) Please reach out to me (Sage Ross) with any complaints, bug reports, and feature suggestions. The basic features of the extension are documented at Wikipedia:Course pages, and you can see a tutorial for setting up and using them here.

Communication and keeping up to date

In the past, the Education Program has had a pretty fragmented set of communication channels. We're trying to fix that. These are the recommended places to discuss and stay up-to-date on the education program:

1. The education noticeboard has become the main on-wiki location for discussion of the Education Program. You can post there about broad education program issues as well as issues with individual courses.
2. The Ambassadors Announce email list is a very low-traffic announcements list of important information all Ambassadors need to be aware of. We encourage all Ambassadors (and other interested Wikipedians) to subscribe to the list; follow the instructions on the link to add your email address.
3. If you use IRC regularly, or need to try to reach someone immediately, the #wikipedia-en-ambassadors ^connect IRC channel is the place to find me and fellow Ambassadors.

Ambassador training and resources

We now have an online training for Ambassadors, which is intended to be both an orientation about the Wikipedia Ambassador role for newcomers and the manual for how to do the role. (There are parallel trainings for students and for educators as well.)

Please go through the training if you feel like you need a refresher on how a typical class is supposed to go and where the Ambassadors fit in, or if you want to review and help improve it. If there's something you'd like to see added, or other suggestions you have for it, feel free to edit the training and/or leave feedback. A primer on setting up and using course pages is included in the educators' training.

The Resources page of the training is the main place for Ambassador-related resources. If there's something you think is important as a resource that's not on there, please add it.

Finally, whether or not you work with any classes this term, I encourage you to post entries to the Trophy Case whenever you see excellent work from students or if you have great examples from past semesters. And, as always, let students (and other editors!) know when they do things well; a little WikiLove goes a long way!

--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 20:55, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free media (File:Bharat-matrimony-logo.gif)

Thanks for uploading File:Bharat-matrimony-logo.gif. The media description page currently specifies that it is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, it is currently orphaned, meaning that it is not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the media 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 media for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

If you have uploaded other unlicensed media, please check whether they're used in any articles or not. You can find a list of 'file' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "File" from the dropdown box. Note that all non-free media not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Hazard-Bot (talk) 04:11, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Seemed like vandalism by two IP's. Reverted the changes to the article, warned the users -- non-free media is now used in a Wikipedia article (fair use, represents the business). Banaticus (talk) 05:33, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

That's okay.  Hazard-SJ  ✈  04:57, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

The Tea Leaf - Issue Seven

Check out the Teahouse Genie Badge, awarded for solving issues on the Teahouse Wishlist.

Hello again! We have some neat updates about the Teahouse:

• We’ve added badges! Teahouse awards is a pilot project to learn how acknowledgement impacts engagement and retention in Teahouse and Wikipedia.

• We’ve got a new WikiLove Badge script that makes giving badges quick and easy. Add it here. You can give out badges to thank helpful hosts, welcome guests, acknowledge great questions and more.

• Come join the experiment and let us know what you think!

• And...for all of your great work and all of the progress that you've helped the Teahouse make, we hereby award you the Host Badge:

	Teahouse Host Badge
	Awarded to hosts at the Wikipedia Teahouse. Experienced editors with this badge have committed to welcoming guests, helping new editors, and upholding the standards of the Teahouse by giving friendly and patient guidance—at least for a time. Hosts illuminate the path for new Wikipedians, like Tōrō in a Teahouse garden. Earn more badges at: Teahouse Badges

You are receiving The Tea Leaf after expressing interest or participating in the Teahouse! To remove yourself from receiving future newsletters, please remove your username here

Thanks again! Ocaasi 02:04, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

my bad

hey man, sorry bout that. I was just trying to add a pick of the new title. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.99.8.69 (talk) 07:09, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

No problem, it happens. :) Banaticus (talk) 19:40, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Lua requests

Hi Banaticus, I noticed you contributed to the Lua script at Module:Math. I just created a request page for Lua scripts at Wikipedia:Lua requests and it'd be great if you could watchlist it to assist anyone who needs help with Lua scripts. Thanks! Dcoetzee 00:55, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm not really a big fan of forever holding the bucket and not getting to use the mop. I like to fix things, so I'll probably keep an eye on it, but it's kind of looking likely to me that this won't be a primary focus of mine. Banaticus (talk) 01:20, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Keep it real babe

Don't let the turkeys hayterz get you down.  ;-)

You seem like a cool guy. That is more important than playing moderator on a web forum.

TCO (talk) 20:59, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

P.s. Sorry if me voting for you hurts your chances. But if you really wanted the mop, the way to get it is to have no personality, so you already blew that.

Thanks, I appreciate your sentiments. I'm not going to castigate the people that are opposing my RFA as I couldn't really smack them for expressing their opinion in a place where they've basically been asked to express it. I don't agree with them, but I can see where some of them are coming from. Anyway, thanks again. :) Banaticus (talk) 23:21, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

de-listing yourself as an ambassador

I replied on my talk page.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 01:08, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. :)

Working on Lua

Hi there, I came across your RfA and just wanted to drop a note of encouragement to continue working with Lua even if you don't get the mop. Work on the citation templates is well under way at Module:Citation/CS1, and is mostly being driven by Wikid77, who isn't an admin either. {{Chart}} isn't protected, so you certainly don't need to be an admin to work on it. {{Family tree}} is protected, but all you have to do is write a new version in the sandbox, write testcases, spend the time to make sure it's solid, and present it on the talk page... which is exactly what you would do as an admin, except for the minor difference of making an edit request to pull the final trigger, instead of doing it yourself. If you're concerned about not being able to edit "core" modules like Module:String, I wouldn't worry about that, unless you're hoping to work on the String manipulation templates directly... as a developer, I would be wary of using those modules anyway, as they're quite immature and are likely to be not very reliable or stable. So there's lots you can do whether or not your RfA succeeds. Toohool (talk) 00:37, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the encouragement. I'll likely keep en eye on what's going on with lua, although I likely won't be fixing things that are broken since I probably won't be able to do that as protection continues to cascade as the number of templates shrinks once templates can start making decisions for themselves and more pages start directly calling lua modules, etc. I'll instead likely be leaving a note for someone else to eventually get around to fixing what I've pointed out is broken. Thankfully there are so many admins on this site that it's not a very long wait to get an admin's attention -- it's not as though there are any backlisted categories waiting for admin action... :p

Anyway, I don't have the time that I used to have to edit Wikipedia. I have a full time job on the weekends, a part time job most weekday mornings, I do volunteer work in the afternoons and I volunteer work in the evenings. Periodically I reevaluate how I'm spending my time, and I sometimes have quite a lot of time between different projects and it's during those times that I tend to come back to Wikipedia since I think Wikipedia's aims are very noble, to bring information to the masses, to be a compilation of a large part of the world's information. That being said, it's my personality to attempt to not beat a dead horse. Enough people recently voiced their support for Chick Bowen's statement that 1} a string template should be changed to work the way that lua string methods work (and all the templates that run off it should be changed as well or it's going to cause more confusion in the future), 2) I wanted to make a "trivial change" to the way a complex template works, 3) that in the absence of someone they know saying that they support the RFA they're going to oppose it. Most of the edits and changes that I've made to this site are largely trivial in nature. If those are to be discouraged, especially since the lua modules are only going to grow more and more complex, then what's the point? I think this is a case of me noticing that a pretty good majority of people who cared to weigh in on the topic either actively didn't want me working in that area or didn't care. And so, as I'm evaluating all the work that I already do in my life outside Wikipedia and what I spend my time on, I'm going to choose to spend my time in objectives and pursuits where I feel my contributions will be more valued. Again, I'm already very busy. I've already been divesting myself of as much of an involvement with Wikipedia as I have had in the past (removing myself as a Teahouse host, for instance) and I just don't really see the point in continuing to make as much of an effort to free up time to contribute to Wikipedia as I have in the past. I do sometimes make mistakes -- I'm not arguing that. And it's not as though I've contributed very much, what with 10% of my edits supposedly happening on my user page. :p Thanks for the encouragement, though. When I check in to Wikipedia, I will keep those areas in mind. Banaticus (talk) 19:10, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

The Teahouse Turns One!

It's been an exciting year for the Teahouse and you were a part of it. Thanks so much for visiting, asking questions, sharing answers, being friendly and helpful, and just keeping Teahouse an awesome place. You can read more about the impact we're having and the reflections of other guests and hosts like you. Please come by the Teahouse to celebrate with us, and enjoy this sparkly cupcake badge as our way of saying thank you. And, Happy Birthday!

	Teahouse First Birthday Badge
	Awarded to everyone who participated in the Wikipedia Teahouse during its first year! To celebrate the many hosts and guests we've met and the nearly 2000 questions asked and answered during this excellent first year, we're giving out this tasty cupcake badge. Earn more badges at: Teahouse Badges

--Ocaasi and the rest of the Teahouse Team 22:33, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

The aftermath of my RfA

Sorry about your RFA. v/r - TP 00:31, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

I suggest you study the nomination before re-applying. Don't take the opposes personally. Learn from them, try again in a few months and maybe next time you'll be successful. –BuickCenturyDriver 03:14, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry…

…but your RfA did not demonstrate that there exists a consensus among Wikipedians to allow you access to the administrators maintenance toolset. Hopefully, you have received constructive criticism during the process which will help you should you decide to submit a future candidacy. Thank you for volunteering! -- Avi (talk) 04:49, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes I did receive criticism, although I'm not sure that most of it was constructive. The first person to respond opposed because 10% of my edits were on my user page and before I responded to that to correct the user in their mistaken belief I had a few oppose per above and a person who chimed in about how there still needs to be consensus on interface issues, then listed as oppose reasons that I'd a) been casual then b) sought consensus on an interface issue. And a fair number of people opposed per those comments. I had several "you're too casual" (what, Wikipedia should be edited in a suit and tie? When the citation templates are a horrendously tangled mess I can't call them a giant tangled ball of yuck?) and "I don't like your attitude", although nobody would clarify what they didn't like about my attitude. I felt that during the RfA I was unfailingly courteous to everyone and except for a recent comment on my talk page here, I avoided all sarcasm in my responses to others. Since they didn't respond I have no idea how to take their comments. I did have a few, "This user has made mistakes and he might break Wikipedia", which I felt were entirely valid, I have made mistakes and that possibility does exist, although frustratingly enough that wasn't why most people were opposing, or so it felt to me. Edit: I understand, you're just the messenger, I don't want it to seem like I'm taking my frustration out on you, I'm just a tad annoyed with the situation in general. Banaticus (talk) 06:46, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

I understand and no offense was perceived, let alone taken. Sometimes you are right, in that much criticism is not helpful for future use; sadly. Try and unearth whatever pearls you can out of the discussion. Actually, as RfX's are among the most stressful wiki experiences known to man (RfB's should be illegal in democracies!), taking a wikibreak to recuperate may not be a bad idea. :) -- Avi (talk) 07:08, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm going to do just that. I mean, take the second to last neutral statement. "1) If you want to impress people with your technical skills, referring to a particular skill-set as "nitty-gritty mumbo-jumbo", and "a gigantic snarled ball of yuck" might need a bit of copy-editing. 2) In a nomination, your particular time zone isn't really relevant." 1) Sure, I can see that, but 2) what the hell, that time zone bit was absolutely relevant. As I posted on that user's talk page, that time zone bit uses a technically complex template which I created and which I have been the sole contributor to, save for one other editor who made a cosmetic edit so that a parameter is more easily read. And that template references a second rather technically complex template which I also created. I also wrote the documentation for them. They're going to be a lot less complex once they can think for themselves and it'll prevent future edits, since when I created them back in early 2011 I only ran them out through 2013, but I digress. I kind of thought that an RfA would involve people who actually cared enough to look closely at things like that. I mean, if a person didn't want to delve into the nitty gritty of just what a person has done, why would they even hang out in an area which would seem to require that? I mean, it's definitely the thing to do. I realize the normal admin career track involves a heck of a lot of endless talking about all sorts of things where people are posting their opinions instead of actually fixing things or helping someone get something done, and comments like that shouldn't surprise me. Sorry, I'm going on at length and it's late -- I'm going to bed. I'll be back in a month or more. Banaticus (talk) 07:40, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Zeboyd Games

When you get back, I was just curious where your interest in Zeboyd Games came from. Have you met the programmers or did you just become interested because theyre located nearby? I am a big fan of their games Breath of Death and Cthulhu Saves the World, although Ive never played them, just seen them played on YouTube. —Soap— 00:14, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Both. :) Banaticus (talk) 00:29, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Banaticus, we moved your Teahouse host profile

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Nomination for deletion of Template:Current time with daylight savings

Template:Current time with daylight savings and Template:Is daylight savings on have been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. iComputerSaysNo 20:47, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I responded at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2013 March 19#Template:Current time with daylight savings. Banaticus (talk) 02:13, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

"Protected page editor" userright proposal

If you're around you may be interested in this RfC which would allow trusted non-admins to edit most full-protected pages. —Soap— 13:22, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks :) Banaticus (talk) 13:54, 5 April 2013 (UTC)