User talk:Rick Block/Archive2005

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[edit] Aspects of music

I see no reason to delete Category:Aspects of music. Thus I simply made it a subcategory of Category:Music theory. Hyacinth 17:36, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I just intruded into this discussion, at User talk:Hyacinth#category:aspects of music. --Jerzy(t) 20:42, 2004 Dec 6 (UTC)

See aspects of music. Hyacinth 23:21, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

One source, Harold Owen uses the terms "dimensions" and "elements". Another, Virgil Thomson, as the article states, uses the term "raw materials". Molino as well uses "element". I chose the term "aspect" because it is common (in textbooks especially), but one cannot argue that this topic was invented by myself in the face of numerous sources. Hyacinth 02:32, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The Humungous Image Tagging Project

Hi. You've helped with the Wikipedia:WikiProject Wiki Syntax, so I thought it worth alerting you to the latest and greatest of Wikipedia fixing project, User:Yann/Untagged Images, which is seeking to put copyright tags on all of the untagged images. There are probably, oh, thirty thousand or so to do (he said, reaching into the air for a large figure). But hey: they're images ... you'll get to see lots of random pretty pictures. That must be better than looking for at at and the the, non? You know you'll love it. best wishes --Tagishsimon (talk)

[edit] Article Licensing

Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 1000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1
I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:
{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

OR

Option 2
I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:
{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{{MultiLicensePD}}". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

[edit] Japanese prefectures

It looks like Category:Japanese prefectures was accidentally listed to be moved or deleted, but Beland quickly corrected it. I have restored the categories and interwiki links, which I suspect were also accidentally removed.

As far as I know, there was no discussion of Category:Japanese Prefectures. It seems to have been created accidentally (judging from Beland's comments at Category:Japanese prefectures). It should probably be listed at CfD.

The discussion at CfD seems not to have made it into the archive, but you can see it here. -[[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 02:21, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] hi

as u may have noticed, my participation in wikipedia has dropped off in recent months. whoever deleted the category I created, it's all good. I was surprised it took people so long to find it and reliaze how stupid it was to anyone but me. keep up good fight to keep wikipedia honest & relevant.

Kzzl 18:18, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Recursive categories

I tried some stuff on both of them, but none of it had any affect at the time. I also tried to get a hold of a developer to have them fix it, but they seemed to have bigger concerns at the time. I'm considering it a minor annoyance at the moment, and not a high priority. -- Cyrius|✎ 04:50, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Superscripts

I was unaware of any problem using characters in the 160–255 ISO 8859-1 range; incidentally the ² character at the bottom of the editing screen, which I used to type this message, inserts a literal character. Susvolans (pigs can fly) 17:40, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Category TOC's

Thanks so much for your help with Category TOC's. I made a template based on what you did. To add a TOC to a category type {{CompactCatTOC}} . I've already used it in Category:Albums by artist

Samuel Wantman 00:08, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I gave you credit for the inspiration at Wikipedia talk:Categorization. So how do we get the changes you talk about implemented? I think this TOC thing should be implemented automatically for categories, whenever they get to be over 400 entries.
BTW, have you been following any of the recent discussion on Wikipedia talk:Categorization? -- Samuel Wantman 01:00, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I have IE, that explains why I didn't understand your changes. -- Samuel Wantman 01:41, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Very well put. I agree. Can I copy your comments to the categorization page? -- Samuel Wantman 07:16, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
No prob on the "plainlinks" thing -- I just learned it myself from Angela over at the Wikipedia:Help desk. You're right, the extra bracket was not supposed to be there -- must have copied it by accident. Gone now! Anyway, great idea, well executed. Thanks for putting it together! — Catherine\talk 15:38, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Orphaned cats

Thanks for pointing out Category:Orphaned categories. I don't quite understand the way it's setup so I want to be sure: if a category header (ie: Category:Battles_of_the_North-West_Rebellion (5) ) is categorised, then I delete the entire section (in this case, up until Category: F-Zero) right? Thanks for your help! --jag123 18:49, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Has anyone ever stated any reasons why the categories couldn't be headers? If they were, participants could easily delete them by clicking on the edit section link. I have the formatting done, I just don't want to change it in case this was previously addressed. Thanks again --jag123 20:00, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] dablinks

Hello, I'm not sure it is advisable to systematically add dablinks to articles where there is no (or extremely little) possibility of confusion. For example, with Florence, Minnesota, it is extremely unlikely that anyone getting to that article might have actually been looking for Florence, Italy or any of the other Florences on Florence (disambiguation). In fact, the one single Florence where there is some possibility of confusion, Florence Township, Minnesota isn't even listed on the disambiguation page. Generally such dab messages are only needed for primary topic disambiguation (i.e., there has to be a link on Florence to Florence (disambiguation)), or where there may be a reasonable possibility of confusion (as with Florence, Minnesota and Florence Township, Minnesota). older≠wiser 14:54, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Category:Gay travel destinations

Hi Rick. You wrote on my discussion page:

Hi - I see you've created a category for gay-friendly travel destinations. Rather than use a category for this, what would you think about using a list? I suspect most (if not all) of the places you've added to the category are better known for many more reasons than gay-friendliness and adding them to this category implies a significance that I think is not warranted. There's a slight POV-ism involved as well (what does it mean for a place NOT to be in this category?). If there's a purely objective way to describe membership (for example, places self identifying as "safe for gays" by adopting the inverted pink triangle) then I think a category would be appropriate. I don't think any subjective criteria really cuts it. What do you think? -- Rick Block 20:21, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Answer: Well, I personally don't see a problem with both a List of gay travel destinations and a category. A list, of course, could include destinations that don't have existing articles at the moment; and then the category, too, for existing articles. I thought that a lively industry such as "gay tourism" (note no article yet on this subject either, or category for that matter) deserved to be noted as one of the many positive aspects of the gay community being described on these pages.

Yes, in addition to notable gay areas and "gay-friendliness", I have noted a number of other criteria for what defines a gay tourist destination. I am sure that others will help develop this definition. Many of these places are also destinations for all other people (or maybe some other sub-set of all other people, but lets not go there). I have used as a starting point the list of US cities listed on the Columbia Fun Maps site, gay tourism specialists (no article yet on gay travel agents yet, either). They publish specialty maps of these destination, and know the markets quite well. In addition I have used my experience and knowledge of gay travel patterns personally noted over many years.

As for being "safe for gays", I noted your point and changed the text to read "perceived as being safe for gays". Good point. Thanks!

As for other "objective" criteria for gay travel destinations I will be pursuing other lists available through other gay travel specialists in addition to Columbia Fun Maps. There are plenty of them out there.

I hope that is a satisfactory answer, otherwise I would suggest you to take the discussion to the appropriate page, i.e. Category:Gay travel destinations. Sfdan 21:03, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Leeds Railways

Hello Rick. I see you amended the word lines to read railways. I disagree: these are all sections of railways (eg GNR) which the company have named for timetable purposes, which is why the title should always have a capital L for line. I am also worried that none of these appear in the main list because they are a separate category, even though there is a splendid National Rail list herewhich is a good check on them all. Folk not knowing that Caldervale or Hallam are on the Leeds list would never find it. I believe that the Leeds category could well be part of the Transport Leeds category, and that each of the lines could be referenced to the Category British railway lines. There is of course more work needed on each of the lines, so that they are not simply timetable information, but include line descriptions also. Peter Shearan 08:45, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] category disambiguation (from the Help Desk)

On March 31, I commented on the Help-Desk discussion on category diambiguation. Because this comment came so long after the latest previous comment, I think you may have missed it — but may be interested in it. Hence my pointing you to it. —msh210 16:42, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Japanese Town/District Templates

Hey Rick, I changed the Template:Miyagi prefecture template to include towns...probably should have checked with you first. Perhaps you might want to take a look and give your professional assessment? If you like the format, I'm willing to do the rest of the prefectures the same way... William McDuff 06:59, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] redirect template

Well, I changed it for consistency. There are so many different redirect messages, and the redirect template really cleans it up. A user just needs to read the next line knowing that we're talking about the capital of Colorado. The way it was before, that appeared in the disambig and the first sentence! I just think we need to keep disambigs as clean as possible. --Dryazan 17:59, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Categories

I think that addition is a bit redundant - the one right above it says that you can only format alphabetically... what need did you see for it that I'm missing? Snowspinner 23:31, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)

Alphabetization is only one formatting issue. In addition, in a category you can't organize the entries in a table, or any kind of hierarchy, or, well, in any way other than as a flat list (currently with only 200 entries per "page"). Because lists are manually created you can format them however you'd like. Because categories are automatically formatted you have no control. I've run into this on occasion and, in some cases, have effectively ended up duplicating all the links shown in the automatic listing created by the software in the category/article text. A special case, but see for example category:20th century (which actually obviates the need for the hundreds of "by decade" categories) - the births/deaths by century categories are done like this as well. If you'd like to combine these two disadvantages into one, I'm OK with this but I think they are actually somewhat different. One relates to ordering, the other to the more generic problem of formatting. -- Rick Block 00:13, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Well, my issue is really more of practicality. The purpose of the page isn't an exhaustive list of the advantages and disadvantages - it's a guide that will help people choose which one to pick. Which doesn't need the most exhaustive description - it needs the most salient one, so that a user can get through it and return to editing with efficiency. Snowspinner 13:09, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)
  • I understand the point, but I do think that "no control over the formatting" is relevant. - Rick Block 13:31, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I agree - I just don't think its relevant enough to need to be stated twice in slightly different ways. Snowspinner 14:29, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Template for U.S. federal representatives

I was not aware of the discussion. Thanks for the info. --DuKot 00:27, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] duplicate content in WP:TFD; Davenbelle

HI Rick, I saw a note of yours re dup posts; I, too, just posted a comment to wp:tfd and found that it had gone through twice. I hit save and got an hourglass and then a message saying that the server couldn't be contacted. I hit 'back' and got back to my edit window, checked the contents, and then hit save again. It would seem the db post did go through the first time, and had trouble returning the result. diffs: [1] && [2]; note that the timestamp of the first one is off by a minute from that in the sig... Good luck, Davenbelle 15:30, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] more duplicated content

I've just noted a couple more incidents of duplicated content at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#duplicate content in articles Thryduulf 19:27, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Advantages... or abilites

I have asked Pioneer-12 to participate in the conversion of the categories sections to an abilities format as well as develop the synergy section in the blue box at Wikipedia talk:Categories, lists, and series boxes. This is just an experiment. Pioneer-12's Advantages... or abilites suggestion was actually pretty good. And, we need another editor or two to participate. -- John Gohde 04:33, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Have fun on Wikipedia talk:Categories, lists, and series boxes. I wont be making any more edits anywhere on Wikipedia, since editing here is a total waste of my time; ban or no ban. The experiment was a total disaster. And, Pioneer-12 is either obnoxious or mentally dull, IMHO. Could be why I have better things to do with my time? What do I have to do to totally piss the AC off? Ah, I know. Never come back to Wikipedia! Ha, ... Hah, Ha! I have other options which are a lot better. Bye! -- John Gohde 00:30, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Duplicate content

Actually, I've had trouble with that page for a couple days. I think its amazing lenght might have something to do with it. I'm actually going to perform some archiving. Circeus 14:08, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)

I did, actually, but I though I had solved it by dropping the edit althogether (I don't remember which version had the wrong text, though. I couldn't notice the duplication on my next edit, because I have preview under the edit box.) Circeus 18:48, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)

Seemed like a good idea - particularly for pages with long introductions which function as operational lists. Dont see the harm in it, except maybe the whole header section would have been better. -SV|t 16:20, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Disambiguation models

It would be wise to create a separate page for discussions about the disambiguation templates as User:Neonumbers proposed; whether it should be a subpage of Wikipedia:Disambiguation or, as you suggested, part of Wikipedia:Manual of Style (how do you create a proposed style guideline?), or somewhere else (such as a WikiProject), I don't know (or I would have boldly created it myself). I'll put a note on Neonumbers's talk page too. —Wahoofive (talk) 22:19, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

That's good - I dunno where either - I'm tempted to shift towards a subpage of Wikipedia:Disambiguation but you reckon otherwise so I won't make the subpage yet. I can see where you're getting at with the style thing, by the way, so if you want to stick it at Wikipedia:Manual of Style I won't complain. (dropped note on Wahoofive's page too)User_talk:Neonumbers/Neonumbers 05:08, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Dab style

I've created a draft project at Wikipedia:Disambiguation/Style for comment. I'll announce it on Village Pump, but I'm directly notifying people who have commented lately. —Wahoofive (talk) 17:26, 2 May 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Content labeling

Hi Rick. I appreciate that you want my opinion, but, as I said on Wikien-l, I don't feel that this is an issue for the board, but one for the community to decide as long, as whatever is decided remains within the bounds of NPOV and the laws of Florida (or wherever the databases are). It's also interesting to note that when I went to Africa recently to talk about distributing Wikipedia there, no one was concerned about content labelling, and no one had ever heard of any perceived problems with the appropriateness of the content. I'm not aware of any schools blocking Wikipedia over this sort of thing. Angela. 21:33, May 2, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Award

Thanks for the award. I don't think I deserve it though. I hate to say this, but my images are actually not my best. They are my second- or third-rate ones. But fortunately, even those images are much better than what I see (or not see) on Wikipedia. Photojpn.org 01:30, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Colorado State Product

I got the information from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (www.bea.gov). I'll be more careful about citing my source next time. - Mu Cow

[edit] Duplication

I'm afraid that I can't remember the details of this. I usually check for duplication after an edit conflict or similar (and there have been a lot of failed edits recently, so I check after those too), but I obviously missed this one. Sorry that I can't help. I'll increase my vigilance, and next time I hit duplication I'll let you know the circumstances. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 15:59, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Right, it's just happened again, this time on Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy. I was adding a new category (so edit conflicts shouldn't happen, in principle), and my first attempt to save hit the screen saying something like "Your action couldn't be completed" etc. I returned to the edit screen, and called up a new copy of the page in case my edit had gone through anyway, but it hadn't — so I tried to save again. This time I got an edit conflict. I copied my text from the lower to the upper screen, and saved. Result: duplication.
A check of the History shows that there was no edit conflict, except with myself. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 19:26, 22 May 2005 (UTC)
No — I always just copy my own text from the lower box and add it to the main article in the upper box. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 21:04, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Ah, so the best thing to do in those circumstances is to copy the text from the lower box and replace the text in the upper box with it? Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 08:28, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Superscripts

Your question is no longer there after my long break, so I can't read it to answer it properly. The characters are stored in MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning, which can be edited by any admin (like myself). I can see that they're not encoded properly, which I assume is the problem. Just tell me what they should be, and I'll change them. -- 19:16, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Done. Sorry it took a month and a half to get that taken care of. -- Cyrius|✎ 22:32, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] How to duplicate

I recently edit conflicted myself again by hitting the save button and then the stop button. Then save again and got edit conflict cause the first time the save went through. Copy my stuff from bottom box to top box, and hit save again to test wether I would get a duplication and I did. I was expecting it because the diff the edit conflict shows mentions the whole article as stuff my edit didn't have and the actual diff on the section I was editing. Somehow the section I was editing got replaced by the article. That's why the section I was editing didn't get duplicated. Seems like a simple bug to fix if you know your code. I am talking about this [3] --MarSch 12:54, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Browser

I use the Galeon browser for Linux, which is essentially a variant of Firefox. —Mulad (talk) 04:39, May 29, 2005 (UTC)

No, my problem was that my browser was following the "width: 300px" property somewhat improperly, so that article text would print on top of the infobox, which renders wider than that. —Mulad (talk) 04:47, May 29, 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, you can do that if you wish. —Mulad (talk) 05:08, May 29, 2005 (UTC)
Yep, looks fine —Mulad (talk) 05:15, May 29, 2005 (UTC)
Heh, I spend too much time on Wikipedia as it is—I don't need the pressure of being an admin ;-) —Mulad (talk) 05:32, May 29, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] image alignment

Hi - Do you enough about CSS to know whether the monobook skin can be fixed to avoid the issue raised here? You never commented about my response indicating it's not just a Gecko bug. I haven't tried Opera, but if it affects pretty much every layout engine except IE's it seems to me that wikipedia's default skin should avoid the issue. Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:41, May 29, 2005 (UTC)

It's not easy. For instance, on the Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Star Wars case, the problem is that the text on the first line is avoiding the first float (the small edit link) only, not noticing the second float below. Adding a margin-top of 1em to the image would push it down enough to avoid the text; I don't know if it would be a solution in the general case, and might break the layout on other situations. Another possible trick in that case would be to remove that edit link from there (putting it at the end or to the side of the title).
There is another more destructive layout problem with floats I can't find a solution to; when you have a string of right-aligned images (which both are right floats and clear the right floats), followed by one or more sections, all the section [edit] links pile up just to the side of the last float. In this case at least, I know it's not a bug; the standard requires this behavior, since these links are also floats.
I had read some time ago a page somewhere saying the "text overwriten by floats" bug was a Gecko bug (unfortunately I can't find it again); the page said nothing of other rendering engines. Of course, if only IE doesn't show it, you have to wonder if it's really a bug instead of a specification misfeature...
--cesarb 16:18, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] subst: templates etc

Hi Rick. Thanks for the note – I understand now. However, I do like using {{tl}} because it also includes the link to the template, which I find very useful. However, I think it is important to only use it with subst:, so that the coding is easy and the server load is small. Cheers, smoddy 09:39, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Civility

I didn't intend my comments to be non-civil. Perhaps I'm being too forward with my opinions but I really do think Steinsky is attempting to speak for more than just himself, which is why I brought the discussion off my user talk page to WP:D. I don't understand how he can say they aren't needed when the assessment of need is one that is impossible to do without speaking on behalf of others. Honestly, my comments were not ones to rile up a fight or be uncivil... Cburnett 02:52, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Japanese city infobox

Somebody made an Infobox template for Japanese cities. I tried to use it for Nagahama, but it doesn't look right. Questions:

  • How do you align it to the right?
  • What should I do if I don't have some of the information the Infobox requires, such as the city tree/flower? I leave it blank and it looks like: {{{Tree}}} Photojpn.org 06:35, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Right alignment should be specified in the template itself and seems to be, although I've seen it more often with a "style=float: right" parameter (as per Template:Japanese_todofuken) rather than an "align=right" parameter (but either should work). Is the alignment issue the stacking of the image and the table in Nagahama? If so, one fix is to put them both in a "div" block (<div> ... </div>), like the image and table in the Tokyo article. If there's going to be an image with each city, I think the image might as well be in the template itself (in the table) which would avoid the need for the div. Note that the "width" parameter for the div should be slightly larger than the max width of the image or table. I assume you added the table to Nagahama with a subst, so at this point the only fix for the missing parameters is to edit the table. When adding the table, if you specify the parameters by name (rather than positionally), a blank value can be used. For example,

{{subst:Japanese city| Name = Nagahama | JapaneseName = | Region = | Prefecture = | Area = | Population = | PopDate = | Density = | Mayor = | Tree = | Flower = | SymbolImage = | CityHallPostalCode = | CityHallAddress = | CityHallPhone = | CityHallLink = | Latitude = | Longitude = | CityMap = | Notes = | ExtraNotes = }}

expands as
Nagahama ()
Country Japan
Region
Prefecture
Area 'km²
Population '
as of
Density
Mayor
City symbols Tree  
Flower  
[[Image:|150px]]
Nagahama City Hall
Address 〒
 
Phone  
External link  
Latitude &
Longitude
[[Image:]]
Notes  

-- Rick Block (talk) 13:40, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Admin question

Thanks for thinking of me on this. Do you know if there is a Wikipedia page that explains the duties of an admin? I'd like to find out what's required before I commit myself. Thanks! 23skidoo 02:22, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the followup. I'll give the information you gave me some thought. Cheers! 23skidoo 04:16, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Village pump

I've seen it. I don't think I have anything to apologize for — I unprotected a page that had been protected, ostensibly against vandalism, for over a week; normally vandalism protection should only last for at most a couple of days, because there's no need for lengthy discussion to resolve a dispute. At the same time, I'm not interested in defending my honor or whatever, so I thought it better simply not to get involved in that discussion.

The right thing for Redux to do would have been to bring this up with me personally, as Knowledge Seeker pointed out. That's why contacting the other party is the first step in resolving disputes. Then he could have figured out why there was a misunderstanding. Since then, we had a brief conversation on the article talk page and he didn't mention the issue at all. I won't presume to guess why, but for now I'm not interested in making this molehill any bigger. --Michael Snow 01:12, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hi Rick. Thanks for your intererst. I've already left a message for Michael Snow in his talk page, hopefully sorting this misunderstanding with him once and for all. About the article itself, I do not consider the article being protected the solution to the problem. In fact, I find it regretable that we actually had to block the article in order to solve this issue, which I'll only consider solved when we get the anon to either start communicating and working with us or move on, and then finally unblock the article again. I only requested protection when it became clear that that person would not be reasoned with as long as he could continue to ravage the article as he sees fit. It was, in essence, a last resource. As for the topic at the VP, you pretty much summed it up in your comment in Michael's talk page. Although I was not exactly looking for any personal apologies, I wanted to bring up the issue that one particular Admin procedure had become somewhat automatic, and that is prone to cause problems. But some appear to have perceived it as an attack on the "Admin establishment", and, instead of discussing the issue, have decided to attack me. I was surprised to see this happen, especially since it was Admins doing it. I have always endeavored to mantain high ethical standards in my work in Wikipedia, and to have that questioned by people who are also supposed to be highly ethical simply because they didn't like what I was saying... it was discouraging. But hopefully this, like anything else, will pass. Thanks again for your interest. Regards, Redux 01:53, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re: lots of edits, not an admin

I put the "*". I wouldn't mind being considered for adminship. Thanks. --FuriousFreddy 02:13, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] User:Rick Block/WP600 not admins

Rick, I hope you don't mind this observation, but I think this list of yours is not a good idea. People chosen for adminship should be responsible editors who are able to collaborate with others, who have a fairly wide range of interests, and who make good contributions to the encyclopedia, post on talk pages, do a little janitorial work, etc. You seem to be judging by numbers of edits alone, which is often very misleading — single-issue editors who make lots of minor edits (e.g. adding categories) will often have enormous numbers of edits to their names, and yet will have no knowledge of the community, and no experience of adding substantive content. I've noticed on your list some names of people who would definitely not be good candidates (not by any standard). Can I ask you to reconsider the use of this list? SlimVirgin (talk) 03:17, Jun 12, 2005 (UTC)

This is a dup of a comment posted at User talk:Rick Block/WP600 not admins - conversation (including portions originally posted here) continues there. -- Rick Block (talk) 05:01, Jun 12, 2005 (UTC)

I agree. I think it's a bad idea. Quantity of edits does not indicate who would be a good administrator. At least one of your nominees is among the most biased editors I've run into, who seems to view the pages he has adopted as an ongoing debate, but one where he has the privilige of rewriting his opponent's position. When he gets mad, he will redirect the page to something nonsensical, or have a tantrum of revertions. He's been banned for violations of the revert rule. I'm sure there are others like it on the list. I wish you'd remove the list. We don't need to encourage them. Pollinator 00:32, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Pro Bowl by year articles

Alright, I'm game, since it's now official that my categories were whittled down to just AFC & NFC Pro Bowl players... so what do we do? -- FutureNJGov 11:08, Jun 12, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re:administratorship

I was once nominated for administratorship and it seemed to cause a lot of controversy at the time. In fact, the person who nominated me withdrew his support for me. I don't want to go through all that again, so I wonder whether I should even bother starring my name. -- BRG 14:10, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)

I wasn't trying to imply that I'd decline if nominated. I just wanted to point out to you that it caused some commotion a few months ago. I don't want to have to go through defending what I did again, but if you, based on what you've seen, still think I'm worthy of nominating, I'll star my name; I just wanted to let you know about the past mess. -- BRG 14:26, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The list

Rick, thanks for your note. Actually, it was a bit of cooincidence. I first noticed your list, and wasn't keen on the idea of it, and then saw that there are two (not one) members of it I'm currently having a problem with, over the same issue, and directly connected to their high volume of edits. So yes, it has taught me to scrutinize very carefully people with unusually high edits. For example, there's a particular editor I can think of (I won't name him/her and haven't checked to see whether s/he's on your list) who has 6,000 edits, and who has also used a number of sockpuppets, one of which has 15,000 edits. The reason for the high volume is the minor nature of the edits and the fact that s/he won't discuss them with other editors, and in fact the use of sockpuppets is to avoid being questioned too much. So this person would clearly make a terrible admin, but the danger is, if the name is simply plucked from your list, voters may not realize this, may not check the contribs carefully, probably won't know about the sockpuppets. The same user could end up with more than one adminship!

I know another editor (again, I haven't checked your list for this name) with 8,000 edits, who never uses the preview button and who makes only minor edits, never marking them as such. His/her edits to a page often consist of moving an image, saving, moving it back again, saving, moving it again, saving, moving it back again. The user also has a sockpuppet with 3,000 edits.

This is why it's very important for editors only to nominate other editors when they are thoroughly familiar with their work. One of the best ways to judge who'll make a good admin is to look at three things: (1) the volume and quality of posts on the user's talk page: someone who gets very little mail may not be interacting properly; (2) that their posts are well-balanced between the main namespace, article talk, user talk, and Wikipedia pages; and (3) that they accurately describe their edits in edit summaries, which shows respect for other editors.

I appreciate you taking my concerns seriously, and I thank you for that, and for having added the disclaimer. I'd like to suggest a change to it, as follows:

DISCLAIMER: This list indicates large numbers of edits, which generally, although not necessarily,indicates a more than casual dedication to improving Wikipedia's content. However, a large number of edits may consist of mostly minor edits (whether marked as minor or not), like adding categories; may be of a single-issue nature; or may indicate a failure to use the preview button. Users on this list, including those indicating an interest, may or may not make suitable candidates for a nomination to become administrators. Nominators are advised to check the balance of a potential nominee's edits between the main namespace, article talk, user talk, and posts to policy and Wikipedia discussion pages, and also to check that the nominee describes his or her edits accurately in edit summaries. SlimVirgin (talk) 20:37, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for updating the disclaimer, Rick, and for your note. About banning the types of editors I mentioned: as admins, we can't block editors who have made some useful contributions, even if many of their contribs are minor and pointless. It would have to go to the arbcom, and that's a lot of work. I'm not even sure this particular editor is doing it on purpose to build up the edit count. I think there are maybe problems in general with that person, and sometimes there are useful edits. As no actual harm has been done, I just keep an eye on it, and watch in case the behavior deteriorates. SlimVirgin (talk) 03:46, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Adminship

Hi! I am still interested. Do not remove me from this list please. Maybe I will be candidating for an admin in July-October this year. - Darwinek 07:12, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Meta-templates

The fact that our main developer, Jamesday, says it's a good idea for technical reasons (and that ArbCom member David Gerard reasserts that), makes it a de facto guideline in my opinion. Radiant_>|< 13:51, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Admin notice

Thanks for the notice. I did decline nomination more than a year ago. I find myself busy enough as bureaucrat on Wiktionary (also Wikisource, but I haven't done much there in the last couple months). The one area where I would find being Wikipedia admin useful is in reviewing the history of deleted articles that have been Transwikied to Wiktionary. Consider me still undecided, which is a little more enthusiastic than outright decline. Eclecticology 20:28, 2005 Jun 14 (UTC)

[edit] Admin

Hi Rick Block,

Thanks for the offer but I think I'll defer for the time being. Maybe in six months or a year I'll toss my hat in the ring, though.

Best regards

Fg2 08:05, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 172.154.226.170

I've already blocked him -- already been warned at the other ip. Evil Monkey∴Hello 04:07, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)

I dunno, I'm really only new at the whole admin thing. Evil Monkey∴Hello 04:12, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Admin

Rick, thanks for the suggestion. I've added the "*" to the list. Should I add my name for consideration on Requests for adminship? Mark 11:45, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for getting back to me. I think I'll take the latter route, like you say self-nomination could be interpreted as arrogance. Thanks again Mark 19:38, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] lots of edits, not an admin

Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm presently not much of a Wikipedia contributor - my present number of monthly contributions at the moment is negligible, and the great number of edits is just a remnant of the past. (Not to mention that given my recent conduct on Wikipedia, I have very little chance of becoming an admin.) Regardless, yours is a very nice initiative. — Itai (f&t) 07:20, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Lots of edits, not an admin

Thanks for telling about the initiative. I guess it would be best for other people to nominate me. Self-nomination is not quite good to me myself. :-D — Instantnood 10:42, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

And likewise thankyou. I don't like the idea of self-nomination (it just feels really presumptious, y'know), but I have no objection to my name being put forward if other people think I'd be good at it. I can't say that I can devote too much time to it at the moment, though (I'm very active politically with NO2ID, which is taking up a lot of my time at the moment), but I'm sure people can weigh that in the balance, if necessary. Thanks again! — OwenBlacker 07:09, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Admin list

Hey Rick. Thanks for letting me know about your list. As it is now, I'm on an indefinite wikibreak, ironically, mainly because of the whole admin thing & WP:RFA. It seems adminship has turned into a clique and a joke. It's pretty sad when an admin invites their friend(s) to Wikipedia from online forums to support them, and they manage to get them promoted three months later, despite very little contributions other than to talk. Your initiative is good and I hope it picks up momentum. Perhaps those who actually build the encyclopedia (instead of bickering about it) will get some overdue recognition. Good luck! --jag123 16:50, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Admin status

Hi,

Thanks for your suggestion. Yes, I've been around since somewhere in April 2001. For a few years I used to be quite active in English Wikipedia but now I'm rather short on free time and totally absorbed by Polish Wikipedia. All I do on a regular basis is inserting interwiki links and it would be very hard for me to fullfill administrative tasks properly. Anyhow I appreciate your invitation. I might apply for a admin status some time in future.

Regards,
Kpjas 21:20, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Admin list details

Hi Rick - thanks for the extra details; I'll wait and see if anyone thinks I'm worth nominating before I make my final decision - MPF 19:54, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] non-Admin list

I was wrong. It sounded like a bad idea to me - I figured that people knew where they stood and either wanted to be an admin, or didn't. It seems like people just needed a little prodding to say they were interested - and needed a forum to indicate interest. I think this diff says it all. Good job, and keep up the good work. Guettarda 20:24, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Film Wars

Hi,

Thanks for your Saturday note. I just finished writing a long response here, and when I tried to "Save Page" it after a "Show Preview, I kept getting this message that there was an "Edit Conflict", and the computer just wouldn't pass it through! For 30 minutes, I've been trying to get it to you, by hook or crook, and it just won't accept it. So - I will try to get back to you in a day or two, when the Wiki programming isn't sleeping one off, but this will let you know that I appreciated your writing me, and that I do want any assistance you care to give. Best, Rich Wannen 20 Jun 2005.

A bit of FYI/advice for edit conflicts. Usually when I get one on a talk page, I go back a page and copy what I was going to write. Then go back to the talk page (in viewing mode, not editing mode) and ensuring it's been refreshed, then I paste my text back into the box and submit it again.
An edit conflict is just what it sounds like: someone has edited the page since you started editing it. This is why I just copy what I had done, refresh the talk page, then edit again. Cburnett 02:52, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Film Wars, Part II:

Well, let me see if I can get the Wikiserver to cooperate now and transmit my complete message.

What I'm working on is reconciling the discrepancy between the default term & introductory article Film and appendices, accessible via the site Search field, and the default Category, Cinema, which is accessed through the Culture header at the top of the Wikipedia home page, which leads to a whole different starting point (a list of subcategories, which go to several levels of sub-sub categories, and a hodgepodge of articles, of which Film is just part of the alphabet soup). This, IMO, will end up with a single entry point, regardless of whether Culture or Search is used, and a far more simplified and better, more logically organized subcategory/article "Table of Contents" that the unwikified casual user or would-be contributor can use to find what he/she is looking for, or what needs adding or developing that he/she can contribute to. At this point, with two different starting points, and each with its own sets of secondary and tertiary links, going this way and that, and perhaps not linked to both "header" terms (Cinema defaults to Film in the Search field, even!), it's a big mess. That is an impression as a "newbie" but I think it is exceedingly pertinent, as the objective of Wikipedia seems to be to reach a larger audience, and if it is a pain in the ass to use, alot of newcomers will go elsewhere.

After the organization is complete, then I plan to look around for articles/topics that need to be corrected, expanded or added; but I just can't get a focus going with the clutter there.

So - your involvement on this project would certainly be more than welcome - there's an enormous amount of film/cinema/movie entries in here, and just getting the existing material organized is a big one - assuming you agree with me on my central premise, of course.

In that context, what I'd propose is - I'm presently looking at the attachment to the Film article which I've identified on the page, much to the annoyance of Mother Wantman, as Index of Film Topics instead of just List of movie-related topics. And what I'm doing is organizing it a bit, the objective being to be able to take an orderly look at the contents and see if they're duplicated elsewhere, and then decide how to eliminate the duplications.

Presently there is a section headed Terminology, on which I'm working; I'm down to H. I'm taking from each alphabetic section those terms which are *technical* terms and sticking them under Motion picture terminology, linked just below the Terminology heading (and which contains only a handful of terms on its own, making it a stub duplication of terminology with some different entries), and leaving behind the assortment of job titles, industry slang, organization/company names, proper names and other miscellanea that's just been stuffed in there and left. We can deal with the residue once the technical terms have been factored out and everything put into more readable column formats instead of strung across the page; if you'd care to start at Z and work your way up, we can meet in the middle somewhere in the next couple of days.

The thing I'd like to do after that, and you may want to do this instead, is look at the article Film and its section History of Film, and then look and the separate article History of Film and give me your thoughts whether these should be merged, or History of Film finalized as more of a Timeline of Film History, which someone seems to have started to do and then dropped the ball around the 1930s, leaving behind just flat text; and I have no opinion at the moment which way it should go, but I don't think having two different articles that simply describe the "history of film" makes much sense.

Or, maybe you have some ideas of your own, or want to explore the Category portion from Category:Cinema (which I can't seem to get to link up here, but as I said you find it under Culture on the home page), and see if there isn't a better organizational plan, something that would go to 2 levels at worst, instead of the maze of sub and sub-sub cellars that I keep running into there; and give me your thoughts, or take some action.

So, that is the kind of help I could use, and if you or others want to join in, great. Or if you want to work on it from a different perspective, that's fine too, let's just coordinate so we don't collide with each other.

Again, many thanks for your kind message and offer of help. Best wishes: Rich Wannen 6:45PM CST, 20 Jun 2005.

PS - Is it my imagination, or wasn't the tab title for these private message boards TALK just a little while ago; now the heading is DISCUSSION but I'd swear it wasn't that way when I first got here. - RW.

[edit] Help desk question

You see my Userpage? It has two meta tags (links that go to other wikimedia projects). They tend to stand in the way of the other sections. As I do that for other article pages too, the same thing happens, like Faith. --Admiral Roo 18:41, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] HD change

I copied the changes and the h2 headings from a page that was transcluded onto the reference desk. It seems that it's no problem in that case. Anyway, thanks for changing it, I'm inclined to change it to just bolding though, to keep it all above the TOC. - Mgm|(talk) 04:54, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] re: premature archive

Hi - It's probably not worth undoing, but you archived some stuff from WP:VPT that was way more recent than the requisite 7 days. In particular, the exchange with Rich Wannen was most recently commented on less than 24 hours ago. I assume he's probably gone for good this time, but I would have preferred for him to have had a chance to see this comment. In any event, please take more care next time (i.e. look at the newest comment, regardless of how old the thread is). BTW - I do appreciate that somebody finally got around to archiving. The page was definitely getting unwieldy. -- Rick Block (talk) 23:51, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)

oops! I *knew* I'd end up making a mistake sooner or later! I've restored the current sections of the debate and left the rest archived. See what you think.
It was more due to the sheer volume that I slipped up. Now that the brunt of the work has been done it'll be easier to keep things archived, so fewer mistakes will (hopefully) be made. Master Thief GarrettTalk 05:16, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you

That was what I was looking for. --Admiral Roo 10:25, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re: edit summary with rollback

No, I haven't made any requests about it on bugzilla (yet), but I see others requested it a long time ago. See: Wikipedia:Ignored feature requests#Rollback Edit summary. So the developers know about the request. But since it's very old, maybe it's time to request it again. Shanes 16:45, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Deleting cats

Listen, I'm working on the Pro Bowl stuff, and I know I got a little out of hand with my reaction to the deleting of the year-by-year cats (which I now realize was a good thing), but they're trying to delete the cats for the older NFL franchises that don't (currently) have entries in them... I'm trying to add entries as fast as I can to keep them open (mostly the Cardinals entries... they want to delete the Chicago, St. Louis, and Phoenix cats)... I made categories for some of the older teams to establish who played back in the day & who's playing now, but I need a little assistance... not saying you need to go through and find players (I'll handle that), but could you add a 'keep' vote for me... I realize my last categorization was a little overzealous, but I don't see anything wrong with this one, and before I get stupid and blow my top again (which won't happen, I swear), could you help me out please? I'd really appreciate it. Anthony 22:21, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)

Glad to. -- Rick Block (talk) 23:03, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Monty Hall

Since picture's (Image:Monty2.gif) source image is another picture (Image:Monty-hall.png) licensed under the GFDL then can't we say that the second work is GFDL or GFDL compatible? This link is Broken 02:44, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

the only problem is that I'm mistaken, the second image is PD so the first image could be anything. This link is Broken 03:26, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
isn't there a template for GFDL-implied or somthing? This link is Broken 03:30, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
That's it. You think we could use that? This link is Broken 03:36, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Fine just add GFDL. (and No. funny you should ask that though, it's the second time someone has said that to me today) This link is Broken

No. This link is Broken 03:58, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't worry about it. GFDL-presumed is good enough for now(what else would he have licensed it under). We can remove the image if the guy or someone else objects. This link is Broken 04:01, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] lots of edits, not an admin

This is really bizarre, but I found out about your list through random browsing just yesterday, and now here you are telling me about it yourself. Freaky. :)

Anyway, as for the list, I think I'll leave it for the moment. If someone wishes to nominate me, that's fine. I'm not going to proactively pursue it myself, though. At least not anytime soon.

Thanks for "officially" pointing out the list though. --TheParanoidOne 17:51, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks from me also for pointing out the list, but I really don't wish to be considered for Adminship. I am quite happy to just edit Wikipedia as I have been doing. - TonyW June 28, 2005 15:57 (UTC)

I was nominated twice before, but sadly, during some conflicts. Got the popular vote but not a consensus. I'd love to be an admin just so cleaning up the site would be easier to do. All I can do is the wiki-equivalent of whistle-blowing. Thanks for the info...I've added the asterisk! - Lucky 6.9 28 June 2005 21:44 (UTC)

[edit] Adminship

Dear Rick Block:

Thanks for your courtesy, but I'm not interested at this time. I did decline nomination more a year ago. Maybe in the future I'll feel able to contribute and moderate diverse points of view. Right now, I prefer to share my feelings and experiences to peers who have common interests. If my ideas and descriptions will add knowledge and pleasure of wikipedians, I shall be delighted; if not, I'm always open to an alternative interpretation, suggest or comment. "Let your ideas be second-hand, and if possible tenth-hand, for then they will be far removed from that disturbing element— direct observation". - The Machine Stops, by E.M. Forster [4]. My regards, and thanks again. :-) MusiCitizen June 28, 2005 05:21 (UTC)

[edit] User:Kevin Rector

I saw your note on Kevn Rector's talk page, and thought I should tell you that Kevin left the project a while ago. So I don't think he'll be an admin anytime soon (though I would have supported him when he was here). --Dmcdevit 28 June 2005 23:35 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. I see he's still making at least occasional edits. As for anyone else, whether he chooses to add a '*' by his name is entirely up to him. -- Rick Block (talk) June 29, 2005 00:15 (UTC)
You know, I hadn't even bothered to check his contributions. He seems have contributed some in the last two weeks, and hopefully he'll become a fulltime member again soon. So never mind. And I think your list is a good idea, too :) --Dmcdevit 29 June 2005 00:44 (UTC)


[edit] Admin nomination

Just saw your message, and I have added the "*" to my name as you directed. Thanks. --Tottenville8 02 July 2005 11:34 (UTC)

[edit] Inactivity

Just to inform you, I have returned and am no longer inactive, as of July 3, 2005. Long story short that nobody wishes to know, my inactivity is generally determined by the amount of time I spend recording my album. If I ever find myself inactive for a lengthy period again, I will be sure to let you know. Bobo192|Edits 3 July 2005 15:25 (UTC)

I wasn't sure whether I should do it or if you would have felt more comfortable if you had done it yourself - in order to be assured that you hadn't missed any recategorizations. Just keeping on the safe side. I'll check it out now. Thank you. Bobo192|Edits 3 July 2005 18:09 (UTC)

[edit] lots of edits, not an admin

I haven't been interested in the past, though I think it would be increasingly useful for helping with my work on cricket-related articles. However, even though I was fully vindicated, it's probably best to let the ArbCom case rest a while before going for adminship, jguk 3 July 2005 18:12 (UTC)

[edit] categorization

The upgrade came and went without any automatic generation of TOC's. I'm quite surprised because the typical comment about {{categoryTOC}} was "this is not needed because it will be automatic in future versions". (I don't know how software decisions actually get made. It seems to be hit or miss, whatever the programmers feel like taking on. I used to be a software designer in the 80's and find this to be quite odd.) I've gotten the same argument when it comes to dealing with the super and sub-categorization controversy. Do you have an understanding about how software design issues get decided? I've been wondering about all this and how to to proceed. Category battles are draining quite a bit of people's energies. Any ideas and suggestions you may have would be appreciated.

Also, I noticed that you have not taken any credit for {{categoryTOC}}. I may have written the first version of it, but that would not have been possible without your work. Also, once written, you did quite a bit to perfect it. So please take credit as well. -- Samuel Wantman 4 July 2005 05:47 (UTC)

The software is open source and the "developers" are simply volunteers who choose to work on it out of the goodness of their hearts. They distinctly aren't employees of the Wikimedia Foundation and there isn't any one person who "controls" what gets delivered, so yes it's quite hit or miss. I think what categorization needs is better policies and guidelines - lacking that different people have different ideas about what categories are for and (IMO) end up arguing about specifics when they're really arguing about their fundamental views. If we're not going to develop better guidelines then I think the only rational stance is that categories are anything anyone wants them to be, which I think means they will be relatively chaotic. I would support an effort to revamp the relevant policy and guideline pages (including at least WP:CG and WP:CSL), but any major policy changes require consensus which I believe may be impossible to achieve.
Regarding credit for template:categoryTOC - where are you thinking I should take credit (my user page?)? I am quite pleased with how this worked out and consider it an excellent example of wiki-collaboration. I've been thinking of changing my user page to include a "what I'm most proud of" section, and this certainly qualifies. -- Rick Block (talk) July 4, 2005 15:49 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply. Would you be interested in participating in a revamp of the relevant policy and guideline pages? I think you started in the right direction when you created a list of what was wrong with categories. The next step would be a list of criteria -- a set of idealized goals for the perfect categorization policy. From there, we could look to see what could be done with the current software, and what future software upgrades should handle. People are fighting all these categorization battles from the bottom up. We need to examine the problem from the top down. Most of the battles result because people have very different conceptions about what categories are for.
And yes, I was thinking of your user page for template:categoryTOC. I also think it is an excellent example of wiki=collaboration even though the discussion got heated at times. Maybe it is a good example BECAUSE it got heated. -- Samuel Wantman 6 July 2005 07:11 (UTC)
And one last thing. I'm surprised to see that YOU are not yet an admin. Would you like to be nominated? -- Samuel Wantman 6 July 2005 07:24 (UTC)
I would be interested in participating in a revamp of the category related policy and guideline pages. On the other hand, every policy change effort I've seen has turned into an exercise in herding cats. I sincerely doubt this one, in particular, can ever go anywhere since policy change requires consensus and, as you've noticed, people have very different conceptions about what categories are for. Perhaps an approach would be for a small group of folks to go off and work on a proposal not to be put up for general comment until it's in nearly final form. I think WP:SFD was done this way. The first step in this approach would be to find out who's interested in being part of the small group (and, if it's more than about 5, I suspect even this wouldn't work).
Admin nomination. Well, yes I've been waiting for someone to notice. Unfortunately, I suspect some things I've done lately may have ruffled some feathers (notably user:Rick Block/WP600 not admins and Wikipedia:List of administrators#Semi-active, which both relate to Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship/Archive_26#automatic_nominations and the not too distant WP:VPT exchange involving Rich Wannen) so I sort of think now might not be the best time - RFA being another consensus process (80% support required, so it doesn't take very many "no" votes to keep someone from passing). I AM sort of curious how it would go, and I'm certainly grown up enough to take it, so if you'd like to in light of my recent rabble rousing please go ahead. -- Rick Block (talk) July 7, 2005 00:29 (UTC)
I've been thinking along the same lines, about 5 people. If the 5 start out with somewhat different views on categories, and they can reach consensus, it probably has a chance of flying. I think you and I hold similar views on categories, were probably more in the user satisfaction camp than the classification camp. Perhaps someone like Radiant would be a good choice. I mention him because he usually wants to delete categories that I want to keep, and he seems to have his reasons. Should this be by invitation? Should we be secretive about this? (Should I be e-mailing you?)
I don't know if I'd call the WP600 rabble rousing. The discussion seems relatively tame. I certainly don't think anyone can blame you for what happened with Rich. You just happened to be his last straw. I tried helping him and all I got was grief. You were much more diplomatic with him than I was and it still didn't help. So I'll give you one last chance to stop me before I nominate you. -- Samuel Wantman 7 July 2005 09:03 (UTC)
By invitation? Ummmm, I'm not sure. The problem is restricting it by invitation seems kind of un-wiki to me, but I think it's likely an open appeal to find who's interested would end up with more than 5 participants. We could draft something ourselves, then selectively invite comments, then open it up for general comments. Another completely different approach would be to do it as part of Wikipedia:WikiProject_Categories. This actually feels right to me. And, in case it's not obvious, no, I don't think we should be secretive about this.
WP600 has definitely raised at least some eyebrows and, combined with adding the semi-active section to WP:LA I suspect pretty much every admin knows I exist. I wasn't thinking anyone would blame me for what happened to Rich, more that I was directly critical of how he got treated by some admins. I think the fact that no admin has offered to nominate me (you're not one, right?) is getting a little conspicuous. I'll be out of town on business the latter half of next week and not very available the next week, so if you decide you're going to do this please wait until about the 25th. I am interested, and thanks for the offer. -- Rick Block (talk) July 7, 2005 15:03 (UTC)

[edit] Request

Hi Rick. If you have some time, would you mind reading this RfC? Thanks, Redux 5 July 2005 02:28 (UTC)

OK. How can I help? -- Rick Block (talk) July 5, 2005 05:45 (UTC)
Thanks. First, do you agree that this user presents a serious attitude problem? If so, I'm in need of a third party to approach him. I'm afraid I'm no longer completely impartial to address him, and, more importantly, my opinion would mean absolutely nothing to him (nor does anyone else's, that being the whole problem...). As Antares911, Martg76 and Mowens35 all can confirm, this anon entices verbal abuse, insults people's intelligence, and when confronted (meaning, people don't bow out and let him have his way), he starts making reversed accusations, that is, claiming that others are attacking him and trying to keep him from contributing. If you mention my name to him, that'll be his very first argument. And now, to top it all out, he posted, on this talk page, a comment that I had made on a completely different talk page, about yet another page. Except he didn't quote me, made no reference that this was his posting, he copied and pasted my comment, with my signature, to the talk page, only a very attentive reader would realize that it was not I who posted, for only the history page would reveal that (you may also notice his constant verbal abuse there).
I thought I'd request your assistance because I'm aware of your diplomatic skills. In this case, I was already starting to loose my patience, so I decided to get out, even let him get his way in the article that was at the origin of this biff, but he doesn't know when to stop. In fact, I antecipate this may not work, and if so, by what you have seen in the RfC subpage, do you believe that there are grounds for a temporary block? And could you tell me the appropriate forum to post one such request? Unless you do it yourself, but still it would be good for me to know. Any help you can spare would be more than welcome. Thanks again, Redux 5 July 2005 08:02 (UTC)
Disclaimer: I appreciate the compliment, but I have no official role (I'm not an arbcom member, or a mediator, or an advocate, or even an admin). I'm more than happy to try to help, but it's strictly user to user advice (and I've been around long enough to know where to go for official help as well).
My first suggestion would be to focus on specific instances regarding specific articles (which you've done in your RFC write-up). I think you're actually more concerned about this user's behavior rather than attitude, so my second suggestion is to be careful to use the right words when discussing this issue (with me or anyone else). From what I've seen so far, impersonating you on a talk page (I assume you actually mean this edit) sounds like the most serious offense. My third suggestion is to try talking with this user directly on their talk page about the general issue, without introducing any personal attacks (and you could generously apologize for previous comments you've made, like this one). One way to approach this would be to use wording like "We seem not to be getting along, I'd like to try to resolve this ...". If you do this, it's generally helpful to find something that you agree on or appreciate or even didn't know that the other user contributed. I assume you've seen it already, but you might want to reread wikipedia:resolving disputes and the other pages it refers to. Sanctions against users (such as temporary blocks) are the final, last, step in the dispute resolution process (arbitration committee). You shouldn't even be thinking about arbcom until you've seriously tried other alternatives. Perhaps mediation might be an appropriate next step (note that this requires both sides to agree to it).
Please let me know how you'd like to proceed. I'm not sure what more I can offer, but if you'd like to bounce any ideas off me or want any further advice please feel free. -- Rick Block (talk) July 5, 2005 14:49 (UTC)
Thank you for your advice. Actually, this and some other past troublemakers have had me read up a lot about dispute resolution. I've been reading some RfCs that, unlike mine (so far), have received some attention, and it's uncanny the amount of work and time that people put in writing their "defenses" and "accusations" (for the lack of a better word). It may not be the nicest thing to say, but I did not join Wikipedia, nor do I have the time, to spend hours dedicating myself to such endeavors. So in my book, even the early steps in conflict resolution are a last resort. This doesn't mean I'm up for revert wars and exchanging insults and accusations with people, on the contrary. I absolutely don't mind discussing topics in talk pages, in fact I'm always up for it, and if any problem arises, which I always try to avoid, I try to resolve it locally or by requesting that a peer read the discussion and back one of the sides. When this user started his attacks, to myself and others, I politely requested that he discontinue. This was bluntly ignored, so I did reciprocate, to a certain extent, but I never threw the first rock, and never allowed it to degenerate completely into an all out insult exchange. I did this by always going back to the theme that was ultimately behind the problem. And I did contact him on the general IP talk page, about the issue of creating redirects to nonexistent pages, and also poletely suggested the basic reading for getting around Wikipedia (there were no direct hostilities then). He never bothered to look at that, but then again, in the RfC page, Antares911 has just indicated that this could be a registered user he knows using the IP address as an alias (to circumvent a block or ban maybe?). I appreciate your suggestion, but I feel I should not apologize for not letting him walk all over me. I have decided, however, to step out for a while. I was going to work on a series of biographic articles about the Brazilian Imperial Family, and have decided to postpone this simply to avoid immediate confrontations with this anon. I was and am letting it go. As I said, if he knew when to stop the latest issues would not even have taken place. The anon has been online since I removed his impersonation post from the page, and even worked on that very page, and has not posted any of his comments, so if he moves on, I will let this die. I would only press for an Arbcom decision if the anon continues to bother me, or if he continues to post slanderous remarks in other talk pages that I know of. Philosofically, this is not ideal, since this guy will continue to roam the website, causing trouble with who-knows-how-many other users (as he already has: five, including myself, that I know of). If possible, however, I'll just wait and see. He keeps it up and he will eventually get himself blocked or even banned. Thanks, Redux 5 July 2005 23:38 (UTC)
This sounds like a reasonable plan. Persistent bad behavior will ultimately be punished. I'm not exactly sure what happens to RFCs, but I don't think it will be ignored (although it might, since you didn't apparently use the template - in fact, you might want to reformat it in accordance with the template). Since you've taken it this far already, you should probably pay attention to what happens with the RFC. -- Rick Block (talk) July 6, 2005 00:06 (UTC)

[edit] The image help

Hey Rick. I just wanted to say thanks again personally for the kind help. Not sure if I figured it out yet, but in any case, it stopped happening. So thanks for taking the time to help. With any luck I'll have that list up to featured status soon! --Dmcdevit 5 July 2005 05:34 (UTC)

[edit] list of non-admins with many edits

You may also wish to see Wikipedia:Another list of Wikipedians in order of arrival. There is a query that can update the list that has not been run for a long time.

I went through the list about six months ago and nominated every Wikipedian who was (a) active, (b) had lots of edits, (c) had been editing for at least a year, (d) not already an admin, (e) interested in adminship, and (f) not under some sort of raincloud.

The Uninvited Co., Inc. 5 July 2005 15:59 (UTC)

Thanks. I have seen this (it was brought up in the discussion at wikipedia talk:List of administrators). Do you have the query, can you update the list? I actually prefer it, since it indicates length of activity (in addition to quantity). I have polled everyone on my list for interest, and quite a few have indicated interest. I haven't decided if I'll start blindly nominating these folks (since I don't actually know them - and I think nominating someone currently implies some level of familiarity). Several have been recently nominated by others, which I suspect is actually a better route. -- Rick Block (talk) July 5, 2005 16:12 (UTC)
The query and the required formatting pieces are linked from the page. It does require the "old" table, which, now at 20 GB, is too much for me to download over the T1 at work. It would be over an hour even with a T3. Perhaps you could find someone who might be willing to run it on one of the database servers. Failing that if someone sent me a tape or a set of DVDs I would load it here and run the query. Before you nominate people you don't know, you may wish to review their contributions and flip through a "what links here" from their user page to get an idea of their pattern of participation. A couple people on your list who have indicated a willingness to accept are pariahs, at least in the minds of some of us. I do support your efforts in general, as there are people who are overlooked, but it is a process that requires care and I have found than there are fewer good candidates than I originally expected. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 5 July 2005 19:12 (UTC)

[edit] duplicated content

You wrote on my talk page: Hi - For some time I've been trying to help chase down how articles end up getting duplicated, as happened recently by this edit of yours. Do you remember exactly what happened? I think there's generally an edit conflict window involved, but if you could remember exactly what you did afterwards (perhaps copy, paste, back button, etc.) it would be very helpful. Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) July 5, 2005 18:02 (UTC)

I have several times, including I think that edit, made an edit and gotten a "no response from the wikiserver" message. After that I usually click "back", and find my changes still on the screen, when i usually click save again (after copying my text to a local file in case of loss). Sometime i then get an edit conflict, at least once apparently with myself. When I do i make sure that my edits are properly included in the upper edit box, and click save again. i admit that i havn't been checking if the upper box includes a double copy of the page or section. Most of the time this has happened has been on section edits, but than by far the most part of my edits are section edits.DES 5 July 2005 18:27 (UTC)

[edit] Re:Lots of edits, not an admin

I note you've just added the standard "please check the list" iem to Alkivar's talk page. it may be worth checking the admin-related lists before you auomatically put messages on talk pages (in this case, Alkivar's adminship nomination was rejected by vote about three days ago!) Grutness...wha? 7 July 2005 04:44 (UTC)

Replied here. -- Rick Block (talk) July 7, 2005 15:11 (UTC)
I'm sorry I caused you offence. I had wrongly assumed, since the messages all had identical titles that they would be identical. I still think it wasn't the best timing, but I apologise for thinking that you had stuffed up. Grutness...wha? 7 July 2005 23:36 (UTC)
Apology accepted here. -- Rick Block (talk) July 8, 2005 02:34 (UTC)

[edit] wanker001 not blocked?

Any particular reason you didn't block the wander dude? Just curious. -- Rick Block (talk) July 8, 2005 02:16 (UTC)

None at all. I just didn't feel like using the block function this time; I expected, it being reported on WP:AN/I, someone else would block him way before I could type "special:blockip". Looks like I was wrong; I blocked him for 24 hours now. --cesarb 8 July 2005 02:28 (UTC)

[edit] WP:VPT re. USD

Thanks - thought I did that and it didnt work. It did, of course. SV|t 8 July 2005 06:22 (UTC)

[edit] Re: elevations, etc.

Hi - I asked this before and as far as I can tell you archived it without answering. Can you please respond (even if you simply don't remember)?. Traipsing through the ancient history, it looks like you were around at the time and involved in this work. Do you have any idea where the values in the US state articles for width, length, and mean elevation came from (originally)? There's a suggestion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_U.S._states to include both metric and English measurements (since the states are in the US, at least some folks are objecting to metric-only). Both are included for Kansas and Missouri, and I'm willing to change the infobox template (and the articles) to explicitly include both. I've looked a bit, but can't seem to find USGS or anything I'd call authoritative sources for width, length, and mean elevation. Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) July 8, 2005 14:41 (UTC)

I had nothing to do with U.S. states (believe it or not!), so I don't know where the elevation information came from. I'd recommend looking at the page history, seeing who added the information and asking them where they got it from. If you find out, add it to a "References" section. I would have guessed the USGS, but apparently not. I have some data on my computer for elevations and such for a variety of places, but so far have not found a way to match it with the U.S. Census bureau's data (city names don't always match or refer to the exact same place). Sorry I couldn't be more helpful. — Ram-Man (comment) (talk) July 8, 2005 15:33 (UTC)

[edit] Geographic data

I posted a possible source for your query about geographical statistics about the states here: Wikipedia:Reference_desk#US_State_widths.2C_lengths.2C_and_mean_elevations. PedanticallySpeaking July 8, 2005 19:47 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't have either. The USGS one I remember reading when I was in college but I don't have access to that library any more, alas. If your library doesn't have them, they ought to be able to request them through Interlibrary loan. PedanticallySpeaking 14:11, July 12, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Uncle G

I've read his explanation, and to be honest I'm not wholly satisfied; how long would it have taken him to say "I accept"? After all, he still hasn't answered the questions. Moreover, he nowhere says that he accepts the nomination (hence my question in the "comments" section). The most that I'm likely to do, though, is go back to neutral; he's an odd mixture — often a decent editor, but when he's in "moderating" mode he often does more harm than good, with a knack for rubbing already irritated participants up the wrong way. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 9 July 2005 17:20 (UTC)

Seems like you missed the I therefore accept in the second paragraph. I've responded to your comment at WP:RFA as well. -- Rick Block (talk) July 9, 2005 18:00 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know! My vote is still neutral pending the answering of the questions; I will change it once the questions are answered. Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk 9 July 2005 17:25 (UTC)

[edit] Admin list

Hi, and thanks for adding me to the list. Unfortunately, I don't have much time for Wikipedia now and couldn't devote it to admin duties, but when I do, I will return the * :) Nikola 17:33, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] reply on help desk

Hi - I just wanted to make sure you see my latest response on the help desk about finding when an article went FA. I really didn't mean my question as a snarky comment, and I'm sorry I phrased it in a way that it COULD be taken that way. I actually spend a lot of time responding to questions at the help desk and other forums here partly because some of the other folks who respond are snarky (and mean it), and I think it's completely inappropriate.
Thank you for your kind concern. My response to you was sarcastic and I shouldn't have. Sorry about that. Anyway, it was proposed by Elfguy that the discussion be moved to WP:VP. I don't quite know how to do that soooo.... if you agree, could you help by moving the discussion there? I have made this same request to Elfguy at WP:HD. hydnjo talk 18:57, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] NekoDaemon and other bots

NekoDaemon is scheduled to create a new page exactly one hour before 0:00 UTC, just like VFD Bot. Then it is scheduled to run again at exactly 5-10 minutes before 0:00 UTC to add the pages. Then it updates and closes out the old pages 10 minutes after 0:00 UTC. However, the thing is that when you add a new entry to the page, the system goes by UTC since everything on the Wikipedia is run accordingly to UTC. It doesn't matter if part of the world is already a day ahead, the autolinker for the date runs by Wikipedia time, not by one's local time. --AllyUnion (talk) 06:54, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Replied here. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:37, July 13, 2005 (UTC)
Please follow my comment made on my user page. --AllyUnion (talk) 06:46, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Tv characters in wheelchairs

Thanks very much for your reply to my query at WP:RD. I am grateful. PedanticallySpeaking 17:15, July 13, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Celebrating

Hi! I've just crossed a symbolic milestone. Three thousand edits! I feel like celebrating. Have a cigar! Don't worry, I don't smoke them either, but it's all good :)! Cheers, Redux 14:53, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] SQL Queries

Thought you might like to know, there's a new place you can run SQL queries on database dumps: see the lovely WikiSign site set up by Benutzer:Filzstift!! It has an English dump from June 23. — Catherine\talk 20:36, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Edit count table

Hi, thanks for the offer of help! I've almost got the revised version (the one that feeds off the raw database) running; just have to finish the timestamp parsing, and then keep two sets of totals, not just one. One question: since you're doing a bunch of sorting anyway, how much extra work would it be for you if I produced a file with just:

  • Main namespace edits
  • Number of main namespace edits in the last thirty days
  • Non-main namespace edits
  • Number of non-mainspace edits in the last thirty days
  • User name

and dropped the:

  • This week's ranking
  • Last week's ranking

which I could produce, but would be a post-processing step. (I.e. I'm not up for adding a sorting stage to my program; if I had to do it, I'd probably spit out a file, use Unix sort to sort it, and then grovel further over the results.) Plus to which, I'm not sure about this "week" business - it would be easier to make it "month", and then I only have to keep two sets of totals, not three. (Although given the code for two, it's mostly a matter of copy/paste/slight-mod to get three.)

Whatever works easiest overall I can do, though; if you really need the rankings I can do that. Noel (talk) 19:09, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

The fact that it's a shell script shouldn't be an issue, because the output file isn't that big. Also, I have a knob on the database filter to ignore users with less than N edits (N being a command line argument), so you can set N to say 100 (which will still definitely get the top 1000) and make the list a lot shorter. I think keeping the positional delta would be good - you can see if you went up or down, or whatever.
As to the month/week issue I was yapping about above, it struck me that the answer is another command line argument, which can either i) ignore entries more than N days old, or ii) set the "recent edit boundary". I'm not sure which would be simpler for you to deal with - would you rather have, say, three separate lists (total, within last week, within last month), or what? I suggest doing it that way because you'd then have several separate files that you could trivially sort, and then merge the info. Right now it's still set up to print out "total" and "in the last N days", but it would be trivial to change that.
Anyway, let me know what would be best for you, and what format would be easiest for you to deal with - the program is working pretty well now (it eats a 375MB slice of the database dump in 8 seconds, so it should do the whole thing pretty quickly), and I think I have all the bugs out of it, so I can tweak it to do whatever's best for you. Noel (talk) 23:58, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

OK, so here's some recent output:

en,0,0,1,0,0,0,Tbc
en,55,0,2,0,0,0,Maveric149
en,3,0,1,0,0,0,Stephen Gilbert
en,54,0,3,0,0,0,Koyaanis Qatsi
en,3,0,1,0,0,0,RoseParks
en,24,0,1,0,0,0,Andre Engels
en,24,0,1,0,0,0,JimboWales
en,11,1,1,0,0,0,Liftarn
en,42,0,1,0,0,0,Ams80
en,33,1,1,0,0,0,Ahoerstemeier
en,22,0,3,0,0,0,CatherineMunro
en,4,0,1,0,0,0,TUF-KAT
en,17,0,2,0,0,0,Angela
en,1,0,1,0,0,0,Efghij
en,1,0,2,0,0,0,Aravindet
en,3,0,2,0,0,0,Frihet
en,9,0,1,0,0,0,RedWolf
en,4,0,1,0,0,0,Dehumanizer
en,7,0,1,0,0,0,Marcika
en,9,0,1,0,0,0,Anville
en,8,0,2,0,0,0,Quadell
en,37,3,3,1,0,0,Mustafaa
en,0,0,1,0,0,0,MDMullins
en,2,0,2,1,0,0,D prime
en,0,0,2,0,0,0,LinkBot
en,4,0,2,0,0,0,Philomax 2

which as you can see looks just like the old StatisticsUsers.csv, except that the last two columns are zero. The program has a zillion flags on it to control what it collects and what gets prints, but I've set if up so that it none are specified, it spits out the old StatisticsUsers.csv data (i.e. main total, main last 30 days, non-main total, non-main last 30), as above. The numbers are small because I'm working with a small piece of the database, "only" 375MB.

As far as the bot stuff goes, I'm not sure if the database dump has that info. It does have a bunch of entries I'm not yet processing for anon adits which were later assigned to a user, but those are no help. (I.e. you see records like <contributor><ip>Conversion script</ip></contributor> which are not different in syntax from records like <contributor><ip>StefanAtev</ip></contributor> which seems to be an anon edit that was later assigned to a user.) Fixing the code to count them is one of the last things I have to do to it (not tonight, maybe tomorrow).

Your suggestion of "new" for new entries sounds fine.

My plan is to finish the last few tweaks (counting assigned edits, plus I need to read the explicit namespace list from the database, instead of trying to intuit it from article names - which doesn't work sometimes), and then find a database dump I can run it over. Noel (talk) 03:01, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Well, I can't get shell access to a Wikimedia machine (grr), but I have discovered what was causing things not to work when using the output of a pipe, so now I can just use the copy at download.wikimedia.org; downloading a copy of the database less the <text> entries now. See Wikipedia talk:List of Wikipedians by number of edits. Noel (talk) 08:09, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Monty Hall problem

Excellent rv. I just don't know where the illogical argument is coming from. Is it a joke on reason or do they really believe their POV. Jeesh - It makes me wonder! hydnjo talk 02:52, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Monty Hall problem

Hi. It doesn't matter if there are one trillion doors, cards, or whatever. Let me pick one. You show me all the other goats until there are two doors left. I'll have one-trillionth chance of winning the car if I stick with my first choice. I'll have 50% chance of winning if I switch. — Fingers-of-Pyrex 02:53, July 24, 2005 (UTC)

Just hold fast until there is only one alternative door presented to you. You see, the "know-it-all" host doesn't just reveal any door, he always reveals a losing door (otherwise what's the point). Choose the final one he presents and you will be rewarded. Trust me on this. hydnjo talk 03:08, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
OK, I made a mistake here. I concede your point if the host reveals 50 cards. Now, answer me this. I shuffle, and deal one to you. I turn over one card that isn't the ace of spades. What should you do? Switch, or not? What are your odds of having the ace of spades if you stand pat? I say they're 1/52. What are your odds of picking the ace of spades if you switch? I say they're 1/51. What do you think about this scenario? — Fingers-of-Pyrex 04:01, July 24, 2005 (UTC)
Rick, at some point the best strategy is to just quit. "Never argue with someone (Fingers-of-Pyrex for example) who knows that he's right" comes into play here. Any arbitrary number of us could provide any arbitrary number of logical arguments and they would all unfortunately fall on deaf ears. I say, let them go on their merry way as in "Alice in Wonderland" and they will think that their position has prevailed. I could pull out many more analogies but these folks aren't worth the keystrokes. Respectfully, hydnjo talk 19:52, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
I'm choosing to assume good faith, and I think we're having a reasonable conversation not an argument. I appreciate the advice, but at this point I'm still hoping I can help him/her understand. -- Rick Block (talk) 20:14, July 24, 2005 (UTC)

Hello Rick. I am here once again to state my view on the question. It is 50/50, I think. Lets start with the three doors. Now...one door,1, has the goat and is choosen by contestant. Monty opens the other one,which leaves only one door. Monty skips the door you choose, admitedly, but he(or she) also skips over another door, either a car or goat.There are two solutions from here.

One: Players Chooses Goat 1: Switching Will Win Two: Players Chooses Car: Switching Will Lose.

No matter it the players chooses goat one or goat two, it is the same scenario. O=Opened C=Choosen U=Unknown

Goat 1:C Door 2: O Door 3: Car Goat 1:U Goat 2: O Door 3: U Those are the only two problems. You can't use the goats twice in a row. The player will always end up with two doors. One will be the right one and one the wrong one. Please make a diagram proving me wrong.

Hi - It sounds like the fact that the two losing doors both have goats is confusing you. How about if one is a goat and one is completely empty and one has the car (and the host must open the goat or the empty door after you choose)? In this case, the three different possibilities are:
One: player chooses goat (host opens empty door), switching wins
Two: player chooses empty door (host opens goat), switching wins
Three: player chooses car, whatever host opens, switching loses
Yes, the player ends up with two doors, but the two goats are as different as a goat and an empty door and these two cases must be treated separately. Does this help? -- Rick Block (talk) 00:49, July 26, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] One More Time (Copied from Talk:Monty Hall problem)

Ok, so stupid me, but I have to do this. Lets take this down to such a basic level that even I understand.

  • Three doors and I pick one of them.
  • Monty, by the rules, gets the other two doors.
  • Forget this step as Monty will always reveal a goat door whether he has one or two goats thus this step makes no difference. In "magic" performance this would be called misdirection as it has nothing to do with the outcome but it will distract you. The hidden rule is that Monty will never open a car door (this is what throws some folks off the trail) - Monty doesn't make a random selection; he knows what is behind every door after all so why bother with this step at all.
  • So now, would you trade your one door selection for Monty's two door leftovers or not (remembering that he hasn't even gone to the trouble of opening a (for sure) goat door).
  • n.b.: My youngish grandchildren all elected to switch.

Respectfully, hydnjo talk 21:18, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Lots of edits, not an admin

Hey Rick Block, thanks for asking, but no I'm not active in editing articles these days, and barring some burst of sanity here I will never be an admin. I've done too much warding off of vandals and POV pushers and gained enough enemies to sink any nomination, especially adding in their self-righteous apologists who have no clue about the subject or even the project but proclaim from on high that I should compromise with nutballs. VeryVerily 15:34, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Being one of them who VV might suspect contributing to sinking *his* nomination, I do basically agree with his reasoning above. Unless the wiki-software is changed to make wikipedia a less rewarding experience for generic FHs I will not likely contribute more than exceptionally — and even less likely spend the energy I myself would expect from administrators.
Thanks anyway!
Kind regards!
--Ruhrjung 14:21, September 4, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re: still on my list

Now that's a pretty interesting list. You can keep the "*" next to my nick, by the way.

Also, could you please sign your message on my talk page? Denelson83 14:23, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Thank you. :-) Denelson83 14:29, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Your help desk reply

Hey Rick, just wanted to stop by to say thanks for the thorough reply to my question over at the help desk. I took your advice and wikified the article. I'm pretty happy with it and ready to keep going! :-) Thanks again, Mrtea 02:11, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] John Fader

Hi - I saw your note on user:John Fader's talk page. He hasn't made any edits since May 21, so is either on an extended wikibreak or has simply gone missing. His account has email turned off, so I'm not sure there's a reasonable way to tell which of these is going on. Just thought I'd let you know you might not be getting a response soon (or perhaps ever :( ). -- Rick Block (talk) 22:51, July 27, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. It was mostly a courtesy note, but even if John doesn't happen to see the note before Sunday, I'm sure he would like to know his pic was featured. -- Solipsist 23:05, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Flabot

OOps, no — I just looked at the User page, saw that it was a bot, and added the designation. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 14:52, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Flabot

OOps, no — I just looked at the User page, saw that it was a bot, and added the designation. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 14:53, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Replied here. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:18, July 30, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] rv summary on CFD page

Hi - No big deal, but I'm user:Rick Block, not user:Steve block (no relation as far as I know). -- Rick Block (talk) 01:26, July 29, 2005 (UTC)

  • Oh, I dearly appologize, I was in a hurry and looking at all the history, I just remembered "Block", I don't have the rollback :( . Thanks for the note and understanding. ∞Who?¿? 01:29, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Have you seen this?

Hi Rick, FYI, Have you seen this? It look like Rich Wannen may have returned. -- Samuel Wantman 20:31, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] open offer to help Rich Wannen

If you're Rich Wannen, can you please leave me a note on my talk page? I'm still willing to try to help, in the sense of being an advocate as described at Wikipedia:Association of Members' Advocates. I understand your recent activities have been, let's say, not well received by some admins. I fear you are proceeding on a path that may well lead to you being banned from editing wikipedia. I was saddened to see you driven away from wikipedia after your first attempts. I was more saddened to see you go the second time. If you end up banned I will be even further saddened. If you do not trust me and would rather work with someone else (perhaps any official advocate on the list at the page mentioned above), I will completely understand. Thanks. And please leave me a message. -- Rick Block (talk) 21:35, July 29, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] link to anchor on help page

Don't worry, it happens to the best of us - and the joy of a wiki is that anyone can help. Thryduulf 19:28, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] duplicate content in articles

Thanks for the interesting problem. See Wikipedia:Bot_requests#Duplicate_content_in_articles and Wikipedia:Duplicated sections. -- Beland 06:25, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] film category cfds

Hi - One way to read your notes at Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion/Log/2005_July_28 (and I know you don't actually mean them this way) is that the anon votes are sockpuppets of Kbdank71. Since this anon (whoever it is) didn't actually add the entries to CFD, I don't think it's inappropriate for him/her to vote. And, if his/her ISP dynamically allocates IP addresses and the user want to remain anonymous, how would you expect him/her to vote? Calling these "sockpuppet" votes seems a little overly confrontational. Would you consider changing your note to be a little less insulting (assuming good faith)? Perhaps something like "user assumed to be the same as the user who originally added the cfd tag"? IMO, accusing someone of being a sockpuppet is assuming some level of malicious intent, which I think is perhaps not warranted in this case. BTW - in case you have any doubt, I assure you I am not the anon in question. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:26, August 2, 2005 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for your message. Actually, I had assumed good faith. I will change the notes on the ones that Kbdank71 "added" but the anon tagged. The only reason I used the term "sockpuppet", is because if you actually read his votes, he insinuates that he is not the same person, yet they are all the exact same edits by each IP, along with the post on Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts stating he was not the same person. I have tried to assume good faith, but he continued to remove Cfd tags, have categories requested to be speedied. The only way I fealt the discussion could be fair, is if all were aware of the activities of the anon, although I'm sure most people realized it was the same. Have a look at the log I created, if you haven't already User:Who/Discussion log/RW. I am not on a personal vendetta, I was in agreement with the anon about changing some of the cat's, but then it became ridiculous and we had to clean up all the bad-faith stuff that was done. I will go change the way the comments read now. Thanks again. ∞Who?¿? 03:34, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Hi, sorry to bother you again. I wanted to be clear why I chose that term. Although I understand that ISP's use dynamic IPs (system admin of 15 years), this particular user has made it well known that he chooses not to login. That is all well and good, I have no problem with that. The problem is, he uses the dynamic IPs to his advantage to attempt surpass the rules by trying to pose as other "users". This, in my view is sockpuppetry. I did as much reading on this as I could find, before I used the term on the Cfd pages. I also understand your point about being able to vote on a Cfd, since Kdbank71 technically added them to the Cfd page. The thing is, this user has just been ignored after all the previous events, and I'm asked to just ignore everything done by them now (not by you), as they will probably just go away. Evidentally, since he had a category speedied a few days after the Cfd close, he wasn't being bothered and still took it upon himself to have it removed. My actions may seem rash, but I just don't see how or why we can all just sit back and let a user who knows the system do what they please. I wish nothing more than to just be done with this situation, as I am not a controfontational person, and try to solve things by discussing them. Thanks again for your input. ∞Who?¿? 04:12, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Fixed. I still try to keep an open mind, and have seen some good contributions by this user. I just hope someone can have a good discussion with them in the future. Thanks again. ∞Who?¿? 04:27, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Duplication

Thanks for pointing it out to me. I would have never have noticed because im always at wikinews and not here. CGorman 09:06, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks for your admin suggestion, but here is the reason why I left Wikipedia:

I (MPLX) left Wikipedia some months ago after running into the onslaught of the ill-informed Christian right wing. Although I am not monitoring Wikipedia and do not have any intention of rejoining Wikipedia due to the small cabal of noisy and ill-informed (as opposed to uninformed) people who love deleting stuff, I have been pressed to add this comment due to the sudden interest in deleting a few of the articles that I contributed to. (I have written about many topics.)
It would appear that someone has it their head to sever any ties between John Lilburne and the foundation of American law. This led to a constant barrage of negative comments on the Hugo Black article. Now I see that the idea is to claim that "Carolana" is a misspelling of "Carolina" and to go further and claim that the article about Carolana is a hoax. To this end both Dr. Kenneth Brown of the University of Houston and Dr. Eric Gilder of the University of Sibiu have also been smeared as being not noteworthy and at worst as the creators of vanity and even hoax articles. Such rants by the few lunatics who have gained a noisy control over Wikipedia are one reason why I left Wikipedia and why Wikipedia is in danger of becoming the refuge of a right-wing idiots.
It would seem that a handful of people are trolling with the intent to delete anything that they may disagree with. I noticed the same approach was used on the subject of copyright law within articles dealing with the subject of recorded music and broadcasting which I also contributed to. Now I see that all broadcasts by 4FWS have been tagged as not worthy because they were on "pirate" radio stations - even though several were on licensed stations. However, everything is being smeared and tarnished to make it appear that everything and anything that I contributed to was either a hoax, a work of vanity or unnoteworthy. I also created the history of the development of the jet fighter, but I have not as yet (and probably won't bother) checked to see if those entries are also being targeted.
It is unfortunate to say the least because I thought that Wikipedia had merit, but when I discovered that a mere handful of dedicated zealots could take it over and put their own stamp of ideological approval on it - I left.
Before making more claims that Carolana never existed I would suggest that you perform a little serious research. Unfortunately the zealots have decided that they are a jack of all subjects (and master of none), and because they have never heard something before it means that the subject is either a hoax or a vanity creation by someone else. How pathetic for Wikipedia!

66.90.213.45 00:23, 3 August 2005 (UTC) (the former MPLX)

[edit] Admin list

Hey Rick, I noticed that the name Rick Block has an * by it on "the list" and I thought I'd ask: Do you think, perhaps, maybe, hypothetically, you might be interested in being an admin? If perhaps, maybe, hypothetically, you might, I might, perhaps, maybe, hypothetically nominate you. -- Essjay · Talk 02:42, August 4, 2005 (UTC)

Let me know when you get back; if you need a nominator, and I'll be happy to do it. -- Essjay · Talk 03:43, August 4, 2005 (UTC)

I'm not too worried. I've seen you around, and I've seen good work. I think the community will respect that. -- Essjay · Talk 03:57, August 4, 2005 (UTC)


[edit] From RK

You recently wrote me: "I understand you're currently under arbcom restrictions, but if you are ever in a position where you're interested in becoming an admin (even now), can you please add an '*' immediately before your name in this list? I've suggested folks nominating someone might want to puruse this list, although there is certainly no guarantee anyone will ever look at it. I've marked you on this list as "restricted". Feel free to update this as well."

I haven't been under any Arbcom restrictions for quite some time. In fact, I have been actively editing since February of this year. However, I took an extended Wiki-break; I really haven't been around for the last four months. I've just had too much to do in my personal and professional life. (Good news in regards to where I work, where I live, and my family, but all of this is quite time consuming.) I don't know how much time I will be able to contribute to Wikipedia; I suspect I won't have much free time for the rest of this year, so I am not interested in becoming an Admin. But your offer is much appreciated. 23:56, August 4, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Category titles

...now has a straw poll. Please give your opinion. Radiant_>|< 09:50, August 4, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Thanks for reverting the vandalism to my user page on August 3. --Viriditas | Talk 12:13, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] user with no password or email address

Hello Rick, This is FangAili who asked a question (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Help_desk#don.27t_know_password_or_email_address). Is there any way I can know the email address this name is registered to? Thanks for all your help.

[edit] Wikipedia:Category titles

Oh my. Thanks for the heads up. -- Beland 03:46, 9 August 2005 (UTC)


[edit] tregoweth

You recently nominated user:tregoweth for adminship. I had a recent encounter with them whereby an image I added to mons pubis was removed as either copyvio or "nsfw". It wasn't clear at all from the edit comment why this was done. Upon asking the user why this was done, they apologized and said that it was accidental. Having edited the user's talk page, it is on my watch list. I am continually amazed to see how many of these minor altercations the user gets in to. Would you mind saying something as an objective third party who seems to have support for the user? Thanks, Avriette 18:43, August 8, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Category titles

I believe this kind of discussion is useful, but the present one has raised a number of questions regarding procedure, and I was rather dismayed to hear that there had been a similar discussion half a year ago that none of us had been aware of. As such, it may be useful to have a centralized page (like RFC) for these things. I've set up a rough draft at Wikipedia:Standards, and would like your opinion on it. Its current wording could probably use some heavy revision (feel free to do so).

At the very least, there should be a central place for archiving and searching for these debates (the Manual of style comes to mind, but it is very unclear which parts of it have actual support and which parts were just arbitrarily put together). I personally believe that having standards is rather pointless if they're not enforceable, but that is especially an issue I'd like more opinions on. Radiant_>|< 08:07, August 9, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Nomination

I left SamuelWantman a note that we could co-nominate, and set the form up for that. You've been nominated, I'm sure Samuel will be along shortly to add his name, so go accept! -- Essjay · Talk 19:14, August 14, 2005 (UTC)

Also, I tagged your pages with a nomination notice. If you don't like it, feel free to remove it. -- Essjay · Talk 19:25, August 14, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Archivers ... very divergent.

Um, I never saw the code to yours until now. We do two totally divergent operations, heh.

I decided right off that parsing the wiki code would be significantly easier than parsing HTML, as the syntax seemed fairly unified. I also decided to use C++, using my fairly proprietary C++ regex library (which is *far* easier to program with than the other C++ regex libraries (such as Boost's)).

My script receives the concatenated wikitext of the entire month's contents, and outputs two text files: Month_Year_a.txt (alphabetical) Month_Year_d.txt (by date).

The times are fairly amazing. Parsing 4325 lines (598 KB) of the June 2005 backlog is very fast (1800MHz AthlonXP):

 $ time ./wiki-CfD 
 real    0m0.018s

I just can't see bash/awk comparing, because I know how slow for each | sed is, and I presume that awk and sed have similiar engines (as they're both GNU shell scripts).

The thing I was most interested in were your regular expressions. Upon initial examination it apears that mine would probably handle more possible combinations than yours; esp. after the regex expressions have been peer reviewed by those more adept than myself.

A snippet of my code (along with the regexen) follows:

  std::map<std::string, Pattern *> patterns;
  patterns["date"] = Pattern::compile("===\\s*([A-Z][a-z]+ [0-9]*)\\s*===");
  patterns["category"] = Pattern::compile("====\\s*(\\[\\[:)*(.*?)\\s*====");
  patterns["decision"] = Pattern::compile("Cfd top\\}\\} '''(.+)'''");

— HopeSeekr of xMule (Talk) 02:34, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm not too surprised you haven't seen the script since I only wrote it about 3 weeks ago. How do you retrieve the wikitext? Aside from fetching the html (one article at a time), the shell/awk version takes no noticeable time (although it is almost certainly slower than using compiled regexs). Even though fetching the html takes some time, I don't think it's a big deal since it is fully automated (tell the script what month to do, go have a cup of coffee and the index file pops out). If there's some clever way you're fetching the wikitext, how about if we modify the script version to take wikitext as input and keep it a script (rather than a compiled program, so anyone can pick it up and run it and even modify it later)? I'm pretty sure if the wikitext can be fetched, the compiled regexs and the awk expressions can be made equivalent. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:56, August 16, 2005 (UTC)
Y=Um...1) Take the URL
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cleanup&action=edit
2) Reverse mod_rewrite it; add "action=edit"
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Cleanup&action=edit
Cheers! — HopeSeekr of xMule (Talk) 13:13, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
Just a thought, sorry for pushing my head in. The easiest way to get wikitext from a document is by calling it with action=raw. That is, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Cleanup&action=raw This is the method used for stylesheets. [[smoddy]] 22:18, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Featured article date

Thanks for the comments and the heads-up about the Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Featured_article_date thread and yes, it is still on my watchlist (I have responded there). I'm just waiting for some kind soul who knows how to mess with templates to help out with this. I would like, for example, to look at the Monty Hall problem at some time and be able to see how it has evolved since it's Main page debut but I don't have a way of knowing that date. I guess I could ask you ;-) BTW, you're racking-up quite an impressive vote tally, best wishes, hydnjo talk 18:11, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

What I find lacking is the date on which a FA was published on the Main page. For example, Australia achieved FA status on 23 June 2005 which I can determine by looking through the Talk Page history. But it's Main page publication date, 16 August 2005, doesn't seem to be documented in any way. It may be that my referring to the featured template has been a red-herring here as what I'm really wanting is to memorialize in some way, the Main page date. hydnjo talk 19:51, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps this will clarify. There is currently a debate about the Big Bang article as it is a featured article removal candidate. I'm interested reviewing the possible devolution of this article since it's appearance on the Main page but I don't know when that was and so I'm missing some perspective in the debate. So, my original suggestion (badly stated perhaps) was that when a FA goes onto the Main page, the {{Featured}} template be substituted with another template recognizing that the FA was on the Main page on this date. hydnjo talk 22:10, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
Well, Wikipedia:Today's featured article is a very nice find. A Google search as you suggested led to a Big Bang publication date of 23 February 2005, thank you. And yes, it would of course be more convenient to just have the date of publication right there on it's talk page. And yes, I do feel less frusrated knowing that the date is documented somewhere. I think I'll continue to manually note the info on each day's FA talk page to call attention to my concern. Again, thanks very much for your concern and help. hydnjo talk 23:07, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
I see we're having overlapping edits on this. I'm afraid that including the date in the existing template would result in documenting the date of FA promotion rather than Main page publication. Monty Hall for example was promoted on 7 July 2005 but not published until 23 July 2005. Some articles wait months and some don't get to the Main page at all. I believe that we need for Raul654, keeper of the Main page FA keys at this time, to concede that this information would be important for some users. If you take a look at this discussion topic on his talk page you'll find him in opposition to this effort. In fact, he wanted to delete the Wikipedia:Today's featured article page a few months ago. hydnjo talk 23:31, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
I didn't want to step in between you and Mark on his talk page and perhaps do more harm than good. I just want to be clear that the important date in my mind is not so much the date of promotion (that's when Mark adds the featured template) but rather the date of Main page publication which is how I've tagging for about a week now. That's the date when the rest of the world takes notice and the editing get hot which has resulted in the demotion of several articles. In comparison, the date that an article is promoted to Featured status goes relatively unnoticed. hydnjo talk 00:14, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
I understand what you're saying and appreciate your help. BTW, there have been 71 edits to the Australia article since it hit the Main page on 16 August 2005. This number overstates the amount of actual change in that it includes vandalism and their reverts. ;-) hydnjo talk 01:07, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
  • To illustrate using the Monty Hall problem article (which I love). It was promoted on 7 July 2005 and gathered 15 edits from then and up-to and including including those on 22 July 2005. It went Main page on 23 July 2005 and got 96 edits on that day plus 59 edits on 24 July 2005. Since then and until 17 August 2005 it has gotten 32 additional edits. Further, the talk page has been archived twice leaving behind very little of the debate essence unless you access the archives. Obviously, if you want to study the effect of Main page exposure on an article's evolution (devolution?) you need to know that date. Thanks to your research I can now establish that date (with some Google help) which is helpful. I just don't understand the reluctance to make that date readily available given the time and mighty effort that went into preparing the article for Main page publication and for that matter , promotion to Featured article status. As a point of contrast, every vandal attack, in exquisite and sometimes vulgar detail, is there for anyone to access with a keystroke. But an article's achievement milestone dates are only available for those who are willing to well... look real hard. hydnjo talk 19:04, 17 August 2005 (UTC)


Apologies for eavesdropping. As you say above, the {{featured}} template really tells you when a page was promoted to "featured article" status, and provides a link to the WP:FAC discussion. There may be some benefit in modifying {{featured}} to record the date of promotion, if only silently (although this should already be implicit from the history of the relevant talk page, when {{featured}} was added), but I'm not sure it is a good idea to modify the existing {{featured}} template to add the date of an article being a "main page" feature. Again, this is implicit in the article's history, since there will be a slew of anonymous edits on that day, but many featured articles have not yet been on the main page. However, I can see the benefit in having a note on the talk page, if only for historical reasons. One solution would be to add a new template, say {{featuredmainpage}}, which links to the relevant entry in Wikipedia:Today's featured article. -- ALoan (Talk) 11:03, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
  • No apologies necessary and welcome to the conversation. One of the incidents which led me to this proposal was the Evolution article. It was not trivial to determine that this article was promoted to Featured status on 4 February 2005 and that still didn't tell me when it hit the Main page (18 March 2005). Take a few moments right now to see what I mean ...
... OK - If you went through all of that because you had a reason to know those dates, the date of the promotion, or the date of Main page exposure, or the evolution of the article between and since those dates then you may wonder why you had to go through such a convoluted process to get those dates. Was it last month or last year? All we're trying to do is to get those dates documented in such a way as to make them brilliantly obvious, and not hidden in the obscure folds of the Page history or Archives or well .... you know what I mean. Those dates are majestically important to the hard working editors who raised the article to these pinnacles (0.1% of all articles). I just don't understand why there is any reluctance to recognize those achievements. hydnjo talk 19:34, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the response, but you are preaching to the choir! (I've just done some rather time-consuming research to find out exactly when Bob Dylan became featured - it was on WP:FARC recently, and no-one could find the original discussion on WP:FAC. As it happens, it was promoted in October 2003, well before the details of the process were standardised.) I think it would be useful to record for posterity when articles become "featured" and when they are on the main page (somewhere discreet, but without having to trawl through page histories). I like the idea of a "silent" comment to record the date of promotion in the {{featured}} template, but as I said above I think it would be best to create a new template to record the date of featuring on the main page. -- ALoan (Talk) 01:52, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps if Raul knew how many choir-members there were he might have a change of heart. I'm suggesting to Rick that perhaps moving this discussion to the village pump might bring additional supporters out of the woodwork. What do you think? hydnjo talk 03:34, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Hey Rick, (soon to be your Adminship sir), would you prefer this conversation be moved elsewhere (say, Raul's talk page!) or are you OK with it here? I only ask because what started as a helpful gesture on your part seems to have perhaps expanded beyond your expectations. Or, it could possibly be moved to the WP:VP proposal section to gather a more diverse POV. What say you, as we seem to be stepping all over your talk page. ;-) hydnjo talk 03:19, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm fine with it here. Although at some point it seems this has to turn into a request for Mark. He hasn't responded yet to my request to add the date to the featured tag. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:28, August 18, 2005 (UTC)
Passive resistance is not unusual and at times leads to conclusion. Some philosopher once said. hydnjo talk 03:44, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
Well, I am sure that User:Raul654 won't object if someone wants to go through the existing Featured articles (and Former featured articles) and add dates (say, in the form {{featured|date}}), or indeed go through the archive of Tomorrow's featured article and add a new template. Once the historical articles are tagged, the extra burden of adding dates to the new pages is not that great: {{FAC}} needs to be replaced by {{featured}} on new featured articles in any event; the only additional burden is adding an extra template to the talk page of front-page feartured articles. Even that doesn't have to be done every day: once a week, or once a month would be enough. -- ALoan (Talk) 09:19, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Adminship

Wow... I welcomed you in February 2004. You're right, I don't remember that at all. But I've seen you around since then, and would be glad to support your adminship. It's cool to see someone I welcomed become a valuable member of the community. Isomorphic 05:22, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Whoa! 59/0/0 so far. I better think-up something really bad evil that you've done so that this doesn't seem rigged, ;-) hydnjo talk 03:55, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Kutchan

Hi! On Wikipedia we follow "Revised Hepburn". Double ch goes to tch instead of cch. Therefore Kucchan -> Kutchan. WhisperToMe 05:31, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] category titles

Hi - Do your votes at Wikipedia:Category_titles mean you think it would be worthwhile to rename all the occupation by nationality categories to be in "occupation from/of country" form? There are something like 75 of these kinds of categories (probably at least 500 individual categories, I'd guess referenced from 50,000-100,000 articles), nearly all in "nationality foo" format. Just curious how strongly you object to using adjectives. I assume you've seen Wikipedia:Category_titles/Categories_by_country? I know Pearle's a bot, but I personally don't think it would be worth the time to set her up to make these changes. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:55, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

Whatever the consensus is, I'd be happy to invest the time to implement the changes. I think the benefits to navigation, credibility, and appearance make it worthwhile. -- Beland 23:00, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] More sage words

It's time to go home now and I've got an aching head,
So I give her the car keys and she helps me to bed, ... Eric Clapton, (Wonderful Tonight). hydnjo talk 04:49, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] edit counter & underscores

usernames are actually stored in the database without underscores (unlike titles) which is why underscores don't work. however i thought i'd actually fixed this so that you could use {{PAGENAME}} on a user pages... i'll have another look. —kate

okay... this should be fixed now: http://kohl.wikimedia.org/~kate/cgi-bin/count_edits?user=Jimbo_Wales&dbname=enwiki —kate

[edit] Pearle's throttle

Pearle normally operates at the maximum rate allowed by Wikipedia:Bots, which is one edit every 10 seconds. If Wikipedia responds too slowly or fails to respond, she waits 1 minute, 10 minutes, or 1 hour, depending on the severity of the problem. -- Beland 13:16, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] John Fader

Hi - Do you happen to know user:John Fader in real life? He hasn't edited since May. I think he was one of the more reasonable folks around. Just wondering what happened. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:18, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, no, I don't even remember crossing paths with him often on line. -- Jmabel | Talk 16:19, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re:Rfa

Well, maybe Boothby just forgot to vote that day ;-) Regardless, you deserve adminship by anyone's standards. Hopefully someday i'll get there too. Karmafist 17:33, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] RE: RFA

No you are not an exceptiopn to it, for the reason that their is no universal NO/nor sheep vote in my voting, my decisions only come after my evaluation of each canidate. As for amused, no i am not amused more like sickened and disapointed. --Boothy443 | comhrÚ 21:47, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Whoa! what's this. 70/0/0 even counting Boothy443. I'll have to look harder fo something evil. And not just the occasional "F" bomb. ;-) hydnjo talk 23:08, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
Never left. Please ignore everything after (04:00 UTC) as I'm probably sleep-typing. ;-) hydnjo talk 23:35, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
Ah, now I see. Superm401 probably misunderstood something I said or whatever so he said Buh-bye. Anyway, don't you feel a bit conspicuous with that middle "0" just hanging there like troll bait? ;-) hydnjo talk 00:10, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
Or perhaps the ... Go f--- yourself ... was taken out of context, and was thought to ... well .. nevermind. ;-) hydnjo talk 00:16, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Well, it still seems undisputed, even if you don't get 112. And, Coolcat's place is quite a rush, thanks for the tip, you soon to be Admin Sir. hydnjo talk 02:01, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] rfa & pearle

Hi - Thanks for the vote of confidence at rfa (and I suspect it will be your turn again fairly soon). Have you thought about getting a copy of pearle from beland and using a bot account for the uncategorizing work you do? user:whobot seems to be available. Once upon a time I did a fair amount of orphaned category parenting, which sometimes involves similar tasks so I know it can certainly be relaxing. On the other hand, you do enough of it that I'd worry about Repetitive strain injury (especially if you're using a mouse at all). I hope this comes across as friendly concern (which is how it's meant). Thanks for the rfa vote, and thanks for all the cfd (and other) work you do. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:11, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for your message. I gladly voted support for your Rfa, I've seen you do a lot of great work with users and wiki. Awhile back I was going to install a bot, I looked at a few different ones, and I was going to name it Whobot, just got buzy with other things, and I thought I already reg'd the handle. It is now though. As far is RPI, yea, I've been using a computer since the mid 80's, and learned long ago how to avoid it :), but thanks for the thought. I just have a thing with categorizing things, other than the high-edit count, which I didn't even consider when I was doing it. I like doing it w/o a bot, because I try to fix other things when I am doing a re-cat, although I make mistakes sometimes, at least I do more than what a bot would do. I am going to see if I can get a copy of pearle running, I already d/l it, just need to get it setup and ask permission. I didn't think your comments were a criticism, and appreciate the sentiment. Cheers. ∞Who?¿? 03:12, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re: category titles

Hi Rick. I don't think we have a problem, just a disagreement as you say. I seem to have, on Wikipedia at least, a tendency to consider what's gone before as largely non-binding unless it has a policy tag on it. I know that places like VfD etc set kinds-of precedents and they must sometimes be respected but generally, and particularly for structural things, I usually think it should be changed if it needs changing. Not everything needs changing by any means, but some things do. In the cat titles case particularly, many of the discussions on CfD have gone "oh, that's how they already did it" which is ok for a single cat where any wider change would be out-of-scope to a single CfD debate. But for a debate of the type on Category titles, with community polls and much discussion, I think we're free to reach what conclusion we reach. I do wonder how some of the conventions (case in point: "rivers of foo") grew up. I suspect that the first editor made a few cats named like that, the next one thought, "oh, that's how we do it round here" and it just extends. But that doesn't necessarily make it right — the first editor might have been wrong. We shouldn't shy away from making sweeping changes to fix things on the rare occasion we have the chance to be sweeping. We shouldn't presume that we (or others) got it right first-time. That is not say, of course, that I will always adopt a position contrary to the prevailing one.

All of that said, I think your analysis of the existing category naming is excellent, and useful. How else would we have been able to say "let's start here because that might be easy"? How else would I have known in advance that I didn't like all the geographical names ;) ? It gives us a nicely structured way to proceed and a correspondingly clear structure to present to the community as we do so.

Reading back of my comments, I can see that I've been rather harsh toward the suggestions you've made. I'm sorry. I didn't mean, or intend, to simply throw out the good work you've done analyzing the existing structures. I jumped in with such...firm...language because I could see those who have the opposite feeling to me (about the adjective/country question specifically) seizing on the status-quo as somehow immutable and concluding that we had no ability to change it, regardless of how the polling might go. So I made my opposition to simply adopting the status-quo because it's the status-quo loud and clear. Loud enough and clear enough that I couldn't simply be stepped around but also loud and clear enough that I give the impression of being slightly spiteful towards your suggestions. I have great respect for your thoughts, and for those of all the editors in the cat titles discussion. I will tread more diplomatically in future. -Splash 05:00, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia talk:Category titles

I've just put together a Proposed poll question? since discussion dried up a bit. I hope that's not too presumptuous and that I covered all the points. Steve block talk 20:50, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Cfd header

Actually I was trying to figure out what you meant, but then i looked at the history. User:Uncle G's 'bot added the entry, but it says its for Vfd, so I will have to leave him a message about the format we use. Thanks for pointing it out. ∞Who?¿? 02:55, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

  • No biggie, it was good you left me a message. Uhm, no so far I am not even sure if Kbdank71 has started using it, or just you. I ran it the other day for an incomplete ver of August, mainly a test. Feel free to change it anyway you see fit, I know he Kdbank71 doesn't mind. At some point I may convert it to php or asp for quicker use, not that I mind it in the current format, that way I can use it when you dont have time. ∞Who?¿? 03:28, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
    • I didn't even really notice a difference, didn't realize July wasn't done by yours. I assuming it has better options, only since your talking about it instead of yours? ∞Who?¿? 17:20, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
      • Yea I agree, I'd prefer it to use the raw code too, as well as non-compiled, that way anyone can fix errors or improve. I did see the index by date, and I was wondering how you did it, now I know that it was done with her/his other prog/script. Not that I couldn't recompile the other one on my machine, but that would mean they would have to be willing to give up the code, if anyone else wanted to use it. I never got a response from Uncle G on the headers thing, but I noticed (s)he updated the CFD page to say the bot will be doing it from now on, I was just used to doing it. ∞Who?¿? 17:37, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Congratulations!

Congratulations! It's my pleasure to let you know that, consensus being reached, you are now an administrator. You should read the relevant policies and other pages linked to from the administrators' reading list before carrying out tasks like deletion, protection, banning users, and editing protected pages such as the Main Page. Most of what you do is easily reversible by other sysops, apart from page history merges and image deletion, so please be especially careful with those. You might find the new administrators' how-to guide helpful. Cheers! -- Cecropia | explains it all ® 18:53, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! Per my custom I'll reply only here (looks like your talk page is overly full of thanks of this nature anyway). Like anyone else, if you see me do something that I shouldn't, please let me know. -- Rick Block (talk) 19:01, August 21, 2005 (UTC)
  • Congrats let me know if my feet are in the way of your mop. ∞Who?¿? 19:02, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
    • Hehe, well if i remember right, it asks to confirm, I'm an admin on another wiki (non Wikimedia). But I wouldn't mind a test block if you wanted. :) ∞Who?¿? 19:29, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
      • You can also edit your monobook.js and move it over. I borrowed someones and edited it my liking. Heres a screenshot of it, and the source. ∞Who?¿? 19:37, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Joyous wonder but...

I actually started to edit the Revert help page but... it's a table with {{R}} stuff in it that was not obvious to me. So rather than mess it up I posted the request on talk. Would appreciate your making the change... I promise I'll go look at it and try to understand. Thanks! -- Sitearm | Talk 22:28, 2005 August 21 (UTC)

It's great! I did a little copyedit as you invited. Only puzzlement is the Francis Ford Coppola example... what is it illustrating? It definitely has words following the first with different capitalisations -- Sitearm | Talk 23:13, 2005 August 21 (UTC)
I get it now... added final copyedit including explaining why Coppola example works. Thanks! -- Sitearm | Talk 05:21, 2005 August 22 (UTC)

[edit] Creating a new day's subpage

I fully understand Wikipedia runs on UTC (and the difference between UTC and GMT) and completely agree that it should. I'm still not understanding what the problem is with adding the link 12 hours earlier. Are you suggesting adding entries under the current "local" day rather than the current "UTC" day is vandalism? IMO this is a very, very minor user error. How about if the "active" day article starts with a header like "Please add new entries in this section" (rather than a date), and the bot changes the header to a date as part of making the next day's article active? Doing this I think there would be a small window where either there are two articles with the "add new entries here" header or there is no article with this header (I think I prefer the latter). In any event, I think we should do something to avoid the current situation where someone in Tokyo might think (incorrectly) s/he should add a new link and day article. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:01, July 16, 2005 (UTC)

I apologize for this late reply. I started work and my Wikipedia activity just dropped. The server variables control how something is added to a page. Meaning that it is always auto-linked according to UTC time. It doesn't matter if the other half of the world is a day ahead, the automatic link will always follow UTC time. The concept is illustrated on WP:VFD, where it has "Follow this edit link" The page uses these variables: {{CURRENTYEAR}}, {{CURRENTMONTHNAMEGEN}}, {{CURRENTDAY}}. These variables ALWAYS follow the server settings of UTC time. The full link in wiki text is:
[{{SERVER}}{{localurl:Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/{{CURRENTYEAR}}_{{CURRENTMONTHNAMEGEN}}_{{CURRENTDAY}}|action=edit}} this edit link]
Although CFD does not have this particular link, it should since everything on the Wikipedia should follow UTC time. The reason that it is harmful to add the page 12 hours ahead is due to the confusion over timezones. We won't have any method to clearly judge the order of an entry without UTC time. Entries are always placed with newest at the top. But if someone signs their signature with UTC time, then the entries should be lined up according to UTC time. Placing an entry into one day ahead of the Wikipedia may cause the entries to go out of order. Because then you might have people adding to day after the Wikipedia, when they shouldn't. (They add into August 21st, when the Wikipedia is August 22nd... then you have a confusion over where the entry is placed.) Furthermore, it is not that adding entries into a page 12 hours before is vandalism, it's just that you create a window of opportunity of 12 hours for vandalism... rather than just one hour. I can see the reasoning behind your request for WP:CFD but I strongly believe the project should follow UTC despite any date confusion. It would be, actually, more useful adding the automatic link that says, "Add new entries following this link" or something like that. That would force everyone on the same page and on the correct date. --AllyUnion (talk) 09:08, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Hi, I checked back in and saw your note on the admin question. I have been formally away for a while, but I check back in occasionally. I am planning to restart some work in the near future. I have some tentative interest in admin status, but it's something I'll have to think about further. Feel free to E-mail me privately Acsenray 15:22, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] No rest for the new admin

I was hoping you could take a look at the VfD for "Pirates of the Great Lakes", and perhaps delete the article if you feel it's appropriate. I was the last and most recent vote on August 16th, so some kind of decision should be reached without further delay. I figured that since you were a new admin and all, you'd be thrilled to assist (^_^) I was afraid that otherwise, this may slip under the radar. Thanks. — Friejose 20:29, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

I think it's unlikely to slip under the radar, but closed the vfd and deleted the article anyway. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:29, August 23, 2005 (UTC)
Thank you. — Friejose 12:43, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] vfd closing procedure

Hello, and congratulations on becoming a new admin! If putting {{vt}} breaks the edit link on the log page, then by all means follow Wikipedia:Deletion process. I haven't closed VfDs in a while, so I must have made a mistake. Thanks for catching it. Sincerely, Vacuum c 02:27, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] archiving

Hi - I noticed you've been doing some archiving of the VP pages. THANKS

You're welcome. Ta. Steve block talk 08:41, 23 August 2005 (UTC)


[edit] to do

No solid list that I know of. The cloest to what you describe would be WP:AN#Tasks and Category:Wikipedia backlog. In practice most admins seem to find one area where they are needed or have the right skills and stick to doing that mostly.Geni 10:36, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Deletion

Not a problem. Deleting your own pages isn't a problem - I do mine all the time. It only becomes an issue at VFD where it's a good idea not to delete something you've nominated for deletion in the first place. -- Francs2000 | Talk 03:04, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] John Bengtson article

Thanks for fixing that Rick!

The only reason I wrote an article about myself was that my name was already referenced in several articles, and sometimes in a rather negative way. My article provides an opportunity for readers to read some more about me and access the external links so they can find out what my work is really about.

If my article is deleted, what recourse do I have?

Another issue is that a certain linguist contributed several articles to Wikipedia before he died, passing off some negative opinions as fact - along with some valid and important facts. An example is the article about Merritt Ruhlen. (Merritt himself refuses to respond, and I honor that by not editing it either.) This is a problem with Wikipedia: that opinions are passed off as facts. Of course, this can happen in any ordinary encyclopedia. Any ideas you have are appreciated!

Yes, I am a total Newbie here. Thanks for the help!

John

Hi John. The salient point is that wikipedia's content is, by policy, verifiable, not original research, and written from a neutral point of view (NPOV). NPOV is held as an absolute and non-negotiable requirement. When writing about yourself it's difficult (although not impossible) to adhere to all of these, particularly NPOV, so the general recommendation is not to try. I didn't see anything in your article that looked completely unreasonable, but suggested you read wikipedia:autobiography to better appreciate the difficulties involved. Regarding Merritt Ruhlen, the same principles apply. If this article (or any article) contains opinions masquearding as facts the specific content should fail one or more of the content policy requirements - unless it's published in some form it is not verifiable and would be considered original research, and if it's an opinion stated as a fact it's not NPOV. If you run across anything like this please consider fixing it. Unpublished, unsubstantiated opinions should be deleted. Published opinions (and "published" in this context really means verifiable) should be presented as opinions (with an appropriate reference) rather than as facts. You might take a look at some of the featured articles to see examples of how wikipedia articles should be written. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:35, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Templates

I am trying to develope a collapisable section for an infobox, i have done them before but not as complex. The complexetly come with the number of variables required for it to work whcih is 4, which isn't so bad, but the way the section diplays depends on two of the variables, being present or not. Also when it displays i want it to set so it could display in any of 4 different ways, based on the two variables, and their are also some diplay issues as well, for conisistancy. The templaet is at User:Boothy443/citybox test, and a display tester is at User:Boothy443/Sandbox/Estonian Goverment in Exile, the section in question is where the flag and seal are, just that box. --Boothy443 | comhrÚ 04:02, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Exactly. --Boothy443 | comhrÚ 04:09, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
I've used the call1 and 3 before on some templates, and i have a basic idea of hwo it works, but thats only set fo one variable, not their is a template , Template:If equal, and a Template:If equal g, which based on their pages sounded like theey were what i was looking for but they didn't have enough space so i developed a Template:If equal r with an extra section, combined with a Template:Template call4 and a Template:If defined call4, and i kinda got it to work, if you went through the edit history on the template and loaded it with the tester you could see what happened, but their were some rendering problems, and problems with if one paramater was taken out it would not work, but if it was switch around it would. --Boothy443 | comhrÚ 04:26, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Yeah so any, i amin no hurry, like i said before i dont think it can work anyway, their seems to be some strange coding issue with the calls or some something, if you come up with something or an idea just let me know, i am gonna keep on fooling around with it. --Boothy443 | comhrÚ 03:08, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

  • Yes. I can see that programmable templates would be a good idea one way or another, and they're certainly cool. And it's not like I can stop you :) I'm just afraid that, given the increase in Wikiload, this feature may make things worse (and, I suppose, it could be removed). I would suggest that programmed templates are only used if absolutely necessary. I would also suggest that you discuss with Jamesday how best to tackle this. If the intent is to make certain rows of an infobox invisible if they contain no information, I'm reasonably sure that CSS can be used instead (which moves the load to clientside). Radiant_>|< 08:42, August 27, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Cat titles

No, I was responding to Steve, whom I believe was asserting that there are speedy renaming processes for articles. On re-reading I may have misunderstood that. Radiant_>|< 14:43, August 25, 2005 (UTC)

  • Please state your (dis)agreement on WP:Cat Titles so that we can move forward, the discussion has lasted long enough already. Radiant_>|< 15:06, August 25, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thai MoS

Please visit Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Thailand-related articles)#Cast votes 217.140.193.123 11:07, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] category titles

Yeah, sorry about that post, you must have posted between me reading the page and clicking to edit it and I just completely missed it. I like the "rule per supercategory" and think it is worth a mention. Hopefully ow we can get some movement. I'm not sure how it got so mired, competing egos I guess. By the way, people keep asking me if we're related, and obviously we're not, since you're from the States, but are your roots British at all? Steve block talk 15:32, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] related

No, no germanic connection on my block side, which traces back to Suffolk, England, in the late 1700's. Steve block talk 16:14, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Monty Hall feature

Hey Rick, just a short note of praise for your work on making the Monty Hall problem a featured article. Yes, it's a while ago already... I thought about doing this before but didn't really know how to phrase it, so I skipped it. But today I read the Wikipedia:Wikiquette for the first time, and give praise is one of the advices at the bottom of that page. I instantly remembered having wanted to do that here, so now I do so. Good job! Phaunt 01:37, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Categories of categories

Excellent idea. Oh, and please see Splash's talk page? Him and me have been looking through CFD logs for precedents. Your feedback is welcome, we'll move it to WP:CENT some time soon. Radiant_>|< 08:42, August 27, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Help desk

The article is a hoax. The person is a troll. The article which was deleted said that this supposed band appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, and that they knocked him to to the ground and defecated on his chest. Zoe 22:18, August 27, 2005 (UTC)

Here's the article about this "real" band, for what it's worth. Zoe 22:20, August 27, 2005 (UTC)

Cleveland And The Steamers were a surf rock band from Ventura, California, who performed together from 1964 to 1970, The band was formed in 1964 with the following lineup:

  • Cleveland Van Ward, an aspiring musician from Thousand Oaks, California. (Guitar, Vocals)
  • Roger Swardson, the owner of Phil Thee Eye Rish Records who had previously played with another band, The Mud People. (Guitar)
  • John "Hot" Carl, a distant cousin of Cleveland's. (Drums)
  • Steve "Dirty" Russell, a musician from Ventura with little experience. (Bass)

They were well-known within the Ventura rock scene during their early years, playing many shows, including an infamous show at the Pig Shit Music Festival, which resulted in nearly four hundred people being treated for E. coli. After a short tour of the Los Angeles-San Diego area, the band began recording their first album, Pulling In To The Station. The album, released in October 1966, was a financial success; costing only $1,500 to record, it sold nearly 9,000 copies in two months.

However, tragedy struck the group in the spring of 1967, when Roger Swardson was found dead in his hotel room of massive internal bleeding, which, according the autopsy report, was the result of a "bowel movement of un-Godly proportions". Swardson's longtime gay lover, Dylan Vernon-Candee, who was initially taken into custody by police after the paramedics stated that he was covered in feces when they arrived.

Vowing to continue performing, the band recruited local guitarist Jack "Sloppy" Seckons, who was performing with his new band only a month after joining. By 1968, the group was back in the studio, promising to shatter the molds with their next album. That summer saw the release of the aptly-titled Back In Brown, which is described by many as "the ultimate feces-themed rock record". The record was an even stronger seller than their first record, and by January, it had reached No. 29 on the charts.

On February 17th, 1969, they performed on The Ed Sullivan Show to a packed audience. Unfortunately, they were banned for life from performing on NBC after Ed Sullivan was wrestled to the ground by members of the band, who proceeded to defecate on his chest multiple times.

Two months later, during a show at the World Feces-Eating Championship, Cleveland announced he would no longer perform with the band, citing health concerns. Although rumors persisted at the time that Cleveland had developed a drug addiction, recently released medical records show that at the time, he was suffering from a massive amount of feces in his lungs.

The band went on an indefinite hiatus, and played only a few shows that summer after hiring Steven "Goopy" Harrington, the singer of another band in the area, The Fudgy Dumplings, to fill Cleveland's role in the band.

On June 12th, 1970 all four members of the band were found dead in their tour van in . There was limited evidence at the scene, but it could be assured that, at some point, something horrible had occured. Deputy Michael King of the Los Angeles Sherriff's Department noted that the bodies were badly decomposed, and nearly every orifice had been stuffed with a "gravelly, fudge-like substance". This was later found to be feces.

On December 2nd, 1987, Cleveland Van Ward commited suicide by choking himself on some of Roger Swardson's feces, which he had aparrently acquired at some point. Van Ward's solo record, Kooky Doh, was scheduled to hit store shelves on January 15th, 1988, but was put on hold. As of 2005, it has not seen release.

This band should not be confused with the sexual act referred to as a 'Cleveland Steamer'.

Assuming good faith doesn't get an encyclopedia written, it just lets the trolls have their fun. Zoe 22:38, August 27, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia_talk:Category_titles

Hi, thanks for your note. That was thoughtful. I am more or less ambivalent about the current discussion. But the current proposal has unanimous support now, so I think it's best for me to abstain. Maurreen (talk) 02:17, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Hi, Rick. I appreciate what you're doing with this, especially the analysis of what conforms to what.
In my view, the ideal would be for category titles and any such standards to be determined by people actively working in those categories -- more of a local, bottom-up approach. I wish the CFD tags could somehow go out to the articles in the CFD categories, but oh, well.
But I realize that I'm in a significant minority, at least among the CFD/category titles regulars. And if there is going to be any formal standards, it makes sense to me to have them align to conventions that have arisen naturally. In other words -- if the preponderance to a type of category is "foobar", I doubt I'll object, althought there may be a few exceptions if I see a special case.
I'm not sure how well I answered your question. But I'll note a few special cases, in my view, at Wikipedia:Category titles.
And congratulations on your adminship. Maurreen (talk) 19:44, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
Now that I've thought about it a little more, I think your generic rule is one of the smartest things in the whole discussion. Maurreen (talk) 20:39, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

I was nodding my head as I was reading your proposal, but then I came to that bit. I know you didn't intend it as a step backwards, but it does, to me at least, seem to be one. I think we were, finally, progressing and pretty consensually: the suggestion implicitly removes all that and takes us back to where we were a little while ago. The rest of your proposal is spot on — I think it would be enough to present that to the community along with a list-so-far of the sort of thing we're suggesting and see if that's ok. Your point about being overridden by the community is one I made several days ago when I suggested we simply write the polls and present them since whatever we think doesn't really matter. I was told I was filibustering. -Splash 23:30, 28 August 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations

Good idea for creating this list. I am willing to help you update and clean up the list. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 03:38, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Oh yeah, I forgot something. See this Barnstar to the right? It's yours. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 03:41, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Template/Category comment request

Hi Rick, I have noticed your input and see your work on templates, I would like to give Motorhead a template and have come up up with some ideas, they are in my sandbox, could you be so kind as to comment on them, I've left a request on the Motorhead page, but as yet no feedback received from there. Categories: can you point me to guidance? Alf 08:57, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your very kind reply Rick, I reckon you're right, I was concerned by their bulky appearance, your suggestion is good. As for doing categories, it's simply that I've never created one before and am aware it should relate to bigger categories, haven't a clue where to start, I'll read the page on categories over again, maybe it's just simpler than it looks.Alf 14:24, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
I think I may have overdone it, should I have put cat:motorhead on the songs and album articles or put only cat:motorhead songs and cat:motorhead albums respectively? I've gone through both, but am happy to undo main cat if that's not quite right. Alf 17:46, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations

Hello Rick, well, that's one I never came across before. I'm assuming that you know about the listing of FAs by category at WP:FA and the index by date at WP:TFA. My own interest came about while reading some FA or another and wondering how the article had evolved (or devolved) since it became a FA and of equal or even more relevance since being published on the Main Page. I've been tagging the Main Page articles for a few weeks now (on their talk page) as a temporary measure after finding little enthusiasm from others to memorialize this date somehow within the FA template (to indicate the date of promotion) and then to have perhaps a different template after MP publication to record both dates. I think my concern is legitimate in that the current FA template gives no clue as to its vintage and as we can see at WP:FFA, some articles do not age very well. Please let me know if your plans address memorializing these dates within the article's talk page somehow. hydnjo talk 20:01, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] An article's historical benchmarks

These dates in my estimation are usually the the most volatile events in an article's history:

  1. Date that an an article was started: Special:Newpages. Usually available.
  2. Date that an article was presented for peer review: WP:PR. Difficult to determine.
  3. Date that an article was presented as a potential FA: WP:FAC. Difficult to determine.
  4. Date that an article was promoted to FA. Findable by looking through the history for the featured template.
  5. Date that an article was featured on the Main Page. Is findable with knowhow but not prominent.
  6. Sometimes: Date that an article was demoted and noted as a former FA: WP:FFA. Very seldom and usually without great fanfare.
  7. Sometimes: Date of re-presentation .... etc.

So, I think that these dates should be readily available for the article's starter, contributors, readers, curious, students of wiki culture or anything else. Sorry to dump this on your talk page but it came to mind and I was already here. ;-) hydnjo talk 22:59, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Featured Articles

Oops, I misunderstood. I thought you were just calling it to my attention to it - my apologies and my thanks for asking my opinion (I'm just not used to that). hydnjo talk 02:05, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] vanity and categories

you deleted a vain category I made once. I'm getting back to you again cuz I thought your suggestions on a better category name that more clearly associates me with the category were awesome. I ran it by this guy radiante! who was all like "no, you'r slightly too vain" cuz I wann use the main category space. See your message to me back then. lemme know if you feel any differently about this type of issue today. thankz, later. Ish Micka Vonn alla'h Vonn Schzz Nzzl Vonn aAmerikazakhstan 22:42, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

just noticed, you'v met him. hope that bodes or su-um. Ish Micka Vonn alla'h Vonn Schzz Nzzl Vonn aAmerikazakhstan 22:43, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
So, um, what's the question? Does this perhaps relate to this tfd discussion? Please let me know what you want to do, and maybe we can figure out a way to do it. -- Rick Block (talk) 23:18, September 3, 2005 (UTC)
Hehe, sorry. Here it is: Do you still advocate the use of a cateogory like category:Kzzl pages (or perhaps category:Kzzl's nonsense slang which could be a subcategory of Kzzl pages) like you once did? I'm getting resistance from radiant! to this idea. Ish Micka Vonn alla'h Vonn Schzz Nzzl Vonn aAmerikazakhstan 02:15, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
The whole notion of categories for user pages has come up fairly recently at Wikipedia talk:Categories for deletion#Wikipedians categories. This discussion was about categories directly including main user pages rather than user subpages, but I think the same principles apply. Wikipedia:Avoid_self-references was not mentioned in this discussion, but this basically implies any given category shouldn't contain both user space and article space pages. My real preference would be for you to use a list, but if there's some really good reason a list won't do (or something like this URL), then category:Kzzl's nonsense slang seems reasonable. You should perhaps also note WP:NOT#Wikipedia is not a free host or webspace provider and WP:NOT#Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought, which I think together mean anyone who wanted to be a hard-ass could get these pages deleted. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:04, September 6, 2005 (UTC)


word. thanks. you'r cool. later. Ish Micka Vonn aAmerikazakh 22:52, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Go and Search

Err, "Go" is not "Search" - it's go. In other words, it's exactly the same as typing that string into a URL (except that wierd characters like '?' get correctly escaped). If someone wants a search, they need to hit the "Search" button. Noel (talk) 03:47, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Hi, sorry I'm a bit slow getting back to you - been trying to water down a large number of fires. Yes, you guessed correctly what I was talking about. That "Go search" stuff drove me a little batty. "Go" is not a search, although (as you point out), in some limited cases it's more general than links are. Part of the reason I was concerned was that I'm worried that people are going to use "Go" when they should be using "Search" (which isn't helped by the way Search is offline a lot, and doesn't work very well to boot). In particular, when we have articles which differ only in capitalization (rare, but we do have some, e.g. Fish and FISH), it's really unfortunate that we're starting to treat Wikipedia like it's caseless. Noel (talk) 01:25, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Update

Thanks for this page: Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations. How long before it is updated? User:Nichalp/sg 06:06, September 5, 2005 (UTC)

Ok, just wanted to know when it was last updated. I saw some errors and since the edit mode had some comments to contact you, I decided to do just that. Those errors are fixed now by someone so no probs. Regards, User:Nichalp/sg 17:23, September 5, 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for sharing the source lists. I'd seen Piotrus' name twice on the list. But now it's been corrected. If I see any thing wrong, I'll be bold and correct. it. Thanks for doing this. Nice comparisons. Regards, User:Nichalp/sg 17:41, September 5, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Featured articles nominated in 2005/2004/2003

Thanks for the heads-up. The information will be be quite helpful in tagging prior talk pages with their Main page date. I'd still like to see the Main page date (going forward) just be part of the selection process rather than what I'm doing now. I feel as though I'm going against the grain somehow. What do you think? hydnjo talk 18:40, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

BTW, with your help I've tagged the Monty Hall problem with its Main page date. I hope I got it right. ;-) hydnjo talk 22:16, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

How about adding a description of how to find the relevant dates for a featured article someplace prominent (like on WP:FA, or Wikipedia:Featured_article_statistics or Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Featured log)? I think:
Defeature and renominations are rare, but we could also describe how to find these. I guess my bottom line is I'm not sure it's worth adding the main page date to the talk page, given an adquate alternative exists. So, I guess this becomes a question for you - do you think the alternative (search the index pages) is reasonable? -- Rick Block (talk) 22:38, September 5, 2005 (UTC)
Obviously I'm not making my point with any degree of clarity. Allow me one more try. I happen to read an article that has been prominently tagged on its talk page as being a Featured article. So, I casually ask a question in my mind: was it a featured article last week, last month, last year or when? How does this version compare to the Featured version? Did it get better or worse since then? I'm not a student of article evolution, I'm just curious. If I were a student of article evolution I could track down the version in question with some effort and time. But just being curious, eh, there's plenty more to read around here so I go on. But, if that date had been easily available (think right there on the talk page) then I may well have gone on to a better understanding of an article's evolution (some articles age better than others) and been amazed or prompted to fix some deterioration. At first I didn't think that I was asking for a great deal within a Featured article's CV but I was wrong. It seems to some to be a big deal and an unreasonable request. I'm not in any way demeanimg your work, in fact, it will be quite helpful to anyone's searching an article's history. My comments are directed towards finding a way (going forward) to memorialize the Main page date within the article itself. Thanks for listening, hydnjo talk 23:38, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
Also, as time and enthusiasm permit, I will definitely use your new WP reference pages to help tag prior FA pages with their Main page date. I am grateful for your help. hydnjo talk 00:05, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Just to echo back what I'm hearing, you want the "featured on main page" date to be prominently indicated on the page (or it's talk). This is what you've been doing page by page (after the fact) and you'd like Raul654 (or whoever does the work behind the scenes related to geting a page on the main page, which I think is Raul654) to do it as part of making a page today's featured page. I really can't think of any automatic way to do this, and I think any way (period) would require an edit to the page (or its talk). You've talked to Raul654 about this, and he seems to be somewhat resistant. I can't find a description of the maintenance procedures for Wikipedia:Today's featured article, but I suppose Wikipedia talk:Tomorrow's featured article would be as good a place as any to bring this up (again). Rather than add the text like you've been doing, you might create a template similar in style to template:featured indicating the date, but I really doubt you'll be able to get Raul654 to edit the articles to add it. You feel strongly enough about this to be doing it yourself, so you might propose an addendum to the "featured on main page" process along the lines of "Raul654 does his stuff, and then Hydnjo adds the mpfeatured template to the talk page". I think (aside from the fancy shmancy template) you've been WP:BOLD and have effectively been doing this anyway. If you'd like to institutionalize it as "standard practice" you'll have to get consensus behind it. I think it's a reasonable idea (I also think it's reasonable to add a date to the featured template). -- Rick Block (talk) 00:21, September 6, 2005 (UTC)

You have no idea how much your considerate response means to me. I'm delighted with your echo in that it clearly articulates what I've been trying to say. At this point, I think that providing a foothold for the feature-master to dig-in on this point would not be constructive. I'm going to let it slide for a while as I quietly do my additive thing going forward (and backwards with your new pages). I'm not sure that I'm up to a challenge right now but I thank you for suggesting the avenues to approach this in the future. Warmest regards, hydnjo talk 00:42, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
If you'd like to use a template, I'd suggest something that does something like:
Rick Block/Archive2005 appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on MONTHDAY YEAR.
where MONTHDAY and YEAR are passed in as parameters. If this template existed, your edit to the talk page would consist of adding the template specifying the date (not particularly different than what you're already doing). If you're template averse for any reason, let me know and we can create this togethter. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:28, September 6, 2005 (UTC)
I am without a doubt template chalenged. Try as I might they always came out wrong so I quit trying. You make it seem so simple that I feel embarrassed at my lack of effort. Thanks for pulling me along, that's the same thing I did with my kids. ;-() hydnjo talk 01:47, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
In case you missed it in my reply, I love the template. Thank you for helping me along in this matter (damn, that sounds so stiff and formal) lets try again: Hey Rick, champion of the Monty logic despite all of the attacks, thanks for hearing my side of things in (I think) a fair way. I feel encouraged by your comments. I was beginning to wonder. hydnjo talk 02:07, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you on this, not by any means for lack of interest. I would very much like to invoke a template as you have suggested. I really don't how to set it up though. How does something like {{Template:FAD}} (Featured Article Date) seem to you? Thanks again for your support. hydnjo talk 02:25, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
Oops, I just noticed - pun not intended. ;-) hydnjo talk 02:31, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
I jumped the gun before hearing back from you. Sorry about that. Should I tag it for speedy and start over or move it to a new name? Now I'm embarrassed. :-( hydnjo talk 03:44, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for wikifying the date, I forgot to follow your instructions. If I move {{Template:FAD}} to say
Main Page trophy Rick Block/Archive2005 appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as [[Wikipedia:Today's featured article/{{{1}}}, {{{2}}}|Today's featured article]] on [[{{{1}}}]], [[{{{2}}}]].

what happens to the articles withe original template? hydnjo talk 15:50, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Category: British Hills by Height and Category:Mountains by_Elevation (km)

I am posting this to all the particants of the Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Category:Books by title discussion and debate. (Where the categories were voted for deletion).

This earlier discussion has been cited as an example as to why the category Category:Mountains by Elevation (km) (and sub cats) should be deleted.

Could you please take a look at the following CFD and vote. Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2005 September 1#Category:Mountains by Elevation (km) and its subcategories

A complication could be that Category: British Hills by Height seems be to liked by the actual British Hills content contributors. By contrast the category Category:Mountains by_Elevation (km) is not liked by User:RedWolf who seems to be a major Mountain page contributor.

Special note: the Ocean trenches by depth categories were added after the all of the people had voted. But frankly these have no real contributors and would probably get deleted if another vote was taken. You should specifically mention these to ensure there is no confusion in future.

ThanX ¢ NevilleDNZ 11:02, 6 September 2005 (UTC) ¢

[edit] Popups tool

Congratulations on being made an admin! I thought you might like to know of a javascript tool that may help in your editing by giving easy access to many admin features. It's described at Wikipedia:Tools#Navigation_popups. The quick version of the installation procedure for admins is paste the following into User:Rick Block/Archive2005/monobook.js:

// [[User:Lupin/popups.js]] - please include this line 

document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="' 
             + 'http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Lupin/popups.js' 
             + '&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s"></script>');

popupAdminLinks=true;

Give it a try and let me know if you find any glitches or have suggestions for improvements! Lupin 01:56, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] E-mail rollback

Shoulda looked before I leaped. That same anon had dropped a bunch of link spam. Wouldn't you know that the one legit edit he made would be the one I rolled back without looking first...? Thanks for pointing that out. Easy fix; consider it done. - Lucky 6.9 04:23, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

All set. I had to log off last night before I had a chance to revert that e-mail article. Thanks again! - Lucky 6.9 16:26, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] user:Larzan

No, sorry, don't know any particuar history on that user. I was going through the block logs and tagging userpages that had some background info to look up. Mostly to inform the user and/or other users of the situation. I remember trying to find the particulars of that case, ie.. "Flying Spaghetti sockpuppet", but could not, so I didnt tag any more users blocked for that reason, at least I dont believe I did. Sorry I couldn't be of anymore help. ∞Who?¿? 19:37, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Thanks Rick. I remember that debate on CfD a few months ago, but I wasn't sure how it had gone. There were really two issue - one regards what the right thing to do is, but the other is how I handled the situation - I think I was too brusque in this, and probably offended TexasAndroid. Guettarda 02:45, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re: <noinclude>

Thanks for the advice and meta link. I guess I didn't look hard enough. — FREAK OF NURxTURE (TALK) 06:54, September 10, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Template:FAD

Hi again. I tried to speedy this but have met some resistance, see Template talk:FAD. You may want to comment at [5] as I have named you as a coconspirator. hydnjo talk 12:30, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for vote but Zzyzx11 still disagrees on the speedy part. I don't really want to do battle over this so I'm not going to retag, I'll keep an eye out in case someone tries to use it (someone already has) and edit it out. On another note, I think you should receive credit here [6] and on its links. Let me know if you object to co-authorship. hydnjo talk 20:41, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
Looks like Zzyzx11's agreeing with the delete now, so I think all will be good at tfd (I'll watch I guess, and if the tide seems to be turning I'll suggest FAD become a version of template:featured that indicates the date an article achieves featured status - which I'm guessing is where you'd really like to go with this). Re credit - I'm perfectly willing to share, but I don't see how it matters (it's not like we're filing a patent or anything, right?). I promise I won't begrudge you any glories that come your way as a result of this. You've been fighting for it for months, so I think you deserve at least most of the credit. -- Rick Block (talk) 22:16, September 10, 2005 (UTC)
I doubt that this will gather any resistance to delete but just in case you have an excellent Plan B worked out. Also, my response line is: "As much as I would love full credit, this template is actually the result of a collaboration between Rick Block and myself. hydnjo talk 23:02, 10 September 2005 (UTC)"
Gone as you can see (thanks Raul). Just curious, what happens to talk? --hydnjo talk 16:34, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Problems with redirect

OK, I made myself look like an idiot by not checking that somebody had corrected a problem and not yet posted the fact to WP:HD. :-P --GraemeL (talk) 19:58, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Sorry. I'm a little surprised I didn't hit an edit conflict on my HD update (I don't think your post was there when I hit the edit button, and the window from when I fixed it to updatng the HD page was pretty small). I didn't update the HD first since I wasn't sure it was going to work. If you want, you could delete your comment or strike it out with an explanation - but I really wouldn't worry about it. -- Rick Block (talk) 20:29, September 11, 2005 (UTC)
Wasn't your fault. I'll leave the comment in place. He may find the information useful anyway. --GraemeL (talk) 20:31, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Categories and stuff

First, congratulations on becoming an Admin. It was an honor to nominate you.

Thanks for noticing the feature article notice. It will be on the front page this coming Wednesday. Getting an article to the FA level seems to be orders of magnitude easier than getting people to agree to some minor policy changes.

I have been watching Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (categories) and made a few comments during the process. I appreciate that you stepped in and tried to facilitate the process. I haven't felt the urge to say much recently. I was hoping the discussion would move towards looking at categories from a bigger perspective rather than long discussions about whether a name should be "in foo" or "of foo". I can live with either. I did comment that there should be a clear distinction between what Fooian means as opposed to “of”, “in”, or “from” foo. You seem to have embraced that concept and run with it so I am happy.

I was looking through my talk page recently, and I came across this comment of yours:

Oh yeah - I assume the recent discussions on Wikipedia talk:Categorization you're asking about are the supercat discussion and your "related cat" proposal. I'm getting to the point where I've pretty much had it with categories (too many folks unwilling to budge from absolute positions, particularly the notion that category membership must mean "is a"). I posted some comments last December (see Wikipedia talk:Categorization#Categories vs keywords), which elicited zero response. IMO categories are fundamentally ambiguous and mean both your "related cat" concept as well as the hierarchical "is a" relationship many people seem to insist they are (well, should be). I don't think there will be any category-related software changes any time soon, so this seems like a relatively pointless discussion (the current reality being that category membership has no intrinsic meaning, formal or otherwise, so trying to impose one is doomed to failure). I've spent a fair amount of time categorizing (maybe 3000 edits worth), and I'm starting to think it's basically a waste of time. I suppose it's more worthwhile than playing minesweeper, but in what universe is it reasonable to argue about whether "list of <x>" should or shouldn't be in "category: <x>"? -- Rick Block 02:33, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Here it is September, and I'm still trying to reach consensus on the same issue. But here is what I notice:

I think it is fair to say that you and I are taking the point of view that usefulness is a primary criteria for how categories are created and populated. Since most people visiting Wikipedia are using it and not the voters at WP:CFD, the slow evolution brought about by users has changed the norms about category duplication away from the stated policy. Back in February I was pushing for a change. Now I am trying to codify the change that has already happened. Wikipedia has tremendous inertia. It is probably impossible to make any radical changes quickly, but it does seem to have an evolutionary direction, perhaps a Darwinian survival of the fittest, that moves towards usefulness. For example, I created Wikipedia:Classification many months back and asked for comments. I didn't get much of a response. I decided to add classifications to some categories and seed the idea. If it was useful to people, I figured that others would add classifications also. Someone took the idea and started templates to classify many of the "fooian fooer" categories. I then modified the templates so that they all had the same look and feel. The idea is spreading without discussion. Perhaps a better example is CategoryTOC. People argued that it shouldn’t be widely implemented. But there is no way to slow down a good idea.

There is a culture clash here. I suspect that the people drawn to categorization are by nature preoccupied with classification, consistency and efficiency. Personally, I wouldn't choose to spend much time at CfD, except for the compunction to make certain that categories I care about are not deleted. (I created Wikipedia:LGBT notice board so that several people could keep an eye out together.) Currently there are discussions happening about Category naming (your current project), Category duplication (my current project), and Categorization by gender, ethnicity and sexuality (started by Radiant!). These are all related to this culture clash. One of my objectives with creating Wikipedia:Classification was to give the people currently drawn to CfD a different outlet for their intellectual pursuit. If they became the classifiers, then everyone else would be free to categorize and both cultures could co-exist happily. Perhaps this will come to pass.

I still wonder though about ways to help facilitate the decision making process in general. I tried getting some discussion going at Wikipedia:Consensus but that didn’t seem to go anywhere. I’ve been thinking about creating some facilitation templates to help organize discussions and decision making. This would fit with my evolving “plant a seed” philosophy. --Samuel Wantman 20:23, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories)

I was just wondering what was supposed to be happening next with that and if there was anything I could do? Steve block talk 14:28, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] List of Wikipedians by FA nominations

You can add Cat to that, and it looks like Lakitu will make it soon. - A Link to the Past (talk) 15:50, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Pictures from Theoi.com

Do not take this as offensive, but every time I get a message from someone, it always has to encompass a complaint of answering machine like proportions. "Hi, I noticed...." is usually the first thing I read. It is actually kind of funny. Though I do admire you for doing your job in making sure the content acquired from Wikipedia is legal. Keep up the good work and don't let my social commentary distract you (it's not as if anyone bothers to read everything I write anyway).

The reason why Wikipedia should upload pictures from Theoi Project is because the pictures there actually provide clear depictions of the Greek gods/goddesses (and other mythological creatures) within their proper ancient context. Having articles about ancient Greek mythological entities depicted by only modern paintings is not good enough. Helpful, but not enough. People need to see how Greek mythological characters were depicted in ancient times so they can see the differences they have with their depictions in modern times.

I would love to place a license tag on every picture I have uploaded, but I don't expect Wikipedia to pay me for my services nor to even show some semblance of respect/honor (some here play games with contributors instead of focusing on academia; I would love to name names but I could care less). I was nice enough to give the pictures I uploaded a source and nothing more should be asked of me. I have made enough concessions and limits are needed. Moreover, I am not adept in the arts of law and license.

If you desire a license, then e-mail the creator of the website and talk to him. Here is the copyright status of the website if you are curious:

"The Theoi Project: Guide to Greek Gods, Spirits and Monsters was created by Aaron Atsma, and is edited by Aaron Atsma in association with Tim Spalding and the ancient history/art site www.isidore-of-seville.com. The images here are believed to qualify as academic fair use; write if you would like an image removed. All other content © 2000–2005 Aaron Atsma. Books offered in association with Amazon."

Here is the website creator's e-mail address, which is aatsma@yahoo.com.au and I recommend that you talk to him. I am sure that for educational purposes, the pictures can be used without any legal problems whatsoever. So don't worry yourself. Get the licenses (or whatever you need) and leave me to my devices as these boring text articles here are in need of some interesting visuals.

I hope that what I provided is helpful to you. Have a nice day. Later.

- Deucalionite 9/19/05 10:26 A.M. EST (Revisions 10:50 A.M. EST).

[edit] Re: template in signature

Hey Rick, just to let you know I’ve asked a couple questions about the templates-in-sigs issue on my talk page that you brought up. I'd appreciate it if you could answer them! Thanks! —Felix the Cassowary (Ae hI: ja) (02:12, 20 September 2005 (UTC))

[edit] Image deletion

I posted the lists you requested on the Village Pump page you referenced. Cheers, Beland 05:55, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Mainpage date

Hi Rick, can you explain for my template challenged tired old brain how the revised (by Brian0918) template works? I asked on his talk page but then noticed his user page saying "On forced WikiBreak until November." Thank you. --hydnjo talk 20:14, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't get it. Articles that were tagged before this change have a blue FA date and those after have a red date. I guess that the template version is fixed with the initial save sort of like having been compiled with whatever version was in place at the time rather than recompiled each time the page is displayed - OK- (that makes sense). But I still don't understand what the new version is supposed to do. :-( --hydnjo talk 22:48, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
Also, I'm reluctant to apply (retroactively, I'm doing past articles) a template version that might not be appropriate. Please advise. Thanks, --hydnjo talk 22:53, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
And while I'm whining, how would I go back and "recompile" those talk pages with an undesirable version of the template that you so kindly generated designed? --hydnjo talk 23:30, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
Well, that was a thoughtful and complete response and exactly on point. That's exactly what I was looking for. As for using the old fashioned "compiled" rather than "expanded" well that's just what came to mind (from long ago). Thanks for helping with the right word to express the concept. And as for your concern about "...more than you wanted to know", not at all. Please don't feel that way about pulling me along; I appreciate it, even though I had to read it a couple of times. I need all the help I can get. ;-)) --hydnjo talk 00:48, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
Have you taken a look lately. I quit. It's not worth it. We did something that needed doing and now it seems that some others want to stomp around and claim some kind of ownership without (I think) merit. Oh well, anyway I've learned a lot from this thanks to your gentle encouragement. I'm not a template-master but I'm better than I was. Thanks, --hydnjo talk 02:42, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
YES, mightily helpful. You'll never know how much. I wish that I knew how to present Barnstars. Maybe I should work on that. No, I will work on that. :-) --hydnjo talk 03:11, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
A barnstar for your voice - the encouraging and supportive one that keeps pullin' me along -Hydnjo
A barnstar for your voice - the encouraging and supportive one that keeps pullin' me along -Hydnjo

Thank you for your support. --hydnjo talk 03:24, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Please do. I don't want to be angry but I am frustrated. --hydnjo talk 04:14, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Mainpage date template(s)

Thanks for explaining what was going on with the revised template. When I was using the template retroactively to replace the sentence which I had added (pre-template) I was using the MONTH DAY sequence but then last night as I was going backwards through July I was calling the template with DAY MONTH (for my own reference) and of course it was expanding incorrectly. The dustup with Brian0918 and ALoan was due to my not understanding the input sequence requirement coupled with my having changed my own entry order. In frustration I went and minted a new template "Mainpage FA date" which is the same as your original version of "Mainpage date". Now that I know what's going on I'll go back and edit in your original template as it now exists. I'm still concerned about future users getting it wrong as I did. Any way to fix this so that it isn't input sequence sensitive? BTW, HighHopes and I are adding the template to all prior FAs that were on the MP with he going forward from February 2004 and I working backwards from September 2005. --hydnjo talk 16:36, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Also, after I'm done retagging with the proper (original revised) template I'll put the new "Mainpage FA date" template up for speedy deletion. --hydnjo talk 18:01, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Hi - Can we make a version that isn't sensitive to the date ordering? Well, yes, but my guess is you might not like it very much. One way would be to use three named arguments rather than two positional arguments. Ignoring what the template code would look like, the reference on the talk page might be:

{{mainpage date|month=July|day=12|year=2005}}

and any order would do. The arg names could be more concise, for example m=, d=, and y=. Using named arguments you can put the arguments in any order, but you have to remember what the names are. Using positional arguments you have to put them in the right order, but you don't have to remember any names. The wikipedia "template language" is pretty primitive - something as simple sounding as recognizing a date is in "day Month" form and transforming it to "Month day" form is actually quite difficult. What it's really set up for is creating a shorthand notation for a chunk of text, with arguments simply substituted in (like a form letter). Doing any computation or making the output vary based on parameters is extremely difficult. I can't think of any way (well, no reasonable way) to accept either "Month day" or "day Month" as a positional argument and preserve the link to the specific WP:TFA summary article. An unreasonable way is to have two sets of 366 templates, one for each day in either form, and use these templates inside the main template to expand the argument to what's needed for the link to the TFA summary for the given date.

Would you be interested in a version with named arguments? -- Rick Block (talk) 18:50, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

No, I think that may make the situation worse. Heck after HighHopes and I are done it's only going to be used once a day anyway. I'm sure we all can keep track and catch any trip-ups (mainly from EU I would guess). Thank you for taking a look. :-) --hydnjo talk 19:30, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
FYI, we're done. ;-) --hydnjo talk 19:02, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Mainpage date

Rick, thought I'd let you know: I recently started adding Template:Mainpage date (which I gather you made - thank you!) to articles that have appeared on the MP, simply because I felt that such status was worth recognising and also because, on a personal level, I simply wanted to know if it had been on the MP. This was picked up by Hydnjo, who, it turns out, was planning something similar anyway. So this is just to inform you that we're working from either end - it should be completed fairly soon. --High(Hopes)(+) 16:53, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Whoops! I started writing this message much earlier but left it to go do something else, came back and finished it only to find Hydnjo's left something to the same effect. Not intentional. --High(Hopes)(+) 16:54, 22 September 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Bengtson article

I think everything I wrote is verifiable. Well, we'll see what happens.

Can we delete the previous discussions? I didn't mean to leave a specific name for public consumption.

Thanks very much for the valuable tips!

John

[edit] cfr tagging for renaming by-country categories

cross posted from User talk:Who

The only draw back to not tagging them, is I recently just got finished with the "Films by director Foo" cats, and although they were all tagged, by me, there was still a question after it was said and done. See above entry. I think we should consider it and discuss it, but it's been pretty decent on the smaller speedy renames w/o the tag. ∞Who?¿? 16:27, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Also, should we bother listing them in the standard section of Cfd or should they be listed under Cfd/Speedy? ∞Who?¿? 16:37, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
-- thread continues at user talk:Who -- Rick Block (talk) 16:55, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] monty hall

Hi, I've just come across your discussion on the origin of the Monty Hall problem picture. You were pondering over whether either Robert Saunders or I were the original 'artist'. May I ask why you are wondering this? For the record, I put together the original image which then Robert Saunders copied and reduced the file size. I felt rather 'sore' at this because it would appear that he created the original, whereas if you look deep into the page history you will see that my image predates all his.

RSVP —The preceding unsigned comment was added by JDB1983 (talk • contribs) 20:17, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

==Who's RfA== Thank you for supporting my masters RfA. He appreciates your support and comments and looks forward to better serving Wikipedia the best he can. Of course I will be doing all of the real work. He would have responded to you directly, but he is currently out of town, and wanted to thank you asap. Thanks again. --Who's mop?¿? 20:56, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Templates "/div=true" and "Hide"

I'm sorry I didn't get back to your question (from August) reguarding the Template:/div=true, I was away from wikipedia for a while.

User talk:BCKILLa#{{Template:/div=True}}

If you have any furthur questions or suggestions, I'd be happy to respond. --BCKILLa 21:36, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Intelligent Templates

Rick, I'd like a little guidance from you about how to handle a template issue. I've spent hours reading background, and still can't fully parse what I should or shouldn't do; I see your name all over the pages I've been haunting, so I come to you.

What I have done is to create a template {{Infobox_river}} (examples and use) to replace {{River}}. This template uses {{If_equal}} do decide whether or not to include a third template. It's a clean way of allowing users of the first template to omit a picture in the Infobox without having to use a whole different template. But now I come across WP:AUM and it sounds like I'm violating that guideline.

The way I've built it seems better for editors (more backward- and forward-compatible with its use in articles, easier to use), while multiple templates seem better for readers (less server load). Is there a third way? What should I do? Please feel free to comment on the template's talk page. (Oh and hey, I'm from Boulder.) Thanks, —Papayoung ☯ 21:56, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

First, I am not a wikimedia developer and have not official standing - but it sounds like you've got it. As far as I know there aren't any hard and fast rules. IMO the only real solution is for somebody to implement an if-then-else construct in the template language. Using nested templates (that don't change) in even a large set of articles that aren't changed too often shouldn't be a big deal (every time the article is changed the template definitions have to be fetched from the database). Using a "standard" template for something like this would allow all templates using it to be found (and updated) whenever the template language does support if-then-else, so I'd say go for it. -- Rick Block (talk) 23:32, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
Thanks, Rick. It's good to have a little reality check, and I'll go ahead with this template as-is. It would be easy to replace with better technology when that comes along. Is there a good place to register my agreement with your idea that if-then-else syntax should be in templates? Or offer to help with that? I'm a PHP/MySQL coder, so who knows what's possible. Thanks again, —Papayoung ☯ 00:33, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
PHP and SQL, and you're an editor, and you're remotely interested? Ummm, get thee to m:How to become a MediaWiki hacker. Existing developers pay at least some attention to "votes" for bugs and enhancements at bugzilla when choosing what to work on. IFDEF is a fairly new request, see bugzilla:2615 (bugzilla:364, optional parameters, would be useful as well - also see m:Extended template syntax). -- Rick Block (talk) 01:17, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the guidance, and I'll do that. —Papayoung ☯ 03:09, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Template weirdness

Hi again template genius. Template:Mainpage date was enhanced recently by HighHopes with the WP Mainpage logo (nice touch). The weird part is that when I call a talk page that calls that template there is a hang-time of (sometimes) several seconds between the template expansion without the logo until the logo shows up. Also, my browser (Safari) progress bar indicates incomplete until the logo is in place. The other templates on the same page (Featured, etc) appear all at once, logo and all. I'm concerned that the way the logo was added may be incorrect. Please take a look and let me know what you think so I can sleep soundly tonight. Thanks, --hydnjo talk 00:44, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Oh, I forgot to mention that it seems to happen (I think) only with the first call after adding the template. --hydnjo talk 00:59, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
You responded:
The logo that's included at this point is a .4M version of the image rescaled on the server (!) to a 42x42 version for inclusion with the template. The rescaling is done by an Apache server (not cached by the numerous squid cache servers) every time any user views a page including the template. Ummmm, this is dumb. It would be FAR more efficient for the smaller (42x42) version of the image to be stored on the server. Given that this is a copyrighted image of the Wikimedia Foundation, there might be some sensitivity to uploading a pre-condensed 42x42 version of the 600x600 original. I'm not sure if there's a way to force the rescaling to be done by the user's browser (rather than by the Apache server), but I'm trying to figure out a way to do this. Please stay tuned. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:37, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
I can't believe that I asked a question requiring such a convoluted (to my mind) answer! Now I'm feeling bad that I put you through all of this for such a minor annoyance. Thanks of course Rick for looking into this, I was just wondering if adding the logo could have been done in a more efficient way. As always, your research has helped me understand the underlying mechanics and I thank you for that. --hydnjo talk 04:53, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Is it actually true that any time you call for an Image in wikicode with a size other than the original it's generated on the fly and not cached? If so, wow. There must be a pretty good reason why not. Is there a good page describing what the squids are and how they work? Thanks, —Papayoung ☯ 20:04, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm trying to chase this down, but I think image resizing is done server-side, not client-side (look at the browser source of a page with a resized image), and then cached on the server for some period of time (but not permanently). There's a standard "thumb" size that might be stored permanently. I suspect not permanently caching the result is a classic space/time tradeoff, but still begs the question of why this is done on the server in the first place. The squids are pretty dumb caching front ends. I only know the overall architecture, from m:Wikimedia servers (and what I've picked up from here and there, and knowing how Apache and squid basically work). There's a reasonably detailed description of how a page gets built at WP:AUM. Wikipedia is one of the most popular web sites on the net, see m:Wikipedia.org is more popular than...; it serves a LOT of traffic. -- Rick Block (talk) 23:54, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
Having looked at the system diagram and page-generation docs, it looks like there's never any caching at all if you're a logged-in user. I couldn't find any data on how the squids handle images, if they do at all, but it's moot if you're registered; every time you ask for a page with an image sized differently from the original, it'll be created on the fly and might take a while. After the first load, though, your browser might cache it locally and that's why Hydnjo wouldn't see the problem on later page views. But it's worth looking at a page while logged out to see what most of the world's seeing. —Papayoung ☯ 02:09, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Speedies

Hey. I just got your email. For some reason a whole bunch of emails (some regarding blocks, annoyingly) have been held up somewhere in the Wikimedia servers from reading the headers. You must have thought I was ignoring you. I'll take a look a little later. -Splashtalk 13:54, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikiwoohoo's RfA

Image:WikiThanks.png Hey Rick Block. Thanks for voting on my RfA. Although you voted against me becoming an admin, I'd like to say thanks for taking the time to give your opinion. I'm taking all comments onboard to help me to improve. Wikiwoohoo 15:15, 8 October 2005 (UTC) (Have a look at this

[edit] Cfd guidelines

Hey, I finally added the CFD guidelines, or at least started to. Take a look at:

I also have to track down all of the other deletion guidelines and policy pages and add to them, but this is a start. Also, I have been tagging the closures that mention Naming Conventions with that in the result, just incase you didn't notice :) I'm about to the point where I can catch up with all of that, I'm still a day behind in closing, and my bot has been running non-stop almost. Lots of cleanup. Well anyway, see how those two pages look and let me know. Thanks. ∞Who?¿? 20:37, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

The CFD closing guidelines look great. I'll add a bit about updating naming conventions if appropriate. I'm not sure it's kosher, but you might talk to Beland about divying up the massive renames between Whobot and Pearle (there isn't really much difference between doing this and doubling the speed at which Whobot runs, but I don't think it's technically cheating). -- Rick Block (talk) 01:58, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
I've thought about it, he's been buzy with cleanup tasks I think. And hasn't been on that much. I got it pretty much cleared up now. But I think another big chunk is coming along. No prob with the adding the naming conventions, its a good idea. ∞Who?¿? 02:09, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Policy or guideline

Well, it's honestly not that big of a deal, but while the list of NCs is policy, all the individual NCs are in Category:Wikipedia naming conventions rather than Category:Wikipedia official policy. Radiant_>|< 13:16, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re-active admins

Hi Rick,

I certainly don't mind your telling me about anything that is going in Wikipedia, but what shall we do with this information? Could you suggest a proposal to re-certifying admins; that is, to make sure they are who they say there are? -- Cecropia | explains it all ® 23:09, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

I think we should import Meta administrator rule: m:Administrator_on_Meta#Policy_for_de-adminship and Meta:Administrators/confirm. Even if we don't use the 1 year probabtionary, I think we should have the reconfirm portion. ∞Who?¿? 23:14, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
More detailed response via email, but it might be prudent to try to confirm the identity of these folks (somehow) and/or watch what they do for a few days. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:51, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
Well, not sure how everyone will like it, but I updated {{admin}} and applied it to all the active admins on the list. ∞Who?¿? 01:39, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
Note, I've changed the above link to "admin" due to the histories of the templates having been merged. — FREAK OF NURxTURE (TALK) 19:16, Jan. 8, 2006

[edit] Abbreviation expanding for country names

I believe you supported the following proposal for a speedy criterion, and I believe I followed the rules and after a week in which no objections were raised I listed it as a criterion. After one day, it has been removed as one user has issues with it. If you still support it I would appreciate your comments at CFD talk

  • Abbreviation expanding for country names: The name of the country should appear as it does in the name of of the article about that country (e.g. US or U.S. in reference to the United States should be renamed to the United States)

I appreciate your time, Steve block talk 12:07, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for sorting that out. I do tie myself up in knots at times that I can't see such elegant solutions. Steve block talk 17:46, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Pending image deletion notifications

AllyUnion seems to have taken this up; see Wikipedia talk:Bots. -- Beland 03:54, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Category standardization

Hi there! I was looking over CFD and noticed the many standardisation entries. I just wanted to say, excellent work in establishing that, and keep it up! Radiant_>|< 16:33, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

  • Oh, I'm nowhere near frustrated, but thanks for asking. I'll be on-and-off the wiki as time permits. Yes, stealing time, and keeping the occasional eye on policy development, ANI, and RFA. We'll see what happens, I find all three options (Am, US and keep-as-it-is) very much acceptable, I hope we can stay away from the fourth option of "repeated debate every time the issue comes up" :) Radiant_>|< 22:32, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re: wikipedia 1.0 idea

To answer your question you left on my talk page, I proposed it directly to brion, one of the developer, and he said it would be a possible future improvement. It would need to be added in the software so we really need the devs to work on it for something to happen. Elfguy 12:14, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] sport by country cats

Hey, I tagged all of the subs of Category:Sports by country. If you need anymore tagged, just let me know. Actually I may have missed 3 or 4, i removed some of the ones that were already "Sport in.." from the list before I ran it. «»Who?¿?meta 00:55, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Response.

My mistake, I must have accidentally thought I renominated it after Toothpaste did after a while. - A Link to the Past (talk) 21:20, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Subcats of Category:Football (soccer) venues by country

Rick, I just renominated the above because the subcats weren't tagged for renaming. Could you go through and tag them? I'm trying to fill in for Who while he waits for Wilma to give him his power back. Thanks. --Kbdank71 14:28, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

I tagged 'em. -- Rick Block (talk) 23:39, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Subst: part of a template

Hi Rick, you seem to know these sorts of things. I'd like for {{copyvio}} to be able to hard-link to the relevant day subpage on WP:CP without actually being subst:ed itself. Is this possible? -Splashtalk 22:54, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Thread continues at user talk:Splash. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:04, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] cfr speedies

Hey, I just ran across this template {{cfr-speedy}}, thought you may like to use it, if you didn't already know about it. «»Who?¿?meta 03:04, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Halibutt

I think you may be interested in this nomination, especially as you have posted recently on Halibutt's talk page enquiring about his admin status :) --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 22:19, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Category consistency

There are at present several categories up for renaming from "People of city" to "Citians", and a number for renaming the other way around. For the sake of consistency, maybe we should put up a central discussion to find out which of these has consensual preference? The main issue seems to be how well-known the adjectives for city names actually are. Radiant_>|< 13:25, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] LGBT criminals

Hi, I saw your comment on the cfd page. The main problem with this category is that LGBT people have lived in many countries and eras with different laws so I really don't see how this category serves any useful purpose (the same applied to Jewish criminals, Catholic criminals etc.). I am opposed to any blanket criminal category as it is just not informative, if they do exist they should be by crime committed. Regards Arniep 23:55, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Iwate-geo-stub image

Hello. Currently all images for {{(prefecture)-geo-stub}} are the silhouettes of the prefectures. Yes, Iwate looks like an ink splotch, but I don't think it's of any problem to its citizens. While I think it's better to keep the current image (because now images for all prefectures are in the same fashion), it can be changed to the prefecture symbol or something like Image:Japan Iwate large.png. I wouldn't mind either way, but isn't that ink blot beautiful? :) Conscious 08:23, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] LGBT Criminals II

Hi - Appearances notwithstanding, I didn't actually mean to single you out in my comment. I apologize if you took this as a personal comment. By and large, I really don't care for any of the "intersection" categories. I'm not sure what to do about this (it's irked me for quite some time), but in this specific instance there seems to be a claim that this category carries an inherent anti-LGBT POV. It might - but, it might not as well. In any event, I thought a personal message about this might be warranted. -- Rick Block (talk) 05:38, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Rick, thanks for the note. I didn't take any offense whatsoever. If my response was heated, it wasn't meant that way. Its strange how, um, spirited those discussions can get. I admit I'm surprised by all the support on the Keep Side, though, and can't see the logic or intent of the category. It would seem logical to me to group serial killers together, gay, straight, black, white, etc.
I do understand your concerns. The category, if kept, will be a POV magnet from all sides. It will be used by pro-gay and anti-gay editors to slander both gays and non-gays. Some will want to pack the category to show that gays are involved in lots of crimes. Some will use it to brand anyone they don't like. Anyone with the most tenuous LGBT connection will be thrown in. People convicted of sodomy will be added, such as Oscar Wilde. Others will want to include people out of a sense of pride (LGBT are normal, they therefore commit crimes like anyone else). Crimes involving homosexual victims might qualify. Should Oscar Wilde be in the same category as a female prostitue who may have suffered LGBT sexual abuse as a child, and then 30-years later killed a series of male clients? When I pointed out a lot of immediate problems with the category, the response is always let's keep it, because those problems will be immediately addressed and won't reappear. In my view, these types of problems reflect an inherently flawed category/list, they can't be fixed and will be a constant problem.
In any case, I'm not trying to get you to change your vote. Just throwing out some ideas, as usual. Take care --JJay 09:34, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Admin? No thanks, but I appreciate the offer.

Hi Rick,

Thanks for the offer to nominate me to be an admin. In truth, I'd find lots of things convenient, but at least for the present I prefer my present status. Again, though, thank you!

Fg2 00:52, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Cheers

Thanks for your support on my RfA. I'm now a bit shamefaced as I remember I have an email from you to which I haven't responded. Anyway, if you ever need a hand at anything, give me a shout, I enjoyed working with you on that mammoth category discussion. Steve block talk 10:09, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Page move

Completely without announcement, an article was moved from its common English name Nidhogg to the old Norse version Níðhöggr, even though a proposal to move mythology articles to non-English spellings failed to gain consensus. You have expressed interest in simular page moves in the past. Please take a minute to look at this one. CDThieme 18:37, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] OK...

Whichever vandalism it was, OK I think... 68.39.174.238 05:52, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

That dude WAS weird. "Customer service representative"... 68.39.174.238 05:56, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
I find that "No new pages for IPs" horribly offensive. Most of the vandalisms I see (Which admittedly are FAR from all) are already existing pages getting screwed with. Lets face it, if the page exists, it takes MUCH less creativity to change to to (John Q. Public [sux] is the President of the United States...) where [] is the vandalism, then to have to create a page on it. Further, as was mentioned by someone, page edits and creations by anonymous usrs are "spur of the moment" (@least in my case). I see an error, I want to correct it, I correct it. If I get slapped with a "You have to login" page, I'm NOT going to go jumping through hoops just so I can fix an error that doesn't effect me. It's a very easy way to totally alienate a earnest and good-faith contributor. Also, his rationale seems to metion it was in response to a spurious page that escaped detection. I seem to remeber something like this happened a long time ago with some fake aincent[sic] Greek philosopher. The result was the page was deleted and the contents dumped to BJAODN. In this case it looks like Jumbo got stung somehow, and frankly, that makes this sound alot like a moral panic-overreaction. I hope it fails like CAPPS II. 68.39.174.238 21:34, 6 December 2005 (UTC) PS. Feel free to correct any spelling/grammar errors or just blank this if it irks you. Thanx again.
I can sortof understand the "We don't want images that might be someones" as wanting to either "Cover our aſſes" or try to ensure copyright is respected (Although the way he announced it was abrasive at best). However blocking IPs from creating pages seems totally nonsensical. I constantly hear (read: read) requests/proposals/demands to remove anonimity/require registration for any edits, but page creation!? I fail to see how that whould help, say George W. Bush vandalism or the autofellatio redirect vandal (Who, if I remember right, hit up on user talk pages, which are unaffected by this block). 68.39.174.238 00:47, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] thanks

I happened to notice this question. This edit to the Infobox Movie template apparently changed what needs to be passed in for the image (should now just be "image = Red_Eye_poster.JPG"). I've looked around a bit, and it seems at least most other movies already supply the image in this form. I'll update the Red Eye article. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:52, 7 December 2005 (UTC) Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Who"

Thanks :) Btw, it also happens with Monsters, Inc.. I'll check other articles and let you know. It seems I notice some of the articles with images have the same problem. HoneyBee 11:36, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks for work on Bollywood movie templates

Thanks so much. I didn't really understand how the template worked. Someone was editing them in a way that produced doubled images, and I couldn't figure out how to fix it. Zora 05:12, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Mystery block

I sure as shooting don't remember blocking that guy. His edits were awfully early in my adminship. Weird! I'll leave polite word asking what's up and if he's still blocked. He doesn't seem to be. - Lucky 6.9 06:48, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Population count template

I've updated my talk page with examples of the revised template for holding populations. The "as of" info can be optionally displayed now. Neier 22:41, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] multiple DB servers?

I've replied to this over on my talk page, because it's probably of interest to others who might visit that page. You're on the right track, though we started doing bits of it about 16 months ago when I started the practice of assigning queries to different projects to different database servers. We've been doing more and more of it and that trend will continue. Jamesday 21:27, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] CfD: Wikipedians by politics

hi, i hope u don't mind me contacting u like this. maybe i'm misinterpreting the situation, or maybe i'm just a bit stupid, but i don't think the argument to remove is coming across clearly. i'd genuinely like to understand why you want them removed. if you have time, could you add more detail? Veej 13:53, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Replied at user talk:Veej. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:23, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
  • sorry mate. i should have said in my original message, could you put you comment here, so that it adds to the debate? perhaps if you start with "comment", your comment won't be misconstrued as a double vote. thanks. BTW, one of the reasons, that i've asked you to put your comment in Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion/Log/2005_December_18#Category:Wikipedians_by_politics is that i'd also like my reply to be part of the overall debate. i thought i'd better come clean. thanks, Veej 16:25, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
  • You & soltak have made some really important points. it's a shame that others aren't joining you & the debate is becoming one-sided. well done for bringing this up though. Veej 18:26, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

BTW, i was serious when is said, "perhaps there should be a category of wikipedians who are 'against POV categories of articles' from whom you can rally support". From your link to Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion/Log/2005_November_24#Category:Pro-life_politicians, i read Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters's comments. However, i don't believe removing the category is the answer. I do believe that application of the category will need to be monitored closely. so how about 'wikipedians against poor application of categories to articles'. if you start that category, i promise i'd join, & you could rally my support. Veej 19:16, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] redirected categories

Hi - I noticed that NekoDaemon is meant to move contents from categories in Category:Wikipedia category redirects. I've been doing some WP:CFD cleanup and thought I'd let ND do some moving rather than doing it manually (or asking Beland or Who to do it with their bots). The claim at the category redirect page is that ND patrols "hourly". Does this mean ND examines each redirected category once an hour, or that it wakes up and does some amount of work every hour? I added the redirect template to Category:U.S._history_images about 24 hours ago and the articles aren't moved yet. Just curious. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:31, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

And, while we're at it, what would you think about adding category deletion as well? WhoBot and Pearle are typically used for both moves and deletes, but if there were an equivalent to template:categoryredirect for categories to be deleted, deleting a category (after discussion at CFD of course) could be semi-automated by adding the category to a "to be deleted" category patrolled by ND in much the same way as Category:Wikipedia category redirects. -- Rick Block (talk) 19:45, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
The first problem is fixed. As for your suggestion, I'd rather get some kind of community consensus before preceeding. --AllyUnion (talk) 23:17, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] null edits with Pearle?

Hi - Can Pearle do null edits? I've subst'd template:Prefecture navobox in the templates it was used in, so now there are logically no references to it (a few from user or talk pages, but that's it). The "what links here" still shows several thousand articles. I'm not sure it's even worthwhile, but touching the articles would clean up the db. If yes, thanks. If no, no problem. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:29, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Sure, I'll make a pass after Pearle is done doing null-edit cleanup for Template:Cleanup. Looks like she's on "I" right now, and it's been about a day so far. -- Beland 02:20, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
All done with your run now. -- Beland 02:48, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] User:PMA

I just noticed the message you left at User talk:Cecropia. A quick look at the other bureaucrat log shows it was changed by meta:User:Datrio, and gives us the date. The explanation can be found here (found looking at Datrio's contribs around that date). --cesarb 03:27, 21 December 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Waterfall Gully

If you can change it over, that'd be great! It'd be worth the self-gratification ;) ~ - Gt 08:48, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Admin

Why aren't I? I'll tell you: When I first started being active, I considered it; I decided I didn't understand how things worked and didn't have enough edits. Later, I decided I'd wait until someone nominated me; nobody has.

It seems like Wikipedia could use many more admins.I'm not certain how I can help out. I know it would be nice to have the tools to rollback vandalism and fix cut and paste moves. Supposedly, "it is not a big deal", to become an admin but it doesn't look that way all the time when I read the WFA discussions about people nominated. I would like to help shape the discussion about wikipedia consensus, categories, portals, etc..., but I don't really need to be an admin for that.

So yes, you can nominate me. I guess I can find a useful niche in the admin world. If you do nominate me, please hold off for at least 12 hours from the time of this posting. And thank-you for considering me. --Samuel Wantman 17:35, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the nice nominating statement. I've answered the questions and linked it up. -- Samuel Wantman 08:55, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for all your support. It was one of the best gifts I got this holiday season. -- Samuel Wantman 20:54, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] RD/HD date headers

Hey Rick, thanks for the tip. I posted a bot request at WP:BR for this about a month ago (it has since slipped into archive heaven) but no takers at that time. I don't know if AllyUnion watches that place or not but I'll make a direct request if you think it's appropriate (?). --hydnjo talk 02:51, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Dec 14 CFD

I went through and cleaned up Dec 14th at CFD: deleted what needed to be deleted etc and added whatever to the list on WP:CFD. I also archived it because the page was getting lengthy, however, one of the discussions wasn't closed and I wasn't sure what the outcome should be. It only had one vote so it should probably be relisted or something. I figure I'll let you make the decision here because I honestly have no idea. K1Bond007 01:59, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, I noticed the category redirect thing. I don't necessarily have any problems with it, but at the same time I'm kind of scared that if, say, a vandal were to use it, they could cause some serious work if it went unchecked. Doing more work with CFD than I usually do, I've also come to have a problem with the speedy section (or the actual list section for that matter) - once again in case a vandal were to add a category that wasn't "authorized" by an admin. There are so many edits that it may go unnoticed or something. Personally, I'd rather see the list moved to a seperate protected page where only admins can add and remove categories from the list. Maybe I'm just being overcautious/paranoid here. I considered bringing this up to Kbdank71, but have yet to. K1Bond007 03:52, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
Well, whatever. I just know that if I was a vandal, there are certain things that I could pull off without anyone immediately knowing. The category redirect is just one, a number of others associated with that also come to mind. I kinda like the protected list for CFD renames etc like you said. If they can do that, they should, instead of doing the category redirect template. I agree that manually doing CFD renames/merges/removes is ridiculous - even with AWB, it's still a pain in the ass. :D K1Bond007 04:23, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
I used to do it manually too - off and on. I used Firefox and just opened a bunch of windows then saved them one after another. Never was fun, but a lot better than IE or a non-tab browser. I still do this when removing categories (AWB, to my knowledge, can't do this - just find and replace). K1Bond007 05:27, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
I know how I just never really felt the need for it. Hasn't really stopped editors from contacting me about admin stuff in the past .. believe me :) Maybe some day... K1Bond007 05:55, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] For RB

Image:Musical+notes.png And so happy Christmas... Best wishes from Heidi and Joe

[edit] George Bissell

Thanks for your part in bringing the real George Bissell to wikipedia. I notice that you seem to have a Denver bent going. I am about to add some Denver sculpture in various places, but will check what's there first. ho ho ho. Carptrash 00:15, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Wait ! You mean that someone has to enter George Bissell (sculptor) to get to him? Is there not a way to set up a George Bissell page that allows you to choose which one you want? Carptrash 00:21, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
The general topic is explained at Wikipedia:Disambiguation. There are basically two choices: 1) add links between each of the articles so when you get to either you know which one you're at and can easily get to the other one (there are called "disambiguation links"), 2) add a page that lists all of the like-named pages with links to each one (this is called a "disambiguation page"). Things to consider - if one or the other are much more widely known, then this one should be the "primary" page with disambiguation links to the other(s) or to a separate disambiguation page named George Bissell (disambiguation). If both are equally well known (or unknown) the existing article should likely be moved (not copied and pasted) to something like George Bissell (oilman) and effectively a new George Bissell article created which is a disambiguation page. I've added a disambiguation link (dablink, they're called here) from the existing article to the new one about the sculptor (please edit the article to see what it looks like - I did this by literally entering {{subst:dablink|For the American sculptor, please see [[George Bissell (sculptor)]].}}, which gets into templates which are an entirely different topic). -- Rick Block (talk) 00:51, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
Thanks, Rick. to me these are uncharted waters and I do worry about sailing over the edge of my world. Right now i am struggling to get KLDK to appear on various Radio Stations of America pages, with only marginal success. However I shall hang on to your explaination should I need it again.
and the entire staff at KLDK thanks you too. I will make a special presentation to/for you on "Tuesday Night Live" a couple of nights from tonight. Carptrash 04:03, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
Being bold, I've made a disambiguation page for these Bissell's, added links to each other on each article, and updated all of the links regarding the industrialist to point to the new article. If you are familliar with the sculpter, please expand his article to move it out of stub status if you can. xaosflux Talk/CVU 21:19, 26 December 2005 (UTC) (Reply on My talk page if needed). xaosflux Talk/CVU 21:19, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Dec 15 CfD

Hi, I noticed you were involved in some of the decisions on that page. I created a couple of the categories suggested for deletion (Pederastic deities and Pederastic lovers) which have not yet been decided, and I had a couple of points I wanted to raise. First, I do not want to precipitate events, but since it appears that you and the other admin have not yet decided how to proceed I thought I would make myself available should you have any questions. However, I will only be available another 12 hours or so, after which I am leaving on vacation for a week. Second, are articles and categories protected from double jeopardy, if they have gone through the AfD/CfD process once and survived? Haiduc 02:09, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

I hadn't thought of using a list article (though that remains a possibility regardless of which way the decision goes). The main question is how best to present the information to the readers. I don't have an easy answer. If the way to go is by using a "List of..." linked by an entry under a "See also" header, why do we even bother with categories? And if double jeopardy protection does not apply, then is a list not equally vulnerable to dogmatic attack? As for relisting the categories, if you look back at the debate you will see that most of the people working on homosexuality topics recognized it as a valid academic topic and voted to keep, while readers less familiar with the subject were more likely to vote viscerally. Since the homosexuality "specialists" are necessarily in the minority, and since you do not seem to discount the visceral votes (had you done that you might have been a lot closer to a consensus), is it not obvious that relisting only serves to dilute the input of those familiar with the academic side? Haiduc 03:27, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for your thoughts, it's good to get another's perspective in all this. Haiduc 04:17, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Your query

Try again, it should work now. Radiant_>|< 01:14, 27 December 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Consensus

Well, irregardless, there is no policy or guideline involving this - at least not for CFD. The best I could find was in the deletion guidelines for admins and even that is vague and subjective depending on the admin. I've tried to be fair and I don't think I was wrong on any of the ones I closed — at least I'm pretty sure I didn't close any as delete or whatever that were below 60% - nor was I really using a certain % as the marker for when I would choose to delete or close as no consensus. One specifically was 63% that I closed as delete after reading the entire discussion and taking everything in including the number of people involved in the "voting" process. Maybe that was wrong, but I went with the majority and agreed with the reasoning for deletion. I don't really know how to do this where someone isn't going to complain anyway. Not all (and I would love it to be) discussions are crystal clear or have a good consensus. Hey, I guess if you feel totally the opposite on some of the ones I closed (and it's not too late) then go ahead change it and delist from the CFD main page. K1Bond007 00:29, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

I didn't mean to "blow steam" here or take it personally against you or whatever, but my "judgement" was already questioned earlier on one closing. At the time, I guess I felt the need to defend my reasoning, yet again. Sorry. K1Bond007 02:18, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Yo. I copied and pasted from a soon-to-be deleted article, and didn't remove the category or whatever to preserve the data. Kobra 03:24, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] I wonder what did the trick?

Hmm...This or this? Anyway, thanks for jumping in and helping out here. See you around! --HappyCamper 05:19, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] RFA comment

Yeah, my first comment pretty much answered itself, lol. Cheers, good to know. NSLE (T+C+CVU) 05:45, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Regarding US State Infoboxes

I replied to your comment on the template talk page. You can respond there or on my Talk Page. --R6MaY89 00:11, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] More template ideas

Rick, I have some ideas for templates, but don't know if they are technically possible, so I thought I'd ask you.

I keep bumping into small skirmishes and ongoing debates about the spelling of English, and I'm wondering about using templates to solve the problem. What I don't know, is if there is some way that each user could set a parameter that would be used by the template. For example, say that this parameter is called English. In the user preference page, you'd be able to check off the version of english you'd like to use. For instance, 1 might be for British English, 2 for American English and 3 for Australian English, etc... Next we'd create templates for the words and phrases that differ. As an example, the template {{colour}} would be written to display "colour" if the English parameter is set to 1, "color" for 2, etc... Anyone who objects to a spelling would only have to turn the word into a template. Any ideas? -- Samuel Wantman 01:14, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

As far as I know, this wouldn't be possible without code changes. Treating this like the date format preference has been suggested before - I don't know the status but I don't think I'd hold my breath. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:54, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

text=thank you I hope this is in good taste. --Delzen 23:52, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Image help.

Thanks for your comments on my problem with image:Henry Purcell.jpg. I've moved a copy to the commons, and put up the template to that effect on the Wikipedia image page. It seems that it can't be speedy deleted, but I've put it up for deletion, and informed the original uploader. I think I've done all the steps, just have to wait for the deletion cabal :). Again, thanks, this is all pretty new for me, but it helps when people are friendly and helpful. Makemi 04:45, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] CFD

Don't know if you noticed, but Kbdank71 went on a Wikibreak again and thus CFD is backed up. Just letting you know so that you could possibly help out if you have the time. It is kind of sad that there aren't that many admins working at CFD and it all really comes down to Kbdank71 and Who - both of which are now on wikibreak. It's not something I really like to do, which is why I'm not always there. Perhaps we should make a mention of this at the admin noticeboard or something. I don't know. Just a thought. K1Bond007 08:25, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal about categories and subcategories

I've posted a proposal about categories and subcategories here. Please take a look. Thanks. -- Samuel Wantman 09:24, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] By hand!?

You: "Deleting a category is harder since (without user:Pearle's or user:Whobot's assistance) the references have to be deleted by hand."

Me: I understand the rename part, but not the delete. So how do I get user:Pearle's or user:Whobot's assistance? Or is this the reason why some of you admins have tens of thousands of edits? It looks like I have to get User:Beland involved in this, but I am bot ignorant and not quite getting it.-- Samuel Wantman 20:48, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jury Duty

I saw your comment about self-selection, random sampling, and consensus on RfA talk. Do you have any further gems as to how to make it viable? - brenneman(t)(c)

[edit] New category & tag

Well, now that I've upgraded NekoDaemon, is there a suggested template that you wish to create? Maybe something like, {{ctma}} with a category of Category:Categories to be moved automagically (or Category:Categories to be moved automatically); Let me know something you prefer, then I'll go set up the bot to do so. --AllyUnion (talk) 07:13, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

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