User talk:Brooke Vibber/archive
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Brion, I just noticed you had italicized some of the words in the Bats article I wrote. Please note that only genus and species names should be italicized in Linnaean taxonomy, and not any other level of taxon.
-Aidan
- Ach, very well. Brion VIBBER
Cool! Thanks Brion. What did you have to do to fix it? maveric149
- Don't thank me too soon, the bug was my fault too. :) In the function that strips out unwanted HTML tags, there's a buglet that causes the whole process to stop dead if it found too many closing tags -- there was an extra </font> tag in there which set it off. D'oh! Hopefully Jimbo will install the patch soon, but until then just make sure you have at least as many opening tags as closing tags...
Fair enough. So all the text was still there in the edit mode then? If that is the case, then I owe you an apology - I should have looked first before I threw a temper-tantrum. I then would have realized it was a rendering issue, and not an actual deletion. maveric149
- Quite all right, I'd be throwing temper-tantrums too if my baby came up that badly broken! --BV
I love the macrons in the rubi. Had no idea how one would do that. -- Olof
- Ahh, the wonders of Unicode! If you have (lots of) spare time, take a look through the Unicode character charts. Most people with current computers should have fonts that include everything in Basic Latin, Latin-1 supplement, Latin Extended-A, Greek, Cyrillic, and some other bits. Hmm, here's a shortcut that lists just the characters in the default Microsoft fonts. --BV 2002/03/12
Are you sure that Soderbergh's Solaris is remake? I heard that this will be new adaptation of the book. That's why i decided to put two Solaris (movie), one for Tarkowsky (with future intention of added wikipedia contains spoilers etc) and second for future Soderbergh. szopen
- Well, I consider it a remake in that it's another movie based on the same story. I consider the recent Tim Burton Planet of the Apes movie to be a remake, even though it's not really closely based on the 1968 film, but both are based (loosely) on the book La Planète des singes. Of course, even the first movie was a remake of the book, when you think about it. :) In general I think it's preferable to keep multiple incarnations of the same thing on the same page where appropriate, particularly when there's roughly zero information on at least one of them. If and when there's a reason to separate Soderberghe's version, we can do so. --BV
one more thing - could you possibly look at Stanislaw Lem entry? It seems there is something wrong with software - just look how it begins... szopen
- Yeah, as I mentioned at the bottom of wikipedia:Bug reports, I accidentally broke that feature such that inter-wiki links with % signs (used for url-encoding as a hack until we move to UTF-8) are rejected. Until Jimbo installs my patch to fix it again, either ignore it (grrrr) or switch things to ASCII-based redirects. --BV
Incubus? Charm? I think I would have to disagree with you on this one... but it is pretty funny for those who speak Esperanto! It was incredibly hilarious to watch with other Esperanto speakers in Philly. Although I have to admit that the funniest experience I think I had at those things was on the New York subway when a guy asked us what language we were speaking: "Well, we're all really Americans, but we're speaking the international language, Esperanto!" and the guy replied, "What? Is this some kind of joke?!" :-) --Chuck Smith
- Well, I've always loved those old Twilight Zone and Outer Limits episodes, and Incubus feels just like one, krom ĝia esperanteco. As well it should, having been made by the same people that did The Outer Limits. For a real hoot though, run William Shatner's commentary track on the DVD sometime. Sadly, the commentary's not in Esperanto. :) --BV
Nice Brion putting in the main page a link to Slovene Wikipedia. As for now I am the only one Slovene wikipedian and I do hope this will change soon, 'cause Wikipedia really means something. I just want you to correct a typo mistake if it is possible. It is not slovenkso but slovensko. Thank you in advance, man. I can give some assistance on Wikipedian's geographical maps in non-English if it is needed. --XJam [2002.29.03] 5 Friday (0)
- Oops, gess i cant spel... Fixed it. Help with the maps would be great! Get me a list of the country names and whatever other text belongs there appropriately translated and I'll happily put up a slovene version. --BV
- I've finally move the incorrect Slovene pages from http://si.wikipedia.com to http://sl.wikipedia.com . I hope this will make things clearer about Slovene and Sinhalese languages. Brion, please correct once again the protected main page for the right link. --XJam [2002.06.03] 1 Monday (0)
- Great, thanks! If you notice any other oddities in the lists, let me know (or just fix 'em). Brion VIBBER
- I've finally move the incorrect Slovene pages from http://si.wikipedia.com to http://sl.wikipedia.com . I hope this will make things clearer about Slovene and Sinhalese languages. Brion, please correct once again the protected main page for the right link. --XJam [2002.06.03] 1 Monday (0)
Many thanks for the quick response on user 62.98.various. I really should get off my duff and write for a sysop password... your help is much appreciated. -- April
Hi Brion, God-of-Wiki-Tech :) Maveric said I should copy this note here because you'd be better able to help me with it. I have no idea why but I had a big problem with the Bug Report page:
Maybe you can help me? I'm getting very frustrated by things that don't work today and I don't know if it's because I'm doing it wrong or not... I tried to search for 'May 23' to see if anyone else had done a birthdate fill-in, but I got a Boolean error because 'May' is less than four letters long!' So I thought I'd report it on the bug reports page, only when I loaded the screen and hit 'edit' it loaded the appropriate window - but then it wouldn't let me add any new text to the page! It it locked? Or at maximum length? Maybe somebody who knows what they're doing needs to make a 'Bug Reports Page 2'... or maybe I've just totally screwed up because I'm an ignorant newbie! Also, when I typed 'help' into the search box to see if there was another help page to give me a clue, I got no results... I find it hard to believe that no articles anywhere in the entire Wikipedia use the world 'help' in them! I'm bewildered... KJ
- As far as searching, there are some problems with the search function (short words break, and some words just don't come up with any results) and we're working on fixing that. After the next upgrade, it should automatically fall back to a slower, but more thorough, search method if it doesn't get any results.
- As for editing long pages... what browser, what operating system, and what version of everything are you using? The longer pages seem to be particularly troublesome for some people; there've been some reports about Internet Explorer 5.5 on Mac OS giving some kind of beeping noise when trying to edit (unfortunately I can't test this, as I don't have a Mac), and there are known problems with Mozilla 0.9.9 (can't submit long pages) and in general (editing is very very slow when the sidebar is enabled, especially for longer pages).
- For the Mozilla problems, you can work around it by upgrading to a nightly build that has the submit bug fixed (see http://mozilla.org/, down in the right-bottom corner) and by disabling the sidebar in your Wikipedia preferences for the slow-edit bug. For the Mac IE bug, I don't know. :( For anything else, I also don't know yet! But I'll try to help... Knowing exactly what the problem is should help with that; does your browser refuse to let you type text? Or can you type, but saving your changes doesn't work? Brion VIBBER, Sunday, April 7, 2002
- I'm using Netscape and I think the problem MIGHT have been with my computer. I had a similar incident with my diary a few hours later, where keyboard apparantly stopped responding. I restarted netscape and it was fine. During the problem I couldn't type any text into the textbox. Hopefully it won't recur! I just worked with a wiki page that was every bit as long as the bug reports screen and it worked fine. KJ
Hey Brion -- Do you know if there is a way to prevent Google from indexing and displaying wikipedia edit-links in google searches? As it is right now, even these pages (which shouldn't really exist -- right?) are indexed by Google and presented in search results. Not sure if this is a bug, mis-feature or even a feature in somebody's mind, but this may be the main source of many of the "Describe the new page here." pages come from (which has been a major maintenance issue that is eating up the time of several sysops). I’ve been tracking many of the IP's that create these pages and most never return. So I don't think that these people are purposely creating these pages as a kind of vandalism, they are just understandably confused when they click on a link from google titled Editing California State University and are presented with a text box with the words "Describe the new page here." -- hell, I might even have hit the Save button a couple of times in my pre-wiki days. Any help would be greatly appreciated. --maveric149
- Yeah, that's possible... Okay, the issue is that currently the edit links look like this: http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/User_talk:Brion_VIBBER&action=edit. A web search crawler has no way of knowing that that's a dynamic page that it shouldn't be messing with. If we used the full URL, ie http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Brion_VIBBER&action=edit, it might be clearer... maybe. Leastwise, looking in google, I don't see edit pages showing up in my google searches when checking the perl-based wikis, where the URL is like http://eo.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?action=edit&id=Brion_VIBBER/Priparolu. On the other hand, ?-ed URLs for viewing articles do show from both on the perl- and php- wikis (look for things on the meta wiki, it's still running on all-explicit URLs without the /wiki/ alias); perhaps google is playing some kind of guessing game, where "something=edit" in a URL with a query string gets ignored? I don't know... arrrgghh... Brion VIBBER, Friday, May 3, 2002
You could probably help things by putting ".../wiki.phtml..." in wikipedia.com's ROBOTS.TXT file. --LDC
Hey Brion,
I got into a bit of trouble awhile back by accidentally deleting The German Ideology from the database. This page was created as a blank page by a newbie back when the server was moving VERY slowly. I hit delete several times over the period of an hour and kept getting timeouts. Apparently, somebody was actually working on the article at the same time, saved, and then I deleted that version without knowing somebody spent time creating an article out of the blank page. Is there a way to recover deleted material that was deleted within minutes of being created? --maveric149
- I don't know if it still works this way, but a couple of weeks ago I found that if you recreated a deleted page (for example, if you were to go to The German Ideology and just type in random junk then save it), the history link would then allow you to access the prior history of the deleted page. I'll test and see if that's still the case... Bryan Derksen, Saturday, May 18, 2002 -- Nope, sorry, doesn't appear to work any more. Bryan Derksen, Saturday, May 18, 2002
- There's not an explicit 'undelete' function yet, but the delete function is set up in anticipation of one; the deleted page is still (or at least, should still be) kept in the old versions table, but unlinked so it doesn't show up in the regular page history list. Poking around in the old table, I do see a "Describe the new page here." page for The_German_Ideology dated April 21, but I don't see a more recent version (or one with content). If there was in fact a more recent version saved, it seems to be gone now, sorry. Brion VIBBER, Saturday, May 18, 2002
- Thanks for the info -- maybe the article wasn't saved correctly in the first place because of the ridiculously slow performance of the server that day (there was much weirdness going on that day). Perhaps I did only delete the "Describe the new page here." page like I thought... Perhaps some of the performance issues caused something unexpected to happen with eithe the save or delete... Perhaps... Anyway I tried. Thanks again for your help. --maveric149
What do I need to remove an uploaded file that shouldn't be here? Specifically, a user called Mushroomhead whose user page is blank and who has no record of working on any articles, has uploaded a file called "ACDC - For Those About To Rock.mp3"; even if ACDC doesn't object, Wikipedia isn't an MP3 server. Vicki Rosenzweig
- If you have been declared a sysop, you can click "delete X" from the list in special:Upload (the list is in filesystem order, so you might need to search for the filename to find it). If not, just create a blank file with the same name on your computer, and upload it over the objectionable material. It can then be completely deleted later. (About this file specifically though, see my comment below.) Brion VIBBER, Tuesday, May 21, 2002
- Deleted. For some reason that file hadn't shown up on the Uploads page yet so I typed http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/special:upload&removeFile=ACDC - For Those About To Rock.mp3 which seemed to work. --maveric149
- The file also didn't show up when I tried to access it directly -- I don't believe the upload went through in the first place. (The uploads page is really in need of a rewrite; it says "upload succeeded!" and logs it without actually checking to see if it succeeded. Ditto on deletes - try deleting a random file that doesn't exist, and it'll happily tell you it did it.) Brion VIBBER, Tuesday, May 21, 2002
Hey Brion, I just had an interesting idea (well, at least I think it's interesting) about how we could track IPs after they are removed from the block list or on some kind of "warning list". We could place the offender's IP into a "probation list" such as the one I've started at Wikipedia:IP probation watchlist. My question is this: would it be possible to change the way IP numbers on such a "watchlist" would show up in RecentChanges? As it is right now, there really is no practical way to have such a watchlist -- unless you are a phycho like me and compare IPs on my own list with ones on RecentChanges (I don't like blocking IPs, and when I do I try to limit the time period of the block which means I have to periodically check the IPs contribs). A lot of IPs seem to have been kept blocked for longer than really are warrented by the limited damage that was done (well, that's my view anyway). This is especially troubling since so many IPs are dynamic and change after a few weeks (if not the next time the person dials-up to their ISP). Just wondering if this would be possible, I'm not advocating it yet. --maveric149
- Sure, I suppose that could be done pretty easily. Particularly if you're only concerned about checking the author of the most recent edit (assuming that any vandalism would have been removed by the next contributor). --Brion VIBBER
- Cool! Do you think this is something we should bother the list with? (I'm leaving town for 4 days starting tomorrow so I won't be able to be part of the any policy discussion) --maveric149
- Probably should, since this means adding a sysop-level function (or else, letting anybody add to the "ip probation" list...) Brion VIBBER
- I'll do this first thing after I get back. Thanks! --maveric149
- Probably should, since this means adding a sysop-level function (or else, letting anybody add to the "ip probation" list...) Brion VIBBER
- Cool! Do you think this is something we should bother the list with? (I'm leaving town for 4 days starting tomorrow so I won't be able to be part of the any policy discussion) --maveric149
Thanks for the info about the changed Stats - I looked at the diff linik you gave, but the headache seems to be fading now :) user:Verloren
Thanks for the info on the / page deletion workaround. BTW, do you think it would be possible, or even desirable, to write a script that automatically removes entries from the "Votes for deletion" page when a listed entry is deleted? --maveric149
- Sure, sounds reasonable to me. There's a potential to eat up extra text if the page has been manually misformatted just so... But, if the old version is maintained, that can be corrected if/when it happens. --Brion VIBBER
- Cool. It's not particularly important -- just would be nice thing to have if you or another developer decided to do it. Thanx again! --maveric149
Hey Brion, you are probably already aware of this, but when a page is administratively moved the history of the moved page gets majorly truncated usually only leaving who created it and the person that last edited it before the move. Is this a feature or a bug? If it is a bug do you know when it will be fixed? Also, if it is a feature I would like to request that the entire history of pages be moved -- which only makes sense to me (esp. on pages that have extensive histories such as the improperly named Tables of Chinese Sovereigns -- I don't want to move this unless I can be sure that the complete history will also move over). Later! --maveric149
Yep, I was talking about the moved history. For example I just made a few edits to the improperly capitalized and pluralized Cigarette Cards article and then administratively moved it to Cigarette card. Here is a screenshot of the history before the move and here is a link to the histoy after the move. Minor edits as well as regular ones are lost inbetween the first and last edits. Notice that the creation and edit times have also changed (dates are also affected). For the mass majority of the articles in the database this isn't too important but for some that have alot of edit activity this may become an issue. --maveric149
- As I just explained on your talk page and on wikipedia-l, the edits are not lost, only the dates. The items being missing from the history list is an artifact of the sorting used in retrieving items for display. Exact dates of older edits that have been munged by this bug can be manually restored, if and only if they're recorded elsewhere. (Eg, that screenshot; older database snapshots, etc.) --Brion VIBBER
- Should I modify what I am telling the other sysops then? If so then go ahead and modify what I stated on Magnus' page and I will copy this onto the talks of the other sysops. --maveric149
- Oh, what you're telling them is true enough. It shouldn't be used until the fix is installed! (BTW, I just fixed the dates on Cigarette card, though the accuracy is only to the nearest minute.) --Brion
- Should I modify what I am telling the other sysops then? If so then go ahead and modify what I stated on Magnus' page and I will copy this onto the talks of the other sysops. --maveric149
- Hmm, should I remove all that obsolete discussion of bugs or just leave it there with a disclaimer that the administrative move function is now happy and bug-free, and you should use it as often as possible? I think the latter. --Brion
Thanks for fixing my typo. :) --mav
- Well, if Denmark then geography... but if not Denmark, then what? I knew that couldn't be right... --Brion
Hey Brion,
I just cam across an interesting bug for you and want to know if it is affecting anyone else; I tried editing User talk: Rlee0001 and got this error:
Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/Article.php on line 1003
Which is the exact same thing that pops up to anybody trying to edit a page when their IP is blocked (try it yourself, this version allows you to unblock your IP afterwards). Trouble is that it only has occurred for me on that particular talk page (your's too) - and no I didn?t have myself blocked at the time (but I did for most of the week for my work IP though? I'm currently at work). Weirder still is that nobody else seems to be having trouble editing that page. Also, replacing the 'R' of Rlee0001 in the edit URL of User talk:Rlee0001 with an 'r' provided me with an edit window (had to do the same thing here). But then I didn't have any problem editing user:the Anome's talk page or my talk page (both are user names that were created with lowercased starting letters) or any other one I tried. This may have something to do with my work computer so I will try to recreate this when I get home. --mav
Do you have any idea why the deletion log is now called the "article deletion log" and not the "page deletion log"? Why in the world would we ever want to delete an article? I know we don't delete articles but others may not. It is already difficult enough to explain the difference between a wikipedia page and an article. --mav 14:18 Jul 28, 2002 (PDT)
Thanks for fixing the minor league baseball table. -- Zoe
Brion, I was trying to say when Caribbean blacks, whose ancestors were brought from Africa centuries before today, immigrate to America, it makes sense to call them African-Americans. But maybe I'm going overboard on classification and categorization. I think I'll call it a day. --Ed Poor
Hi, I've uploaded the files holography-reconstruct-notext.png and holograph-record-notext.png which are text-removed versions of the images I made for holography. I've also uploaded the original Adobe Illustrator files, in case you can use them directly. DrBob
- Thanks! --Brion VIBBER 23:23 Aug 10, 2002 (PDT)
Brion, could you take a look at the deletion log and at user:Andre Engels just to make sure I'm not being paranoid about the choice to delete? --mav
- If I may butt in -- I've spent the last 1/4 hour following Andre, and I think he needs reining in. I left him a note at the deletion log, with a stern warning. Ed Poor 13:14 Aug 14, 2002 (PDT)
Yes, I have left him a note to. He saw it, replied and then ignored my request to stop deleting the Bible entries and then proceeded to start deleting stub orphans (a handful I was able to find cached on Google had decent definitions and encyclopedias are filled with decent definitions on minor players). --mav
Is there some time limit on how fast I have to get the image uploaded after I put its link in the article, please? I didn't think ten minutes was too long, but you deleted the link in Butt while I was uploading the image to go there. -- isis
- Maybe it's just a weird thing I do, but I usually upload an image and then stick it into articles. --Brion
Is there anything wrong with my doing it in the other order? Because I do graphics on a different computer from the one that's on the Internet, I often process six or more images, put them on a floppy and then upload them one after the other, I find it more efficient to put the link to the article in on this computer when I write the JPG file to the floppy on the other one, so I don't have to remember what the names are or which ones I've connected to articles -- they just go where they're supposed to as soon as I upload them here. If that's a problem, I can not do it, but I find it a lot easier than when I tried it the other way. So do you mind if I keep doing it backwards from the way you do? Different strokes for different folks? -- isis
- Do you also pay for things with checks and then deposit the money into your bank account? ;) Nothing technically wrong with it, I suppose, so long as you get the money deposited before the check is cashed... However, as a courtesy you might want to note in the "summary" field of the change that you're still in the process of uploading, and that's why you've left a broken link. The rest of us don't know what you're planning to do, only what you've already done. --Brion
No problem. (BTW I worked for E. F. Hutton when they did the infamous check-kiting where they didn't deposit money until after the checks had actually cleared the bank, and I'm still suing them for firing me for whistle-blowing, so that example cut a little close to the quick.)
Anyhow, now that I know you're somebody that knows how things are done here, I have a question I hope you will answer for me, please. There's already an article for President Benjamin Harrison. I want to make an article for his great-grandfather (the father of President William Henry Harrison) who was a signer of the Declaration of Independence (and governor of Virginia several times, etc.) His name was also "Benjamin Harrison" -- he was Benjamin Harrison V, and the president one was VI or VII or something. There's a link for Ben V in United States Declaration of Independence, but it goes to Pres. Ben. So here's my question: What is the policy for how to handle the names of these two Benjamin Harrisons so we can have articles on both of them? -- isis
Hey Brion, I'm kicking around a new idea over at Talk:Orders of magnitude that I think will make us both happy. --mav
Brion, there is something over at Wikipedia talk:Statistics that needs to be seen by a developer. It's about article counts. --mav
I don't appreciate the condescending parental b.s. The way you handled the issue was heavy-handed, and you could at least have embedded a link on the main page. Is this the sort of thing I'll keep having to put up with if I'm involved with this project? --user:jaknouse
Thanks on the info on how to move a page. re: The Walt Disney Company. [User:Christopher Mahan|Chris Mahan] 20020906
- You're welcome! --Brion
Hey Brion, I've noticed that the default time on for Wikipedia is now UTC however why is "UCT" showing up in time stamps? Is this a French thing I'm not aware of? --mav
- Naw, just the wrong acronym. It's been fixed. --Brion 04:10 Sep 7, 2002 (UTC)
You, sir, have just made me inundate my monitor with soda thanks to the Darth Vader quote. :) -- April
- As they say down at the Assassin's Guild, we aim to please... --Brion
The map idea is great. I do have one minor comment on my talk page though. --mav
- Brion, I think the map idea is good, have fun uploading all those images. :-) -- Zoe
Hi, Somebody created Santa Anna as a blank. Before erasing it, I followed the back links, and additionaly "corrected" the Santa Anna to Santa Ana. The name of this guy is an anomaly in Spanish, i took me a while to convince myself that the correct spelling is, in fact Santa Anna. Sorry for the extra work.AstroNomer
hey thanks-and how do you unlink one that is mistakenly linked? Lir 23:54 Oct 3, 2002 (UTC)
- Unless it's a redirect with no history, a sysop has to delete it; I'll go do that now. --Brion 23:57 Oct 3, 2002 (UTC)
Go:--User:hfastedge
Are we waiting for language.php to be translated before announcing the fact that the Japanese wiki is now on the Phase III software? If that is the case, why don't we just move all the other active wikis to the new software (with permission from the participants of course). That is one sure way to motivate people to translate language.php -- each language.php could be pasted onto a page in each of their respective wikis for community translation. Just a thought -- it may not work. But posting of the language.php text on wiki-editable pages would be a good idea. --mav
I tend to look at it from the other direction: if there isn't already enough interest in a particular wiki to produce someone to do the translation and help with maintenance, why should we waste any of our valuable time on them? --LDC
- The Japanese wiki is a personal pet project of mine (but my Japanese is too poor to do it justice) -- and there were only about a half-dozen pages to manually move over. All the active non-English wikis have localized interfaces and hundreds or thousands of pages that need to be converted correctly. --Brion 20:14 Sep 10, 2002 (UTC)
- I knew there must be a reason. Thanks! --mav
This does need to be explained to the other language wikis. Otherwise I forsee much unnecessary angst in the non-English wikipedias without both of your explanations. But such a statement needs to come from a developer. Is there any technical reason why language.php can't be community translated (I don't buy Lee's maintenance argument -- "if you build it developers will come", along with a boatload of new contributors)? If the text of that file is on the respective wikis and nobody does anything with it, then they only have themselves to blame for not being upgraded to Phase III. Also, is there a set of translations that must be done before any upgrade can be done at all (namespaces such as "talk", "user" and combinations therefore spring to mind as being absolutely necessary)? A priority list would be great to have. I'm sure having some links in English won't hurt so long as the really important stuff is already translated (in fact, it probably wouldn't even hurt to keep certain URLs in English -- so long as the displayed link is eventually translated). --mav
- There's no reason they can't do a community translation... just like the French did in preperation for phase II upgrade. Unfornately, by the time they finished, phase III is online and my suggestion to do intermediate phase II upgrades using the existing translations for Esperanto, German, Spanish, Polish, and French was rejected in favor of "wait and go straight to phase III". --Brion 21:00 Sep 10, 2002 (UTC)
- If you think some effort on our part is justified to kick-start growth, then I suggest making a post to intlwiki-l asking someone on each of the foreign wikis to post a note on their front page asking for translators. We can use that to judge interest--those that actually make the change will show some interest; those that actually come up with a translator are even better. Best of all are those that come up with a translator skilled enough to deal with CVS and check in the code himself.
- Yes, there is an abolute minimum set of tranlations needed to get basic functionality for the wiki, with all the remaining text in English (and things like American date formats): the namespaces "Special", "Talk", "User", "User talk", "Wikipedia", "Wikipedia talk", "File", and "File talk" (yes, I know that's not even in the English wiki yet--but it will be soon), and the special link prefixes "Image" and "Media". --LDC
- Will do. I will summarize what was said here and link to this page from my list post (just so the other list members know that what I say is true). --mav
Brion, I see you moved a lot of talk pages for the WikiProjects which I moved to the Wikipedia-namespace earlier. I'm pretty sure I had the "move talk page if applicable" checkbox checked, however (it's checked by default, I think, and I haven't changed it). Did this go wrong because I was moving across namespaces? If so, this should probably be added to the bug reports (or maybe this is a feature ;-) ). Jeronimo 08:18 Sep 11, 2002 (UTC)
Aaargh, saw your message on my talk just now... Jeronimo
- I've answered on your talk page. --Brion
You have mentioned a couple of times about restoring the pre-Feb histories. However, how is this going to work for the many 100s of pages that have been moved since that time? --mav
- Make a list of pages that have moved, their old and new titles. (Check for "moved" in comment fields.)
- Make the converter aware of this list, and tack the histories onto the new titles.
- Not completely foolproof, but it should catch most cases. --Brion 07:11 Sep 12, 2002 (UTC)
In Bob Jonkman's User talk page Brion wrote:
- Hi Bob; I noticed you've been making some links to NTSC standard. That article's basically a dupe of the more expansive NTSC, so I've made it a redirect to that existing article. (I left the former contents of NTSC standard in Talk:NTSC so anyone who wants to integrate remaining tidbits can easily do so.) In the case of things like NTSC and JPEG where the acronym of a committee or standards group has become synonymous with the standard, it's generally accepted to use that common name for the article about the standard; articles about the committees themselves would most likely use the expanded names, such as North American Television Standards Committee and Joint Photographic Experts Group. --Brion 04:00 Sep 12, 2002 (UTC)
- Thanx Brion! I was aiming for some consistency between the entries for the different standards. Since both PAL and SECAM have concise titles and explanations for the standard, I had hoped to get the link for NTSC to point to a description of the standard (instead of the link NTSC standard), and, as you suggest, use the full name link National Television Standards Committee for information about the committee (which article does not yet exist). It now works pretty much as I had hoped for. --Bob Jonkman 13 September 2002
---
could you add the fr: link to Wikipedia:Neutral point of view please ?
I think we have a little issue here as some french people seem to have a quite different definition from the english wikipedia on what neutral point of view is. Substantially, their point of view is that on every moral, ethical and political issue, the "united nation point of view on human rights" should prime on the neutral point of view. And should be clearly stated as such. You may see what the consequences could be on articles such as excision for instance. Since you wander on other international wikis, do you know whether the issue of what neutral point of view is, has been brought up ? Do they follow the en.wiki point of view ? Can we consider the fr wiki to be part of this global project if it differs so much on what neutrality is ? Any ideas ? user:anthere
- I've added links to the french, german, and esperanto NPOV pages. (I'll take a look through the others later.) I just finished reading the french discussion, and I must say I'm pretty bemused by the suggestion about the convention on human rights -- I simply don't see what it's to be used as the base for. Certainly it can be cited in an article on a subject that is forbidden or required by the convention (as a major facet of international law it's quite important!), what more is being asked for? For the encyclopedia to say "torture is bad"? What does that provide that "torture is outlawed by international convention X, and violations by countries such as Y, which claims to require such methods to combat criminal element Z are condemned by organization W" does not? The latter (which conforms to the conventional NPOV policy) is informative and encyclopedic, while the former is an empty opinion. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding; if I could see some examples of articles written in the suggested style, it might make more sense. --Brion 07:05 Sep 16, 2002 (UTC)
it is more than bemusing, Brion, it is a disastrous idea imho. With the recent issue of "les six" (discussion Ligne du temps, it appeared obvious to me we had several problems that I tried to sum up on the int.wiki mailing list (if only people were not stuck by "gros mots"...), among which the notion of "neutral point of view" appeared somehow misunderstood by several (along with cooperation, respect of other people, patience, acceptance of different propositions...). It seemed to me the neutral point of view was badly leaning on the "scientific point of view" side. So I decided we needed to make that clearer, together. And you read what was written.
Only two people chose to comment what I translated and adapted to our situation. You saw that.
If french people decide that the "united nations point of view" comes above the "neutral point of view" as stated in the en.wiki, it is a breach with neutrality as the en.wiki defined it. It means considering our moral views are superior to these of other countries that do not follow human rights.
Consider a wikipedian who decides to write an article on excision that says Excision is a mutilating operation practiced on women in some countries. Excision is to be considered wrong as it is infringing with human rights as defined by the united nations declaration on human rights. However, some people think excision is acceptable for these and these reasons, and many countries go on with that practice... (I agree I force a bit the idea, but basically, that is what is proposed in
--> Parce qu'il existe une échelle dans les valeurs : je préfère mettre le respect des personnes et de leur intégrité physique AVANT les raisons qui expliquent les pratiques de mutilations sexuelles, qui doivent bien sûr être présentées.
or in
Le référentiel adopté par Wikipedia est la déclaration universelle des droits de l'homme de l’Organisation des nations unies : les points de vue contraires à cette dernière sont considérés comme nuisibles.)
Would you consider it neutral ? probably not. I would not. The en.wiki has an answer to this kind of article, it does not fairly represent point of views. That's final. Hence, the article must be reworked. If the french wiki considers human rights above neutral point of view, there is no answer to this kind of article, as the author can state it is acceptable along the policy rules. Adopting this policy would only state some moral views are acceptable while others are plain wrong. And this, I believe, is not neutral. Fortunately, no, no article really has been done that way yet, but it would be an open door. I would like very much other people to state what they think, otherwise, it will be tough to defend what imho is the idea of neutrality. That was why I asked you whether other int.wiki had been working on that issue. I'm a bit troubled right now. user:anthere
- Indeed; that seems so completely unlike an encyclopedia that I can't conceive of someone wanting to write one like that! On the Esperanto wiki, we're not always as neutral as we should be (especially on the pages about other constructed languages ;) but we try -- certainly no one is considering that the UN's official point of view is "neutral" (it's not!) or should be implicitly considered correct. It should instead be explicitly stated and assigned to the UN, the Declaration of Human Rights, etc. IMHO, if what is intended by the troublemakers is pushing the (officially) internationally accepted viewpoint, citing the convention or organization that holds the view will carry a lot more weight than a bald assertion from an anonymous author! I'll try to drop a few words to that affect into the discussion when I have a moment. --Brion
Hey Brion - it looks like there is some consensus on having a more conservative definition for what the software considers to be artciles. However I still haven't heard either you or Lee jump into the discussion yet on the list. I think that it is important to change this before we hit 50,000 articles. What do you think? --mav
- From the other side of the screen articles and non-article pages look exactly the same -- they take up space, have edit histories, link and are linked to -- so it makes little difference to me. :) As long as there's a consensus and the measure is straightforwardly quantifiable, I have no objection. --Brion 23:31 Sep 20, 2002 (UTC)
Hi Brion,
Just a few words to tell you that I did put the text for the php translation on the french wiki.
How are the other wikis doing ?
On the mailing list, Aoineko said he would take care of that, but he seems to be still on holidays. Buzz declared himself interested to do it, and I hope he will, but he is rarely around these days...My previous call for translators didnot raise any reaction.
As I already stated, the phase II translation was not a community work; I did it alone, didnot even succeed to convince the others to check what I had done (I am no developper in the least). I spent quite a lot of time on it. So I have decided I will do the barest minimum this time, and if nobody does the effort, I will consider, as LDC stated, that they are not interested really.
The neutrality issue is bugging me quite a lot (thank you for your comment over there); it seems the pro-scientific point of view chose to bury the head in the sand and not to discuss it at all. Avoiding discussion when there's an issue to discuss, or getting rude as with the six is not the way I see wikipedia.
Hey Brion, I'm on the list twice (#6 or 5 and #77). Would it be possible to combine those in future? (If this is going to be steadily maintained--and if not, that's cool too.) I'd do it myself but after I got the results, I couldn't figure out an easy way to sort them. Best, --KQ
- Woo hoo! Thanks, Brion. Two halves reconciled.... Now if I give you some thought patterns exemplifying cognitive dissonance, can you resolve those too? (I've got plenty of them, I'm sure). ;-) --KQ
What happened? I was trying to move Gay marriage and the article disappeared? --mav
- All is well - you fixed it. --mav
I think three people were working on that swap simultaneously. Do we have a "Most Hilarious Bloopers of Wikipedia" page? :-)
- We should. :)
"(deleted "Same-sex marriage": Removing to make room for rename of Gay marriage (wouldn\'t need to, but someone changed the redirect to a paste-in of the other page))
-- Right. That would be me. Is it a no-no to do things that way?
- It's much preferred to use the "move page" function. This changes the name of a page while keeping its edit history completely intact under the new name, so it's easier to keep track of changes to the article over its entire existence. (See Wikipedia:How to rename a page). This feature is only available to users who are logged in (this was a compromise; originally it was an experimental feature available only to sysops, but it was so useful that there was pressure to make it generally available. However, we don't really want random vandals to be randomly renaming pages, so at the same time there was pressure to limit who can use it.) So, feel free to create a login for yourself (it can be random letters and numbers for all I care :) and you will then find "move page" listed in the sidebar. --Brion 00:17 Sep 27, 2002 (UTC)
Thanks! Noted.
Hey Brion; After getting the idea from your county locator maps, I've started a new thread over at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elements about a concept for nav bars and locator maps for the chemical elements (there is a prototype example at Lithium). Join in if you are interested. --mav
Brion; I suppose you've noticed all of the county entries that I added (if not, just look at one). Now I am in a position to create the exact same sort of entries for any or all of the cities in the U.S. FYI, that would make 35,000 or so new articles at ~2000 bytes per article. It would take me a good chunk of time to add that much data, so my question is, is there some way that we could automatically generate some of the articles? Clearly there would be some specifics to work out (naming conflicts, whatever), but I can prepare the data/articles in a MySQL database. I don't mind adding the entries myself as it will go really fast since most of the entries currently don't exist, but it would obviously be faster if there were an automated way. Tell me what you think. -- Ram-Man
I am not even going to try to get any kind of web interface going on. I am *not* a very good web developer (my main programming "weakness", as I don't enjoy web work too much). I can provide the data as a MySQL database, a text file dumped from MySQL using a "INTO OUTFILE 'textfile.txt'", a tab delimited text file, or a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. -- Ram-Man
Hello Brion, thank you for your suggestions. I will scale down the maps tomorrow and try to convert them to PNG. As I plan to make more maps for the other german states as well, your advices will at least help me to make the next ones better. BTW, I had the idea of adding the maps after finding your own maps in the California county articles. Greetings, -- Cordyph 09:30 Oct 3, 2002 (UTC)
Another question concerning images. Did you ever encounter the case, that you tried to upload an image, and afterwards it had a size of 0 Byte. The message tells me, that the upload was successful. But it's not there. Any idea? I ask you, because you seem to have uploaded dozens of images. -- Cordyph
Brion, I attempted to make a page with title Luís Inácio Lula da Silva. The non-english characters do not display correctly. Apparently I still don't understand this. Thanks. -- FURTHER COMPLICATING MATTERS: I now have a good page (the link in the previous sentence) and a bad page LuÃs Inácio Lula da Silva. The latter needs to go (unless there's some chance somebody might actually enter these characters; I did when when trying to make the page).
- Okay, let's go through this step by step: 1. What browser are you using? 2. What version, exactly? 3. What operating system are you running it on, exactly? 4. From what page did you follow that link to create the page, exactly? 5. Or, did you instead of following a link manually type the characters into your browser's URL bar (which may cause troubles)? --Brion 01:38 Oct 7, 2002 (UTC)
Brion, I think I entered the page name into the URL bar directly. This seems like a logical thing to do, but evidently not, if it's going to cause problems. Thanks.
- Yes, that's the problem. I have a work-around planned, but haven't gotten to it yet. In the meantime, don't do that. ;) Your browser thinks it's smarter than you and is encoding URLs you type as UTF-8; since this wiki uses a different encoding, you get garbage characters instead. Fortunately, UTF-8 is relatively easy to detect, so it should be able to automatically detect and recode the URLs to give you the correct page. But, as I said, I haven't gotten to it yet. Sigh... --Brion 18:10 Oct 7, 2002 (UTC)
-- More of the same :-) -- Brion, User:Xaos is new (I think), and on his/her user page, it says, "I think I'm always making mistake when I type some korean characters in the documents. I'm using the english IE 5.5 under Windows98. What should I do for correct encoding?" Thanks again.
The following are data for 30,966 cities of the United States. It is in raw form. I hope is it what you wanted from me.cities.zip -- Ram-Man
Brion, I have the same problem with the Recent Changes page as with the Search Results page -- it's lapping into the right margin. -- Zoe 21:05 Oct 8, 2002 (UTC)
Whoops, never mind, there's a very long URL in the comments causing the page to spread out. -- Zoe 21:08 Oct 8, 2002 (UTC)
Hey Brion, Iv'e continued our Meta discussion on my Wikipedia user talk page since I can't access Metapedia right now. --mav
Yo, Brion, do you actually live in California? --Wiz!
- Yes. Not that difficult to believe; there's over 30 million people here... some are bound to end up on Wikipedia! --Brion
- I think you guys have low standards for "talent" and "creativity"
I agree. In my self-appointed role of Editor, I frequently feel desperate to find new talent -- perhaps I expect too much, if I think creative writing and encyclopedic writing can overlap. --Ed Poor
Brion, can you help ? Thirteen Years War has been the victim of a "cut and paste" move to Thirteen Years' War, and as a result the history has been split. I'm happy with the move, in principle, it's just the way that it's been done that's a problem. I would fix it myself but I don't have the ability to permanently delete pages (and I don't particularly want it) so I can't clear things ready to do a proper move. Could you do it, please? Thanks. -- Derek Ross
- I'll do it. --mav
- Done. --mav
- Thanks, mav -- Derek Ross
See: Talk:Burbank, Los Angeles, California
Hi Brion, I haven't been able to connect to fr.wikipedia.org for days (weeks ?), it keeps sending me the following message:
- Warning: Host 'localhost.localdomain' is blocked because of many connection errors. Unblock with 'mysqladmin flush-hosts' in /usr/local/apache/htdocs-fr/w/DatabaseFunctions.php on line 17
- Connexion impossible à la base de données sur 127.0.0.1
What's happening ? FvdP 21:48 Oct 21, 2002 (UTC)
- Problem cured by reading your messages about caches in answer to other people's questions. Thanks. try reload, ctrl+reload, shift+reload, alt+reload, clear the cache, reintstall Windows, whatever? ctrl+reload did the trick, no need to resintall Windows, pfew !. FvdP 22:17 Oct 21, 2002 (UTC)
Engels reworded it in later editions that could explain differences.
- Aye, that would do it. If we can exactly match the quote and an online edition to cite that'd be great, but not the highest priority. --Brion 06:29 Oct 23, 2002 (UTC)
regarding Mimos Berhad what is a corporatized organisation ??
- I explained my guess on Talk:Mimos Berhad, but as I said that's only a guess. Someone more familiar with corporate structure in Malaysia might be better able to say for sure. --Brion 10:37 Oct 23, 2002 (UTC)
Brion, I didn't want to do the MOVE because I didn't want to have to unlink and relink everything. -- Zoe
- You don't have to; it leaves a redirect. --Brion 04:27 Oct 24, 2002 (UTC)
- ??? Then why do I get yelled at for doing a move without changing all of the links? -- Zoe
- ??? By whom??? --Brion
Hello, you're knowledgeable about these things: how would i generate a query to determine all pages that have interlanguage links to the French Wikipedia so I can start posting those links over there? I know it can be done; I worked on the one for the Dutch wikipedia for awhile. :-) Thanks very much, --KQ
- Also: interlanguage links from other Phase III wikipedias to the French one lead to wikipedia.com, on the old software. --KQ
- That's right. It hasn't been converted yet; the fr.wikipedia.org is still in testing (though we should get it moved over soon, it seems to be working okay). --Brion 20:24 Oct 24, 2002 (UTC)
- Ah, so I've jumped the gun. What about the SQL query for the interlanguage links? I'd like to set up the page to work on them once the database is switched over (provided someone doesn't beat me to it, which is quite possible given my schedule). --KQ
- That's right. It hasn't been converted yet; the fr.wikipedia.org is still in testing (though we should get it moved over soon, it seems to be working okay). --Brion 20:24 Oct 24, 2002 (UTC)
- SELECT cur_namespace,cur_title FROM cur WHERE cur_text LIKE "%[[fr:%" should do it. There's also the maintencne page which will show which pages don't link to the French wiki, but that's less useful from our end at current ratios. ;) --Brion 20:27 Oct 24, 2002 (UTC)
- Neat feature, that. Actually that gave me the idea of going to http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Maintenance and selecting which pages don't link to English. I wonder how that's done, though. Automagic, indeed. :-) --KQ
thanks kq. From time to time, I added the fr links for some articles. Is there not a way to update automatically all the links in all the phase III wikis once one is connected ?
comment ça, current ratios !!!
euh, I tried SELECT cur_namespace,cur_title FROM cur WHERE cur_text LIKE "%[[en:%" on the fr.wiki, and I feel curious about the results : one of the page that gets out is http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarquin, but there is no english link on his page ?
Besides, what does the field "cur_namespace" means ? Tarquin has 2, while the other pages have 0. Tarquin doesn't have a talk page. What does it refer to ? user:anthere
- The number scheme is: 0=article 1=talk 2=user 3=user talk 4=wikipedia 5=wikipedia talk 6=image 7=image talk. There're stored as numbers to make it a teeny bit more efficient, and so we can localize the names for each language. If you check But there is one on Utilisateur:Tarquin, there is a language link. (Though the query can turn up false positives -- things that look like language links, but actually aren't (it would pick up this page, for instance). Eventually we'll get around to keeping them in a link table that can be queried directly, but not yet.) --Brion 21:37 Oct 24, 2002 (UTC)
okay ! I made a few experiments with "not like" (and "limit"); it's working nice.
I am not seing any en.wiki link on Tarquin page, but that's meaningless :-) thanks --user:anthere
thanks Brion! found it! gosh, i feel blind! thanks again!
If/when you have a moment, could you promote my es.wiki user account to Admin status? Thanks. ---mav
- Thanks! --mav
Brion - I need some help. Earlier I blocked 194.117.133.196 after somebody who is using that IP went on a vandalism rampage. However, after reviewing all the edits by this IP I saw that most were in fact good edits. Just now I got an email stating "194.117.133.196 (cache-haw.cableinet.co.uk) is the ISP cache I'm behind. I'm finding life a little difficult tonight :-/". So it looks like both a valid user and a vandal are using the same IP at the same time. What should I do? --mav
- UPDATE This is effecting more than one user. See Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress. I am tempted to lift the block and hope for the best. --mav
is the fr conversion issue *ok* Brion ?? I spent maybe 3 hours yesterday moving stuff around, deleting, renaming...I hope I didnot do anything wrong :-(
Brion, I left some comments on Wikipedia talk:Links to disambiguating pages. Can't succeed to make it work in french. Did I misunderstood how it is working, or is there a but. I made a collection of page, a disamb, 2 going after the disamb, and one leading to the disamb. Shouldnot this latter appear on the maintenance page ? Thanks in advance
thanks alot Brion. Works great. --ant
hi, Brion. Could you upgrade the interface localization file at zh.wikipedia.org? We had translate some pages into Chinese and we want to have a look.
Thanks. --user:ghyll
- Done. --Brion 09:25 Nov 16, 2002 (UTC)
I unblocked 24.201.235.57 -- whom you blocked 30 days ago. I figure 30 days is long enough. --Ed Poor
Brion,
weird thing. Somebody linked fr:agriculture durable to en:sustainable agriculture. This is currently an empty page, but the history show the page was created in 1969 31th of december ??? What is going on ? user:anthere
- The page doesn't exist. That's what you get if you're foolish enough to click "history" for a page that doesn't exist. :) It probably should display a message like "Page doesn't exist, there is no history" instead of trying to convert a bunch of zeroes into a meaningful history display, but since it's harmless and cosmetic and rarely comes up (linked to nonexistent pages normally are edit pages, which don't have a history link) nobody's got around to fixing it yet. --Brion 10:15 Nov 16, 2002 (UTC)
- ah ? But why did it come to the idea to Tokerboy to link a french page on a non existing english page ? He certainly didnot "invent" the page just to set the link, did he ? That's weird... bah. Thanks anyway foolish
Thanks a lot, Brion.
we had fixed some error on translation, and this time the main page should not be mixed with Chinese and English links any more. so could you please upgrade the interface localization file at zh.wikipedia.org again?
and we found the style sheet must be tuned to Chinese makeup convention. I will give a thorough study on the css file - wikistandard.css.
Thanks in advance. --user:ghyll
Brion, would it be possible to revoke just Lir's ability to move pages. I'm sick and tired of moving pages back because of her stupid moves every few days. --mav
- Technically I could hack something like that in, but I don't believe I have the authority to add a new and exciting level of partial banning without the say-so from Jimbo or a general consensus. --Brion 05:31 Nov 18, 2002 (UTC)
- I just wanted if it was technically possible. Thanks. --mav
Brion, has there been any complaint on Windows 98 avec Internet Explorer 5 (5.00.2614.3500). AGiss says that pages do not reload when he clicks on the reload button; the only way is to empty the cache, or to do a Ctrl+Alt while reloading. He is afraid he will tend to destroy changes, as he might forget to reload a page each time he wants to edit it. Does anybody complained about that ? http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikip%E9dia:Rapport_d%27erreurs&diff=0&oldid=0 [[user:anthere]
Hey, Brion, at the bottom of every subject and talk page (at least in the article, user and Wikipedia namespaces) contains:
Notice: Couldn't find text for message "subjectpage". in /usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/GlobalFunctions.php on line 141 Notice: Couldn't find text for message "subjectpage". in /usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/GlobalFunctions.php on line 141
Right above the lower control bar. This started since I've become a sysop a few hours ago. Everything seems to be working fine, though I haven't tried deleting anything or blocking any IPs yet. Any clues? Tokerboy 00:44 Dec 4, 2002 (UTC)
- Nevermind, I suppose it has nothing to do with being a sysop--someone else just mentioned it at the Village Pump. Tokerboy 00:44 Dec 4, 2002 (UTC)
- Yeah, I was getting it too (I use Opera), and I just switched to IE for a minute to see what's up. But, I'm just gonna guess it's a server-side problem -- probably having nothing to do with the browser. Anyway, I now I can call it a night since the new sysop is on duty :-) --Ed Poor
I had to do that because he kept deleting my changes. why did he remove a link to a relevant NYTimes editorial?
Why did he remove relevant info about ACSH's funding?
Why did he say 'nominally' independent??? That is libelous!
Why did he simply REVERT to old version, when the old version was misleading?
If he wants to take out POV stuff, fine, but a clarification regarding funding issues????
Removing a NYTimes editorial that agrees with ACSH?
When even the left wing editorial page of the Times agrees with ACSH, he should probably give up his unscientific advocacy and conceed that there is no longer a controversy--in the scientific community- about this issue.
I notice some comments in the deletion log about the delete function not working right -- what's up? I'll try to fix it if there's a problem... --Brion 08:28 Dec 7, 2002 (UTC)
- I'm not sure, and I don't have time to play with it because I'm behind schedule to make my deadline on Monday, but I stopped by for a minute and tried to delete a page, and it didn't go away. I thought when I deleted pages that had no links to them before, they ceased to exist, but I may just not have known how to find them again. This one doesn't go away when I delete it.
- What exactly happened? Did it tell you that it had deleted the page, or did it do something else after clicking the 'yes, delete it' button? --Brion 09:19 Dec 7, 2002 (UTC)
- It said it was deleted, but it wasn't -- the page was still there, but without any text. It may have had to do with there being an article page and a talk page and my trying to delete them one at a time. Or not. -- isis 09:46 Dec 7, 2002 (UTC)
- Hmm, "without any text" meaning a completely empty/blank article area, or meaning the "(There is currently no text in this page)" message? (This latter is very misleading -- the message only shows for pages that don't exist; a page with no text will just show blank. This needs to be replaced with something useful.) --Brion 10:05 Dec 7, 2002 (UTC)
- I don't remember whether it said anything or not, but it was an edit page, and when I clicked on 'cancel' (without typing anything on it) it turned into an article page that may have said there is no text. -- isis 10:47 Dec 7, 2002 (UTC)
- By the way, I'm not sure if this is a problem with the software or my ignorance of how to use it, but when I search I don't find articles whose titles are letters, that is, I can't find A.U.M.P. Church by searching on the letters, but on "a u m p church" it gives me all the ones with "church" in the title. -- isis 09:10 Dec 7, 2002 (UTC)
Brion, why does the textbox work for me here in the Normal skin, but it still doesn't work right for me in the Esperanto version? --Chuck SMITH
- Did you try turning off 'edit box full width' in your prefs? --Brion 10:49 Dec 9, 2002 (UTC)
I didn't know if it would matter, but I created a User:rambot for all the rambot entries, that way anyone can tell at a glance if it is me or the bot doing the work. I didn't know if this meant there could be some way that we could hack in some kind of special case so that the Recent Changes screen avoids all "rambot" entries. The current bot run is going to take about 7 days to complete, but after that I was planning on rechecking the remaining 10,000 city articles that were missed (to verify the data, as people were noticing problems). I didn't know if there was any new work done on trying to clear the Recent Changes screen of bot entries. -- RM
- If the rambot entries weren't on recentchanges, would people have noticed the problems in the data? --Brion 21:22 Dec 9, 2002 (UTC)
- Unless they were viewing recent changes from a month ago, yes. None of the errors that people have recently given me were about the current bot run. So it appears as if most people are ignoring those entries. That said, I understand the purpose of the RC. Nevertheless, I just wish there was some way that I could do my work without bothering others. It is also a (minor?) annoyance to have to slow the bot down this much. A filter would be a blessed thing. -- RM
Hi Brion. is it ok to change the logo for the Swedish wikipedia? So far we have one alternative ready, with swedish text and a little bit happier in color:
This is how it looks...
http://sv.wikipedia.org/upload/b/bc/Wiki.png
Dan Koehl 11:42 Dec 10, 2002 (UTC)
- Done. It should now be linked to the uploaded file 'Wiki.png', so if you upload a new version it should take over automatically (clear your cache if need be!). --Brion 21:46 Dec 10, 2002 (UTC)
- Thanks for your help once again! Looks good? / Dan Koehl 00:53 Dec 11, 2002 (UTC)
Hey Brion - Wiktionary is a bit much to type for inline links to Wiktionary articles. Is the d: namespace being used for or planned to be used for anything? --mav
Its only tempoary Mav anyway, We need to get it moved to languagecode.wiktionary.org, but the main question is hwo we are going to link it back and forth maybe... enwt: for wiktionary and enwp: for wikipedia.
-fonzy
Thank you so much for the bot feature. I look forward to when you finish up and we have an option to turn it on. -- Ram-Man
- Sweet! Thanks Brion! --mav
As I mentioned in email sometimes the full headers produce new articles! Aludra Thanks again for helping. BF 01:38 Dec 16, 2002 (UTC)
Hi Brion, I have a favor to ask. I posted this question to Maverick, and he referred me to you. Somebody has taken my comments to "Karl" on Dan Keshet's talk page and moved them to the Holocaust page, signing my name, creating the impression that I am a holocaust denier. I've made an entry on the Vandalism_in_progress page, and contacted the anonymous user's ISP, Sentex.net in Canada. Is it possible to check the server logs and find out if any registered users have logged in from the IP block (64.7.128.0 - 64.7.159.255) on December 18 between, say, 8:00-10:00 UTC? Or any other information which would help identify this person? If necessary, I can provide Perl support to help grok logfiles. Thanks! --Len
- See my response at User talk:Maveric149. --Brion
- See my followup on Mav's talk page. --Len.
On a related matter the above mentioned user have been posting my full name and adress on at least two pages in the Swedish wikipedia. Not only is it a violation of my privacy, but also of Swedish (and European) law. Since I'm concerned about my privacy I would prefer that the article would be deleted. // Liftarn 10:10 Jan 7, 2003 (UTC)
- And where may I find these pages? --Brion 10:24 Jan 7, 2003 (UTC)
- They are on his user page in the Swedish Wikipedia. // Liftarn 12:11 Jan 14, 2003 (UTC)
if you are polite to the trolls they give you gold coins. Vera Cruz
- Maybe once in a great while, but usually they just give you more shit. -- isis 17:08 Dec 19, 2002 (UTC)
Help! I can't erase an stupid image called Optimism.jpg in es.wikipedia!--AN 17:00 Dec 19, 2002 (UTC)
- Thanks!--AN 19:31 Dec 19, 2002 (UTC)
Hi! Would you mind setting up a test version for the new Portuguese Wikipedia? There are a few lines left to translate, but i would really like the other users (they finally appeared!!!!!) to test it at once. I am a bit insecure with the translation, so this is very important.
I've uploaded it to http://www.yvesjmt.kit.net/LanguagePt.php
Can you add me as an admin at the test.wikipedia? Username 'Yves Marques Teixeira' pass: 'lol'
thank you! My email, in case you need, is junqueira at brturbo.com Yves 23:49 Dec 20, 2002 (UTC)
- I'll try to get that set up tonight. --Brion
- Ok. I am sorry if I sounded like trying to rush you. That was not my intention. Take your time. Thank you! Yves
I tried the DNS redirect thing and it failed on me. More on my talk page. If you like I can forward you the account info which has the user id and pswd. FYI I only registered with Verio, I didn't sign up for any service. --mav
Brion, could you delete Image:Jennajameson.jpg for me? For some reason the software says that it is either a bad or empty title but as you can see there is nothing empty in that picture. I don't think fair use applies. --mav
Brion, was sent to you from the Village Well. I am a new Israeli ... (insert whatever you like to call your newbies), and since the heb site is empty I was wondering what could one do to help. Besides the point just wondering about your interest in film. I studied film and hope to end up making them some day in the near future (my first contrib was Un Chien Andalou. Thanks. -- aarrrggghhh
- I'm a little behind on setting up new language wikis; I have to tweak some of the conversion scripts to get them back in synch with the current database schema. I'll try to get it set up in the next couple days! --Brion 22:02 Dec 26, 2002 (UTC)
- Definitely don't rush this on my account. Are there any other people in charge of making something of the Heb wiki once the software is up?
I would offer my help with the code, only I should probably learn to write some before... Thanks anyway, -- aarrrggghhh
Performance has been great in the last few days, is this because of InnoDB? Or are we just getting less traffic? --Eloquence
- It's the light holiday traffic. The InnoDB tables are still only running on test.wikipedia.org, as I haven't yet ironed out some cases of search index synchronization problems. --Brion 03:20 Dec 28, 2002 (UTC)
Re Image:Dimndust.htm; is it your intent to place the book under GFDL license? --Brion 23:21 Dec 29, 2002 (UTC)
- Yes. -- isis 23:43 Dec 29, 2002 (UTC)
Hi, Brion, I was looking at the LanguageIt.php versions on Sourceforge and I found that I probably made a mistake in sending you the last file. Sourceforge version 1.3 is in fact reverting all the changes I had made in version 1.2 and it should be quite similar to 1.1, if not the same. If you wish, I could prepare a 1.5 restoring 1.2 and including the "math" => 1 string added in 1.4. Please, forgive my confusion, and
Have a joyful New Year :-))) Gianfranco
Hi Brion! I've tried to search for some common Englsih words in the Swedish Wikipedia, this would be a good way to find English articles that need translation or removal, but all common words seems to be blocked. Is there any chance to change the blocked worlds from English to Swedish? // Sven Eriksson
- MySQL's fulltext search index is hardwired with English stopwords. --Brion 15:38 Jan 2, 2003 (UTC)
Hi Brion! Someone had left some good advices for you at zh.wikipedia.org . I support these advices.
--Ghyll 4:14 Jan 3, 2003 (UTC)
Brion you're quicker than me Ericd
How come today I'm getting "error"s in the left margin of my "older versions" screens, please? I think I would have noticed if they had been there before, but they've been there since I got up this noon. It says:
View article
Move this page
Error
Error
Discuss this page
What links here
Please make it stop saying that. -- isis 21:53 Jan 7, 2003 (UTC)
- We've changed the sidebar behavior so that there are links to the article, talk page etc. on screens where they were previously missing. For example, when you click on a user page that doesn't exist User:Foobarbar, you can now directly visit their talk page, or contributions, without having to put some text there first. The errors probably relate to your sysop status (I suppose these would be "Protect" and "Delete" links), I didn't test properly with sysop status enabled. Will be fixed ASAP. --Eloquence
- Fixed, but should be double-checked for correctness. The deleteThisPage() and protectThisPage() link-generation functions were making different checks than the functions that called them, returning an error when not in plain viewing mode; I've changed them to check simply for the existence of the article instead. --Brion 22:21 Jan 7, 2003 (UTC)
Yes, it seems to be okay now. The two "Error"s have turned into "Delete this page" and "Protect this page," and when I put my cursor on them, they show me the name of the article whose "Older versions" page I'm on. Thanks very much. -- isis 22:36 Jan 7, 2003 (UTC)
Brion can you have a look at Sexual lubricant & Talk:Sexual lubricant
Hi Brion, Me again. What can I do to help with the Hebrew wiki. I'm kind of getting the feeling that there aren't many other people interested (so who put up the page??). Will translating the language.php file help? What about all the Right-to-Left troubles.. :-) Please let me know what I can do to help. Aarrrggghhh
- Yes, the translation would be a help! I'm not sure just how right-to-left is going to work; we'll see what happens once the interface strings are translated and it's running... --Brion 17:35 Jan 8, 2003 (UTC)
- Where do I put the stuff (front page, php file) once it's translated? It's going to be UTF-8 text, if that's OK? Aarrrggghhh 19:13 Jan 9, 2003 (UTC)
- Perfect! Just attach a copy and e-mail it, either direct to me or to the developers' list (see Wikipedia:Mailing lists). Or, try on meta.wikipedia.org (which is set up for utf-8) and see if it posts properly. --Brion 23:07 Jan 9, 2003 (UTC)
Hi Brion. I've got myself an account at Sourceforge: "tarquindarkling" (there's another "tarquin", who'd been inactive for ages last time I checked.... :( Once I've worked out how do have multiple logins with WinCVS I'm ready :-) -- Tarquin 15:51 Jan 9, 2003 (UTC)
- Looks like I'm in :-) Will I find english text in LanguageFr.php that needs translating, or variables missing from that file I have to add? -- Tarquin 22:43 Jan 9, 2003 (UTC) Never mind, it seems to be the former. -- t
- Probably a little of both, double-check. --Brion 23:07 Jan 9, 2003 (UTC)
- Now why do I suddenly get this feeling of impending doom? ;-) -- Tarquin 23:14 Jan 9, 2003 (UTC)
- Problem: I tried to commit the file & I got: "cvs [server aborted]: "commit" requires write access to the repository" -- t
- Were you working from a directory where you made an anonymous checkout, or did you make a separate checkout from the non-anonymous server? (Remember you need to run it through SSH. I don't know how to do this with WinCVS; when on windows I just use cygwin and pretend I'm running a funny unix.) --Brion 00:44 Jan 10, 2003 (UTC)
- I'm working in the non-anonymous directory -- but I used the same server, just substituting my userID for "anonymous": tarquindarkling@cvs.wikipedia.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/wikipedia . I've found an SSH option, but I get the same reply from the server. Do I need an "RSA identity", whatever that is? There's an option for that that "wakes up" once I have SSH selected. -- Tarquin 10:04 Jan 10, 2003 (UTC)
______
This offensive handle debate got me thinking about F*** and I just clicked into Vagina. The shock of seeing c*** big and blue simply stund me. How could I be so foolish ? Two16
I think the consensus of the community is that it's time for you to change cumguzzler's username. Please check that user's talk page and see if you agree. -- isis 09:31 Jan 16, 2003 (UTC)
mav and I reccomend C. Guzzler. Vera Cruz
- If the user in question has agreed to change their username (a simple matter of logging out, creating a new account, and moving the user page if desired), I will be happy to swap the database records to list the new name for their old edits. Otherwise, you'll need a "warrant" from Jimbo (I don't have the authority to ban or radically alter user accounts without permission except in cases of outright vandalism, which this is not), and you can expect more whining and bitching and creation of "clever" alternate "obscene" usernames to get around the "ban" will likely follow. --Brion 10:19 Jan 16, 2003 (UTC)
- I've cc'd you the email I sent to Jimbo. --Robert Merkel
Brion,
is there a reason we are using a different set of code files for each Wikipedia? It's fairly simple to use the same one for each, I have hacked this for the OpenFacts project: just use different wiki.phtmls which include different Setup.phps which include different LocalSettings.phps. All other PHP files are then shared among the different languages. Wouldn't this make updating a lot easier? (On a different note, I have also hacked OpenFacts to use a common user table for the two languages, this took me only a couple of hours, but merging the existing user DBs would be tricky for WP.)--Eloquence 20:34 Jan 17, 2003 (UTC)
- I'm not so sure that would be an advantage; as it is, I can synchronize all the common source files with a single call to a simple update script, so it's no trouble to have separate directories -- modifying the wiki.phtml and Setup.php for each language would cause more work for me whenever those files happened to change. If we reenable PHP caching with a more recent and less crashy version of APC, I'm not sure how it would be affected by running the same files with different include dependencies.
- I'd like to combine the user tables, but we need charset conversion (or a common charset, preferably), a one-time remapping of user id numbers, and a one-time check for duplicate names that aren't the same people. Further, I haven't heard any concrete ideas on how broadly user options and sysop rights should extend; the same for all languages, or partitioned into sections? --Brion 01:45 Jan 18, 2003 (UTC)
- If you have a script that's fine; when working on de I noticed it seems to be a relatively dated version of the code, though (I miss my backlinks ;). As for perms, yeah, we'll probably need a more complex mechanism here. Either we try to push it all into one column, or we'll create a separate perms table. Opts could be global for the time being, IMHO -- if at all, you would probably only want single opts to be different in different local versions. --Eloquence 04:00 Jan 18, 2003 (UTC)
- I've just updated everything to current version. I notice there's some weirdness in the default skin sidebar; "New page" was showing up on special pages (Recentchanges etc); I've suppressed that message but still get two line breaks. That code could use some cleanup... --Brion 04:18 Jan 18, 2003 (UTC)
- Argh, my mistake, I wanted to show the backlinks in preview mode, too, and checked for $action=="submit", which seems to be the action for special pages. I removed the check in CVS, which will make the backlinks disappear again in preview, though. --Eloquence 06:28 Jan 18, 2003 (UTC)
How much work is it to update the scripts? The display bug is quite annoying. I'll try to fix things up properly over the weekened (don't have a local install here yet), but it would be nice to have the temp fix up before that. (I know you're using a different skin, so you don't notice.) Alternatively, I can ask Jimbo for server access. --Eloquence 00:47 Jan 19, 2003 (UTC)
- Poof, updated. --Brion 00:53 Jan 19, 2003 (UTC)
- As always, thanks for the quick service. I could get used to Cologne Blue .. if only it had a go button ;-) --Eloquence 01:03 Jan 19, 2003 (UTC)
Thanks for your diagram in Telecine. It was the key to helping me understand the process. I added column names to the picture and reduced it to 256 colors (filesize from 20K to 8K, no noticeable decrease in quality). --Nate 05:56 Jan 19, 2003 (UTC)
Hi Brion,
I've been having trouble editing a couple pages here. I can click in the edit boxes, I can select in the edit boxes, I can delete in the edit boxes, but cannot type or paste in the edit boxes. The only two pages (that I know of, of course) on which this happens are Talk:Evolution and User talk:Maveric149. As far as I know, there is no other unprotected page that I cannot edit.
Several people, and in particular Koyaanis Qatsi, have tried to help, but to no avail.
Other info:
- I don't have an ISP. I have ethernet locally going out a T1 eventually at a college.
- I have my own IP. It's dedicated to the sole computer in my office.
- My IP is almost certainly not banned. Otherwise, I couldn't have written this message--unless there is such a thing as a page-specific ban. However, I've never written to Maveric's page, so unlikely I'd be banned there.
- I've never seen a ban message. Only the symptoms I described above.
- Maveric149 said that large pages might be giving me trouble. Perhaps. Both the bothersome pages are fairly large.
- I'm using Netscape 4.75. (I know. It's old, but I like it.)
Do you think there's a bug of some kind doing this?
Yours,
- Okay, this is no longer useful, i guess. I just saw the message you just sent. I think i'll still send it for archival purposes. I hope that's helpful rather than rude (i'm new here. don't the culture yet).
- No more need to respond. I'll assume it's my browser and a size limitation.
- Thank you!
- Arthur
I should modify my earlier comment to Arthur to say that you seldom bite. ;-) Anyway, thanks for all your help on wikipedia. I do appreciate it, even if I don't always remember to say so. Koyaanis Qatsi
- Hey Yo! (okay, that's a little joke)
- thanks for support on other pages. I still like those who disagree with us and are unkind for no reason (do you understand this? I don't want to say names because I don't want to offend anyone).
- best wishes,
- Arthur
It’s time to update the list on the most active Wikipedians, complied over a month ago.
Do you have an idea why your change of Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary of last December shows up in my watchlist (of the last 7 days)?
BTW, nice article on Model United Nations.
Sebastian 19:47 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)
- The watchlist actually shows _all_ entries back to X number, ignoring the date. (The header bit needs to be fixed to explain that!) Since you only have a few items in your watchlist, even fairly old ones will show up. Thanks re the MUN article, I'm glad someone read it. :) It's still pretty light though, calling out for additional editing... --Brion 19:54 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)
Brion!
Dropped the nearly fully translated version (I skipped some really difficult parts scriptwise) of LanguageHe.php in you mailbox. It's v0.1 or less but it's a start! It's on my talk page over at meta. Should I put it on the Locales for Wiki software page as well? -- Aarrrggghhh
I just got an error message. I saw an empty link to Guns n Roses at 1962 in music and clicked on it to make a redirect. Since I was unsure what the correct title was, I did a search for "guns roses" and, then clicked back to make the redirect. The error message came after I pressed save -- (it did take and the redirect works) and this is what came up:
A database query syntax error has occurred. This could be because of an illegal search query (see Searching Wikipedia), or it may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was: SELECT cur_id,cur_namespace,cur_title
FROM cur,links WHERE cur_id=l_to AND l_from='Guns_N'Roses'
from within function "LinkCache::preFill". MySQL returned error "1064: You have an error in your SQL syntax near 'Roses at line 3".
Tokerboy
- Oops! Fixed. --Brion 22:05 Jan 25, 2003 (UTC)