User talk:Cyde/Archive004

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[edit] Maryland: North or South

If you could go to the Maryland article and weigh in under the Talk Page for "Mid Atlantic State?" I would greatly appreciate the opinion of another Marylander on this issue. User:History21

[edit] My RfA

Hi Cyde. Just a quick note to thank you for voting on my RfA, which recently passed 62/13/6. I want to let you know that I will do my best to address all concerns that were raised during the RfA. I will also do my very best live up to this new responsibility and to serve the community, but please let me know if I make any mistakes or if you have any feedback at all on my actions. Finally, if there is anything that I can assist you with - please don't hesitate to ask. Cheers TigerShark 04:11, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Oral Sex

I think it might be time to close this mediation case...... KimvdLinde 21:10, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Done, there wasn't much to do though. The main person on the other side was recently banned indefinitely by the community. --Cyde Weys 21:19, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I missed the latter, but I am not surprised.... KimvdLinde 21:21, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I was actually the one who blocked him for one month and then recommended an increase to indefinite, which was then carried out, so maybe I wasn't the best impartial mediator in this instance :-D Cyde Weys 21:29, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hamas

Hi Cyde, thanks for your note about the new refs style, which I've just started using, so I'm still feeling my way. I only converted the refs in the intro, by the way, so the {{note label|CFR|16|a}} edits aren't mine. Thanks for the link to your refs converter. Cheers, SlimVirgin (talk) 01:35, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Nice-looking talk page. SlimVirgin (talk) 01:35, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Footnotes and references WikiProject

I'm seriously thinking about starting a Wikipedia:WikiProject Footnotes or something along those lines. When it comes to footnotes and references the articles on Wikipedia are an absolute mess and need serious cleaning up. It doesn't help that the old {{ref}} and {{note}} system was hard to use and very prone to falling out of date with further edits, to the point that there are isolated refs or notes that don't match anything or the numbers have gotten out of order. The Cite.php is much better and to that means I have created the Ref converter, which works to convert properly formatted old-style refs and notes to the new Cite.php. Of course, a lot of the old-style refs and notes were done incorrectly, and so lots of human hands are needed. The ultimate goal would be to zero out the What links here list of {{note}}, {{ref}}, {{an}}, {{anb}}, {{ref label}}, and {{note label}}, as well as eliminating inline external links. Obviously that's a hard goal to achieve, so we would probably be better suited to go for education efforts, i.e., educate users on how to properly use <ref> and <references /> so that, over time, new references and footnotes are added correctly and ones in the old style are gradually converted. Who's with me? --Cyde Weys 01:40, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Intriguing idea. Of course, I just really need another project to help me with all the things to do on my personal lists. At the very least, I guess, I could go back and redo the refs on the articles I've made substantive contributions to. I'll keep an eye on this. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 02:14, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. As I said, there is going to be a big focus on education efforts, because the number of articles on Wikipedia with old and improperly formatted references is huge. I've already started looking at edit histories on these kinds of pages, identified the editors using the old style, and left them a polite note on their talk page. If we have a nice WikiProject page we can link to that lays out all of the proper stuff to do when making references it will be very helpful. --Cyde Weys 02:21, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

I have echoed this to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check, let's see what kind of a response we get from them. --Cyde Weys 02:22, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

OK. Against my better judgment I may let myself get sucked into this. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 02:28, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

I think the first thing I'm going to do is create a page that list proper ways to cite various sources (e.g. {{citenews}}) and describes the proper way to use Cite.php. Of course, there will be examples! --Cyde Weys 02:33, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

see also User:Cantara/Bibliography ... that user may be interested in combining forces with you. I just told you just about all I know about it. Hope it helps! ++Lar: t/c 03:46, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Here are some useful links to start fixing references:

--Cyde Weys 04:09, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

You'll definitely have to count me in. I wish I'd found your ref converter before now, because I could've used it when I converted several pages by hand :-) Also, I noticed (a bug?) that when you ran it through Katie Holmes, it did something weird with the formatting, and it ended up <ref>. Start of reference</ref>. Not sure whether that was actually a problem with the original formatting or not, but I've gone through and tweaked it all out--hopefully. :D Jude (talk,contribs,email) 08:36, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, I noticed the out-of-place periods in Katie Holmes too ... there wasn't much I could do about it though, those were present in the original ref/notes for whatever reason. Ref converter just converts properly formatted refs ... if it tried to handle every little weird thing that people do it would be a monumental undertaking. --Cyde Weys 16:53, 5 April 2006 (UTC)


I love your converter! thanks much! KillerChihuahua?!? 09:31, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Protect a page

Hey, Cyde. Almost the entire article at World War II was deleted and replaced with nonsense by an IP vandal. Could you get that to the attention of administrators? This request was added by Brendenhull 01:43, 5 April 2006 (UTC).

For future reference you can just take care of that kind of thing yourself. Just revert the vandalism. And if it's a persistent problem, report it at WP:AIV. Thanks. --Cyde Weys 01:50, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ref converter

Cyde, I've tried your Ref converter on Body mass index and it worked amazingly well (I was amazed anyway!). Some (but not all) double quotes " and other stuff was indeed munged until I used Notepad exactly as you had said. Merely copying and pasting into Notepad wasn't sufficient: I had to save your text file and open it into Notepad before copying and pasting into "edit". But someone is bound to know the solution to this: shame that someone isn't me. Many thanks. Thincat 10:49, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, the browser tries to be too smart and tries to interpret some of the foreign characters to your local character set. Meanwhile, Notepad is just dumb enough that it leaves everything exactly the way it is, and thus works. I really do wish I could figure out a way to get copy-and-paste straight from the browser working, rather than having to download and open a text file. Ref converter is open source, so if anyone wants to take a stab, get in contact. I can set you up with a CVS account. --Cyde Weys 16:56, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
Use Textpad or EmEditor, never use Notepad, its a piece of... its not the best text editing solution. One puppy's opinion. KillerChihuahua?!? 17:03, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
I tried using Notepad2 and it was actually being too smart and it messed up the foreign language characters. What's needed in this situation is absolutely the dumbest rock on a log text editor you can find, because all you're doing is downloading a text file, opening it, and copying the contents into Wikipedia, and during that conversion, you don't want a single byte changed. Notepad doesn't change a single byte; others do. --Cyde Weys 17:10, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lothal

Thank you for the wikiflower. It's nice to be appreciated. I have also put an {{editprotected}} on Wikipedia:Today's featured article/April 6, 2006, and was wondering if you would take care of that for me. — MSchmahl… 21:22, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:Mike Garcia

Mike Garcia (talk • contribs) has been changing "is" to "are" and "was" to "were" on articles again. He has said that he would go into an edit war with me if he has to and said, "Feel happy that there is nothing you can do to stop me from that [1]. I have been unable to resolve this issue with him. What can I do to stop this kind of behavior from him? I am thinking of doing an RfC but read that it requires 2 active editors to file one. Any comments and suggestions? Thanks! —RJN 04:54, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Ugh, not this again. I've dealt with it and posted to WP:ANI. Going to bed now. --Cyde Weys 05:03, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

It is irresponsible to block another user in order to gain an advantage in a content dispute. Could you please unblock Mike? Thanks. Rhobite 14:42, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

It's not a content dispute, it's a formatting dispute. And he's causing disruption to many articles. General consensus on these US/British issues (i.e. color/colour) is to just leave them alone, and do not go out searching for things to convert to "your way". --Cyde Weys 16:02, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't believe this is a US/British issue. In many cases, such as The Beatles and The White Stripes, it is correct to use the plural in both forms of the language. Rhobite 19:14, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
In American English the preferred form is to use the singular verb when referring to collective nouns. I suppose the other way is acceptable in colloquial usage, but ask an English professor ... they'll tell you what's "correct". Apparently it's different in British English. --Cyde Weys 20:00, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
That's fine, but plural band names are not collective nouns. Ask the New York Times, they agree with me on The White Stripes and The Supremes. If the Times writes in "colloquial" English, as you say, then so should we. Rhobite 20:37, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
Although the question largely turns on whether one writes/speaks in British or American English (notwithstanding that some of us hail from America but side with the Brits on collective noun questions), upon which recognition we are perhaps best served to use whatever verb form would be consistent with the general language on the page (inasmuch as there is surely no pattern one can observe with respect to which articles, having been contributed to primarily by British English speakers, employ British spellings and grammar and which don't), consistent with, inter al., the Jguk arbitration case (although I'm not altogether in accord with the suggestion that one should, for instance, change BE spellings to AE where the subject of an article is American; the justification seems insignificant), concerns over intent sometimes militate that one usage be chosen over another. As our article collective noun well illustrates, even in BE one sometimes uses the singular where the intent is to refer with specificity to the group qua group (cf., group qua individuals). In the VF article, I believe the plural should be employed, given that the history reveals that the "are" formulation was used for much of the life of the article. Whether one, as Mike, should so concern himself with returning the article to the plural locution (and with changing other articles in order that they should be consistent with BE) is a different question, and one that may properly be addressed at RfC if the user about whom RJN writes is wholly recalcitrant and otherwise incivil. Joe 20:53, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] My RfC

Hi Cyde. I wonder if you would mind if I moved the RfC on me from your userspace into mine? It just seems, well, more appropriate. Cheers, Sam Korn (smoddy) 16:48, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Yeah that sounds fine. Please leave the redirects in my userspace intact though. Thanks. --Cyde Weys 16:51, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Cheers. Sam Korn (smoddy) 17:52, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] See what you miss?

I only just noted your April 1 vandalism of my userpage - made me chuckle, that did :-) Just zis Guy you know? 17:51, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

April Fool's: The Gift That Keeps On Giving. --Cyde Weys 19:59, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vandal/troll is back

The troll 67.160.36.12 (talk • contribs • logs • block user • block log) I mentioned earlier who had photoshopped pictures over that AfD is back, it is currently putting non-sensical warning messages on my talk page, I took one off and it put on another. Among other fun things, it seemed to think my last name was "Zimmerman" or tried to guess that was what it was. In any event, a word/and or a long a block might be in order (and could you rv my user page since technically I shouldn't be removing warnings from my user page). Thanks. JoshuaZ 20:27, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

This is probably the same troll that made the Joshuaz (note uncapped z) user name. JoshuaZ 20:33, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Nevermind, Gator and Teadrinker handled it, apparently our little friend tried to report me for vandalism and that caught their attention. JoshuaZ 20:38, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Dealt with. Ugh, what an annoying troll. --Cyde Weys 20:39, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 67.160.36.12

I think a month long block is too long in this case, perhaps 48 hours? (Of course I am just a newbie admin, so point it out to me if I am obviously wrong)

Prodego talk 20:41, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Look at his contribs and his overall disruptiveness. He hasn't done anything good in the past dozens of edits and he sure as hell has done a lot of bad. Him posting to WP:AIV shows that he's familiar with Wikipedia and was trying to game the system. In other words, he knows what he was doing was bad, and one month is not too long of a block for this kind of trolling, harrassing, and unproductive nonsense. --Cyde Weys 20:42, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but I always try to assume good faith, (i.e. I never user the blatant vandal template), I definitely don't think a block longer then a week is necessary here, especially since this is an IP. If (s)he continues after a 48 hour block then I would support a month block, but not as a first block. Prodego talk 20:47, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Look at all of the warnings on this guy's page though. He got off very easy earlier without a block at all. And if you still really think the block duration needs to be decreased, post something to WP:ANI. Let me remind you that WP:AGF is an initial assumption ... it is not a suicide pact. You don't keep assuming good faith while they're shooting at you. --Cyde Weys 20:49, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Actually I do ;-), see the vandal who attacked my userpage. However I leave this up to you, I won't contest it or anything, just giving my opinion. Happy editing. Prodego talk 20:51, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

My sincere apologies to Prodego and Cyde for having inadvertently removed Prodego's last message here while adding my comment. Joe 21:18, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sherbert test page merge proposal

I've been editing the Sherbert Test page that you created (you and I are the only one's who've worked on it). Frankly, I think a lot of the page is redundant with the Free Exercise Clause page. I was going to propose a merger, but if it's fine by you, I'll just go ahead and merge Sherbert into FEC. --Kchase02 23:28, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Just make sure you add a new section to that page explicitly named "The Sherbert Test" or something and then have the redirect from Sherbert Test point to that section. --Cyde Weys 23:37, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that makes much sense. There is already a section on the compelling interest test, which is the same thing. I think they should be merged. I can do that. --Kchase02 17:20, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "ZOMG the signals are coming thru yer TINFOIL HELMET, better get an UPGRADE"??

in the future, when leveling a block on a sharedip, could you try to give a more useful blocking description, I mean, I don't know what the hell to make of this, is it on an ip, or a username? I can't even tell--64.12.116.9 00:00, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

The user's contribs speak for themselves. And my block summary was entirely relevant to his username. --Cyde Weys 00:06, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
No, I mean I tried to edit a page just now and it said "ZOMG the signals are coming thru yer TINFOIL HELMET, better get an UPGRADE", without actually mentioning that there was a username involved at all, it used to just say "autoblocked because your ip has been recently used by...", they seem to have changed it, and now it just prints the blocking summary for you instead, without mentioning whether it was a username or an ip block--205.188.117.5 00:10, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Are you the same person as 64.12.116.9 above? I don't even know if I'm talking to the same person, or two different people, or what. --Cyde Weys 00:11, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, had to change ip ranges becasue every time I clicked save page I get hit with "ZOMG the signals are coming thru yer TINFOIL HELMET, better get an UPGRADE", making it kind of hard to continue the conversation--205.188.117.5 00:13, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
So you're not the Moonbat or Mooncat vandal, you just somehow happened to be using the same IP address as them? That's not entirely unlikely ... are you coming from a country with restrictive Internet access, or a school computer system, or anything like that? --Cyde Weys 00:15, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
AOL user--205.188.117.5 00:28, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Ugh, I fixed it. Banning users is like walking through a minefield ... you never know when you're gonna ban a big AOL account and trap up a bunch of people in the autoblocker. --Cyde Weys 00:29, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dates

My personal opinion is that so long as they're not a wave of links, they don't hurt. I rarely do any mainspace work where date linking is an issue, but as it's at best disputed right now on either side, I try not to make it that big an issue in the mainspace. Thanks for your comments. Ral315 (talk) 00:20, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Deletion review/Userbox debates

You closed a few debates — what was the outcome? It looked to me as if there was consensus to undelete. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 00:54, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

The outcome on the "Assume bad faith" in userspace one was undeleted, all of the others didn't have consensus to overrule Jimbo's T1. --Cyde Weys 00:55, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

About damn time that one was closed. (or maybe I'm perceiving a week as much longer than it actually is) — nathanrdotcom (T • C • W) 04:26, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
I think you're misinterpreting T1, especially since MarkSweep's assertions of T1 should probably be reversed without further investigation, but you're closer than most. I was particularly amused by someone who stated that a template had to be both divisive and' inflammatory in order to be deleted under T1, while Jimbo clearly intended or. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 01:16, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Okay, well let's just say then that there was no consensus to undelete. On a personal note, I find it humorous that two of the most vociferous people in that debate have since been indefinitely blocked as sockpuppets. I did take that into account before closing the DRVs. --Cyde Weys 01:18, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Encouragement

alt text

I have noticed that some people have been rude to you recently, and I'm sorry to see that. Whether you're right or wrong, there's no excuse for incivility. Keep your chin up! Sarah crane 15:15, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

There most certainly is a reason for incivility! He's a poop-head! 4.158.60.230 16:36, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AWB Cleanup on Historicism

I have to ask why you found it necessary to go through the Historicism page and essentially remove some spaces which do not affect the layout. On the other hand, some like the style == Heading == as compared to ==Heading==. What style manual enforces your style? I am not meaning to attack you, but I find the original style much easier to read than the second and since you only made source code edits, thats what matters to me. Note: Its not that I was an active contributor to that page but I have it watched just in case things happen to it and this seems purely a style issue. Ansell 01:54, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Please see WP:STYLE. KillerChihuahua?!? 01:56, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
As far as I can see, that does not address white space, except at the ends of sentences and before colons. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 02:17, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
It does address heading styles, and white space is covered somewhere, I'll go digging. It is likely on a sub-page buried somewhere. KillerChihuahua?!? 02:19, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
You're right, Dal - I saw white space addressed somewhere but its either been taken out, or I'm not looking in the right place. However, the headings was my main reason for posting the link. Ansell, which was your primary concern? KillerChihuahua?!? 02:23, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
[2] defines the headers issue as completely optional. I can see that the extra lines in the references part of the edit that were made would possibly change the layout there, however, extra spaces between sections do not create the difference.
I was wondering why someone found it necessary to go through a page and essentially not change its output (with the possible of exception of spare lines in the references section) Ansell 02:26, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
Since this is a matter of AWB pre-sets, that kind of thing should be taken up there. Guettarda 02:28, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
"Note that the Start a new discussion tab on a Talk: page (the "+" link) inserts a blank line before and after the heading, and spaces in between the == and the heading text. Some editors find this easier to read in the wikitext source code." Quote from the Manual of Style (Headings)
I am wondering what was so wrong with the page that AWB was flagging it. Will have a look at the AWB site about this. Ansell 02:30, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Sorry guys, I didn't realize removing the spacing between the equal signs and the text in the header was gonna be such a big deal. I'll stop doing it. And don't bug the AWB people over it either; it was just something that I cooked up in regex. It's kind of annoying to see this inconsistency with spacing between multiple pages though. I wish the manual of style picked one way or the other and stuck to it. --Cyde Weys 02:46, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry but I just brought the issue up on their talk page. If you could go Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser and explain it would be great. Ansell 02:49, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
They took up the style suggestion into their "Rules of use" :) See [3] Ansell 08:08, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
Hah, awesome, I enacted a policy change entirely by an unintentional WP:POINT :-P Cyde Weys 08:11, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Closure of deletion review votes you were heavily involved in

Cyde, I have no interest in a revert war with you. Let's discuss this. My main objection is not to Template:User review being closed as a "keep deleted", as such, but (1) that it was closed by a user who was heavily involved in the discussion and vote and has a self-professed bias against all userboxes that requires him to vote "delete" regardless of their contents (i.e., you), and (2) that it was closed unnecessarily early and abruptly, even though it is customary to allow most Deletion Reviews to run until discussion on them has pretty much died away or the votes are obviously stacked one way or the other (neither of which was the case here, as the voting was still going strong until you put an end to that by archiving the vote, and as the votes for "keep deleted" and "undelete" were nearly tied, with in fact a slight advantage to "undelete"; additionally, the discussion itself, at least in my interpretation, favored an undelete, if only for the sake of a fuller discussion at TfD, considering the number of holes and the borderline, disputable nature of the template's real "divisiveness", which, as the discussion revealed, is based primarily on many editors' personal opinions of certain notorious users of a website, not on the literal contents of the template itself).

Of tertiary concern to me was that this seemed to be an unprofessional, potentially confusing rush-job on your part: you failed to leave any sort of notice of what the decision had been for the four votes you closed (three of which I did not restore, incidentally, because you were in the right in closing those: their results were much clearer and their debates less active), which I remedied by adding notices for the three at the bottom of the page, but which you subsequently reverted when you hastily re-removed the Template:User review userbox.

In case you doubt my motivations for objecting so strongly to this closure, perhaps suspecting that I have a personal vested interest in the template's fate myself (beyond the obvious fact that I voted to "keep" the template, largely as a matter of principle), I'll be honest: on a personal note, I'm deeply uninterested in userboxes at this point. I have no personal involvement in this review forum place; I visited it once a long time ago, and found it dull, though not entirely devoid of interesting points (though neither of those facts is really relevant here, despite personal opinions of the site being the justification for so many "delete"-voters votes). I don't especially care, at least in the long run, whether the template is deleted or not, as long as other, similar templates are also deleted for the sake of consistency and fairness (which you would obviously support, since it furthers your ongoing crusade to annihilate all userboxes :) cute).

But what I do care about, very strongly, is that you are abusing your editorial privileges by closing the votes of ongoing Deletion Review discussions that you personally have a very strong vested interest in. Please, especially for contentious and borderline debates like the Template:User review one, in the future, avoid closing a vote you're already involved in (or are otherwise predisposed or biased for or against), especially without any explanation for your interpretation of Template:user review's discussion and vote as "keep deleted". Whether or not it was your intent (and I'm not certain that it was), this reeks of partisan discussion-suppression, and could cause an escalation in the argument and senseless quarreling in the future if a similar situation comes up again and more users take offense (in this case, you seem to have gotten lucky and snuck past the watchful eyes of most of that page's participants, in part because you left no trace at the bottom of the page). So, please do refrain from similar closures in the future; no matter how strongly you feel that a certain template should be deleted, it's not your place to unilaterally rule such without explanation or discussion, nor is it worth all the trouble and bickering that such actions inevitably provoke. It's just so much easier to circumvent and mute all the drama by not giving people a reason to suspect your motives, and letting the discussions resolve themselves naturally and at their own pace. Neither you, nor I, nor anyone else who is directly involved in the deletion review discussion for "Template:User review", should be the one to close that vote. It's just not kosher. -Silence 06:11, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

It wasn't a unilateral decision on my part. I discussed it with numerous other admins. There was no consensus to overturn. It's history. End of story. --Cyde Weys 06:15, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the elaboration. Conversations with you are always so enlightening. :/ If you ever deign to tell this to the apparently insignificant masses on the appropriate pages (like the top of the DRV and the summarized bits below the Archive link), or if you ever explain who these admins are (aside from the obvious ones: the ones who, like you, voted "delete" on this template, just as other admins voted "support" :)), that'll be even better. But I won't press my luck; even getting a one-line response from you is an incredible honor, and shames me for my futile quest for proper DRV-closing procedure. Oy. Have a nice day, God. -Silence 06:55, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
There was no consensus to overturn deletion. All you have to do is count the votes, making sure to disregard the votes by indef-banned sockpuppets (of which there were a few). And the admins I was in consensus with were cabal admins. You probably know some of them. --Cyde Weys 07:34, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cydebot

Cydebot (talk • contribs • logs • block user • block log) has now been approved for a week's trial run. Please remember to throttle edits. If no objections are raised following this trial, you may request permission to obtain a bot flag. Rob Church (talk) 19:24, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jedi6 RfA

Your questions have been answered. Jedi6-(need help?) 06:32, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Not all of them, yet :-P Cyde Weys 06:34, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm gonna finish your questions tommorrow (well I guess its technically today now :-)). Jedi6-(need help?) 07:56, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
Hay, I mean at first I thought it was a spelling mistake too until you mentioned Wikipedia:Rouge admin. Then I understood what you meant by the question. I just don't get why my RfA is making Doom127 more stressed than me. Actually I've never seen Doom this stressed and angry, even when Brazil4Linux was attacking him. :-( Jedi6-(need help?) 08:05, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Now I have answered all the questions. Jedi6-(need help?) 04:08, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] ContiE has impersonated me on other wikis

Hi, I'm in a potentially awkward position with an Administrator. I have read the Wiki pages on dispute resolution but I'm still not sure how to proceed.

The Admin ContiE has a personal grudge against me for reasons I do not fully understand. He has been this way since I began frequenting wikipedia.

I have done work improving the furvert article. He has basically gone on a crusade against any edit I make. He controls every furry category article and several others ruthlessly. He is an iron fist and bans anyone he edit wars with. I had uploaded pictures and he deleted them with no talking. He seems to believe I am every person he has had an edit war against. He is always using personal attacks, calling me troll without reason. I uploaded them again and he voted them for deleted, but to his surprise the person who runs the images, thank you Nv8200p, found they were acceptable once I tagged them properly. Just recently he removed both the images without himself discussing it in the talk page (unless he was the same person who discussed only one) with the edit here [4] Then ContiE assumed bad faith, added his constant insult of troll in the talk page. It appears on a completed different wiki, a comedy one in all things, somebody else stole my username and I believe this was Conti himself and uploaded them. ContiE showed it as his reason. While vandalism like his, I would revert and mention it, he would ban me permanently if I undid his edit. That is why I am asking admins for help. He holds a couple of accounts on wikipedia and I think they are administrators so I have to be careful who I tell about this. Arights 07:31, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Boy, am I disappointed in you, Cyde

Hi Cyde. Boy, am I questioning myself now for supporting your RfA. For starters, I sure don't appreciate editors who are trying to clean up articles relating to child abuse, child porn, pedophilia, and related issues - which work includes working with difficult material, difficult people, and, by the way, getting severly harrased in meatspace - being on the receiving end of smart-ass remarks and undergrad-level pro-child-porn arguments from a freaken admin. Jesus.

I'd give you the benefit of the doubt there, that you just dropped in, were over your head, didn't know what you were saying.

Then, in coming by to drop off this note, what do I see but your response to a (cogent and polite) note from User:Silence: "I discussed it with numerous other admins. There was no consensus to overturn. It's history. End of story" (emphasis added)

That's just... there are so many things wrong with that. First of all, do you even know who you were talking to? Probably not. Second of all, if I may speak as a Dutch uncle: you go around with the It's history. End of story shtick, people might get the wrong impression and think that you're an arrogant little prick who can't justify his edits, which I'm sure you wouldn't want people to get that false impression. But I mean, you just don't talk to User:Silence like that. You just don't talk to User:FloNight like that.

You know, I've warned before you to stay away from the userboxes as you promised in your RfA. You know its a drug to to you.

Get some perspective, son. Herostratus 08:00, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

First of all, the pro-child-porn accusation is so absurd I'm not even going to bother responding other than to say, shame on you. Secondly, what do you mean by "do you even know who you were talking to"? If there's something special about these two users I'd love to hear about it. --Cyde Weys 17:21, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
Yes, there's something special about them. They're Wikipedia editors.
Look, I gather that you're the Energizer Bunny around here, and that's great. You do a lot of great stuff I'm sure. I hate to be getting on your case. We're all on the same side. But...
"I'd just like to make one thing clear: I've never deleted a userbox and I don't forsee myself getting involved with that in the future. Why? Because I now realize that my actions weren't helping matters, so I've decided not to get involved with that anymore. There's plenty other stuff to do on Wikipedia. I'll leave the userboxes up to other people. --Cyde Weys 20:43, 2 March 2006 (UTC)" (Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Cyde)
Look, there's a way out. Take a moment to reflect. I know there's a zillion things to do and you're full of energy. But take a few minutes. What's done can be undone. What's said can be made right. We're all rooting for you.
But if you can't do it that's OK too. Herostratus 09:30, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
I've stayed away from userboxes a lot more than you know. So far I think I've only deleted two ... one was a Nazi template and one was an atheism-bashing template. Both clearly needed to go. --Cyde Weys 16:29, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
I believe you. It sucks one it, doesn't it? I got all GRRRRRRRR for awhile over userboxes. But I got over it, I switched to heroin, less addictive (kidding). I also learned, and changed my mind a lot over the course of the discussions. Changing the mind on occasion keeps it nimble.
I appreciate your reply, Cyde. Off-topic, but... man, it must be kind of cool, being young and getting in on a project as exciting and important as this, writing tools and other cool stuff, kind of like a cool internship, maybe? I saw that Jimbo acknowleged you and knows you. You're gonna be a star, man, and it'll carry over into life, I hope. I hope that's not too personal.
OK now that we're all warm and fuzzy, could I induce you to maybe re-look over Silent's comment in a mindful way, maybe imagine being in his shoes? I'm not asking you to change your decision, but if it led you to maybe drop him a note about maybe not wanting to have come off curtly (only if you really felt that), I don't see how that would be a bad thing. He really is a thoughtful man, I think. I voted to Keep Deleted myself, but I do understand how he feels maybe a little bit disregarded. Er, if you see your way clear to do that. Herostratus 06:28, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] account

It wasn´t me. --ThomasK 09:02, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Already changed. --ThomasK 09:09, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Jedi6

You might want to do the protection for User talk:Jedi6 as well history. Both IP's blocked for 48 hours. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 09:50, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I just blocked 2 more here. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 10:04, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
Essjay just nuked the underlying IP address, I think all of this guys avenues of vandalism have been cut off now. --Cyde Weys 10:05, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
Any idea what they had against Jedi6 or was it just random? CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 10:07, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
I believe it started after an edit war between Cyde and Doom127 over a spelling mistake or something like that on Jedi6's RfA. --TBC??? ??? ??? 10:09, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
Hey, that wasn't a spelling mistake, that was entirely intentional. I don't make speeling mistakes. --Cyde Weys 10:11, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
If you read the section on WP:ANI, this guy's been running a sockfarm for about two weeks now, and as it turns out, he's a complete lunatic. This entire thing was set off by me using the term "rouge admin" instead of "rogue admin". I'm not even kidding. Check out the page history on the RFA if you don't believe me. This is the most trivial blow-up I've ever seen on Wikipedia. Someone is insane in the head. --Cyde Weys 10:10, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
If Essjay took care of the IP address, why is the guy still vandalizing Jedi6's RfA? [5]. Don't now enough about computers to understand how he's able to do this.--TBC??? ??? ??? 10:17, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
Umm now he's using IP addresses in a different range. Essjay is doing more CheckUsers and he's continually banning /24 ranges. There's only so many IP addresses this moron can get before he runs out of all of them. --Cyde Weys 10:18, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
I saw the RfA incident earlier so I thought it was related to that. I'm not that bothered about my user page being protected but thanks anyway. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 10:22, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
I've unprotected my user page. It looks quiet now. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 11:00, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] ThomasK

ThomasK (talk • contribs • logs • block user • block log)

Please do not unblock this account, it is being used to commit vandalism, and did so again after you unblocked it. -- Curps 18:01, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Ugh, whoops, sorry about that. He seemed so honest about repenting; I guess I just got played for a fool :-( Cyde Weys 18:10, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ref converter error

There seems to be a problem with quotes(") and your ref converter. This page provides a minimal test case. They come out with odd characters. I assume it's a encoding issue, maybe Windows related... JesseW, the juggling janitor 01:50, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

I am unable to reproduce the bug. Make sure you are reading the WikiRefs instructions very carefully and that you are following them to the letter. If you aren't downloading the text file and opening it in Notepad or some other minimal text editor, you're liable to get problems involving non-ASCII character sets. --Cyde Weys 01:55, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

OK. Let me attempt to paste the original and resulting, wrong characters here, on your talk page. Good: “AGP specification 1.0,” Bad: “AGP specification 1.0,” BTW, I did follow the instructions to the letter; it didn't fix the problem. ;-) JesseW, the juggling janitor 02:05, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Can you come on IRC and speak with me? It's much easier to debug these kinds of things in realtime. Thanks. --Cyde Weys 02:09, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Yep. On now. JesseW, the juggling janitor 03:21, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

My suspicion is that you're using a text editor that is too smart and it is trying to convert the garbled ASCII into something meaningful, which, of course, ends up being entirely incorrect. I notice you're running Mac OS X; what text editor are you using? You need something as stupid and naive as Notepad on Windows. Maybe you could try cat'ing the text file from the command line and copying that? --Cyde Weys 02:20, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

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[edit] My RFA

Thanks for your vote.
Enlarge
Thanks for your vote.
Hi, this is Matt Yeager. I wanted to thank you for your vote on my request for adminship. The count was something like was 14/20/5 when I decided to withdraw the request. My decision was based on the fact that there are enough things wasting people's time on the Internet that doomed RFA's shouldn't be kept up for voters to have to think about. Regardless of the rationale behind your vote, I hope you will read this note for an extended note and discussion on what will happen before I make another try at adminship (I didn't want to clog up your userpage with drivel that you might not be interested in reading). Thank you very, very much for your vote and your time and consideration of my credentials--regardless of whether you voted support, nuetral, or oppose. Happy editing! Matt Yeager ♫ (Talk?) 01:59, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Allegation of serious NPA violation

Cyde, would you be kind enough to look into this matter, please? [6] It is a bit odd, in my experience, in that there is no trail of escalating verbal threats leading up to this alleged attack. Instead, the discourse has been fairly civil and restrained albeit with careless use of the term "vandalism" recently. I'm inclined to believe Southwick's version because he apparently edits under his real name and he seems to understand WP:RS and other policies and guidelines whereas Cap_j's grasp of these is limited. I've contacted MONGO separately about this matter, but he is off today. Southwick's post on WP:PAIN seems not to have produced apparent results as yet. [7] Best wishes, Walter Siegmund (talk) 02:02, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Ohh crap, more spillover from Wikipedia into meatspace? Not good. If you can verify this I'd highly recommend bringing it up WP:ANI. This is too big for just me to handle. --Cyde Weys 02:05, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

I feel the same way, but will try to obtain independent confirmation of the allegation. Best wishes, Walter Siegmund (talk) 04:05, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Ref Converter

Thanks for the update. Sounds good, although the connection seems to be timing out right now when I try to go to the page. Good work! Flcelloguy (A note?) 20:31, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Oyyy, fracking internet connection. I wish I had a better place to put my server than at my house. Oh well. It's up now, at least. --Cyde Weys 20:36, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Doom127

If was comproved that User:Doom127 created and used sockpuppets he will be block indefinitevely? --Pinoi 03:04, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

I have no idea. Now he's claiming you're a sockpuppet of Brazil4Linux. Is there any truth to that? --Cyde Weys 03:09, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Hey Cyde. Yeah, if you do a CheckUser, you'll find that the guy is the same guy. He desperately wants me indef blocked, and I'm sure he's watching my user contribs even now. I wanted to apologize about last night... All I can say is that it is in regards to Brazil4Linux and that he's found out more about me offline... I've already talked with Jedi6 about it and apologized to him about not telling him about my planned explosion sooner and the sockpuppet cultivation and such; if you want to discuss it more, I'm on AIM at the moment. Cheers! Daniel Davis 03:20, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
Why would you have a "planned explosion" and "sockpuppet cultivation"? --Cyde Weys 03:21, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
To put it simply, no matter what got done, no matter how many times Brazil got blocked, he kept coming back. He found out personal details about me, about my wife and who I am, where I live and quite honestly, has me backed into a corner here on this account. To put it simply, I needed to get rid of this username, but I chose an asine and completely inappropriate way to do it. It was hostile and I'm surprised I wasn't blocked completely. I apologize to you regarding it. If you want to take further action against me, feel free. I certainly deserve it. Daniel Davis 03:28, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] re:squidward vandal

I was just quickly blocking them, am now reviewing each one for approriate lenght of block. Thanks for the head's up though. — xaosflux Talk 03:35, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re:Block Conflict

Hi there, apologies for the conflict. When I deal out a block, I usually go on WP:AIAV for vandals, and if the vandal is still listed on that page (of course, how else would I see it? :) ) I will go to the talk and see if they have a block notice. In this case, it looked like the vandal was still unblocked. However, you are right, I will check the log in future. Regards -- Banez 19:18, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

The thing is, there's lots of other ways to find vandals besides WP:AIV. There's #vandalism-en-wp, there's watchlists, there's CVU tools ... all of which could easily lead to a block while still leaving the user on WP:AIV. So it's best always to check first. Thank you for understanding. --Cyde Weys 19:20, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Too true. I will make a point of checking the block log as well from now on. Cheers Banez 19:34, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Psycho

Just a note on this user...I believe him to not only be a sockpuppet of User:child_p0rnographer, but probably the same with User:Easteregg, User:Ancorzonr and User:WarMach. It's probably worth a quick peek at the contribs of those users. The Psycho specifically though, is now re-adding images to pages that were removed when he was blocked for extreme bad faith examples of 3RR (see recent image addition to Bukakke). This user's really been a thorn in my side for a while, and immediately after The Psycho's block a new user vandalized my home and talk pages. --Kickstart70-T-C 22:13, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] sorry

sorry for citing that it didn't come out the way I wanted it to. take care Just another star in the night T | @ | C 00:05, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Umm, what is this in reference to? I don't know. --Cyde Weys 00:18, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Ahh, nevermind, I see you're talking about Wikipedia talk:Deletion review/Userbox debates. --Cyde Weys 00:22, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Early "closure" of SFR discussion

I'm puzzled you'd move a stub template before the end of the discussion period. Granted it seemed hardly likely that four or more people were about to turn up and oppose this for no apparent reason (though that doesn't always stop 'em), but it seems a little odd to do so, moreso when you're not a normal "closer" of SFD listings. (Not that you closed the listing...) Alai 01:54, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

WP:BOLD and all that. And as far as I know there aren't any special admins who deal with SFD listings. But I'll hold off on moving the rest of the old stub-types for a bit in case anyone against the move materializes. --Cyde Weys 02:06, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

There were other stub types involved? But I'm not claiming "special", just "usual". Nothing wrong with you doing them, I just found it a bit odd that the first one you did (that I noticed, anyway), you did early. Nothing here actually required admin action, of course, so I'm not even going to argue it's even procedurally "wrong", just as I say, slightly puzzling... Alai 16:45, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

I have a special interest in biology, maybe that's what you're noticing? I'm not really going to bother with stub types I don't care about, which is most of them. --Cyde Weys 19:06, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kindly butt out, please

This is a friendly reminder to butt out. ____G_o_o_d____ 10:48, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] danah boyd

Hi, thanks for the help with the danah boyd article. I saw that you'd had questions about a couple of the statements. References *were* on the page, but I went ahead and included additional citations next to those sentences in particular. If you have any other questions, please let me know! --Elonka 17:06, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cyde has a new friend

4.158.60.60 (talk • contribs • logs • block user • block log) JoshuaZ 04:15, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bonny

Hi Cyde, you've been involved in the User:Bonaparte case at least once, according to the edit history of User talk:Bonaparte. User:Bonaparte is known for constantly creating new sockpuppets and trolling with them, engaging in personal attacks, etc. However, many of these obvious socks are not permanently blocked, as they should be per policy. I was wondering if you'd like to take a look at this case, and have a shot at User:Bonaparte/sockpuppetry and User talk:Bonaparte/sockpuppetry. This permanently blocked Bonaparte has become a high-level vandal and his socks should be indef blocked with less red tape. Alexander 007 05:37, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Topalov Cheating

Hi Cyde. I contacted you several months ago to mediate on the Topalov page. The other disputant did not respond, but the RV war has restarted. Rather than get in any trouble for that, I've decided to try mediation straight away. If you're willing, I'd much appreciate you giving this another shot. [[8]]. Thanks! Danny Pi 05:14, 15 April 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Wiki-links for you.

Go ahead and make a copy for yourself. They'll assisst you in your duties as a Admin. Martial Law 01:10, 15 April 2006 (UTC) :)

I'm sorry, I don't really know what you're talking about? --Cyde Weys 01:18, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Find on my User page a list of Wiki-links to different Wikipedia protocol, such as WP:Signpost and WP:SB. Go ahead and make yourself a copy of these links. Martial Law 08:03, 15 April 2006 (UTC) :)

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[edit] Happy Spring celebration / Easter (as your preferences and beliefs dictate)

Here's hoping that if the bunny leaves you any beans they're this kind! ++Lar: t/c 15:35, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
Enlarge
Here's hoping that if the bunny leaves you any beans they're this kind! ++Lar: t/c 15:35, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
Happy Easter! --Misza13 T C 16:49, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
Enlarge
Happy Easter! --Misza13 T C 16:49, 16 April 2006 (UTC)


Crap, I already ate all of your jellybeans. --Cyde Weys 15:35, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

And crap, I already ate the chick too. --Cyde Weys 16:59, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

-1, Cruel --Misza13 T C 17:54, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Don't Bite The Newbies

[9]

Your words, not mine. I appreciate the work you do for Wikipedia, but just be careful next time. --D-Day(Wouldn't you like to be a pepper too?) 16:26, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

He's not a newbie. He's obviously a sockpuppet of some other userboxer. Don't believe me? Just check out the contribs and how mind-numbingly fast he got involved in all of the various intricacies of Wikipedia process. --Cyde Weys 16:35, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

WP process isn't very intricate. That said, I've been editing anonymously on and off since July 2005-ish. -Objectivist-C 21:56, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Is anything wrong with using {{ref label}} rather than {{ref}}?

Cyde, this regards the revision you just made of the usage of {{ref label}} to {{ref}} in the Ammonia article. I don't understand why. Would you mind explaining? I think the caret used by {{ref label}} looks very much better than the anaemic, hard-to-see vertical arrow used by {{ref}}. Can't we have the choice of using either method? I will watch for your reply here on your talk page. Thanks, - mbeychok 06:47, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I didn't convert to {{ref}}, I converted to Cite.php. And the reason why is because Cite.php is the only non-deprecated references format. So no, there's really no choice. If you don't like the look of the arrow (which I hadn't thought of before, but maybe you have a point), you might want to bring it up with the Cite.php guys. --Cyde Weys 07:12, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I have always used <ref> tags with {{cite ... templates. Are they deprecated? And what is Cite.php? Ansell 11:23, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
cite.php is the php extension that makes <ref> and <references/> work. That markup is not standard HTML so it needs a php extension. I think using {{cite... within the <ref> </ref> pair should work fine as I think it's decoupled from using {{ref}}. That's all just my understanding. Hope it helps. ++Lar: t/c 12:52, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
I wondered what the magic behind the ref and references tags was. Thanks. I do use cite inside ref by the way. It works well for me. Except for having the whole citation intext, thats a bit annoying. Thanks for the explanation. Ansell 13:09, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm of two minds about the cite/note/url/whatever being in text right there with what it goes to. The downside is it makes the raw paragraphs a bit harder to review (but that's what preview is for, and the live preview js extension is very good in that regard, if you don't have it already you should look into it), but the upside is that you don't have to go traipsing around (as with the older {{ref ... {{note ... syntax ) somewhere else to find the stuff, it's all there in one spot. So... ya. But on balance (absent how MS word does it, moveing you automatically to the other field (footnote area of the page) to work on the cite/ref) this is the best we can do, and I think I like it better... Which is good because the other way is deprecated. Grin. ++Lar: t/c 14:02, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
Cyde, I really would like to pursue using the caret rather than that anaemic, hard-to-see vertical arrow. I am a newbie of just a few months and I would'nt have the faintest idea of how to take it up with the cite.php guys as you suggested. Also, they probably wouldn't pay too much attention to me. But they might pay more attention to you as an administrator. Would you please take it up with them? If not, could you at least tell me how to go about contacting them? Thanks in advance. - mbeychok 15:24, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rockero's RFA

Since you voted oppose "per freakofnurture", would you consider changing your vote to match that user's "Tentatively oppose"?

You can read how I feel on the issue at Rockero's RFA. I would also like to request that consider moving your vote to Neutral. I will admit that both the narrowness of subject matter, and spareness of Wikipedia namespace edits are weaknesses that would give me pause and might cause me to vote oppose for an editor that I was unfamilar with. I have, however, seen Rockero make many fine edits on the Southern California topics that are on my watchlist, and I think that he would make a good administrator for the English-language Wikipedia. BlankVerse 05:03, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, but my votes are not open to being changed by lobbying. And my oppose reason is a bit more complex than merely "per freakofnurture" ... but it would take a loooong time to write out everything going through my head. He was just the other oppose voter whose reasoning most closely matched mine. --Cyde Weys 05:12, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Signpost updated for April 17th.

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[edit] re: Ref converter

Well, I'll be damned. I was just giving you a barnstar when you popped by: thanks for the tip! How did you know I was using it? I'd been slowly converting articles by hand, and let me tell you, it was slow. This is brilliant. Really brilliant. Thanks a million. Blackcap (talk) 05:34, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

If you look at the source code of the ref converter you'll see that it keeps quality control logs (I review these later to see what articles were changed and make sure no errors were introduced). I also watch the log live, and it was trivially easy to see that someone used the ref converter on page X. So I went to page X, and right there in the edit history I saw that you were converting references on page X. --Cyde Weys 09:17, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

And yeah, I converted one particularly long article with 40 references by hand, and then said to myself, screw this, I'm automating it. Really, it was just a question of laziness. I saw that it was going to take a lot more time to do them all manually than to sit down and write an automatic converter, so I went the automatic route. --Cyde Weys 09:18, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Welcome to VandalProof!

Thank you for your interest in VandalProof, Cyde/Archive004! You have now been added to the list of authorized users, so if you haven't already, simply download and install VandalProof from our main page. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me or any other moderator, or you can post a message on the discussion page. AmiDaniel (Talk) 05:34, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ref Converter list

You might find this list I just made useful, and may even want to link to it from the tool. Saves a few clicks. JesseW, the juggling janitor 09:12, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

That's awesome! How'd you make that list, manually or automatically? I suppose I could do a new version of the tool that generates its own list from the {{ref}} "What links here". --Cyde Weys 09:14, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Semi-automatically. Instructions are now on the talk page. JesseW, the juggling janitor 22:49, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

And link it yourself, this is a Wiki, be bold :-P Errr, link it on User:Cyde/Ref converter anyway. Cyde Weys 09:41, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I did. ;-). I was suggesting linking it directly from the offsite page... JesseW, the juggling janitor 22:49, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Retreat of glaciers since 1850

A number of editors worked hard to get the harvard style of referencing in that article. I respect that your action to convert it to the style you did was fully well intentioned, but...the article is on the main page now, you did nothing to discuss this action and the major contributors agreed overall to using Harvard style. One editor even created the newer superscripting which makes or "harv_" style, which reduces the size of the word within the article text...al a spin off of this article's creation. I truly respect your edits, but please discuss this major change first.--MONGO 09:45, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

There's really nothing to discuss. Those older-style references are deprecated. There are literally tens of thousands of articles using the old outdated references ... if I stopped to discuss on each one, do you know how much time I would waste? There's also something to be said for consistency. It's really worrying that a special template was created specifically for this one article. Consistent interfaces are very important. It took awhile for me to even "see" the references on that page because they weren't what I was used to at all. --Cyde Weys 09:47, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Well then, since I think you have acted in an overly bold manner in regards this...I mean, the article is on the main page, it passed unanimously through the nomination process for FA and you didn't once have the consideration to say, hey, let's change this around. The "style" you're using I think look awful in the edit window...it simply takes up too much room and I think it looks better at the end...who says that your style is the better version? Where was this voted on? Can you lead me to where this new style was discussed?--MONGO 10:00, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
Yes, Clyde, please do not change the reference style without reaching consensus on the issue on the talk page for Retreat of glacierss since 1850 first. If you read the archive of the discussion, you can see that all the principle editors editors of the articles—including several prominent content area experts—discussed the advantages and disadvantages of using Harvard versus m:cite.php references. We are all entirely aware of the latter, including the disadvantages of m:cite.php. A strong consensus was reached to use Harvard references (which is not deprecated, though possibly partially eclipsed) rather than m:cite.php for this particular article, largely because of subject-area concerns. Scientific articles in journals typically use a style similar to this, and almost never use a style similar to what m:cite.php produces. Alphabetical references are strongly preferred.
Aside from following the formal pattern of scientific articles, the other large advantage of Harvard style (for this article) is the disruptiveness to editing when full citation details need to be addressed inline.
I myself use m:cite.php for many other articles. There are definitely places where it is more appropriate. For example, where references tend to contain explanatory footnote text instead of, or in addition to, citation references themselves, inlining the reference tends to be more conceptually clear. This article is not one of that type, IMO, nor in the opinion of the so-far demonstrated consensus of editors. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 16:19, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

It's not "my" style, it's "the" style. See Wikipedia:Footnotes. (edit conflicted) In addition, nobody owns any articles. And the argument that a lot of people worked hard to get those Harvard references working doesn't wash with me ... because I'm pretty sure I put a lot more work into the Ref converter. Consistency is key. We can't just have every article using its own special references format with its own separate templates. This is one of the important things you learn in usability studies ... consistent interfaces = good. --Cyde Weys 10:03, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Did you read the link you give:
Footnotes are an excellent way to cite sources, but they are not the only way; some articles use inline links instead. Also, Cite.php footnotes are not the only way to make footnotes. Many articles use templates to create footnotes, particularly if they use Harvard references. For a general overview, see Wikipedia:Citing sources.
That advice is just about exactly right (and is policy/guideline for WP). Cite.php is wonderful for some things, and not so wonderful for other things. Editors of each article need to make the decision (by consensus, not by unilateral action by someone who simply like his shiny toy). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 16:53, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
I appreciate the work you did creating an automated tool; and you should indeed be proud of it. But just because you created a tool does not mean that WP policy or guidelines were changed in regard to referencing. They were not. Some people like the new style. I mostly like it, though it does have drawbacks as well. If style guidelines actually are changed at some point in the future (something I would definitely vote against if I saw the discussion) to actually deprecate Harvard referencing, then use of your automated tool becomes useful. And in existing articles where consensus supports the change, of course. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 16:19, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

In addition, now is probably a good time to get the inevitable RFC over references formats out of the way. (And not a user RFC involving me, just an RFC in general on references formats). I thought it was pretty clear when Cite.php came into play that the older styles became deprecated, but I guess there's always going to be holdouts ... --Cyde Weys 10:05, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Again, when did it become "the" style...and you are completely mistaken that you think that your convertor was "more" work than the research that went into the FA article. "the" style look like "crap" in the editing window in the article space...it takes up too much room.--MONGO 10:14, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
It became the style in December of 2005. If you want further clarification I encourage you to get wider community comment at WP:RFC. I think you've spent too long working on a few articles and you didn't notice the references landscape changing around you. And it doesn't matter so much what it looks like in the edit window since the output looks a lot better, as 99% of users are browsing Wikipedia strictly to read. --Cyde Weys 10:17, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
Editing a few articles? Okay...let me explain...the editors that did 95% of the work on the article in question preferred Harvard style referencing for the alphabetic style of the footnotes. We thought the numbers in the text were more obtrusive than the superscripted author name. We did all the referencing since December of 2005 and I never saw this style you are using. You must have noticed the article was on the main page (not that the casual reader noticed the change) and surely you can't possibly assume that a radical change such as you did without a word in discussion would not draw a raised eyebrow. I don't need to file an Rfc...I want to see the discussion that this style you support was agreed on by a large concesus of editors here. When you demonstrate that, then I can file an Rfc to argue why in some cases, har style is better, especially in scientific articles.--MONGO 11:05, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What would make m:cite.php better

Btw, Clyde, I don't know if you're a developer on the MediaWiki software as well as your robot tool, but the main problem I have with m:cite.php is actually addressable in prinicple. The system does allow named references as well as inline ones. The problem is just that it forces in-line description on first occurrence, which is too narrow. I think something that would solve the issues would be allowing an "invisible" section to layout the references as actually desired (alphabetical, etc). For example, if I could do this, I'd probably use it more widely:

<hidden>
 <ref name=alpha>Alpha, Bob.  ''Cool article on topic''</ref>
 <ref name=beta>Beta, Sally. ''Sally weighs in''.  Note that Dr. Beta revises 
 this analysis in ''Later work''</ref>
 <ref name=gamma>Gamma, Yuri. ''Yet another one''</ref>
</hidden>

== Main article ==

 A number of experts contend Foo.<ref name=gamma/><ref name=alpha/>.  However, 
 other experts believe Bar might hold.<ref name=beta/>  The intermediate, Baz
 position is sometimes held by both sides.<ref name=alpha/><ref name=beta/>


This would let us put all the references together in a block, including annotation to the citations themselves. But it would also allow easy reference by name, and in orders other than the prose sequence (and also repeated references to the same source). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 17:05, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Lulu that the cite.php would be more powerful if it could do alphabetical listing too. See the glacier talk page for more detail. David D. (Talk) 17:13, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

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[edit] User:69.248.81.83

This user has vandalized the article Exit 9 Family twice now, can you please block him? --GorillazFanAdam 00:00, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/69.248.81.83 there has only been one edit altogether from this IP. AFAIK the general policy is to give 4 recent warnings ( subst:test, subst:test2, subst:test3, subst:test4) before blocking for standard vandalism/blanking. test4 is the "Final Warning." See Wikipedia:Recent_changes_patrol. T. J. Day 00:37, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image copyright problems

Got it! I do not really understood the copyright laws, sorry. Thank you for reminding.--Freestyle.king 01:00, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Regarding your edits to the Signpost

You added a citation-related note to the technology report yesterday. Upon a request by another editor, I removed it, on the grounds that it was a bit biased. I appreciate your adding it, but remember that just like in article-space, Signpost articles should never display anything more than a neutral point of view. Even if the new system is vastly better, and should be replaced, we should not say that. Ral315 (talk) 06:53, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

I think it's a bit unfair to blame me. I added that note upon your request, and you reviewed it and published it (thus taking responsibility). You are the editor of the paper. You didn't see anything wrong with it originally; if you had, you would've asked me to reword or edited it yourself. But you shouldn't turn around upon receipt of a single complaint and chastise me. --Cyde Weys 18:09, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with the adding of it; I had the problem that it was POV. I admit that I didn't read it over like I should have, but you should have known better than to write something like that. Had I seen the addition, I would have removed it earlier. Ral315 (talk) 22:59, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Two points re. Ref converter

  1. I'm going to list Ref converter as a semi-bot tool at the wikipedia:semi-bots guideline proposal;
  2. Note that converting Harvard references to numbered footnotes is problematic (I mean: usually people don't want that, I'm not talking about software problems). There has been an ArbCom case against such conversions (late 2005), and still yesterday there was some disturbance regarding the Featurerd Article, that was converted and re-converted a few times while it was on Main Page, see the end of the discussion at wikipedia talk:footnotes#I don't like cite.php. --Francis Schonken 07:45, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ref Converter on non-English articles?

Hello, Cyde, I'm wondering if anyone's had the chance to test your converter on non-English pages. Someone at zh-min-nan translated a long article from English, including all the old-style citation tags (zh-min-nan:Chhùi-khí ê hoat-io̍k). It'd be nice not to have to convert it manually. Thanks for this useful tool. A-giau 01:27, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I dunno, I hadn't even thought to test it out on non-English-Wikipedia pages, but in principal, it should work. I have licensed the code to the Ref converter under the GPL, so it is open source. Still, if the only thing you need to change is the URL of the wiki it's getting pages from I wouldn't mind helping you with that. If, on the other hand, you need it converted so that it fixes refs in which {{ref}} and {{note}} aren't used, but rather, some sort of non-English version, I'm sorry, you'll need to do that on your own. --Cyde Weys 03:49, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I see. I'll try to mod the url and give it a spin and see what happens, thanks. A-giau 09:58, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Just want to report your script appeared to work well. The test data had some 70+ notes. Both the article title and body had all sorts of Latin diacritics (per Min Nan orthography), but this wasn't a problem. There were several commented out notes in the output, mostly likely attributable to defective citation syntax. A-giau 11:43, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Astrology page

Cyde, I appreciate your efforts on the astrology page, but am not sure why you reverted (on 13th Apr 06) the link I made to Astrology College. As you gave no reason, I cheekily put it back. In time, as I find out more about the organisation, I was going to expand the details in their entry. Though they are quite new, they are definitely kosher. I have no personal links to them and are not involved with them, therefore should be able to provide a detached overview. There are a number of other respectable astrological teaching organisations that I was going to do articles for (such as the FAS), but I won't bother if you have some valid reason to remove them. Regards MayoPaul5 10:35, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Appeal for leniency on behalf of Rgulerdem

Hello Cyde. I hope you will not take offense, but I have taken NSLE's advice and opened a request for arbitration at Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration#Appeal_for_leniency_on_behalf_of_User:Rgulerdem. I believe 100% that you have acted in good faith. I just feel that an indefinite block is a very serious matter and I think the user deserves more of a chance to be heard. I hope this matter will resolve quickly so it does not take too much more of our time. Johntex\talk 03:14, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Cyse, I've just added Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration#Appeal_for_leniency_on_behalf_of_User:Rgulerdem to my watchlist, and I will comment _if_ Arbcom opens the case. I certainly don't want to see Rgulerdem back with his disruptice activities any time soon. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 11:06, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] bad ref?

Hi! I saw your recent edit on Paul Barresi-- why do you consider the 2004 KCBS series a bad ref? Because it's unlinked? I can assure you it aired, and the statements Barresi made in it help contextualize his claims about working for CBS and his involvement with Mitteager and Pellicano. Let's discuss on the talk page, shall we? See ya there! Jokestress 04:20, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Do you have a recorded copy of the tape or a transcript or something? I don't think that the tape says what the source you cited seems to indicate that it says. Remember verifiability. --Cyde Weys 04:23, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
Here's the relevant passage from the transcript:
One year after this interview, Jim Mitteager died. But the story he began to tell that day lives on in these secret tapes, tapes that seven years after his death began arriving at the home of his friend and former tabloid confidant, Paul Barresi.
Barresi: "He indicated to the person who gave them to me that I would know what to do with them."
Baressi has decided to make them public. And for the first time reveal how the tabloids get their stories.
Let me know if you need more. Jokestress 09:05, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Nevermind me then :-/ Cyde Weys 09:12, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Got a question for ya...

Hey buddy,

I have a question for ya. I was browsing the Community Portal just now and I noticed a request for assistance in converting all old footnote systems to the new <ref> system. However, the citing sources page in the Manual of Style suggests that users editing articles with an existing footnote system continue to use that system, and that the footnote style for each article should be chosen based on what works best for that article.

Has this guideline changed? Should editors endeavour to standardize articles using footnotes to the <ref> system? Or should the guideline at WP:CITE be followed instead?

Thanks in advance for your response. —Lantoka ( talk | contrib) 09:38, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

That page is merely extremely out of date, that's all. And it's very muddled and confused. Thank you for pointing it out to me; I shall endeavour to improve it. And yeah, Cite.php is by far preferred over all of the alternatives. Several of the alternatives, by the way, have been deprecated and deleted in the past week. {{ref}}/{{note}} still linger but they won't be around forever and all new notes and references should be made using the new Cite.php system. --Cyde Weys 21:30, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Another Appeal for leniency on behalf of Rgulerdem

Although Rgulerdem has a penchant for getting himself into trouble, his heart is in the right place. NO ONE deserves to be indefinitely blocked. Please unblock him. Netpari 20:51, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Why is there some sort of crusade out to get this guy unblocked? And how can you make such a patently false statement as No one deserves to be blocked? What about Willy on Wheels?! We're writing an encyclopedia here, not overseeing a playground. Consistently disruptive users are not welcome. --Cyde Weys 21:35, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

As clerk to the Arbitration Committee, I have removed some threaded discussion from the application for leniency for Rgulerdem. If I inadvertently removed something you wished to raise in your statement, please feel free to add it back as part of your statement. Please keep the application clear by refraining from threaded discussion of other editors' statements. --Tony Sidaway 01:54, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New ANI thread

I've asked for a review of the indefinate ban and would appreciate your comments here. - brenneman{L} 00:11, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] OMG

(From User talk:Misza13/CURRENTMINUTEOFDAY)

I can't believe you literally put in over a thousand switch statements. That's gotta be retarded for the servers. Now that we have real exprs, couldn't this be done more efficiently? --Cyde Weys 04:14, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the ParserFunctions are great, but they lack the ability to play on strings, so I can't easily extract the numbers from what {{CURRENTTIME}} gives: 01:01. If you know a better way, please, do tell me. --Misza13 T C 09:44, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
Heh, I just found {{CURRENTHOUR}} and {{CURRENTMINUTE}}. Apparently I wasn't the first one to "invent" it. --Misza13 T C 09:47, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
Ed Poor/hour, Ed Poor/minute... --Misza13 T C 09:51, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Thanks for using the bot to move/rename {{dm-stub}} to {{disaster-stub}}. I had expected to have to do it myself manually. Made my day seeing that it was done for me! --rxnd ( t | € | c ) 11:49, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

No problem, if you need something like that again Cydebot is happy to help. --Cyde Weys 17:28, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Game

Could you maybe clarify your opinion on the Deletion Review, you wrote that you had just lost the game, but didn't actually give an opinion about whether or not Zoe's deletion should be endorsed. JoshuaZ 22:18, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

My comment stands as originally written. --Cyde Weys 22:19, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RfC

I am going to prepare an RfC about the repeated conversion to cite.php of J. K. Rowling using your conversion sub-page. It will take me some time to prepare my statement, however I would like to let you know that I will be naming you in this discussion, and I would like to invite you to begin work preparing your responses, if you so choose. My intent here is not to be combative nor litigous, but I do feel that conversion using cite.php is a controversial issue, and I feel that the discussion generated at Wikipedia talk:Footnotes would be enough to cause you and those using your conversion tool to reconsider repeatedly attempting to convert J. K. Rowling. However this apparently is not the case, and my goal here is to simply try and further engage the community in the discussion of this issue. I noted some comments in the discussion on Footnotes about controversial conversion on retreat of glaciers since 1850, which I feel should also be discussed. Best regards, Ëvilphoenix Burn! 18:50, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Good, finally some community discussion on references. --Cyde Weys 18:51, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Abusive (mis)use of refconverter

I desperately implore you, Clyde, to disable the "change a random article" function of refconverter. This is causing many problems, and in many cases actively harming Wikipedia. Your tool is nice to have—in fact, it's the impetus for me creating my own "Citation Tool" (still alpha). But it is nice to have to aid editors who are actually involved in editing a specific article, and who have reached consensus about making a given type of change to an existing article. Unfortunately, your tool is largely being used to make "drive by 'improvements'" to articles where editors either have not considered the citation style, or where they have actively decided on something different from what your tool produces. This is extremely disrespectful to other Wikipedia editors, and a gross violation of process. What you are doing is wrong, and harms Wikipedia.

Unfortunately, I will support a user conduct RfC against you for this misbehavior. It's really crossed the line. I know you are well meaning, but this has shown a real obliviousness or indifference to other editors and to consensus. I certainly do not think you should be blocked, nor that your tool should be banned. But I do strongly feel that you need to provide the sort of warning that I have put on the page for my tool: i.e., "Use this tool only after consensus for a change has been reached on the talk page of the article to which it is applied!" Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 20:38, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, a user conduct RFC?! Are you serious?! I understand a general RfC relating to references formats as Evilphoenix is suggesting above, but a user conduct RfC is absurd. I simply wrote a piece of software and released it under an open source license which explicitly contains the following disclaimer:
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
If you have a problem with users updating references styles you'll need to take it up with them, not with me. But I don't think you'll have much luck as most people do support the move away from outdated references formats. --Cyde Weys 20:48, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
This sort of reaction makes me think that, in fact, a short-term block really would be an approrpriate remedy. You have actively encouraged harmful edits... and have performed a large number of harmful edits yourself, including engaging in edit wars to enforce your personal vision "better references" (even when it directly contradicts consensus). While other editors need to take a certain responsibility, your own active misrepresentation of the purpose and status of the tool contributes to their misuse. If you were to simply disable the "drive by changes" and put in some words encouraging semi-bot users to seek consensus that would show good faith. Instead, you advocate that everyone just declare: "Fuck consensus!" to push your particular idea about reference styles. This, BTW, has already been subject to an RfAr and sanctions for users doing exactly this same thing. I'm quite willing to take it as far as arbcom if your abuse continues. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 21:05, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
Bring it on. --Cyde Weys 21:12, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
Look I'm trying not to phrase this as a User conduct RfC aimed specifically at you. I am wanting input mainly on the behaviour of several users who are using your converter. I really don't want this to go to ArbCom and I wish both of you would calm down and try to keep it a little more civil. Cyde, I'd like to propose to you that you A. not use your converter right now and B. disable your converter subpage, or at the very least add a note asking people who use it to make sure there is not a consensus against making the conversion on a given page, as there may be on some of the pages being converted. Please recognise that this tool is becoming controversial, and that there needs to be discussion of how to proceed. It would be much better to slow down what you're doing for a while, and try to work to help defuse the situation. Ëvilphoenix Burn! 21:36, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
Ref converter is open source and it is released under the GPL. Both legally and pragmatically I cannot be held responsible for the way anyone else makes use of Ref converter (ditto for all open-source software, really). Shutting down my copy of ref converter is meaningless, as other people would simply host it for themselves (all it requires is Perl and a http server such as Apache). And that is a much worse situation than what we have right now, as at least right now, I am in control. I'd also like to point out that I have gotten some interest from other-language versions of Wikipedia as well as sites running MediaWiki software that are totally independent of Wikimedia Inc. It is a freely available tool, nothing more, and nothing less. As for incivility ... Lulu is the one who immediately threatened a user conduct RfC, then in the next post he said I should be blocked and that he would bring it to ArbCom. There's no reasoning with someone like that. He immediately assumes bad faith about my actions and the actions of others who happen to be using software that I wrote. I'm not going to waste time arguing with him here because his mind is made up. So he's welcome to file an RfAr if he wants; until then, I shan't respond to him. He's exactly the kind of person I don't like ... he walks with a big stick and swings it every which way, hoping to intimidate people into doing as he wants. He's not interested in compromising; if he was, he wouldn't have immediately started out by threatening me. Now unluckily for Lulu, I'm not the kind of person who can be intimidated, so I'm calling his bluff about filing an RfAr. Now I don't mind talking to you, because you're more reasonable. --Cyde Weys 21:45, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
Give me a damn break! You obnoxiously refused numerous requests (from lots of people who aren't me) to mitigate the harm you were causing, on many talk pages, before I ever wrote than a user conduct RfC might be needed. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 02:13, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

It's not really an issue of how Ref converter is released, it's an issue of how it's being used. You may not feel responsible for how it's used by others, but you do control how your subpage presents the tool. Lulu and I are both asking you to reconsider how your sub-page presents the tool, not to reprogram the tool. Most of the conversions I have seen that have been problematic are specifically pointing to your page, so changing your page would be a good first step to resolving this issue. Ëvilphoenix Burn! 22:48, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

What do you suggest be put on the subpage? --Cyde Weys 23:00, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

I suggest you follow Lulu's request to remove the "random article" feature, and leave a note explaining that some articles prefer to use the {{Ref}} template and need not be converted, and it would be a good idea to check that first. Ëvilphoenix Burn! 23:06, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
There is no "random article" feature. What are you talking about? And it's kind of unreasonable to ask everyone to post a note to a talk page and then wait awhile before actually converting the references. Nobody owns any pages and we are all encouraged to be bold in making edits. Obviously if it's a contentious issue (like J. K. Rowling) then users shouldn't keep reverting, but on non-contentious issues, there's no reason people updating to the demonstrably better references formats should be held back. --Cyde Weys 23:11, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
Hmm. I'm not actually sure what specifically Lulu was referring to either. Ok so scratch that. Tell you what, here's what would make me happy...I'm seeing that J. K. Rowling is the very first link that comes up when I click on your "list of things to convert". If you would remove J. K. Rowling from that list (since that seems to be what's generating the frequent conversions coming in), that would make me a lot happier. In response to your comments on Bold and Own, it's as I said on Sandsteins Talk page: Bold is a good guideline, but if something you are doing is becoming contentious, it doesn't mean you should merrily carry on doing that without reconsidering your approach. Ëvilphoenix Burn! 23:34, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm referring to this! It specifically generates a random list of articles (that editors are otherwise uninvolved in) that might be good to semi-vandalize with a non-consensus major modification.
Asking anyone who uses refconverter to get consensus on the relevant talk page is not unreasonable, it's the very basis of Wikiquette. Users don't "own" articles, but there are editors who have followed the history and developement of a given article, and other editors who have never so much as seen it before. The latter category should not jump in an make major changes without so much as basic discussion. Doing that is bad faith, pure and simple. Of course I feel free to fix a spelling error in an article I've never edited... but I would never completely rewrite or reformat a substantial and longstanding article, with many past collaborators, as my first edit. Doing that shows almost unbelievable contempt for other editors... and is exactly what you have done, Clyde, on a number of articles, motivated by this weird technocratic rationality of: "If there's an automated tool, the action must be desirable". As someone who literally "wrote the book" on those type of tools before you ever wrote your first CGI script, I know enough not to be blinded by such instrumentalism. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 02:10, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
It's not contentious on the vast, vast, majority of articles though. Just two that I am aware of. Are you suggesting there should be some sort of blacklist of articles that should not be converted at this time? --Cyde Weys 23:37, 23 April 2006 (UTC)


I would disagree that it's not contentious, but yes, a blacklist would probably be a good way to go. Ëvilphoenix Burn! 01:02, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Done. By the way, how's that references RfC coming? --Cyde Weys 01:19, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm still getting J. K. Rowling from your website there. Ëvilphoenix Burn! 01:46, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
See User:Cyde/Ref converter#Blacklist. I can't do anything about it displaying in the list because that list is just based on whatever links to {{ref}} and I don't have any control over the order of display there. --Cyde Weys 01:49, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
Sure you do. It's your website, therefore you have control over it. It's perfectly possible to implement a blacklist and not display certain articles on your list of things to be converted page. I managed to stay awake enough in class to earn my B.S. in Computer Science, and I know that with computer programming stuff, you can pretty much make a program do anything you want it to, it's simply a matter of implementation. I'm suggesting to you that it would be a really nice idea to make JKR not appear on that list since it doens't need to be converted. Ëvilphoenix Burn! 07:51, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
Let me clarify. I can't do anything about the list that pops up in "What links here" on Wikipedia. Yes, of course, I can theoretically control the list displayed by WikiLinks. I'm still wrestling over to do it with just a simple switch statement or make something more robust that uses an external blacklist (such as a flat file or even a database). I'd also want some sort of page to go to where you could add an article to the blacklist. In short, this is gonna take time, and unfortunately, I have lots of projects to work on for getting my own CS degree right now. The thing is open source though, so if you want to help out, you can! --Cyde Weys 00:38, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] good faith and JP cartoons

I just tryed to tell Raphael1 that his actions could hardly be considered good faith anymore.

The comment was nothing more random than a quote from Wikipedia:Assume good faith

MX44 18:53, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Please see WP:ENC. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. If you want to bitch out another editor, do it on their talk page or on the article's talk page. But don't do it in the actual text of the article. --Cyde Weys 18:55, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Will it be OK if remove Raphael1s instructions on how to game the system by yelling "Assume good faith" then? MX44 18:58, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
Let me take care of it. That comment is huge, overwhelms the actual article, and probably puts off people who would be editing the article appropriately (vandals don't care one way or another, they just want to remove the image). --Cyde Weys 19:00, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sockpuppetry on Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy

Greetings Cyde Weys, seeing as you were the administrator to put a 48 hour block on User:Raphael1 for 3RR violations I thought you should aware of this Request for Check User. Thanks! Netscott 01:35, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

That's an interesting charge, I want to see the results of the CheckUser before I commit to anything though. --Cyde Weys 01:43, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Well User:Naconkantari decided that User:Raphael101 was similar in user name and editing to User:Raphael1 to do an indef. block. I suppose we'll see how the others turn out. Netscott 02:32, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Your offer at SFD

Hi Cyde - thanks for your offer of using Cydebot to change over sone of the "UK" and "US" stub categories at SFD. As I said at the time, there are quite a number of them. here's a list of all the ones that are listed on the WP:WSS Stub type list:

  • Cat:UK writer stubs
  • Cat:UK school stubs
  • Cat:UK comics stubs
  • Cat:UK retail company stubs
  • Cat:UK government stubs
  • Cat:UK constituency stubs
  • Cat:UK rail stubs
  • Cat:UK railway station stubs
  • Cat:US writer stubs
  • Cat:US school stubs
  • Cat:US train station stubs

There wre fewer of them than I thought (the full stub type list hadn't been updated properly at some time) but there are still quite a number, as you can see. Any help you could give with these would be appreciated!

PS - how do you make your sig do that fancy cursor-change thing? Grutness...wha? 05:50, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I shall start work on them tomorrow. As for the sig, I won't give away my secrets! (But the secrets are in the source!) --Cyde Weys 06:56, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

What should UK be expanded to though? Simply United Kingdom? As in Cat:United Kingdom writer stubs? What would the corresponding stub templates become for these? I don't want to switch over 500 to a new name only to learn that's not what's desired. Please give me some names of what the categories and stub templates should be turned into. --Cyde Weys 06:58, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

It's just the categories; the templates should stay as UK and US. So yes, the new categories should be
Thanks again! Grutness...wha? 07:15, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
Oops - ignore the US train station one - looks like someone made it into a category redirect for some reason, so it's already at it's correct name. Which reminds me - since these categories are fed by templates, the old names can be deleted rather than being made into redirects once they're empty. Grutness...wha? 07:47, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Done. But since no actual mass conversion of templates on article pages was needed, I did the thing by hand. Probably would've taken longer to get the bot to do it anyway. Plus, my bot can't delete pages (i.e. old categories). --Cyde Weys 00:35, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] re: Cydebot

Your bot was used recently to "remove extraneous links to old VfD templates". Specifically, it removed the hidden self-reference to the template. That self-reference was included on purpose. You could argue that the purpose was unnecessary but that should have been discussed some before triggering a bot to remove all traces of the self-reference.

In particular, it disturbs me that I discovered it because the bot remove the link in a discussion about the self-referential link and whether it was a good idea or not. Even if it was a bad idea, removing it from the Talk page made the rest of the discussion meaningless. Rossami (talk) 18:46, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I've stopped Cydebot for now. I don't have time right now for discussion, but I will later today. --Cyde Weys 18:47, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm changing the bot to ignore the Wikipedia talk namespace. In the meanwhile though, all of those old links really need to go. They are absolutely clogging up the "What links here" on all of the AfD templates to the point where no real maintenance is possible (bots just choke trying to get a what links here of a list of thousands – tens of thousands? – of pages). And I honestly didn't think this was going to be contentious at all. Let's face it, these are year-old AfD results. They really don't matter at all. The only thing that's being done here is removing a bunch of unnecessary non-inclusion links to templates which are redirects. --Cyde Weys 00:15, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Also, the bot is going through substing all of the templates that aren't substed. This is in line with the substitution policy. Unfortunately, due to the obscene number of links, it's impossible to just go through and deal with the inclusion ones (the bot gets into a line of all links and fails) .. so they all must be dealt with. --Cyde Weys 00:23, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm confused. The self-referential link was first recommended because the template was intended to be used as a subst. Hiding the link in the last period was a convenient way to record where the text came from. Without some such link or comment, there is no way for other readers to know that the text was added from a template. There is no way for new users to learn about the existence of the template or for future readers to compare the template as it was substituted with the current version. The alternative was to deliberately not subst the template - which, as you say, is often a bad idea (and is specifically a bad idea for template:afd top which has some commented text).
I'm also confused about what maintenance you foresee. When would you look at the "What links here" from one of the templates except to see all instances of where it was used? I confess my ignorance in this area. What bot-assisted maintenance would you be attempting on the template?
You are right that these are all old deletion discussions and they don't really matter so much anymore, but I'm trying to understand the underlying principles. While it may not matter in the old AFD/VfD discussions, I could see it mattering in other situations. Wherever possible, I would prefer a consistent solution. If the self-referential links are a bad idea, please teach the rest of us why and give us a chance to comment on that change. Thanks. Rossami (talk) 18:37, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
The self-referential link really isn't necessary. We're talking about {{Afd top}} and {{Afd bottom}} here, two of the most widely used substituted templates on Wikipedia. They're very well-known and they're not esoteric; they're really just mainly text. And anyway, the only people who should really be using them are admins (or very ambitious users), both of whom will definitely have to know of them already through their experience. I think probably the best evidence that the self-referential link is unnecessary, though, is that we stopped doing that awhile ago. The link in the period was just confusing anyway.
The maintenance issue involves the "What links here" list. There's no way to filter that out by inclusion, so bots simply choke and die on lists of thousands of template links that aren't inclusions. These bots are going through making sure that these templates are substituted, by the way, as per WP:SUBST. The preferred method for indicating what template the text came from is by including a comment, such as <!--Template:block--> (this is used in majority of usertalk warning templates). Linking to the period is counter-intuitive and confusing because it throws in a superfluous link that the casual reader really doesn't actually care about, but may click through anyway, because what the hell, there's a link in a period and that's a really weird thing to see. And finally, these links were all to old Vfd redirects, which is confusing, because the process has since been renamed to AfD. The minimal solution would have been to repair the redirects, but since modern AfD templates don't have those links anyway, the best solution was simply just to remove them. --Cyde Weys 20:16, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
Fair enough. I've added the commented version onto those two templates as you suggested. While most experienced admins already know about them, new admins still have to learn about them somehow. Rossami (talk) 22:27, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
By the way, I think it's actually the "Template talk" namespace that needs to be excluded. I don't know of any use of these templates in "Wikipedia talk". Or maybe it's both. But I see your point about removing them from the discussion pages. Thanks for taking the time to explain. Rossami (talk) 22:32, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
No problem. It's always better to take the time to explain so that everyone has a mutual understanding. --Cyde Weys 23:35, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Don't Give Up!

Okay... so I'm not exactly Esperanza but I am always willing to cheer up a friend in need. Just remember that you'll always have people on the project that care for you and hope that you're doing well! You do great work here (or at least more work than I can bring myself to do). So just keep it up my friend! But don't forget to stop and smell those roses. :-D Cheers and happy editing. Sasquatch t|c 01:54, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Hah, now you just made the stress busting squad at Esperanza look bad :-P Cyde Weys 01:56, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

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[edit] Inappropriate

I think you are well aware that altering the user template to vandal in this case is simply nasty dealing. Now, I supported your motivation over the userbox controversy (though not the deletions that were done) and I am willing to still have you and others demostrate why cite.php is better than {{ref|note}}, but if you are going to force the issue and even label those that disagree with you as vandals, then we have a problem. Regardless, it will take a lot of explaining as to how cite.php is better in some articles than the Harvard style. I am still trying to assume good faith as I think you are motivated to make improvements and that you are doing so because you honestly believe that they are the right changes. Help me understand.--MONGO 03:45, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

You are making a mountain out of a molehill. {{user3}} doesn't have the second optional parameter that allows usernames with spaces to work, so I went with {{vandal}}, which I know does happen to have that feature. Frankly I think the template could be duplicated under a different name so everytime you want to get all of the user links on someone you don't have to call them a vandal. As for why Cite.php is better than {{ref}}/{{note}} ... honestly, the best way to get an idea of this is to use Ref converter for yourself. You don't have to commit any of the changes, just pore over them. Pay special attention to articles with lots of references in the old style. You will quickly begin to see that ref/note are very unmaintainable and prone to breaking. They end up getting out of order incessantly. The Harvard footnotes don't have exactly the same issues because they aren't done numerically in order. --Cyde Weys 03:51, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Okay...I understand that...I did Shoshone National Forest (with the help of others of course) in ref|note...simply put...I prefer the reference after the article, not in it. I am, along with one other editor, using cite.php in the upgrading of the Glacier National Park (US) article, as I am willing to see if I prefer it. I personally think, as primarily an editor and not a programmer or template wizard, that from this editors opinion bench, that a simple ref|note in the text body is preferable to having the entire cited reference in the text. I am aware that things get misnumbered if someone comes along and deletes a ref|note and fails to also do so in the seperate section at the end of the paragraph, or if paragraphs get moved around, etc. This is the only reason that I can see in which cite.php is superior. I am speaking as one who does editing, not programming...are there other reasons why, from a programmers perspective, this newer style is superior?--MONGO 04:19, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
One of the main reasons to update to Cite.php is that it makes future maintenance much more easy. With ref/note, if you want to add a reference, you have to choose a reference name tag for it (and make sure it doesn't already exist in the article), add an appropriate {{ref}}, go down into the notes section, and add the {{note}} in the correct order. And then anytime you're making non-trivial changes in the article (like, say, removing parapraphs or moving sections around), you have to go through and completely rework the order of the {{note}}s to make them stay consistent. It's just way too much of a burden. With Cite.php, however, it is much, much simpler. All you have to do is add <ref>text here</ref> and you're done. You don't need to worry about refactoring the order of the notes because all of the numbering is done automatically. It's a much more graceful system. --Cyde Weys 06:30, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
Okay...I know others have offered alternatives in terms of programing this but I haven't examined them and honestly I simply may not grasp it. My last question is...can we create a program in which the cited reference shows up in the end only, and not in article text...linked somehow to a number which automagically changes if you move a reference or section so that it always remains in correct numerical order? My guess is no...I suppose this still gets back to the reference being in the article and as far as the changes in ref|note to cite.php I do see that overall, your style is better...as far as the maintainability, but I am not convinced that I like the article text being swamped with references. I'll continue to do this latest article with your style and see what I think about it after that is done. Thanks for working with me on this.--MONGO 08:09, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, unfortunately there's a bit of a mutual exclusion problem going on here. If refs and notes are separated then you have the syncing/maintenance problem. If they are together then you have the problem with the article text getting swamped by references. Yes, I'll admit Cite.php isn't ideal, but I don't really think any one references system can be. I think the tradeoff is more than worth it for Cite.php, though. You quickly get used to references inline with the article text and after awhile you begin to prefer it because it really is much easier to work with. Let's say you're converting an external link to a reference ... all you have to do is wrap it inside of the <ref> tags and boom, you're done. Now compare how much extra work that would be under ref/note. I think, ideally, we could have some sort of syntax highlighting in the edit box so it is plain as day which text is actual displayable text and which is references. But for now we need to work with what we've got. And it's no problem at all working with you on this. I'm glad we're having this discussion. I'm more than capable of polite, calm, and reasonable discussions, and all the people who know me well will tell you that, but, I somehow have this weird reputation that precedes me in some circles on Wikipedia. Quite frankly I'm confused by it. The only person I've even had an unpleasant encounter with recently was Lulu, and let's be honest here, that was entirely his fault :-p Cyde Weys 08:27, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
Well, not to throw coals in, I didn't "see" who threw the first punch. I felt a little punched during the Glacier thing, but over it. All I can ask is from you and from others to see that there have been some that have voiced concern about cite and, especially when coming upon a Harvard style referenced article, tread lightly or else surely others may be distressed by sudden unannounced alterations. My other concern is not that I can't learn to adjust to the references in the body of the text, but I am concerned that, as I stated before about how long it took me to figure even basic editing out, that having no article information in the editing window may be really confusing to newbies. For example, one gentleman that significantly helped us in the Retreat of glaciers since 1850 article is User:Peltoms. Peltoms is a professional glaciologist and he has a huge knowledge base that I think is important for articles such as that (so long as they be mindfull of their POV, which in his case was surprisingly neutral). Anyway, Peltoms I think had some difficulty with the wiki formatting and this doesn't mean he is ignorant, just, like me, he would have to really spend some time editing here to be able to figure out how all these links, etc. work. I just thought that we have to be mindful that a lot of valuable contributors already have enough difficulty dealing with a comparatively straight-forward editing area that has a minimized amount of wikilinking, font alterations and what not. I have spoken with an expert on Wolf recovery how flat out stated he was "scared" to edit wikipedia because all his additions mucked up the page...I know, it's like riding a bike, once you figure it out, you're golden. Anyway, I encourage you and Lulu and Doug Bell, all programmers to work together and figure out a way to make as many people happy as possible...Lulu and I started off fighting and though some issues divide us, we compliment each other now...the guy really is brilliant and I can tell you're no slouch IQ wise either.--MONGO 13:34, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you!

Thank you for my very first barnstar! I'm honored : ) --MPerel ( talk | contrib) 03:48, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Implied Baseball Team?

Doesn't the use of the word pitcher before mentioning the Baltimore Orioles imply that the Orioles are a baseball team? joturner 04:09, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Your thinking is too American-centric. If I tell you that a famous player for a certain team is an all-rounder, do you know what that means? --Cyde Weys 04:35, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Simply to prove your point, I'll pretend that I don't know the term is associated with cricket. joturner 04:40, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
Damn :-P Cyde Weys 04:41, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
(During the edit conflict, in case you think this is a case of me being pedantic) However, I would like to add that that's the reason the wiki-links are there; if someone doesn't know what something is they can click on it. It would be just as absurd to say "the pitcher, the person who throws the ball in baseball, a game where you have to run around bases, for the baseball team Baltimore Orioles, which is named after the state bird of Maryland, the seventh state in the United States." But I won't make a big deal out of it. joturner 04:44, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
It's all a compromise. In this case I think it's a good compromise to put "baseball team" (just two words) in there. More than half of all English speakers most likely don't know what the Baltimore Orioles are. We shouldn't have to force them to click through to the other page when we can just insert two simple words that clear most things up. --Cyde Weys 04:52, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Deletion of Memorial High School Memories

While I respect your decision, I feel that you might have misunderstood the concept of the page. It is not something that some people made up in school one day. The creators of the page, including myself, all attend college in different parts of the country. We made this article in order to inform others about the EVENTS that occured during our senior year. I feel that the comments made that argued towards deletion came from a biased group of individuals on a powertrip regarding Wikipedia. Furthermore, I found many of their comments insulting and degrading, as if they thought they were better then us because they had been on wikipedia longer. I feel that this is a great website, and although most of my professors will not allow me to use it as a source in research papers, I often come here for miscellaneous information. None of their arguments included any valid reasons to shut the article down, other then "its not encyclopedic." To that, I respectfully disagree. It informs others about events, places, or people in history. That is most definitely encyclopedic. I hope you have a good night, and realize that while your decision might be appreciated by a few misguided individuals, it disappoints many. Have a good one. -Hawkril324

I'm sorry, but it really isn't encyclopedic. Imagine you're reading Encyclopaedia Britannica ... would you honestly expect to find an entry about some memories from some random people at some random highschool? If you had an article for each high schools' memories that would make up the bulk up the encyclopedia! Please read WP:ENC. What you had written is perfectly acceptable for any personal website on the Internet. But Wikipedia isn't a personal website, and we have strict guidelines and policies in place. --Cyde Weys 06:27, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't agree, but since your the admin, lets just accept that your probably right. However, I wouldn't expect to find articles about every porn star I can possibly think of in the Encylopedia Britannica either. And you say memories, I say events. And i find neither the people nor the high school random, as is noted on its main page, its one of the top 150 in America, and it's students are epitomes of excellence. I agree that the name is misleading(as it has memories), but someone made it like that because this Wesley Pinkham used his bulls*** influence to somehow stop us from editing our other page.

[edit] Mass category renaming/deletion

I've come across a couple instances of your mass renaming of categories to substitute United Kingdom for UK and United States for US. While I think this is laudable, I'm rather concerned that whatever algorithm you're using in this process is woefully incomplete. While a category may no longer have any articles, it may still have subcategories, and thus not be empty when deleted. Moreover, category text is not being moved, and that could seriously harm categorization efforts, especially those related to WP:WSS. For the record, the category I encountered these issues in was Category:UK railway station stubs -> Category:United Kingdom railway station stubs. Update: Upon further digging, this is the only one in the list that Grutness gave you whose text wasn't properly migrated. This is a much smaller problem than I first imagined. Apologies if I was too panicky. However, the categories still aren't empty; this, however, doesn't require administrative action, I think.

These problems need serious attention, sooner rather than later. I'd appreciate it if you got back to me quickly about this. Thanks, --CComMack 07:59, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, but everything you're referring to was done manually in the span of about ten minutes, so it's not nearly as urgent a deal as you're making it out to be :-P I'm not overly familiar with the grand categorization scheme of stubs and I admit that I may have messed something up. I would appreciate if you could take a look at it and fix it, since you seem to know more about this than I do. And I tried to move all of the category text ... I hope I didn't forget one, though ... hrmmm. --Cyde Weys 08:19, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, as I said earlier, sorry if I panicked initially (my impression was that this was a huge ongoing project relating to some decision or other at CFD; I'm glad to hear it was much smaller than that!) So far as I can tell, you did forget one, but (again, AFAICT) only one. So if you could exercise your admin mojo and fix that one, we'll be well on our way. Once again, sorry if I came across as abrupt or upset. --CComMack 08:26, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
I think I covered all of them, tell me if there's anything I missed. Ohh, and there's no problem if you panicked. I do it all the time :-D So long as we reach an amicable solution, that's all I care about. --Cyde Weys 08:32, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RfC comments

Well, anyhow, my comment might make other wikipedians, who read the RfC, see that the ad hominem part of the current RfC isn't all that interesting.

No, I'm not going to start another type of RfC, as I have one running that could have avoided the problem. Above on this page there was an implied invitation to have a look at the wikipedia:semi-bots proposal. I invite you again, this time explicitly. That proposal is listed on an RfC page, Wikipedia:Current surveys#Discussions, and could have avoided the turmoil now directed against you, if it had been guideline already.

Further, I was a bit disappointed that notwithstanding my second remark above, I didn't see an update to the refconverter software, being more cautious about converting harvard references to numbered footnotes. In that respect, the refconverter violates the WP:FN/WP:FN3 couple of guidelines (or was the software improved without me being aware of it? - in that case maybe advertise a bit more clearly regarding the software, so that all who want to use it are made aware of it). Unless the refconverter software stops violating these guidelines, it should not be used (or the accounts using it should be blocked) IMHO.

I suppose this will hardly comfort you, but nonetheless: I've had some experience of Lulu's uncompromising attitude, and all previous instances where I met this user, we didn't agree (to put it mildly). This time, however, I basicly agree with Lulu. The best chance, I think, to thrive towards compromise on this issue, is to keep my remark on the current RfC, and not to start yet another one. If there would be agreement to convert to another type of RfC, as I suggested, I'd support that of course. But maybe best to keep the discussion on one spot. I hope all parties try not to overstep any marks in ad hominem direction. --Francis Schonken 09:22, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] email?

Have you received my emails? Why don't you reply to them? Raphael1 20:22, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

You'd be surprised how many Wikipedia emails high-visibility admins get. I'll look for it. --Cyde Weys 20:25, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RfC 2

Sigh. I had hoped blanking the page and leaving a note stating that I didn't think it should go to RfC would have been enough to dissuade Lulu. I guess I should have flat out deleted it too or move locked it (damn I only just thought of that). So, while I still disagree with a lot of things being said, I am sorry that it went to RfC because that wasn't what I wanted, and I didn't feel it was needed, and I'm sorry Lulu didn't choose to follow my lead on that. He's completely lost my trust on that one, and I regret even pointing out where I was working on it to him. I'm glad to see that most people in the RfC do seem to acknowledge that it was taken forward against my wishes, so take that for what it's worth. Anyway, I'm still out of town for the week so I won't be around much. Best regards, Ëvilphoenix Burn! 20:41, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

It's okay, I don't blame you. You did everything short of literally deleting the page to say you didn't want to go through with it, and pretty much everyone understands that (except for a certain person). Seeya in a week, and have a good vacation! --Cyde Weys 20:44, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] I can't believe someone hasn't given you one yet for your fantastic tool!

The Technology Barnstar
For technical genius in creating the phenomenal Rev converter tool, saving Wikipedians from long tedious hours of manual conversions. --MPerel ( talk | contrib) 08:17, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Thank you very much! And, uh, this would be the second barnstar I've gotten for Ref converter :-D Cyde Weys 14:25, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

What?? I wasn't the first? @#$~%&!! Where (and why) the heck are you hiding your other one? --MPerel ( talk | contrib) 17:02, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
It's being hidden in User:Cyde/Awards. --Cyde Weys 17:51, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RfC boilerplate

This is a summary written by users who dispute this user's conduct. Users signing other sections ("Response" or "Outside views") should not edit the "Statement of the dispute" section.

This is the standard text in all RfCs. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 19:32, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Evolutionist

In this edit, you stated that it was a "wingnut term"; I'm wondering if maybe this is a language difference or something similar, or cultural, for here I often hear people refer to themselves as either creationist or evolutionist. _-M o P-_ 22:12, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

It could easily be a language difference; I'm from the USA, where are you from? --Cyde Weys 22:14, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
Canada. Here's the Wikipedia page on Evolutionism. I checked on Google, too; this is one of the things I found. So I think it could be language differences. _-M o P-_ 22:19, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
Ah, well that probably explains it. We have a much more thriving and vibrant creationist community down here :-( Cyde Weys 22:20, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, the dirty rotten little bastards! Why don't they get their rotten asses out of the U.S.?! Buttheads! I wish they would get incinerated by bolts of lightning! MrMonkey 02:42, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] My RfA

Thank you for voting at my RFA. Even though you did not vote for me, your counsel was appreciated. In the next few months, I intend to work on expanding my involvement in other namespaces and try a few different subjects than in the past. - CTSWynekenTalk

[edit] Cydebot approved for flag

Your bot, Cydebot (talk • contribs • logs • block user • block log), has been approved for a bot flag. Please ask a bureaucrat to grant bot status. Thanks. Rob Church (talk) 13:37, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Server problem?

It looks like edit conflicts are not properly noted. My revert was intended for an earlier edit by 216.6.210.1 and shows up as such in the history diff. LambiamTalk 22:27, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Sorry about that, I didn't even realize there was some sorta-vandalism that needed to be reverted. --Cyde Weys 22:28, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] CFD Working and Bot readability

It's great to have a bot working on CFD grunt work again. I would ask for a couple of things in the bot readability scheme. We really need a way to comment lines without disrupting the bot. To add comments after the main move data.

It would also be nice to have a way to flag certain lines so that the bot does not work them, but will continue on to the next entry in line. There are times when moves need more human attention than a bot can give, and a systematic way to flag the bot off of these moves, without hindering it from processing the rest of the moves, would be very, very useful. - TexasAndroid 16:18, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

As for commenting, we could just use a single character that will never appear in a category name (such as #) to mark the rest off the line as commenting. Then the bot could just ignore everything after that character. Does # ever appear in a category name? And if you want to flag a bot off of moves, just insert something in there that will confuse the bot so it can't read that line. Something as simple as inserting the text "NO BOTS" before the first Category: name would do. The way my category metabot is written, if each line doesn't match the exact regex, it's simply ignored. --Cyde Weys 16:26, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

btw - replied on my bot's talkpage. yah, I'd say lets just divvy it up since syrcatbot is working on auto too. --Syrthiss 16:53, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
Actually it doesn't even matter to me anymore, I modified pywikipediabot to just ignore edit conflicts. --Cyde Weys 16:55, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
Ok. I wonder how awb handles them. --Syrthiss 16:57, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
Heh, shall we find out? --Cyde Weys 16:58, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
Bleh. It doesn't handle it gracefully. It basically locks up and I have to kill it from the task manager. --Syrthiss 17:00, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
Oh, you left a message on the talk page. Its because AWB pops up a window that says "Uhh you have new messages" (which I think there's an option to turn that off), assumedly as an easy way of disabling the bot if its going crazy. --Syrthiss 17:03, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
Wow, AWB reacts to an edit conflict that badly? Well, I'm going from the list from the top to the bottom, you may want to start at the bottom and we'll meet in the middle. Also, apparently I hadn't fixed all of the edit conflict exceptions and I just caught another one. Luckily it quits gracefully rather than freezing :-P Cyde Weys 17:09, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
Well, the freeze was I think from the 'new messages' not an EC. In any case, yah I'm starting from the bottom then (actually I was emptying a few cats while we talked). --Syrthiss 17:12, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
How much does your bot do? My bot does everything. It moves over the old category text to the new article (including applicable parent categories), and it would even delete the old category if it had administrator access. And I've modified it to do any number of categories at a time, so I could set it running and come back a day later after it automatically moved hundreds of categories. --Cyde Weys 17:18, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Really all mine will do is recategorize/remove articles that it greps out of the category. AWB does have some text replacement capabilities, but I rarely use them. I do the new category creation and cat deletions with the Syrthiss account in a Firefox window. I have to feed it the settings as well whenever it completes a list, so it won't just go down the CFD/W list automatically. Overall, it sounds like your bot is quite a bit more worthwhile than mine... I'd just let you grind away, but as I'm working atm from home its not a problem to leave my bot running. I can't on the other hand close cfd debates while working since that actually takes reading and comprehension skills. ;) --Syrthiss 17:24, 28 April 2006 (UTC)


btw - looks like you might have screwed the pooch a little: the syntax on the cfd/w page had Category:Reed alumni to Reed College alumni (not Category:Reed College alumni). So you may have ended up depopulating the cat into a link instead of another cat. :/ --Syrthiss 18:57, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Did Cat:Reed alumni even have any pages in it? I just reviewed all of today's Cydebot edits and none of them even touched anything having to do with Reed alumni. --Cyde Weys 19:04, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Gimme a sec and I can check an old database dump of mine. update - sorry it was Reed College alumni. --Syrthiss 19:08, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
No idea. My database dump is a little old (december 2005) but searching for 'Reed College alumni' or 'Alumni of Reed College' turned up no articles...but it seems to me that it must have had articles in it if it was nominated for renaming. --Syrthiss 19:24, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
I can't find any. Maybe someone just goofed? And I don't think pywikipediabot will even try to turn categories into article links (it should be smarter than that). So, I don't know what to say? I think Cat:Reed College Alumni was really just empty? --Cyde Weys 19:34, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, that looks like the case from every angle I can investigate it from as well. Okee, sorry to have bugged you. --Syrthiss 19:36, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Request for clarification.

Good day,

A bot supposedly associated with you recently modified the Steven Muchnick article, changing a valid category to one with a red link. Are you aware of this, and could please explain what this is about? Folajimi 18:48, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

See WP:CFD. These categories are being renamed. And to fix the redlink, just move the category text from the old cat to the new one. --Cyde Weys 18:50, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Harvard University Alumni

You are aware that there is a difference between Harvard Alumni and Havard University Alumni aren't you? Harvard Alumni attended and graduated from undergraduate school at Harvard College where as Harvard University Alumni attended graduate school at one of the many Harvard University schools such as Law, Med, Divinity, etc. and that they've earned their Masters, Doctorates, and other postgraduate honors.

While it may confuse you and the other wikipedian's that you must have discussed this sweeping change with there are many University Alumni who would adamantly disagree with being co-lumped with the undergrads as has just been done. There was a good reason why there were two Catagories.

Please refer this note and it's research links to your colleagues who agreed with merging two separate classes of Harvard Alumni and see what you can do about undoing what your robot has done site wide.

Regards,

Dennis 19:05, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Oyyy, this is not good to hear. Still, Cat:Harvard alumni is inappropriate as a category name ... what else would you suggest besides Cat:Harvard University alumni? Should Cat:Harvard University alumni be renamed? The thing is, most other schools don't distinguish in this fashion, and people who were populating these categories probably weren't aware of this distinction and thus the categories were probably already randomly muddled anyway. --Cyde Weys 19:08, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Can I get a cite on this "Harvard alumni"/"Harvard University alumni" thing? I just polled some fellow admins and nobody's ever heard of it. If it's just some esoteric distinction made by Harvard, it's probably too confusing to use as a guideline on category names. Either you went to Harvard or you didn't. If someone wants to find more details about which specific degrees were obtained they should be included in the relevant articles. --Cyde Weys 19:16, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

  • I believe the terms Harvard Corporation and its alumnus use are "Havard Alumni" for undergrads and "Harvard Graduate" for gratuate and postgraduates. As for following convention, Harvard has always modeled itself on Cambridge and Oxford and most foriegn schools do not follow american conventions.

Dennis 19:29, 28 April 2006 (UTC)


  • Not being esoteric. Read the discussion on the Harvard University Alumni, read the first paragraphs of both Harvard articles I included. There different entities. And treated as such. The only things they share are the President and the trust. Also, a call to Harvard would be easy enough to get confirmation.

Dennis 19:35, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

At this point it looks like Cat:Harvard University alumni could become a parent category for two new sub-categories, Cat:Harvard University undergraduate alumni and Cat:Harvard University graduate alumni (or whatever name is best). This is assuming if someone is willing to put in the work to go through all of the bios in that category and sort them appopriately. But unfortunately, since most people don't know about the distinction between "regular" alumni and University alumni, those guidelines weren't followed very often, so we don't have any valid extant metadata on this. --Cyde Weys 19:32, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes. I'd be careful about the nominclature and trying to categorize who should go where. Perhaps it's best to create the Categories for Harvard Alumni and and Harvard Graduates with a modest description at the head of each page and let them be repopulated by regular editors again. If an editor is an alumni or has a family member who is or was they will know and understand which category to use.

Dennis 19:43, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] SFD log

Thank you (and of course the -bot) for helping out with the SFD closures; note that there's a log of deletions (and non-deletions) from the listings page, however. Alai 22:46, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Heh, whoops, I totally didn't see that. Blanking is so much easier though :-P Cyde Weys 22:49, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
You have my vote for kidnapping a developer to make it a one-click operation, at any rate. Alai 00:15, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Cross namespace links

Ah, sorry about that. Now I know. —Etaoin (talk) 22:56, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rollback failed

Cannot rollback last edit of User:Cyde by Chrisincanadaoraustralia (talk); someone else has edited or rolled back the page already.

Last edit was by Cyde (talk).

The edit comment was: "Reverted edits by [[Special:Contributions/Chrisincanadaoraustralia|Chrisincanadaoraustralia]] ([[User talk:Chrisincanadaoraustralia|talk]]) to last version by Slowmover".

Now, that's an edit summary! KillerChihuahua?!? 00:04, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Whoever this guy is he's a big Rush Limbaugh fan, and he seems to think we should all be NPOV drones. Of course that's impossible; it's the articles that we write that should be NPOV. I invite him to show me a POV edit I've made. Until then, get that shit off my userpage! --Cyde Weys 00:06, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

I would have, but you were faster on the mouse. And Rory096 got the second one and the warning... I'm going back to LinuxBeak's survey. KillerChihuahua?!? 00:09, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
Man, this Rush sure has some fanatical (and pathetic) fans. How in the world does one possibly think they can vandalize an admin's userpage and have it stay for more than a couple of minutes? --Cyde Weys 00:11, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
You are assuming there is thinking in the process. KillerChihuahua?!? 00:15, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spam to multiple users (13 of them)

Hi. From comments on Sam Spade's RfC, I got the impression that quite a few users, including you, were in favor of an RFAr on Sam, though no one liked, or perhaps had the time, to be the one to post it. If I were to start a request on the RFAr page, would you be interested in signing as an involved party, and/or write a short statement there? I'm asking because if people have lost interest, there's obviously not much point in my doing it; it would merely distress and aggravate Sam unproductively, which I've certainly no wish to do. I wouldn't supply any examples of my own, as I haven't edited any of "Sam's articles" for a long time (couldn't stand it, that's why I stopped), but would basically simply refer to the RfC. It seems to me that anybody who wanted to endorse such an RFAr could more or less do the same, as the RfC is so complete. It's full of evidence, and its talkpage gives a view of Sam's attitude. I believe that it's important for the encyclopedia and the community that the old dog should learn new tricks, but please don't think I want to put the least pressure on you or anybody else to take part in an RFAr if you'd rather not. Bishonen | talk 02:20, 29 April 2006 (UTC).

There are definitely people interested in going forward with this. --Cyde Weys 02:38, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hello

Greetings, Earthling! I come in peace! Where the heck am I? Well, it doesn't matter. What are you, a chimpanzee? You sure look like one! Oops, fatal error—beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beepbeepbepbepbepbepBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMM OOOOOOOWWWW! That hurts! Ouch Greetings Earthlings, We come in peace 02:51, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bravo!

Greetings Cyde, knowing that you are liable to take a bit of heat regarding some blocking you've done today I just wanted to say how much your actions are APPRECIATED!!! I will 100% support you relative to these blockings in the event that such support becomes necessary. I have been combatting the one or two image removal/linkimaging editors on the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy article for ages now so wanting to have the ability to do more and what you've done is exactly what the doctor ordered to stop the stupidly repetitive and highly disruptive nature of these edits. So once again, Thank you! for finally refusing to accept the nonsense any further. Netscott 03:28, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] cite.php

Hi Cyde,

Ooooh I'm going to have a tough time making this response honest and yet not snotty sounding, I can feel it already :-) OK, I'll do my best... I'm well aware of the syntax for the multiply-referenced footnotes with multiple backlinks. However, I can't stand them. Just my opinion of course, and I'd never change anyone else's citation style to conform to my own, but for my money, the multi-ref stuff is ugly, confusing, and, once it gets to the point that the foonote numbers start going back and forth in the prose (you know, 1, 2, 3, 1, 4, 5, 1, 6, 1...) just a crime against humanity. OK, that was an overstatement. And of course you're right about the risk an ibid getting moved and therefore invalidated... and you forget to mention that maybe 10% of our readers know what ibid means... yet I still much prefer it to the other way.

Thanks, —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 03:24, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Email

Check yer email! --Cyde Weys 04:30, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

I have responded. joturner 04:42, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
Hrrmmm, still haven't gotten it yet. If I haven't gotten it by tomorrow maybe try resending it? --Cyde Weys 04:47, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

As for Blair, I'm thinking a few more pictures might be good ... luckily, you're in exactly the right position to take 'em. I'm thinking of a picture of Blair Blvd. from one of the third floor overlooks and a pic of the SAC. By the way, do you guys have bomb threats/fire drills fairly often? Back when I went that was a bit of a problem ... --Cyde Weys 04:55, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

I already have a picture of Blair Boulevard from the third floor between lunches as well as picture of the cupola. I have a picture of the media center, and I'll have an opportunity to take a picture of the school's SAC tomorrow. However, as of right now, I see no place to put the images, so I'm holding off on uploading them. There hasn't been a bomb threat at the school in at least three years, but there recently has been a problem with faulty ffoire alarms as well as small intended trash can fires. joturner 05:01, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
Just upload them to Wikipedia under GFDL-self. Even though they're orphaned they'll stick around at least for a few days. Wikilink 'em here so I see em (and so they have file links). That'll do it. Then we can add them to the article as necessary. And you haven't had bomb threats in the past three years? Wow, either Blair is getting a bit better or the administration isn't telling you everything :-P And by the way, that pic of the computer lab you uploaded made me more nostalgic than I have any right of being. Are you in the Magnet? --Cyde Weys 05:04, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
The fourth paragraph of my Identity page probably gives that away. I'll upload the images momentarily. joturner 05:12, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
An image at reasonable size.
Enlarge
An image at reasonable size.
The following images were uploaded:
I'm especially surprised by the reasonable quality of the sundial picture considering it was taken from a second-story window in the morning. joturner 05:29, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
Too bad the pic of Blair Blvd is blurry. Maybe try resting the camera on the rail for the next shot, or will that take a picture too high? My only other recommendations are to take several shots, focusing on keeping a steady hand, and using the best. Or you could procure a tripod from somewhere. Anyway, as for the sundial, you said it was thanks to the Astronomy class? Oh really? Magnet Astronomy? (When I went there wasn't any other astronomy class in the school). Does Mr. Rogers still teach that? --Cyde Weys 05:41, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
Resting the camera on the rail would take the picture far too high. Getting a tripod would be a last resort (after all, I'm just casually taking pictures). The astronomy class is the magnet astronomy class taught by Mr. Rogers. About the overall quality of the photos, I disagree that they're bad (again, just taking the pictures between classes). And many photos appear of bad quality when at super-large sizes. At normal, article-size they can seem much more reasonable. joturner 16:18, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] E-mail

Please don't send me any more nasty gram emails...you got something to say...just spell it out on my talk page...thanks.--MONGO 05:12, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

What the hell are you talking about? --Cyde Weys 05:13, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Let me explain for the benefit of onlookers. Several days ago I sent an email to MONGO and he responded via email. No, it wasn't a "nasty gram". The only possible reason I can think for MONGO bringing this up here and now is that he's fishing for some kind of response he can use on RFAr. --Cyde Weys 05:21, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Your email: Look, you seriously need to get over the article "Retreat of glaciers since 1850". You are making some bad decisions here about who you are allying with and I can't help but think it's my fault because I got into a silly little argument over the glaciers article and now you're sticking to your guns all the way off the edge of the cliff.

My response: Oh my god...could you be more arrogant? Is there a point at which you are ever wrong...no nevermind, hold onto that illusion. Og course I am sticking to my guns.,..you tried to tell everyone in every way you could that the Rfc was wrong, when it wasn't...

At the top of the Administrators Noticeboard/Incidents...third paragraph it states: "If you want to make an open informal complaint over the behaviour of an admin, you can do so here, but please only do either that, or file a RFC or RFAr, but not both. Please try to discuss things with the admin before bringing the issue here."

4 people stated in that they questioned either your demeanor or the citations...numerous others have also complained about cite.php...here's the problem: It isn't that you are wrong that cite.php may be better...it is that you come across to a number of editors as rude. 4 people that signed at the Rfc about you in one place or another are voices that have an issue with you...had you simply said, okay, I must have a problem here that I need to address...but instead, you dismiss the Rfc almost out of hand as if not one of those folks had a legitimate gripe...even going so far to say that the Rfc was without merit. I had let it go and then checking my email I found that tidbid, which can only be construed as a threat: "sticking to your guns all the way off of the cliff." What cliff? Nevermind. Next time someone is pissed enough to create an Rfc...it would be best to listen and heed the comments....it simply makes you look bad to dismiss them as if everyone else has a problem.--MONGO 07:10, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wheel war

Clyde, I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't undo my admin actions without discussing it with me beforehand, particularly when I'm on the talk page trying to evaluate the situation, and when you yourself are involved in the dispute. It's disrespectful and it causes wheel wars. There's also no point in prematurely unlocking a page. I'll be reprotecting if the reverting starts again. Cheers, SlimVirgin (talk) 05:23, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

I wasn't undoing your actions in particular, I was merely making the page editable so that the blacklisted URLs could be removed. I tried doing that while the page was still protected; obviously, that didn't work. --Cyde Weys 05:38, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

You should have asked me to do it, and I would have. I didn't realize there were links in the version I protected. I agree that we need to take the legal advice (not just take it seriously, take it period). As for a compromise, I suggest that someone go through the article and replace the citations where material needs to be sourced, with (for example): "Name of article," Wiki Truth, retrieved April 28, 2006. That'll satisfy people who care about sourcing. Sources don't have to be online. SlimVirgin (talk) 05:42, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
You can reprotect it now if you wish; I honestly don't care about the protection status, I just wanted to remove the blacklisted URLs per advice I have received. --Cyde Weys 05:44, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
I'll wait to see whether there's more reverting. SlimVirgin (talk) 05:50, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Sloppy. You didn't take off the protected tag or remove it from WP:PP. Kotepho 06:04, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Sigh, I guess I'll have to turn in my gun then. --Cyde Weys 06:10, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New questions for you at yr RfC talk page

See the end of Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_comment/Cyde#The_other_user_conduct_issue. Just posting here, so that you know about these questions/suggestions.

Looking forward to see your answers! --Francis Schonken 08:01, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why Politicized Science is Dangerous

Have you read Why Politicized Science is Dangerous by Michael Crichton? Based on your "About Cyde," you have either read it or would like it. ;)-- Mac Davis] ⌇☢ ญƛ. 08:57, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Everything you just said is wrong

Firstly, you may not unprotect for a few minutes, make your edit, and then reprotect the page. This is totally contrary to page protection policy: you must not protect or unprotect a page you are involved in. Secondly, Wikitruth.info is not on the spam black list. If it was I would not have been able to revert you. Thirdly, sourcing facts to the Wikitruth website is not associating Wikipedia with Wikitruth. None of the links you removed pointed to libellous material taken from Wikipedia. - Ta bu shi da yu 11:45, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Wikitruth is on the spam blacklist. I even linked to the m:spam blacklist which it is very clearly on. But if we can't even agree on the simple facts we sure as hell can't be discussing policy. There's a bug with MediaWiki that allows page reversions to bypass the spam blacklist. --Cyde Weys 18:19, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Date proposal

Hello Cyde,

I'm not sure if you're still following Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers). I have made a proposal to completely rewrite the Dates section in the Manual of Style, with the hope that people from both sides of the debate can agree on a text. I noticed you contributed a lot in the previous discussions on this topic, but I don't think you've commented on my proposal yet (unless I just missed it!). Please do come along and discuss it if you're interested. I would like as many people as possible to comment, so that we can truly say we've reached a consensus.

Thanks,

Stephen Turner (Talk) 19:19, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re:Warning

What are you talking about? — HurricaneDevon @ 00:14, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Oh! that wasn't vandalisms. Sorry for the confusion, please don't scare me like that! — HurricaneDevon @ 00:18, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
Only administrators can delete pages, and administrators aren't exactly in the habit of vandalizing ... --Cyde Weys 00:22, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Aww...

I was just waiting for 69.128.177.57 to come back too...[10] - thanks for keeping on top of things :-) --HappyCamper 02:44, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

I would've just blocked him for 48 hours immediately and not bothered with the 5 minute nuisance block. --Cyde Weys 02:46, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Oddly enough, I found that on the occasion sometimes it works! Guess not this time. --HappyCamper 02:49, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Does the bot create categories too?

I thought you said it did, but I've run across a few cats where it moved the articles and didn't create the target category. I created Category:Ancient Greek religion from Category:Greek religion, for example. Thanks for the hard work, Cyde. :) --Syrthiss 13:30, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out. I think it does prompt to create the categories normally, but it doesn't seem to be doing it in batch mode (which I just added to pywikipediabot's category.py). I'll look more carefully at the changes I made and see what's going on that it's disabled the moving of the category from the old to the new. --Cyde Weys 14:01, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template:User infidel

An editor has asked for deletion review of Template:User infidel. Since you closed the deletion discussion about (or speedy-deleted) this page, your opinions on this will be greatly appreciated. --William Allen Simpson 15:35, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm already well aware of all issues surrounding this :-P Cyde Weys 15:38, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Skeleton Demon or hoax ?

What do you think of this Skeleton Demon Photo ? If that is for real, someone needs some clean underwear quick. Martial Law 19:50, 30 April 2006 (UTC) :)

Hah, that is a fun pic, but I highly doubt that it's real, for a very simple reason ... that is soooo far beyond the bounds of established science, I'd need a lot more than an ambiguous picture to make me believe. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Now if I read a peer-reviewed journal article in Science about animated skeletons, including an autopsy and a scientific explanation of how they're able to walk around despite being dead, then I would probably believe it. --Cyde Weys 19:55, 30 April 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Please help with vandalism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Teddythetank/VandalWar I'm new, not sure what to do about it. Says you already blocked him or something

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