User talk:Cryptic/archive-4

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[edit] Archivals

I wonder if you could be so kind as to help write something to archive the reference desk, and automatically add a date label every 24 hours to the page? If you think it is something feasible with relatively little effort, please let me know! As the primary archiver for the past few months, I am looking for something that will run every 24 hours - basically remove the last set of questions from a particular date (determined from a date header), and archive them into the appropriate subcategories. The page is heavily trafficed, and it would help if archivals were done more often to keep the page length lower. Let me know what you think! --HappyCamper 15:41, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I can't add the date headers; I'm not usually at my computer around midnight UTC time, and there isn't an easy way to automatically schedule tasks in my environment (cygwin). I won't be able to split unanswered questions out into Wikipedia:Reference Desk archive unanswered, either. Archiving sections based on the date in their enclosing level-1 header can be done, but I'm not likely to have enough time strung together in a row to program it until the new year. —Cryptic (talk) 15:49, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
You brought up a good point - I did not realise that a bot had to operate with a computer - I thought these were placed on some server which operates 24 hours a day! There is no splitting of questions into answered and unanswered categories right now - there are just too many questions to deal with; the entire block of questions is archived, and I have done this for the past few months hoping it would simplify any potential implementation of a bot. Well, I'm really grateful for your quick response. I might follow up with you on how to set up a bot on cygwin - I have that too. I have not had the time to sit down and really go through the documentation on how to interface with Wikipedia. Maybe I'll make it my New Year's resolution to get a bot running! All the best, HappyCamper 16:23, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Request for bot

Could Crypticbot please be used to remove old RFC issues? In particular, any link on the subpages of RFC can be deleted after one month (which is what I presently do manually). The exception is user conduct RFCs, which frequently last longer than that (which would require checking when the page itself was last edited, and moving the link to some archive). Radiant_>|< 15:20, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Can be done without too much difficulty, so long as RFC entries are always exactly one line long. I'm unlikely to have enough uninterrupted time strung together in a row to try it until the second or third week of January, though; I'm working twelve hour days now, and don't get a chance to edit at all except during my lunch break and sleeping hours. You might try asking on WP:BR, if you can't wait; getting consensus to remove the lines (are they archived anywhere, or just removed?) on RFC's talk page if you haven't already would be a good idea, too - bots and controversy don't usually mix very well. —Cryptic (talk) 15:34, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Cool! No, I don't mind waiting a month. RFC entries start with " (linebreak)* ", and occasionally but rarely have additional comments added to them by people who mistakenly believe they should respond on the RFC page. They need not be archived anywhere. I've been doing this manually for quite a while with no objections; given the speed of Wiki, any article RFC is outdated after a month. But I'll ask anyway. Radiant_>|< 15:44, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Need help &/or advice on 2 articles

Cryptic, I am a relatively new editor here at Wikipedia and I have run into 2 problem articles:

  • Stockton massacre - I edited this article to conform to higher standards and to remove what was thought to be a specific point of view. The original author reverted it right back and, among other disappointments, refuses to allow the name of the murderer to be listed in the article. Rather than getting into a revert war, I am hoping you can point out to me a way to handle this difficult situation.
I see you've already tagged the article NPOV and tried to engage him on the talk page, which were exactly the right things to do. If this continues to prove unfruitful, the next step is to either ask more editors for their opinions, or to open an RFC (which is basically a more formal way of doing the same thing). I'm afraid I'm a poor choice for the former; I've made it a point to avoid content disputes, so I don't have much experience with this sort of thing, and furthermore I don't have a whole lot of time to do wiki things - I normally edit from work, and this is the busiest time of year for us. —Cryptic (talk) 15:17, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
  • The Claw Accident I nominated this for deletion over a week ago and it's still sitting out there. I fear that it has been misplaced or overlooked.
No problems here - there's a perpetual backlog in closing old afd discussions (you can see its current state at WP:AFD/Old). It'll be closed within a few more days. —Cryptic (talk) 15:17, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Any insight would be appreciated. Madman 04:46, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] WP:PP help?

You are a botmaker, :) so I have a question for you. I was wondering if it would be technically feasible and/or if you could do it yourself to make a bot or script or something to help out at WP:PP. There are a few things it could do. For example there are doubtless quite a few pages on there that are currently unprotected, and people have forgotten to remove them. This happens especially in the user and template pages, and semi-permanently protected pages which few people are watching, as well as recreations and redirects. It would be good maintenance to scan all the listed pages and ensure they are protected. The opposite is also needed, as there are certainly some protected pages cetainly not listed, if admins forget to do so (especially move-protected and permanently protected pages), and this can be detrimental if they are forgotten about and languish protected. It'd be great if we could generate a list of pages (non-MediaWiki) that are protected but not listed on WP:PP. In fact, I'm kind of miffed that there's no special: page that lists protected pages (rather like the list of blocked users), since using the logs for this is basically impossible for any older than a few days. Any help or guidance you could give is appreciated. Dmcdevit·t 09:34, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Hrrrm. I can automatically check listed pages for their protection status, no problem. I'm not sure how to go about finding pages that are protected but aren't listed. I could crawl Category:Protected and its subcategories and compare it to WP:PP, but it seems that most of the pages you're looking for wouldn't be tagged with {{protected}} or any of its brethren. Bots can't do things automatically that can't be done manually (even if doing it manually is a lot of work); is there any way you know of, even an inefficient or time-consuming one, to find protected pages that are neither listed at WP:PP nor tagged with a protection template?
If not, the only idea I have is to bug someone with an account on the toolserver to do database queries (Tony Sidaway would be my first choice here, since he's been involved in page protection). I don't know if that's even feasible, since I don't know how up-to-date the toolserver database is kept. —Cryptic (talk) 15:22, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

even an inefficient or time-consuming one — Parse Special:Log/protect. Uncle G 17:39, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

OK, point taken. It's not so bad as I first feared (about three months per page of 5000 entries), and I suppose the articles that get unprotected because they're deleted and restored can be caught by a check on their current status. This won't catch articles that were protected before the "new" logging went in (about a year ago?), if that matters. —Cryptic (talk) 18:52, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, aside from accidentally on articles, talk and user pages are often not tagged, and protected templates are intentionally not tagged, so that would be a good feature. Not too worried about year-old things. So, you can do this? Dmcdevit·t 21:34, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
I'll look at when I get home. Removal should go fast - at least, finding a list of articles to remove; it might take a touch longer to get it to update the page correctly - but parsing the log will take longer. Might not happen until work gets less crazy in a couple weeks. —Cryptic (talk) 00:40, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Thanks. It's not anything urgent, just something I've been thinking about for a while. If regular updates were anything I could do myself, I'd be happy to. Dmcdevit·t 01:28, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Can you help me?

Hi I am the editor that is going through and fixing bad Wikisource links left from the language split. I have been doing this by hand off a search for Wikisource. So far I have looked at 700 of the over 4,000 results from that search and I now have a good idea where I will find errors. Is there any you can pull out a list of all the instance where WP links to WS without a template? The most common ways these links are setup is [[Wikisoure:This is an example]], [[s:This is an example]], [http://sources.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_is_an_example This is an example], and [http://wikisource.org/wiki/This_is_an_example This is an example] If I could have listing all these links and so I could just test them out and only look up the article when I find a bad link, it would be great as these bad links are really causing extra work at WS. Or if you have any suggestions as how I could do this without looking through 4,000 articles individually I would appreciate it.--BirgitteSB 14:58, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

The best way to find all of these is with a database query. The toolserver database is probably up-to-date enough that this will work, so you don't need a developer; I don't have access to it, though, so you'll have to ask someone else. I know User:Beland and User:AllyUnion both have toolserver accounts, and are usually receptive to this sort of task; I suggest trying one of them.
Alternately, you could download a database dump and query that. This requires a lot of diskspace, though, which I don't have currently available myself. —Cryptic (talk) 15:29, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] AFD Bot

AFD Bot's moving the wrong day on WP:AFD. [1] —Cryptic (talk) 17:48, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Bot is operating correctly. See [2] then see [3]. Someone moved the 21st back up to the top. The bot keeps a 6 day listing, because historically, after 6 days, then it's considered old. It should not be a 7 day listing. --AllyUnion (talk) 19:49, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Vicki Walker

Hello, my name is David and I edit a lot of the political articles having to do with my home state of Oregon. I noticed this article had a copyright issue, which is funny, because I was planning to write the same article eventually. I've been adding and rewriting some of the articles for the 2006 Governor's race in Oregon.

Anyway, I rewrote the article using lots of diffrent sources. The article is on the temp page as the directions on the main page stated to put it there. If you get a chance, I'd appreciate it if you would do whatever is necessary in terms of posting. Thanks for your help. Davidpdx 13:15, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Done. —Cryptic (talk) 15:10, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
Thanks Again! Davidpdx 15:19, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sure!

I'll keep it mind in future :-) Sorry about that... wasn't aware it caused issues for your bot... Ta bu shi da yu 21:35, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Local

Hey, I saw you restored the Astronomy section on Local. Did you see the discussion on Talk:Local? And do you feel that a user who just types in the word "Local" might be looking for one of those astronomy terms? I agree with you that most of the terms on the page are at least one step removed from the word "local" (with the exception of labor unions), but the astronomy terms seem like a substantial stretch to me, since "local" isn't really the defining word in those terms. | Klaw ¡digame! 14:22, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Ack. I thought I'd commented on the talk page, obviously not. I'll go do so now. —Cryptic (talk) 14:30, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
No worries, I saw your comments there. Thanks. | Klaw ¡digame! 14:59, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] DRV

Hi Cryptic,

The backlog is almost clear, as I have been closing those which mere mortals can. Would you please use your admin superpower to undelete the two old entries which require it? Almost back to normal... wow, this place gets slow around holidays. :) Thanks, Xoloz 21:23, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

By an odd coincidence, I was doing just that already. —Cryptic (talk) 21:25, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
Well, I'd say "great minds think alike", but I'm a moron :)... so, that's just a case of your brilliance seeing where a need existed. Best wishes and thanks, Xoloz 21:42, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Big quran page

IF you crop the picture to just the image of the page, you end up with a page with a big shiny blotch in the middle that could be of a three-inch high Qur'an. You need the figure for scale. Without the scale, and the figure, you have a substandard photo of no particular worth.

I was under the impression that we didn't accept images with strings attached.

I'm VERY UPSET and should probably end here before I say something uncivil :( Zora 21:16, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] N000

Well, for one thing, you know that line of Category: Wikipedians By Subgroup userboxes?

N000's page had several hundred of those lines. Possibly every single userbox created, including the mutually exclusive ones. It was a deliberate pain in the ass, so I deleted it. DS 00:39, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RFC

I've opened a RFC due to your blatant violations of Wikipedia:Blocking policy and your support for out-of-process deletions. Firebug 01:18, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Gang stalking

Despite DonRus's obnoxious behavior, gang stalking does appear to be a documented phenomenon. Could you reconsider your comment at the deletion review? Gazpacho 03:08, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

I'll look at it more closely tomorrow; my initial impression (without looking at the article again, or any of the references) is that it should stay deleted for at least a few more days to see if the rampant re-creations slow down any. DonRus' behavior was obnoxious enough that I blocked him for a week just before you posted this, so I don't think I'd be terribly neutral on the subject at the moment. —Cryptic (talk) 03:16, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fixing the old watchlist-VFD problem

One of the big objections to splitting vfd into separate subpages per day back when was that, if you want an entry to show up on your watchlist whenever a new article is listed, you have to watch a gazillion daily pages in advance instead of just watching Wikipedia:Votes for deletion. CFD has the same problem, and so would the recent proposed overhaul of TFD (which has multiple other problems, but never mind that). It occurred to me today that this might be fixable by, instead of creating each daily page from scratch, to instead create Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/Seed, and, every day just before midnight, move that to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2005 December 31 or such before editing it into the standard format as is currently done. Watches follow page moves, so users who want to permanently watchlist AFD need only watch the seed page; users who only want to watch given daily pages can just watch those pages, as is currently done. Thoughts? —Cryptic (talk) 05:04, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

The problem is that you'll end up with users with, after a long period of time, an extensive number of pages in their watchlist which is not necessarily the easiest to remove. While I think it is a good idea, there is no feature currently in the Python Wikipedia Bot Framework that has a move feature, which means I'd would have to end up programming one from scratch. --AllyUnion (talk) 08:29, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Quran Image

Hello, Why you revert may Removal of unsuitable image

[edit] Thanks!

Since you seem to get lots of grief over deleted articles, let me thank you for keeping one.

For some reason, an article on Henry James' short story Paste got marked for deletion.

Why this pretty little story would irritate anybody is beyond me. It's a clever reversal of Maupassant's The Necklace, and I don't think anybody's marked that article for deletion.

Again, thanks for deciding to keep the article. I helped clean it up, but even in its original form the article hardly deserved the ax. Casey Abell 21:00, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Your thanks are misplaced; it was the editors who discussed it at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Paste (story) who determined the outcome. I didn't even close the debate; Izehar did. The only reason I became involved at all is because Izehar forgot to remove the afd tag from the article; I haven't even read it. —Cryptic (talk) 21:14, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
Okay, thanks to everybody who wanted to keep the article! Casey Abell 00:49, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] I got fired once for using "eschew"

Well, there were other reasons, but the lawyers didn't like it that their file clerk had a bigger vocabulary than they did. Zora 02:56, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] please vote

Please vote on whether to delete Kancho sense. You said you wanted it deleted and I nominated it for it. Voting link here: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Kancho_sense StarTrekkie 09:11, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template: Information appliance logo field

Hi, I see you removed the logo field from Template:Information appliance. You said in the edit summary that "their use is these infoboxes is purely decorative and violates WP:FUC (not to mention WP:AUM)". I don't see how this field is related to meta-templates at all. With regard to fair use criteria, I presume you are referring to this: "Fair use images should only be used in the article namespace. They should never be used on templates (including stub templates and navigation boxes) or on user pages." However, I never included any fair use images in the template itself, I merely provided a space for them to be added within the article namespace. Loads of templates do this, and I don't think that something being purely decorative is enough reason to remove it. I haven't changed it yet, because I'd like to hear what you have to say on this matter. Perhaps I'm wrong, and there are other reasons why this is not appropriate. Jacoplane 15:32, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

The AUM reference was for the invocation of {{if defined call1}}. The company logos themselves aren't fair use in articles about the products, only in articles about the companies, like the tag on the images says. If the individual products (or even product lines) have logos specific to them, that would be ok, but all of the articles with this infobox that had a logo used the company's one. —Cryptic (talk) 15:46, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] {{mb}}

[4] Oops, my bad :) Considering that the present {{mb}} is not really used all that often, maybe we should rename it and make MB a redirect to MFD bottom? Radiant_>|< 20:47, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

SPUI says in the edit summary creating this that it'll be used mostly with subst, so I'd bring it up with him first. My own thinking is that {{mfdt}}/{{mfdb}} would be more scalable as redirects (vt/vb and at/ab nonwithstanding). —Cryptic (talk) 20:56, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How's your stress level?

I saw you were the subject of a (now deleted) RfC as a result of the userbox fiasco. I took a cursory glance at the blocks you performed and the rationale behind them, and it looked solid to me. I hope you haven't become too stressed about this matter. You're not at the core of this dispute and what you were doing, at least in so far as my cursory check showed, was inline with policy in my opinion. As the guy who nominated you at RfA, my review of you for that RfA showed you to be a level headed individual. We all have our moments though. I just wanted to express that I have confidence in you and that I hope this situation hasn't stressed you too much. All the best, --Durin 03:16, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Stressed from work, stressed by personal life, not stressed at all by Wikipedia. If I had a wikistress graphic on my user page, I wouldn't have budged from "Not wearing any pants." I greatly appreciate the concern, though. —Cryptic (talk) 03:34, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re-creation of legitimately deleted stub redirects

Hi Cryptic... those stub redirects that were re-created after DRV vote... since no-one involved in SFD to WP:WSS knew that those votes were going on (it almost seems like we were deliberately excluded from any news about it) is it any surprise that they've been re-listed for deletion? The original votes for deletion of these stubs were overwhelming - SPUI was the only one who voted for their retention, and since that time he's waged war of WP:SFD (have a look at why Radiant blocked him on Christmas Eve to get some idea of what I mean). In each case there was a valid reason for deletion. In the case of bike-stub (which SPUI re-created nine times before it was protected from re-creation) the term is far too ambiguous to be used as a redirect for cycling-stub, since "bike" means motorbike in many countries and is therefore more likely to be considered as a redirect to a motorcycle-stub. In the case of the other templates, it is already hard enough to keep track of all the many stub types, and it is for that reason that as many stub redirects as possible have been deleted. To only have one name, and to make sure that that name is standardised and therefore not likely to be mistaken, makes the work of any editors likely to use specific stub templates far easier. Casual editors don't use specific stub templates - they use{{stub}}, and they're happy. They don't need to know a specific name for stub templates - but stub sorters do. unless that name is standardised, it's unlikely that a stub sorter will knwo instantly what the correct template name would be. By creating (to the best of my knowledge) a total of 75 different non-guideline stub redirects in the last two months, SPUI has made it more likely that non-standard stub templates are created by others, since those from outside the stub-sorting project who see non-standard stub names working, a la SPUI's redirects, think that any name can be used happily for a new template. It is no surprise that the number of non-standardly-named primary templates (rather than redirects) has gone up substantially in recent times. If theDRV vote had been mentioned at WP:SFD or WP:WSS, I an certain that the vote for keeping those redirects deleted would have been very much the same as the legitimate original deletion of them. Grutness...wha? 07:54, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Thank you for your support of my RfA; I appreciate your confidence. Best wishes for a happy new year, Tom Harrison Talk 13:20, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use images

No fair use image may be used outside some reasonable fair use such as an educational purpose, userboxes are not such a use. No vote or consensus process otherwise is valid. Fred Bauder 17:28, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

If you are an administrator, take action (carefully} or make specific complaints at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents if you are not. Fred Bauder 17:45, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Don't go overboard and make a fool of yourself, but pick out an instance, warn, and if no effect, remove the image from the userbox and if restored, block the user. Take it easy, but take it. Report what you are doing at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents and listen carefully to the feedback. Fred Bauder 17:45, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Thanks for unblocking my IP. I'm glad this was cleared up so quickly. Infinity0 talk 18:38, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kelly Martin RFAr

I posted this under your comment. I'm just putting it here to make sure you see it.

Would you please post the evidence for this claim here. If you can back it up with the evidence I will take another look and reconsider my vote. Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 21:47, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] help with old username

i have an old username which i need to remove. i foolished used the same username i have used in employment and it is rather unique. my identity may be exposed and cause me trouble at work. is there any way to alter my old username or remove my old edits?

thanks OnceUponATimeInChina 04:02, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Changing username. —Cryptic (talk) 04:03, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Notability (websites)

Hi, I've rewritten Wikipedia:Notability (websites), leaning heavily on Wikipedia:Notability (companies and corporations) for insiration. I've tried to make the guidelines broader so that they can be applied to any form of web content, rather than focusing on specifics. The goal shouldn't be to set bars to take account of particular examples, but rather to outline existing policy and consensus at various places. As someone who has expressed an opinion on the guidelines in the past, I hope you will read the new version and comment on the talk page. Steve block talk 12:09, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] God of War

Hi, I think God of War should be unblocked, for reasons I've stated at User_talk:God_of_War#Blocked. I've not unblocked, altho I feel it's the right thing to do. Would you be willing to unblock, or perhaps comment? Friday (talk) 21:00, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stub redirects

I would be interested in your thoughts regarding the conversation at the bottom of User talk:Jamesday regarding template redirects (and, ultimately, stub redirects). I ask your opinion because of my high regard for your level head and your technical skills, and because you seem to share my opinion that stub redirects are useful. Ξxtreme Unction|yakkity yak 00:29, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

I like the solution he offers, not least because any instances where the editor saves an article with a soft-redirected template but either doesn't notice the message or doesn't bother to clean it up can be fixed by a bot (which currently can't be done for normal template redirects because of the bug that breaks their Whatlinkshere). Of course, it would require either that a list of such soft-redirects is maintained somewhere, or that the boilerplate text contains a link to Wikipedia:Don't use template redirects or a similar page. —Cryptic (talk) 01:34, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
You may be interested in the revived discussion about this topic currently found in the lower reaches of both Wikipedia talk:Redirects for deletion and Wikipedia talk:Stub types for deletion. There is currently some difference of opinion regarding how conservatively one should view Jamesday's remarks. Ξxtreme Unction|yakkity yak 12:42, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] My bureaucrat nomination

Thank you!

Thank you for your kind words on my nomination for bureaucrat. I'm disappointed with the results, but heartened by the support I received by so many fine Wikipedians. You're "one of the good-uns", as they say. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 08:32, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Do reconsider the deletion

of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signa_Vianen%2C_Journalist

Reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signa_Vianen

[edit] Moving articles on AFD

Ok. --Phroziac . o º O (♥♥♥♥ chocolate!) 15:46, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] poll summary on WP:TFD

I accept your revert on WP:TFD. Was just a try :-). Adrian Buehlmann 17:10, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks!

Thanks! (Was that you or a bot, or just some incredibly fast copy and pasting?) Flcelloguy (A note?) 23:37, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts/Replace. —Cryptic (talk) 23:42, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Zordrac suffrage

  • Zordrac does not have suffrage; his first edit was at 12:59, 24 November 2005 (UTC). —Cryptic (talk) 04:27, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

in fact, "In order to vote, you must have an account registered on or before 30 September 2005 and 150 edits by the start of the election (January 9)."

why would having his first edit at 12:59, 24 November 2005 (UTC) make him ineligible to vote? r b-j 05:28, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

...November comes after September. —Cryptic (talk) 05:33, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
Oh, I see what you're getting at. I check the first edit time only because it can be done in the same check as edit count before January 9, and it almost always closely follows the user's actual creation. The developers are probably unhappy enough with me as it is, since I'm scraping html to get that edit count; no need to upset them more by scraping the user creation log, too. If there are any cases where someone actually did register before September 30, but didn't make their first edit until afterwards, I can flag him so he won't show up on my suffrage checks anymore. Zordrac's not one of these, cases, though - he registered at 12:26, 24 November 2005. —Cryptic (talk) 05:41, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
then, please, i would suggest to make that clear where you disenfranchise him. and i would also suggest striking out the text of his vote. r b-j 06:26, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm unsure how to make "his first edit was at (timestamp)" more clear. I'm deliberately avoiding striking others' signed comments, which is a pretty rude thing to do; simply indenting their vote is enough to remove them from the count. —Cryptic (talk) 06:45, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Suffrage

You are incorrectly tagging people as not having suffrage. Suffrage is based on having 150 edits and account creation before October 1. This hasn't resulted in an improper removal yet, but you were within 5 days with one. I don't have time to keep fixing your mistakes. Please correct them yourself. WAvegetarian (talk) (email) (contribs) 06:24, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Just read above topic. This is cheating in a way. I understand it, but it is cheating. If you use popups it takes just one more click. Please do it properly. Screwing up would look really bad, especially since you knew of the problem already. WAvegetarian (talk) (email) (contribs) 06:26, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
If you find an actual error, please feel free to inform me. This will both prevent the vote from being flagged again, and allow me to apologize to the voter. I don't use popups; I'm using a read-only bot (see Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections January 2006#Suffrage checking). —Cryptic (talk) 07:06, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
I was going to tease you about making 148 not meet sufferage, but now instead I'll say, "Good job doing a thankless task, keep up the good work." - brenneman(t)(c) 06:56, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
Borderline cases like Stevecov's are exactly why I'm giving the precise reasons I flagged votes, and part of the reason why I'm only indenting instead of indenting and striking as suggested above. It's up to the folks actually running this to make the final call whether someone is counted; all the rest of us can only bring them to the organizers' attention. —Cryptic (talk) 07:06, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
Makes sense. I hadn't realized you were running a bot. If I'd bothered reading your username it would have clued me that you were, as that seems to be what you do (running bots andmaking scripts that is, thanks). It did seem kinda ridiculous that you would be checking all of them by hand. Maybe you could include a link to a user sub page where someone could complain if they were unfairly tagged. Thanks for bothering to check it. It seems that many others are simply trolling their (least)favorite candidate's vote page and checking all they disagree with. It reminds me of the Washington State gubernatorial election of 2004. WAvegetarian (talk) (email) (contribs) 07:35, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
Very nice, thanks. WAvegetarian (talk) (email) (contribs) 08:54, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

As someone who in AfD discussions has not been a big fan of third parties puttting edit counts in, and said so, I think I need to pop in and say thank you very much for doing it in the ArbComm election. I also really appreciate that you aren't actually striking the comments, just adding your information and leaving it at that. I expect there may be some people that give you a hard time about doing this but remember that many of us really appreciate it. Take care. ++Lar: t/c 10:01, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

So where can I see how many edits I have made? I am surprised that it falls short of the 150, but there seems to be no checking mechanism other than counting down a screen. I understand your comments, but shouldn't something prevent me voting if I am not eligible? Alternatively, shouldn't there be a means for editors to check their edit numbers? (Note this also excludes edits made at work and not logged in for cookie reasons, although I understand and accept the principle.) - Stevecov 09:02, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

The link I've been using is http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&limit=150&go=first&target=Stevecov. That'll show your first 150 edits. —Cryptic (talk) 09:05, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

For determining account creation time, sometimes Special:Log works [5] and sometimes it doesn't seem to work. [6] In cases where it doesn't work, it's possible to query the database for the earliest edit of all users with a user id >= the desired user. The only query I can come up with is slow, but if it's useful (if account creation times are contested), it's something anyone on the toolserver could run. --Interiot 18:21, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

SELECT MIN(rev_timestamp) FROM revision WHERE rev_user >= (SELECT user_id FROM user_ids WHERE user_name="Interiot");
Special:Log/newusers only goes back to September 7, which is why you don't show up. While I haven't been checking the log, either manually or by bot, I can't envision an account created before this date but having no edits at all until after the 30th, unless it was deliberately created as a sleeper. If it comes up, I'll happily let someone else sort it out. (And I really must learn SQL at some point.) —Cryptic (talk) 18:44, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Hi, Thanks for striking my votes. I was sure I'd been here longer than that... :-) A note on the message page would be a nice added feature - and would have saved me from making the same mistake a 2nd time! Thanks again, Ben Aveling 05:22, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] thanks

Thnaks for correcting Wikipedia:Process is Important. I hope that this will in time bevome a much-cited page, and the better writtten and formatted it is, the more likely that is to happen. DES (talk) 19:16, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jim62sch?

At Kim Bruning's vote page you said that User:Jim62sch did not have suffrage. According to the user creation log, his account was created on September 28. I thought you should know. Chick Bowen 21:36, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Bother. Thanks for letting me know. I've reinstated his votes, updated my bot to check the log, and rechecked everyone else I've tagged; he was the only anomaly. —Cryptic (talk) 02:39, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
I thought he would be. It was a rather unusual situation (maybe his first edits were to now-deleted pages or some such)--really just bad luck; your original logic was sound. Sorry about the extra work. Chick Bowen 03:15, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Barnstar and a request...

I combined two topics in one...

[edit] Barnstar

I award this Barnstar to you, Cryptic, for your work with your script that calculates voting suffrage. Thanks for doing so! — Ian Manka
I award this Barnstar to you, Cryptic, for your work with your script that calculates voting suffrage. Thanks for doing so! — Ian Manka

[edit] A request

"If you need access to a Wikipedia article that has been deleted, ask me. If it's not a copyright violation, libel or similar (I don't think it is), I will make the text available to you (that'd be nice!)."

I would like to know if you would be willing to send me a copy of the deleted article Chris labosky. I was telling a few of my friends what a mess that was. I am trying to get them into Wikipedia, and kinda show them the ropes... like what NOT to write (i.e. not autobiographies). I happen to somewhat know. If you can do that, that'd be great, but otherwise, no big deal! Thanks for reading, — Ian Manka Questions? Talk to me! 03:16, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I'm in the process of gathering what you shouldn't do... — Ian Manka Questions? Talk to me! 23:53, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re stub redirects

Hi, as this is off-topic, I thought I'd bring it here. I was going to point you to this discussion and this one, but I see you've already been there. As I don't know "squids" from any other tempura, I honestly can't say whether or not your interpretation of the situation (that it's better to keep those redirects) is appropriate. I apologize for speaking in ignorance. I tend to agree with what WP:WSS is doing, but I won't argue technical points that I don't understand.

I just don't find stub-sorting that difficult — I use WP:WSS/ST, and it's easy — and I wouldn't consider stub sorting "almost the only thing I do", so at least that's a point about which I'm informed enough to speak. I don't understand the apparent antipathy some people seem to have for the stub-sorting project. -GTBacchus(talk) 05:42, 11 January 2006 (UTC)


[edit] An apology Jim62sch

It's OK, stuff happens. :) After I registered, I wanted to take some time to get used to the "lay of the land" before I started making edits, so there is a bit of a gap. Apology accepted, of course, as it was an honest oops. Take care. Jim62sch 11:14, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rishabhadeva

Hi,

The page Lord Rishabha is about same entity as Rishabhdeva. The content of several articles, now linked to Lord Rishabha was exactly same. I have cleaned them up, and added their most content to Lord Rishabha page.

Please go thru Lord Rishabha page for comparision.

Chirags 15:42, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Not my responsibility. If you want the article deleted, please follow the full process. Blanking the article, replacing it with {{afd}}, and doing nothing else is indistinguishable from vandalism. —Cryptic (talk) 15:46, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
I can understand, Have changed it to a redirect page to Lord Rishabha. Chirags 16:04, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AFDs

I see your bot is pretty powerful in monitoring whether the AFD steps are followed, and fixing any problems. Why not just streamline the process for humans and have everyone depend on your bot? (I use javascript to automate it myself, but I assume most people don't.) —Quarl (talk) 2006-01-11 19:24Z

Because it requires human intervention to figure out what exactly went wrong. There are a lot of weird cases that show up - besides just afd pages being moved, there are multiple nominations on single pages, articles listed at non-standard pages, people who write their afd nomination on the talk page or the article itself, etc. It actually takes longer for me to determine whether a given half-done nomination needs to be completed than it would to nominate an article from scratch.
Also, it's a pretty bad idea to make afd, a critical part of the day-to-day workings of Wikipedia, dependent on one person's bot. I could have a heart attack tomorrow, after all. —Cryptic (talk) 20:03, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
As for weird cases showing up -- wouldn't we have a lot less weird cases and less to fix if the task of nominating for AFD were easier? As for depending on you not getting hit by a bus, it could be run on tools.wikipedia.org. —Quarl (talk) 2006-01-12 00:10Z

[edit] Elections

You're doing good work on monitoring election pages and gracefully dealing with voters without suffrage. - Haukur 20:16, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

As noted above with award of barnstar. — Ian Manka Questions? Talk to me! 23:51, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:Mistress Selina Kyle - indef block

Dear Cryptic: Regarding your indefinite block of this user - Yes, I agree this user's behaviour has been frequently unpleasant and out-of-line; undeniably, something has to done, although I'm not sure that an indefinite block is necessarily the best answer. Usually I am somewhat hesitant to dish out indefinite blocks on anyone (save for Willy on Wheels vandals and impostor accounts) simply because of the fact it is somewhat unwiki, and also because usually I am prepared to give users at least a second, if not a third, chance (with fairly long blocks in between). The other thing is that unilateral blocks given by admins tend to be unpopular amongst many users, regardless of the merits of the matter, where the arbcom hasn't ordered it. Personally I would advise perhaps changing that block to one month, or perhaps three - or, alternatively, removing the block entirely and sending it to arbitration. If the arbcom get involved, that would give more weight to the matter, and no potential allegations of unfair conduct could be levelled by users who disagree with the block. Just a suggestion, of course; your blocks are of course your own domain, and I absolutely will not tamper with it myself. All the best, --NicholasTurnbull | (talk) 20:49, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Sean Black indef blocked her; see the log. The only reason my name is on it is because I tried to block her for a week immediately after, and didn't notice she'd been blocked already until I went to her talk page to tell her. (Ironically, he'd already reblocked her, and I stepped onto that again while I was trying to fix my error.) —Cryptic (talk) 20:55, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
Dear Cryptic: Ah, I see, thank you for shedding some light on the situation. Sorry to have lectured you when you weren't the one who imposed the block! Best regards, --NicholasTurnbull | (talk) 22:13, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] MSK Unblocking

It was recently pointed out to me that I should contact you about my unblocking of Mistress Selina Kyle. My apologies for not doing so previously. My feeling is that while her behavior is in need of improvement, she's not at the point where an indefinite block is justified. Kelly Martin asserts that the user shares an IP with known vandals, but let us consider both that Kelly Martin is herself in conflict with the user (The whole Userbox purge), and there seems to be some discussion on MSK's talk page that while she does happen to come from an open proxy (and I'm not really well versed enough in Internet meanings to understand that, looks like I'll have to study up), that it's not neccessarily her choice to edit from that proxy and it's also possible that she simply happens to have the same IP as a vandal (ie the whole situation with AOL). I dont have a full understanding of that situation, but I don't think she's conclusively linked to other vandalism. This is not to say that I'm unable to be convinced that she should be banned, but so far I'm not seeing the evidence for it, and I am seeing the evidence of what is in my perception some rather heavy handed action from other Administrators, and I think there needs to be further dispute resolution procedures taken before she's indefinitely banned. I of course want to spend some time researching her case, and will be doing so. The idea behind a community banning is that a User is essentially banned if indefinitely blocked, and not one Administrator can be found that's willing to unblock. However, if there are Admins who oppose the block, then the Ban is disputed, and further dispute resolution is the appropriate course. That is why I chose to unblock her. I note that she has been re-blocked, so I'm not going to reverse that, but I wanted to express to you my opinion on that matter. Ëvilphoenix Burn! 01:04, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

While I'm not sure that an indefinite block is in order, unblocking her outright certainly isn't, given both her history (see, f'rexample, here (one of at least a dozen such that I've noticed) and the user page of a admitted sock she created to get around a previous block) and that she had been edit warring to remove another's comment from WP:TFD when I initially blocked her. That she explicitly declined to go to arbitration doesn't speak well for her, either. —Cryptic (talk) 01:47, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Moving articles on AfD

Re: comments on my talk page.

Sure thing. Is there anything I can do to fix what I've broken? --Wrathchild (talk) 17:55, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] TFD header

[7] nice! I don't have a bot standing ready, but I've requested AllyUnion (of NekoDaemon fame) to handle TFD the same way he does CFD. In the meantime I'll do it manually for a few days, it's only two edits anyway. Radiant_>|< 23:20, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

AllyUnion's bot isn't capable of doing it correctly, since pywikipediabot can't move pages; see above. I'll see if I can have something running by tomorrow. (The hardest part, stupidly enough, will be getting it to run at the correct time; there's no cron equivalent in my environment, and it doesn't compile at all cleanly, so I'll have to roll one myself.) —Cryptic (talk) 23:26, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
I believe you want to move pages to get your watchlist straight every day? An easier solution would be to create a page WP:TFD/Today that is a redirect to the most current page, and have the bot update that. If you watchlist the TODAY page, it will show up on your daily watchlist and if you click it, you'll end up on the proper page. Radiant_>|< 00:19, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
No, I want to be able to watch a single page, once, and then have tfd discussions show up on my watchlist wherever they are. A redirect only shows up on the watchlist when it's edited itself. This was a significant issue when VFD was split a year ago (see Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion/January-February 2005, particularly #VfD change, #missing vfd voices, and #VFD One Page a Day). User:Sjorford/VFD pages, which has links to add each individual page to the watchlist, appeased the objectors, but it's a pain to use, and not at all scalable - it doesn't have any 2006 pages, for instance, and wasn't updated for the vfd->afd move. —Cryptic (talk) 00:36, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
Okay, good point. Then how about this... you could set up a small bit of JavaScript that, when you open your watchlist, does a Special:Unwatch on yesterday's TFD/VFD/etc, and a Special:Watch on today's. By the way thanks for your help in botting this! Radiant_>|< 11:21, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
So, not only does everyone who used to watch WP:TFD and wants to continue doing so gets two extra windows popping up every time they open their watchlist, but they only see edits to the current day's subpage? Unacceptable. —Cryptic (talk) 17:59, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Archiving of Tfd's

Hi. I archived some TfD's under the new system. Please review my edits on Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/Archives. I propose to no longer separate delete/non-deleted templates (as done previously). The new system is really nice, as it makes archiving simple. I deliberately didn't create yet subpages for months. --Adrian Buehlmann 00:18, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Hrm. A simple bulleted list will get very bulky after a while. (See Wikipedia:Archived delete debates.) How about something like User:Cryptic/sandbox4? It's pretty easy to produce (it's just {{subst:JanuaryCalendar2006Source|1=Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2006 <nowiki></nowiki>|1a=|2=|3=|4=|5=|float=left|color=#ccccff|color2=#ccccff|EndNote=}} (and similarly for the other months), with the redlinks commented out and nowikis removed), much more compact, and even pretty. —Cryptic (talk) 01:47, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
Yeah. That looks good. Full support. --Adrian Buehlmann 09:56, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] the bot on TfD

is creating wrong calls, it is refering to {{Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2006 0 15}} →AzaToth 01:21, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Fixed, thanks. Sorry about not catching it immediately; I got called away at about a quarter to, and assumed it would be fine. It did, after all, work fine the day before, other than the off-by-a-day error which I'd already fixed; I'm not sure how I managed to remove the month conversion in the meantime. Grumble. —Cryptic (talk) 03:30, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New job for the bot

Could your bot help in archiving the Help Desk? I am manually archiving it at the moment, keeping today, plus the previous seven days. If I am not around to do it, the page can grow rather quickly. The help desk uses super sections for date separation which might make the job more difficult. --GraemeL (talk) 15:41, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

So if it were to archive tonight, it would (at midnight UTC) add "=January 16=" to the bottom and move everything in the "January 8" supersection into Wikipedia:Help desk/Archive 38? Are new archives started according to their size, or according to how many days are stored in them? And how big or how many, respectively? —Cryptic (talk) 16:35, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
Correct on the addition of new supersections and the moving of the supersections to the archives. As to how big the archives get, I haven't been using a set policy. For the bot, an archive size of 10 days would probably be best. More than 10 days and the archives get too big. --GraemeL (talk) 16:47, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
'k. I'll try to get this written once I'm sure tfd maintenance is stable. I'll let you know in advance before I start it running on the live page. —Cryptic (talk) 16:53, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
Thanks! --GraemeL (talk) 16:55, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Election Duplicate Vote

Sorry, I removed my "duplicate vote" a while back but forgot to inform you upon doing so. Thanks for notifying me though! --- Responses to Chazz's talk page. Signed by Chazz @ 17:29, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Creating AFD subpages on behalf on anons

I would like to know why is your bot creating subpages on behalf of anons. Scott Levy (actor) was tagged for deletion by anon, who of course can't create subpages (as anons can't created pages anymore, thankfully). Now, the restriction against anon making pages is a policy choice, so I don't understand why a robot would override that. It seems little different then a robot making articles for Wikipedia:Articles for creation. If there's a decision to let anons make subpages for AFDs, then permissions should then be set to allow that. If that's done, and anon still has trouble, I could see the reason for the bot (If I'm mistaken, and anons are allowed to create subpages, I'm sorry for my mistake). Otherwise, it seems to be allowing an anon to do what they're not allowed to do. --Rob 17:41, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Anons have always been able to nominate articles for deletion; see Wikipedia:Guide to deletion#Nomination. The statement that anonymous users can make afd nominations has been in the guide since its very first revision, and no doubt was present in the pages that it was merged from (though I haven't looked). The biggest reason we don't see more anon nominations is afd's ridiculous instruction creep. Further, the bot doesn't just blindly list articles just because they're tagged; I have to check every one (and in fact reject anywhere from half to three quarters of the articles it finds every day). See User:Crypticbot#How I determine whether to let the bot list an orphaned or incomplete afd. —Cryptic (talk) 17:49, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I'm well aware that anons *were* always allowed to make nominations, which involves the creation of AFD subpages (obviously). They *were* allowed to create pages in general. But they are no longer permitted to create pages. I even just retested this fact. It was prohibited by Jimbo's recent action. This is why anons are now going to WP:AFC and asking for AFDs in addition to new articles. I think a problem here, is that after anons were blocked from making new pages, a number of guideline/policy pages have not been updated to reflect the change. Your reply above was relevant to the issue before Jimbo's anti-anon-creation action, but it seems to be moot at this point. Can you address the issue of our policy to stop anons from creating pages? I feel the robot is helping anons get around an intentional prohibition. Also your statement "The biggest reason we don't see more anon nominations is afd's ridiculous instruction creep." seems to totally ignore the fact that no anon, no matter how expert, no matter simple the instructions are, is able to make a nomination unassisted, as doing so requires page creation. The issue of instruction creep, and complexity are irrelevant. --Rob 18:40, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
So what would you have me do? Paste it to WP:AFC instead? Are only certain special users allowed to create pages for anons? —Cryptic (talk) 18:44, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
I would have you respect the fact that there is now a prohibition on anons creating pages, and not override that. If you disagree with that prohibition, then you should lobby for its change, not bypass it robotically. There are places suitable for discussing what policy *should* be, this isn't it. I'm simply asserting your robot is undermining the new policy (based on the premise anon page creations are problematic). --Rob 18:57, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
My bot is not undermining policy any more than WP:AFC is. Scroll back up and read what I wrote. I've italicized the part you're trying to ignore. —Cryptic (talk) 19:04, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
I was well aware of your screening, as I've dealt with your bot in the past. I've seen what you let through the screening process, and its pretty bad. I opted not to re-address that, as I was trying to focus on the *new* issue that arises from blocking of anon page creation. Anyhow, I suggest visiting Wikipedia talk:Guide to deletion#Anons making nomination. Given that you've changed how deletion nominations are done, you should consider discussing how the instructions for nominations should be worded. --Rob 19:29, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Arniep suffrage

Hi, I notice you removed my vote on Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections January 2006/Vote/Mindspillage. I should be allowed to vote as I registered in August under User:Arnie587, but had to create a new account as I lost my password. Arniep 18:04, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

As mentioneded above, all any of us can do with regards to suffrage is to make note of those votes that we don't believe are valid; the final determination on how to count them is up to Jimbo. I suggest you go back to the vote page and make mention of your above claim; in particular, is there any way you can substantiate it? —Cryptic (talk) 18:51, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your response, I have found these two links [8] and [9] which I think are pretty good evidence that Arnie587 was my old account (as well as the fact I edited User:Arnie587 to direct user's to my new talk). Arniep 21:54, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
The vote in question was actually at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections January 2006/Vote/Merovingian not at the page posted above. Arniep 21:55, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for reinstating my vote! Arniep 23:08, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Request for deleted text

Hello, I wonder if I could trouble you for the text of a deleted article namely Danbert Nobacon. Last time I saw the article it sensible enough and a decent start. I'm guessing it was vandalised and then speedied based on the fact that he has a stupid name and the article contained nonsense at the time or the deleter just saw the silly name and got carried away. Either way I'd appreciate it. If you dont know, he is a guenuine songwriter and recording artist and has made front page news in Britain at least - see Brit Awards - and Tubthumping was a big hit (eg #2 UK, #6US) in many countries with his band Chumbawumba. If, as I suspect, the last version was indeed a vandalisation could I possibly get the last sensible edit? Many thanks, --LiamE 10:31, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I've undeleted your revisions. It had indeed been vandalized, and then speedied. —Cryptic (talk) 10:35, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
Many thanks. --LiamE 15:54, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Witch

The Witch is Wyss, see Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Wilkes,_Wyss_and_Onefortyone#Proposed_remedies Fred Bauder 19:17, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Yet another new job for the bot

Someone at the Reference Desk has suggested that Crypticbot archive the Reference Desk...but never bothered to ask, from what I understand? There's plenty of volume there, and it's run just like the help desk. Would you be willing/able? Pretty please? Cernen Xanthine Katrena 23:48, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] smiley's

Hi ,Ive already added the Extra Java edit tool box script into my monobook.js file ,and It works (wierdly enough it doesn't work on talk pages..). I tried to add your smile.js just after the previous code user:Diza/monobook.js,and at least judging by my user:Diza/sandbox It doesn't work. Can you help..? :-) --Procrastinating@talk2me 01:17, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

It's because you have unescaped double-quotes in LeftTextButton, CenterTextButton, TableButton, BlockQuoteButton, and FontColorButton. —Cryptic (talk) 13:00, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

I do not understand ,can you elaborate? how do I merge ,generally ,JS files..? --Procrastinating@talk2me 11:32, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

In your lines defining the variables above, you have " marks in the middle that aren't escaped by a preceding \. This ends the strings, and confuses your browser. There should be a \ in front of each " except the first and last on the line; for example, LeftTextButton is currently defined as
LeftTexttButton = "<a href=\"javascript:insertTags('<div style="text-align: left; direction: ltr; margin-left: 1em;">\\n','\\n</div>','Left-aligned text');\"><img src=\"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ea/Button_align_left.png\" alt=\"Left-align\" title=\"Left-aligned text\"></a>";
and should be changed to
LeftTexttButton = "<a href=\"javascript:insertTags('<div style=\"text-align: left; direction: ltr; margin-left: 1em;\">\\n','\\n</div>','Left-aligned text');\"><img src=\"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ea/Button_align_left.png\" alt=\"Left-align\" title=\"Left-aligned text\"></a>";
There should be an option in your browser to turn on debugging of javascript. In Opera, it's at Preferences→Advanced→Content→JavaScript options→Open JavaScript console on error. In Internet Explorer, it's at Tools→Internet Options→Advanced→Display a notification about every script error. These will let you know when and why your script dies.
In general, if the scripts are written correctly, they should work if just pasted them together like you did. The problem is that the edit tool box script you already had there wasn't written correctly. —Cryptic (talk) 11:50, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Automatic archiving of the RfAr page?

Hello Cryptic, how difficult would it be to setup automatic archiving of the Wikipedia:Request for Arbitration page? It seems at least one arbitration committee member, Fred Bauder, has gotten into the bad habit of blanking sections involving requests for clarification and rejected requests, which seems odd for one of the most important pages within Wikipedia. I think we should also retroactively archive blanked sections too. zen master T 00:24, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't have anything that can parse history pages or diffs. —Cryptic (talk) 05:28, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
Do you agree its something that should be archived? zen master T 16:00, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
I think it would be nice if rejected requests could be archived automatically, but I'm not sure where to start on getting a bot to do it. There's just too much random trolling and vandalism that shows up on that page and gets promptly removed that I don't think anyone would want to see archived, and it would be quite difficult for a bot to distinguish between that and between a normally-removed request. —Cryptic (talk) 16:05, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps things that aren't vandalism shouldn't be blanked? zen master T 00:13, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] James Kerr (singer) article already exists @ Jim Kerr

Hi there, Since you did some work on this stub, I wanted to contact you before making any changes, lest toes be stepped on otherwise. I did a little research and Jim Kerr has more information than this stub does. If nobody objects, I'd like to make these changes:

Let me know over on my talk page the next few days if you think this page should remain as it stands. Ckamaeleon 01:03, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

No objection from me, and I hardly think my trivial wikification qualifies as having worked on the stub. —Cryptic (talk) 05:29, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
I know, but there are only two of you, plus one anon. who I can't contact, If there had been dozens of editors/contribs I might have only contacted substantive editors. Thanks for hte input, nonetheless. Ckamaeleon 05:32, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Victory Airlines

Hi. I recently submitted Victory Airlines for deletion using the AfD in 3 steps template. I noticed your bot said it was "orphaned." Can you explain to me what that means and what I did wrong? Thanks. mtz206 15:42, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

You included an extra space between "Victory" and "Airlines" when you transcluded it on the daily log page, which confused my bot. Usually I catch this sort of thing, but I overlooked the link from the log page in the Whatlinkshere when checking it. My fault entirely; my apologies. —Cryptic (talk) 15:55, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
My bad on the extra spaces. Thanks for correcting. mtz206 20:53, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Protein Ontology redirect

I've got the hint. I'm just pretty new here. Thanks.

Miguel Andrade 18:50, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User Page Requested Deletion

Wow, I never expected anyone to actually delete it. I know you did it in complete good faith thinking that it was a request. I had nothing much on there anyways, so restoring it should take a moment or two. I still can't stop laughing. I put the AFD tag on there as a joke so people would wonder what was going on when they visited my user page. Seriously, was that wrong? Does it send it out to all admins as an automatic request even if I don't list it anywhere? Well, no harm done. Thanks. tv316 15:43, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Afd-tagged pages show up in Category:Pages for deletion; I run a bot every morning to find tagged pages that aren't actually listed there. (You'd be surprised how many people request that their user pages be deleted.) I've undeleted the history. —Cryptic (talk) 15:51, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. tv316 15:53, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why fix all those redirects?

Hi Cryptic. I notice you've made more than a hundred edits in the last hour changing links from Iron Maiden (band) to Iron Maiden. You're a WP pro, so there must be a good reason... I just want to know what it is. I've always lived by Wikipedia:Redirect#Don't fix redirects that aren't broken. ×Meegs 16:13, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Because they're all piped to a disambiguated page title. A link to, say, mammalia should stay as is, since we may one day have an article on the class instead of just a redirect to mammal. However, no other article will exist at Iron Maiden (band) and the appearance in the source article is the same whether it's Iron Maiden or directly to Iron Maiden. —Cryptic (talk) 16:22, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
I accept your that the (band) disambiguation will always be useless in this case — I'm just trying to figure-out why it's worth the cost of changing them all (taxing the system and consuming our time). The link above still seems to advise against making edits only for this reason. The only reasons I can think of are to shave a few bytes off the page length and to eliminate a potential source of confusion for inexperienced editors. Is there something else? Thanks ×Meegs 16:41, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
I was prompted by this edit by Jamesday, who's our primary database administrator. The benchmark in the section you point at is interesting, though it neglects the squid cache entirely, and the section's only about a day old (which is why I was unfamiliar with it). Either way, it's probably not worth the effort in terms of human time; the only reason I do mindless tasks like this occasionally is that I edit from work and so tend to get too distracted to do anything that requires actual thought. —Cryptic (talk) 16:51, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
Ok, very interesting. Thanks. Oh, and you're right, that bit I cited is brand new, but I read similar advice somewhere just a couple of weeks ago. Hopefully I'll come across it again. ×Meegs 17:13, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Michael E. Berumen

Wow. I now feel REALLY stupid. Not only did I undelete an article I shouldn't have, but I did it on the word of another user without checking for my own reference if it was true. Nothing against him, it's all me. Thanks for pointing out the error of my ways. Mo0[talk] 17:39, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RD & HD Dating

Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you hydnjo talk 01:09, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RE:RFA SIG

Thanks for your comment about my signature. What do you want me to change with my signature? User:Adam1213/RfS --Adam1213 Talk + 12:13, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

The blue box is the worst part. Getting under three lines of wikitext would be nice, too. —Cryptic (talk) 12:24, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Did not realised that you had responded as you did not leave a message on my talk page.... how is this --Adam1213 Talk + 14:48, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Much better, thanks. (And there's a big green box at the top of my talk page saying that I'll reply here.) —Cryptic (talk) 14:55, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pomegranate

Hey Cryptic, sorry for the wrong credit on the second Pomegranate edit I just overlooked your name. --Dschwen 23:07, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Palming

Thanks for sorting out my typo on the palming page. I see that you have given biddle grip a blind link. Got a decent description? I know it, but describing it may be harder than doing it!--Jugglinbob 03:32, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm afraid not - barring some dabbling in elementary school, I know nothing about magic, and only watch magic-related pages because they tend to get heavily vandalized. I linked biddle grip because it popped up on my spellchecker and googled ok. —Cryptic (talk) 10:10, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A nice and shiny barnstar!

Cryptic - thank you so much for your help on the reference desk. Your professionalism and timeliness is impeccable. Feel free to put this barnstar wherever you see fit, with whatever citation you feel is most appropriate. May it bring you all the best there is on Wikipedia! --HappyCamper 13:19, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

For your bots which keeps things going and going and going on Wikipedia. Here's a special barnstar for your efforts with helping out with the archival of the reference desk :-) HC
For your bots which keeps things going and going and going on Wikipedia. Here's a special barnstar for your efforts with helping out with the archival of the reference desk :-) HC
And just when I'd come up with enough content that they don't push the bottom boxes down anymore, too. Will have to think of something else to put next to it. Bother. —Cryptic (talk) 13:57, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] thanks on the afd

I was tagging a bunch of articles and I thought I got them all in the list, glad you caught those. Night Gyr 17:38, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] More thanks

Just wanted to stop by and thank you for getting the bot up and running archiving the help desk. It has been doing a great job so far, but I'll keep an eye on it until it has gone through an archive switch. --GraemeL (talk) 15:52, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dotara

You deleted the article based on the WP:CP, but a look at the article's history shows that the copyvio has been removed following the listing. Please check out the version you deleted. I don't see this version to be in violation of Banglapedia or the other site's copyright. Thanks. --Ragib 08:50, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

That version was copyedited out of this revision (the one directly following the copyvio notice). Nearly every word in that one is pulled from one of the two sites I cited in my deletion summary. Copyright also covers derived works, which the eventual version I deleted clearly was. —Cryptic (talk) 13:12, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks for doing my paperwork!

Hey, Cryptic, thanks for trawling the history of DRV to list the bunch I removed yesterday. I had gotten bored of the whole thing by the time I was done and couldn't face another session of copypasting my own edit summaries. Guess I should do it in a seperate window as I go in future. Thanks again! -Splashtalk 22:14, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sincere Thanks

Truly, I had no right to go mucking about on the Admin's Noticeboard/Incidents like that. Especially the nav boxes, which I saw after I updated were usually tidied up by your bots. I just have a "helpfulness" gene that's hard to control sometimes. Thank you sincerely for fixing my mistakes, I was begining to panic just a bit. InkSplotch(talk) 16:01, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Should I even try to do anything about the 2 hr old discussions at this point? Or should I leave well enough alone? InkSplotch(talk) 16:06, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
If someone wants to reopen them, they can pull them out of the archive back onto the main page. —Cryptic (talk) 16:12, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Deleted page

David Dailey was created some time ago, apparently by his brother, and told of Dailey's eventual election as Governor of Kansas, and President of the United States. Even the VfD (yes, that old) called it cute; if you create it at User:Pmanderson/David Dailey, I'll look at it, and move it off Wikipedia.

Please reply on my talkpage. (Yes, my sig is different from my ID; long story.) Septentrionalis 03:54, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WP:DRV discussion of Template:User no Rand

You reverted my closure with the following summary: "I don't know if this was trolling or just clueless, but it's not how it's done here." It was neither, thank you very much (and this is a perfect example of how the term "troll" is almost meaningless, since it gets thrown around all the time to refer to good faith actions that the person using the term disagrees with). It was a simple recognition of two facts: (1) the result is very clearly going to be no consensus, so there is little point in enacting a rehash of the same stale arguments over and over again (per WP:SNOW), and (2) the template as it exists now is not the same or substantially identical to the one that was originally speedy deleted, so WP:DRV doesn't even have jurisdiction over it. Please assume good faith, which I feel your edit summary failed to do. Crotalus horridus (TALK • CONTRIBS) 14:59, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:Crypticbot/Proposed deletion

Regarding the on-wiki log of the toolserver prod page... that's pretty cool. :) Did you use some sort of tool to more or less automatically convert the HTML to wikitext? I'm curious because the page even lists the "closed" field, which is commented out using HTML comments. --Interiot 18:51, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

No, just a bunch of search and replaces. —Cryptic (talk) 18:53, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WP:AN and WikiProjects

I understand that WP:AN is not a WikiProject, however, neither are the WP:AN templates maintenance templates. I recategorized Template:Administrators' noticeboard navbox and Template:Administrators' noticeboard navbox all from Category:Wikipedia maintenance templates to Category:WikiProject templates because like WikiProjects, WP:AN is an on-going collaboration between Wikipedians. If you would rather create a separate Category:Wikipedia administrative templates to hold templates used for administration, mediation, arbcom, etc., then that would be fine. But in the meantime, the WP:AN templates fit better in WikiProject templates than in Wikipedia maintenance templates.

I've been working at getting the Wiki templates consistently categorized since I often can't find the template I want. If you have any thoughts on how to better do this, I'd be glad to hear them. – Doug Bell talk•contrib 22:22, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

I'd rather they were uncategorized than miscategorized. —Cryptic (talk) 23:01, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] GDFL question

What other options are available to wikipedians regarding the preservation of history? I always thought a redirect was a neccesity, but I would love to know other options, especially when the good information comes from an article with a crappy title. Cheers. youngamerican (talk) 00:10, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Off the top of my head: list a copy of the history on the target article's talk page, or squeeze it into your edit summary. Move the source article into the talk namespace, and link to it from the talk page (probably using {{merged}}). Do a history merge. —Cryptic (talk) 00:19, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. youngamerican (talk) 00:25, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Question about Template:Prod

At Template talk:Prod#Usage it shows: {{subst:Prod|REASON}}. Is it best not to use subst with this template? --JWSchmidt 18:26, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

The tool that lists them can't find the reason for deletion if it's unsubsted. —Cryptic (talk) 18:30, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Toolserver proposed deletion stuff

*grin* Yes, <a ... /> is quite nasty, and despite my HTML generally being below-par, it wasn't intentional at all (I was calling CGI::a() incorrectly). It should be semi-fixed now.

Regarding using w/index.php?title= instead of /wiki/, hrm. I can probably fix that sooner or later, though it will take some work. Initially, that was the only way I could convince Perl to encode unicode URLs probably, though I should be able to get it to work with /wiki/ too, though some of it is kind of entangled with some utiltity functions that would take some work to separate. Does it seem that important? --Interiot 19:06, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Administrators' noticeboard archiving

The page size limit seems to have worked fine on /Incidents, good work! If you didn't do it yet, I would like to ask you to add the same limit (256k) to the main noticeboard; it shouldn't be needed most of the time, but it would avoid unbounded growth when some heated issue takes it over (as unfortunately seems to be happening). --cesarb 02:42, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Right now, the two methods are mutually exclusive: I can force the page length down to a specific size, or remove everything older than a specific number of days, but not both. A six-day lagtime on WP:AN results in a shorter page at the moment. (204k) I'll see about combining the methods properly once I'm back; please email me if it balloons to the point where it needs to be switched to a 256k limit before then. —Cryptic (talk) 20:42, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Adminship Vote

I want to sincerely thank you for voting on my adminship nomination. Whenever I mess up, please let me know. I want to learn from my mistakes so they don't become patterns. Superm401 - Talk 04:37, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

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