User talk:Timwi/Archive/Mar 04

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Contents 1 Bot 2 Where is it pulling the names from? 3 Columbia 4 Fun project 5 Spamming of User talk pages 6 Map of Manila 7 Köhler's pic 8 Accidental creations 9 Keith number 10 Cudappah 11 Empty images 12 How dare you ... 13 copyvio message 14 Saint Patrick's Battalion 15 MediaWiki:Merge2 16 Bad Redirects 17 Copyvios - Notice 18 Entwurf für neue deutsche Startseite 19 Japanese prefecture capitalization 20 What is your vote?? 21 Victim 22 Jetsun Damba 23 Link table corruption and deletion 24 Point 25 Maio and astronomical objects... 26 Re: astronomical objects 27 Orphaned Articles 28 friendly reminder 29 Case chart 30 MediaWiki:Protected 31 MediaWiki:Inuse 32 You reverted the edits back, but... 33 The MediaWiki messages 34 MediaWiki:Uspresidents 35 Madrid 11 36 Mailing list fun 37 Open proxies 38 MediaWiki for List of people by name: A etc 39 Deletion Request 40 Mediawiki Calendars 41 Whitlighter un-delete 42 Revert on Requests for adminship 43 Quickpolls on Goings-on 44 Meta sysop 45 Thanks 46 List of people 47 RichL -> Mendel 48 Sedna 49 Hidden Scripts in HTML Comments 50 Contributions count 51 USS Enterprise 52 Patches

[edit] Bot

Please read Wikipedia:Bots especially the 30-second-sleep rule - you're making recent changes unusable, and are likely to get blocked. Pakaran. 18:09, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Yes, please - I can't read anything! Is it really necessary to have all these redirects as well?? RadicalBender 18:10, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Also, some of the redirects should not be created, like Alamein, El, which is a town, not a human being. RadicalBender 18:11, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

(From edit conflict with Pakaran & RB)Timwi, good for you to generate the links, but can a developer help you find a way of hiding the edits from RC? It's cluttering it badly. :-) Sorry! Hopefully someone can help-- I know there's a way of doing it. Jwrosenzweig 18:10, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I gave him a 2-minute emergency block to read the bot policy. Pakaran. 18:11, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I've stopped my bot. Thanks for pointing it out to me. I'll read up and adapt my bot accordingly. Sorry for causing inconvenience. — Timwi 18:13, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Ok, as a sysop I give you permission to run your bot provided you - make it its own account - tell it to use minor edits - sleep no less than 30 seconds between edits. Fair enough? Pakaran. 18:15, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

OK, I'll make those changes. Thanks for your understanding and patience with me :) — Timwi 18:25, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Could u please register ur bot, so that i can keep my eyes on the recent change page? Thanks! --Yacht 18:16, Mar 2, 2004 (UTC)

Actually, Wikipedia:Bots suggests running slow without a bot flag at first in order to be able to watch it. Pakaran. 18:16, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Where is it pulling the names from?

I ask because of the city name listed above that doesn't need a redirect as the bot created. RadicalBender 18:17, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Looks to me like it's going for all 2-word titles with both words capitalized... Pakaran. 18:24, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It was using the list of titles from Columbia where it found titles of the schema "Y, X" where my local cur dump had a corresponding article at X Y. — Timwi 09:32, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Columbia

If you want, we can put the Columbia title index on my server. We'll have to figure out a way to filter out created articles, though - no more red links :-(. I'd also prefer it if we would build separate lists for titles containing commas and those which do not.—Eloquence

If you want, you can upload them to your server, but as you already mentioned, it's not very useful because we don't get the link colours. Besides, people may still complain that using the list to improve Wikipedia may still constitute copyright infringement. — Timwi 09:29, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Fun project

You said that you were looking for fun projects -- how about a WebDAV interface to Wikipedia? Basically you would be able to open webdav://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anything in a webdav-empowered editor (that includes all KDE applications) and save it directly to the server. There appears to be a DAV server application in CPAN already which hooks into the Apache module and overrides some of its subroutines. The server would have to retrieve items from the database and save them. The one tricky issue would be edit conflicts, but not impossible -- it could return an error code, or try auto merging with CVS style conflict markers.—Eloquence 15:27, Mar 4, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your suggestion. It does seem like a fun project for people who are into this sort of thing, but I'm afraid I'm not really interested, and I don't know anything about WebDAV anyway. Sorry. — Timwi 15:32, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Spamming of User talk pages

You added a link to the esperanto press release, there for you did edit the English press release, twice, thank you very much. Don't play all naive with me. -- user:zanimum

I never claimed that I did not edit that page. Lots of people did. That does not warrant spamming. Please also see my posting on the mailing list [1]. Thank you. — Timwi 15:50, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Map of Manila

I just wanted to ask you why you did those changes regarding the Map of Manila. Image:Ph_map_manila.png (deleted presumably by you) and Image:Ph_map_manila_large.png are different maps and are not simply resizes of each other. The ~600px map was designed to be readable at that size and so it only contains a few points of interest while the larger version shows more information. Also, what's the rationale for moving the infobox of Manila to the top instead of having the introductory paragraph first? And, please, please use the Summary box. --seav 03:15, Mar 6, 2004 (UTC)

I'm very sorry. I didn't realise they were actually different. I assumed they were resizes of each other and assumed that the thumbnail feature would now do the job. I have tried to restore the image, but it seems that images cannot be restored. Do you still have a local copy of the image? — As for the infobox, on all other articles it is right at the top. Of course, if you dislike it that way, you are free to change it back; I won't go into an edit war over it. — Lastly, I do use the summary box. Just not always. Sometimes an edit is just far too trivial or simple to warrant the effort of explaining it. The diffs show the exact change better, anyway. — Timwi 03:21, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for explaining. I always have copies of the maps I made here in my computer, so that's not a problem. Regarding infoboxes, I'm quite sure there isn't a standard or policy on whether it should be first or second (or third). Almost all the country articles place the introduction first before the infobox and that's why I based it that way (and also because I think it should be that way). —seav 03:44, Mar 6, 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Köhler's pic

The original photo from the Brazilian site comes in at 1.7 MB, but because it's dark and slightly out of focus, and after deleting the gents standing next to him, the quality doesn't really bear much more than the 320x240 I uploaded. Frankly, it looks fuzzy at 640x480. But I'd be more than pleased to send you the original so you can have a try yourself (the Agencia Brasil site is a very rich source, but it does require registration). –Hajor 17:03, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your message. I'm not really interested that much; I was only wondering if you still have the large picture. If it's not much use in terms of quality, then of course there's no point. — Timwi 17:08, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

OK. As a rule I try to shoot for 640x480 (to make the thumbnail > larger version function worthwhile, as you said in your earlier message). Not with this one, unfortunately, but check out Image:Brazil.LulaDaSilva.02.jpg -- a wonderful photo! Cheers, –Hajor 17:14, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Accidental creations

How do we handle accidental creations like Talk:Maximus Rex? Just copy-paste and delete, or what? Thanks. Pakaran. 17:16, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I don't know where it belongs (perhaps Wikipedia:Reference Desk, maybe the mailing list), but yes, we copy & paste it and delete that page. — Timwi 17:18, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Keith number

I've re-written some of Keith number having seen your comments on the talk page (which I agreed with), I'm not sure it's the most user-friendly definition but it should at least be un-ambiguous. -- Ams80 18:44, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. I understand the article now. See also the Talk page. — Timwi 22:03, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Cudappah

Like the article says, it's a district in Andhra Pradesh which is in India, verifiable by a google search which will bring up countless hits. Wikipedia is often accused of being centric on the western world with little or no thought of other nations. Let's not go proving it to them eh? :-) Graham :) 01:15, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Sorry :/ — Timwi 01:28, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Empty images

Okay, okay, I'll update the list ;) silsor 23:57, Mar 9, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks :-) — Timwi 23:57, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It's now a public article in the Wikipedia namespace. Wikipedia:List of empty images. silsor 01:45, Mar 10, 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] How dare you ...

... remove an image from my personal page and have it deleted? Is this the spirit of building an encyclopedia together? Wikikiwi 19:03, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I'll refrain from deleting stuff from your pages in future if you so wish. But I will continue to delete images that were listed on Images for deletion for a whole week without a single voice of opposition. — Timwi 20:33, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] copyvio message

Good idea, replacing the copyvio message on Wikipedia:Possible copyright infringements. The copyvio1/2 include a link to the /temp to create a new stub - in accordance with the established procedure. - Texture 20:29, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Saint Patrick's Battalion

Sorry -- I didn't realise that article was listed on Opentask (which I seldom use, I must confess). It just cropped up on my watchlist tonight – the original merge of the two articles was mine – so I set myself to the task. Not very hard; the earlier version of the article was far superior. Best, –Hajor 03:41, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] MediaWiki:Merge2

Great improvement on MediaWiki:Merge2! Very cool! Kingturtle 06:22, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! Glad you like it! — Timwi 12:32, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Bad Redirects

Great work on clearing them all up! I went back to do some more, and was astonished to find them all gone! Noel 16:04, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, are you talking about double-redirects? If so, yeah. There are double-redirects left in the DB, but finding them is difficult due to the corruption of the links table. — Timwi 16:23, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Copyvios - Notice

Hi Timwi. If you add pages to the list of Wikipedia:Possible copyright infringements, please add a note to either the pages, the talk pages thereof, or to the talk page of the user responsible for the edit in question. In my case, you added my List of Japanese cooking utensils and subpages to the Copyvios list without dropping a notice somewhere else. I would not have known at all if i would not have checked a what links here page by chance. If you got suspicious about the creation of all the pages within 30 second total, I am just a Geek having fun (but arent we all ...), and it took me about 6+ hours beforehand to write and edit the stuff. Anyway, I added my comment to the Copyvios. Best Regards , chris_73 01:40, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I do normally put the {{msg:copyvio}} stuff on the page. I didn't in this case because it was just a vague suspicion. — Timwi 07:54, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Well, no harm done. Thanks for removing the Copyvio from the List. Best regards, chris_73 11:21, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Entwurf für neue deutsche Startseite

Hallo Tim, dem Entwurf für die Main Page folgend, habe ich zur Vereinheitlichung des internationalen Erscheinungsbildes die Seite mal mit deutschen Inhalten gefüllt (vgl. de:Hauptseite/tmp). Alle Inhalte befinden sich noch im Artikel selbst. Textbausteine müssten hier noch angelegt werden. Auch fehlen einige weiterführende Links. Aber das Ganze sollte zunächst nur als Diskussionsbeispiel dienen. Wobei ich mich nach der Pleite mit der Nutzung der Textbausteine nicht wirklich auf die deutsche Diskussion freue. ;-) -- de:Benutzer:Triebtäter

Du verwechselst mich wahrscheinlich mit jemandem. Mein Name ist nicht "Tim". — Timwi 18:33, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Japanese prefecture capitalization

moved to Talk:Prefectures of Japan#Japanese prefecture capitalization

One thing I want to say it: please don't move Japan-related articles without notice. --Nanshu 04:19, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] What is your vote??

You appear to have fixed double re-direct pages of some Atlanta FM radio stations. Go to the list of radio stations page and click on "Discuss this page". Go to the bottom and you will see a voting poll. Do you vote for yes or no?? User 66.32.243.138

Hi there. Please sign your messages using ~~~~ (after getting an account, of course). Also, please repair your "?" key. One is enough. — Timwi 00:27, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I saw that you went into the talk page for list of radio stations in Georgia, but all you did is omit the double question mark. I finally signed, but you didn't finally vote. User 66.32.243.138

Oh, my! Don't you feel great for being able to read article histories. — As for voting, why should I? — Timwi 00:56, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The votes are tied at 1-1 and I am hoping that someday soon one choice will be far ahead of the other (e.g. 20 to 7.) Now, how could you tell that I was able to read article histories?? What would I have done differently otherwise?? User 66.32.243.138

First, please get an account. Then, please learn patience. You have only posted that poll two days ago. Wait for at least a week. Thirdly, stop demanding things. If I were interested in your poll, I would have voted. — Timwi 01:07, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I am very sorry for expecting you to have interest in this poll; I just thought it because I saw you were aware of fixing double re-directs. And please, don't call me a coward! User 66.32.243.138

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[edit] Victim

Are you sure about that Victim page move? There seem to be a lot of backlinks, most of which aren't intended to point at the film... Evercat 01:46, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I see. I haven't checked them. However, I was under the impression that article titles should not have a disambiguation identifier in parentheses if there is no disambiguation necessary anyway. I do not think there will be an actual article on victims. — Timwi 01:54, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Jetsun Damba

Timwi -- help me out, I've gotten us in a pickle. I was editing Khalkha Jetsun Dampa, set all the re-directs towards it (Jetsun Dampa, Bogd Gegen and a cheat, Zanabazar) when I came across your article entitled Jebtsundamba and it's own set of redirects. We really want to use Jetsun Dampa or Khalkha Jetsun Dampa because that's what he calls himself as you can see from the new external link (isn't the web wonderful). But now we are all criss-crossed in namespace & both of us are fixing it simultaneously. I'll hand it over to you & trust you'll do the right thing. Somehow I got Jetsun Dampa in there also (-pa instead of -ba ending). technopilgrim 02:48, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)~

I think you're misunderstanding something. I'm not working on any particular article. I'm using SQL queries to find double-redirects (A => B => C) and I'm fixing them by blindly changing A to redirect to C. I don't think I've ever heard any of the names you mentioned (other than just now when I fixed those redirects). If you think any article is in a wrong place, then please move it. — Timwi 02:53, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Well that explains how your scholarship happened so quick! I'll go work out the naming issues and hopefully stay ahead of the automated SQL queries. Thanks for your timely explanation. Over and out — technopilgrim 07:11, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Link table corruption and deletion

Hello Timwi. Can you explain what you're doing when you're deleting pages with the reason "trying to fix link table corruption...". Thanks, Maximus Rex, 04:04, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I was waiting for someone to ask me this. :-) First of all, notice that I'm strictly deleting (and recreating) only redirect pages this way, so nothing important ever gets lost.

The "link table" is the database table that stores information about links between pages. Normally, this information should be updated appropriately when a page is edited, but we've had a bug for a very long time that led to this not being updated correctly. Due to this, the information in that database table got progressively corrupted.

I am "fixing" some of these now because I'm trying to fix double-redirects (as you can probably see on Recent Changes), and some of this invalid information sometimes makes my double-redirect query return pages that aren't actually double-redirects. — Timwi 04:10, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Point

I don't know, or need to know, what you are in general accomplishing with your "hr" edits.

On the other hand, what you have now done twice to Point reads for me as

a point in a space <var>X</var> is simply an element of the set <var>X</var>.

Unless you are fixing something specific that afflicts more users than your cure, it is destructive and mustn't stand. --Jerzy(t) 18:03, 2004 Mar 15 (UTC)

I am not the author of that line, nor have I touched it. — Timwi 18:10, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Oh. I see it now. It's a bug in my script. Sorry about that. — Timwi 18:10, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[Smile] Thanks. And thanks for not staying as confident as seems to have been your impulse.

And, BTW, thanks for the double-redirect work. I try to be conscientious about it, but i usually can't bear to work at it steadily (lacking any bot).

Do you think the exhortation at Move this page is adequate? I recall it as being vague between double redirects, and plain ones, which maybe i wasted gumption on fixing. --Jerzy(t) 18:36, 2004 Mar 15 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're referring to, but I made a change to the page that appears after someone moves a page to encourage them to look for double-redirects [2]. — Timwi 18:39, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I've now made a similar change to the actual Move page [3] — Timwi 18:43, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Maio and astronomical objects...

User:Maio continues to go around creating odd and unnecessarily complex (and hard-to-remember) article titles for astronomical objects -- his latest behemoth is Sedna, Trans-Neptunian object 2003 VB12. I'm starting to get really annoyed at this convention, as it's just plain illogical and unncessarily complicated... but I'm afraid he's already rejected all my arguments, and I feel like I'd be beating a dead horse by attempting to approach him about it. You've intervened in this dispute before; perhaps you could offer a few more words of wisdom in this... -- Seth Ilys 03:40, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure what "words of wisdom" I can offer; all I can do is tell him to stop, and move the pages he has moved back to their original title. I am useless at mediation and talking with people, you know. Someone else will have to do that. — Timwi 14:45, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Re: astronomical objects

Refer to Talk:Sedna (astronomical object) and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomical Objects. There is an ongoing discussion about this. The reasoning behind this is how search engines link to these type of articles. By doing it in the latter manner, the general public (ie: visitors who do not contribute to Wikipedia) are provided with a detailed, precise and human-readable link.

Let me give you a copy/paste of my argument:

In summary, when we have an instution like NASA using this type of naming convention, I can't find a reason to not use it here. I'm backing up my argument with evidence, and giving a piece of advice from some of my previous experiences where I have had to deal with non-technically oriented users.

—Michael | Talk 15:01, Mar 16, 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Orphaned Articles

The Wikipedia:Orphaned Articles in question on the mailing list has a capital A.

The one you edited is Wikipedia:Orphaned articles.

See [9] for the section repetition in quesstion.

-- Cyrius 16:47, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Ah, I see. What's the reason for having both pages? — Timwi 18:25, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Heck if I know. But on Wikipedia Talk:Orphaned articles User:Angela says that page was just a cache for Special:Lonely Pages, and was supposed to look like that mess of anchors. But since Special:Lonelypages is essentially dead, only the capital A Wikipedia:Orphaned Articles gets any use (although it's overdue for a refresh). -- Cyrius 19:56, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] friendly reminder

just a friendly reminder....when unprotecting a page, be sure to remove the deletion notice from the article in question, and be sure to make a note of your actions on Wikipedia:Protected page. i've done each of these steps for you this time, so don't worry about it. sincerely, Kingturtle 21:16, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

OK, thanks :) — Timwi 16:16, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Case chart

Nice work on the case chart, I'd been meaning to do something like that. Kwertii 16:06, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, but as noted on my User page, it's not actually mine. :) — Timwi 16:16, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] MediaWiki:Protected

Please see Al Gore for why these floating notices are really annoying. I'm about to revert. Evercat 19:07, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)

:-p — Timwi 00:42, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] MediaWiki:Inuse

Hi! Re MediaWiki:Inuse on MediaWiki talk:Inuse we were discussing a less "lurid" color. Your revision was great--we're just looking for something slightly less flourescent and glaring. Would you mind that change? jengod 19:21, Mar 19, 2004 (UTC)

Would I mind what change? — Timwi 00:38, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] You reverted the edits back, but...

There really is no reason to revert back. The poll about voting for whether the FM radio stations should have "FM" in their article name really is no longer needed because Radiojon was able to explain why it is good for "FM" to be in the article of a station that it is most likely that more than 80% (possibly more than 90%) of the voters will vote for "yes" if the poll survives for several months. Why do we still need the poll?? User 66.245.87.34

Your edit looked like vandalism. You might want to register an account to prevent this from happening again. Additionally, I'm really not sure if we delete these things at all; it is always good to be able to look these things up later, without having to scurry through the page histories. — Timwi 03:48, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] The MediaWiki messages

I like the compromise. No hard feelings -Branddobbe 05:18, Mar 20, 2004 (UTC)`

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[edit] MediaWiki:Uspresidents

There is no conensus to add that and it was already reverted once because of this. Please achive consensus at MediaWiki talk:Uspresidents before you add the footer. --Jiang 22:05, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I don't care. Revert it and discuss it to death as you want. I will not start an edit war over it. — Timwi 22:15, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Madrid 11

Why did you move the 11 March, 2004 Madrid attacks without discussing first in Talk? It was agreed upon in the discussion that we would use the European date format in the entire article, including the article's name.

If you really want to help, you may want to move the page to 11 March 2004 Madrid attacks (without the comma). We wanted to move the page there because the European date format does not carry a comma before the year, but the page already exists so without an admin we can't move. Thanks. --Cantus 05:12, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I hate inconsistency. We have September 11, 2001 attacks, so I think we should have March 11, 2004 Madrid attacks. People should stop being so picky about the date format. I don't care if you want to make them all "11 March" and "11 September", but having one this way and one another is inacceptable. — Timwi 05:19, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I hate inconsistency too, but this is the English Wikipedia, not the American English Wikipedia. The Wikipedia Manual of Style explicitly says usage of either date format is acceptable, if it's used consistently throughout the article. Because this event occurred in Europe, it was agreed upon to use the date format used there.

Anyway, can you help moving the page to 11 March 2004 Madrid attacks? We would really appreciate it! --Cantus 05:23, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

THANK YOU!! --Cantus 05:26, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

For what? :-p — Timwi 05:31, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 ;) --Cantus 05:35, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Mailing list fun

Myself, I don't care about the date format itself, but I hate that this could create inconsistency with the September 11, 2004 attacks.

Can I bother you for a stock tip? ;) →Raul654 06:56, Mar 22, 2004 (UTC)

 :-p — Timwi 06:59, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Open proxies

Where there really that many open proxies that were blocked? Dori | Talk 18:14, Mar 22, 2004 (UTC)

Apparently. I'm through with them now. — Timwi 18:16, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] MediaWiki for List of people by name: A etc

Way cool! I'm embarrassed not to have thot of that, and flatter myself that you were inspired by looking over my shoulder aided by my recent summaries.

I suppose that the same kind of mark-up can be applied to the within-page indexes that someone (not sure it wasn't me!) introduced where automatic ToCs grow too big to be very useful, even tho i assume MediaWiki stuff cannot be parameterized. But do you know enuf abt the implementation to comment on my previously private notion that automatic generation of the "distributed ToCs" i just referred to could be added as an option (e.g., __DISTTOC__) as a Small Matter of Programming? --Jerzy(t) 21:03, 2004 Mar 22 (UTC)

I'm afraid that would be a pretty involved thing to program. Personally, I like the TOC as it is. — Timwi 21:08, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I'd appreciate a chance to discuss before collapsing more rows; it's something i've been reversing recently, and i think it's a mistake. --Jerzy(t) 21:07, 2004 Mar 22 (UTC)

Oh, OK, I won't collapse more of them then, but I didn't actually collapse the B's themselves, only the row in the table on List of people by name (except that I collapsed By and Bz together). — Timwi 21:08, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Yes, i understand your distinction, and i also see why you did it, tho i still see a problem. You may have a solution to it tho. More follows. --Jerzy(t) 21:15, 2004 Mar 22 (UTC)

In fact, your innovation at least reduces the problem i have in mind. The reason for uncollapsing is that relying on the redirects to reach the "pair spanning" page (By-Bz for example) means avoiding work when pages are split. (Or merged, tho i mistrust any statement like "we'll never need a page for names beginning "Bz...", and therefore prefer to let the ones that are already split but empty stay, in case; there are costs we can discuss to merging empty pages with any that are likely to have more than a few handfuls of names on them.) If the "main table" you collapsed it in, and the "lateral indexes" (e.g., the links like the one on List of people by name: Ba to List of people by name: Bz or List of people by name: By-Bz, refer only to single-prefix titles (i.e., those with a single letter, single letter-pair, single letter-triple, etc, after the colon), then only the redirects need to be changed to compensate for the change. Hmm. With what you are doing, there are many fewer places to change: in the By-Bz case, one in the main table, and one in the MediaWiki (which takes care of up to 26 pages (or 27, but never mind). I'm sorting out what happens deeper in the tree. A silly example: if Tito has enuf prominent descendants, we need to subdivide Bro and create a Broz page. Broz links to B, By and Bz, to the rest of Bra thru Brz, and (laterally) to Broa thru Broy. So i think the merge or split of By and Bz has to be reflected in the MediaWiki on Bro and on Broz, and on everything else descended from B.

Tell me if i'm wrong, and if i'm not, let's talk about other means of automation. I think a lot would be solved if, say, MediaWiki checked By and Bz to see whether they point at the page it is setting up the msg for, and blacked out the links the way the normal rendering blacks a page's references directly to itself. But i suspect that's still not enough...

Timwi, i'm just not sure, and bcz or other commitments, i don't have time in the next 6 hours to think it all thru; some of this can be covered when the index blocks for the deep pages are written. If you think you understand what i'm talking about, don't let me hold you up where you're pretty sure i'm shooting at ghosts, but i'd be grateful if we can talk more later. --Jerzy(t) 21:53, 2004 Mar 22 (UTC)

One last thot: the Co page is too big, and needs to be split. IMO, tha means first splitting off Cp-Cq, and then splitting Co into no doubt at least 3 pieces. It'll make a good case study. (I did Ca yesterday, and was ready to do Co today. [grin]) --Jerzy(t) 21:58, 2004 Mar 22 (UTC)

Wow. You really do think about this a lot, don't you? ;-) I'll be honest: I couldn't follow most of what you said. I think what you are referring to is that a number of MediaWiki elements would have to be changed if, say, By and Bz were split up again. But, the only ones that need changing are B, Ba and Be. Even if we had to split Bi, Bo and Bu too, that would be only six of them. I don't think that's too much of a problem. It's certainly way less of a problem than it used to be without MediaWiki. :-) — Timwi 22:05, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

(You'll see that i am more concerned abt the representation of collapsement in the main table and other indexes, than abt what i've called merging pages in itself.) Use your own judgement for now; i'll definitely study your last msg, but forgive my current brevity. --Jerzy(t) 22:27, 2004 Mar 22 (UTC)

OK, i'm back on this after all. More from me in the next hour. --Jerzy(t) 00:09, 2004 Mar 23 (UTC)

Do you want to help me with the rest of the pages? It's getting a rather laborious task. :) — Timwi 00:49, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Sure, i've started! ([wink] , bcz i was just fixing some typos). --Jerzy(t) 00:52, 2004 Mar 23 (UTC)

Yeah, I just noticed I missed out "Br" and "Bu" in B... thanks for spotting and fixing that! — Timwi 00:55, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Seriously, even if you wanted to drop it at this point, what's left to do may even be easier than what i had planned out; the greatest thing you could do for LoPbN from my PoV was showing me what i should already have been doing, what was an obvious implication of what i was doing if i had enuf imagination to come up with it.

As to what we were already discussing, i wanna put something on the talk page abt the innovation of leaving the paths directly back toward the root of the tree as usable links, to be sure you (and now i) are not missing something abt why they were traditionally black. And the burden of change in response to a merge or split is more than you described, but not much worse than linear with the depth of the tree, (more on this in the next few hours) and my tentative judgment is that the MW scheme eases it enuf to justify ditching the principle of all links to "spanning" pages being via redirects. Altho no one has been responding to what i've put on the talk lately, i think it needs to be exposed there on the assumption that some of them are at least still reading. Gotta run an errand now; more soon. --Jerzy(t) 01:08, 2004 Mar 23 (UTC)

I do need to ask you one thing: do you have in mind some substitute for the many within-page links you deleted from at least one page (about 30 on [[List of people by name: Bo-Bq|Bo-Bq]), or do you just disagree with me and several others that a ToC that long is barely usable? I think the single level indexes within sections have been working well, and you're going to have to convince me that they shouldn't be put back immediately, before the effort to restore them w/o loss of names increases. --Jerzy(t) 02:11, 2004 Mar 23 (UTC)

Oh, sorry. I thought the TOC would indeed suffice. I'm not sure what exactly you mean by "barely usable"? You click on a link and you're brought to the relevant section. Surely that fulfills the usability requirement. — The reason I deleted them is because I thought they were confusing in the overall page layout. The user expects the bulk of the page to be a list of links, each of which goes to an article on a person, not some persons and some navigational elements. So they should be at the top. I also don't like hrs. ;-) — Timwi 02:16, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I suppose a lot depends on how you navigate, e.g., i don't do WP full-screen, bcz i always have several windows open; i can't speak for others. I lean toward

1. Leaving at least one example done your way.
2. Working up some crisper-formatted versions of the style i prefer as alternatives.
3. Asking for reactions.

--Jerzy(t) 07:41, 2004 Mar 23 (UTC)

I said i you were underestimating the work merge or split requires, in the context of using direct links to "prefix-spanning" pages, rather than via redirects. You are right in pointing what i found confusing in the abstract, despite having emulated it repeatedly recently: while all pages in the B row link to any page in the same row that is part of a split or merge, yes, one msg for B covers all the children of B that are leaves in the tree, and one more (currently Ba and Be) covers each of B's children that itself has children. But the ones you were leaving out are for descendents of children of B that have children: Bar and Ben don't have children yet, but when the tree becomes populated heavily enough, they will, and merging or splitting in the B row affect the msgs named Bar and Ben as well, and those for Br and Bro; yet later, Barn, Barr, Bart, Ben, Benn, Bent, Brow, and Broo.

I don't think it's clear that splits will continue at high levels in the tree, even after the tree gets deep, but unless sticking to single-prefix links to prefix-spanning pages turns out to also have scaling problems, i think it needs a hard look at how awkward it is to deal with the links: in the links model using MW, List of people by name: Ba differs from its current appearance by each of its 3 rows having 26 (or 27, never mind) links, instead of 4 for the third one, and the identical msg on List of people by name: Bas-Baz has Bas, Bat, and so on through Baz as non-black links that (via redirects) link back to that same page -- unless we can get MediaWiki's capabilities increased as i mentioned, to blacken them.

It occurs to me now that altho the total work to effect the changes required by a merge or split is reduced by MW msgs, there is no effect on how deep those changes have to penetrate, and the search to find the places that need editing extends to the same places that, w/o MW, need the changes made. (On the other hand, if MW permits using MW links on an MW page, MW:Be could reference MW:B for its top row, and MW:Ben reference MW:Be, which would let us list the msgs needing changing via what links here. Or was your test that failed a case of that that shows it won't work?)

Bottom line, i'm all for going ahead with using MW. But, as to doing away with redirects, in favor of direct links to prefix-spanning pages, i think in a data structure this ramified, opportunity for discussion is needed before making such far-reaching conversions whose consequences are likely to become more expensive with growth. --Jerzy(t) 07:38, 2004 Mar 23 (UTC)

I'm very sorry, Jerzy, but ... you've now filled more than two screensful of my User talk page, and I'm afraid I really can't follow most of what you're saying. 90% of it doesn't make any sense to me. You're talking about "doing away with redirects", but I haven't seen anyone deleting them. I strongly suggest that, instead of flooding my User talk page here, you leave your ideas on Talk:List of people by name (which I think you did, I haven't looked at it yet), and then you discuss it with others. Myself, I'm going to continue this business, and once you have reached your consensus, you can adapt my changes accordingly. — Yes, the test I did that failed was trying to use a {{msg:}} inside a MediaWiki page. — Timwi 16:46, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I screwed up some brace-code near List of people by name: Col#Cole; i am guessing you could spot the problem in about 30 sec, & i'd be grateful if you would.

--Jerzy(t) 23:42, 2004 Mar 23 (UTC)

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[edit] Deletion Request

Could you please delete the image I uploaded last night Image:Von leeb.jpg. I meant to upload another image as this one is a violation of a copyright. I already uploaded a new one and changed all the links. There is also a copy of this picture on the main page that needs to be replaced by a new one. If possible could you totally delete this image off wikipedia. Thank you, Cfrobel

Hi there. First, a little tip: You can just type four tildes (~~~~) instead of "[[User:Cfrobel|Cfrobel]]". :) Secondly: No, sorry, I won't delete images just like that. You should list it on Wikipedia:Images for deletion instead. — Timwi 02:33, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Oh I thought if the person who uploaded it asked, realizing they made a mistake, then it could be quickly deleted. But I will go ahead and do what you said. Cfrobel 02:37, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I see you took care of it before I listed, thanks for the help. Cfrobel 02:39, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Also is it possible to replace the image on the main page with the new one image:leeb.jpg. I really dont want wikipedia to get into trouble because of my mistake. Cfrobel 02:44, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I don't see where the image is being used on the Main Page. — Timwi 02:54, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)

In the blue in the news column, its says "did you know" has a brief synopsis of the article with the image next to it. Cfrobel 03:08, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Looks like someone else has already changed it to use the new, public-domain image. — Timwi 03:43, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Mediawiki Calendars

I love your Mediawiki Calendars, but I note that someone will have to amend all of them when the year turns to take account of the different start-of-week. How many different layouts actually are there? There's got to be a maximum of 7, and ISTR that one actually never happens? It should be possible to create the whole lot and have them transcluded autmagically in the same way that the Main Page does selected anniversaries:

{{msg:{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}}_{{CURRENTDAY}}_selected_anniversaries}}

If Mediawiki could be persuaded to produce a {{CURRENTYEARTYPE}} variable we'd be laughing:

{{msg:{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}}_{{CURRENTYEARTYPE}}_Calendar}}

What do you think? --Phil | Talk 16:14, Mar 24, 2004 (UTC)

Good idea, but introducing a {{CURRENTYEARTYPE}} just for this purpose is a little overkill. — I hadn't thought of the fact that there will be at most seven of them (but there might be up to fourteen for February ;-) ). I don't mind changing them every year; that's not too much work. — I also considered changing January and February to 2005 now already, since their 2004 versions have already passed. I just never got around to it. What do you think? — Timwi 16:58, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

If that's fine with you, go ahead. I was thinking that maybe some of the other 'pedias might not have anyone so obliging and it would be nice to do it automagically. I did think of poking around the code myself to see where it could be done, but I can't even find where the CURRENTMONTHNAME variable gets processed yet, so I'm not exactly blazing a trail :-) I'll let you know how I get on. --Phil | Talk 18:06, Mar 24, 2004 (UTC)

Parser.php, Line 1075 :-) — Timwi 18:10, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Whitlighter un-delete

You're quite correct: I was too hasty deleting Whitelighter; I should have put it on vfd so people could say what it was and fix it. I tried Googling but it was such semi-gibberish that I couldn't figure out what it was supposed to be! Still, my error. - DavidWBrooks 19:03, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Heh. I tried to Google too, and I was faced with the same problem. But I went on to try "What links here"... ;-) — Timwi 20:16, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Revert on Requests for adminship

Timwi - I had to revert your last comment on Wikipedia:Requests for adminship. You made it after I protected the page during an edit war. I hope there are no hard feelings. →Raul654 23:12, Mar 24, 2004 (UTC)

Ah, that's fine. Angela mentioned this on IRC to me too; I didn't realise that the page was protected. I'm sorry. — Timwi 23:13, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I figured as much. I've made the same mistake myself. →Raul654 23:14, Mar 24, 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Quickpolls on Goings-on

I had to remove the users you identified at Wikipedia:Goings-on as the subjects of the quickpoll. The first implementation of the quickpoll actually involved Anthony DiPierro and GrazingshipIV (they had an edit war on RfA before Perl and Wik). Perl and Wik were not banned using the quickpoll process.

The reason I didn't name names initially was because I didn't think it was necessary to publicize who the culprits were. People who wanted to know could easily get the information from the quickpolls page itself, and I don't want Goings-on to become another forum for edit wars over how we present community news. If you really think it's desirable to identify the subjects of quickpolls, I can live with it, but you have to at least get the facts right. --Michael Snow 18:12, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Haha! I'm sorry for my mistake, but obviously, I wouldn't have made it if you had put the names in right away. :-) If it is easy to find out who they are by going to the page, then I don't see a reason not to mention them directly. — Timwi 18:42, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Maybe I was too timid to state the names myself, but I also didn't want it to look like I was pursuing a vendetta against either one (I've butted heads with Anthony before). I did anticipate that someone else might add the names, and thought I was identifying them well enough to avoid confusion (by telling people where the edit war took place). Little did I suspect that within a day, Alex Plank would decide to make yet another bid for adminship - which was of course sure to precipitate another edit war on that very same page. --Michael Snow 19:09, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Meta sysop

Congratulations! You are now a Meta administrator. Please read the Meta:Deletion policy before deleting anything, and make sure you understand how to edit pages such as the fundraising page before doing so. Angela. 01:59, Mar 27, 2004 (UTC)

Wow, that was quick. Thank you! :-) — Timwi 03:42, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Thanks

Sam Spade 06:16, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

For what? — Timwi 06:17, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

05:38, 28 Mar 2004 Timwi unprotected Nazism [10]

Sam Spade 06:24, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Right. No problem. ;-) — Timwi 06:26, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] List of people

I'm bored now. :) These are the ones that are not yet done: J, K, L, M, N, R. Angela. 01:08, Mar 29, 2004 (UTC)

OK, thanks a lot for your help! :) — Timwi 01:38, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] RichL -> Mendel

User:RichL now points to User:Mendel; perhaps you want to change the link in "people you know" at the bottom of your user page. -pne 09:22, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Haha! Yes, thanks. :-) — Timwi 09:29, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Sedna

Thanks for fixing the talk pages redirects. I simply forgot about them. — Jor (Talk) 11:06, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

No problem. — Timwi 11:25, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Hidden Scripts in HTML Comments

Hi Timwi,

I've seen on wikimedia some script pages of you, where you tell the interested readership: I'm placing them inside HTML comments

My conclusion: you are doing this because the nowiki-tag won't work for everything .. but what's not working? Of course, I haven't found the nowiki description between all the nowiki uses... --Hella 20:28, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I suppose instead of <nowiki> you mean <pre>, but yeah, you're quite right. I didn't expect the software to be clever enough to escape everything correctly. I've updated the page now [11]. It would have been helpful if you would have linked me to it directly so I wouldn't have had to search for it first. — Please notice also that I have developed the scripts further since then. I should probably update them as well, but I can't be bothered now. — Timwi 20:52, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Contributions count

Hi Timwi, I'll answer here since I'm not supposed to post to newsgroups while at work. Look again, right above the table it says: "only article edits are counted, not edits on discussion pages, etc" Cheers, Erik Zachte 12:43, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm blind. — Timwi 13:55, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] USS Enterprise

Timwi, are you sure that you want to disambiguate Joseph Campbell, captain of the second USS Enterprise, as [[Joseph Campbell (Star Trek)|Joseph Campbell]]? --the Epopt 05:48, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

What's wrong with it? — Timwi 06:01, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

What does Star Trek have to do with a schooner of the Continental Navy? --the Epopt 14:17, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Patches

Thanks for your reply on wikitech-l. However I don't want to clog up the list (and incidentally betray my total lack-of-clue) by stating in public that whilst I understand every individual word, the sentences are giving me trouble :-). You wrote:

Anything the 'patch' tool will accept. (The easiest way for you to create these patches is to use the 'cvs diff -u' command-line command.)

I'm certain that I've not got this on my Windows box, and I'm equally certain that I don't know where to get it from. Does it come as some sort of "CVS" package? Or if I acquire an "account" at SourceForge, is this a tool which instantly becomes available? If the latter, SourceForge already knows who I am, since I registered there, so have I merely missed some options? Yours in confusion Phil | Talk 12:18, Mar 31, 2004 (UTC)

It (the cvs tool) comes with every GNU/Linux/Unix installation. I'm not sure about Windows. The Windows case is especially difficult because you have to couple cvs with ssh because SourceForge is anal. I'm afraid I can't help you much with it other than recommending WinCVS and/or Cygwin and/or (excuse me) GNU/Linux. — Timwi 13:38, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I have Cygwin but don't appear to have installed cvs with it. I looked at WinCVS but there's nowhere to tell you if it can make patch files like that. The WinCVS documentation refers to WinMerge, which I have, but that doesn't say anything about patch files either. I suppose I'm just going to have to reply to your post and hope someone takes pity on me :-) --Phil | Talk 15:01, Mar 31, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, that might be a good idea. — Timwi 15:12, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)