User talk:Happy-melon/Archive 2

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This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents 1 You are now an administrator 2 Re: Template:Old template 3 WikiProject Mixed Drinks comments 4 Yet more "Congrats" 5 Speedy deletion of Template:HProll 6 Speedy deletion of Template:Ha1 7 Speedy deletion of Template:Ha2 8 Speedy deletion of Template:Ha3 9 Speedy deletion of Template:Ha4 10 Speedy deletion of Template:Ha5 11 Speedy deletion of Template:Ha6 12 Speedy deletion of Template:Ha7 13 Connect2Wiltshire 14 CSD of talk archives 15 I was wondering if you could tell me... 16 Emma Watson 17 Speedy deletion of Template:LOCE/All 18 Speedy deletion of Template:LOCE/Cmt 19 Page deletion 20 Thanks 21 Small LoCE banner 22 The Subversive Caltrop 23 Ashley Barnes 24 MelonBot 25 Peer review archives 26 MelonBot PR exclude not working 27 Spelling error in Template:GR 28 Template:Euro coins 29 template edits 30 Speedy deletion of Template:User LOCE 31 GR redirects 32 Spammer 33 Award 34 Conversion of Religion banner 35 Wikilove 36 Speedy deletion of Hello...Shovelhead! 37 Template help 38 Double redirects in speedy templates 39 Template:AARTalk 40 Deletion Review for Template:Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame inductees - Readers Poll 41 Persian Gulf mediation 42 Saxophone peer reviews 43 Templates 44 archtransit 45 Meta Banner 46 Category= 47 Template junkie 48 Semi-protection for Cillian Murphy? 49 AN header 50 POV tag on Second Amendment page 51 hidden-delete-reason issue 52 Skylla the Copyeditor 53 Previous PRs 54 citation template 55 your comment on Yarrow talk page 56 deletion script 57 Archiving 58 Draft RFAR 59 {{Infobox Officeholder}} 60 Amsoil 61 Categories and templates 62 Template stuff 63 I hate to bother you, but 64 Question for you 65 Template:Country data Holy Roman Empire 66 db-disambig 67 Wikipedia talk:Protection policy 68 db-copypaste 69 Thanks 70 Re: China 71 Thanks 72 Confusing 73 {{Infobox Website}} edit 74 Melonbot request 75 9/11 76 Constructing a poker hand 77 Jyllands posten cartoon controv edit 78 Dual Band Blade Antenna 78.1 Thank you 79 Template talk:Recent death 80 A Simple Plan 80.1 Wow 81 Good improvement 82 How do I... 83 Template talk:Editprotected#Changing formatting 84 Removed nbsp (and therefore COinS) from Cite journal template 85 Copyright tags and copyright issues 86 OK, you can go ahead! 87 My CSD-U1 88 Deletion of User talk:Nicholas Perkins/Archive Aug 2007 and User talk:Nicholas Perkins/Archive Sep 2007 89 Can editors be given an option on journal volume font? 90 Template:Db-g12 91 Banner shell on Adolf Hitler 92 Restore interlang links on RC please? 93 {{pp-meta}} 94 Unauthorized task

You are now an administrator

Congratulations, I have just closed your RfA as successful and made you an administrator. Take a look at the administrators' how-to guide and the administrators' reading list if you haven't read those already. Also, the practice exercises at the new admin school may be useful. If you have any questions, get in touch on my talk page. WjBscribe 00:21, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Congrats! Malinaccier (talk) 01:17, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Congratulations! Nyttend (talk) 03:30, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

And another: congrats! - Dafyd (talk) 11:51, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

A fifth: congratulations!!   jj137 (talk) 12:18, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Might want to update your userbox. :)   jj137 (talk) 12:19, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Congratulations :) - Rjd0060 (talk) 15:33, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

You are welcome and congratulations! Earthbendingmaster 15:38, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Congrats from me too! κaτaʟaveno^T_C 15:49, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Congrats, now get to work! :) Jauerback^dude?/_dude. 16:30, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Congratulations! I know we haven't been in contact for a while, but I never forget nice things. :) GlassCobra 16:35, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi Hmellon, nice to see you passed with such a good percentage. :) If you need any help, just call; I'm usually here. · AndonicO ^Hail! 16:42, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Congrats and you're welcome from me too! Much deserved -- I admire your grace under pressure, patience and persistence. --Melty girl (talk) 18:32, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Dittos as well-now don't let the bastards get you down ;0) SkierRMH (talk) 21:00, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Congratz, well deserved AP Shinobi (talk) 15:12, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Re: Template:Old template

As I said before, I don't mind layout changes or redirection of templates, however, you've unilaterally changed the fundamental way in which these templates can be tagged. It is not a requirement of the speedy deletion criterion that the duplicated template be listed; as such, that could should be modified to make that parameter entirely optional. I can say after tagging several hundred of these that it simply is not necessary to tell which template these are duplicates of. It is up to administrators' discretion whether or not these templates are needed or not. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:19, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Whoa. I commented here without having looked at your contributions, and frankly, I'm appalled. It's one thing to make unilateral changes to a community template; it's quite another to use rollback and undo on speedy taggings that I have made. That's simply unacceptable, and I suggest you read up on WP:ROLLBACK. It is never used on anything except clear cases of vandalism. You've been an admin for about a week; I've been around a bit longer. We may have differences on the interpretation of T3, however, that's something you discuss. You don't simply start going through the contributions of another admin, make whatever reverts you want to, and say nothing. I'm pretty disappointed in your behavior.

Going past all of that, as I've said in the past on WT:CSD, I interpret T3 to apply to deprecated and orphaned templates, regardless of examples. You're free to disagree with this interpretation, but reverts are unquestionably the wrong way to go about stating your opposition. Either is modifying the templates that I worked on (without consultation), changing their behavior, and then leaving quite a mess behind for someone else to clean up. There is no requirement in T3 that I list which templates they are a duplicate of, and I will continue to not list that information. If you feel I should be using TfD, G6, or some other system, you're free to discuss that with me. But please first fix the mess you've made. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:32, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I edited the {{db-t3}} and {{old template}} so that the pages that were already tagged with the second one are no longer creating error messages. To do this I added a different parameter to db-t3 that allows the user to type out the reason by hand if they wish. In many cases, esp. when it's clear that the template could only be used in one article, it's easy enough to check how the template was replaced. For example, the 1960 AFL west season template was replaced by a simple table. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:31, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Shit. Well, it seems that well Carl updated the {{old template}} and {{db-t3}} templates, the seven-day notice was inadvertently removed. Thus, an admin saw the taggings and had no reason not to delete the templates. It seems something needs to be modified in order to get {{old template}} to warn about the seven days notice (and perhaps not categorize them as well). I haven't looked too much into how the templates are currently set up, so at this point, I'm unsure how everything is currently operating.

I agree that undeleting for the purpose of waiting a few more days seems silly. The admin seemed to have made a good-faith effort. The issue of whether or not T3 can be used for deprecated and orphaned templates doesn't really seem like it needs discussion. Admins are free to use their discretion on these cases. I'm tagging and notifying people based on my discretion, when in reality, I could simply delete these templates under G6. I'm trying to do the right thing with these old, unused templates. One way or another, they need to be cleaned out, and T3 seems like a perfectly reasonable solution. I've spoke with Carl, and he seems to agree (thus, the reason= modifications by him). Though, you'll have to ask him for his specific views. Sorry if this response feels hurried -- it was. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:33, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Template:Old template/date was set to one day instead of seven days. There was also an issue with Template:Old template. Both have been fixed. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:20, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Mixed Drinks comments

		The Barnstar of Good Humor
		I saw your comments regarding yourself at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mixed Drinks#Participants. Speaking as one basically brain-dead bot boy to another who describes himself as such, it's nice to know that there's someone else out there who can do the same sort of thing and actually admit it. John Carter (talk) 01:19, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! Happy‑melon 09:03, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Yet more "Congrats"

I must add my congratulations to the outpouring of accolades. And I must confess to a slight bout of blushing at being mentioned in your admin request interview. I hope to eventually become an impressive enough contributer to do justice to your mentorship! SkyllaLaFey (talk) 00:23, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Template:HProll

A tag has been placed on Template:HProll requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section T3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a deprecated or orphaned template. After seven days, if it is still unused and the speedy deletion tag has not been removed, the template will be deleted.

If the template is intended to be substituted, please feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag and please consider putting a note on the template's page indicating that it is substituted so as to avoid any future mistakes.

Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:26, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Template:Ha1

A tag has been placed on Template:Ha1 requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section T3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a deprecated or orphaned template. After seven days, if it is still unused and the speedy deletion tag has not been removed, the template will be deleted.

If the template is intended to be substituted, please feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag and please consider putting a note on the template's page indicating that it is substituted so as to avoid any future mistakes.

Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:27, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Template:Ha2

A tag has been placed on Template:Ha2 requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section T3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a deprecated or orphaned template. After seven days, if it is still unused and the speedy deletion tag has not been removed, the template will be deleted.

If the template is intended to be substituted, please feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag and please consider putting a note on the template's page indicating that it is substituted so as to avoid any future mistakes.

Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:27, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Template:Ha3

A tag has been placed on Template:Ha3 requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section T3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a deprecated or orphaned template. After seven days, if it is still unused and the speedy deletion tag has not been removed, the template will be deleted.

If the template is intended to be substituted, please feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag and please consider putting a note on the template's page indicating that it is substituted so as to avoid any future mistakes.

Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:27, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Template:Ha4

A tag has been placed on Template:Ha4 requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section T3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a deprecated or orphaned template. After seven days, if it is still unused and the speedy deletion tag has not been removed, the template will be deleted.

If the template is intended to be substituted, please feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag and please consider putting a note on the template's page indicating that it is substituted so as to avoid any future mistakes.

Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:27, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Template:Ha5

A tag has been placed on Template:Ha5 requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section T3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a deprecated or orphaned template. After seven days, if it is still unused and the speedy deletion tag has not been removed, the template will be deleted.

If the template is intended to be substituted, please feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag and please consider putting a note on the template's page indicating that it is substituted so as to avoid any future mistakes.

Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:27, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Template:Ha6

A tag has been placed on Template:Ha6 requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section T3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a deprecated or orphaned template. After seven days, if it is still unused and the speedy deletion tag has not been removed, the template will be deleted.

If the template is intended to be substituted, please feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag and please consider putting a note on the template's page indicating that it is substituted so as to avoid any future mistakes.

Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:27, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Template:Ha7

A tag has been placed on Template:Ha7 requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section T3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a deprecated or orphaned template. After seven days, if it is still unused and the speedy deletion tag has not been removed, the template will be deleted.

If the template is intended to be substituted, please feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag and please consider putting a note on the template's page indicating that it is substituted so as to avoid any future mistakes.

Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:27, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Connect2Wiltshire

One of my articles Connect2Wiltshire was deleted because it did not have enough significance. Well it does have a lot of significance because it provides the only bus/share taxi services to many towns in south Wiltshire. Without it people would not be able to get to places like Mere and Stourhead and small villages in the area. It should not have been deleted. Unisouth (talk) 15:57, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

How about this? Unisouth (talk) 17:37, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

CSD of talk archives

Well, the only reason I really want them deleted is because I changed the archive format from one every month to a rotating archive. Therefore, I don't use them anymore. Nol888_(Talk)^(Review) 18:45, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

I was wondering if you could tell me...

how to archive Talk:Uranus. I can't figure out how to do it. Serendi^podous 21:19, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Emma Watson

Congradulations on getting Emma Watson featured. Great work. Basketball110 _{the pages I've messed up completely} 02:18, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Template:LOCE/All

A tag has been placed on Template:LOCE/All requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section T3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a deprecated or orphaned template. After seven days, if it is still unused and the speedy deletion tag has not been removed, the template will be deleted.

If the template is intended to be substituted, please feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag and please consider putting a note on the template's page indicating that it is substituted so as to avoid any future mistakes (<noinclude>{{tranclusionless}}</noinclude>).

Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:24, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Template:LOCE/Cmt

A tag has been placed on Template:LOCE/Cmt requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section T3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a deprecated or orphaned template. After seven days, if it is still unused and the speedy deletion tag has not been removed, the template will be deleted.

If the template is intended to be substituted, please feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag and please consider putting a note on the template's page indicating that it is substituted so as to avoid any future mistakes (<noinclude>{{tranclusionless}}</noinclude>).

Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:24, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Page deletion

Hello, I wrote a page from a very neutral point of view but it has been deleted. I wanted to create a page on our software Autopano Pro software and I wrote something like our competitors, PTgui for example. I don't understand why my page has been deleted. Could you please tell me what I have to remove to make my page informative and not to get the blatant advertising tag. Thanks for your help, Waph (talk) 10:25, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for your help. I rewrited the page of Autopano Pro, focusing on what we are known for: the stitching of one of the biggest panoramic image of the world. I hope this will be an interesting content for Wikipedia. Best regards Waph (talk) 15:50, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Small LoCE banner

Hi HappyMelon, I see that Sandy Georgia prefers small LoCE banners on the article talk pages. Yesterday she changed an old one at Talk:Birmingham campaign by adding a small=yes parameter to the template instructions. Imitating that, I shrank several other banners on the talk pages of articles I had copyedited and which had not yet been proofed. I tried to shrink banners that had been copyedited and proofed, but the small=yes procedure does not work. See Talk:Armenian Revolutionary Federation for an example. I know nothing about template design. Can you tell me if a way exists to shrink the LoCE completed templates like the one on Talk:Armenian Revolutionary Federation? I'd be happy to do some cleanup of these things if somebody shows me how. Finetooth (talk) 18:04, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick response. I will make no further changes to the LoCE banners already in place unless another editor expresses a preference. I have no strong opinion about the size. Finetooth (talk) 20:19, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

The Subversive Caltrop

Come now, I am a happy friendly admin and helpful editor since Nupedia days. I have been cleaning up (by deleting) my boring inbox (Talk Page) until the policy changed one day. I do not like the policy, but I surely can understand it. So about a year (well some time ago anyway) ago I tried to resurrect my old tedious talk page and archive it. I made a few mistakes and it turned into a giant mess. I asked for help on IRC - which will show in the histories, and together we tried to undelete and merge my pedestrian talk page. We gave up and put ice packs on our throbbing temples. There seem to me to much better things to do than worry about the oh-so unsinister pedantic drudgery of my talk page. Bring it back if you wish, poke around all you like, I have no reason to object. But why? I just can't understand with all the half-finished important work the unknown to me honorable Prodego (or anyone) would care. Prepare for unparalleled boredom. Caltrop (talk) 02:17, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Ashley Barnes

What was I suppose to add to it and what qualifies as a reliable source? Jimbo^[online] 22:01, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Does http://soccerfactsuk.co.uk or the official Grays Athletic website constitute as reliable? Jimbo^[online] 22:39, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

MelonBot

Hi! I was just wondering what User:MelonBot/Member lists/WPHP is. It has a bunch of different users names (including mine) listed and things about edits and so on. I just wondered what it was and since MelonBot is your bot I thought you were the one to ask. Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cincydude55 (talk • contribs) 22:05, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Peer review archives

This seems to be going well. I had a quick look through the peer review subpages and spotted one glitch here, and a related one here.

I've fixed this particular case, so this is just a heads up: not sure how common this kind of thing is likely to be. Geometry guy 17:27, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I spotted a few more things:

• MelonBot seems to be missing "/archive 1" examples;
• I also spotted one "/1" example that got skipped;
• I not stupid has archives 1 and 3 switched, with some links correct, some not (maybe I will fix this one);
• Liverpool F.C. needs to be permuted 1->3->4->1. I'm not sure about the links. This will be a pain to fix and discussion 3 is still active.

Apart from this, the archives up to letter N are looking great! Geometry guy 18:13, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

The /archive1 bug has struck again: this is a bad one! Geometry guy 18:20, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

It looks like the problem is when the article name ends in a number: I've seen several more examples. I'm sorry I didn't spot this sooner. Geometry guy 18:27, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I sorted out WP:Peer review/I Not Stupid and WP:Peer review/Singapore (see my talk page for the latter). Geometry guy 11:44, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I've now done Liverpool F.C. too, and think that all the current PRs are now prepared for MelonBot swinging by. But if it can go wrong, it will. Lets hope it can't :-) Geometry guy 21:53, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

MelonBot PR exclude not working

MelonBot moved WP:Peer review/Automated/February 2008 to an archive. So the PR exclude page is not doing its job. I hope you find this edit as entertaining as I did! Cheers, Geometry guy 16:33, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Spelling error in Template:GR

As HDow noted on the talk page, there is a spelling error in the template source code. And since you were the last admin to revise it, I thought you might care to correct the error.

The |title of reference 6 in the source code should read: Find a County vice Find a Country. Please could you fix it? Here's a quick link [1]. I'll also put a {{Template:Editprotected}} on the page, which might get it done quicker. Thanks. -- Ltvine | Talk 00:07, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Template:Euro coins

Hello, Happy-melon. I see you've replaced the non-free images in Template:Euro coins, along with a test to make sure they only display in articles ([2]). While I appreciate your effort to follow the non-free content policy, I'm afraid that simply including a test such as this cannot do the trick. The reason that non-free images are not allowed in templates is because a separate non-free use rationale must be given for every use of a non-free image in an article, and because non-free images must be used as sparingly as possible. Including non-free images in templates which are meant to be used in many different articles violates these points of the non-free content policy. It is not the use of the image in the Template namespace that is the problem—it's the fact that the images can easily be included in many different articles. Let me know if you have any questions. —Bkell (talk) 13:51, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I am aware of that, and indeed the NFCC criteria must be adhered to. The encapsulation of the enormously long table syntax in a template is no way meant to obviate the need for fair-use rationales for each use. As I said in the TfD, with the immediate issue of ImageBacklogBot removing the images every week resolved, the arguments from the recent past TfD stand, which were, in essence, that encapsulation here was a suitable way of hiding from casual editors the extremely complicated table code. If subpages were enabled in the mainspace, I would have moved the code to a subpage of Euro coins, but as this is not possible, the template will have to suffice. I hope this explains my justification for this action. Happy‑melon 13:57, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I guess this raises two big questions in my mind. First, why is it important to have such a complicated table in the first place, and why does it have to be in the euro coins article? Can we make something like Gallery of euro coins to separate the huge table from the main article? Second, what is the real copyright status of these coins? Many of the coin images are on the Commons, which means that they are free of copyright restrictions; why isn't that true of all of them? This whole headache can be avoided if someone can establish that these coin images are actually free. —Bkell (talk) 14:06, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I guess I see why the national sides of the coins aren't necessarily free. —Bkell (talk) 14:08, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

The reason to have such a complicated table is because it is unquestionably the nicest and most professional way of presenting such a lot of data in a compact and effective way. If it were possible to have Featured Templates, I would have {{Euro coins}} up there straight away - it is a beautiful piece of code. Why does it have to be in the euro coins article? Because gallery of euro coins is unquestionably a violation of WP:NFCC - try using the word "gallery" over there and see how far you get. They are only acceptable fair use when they're used in the euro coins article or related sub-articles, but there they are unquestionably informative and make a legitimate fair-use claim. I personally think the current situation (code in template space, but images only display in mainspace) is the best solution. And I couldn't agree more - it would be well worth someone's time to track down the copyright status of each national face and work out which ones we can use freely, and which we have to worry about. It would be very ironic if after all this it turns out that all the national faces are actually free, just no one's bothered to check!! Happy‑melon 21:39, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, trying to pass off Gallery of euro coins would be difficult, but really if we can convince everyone to allow these in a template then we should be able to convince them to allow it in an article like that. I mean, if they satisfy the NFCC now, then they surely satisfy the NFCC if we subst the template into a new article. I may try to do this someday when I feel like opening that can of worms. Ignore all rules, right? —Bkell (talk) 02:35, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

template edits

It's sorted now, but you should be aware that some of your recent work on speedy deletion templates caused some of the templates to themselves show up in CAT:CSD. —Random832 21:21, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Template:User LOCE

A tag has been placed on Template:User LOCE requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section T3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a deprecated or orphaned template. After seven days, if it is still unused and the speedy deletion tag has not been removed, the template will be deleted.

If the template is intended to be substituted, please feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag and please consider putting a note on the template's page indicating that it is substituted so as to avoid any future mistakes (<noinclude>{{transclusionless}}</noinclude>).

Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:13, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

GR redirects

Geographic references is a redirect to the GR templates. Unlike the GR templates that you worked with, it's still simply a redirect. Do you know how to redirect this to the template, so that the references are provided instead of the pages linking to Wikipedia:Geographic references? Nyttend (talk) 15:19, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

What would happen if I changed the link from a redirect to Wikipedia:Geographic references to a redirect to Template:GR? Would it mess it up? I'd like to find out, but I don't want to make a big mess by finding out. Nyttend (talk) 18:00, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Spammer

I'm wondering if you could take a look at the contribs of 68.175.106.228 (talk · contribs). S/he seems to be spamming a certain site into musicals articles. Might you be able to use your newfangled rollback button? —  MusicMaker5376 15:44, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! Will do. —  MusicMaker5376 17:29, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Award

Master Blacksmith Happy-melon: you, and your trusty apprentice MelonBot, are hereby awarded the order of the bath for your sterling efforts to clean up Wikipedia:Peer review. (Or should that be Wikipedia:Peer review/archive1?) Geometry guy 19:29, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Conversion of Religion banner

The difficulty in converting that particular banner is that it has at least three separate subprojects which get different importance assessments, and I'm not sure the meta template is set up for that. The Template:WikiProject Kosovo would probably be a good choice as an experiment, however. John Carter (talk) 19:31, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikilove

Speedy deletion of Hello...Shovelhead!

Hey Happy-Melon--

I've been trying to create this page for a while now but it keeps getting deleted. I added "reliable secondary sources" to the bottom of the page to assert significance, and yet it has been deleted again. Please, PLEASE let me know why. Other admins have simply refused to answer my questions, so I've been forced to simply guess.

Thanks!

Template help

Hey, I have a multipart template idea that I can't quite figure out how to best implement, and you look like someone who could help me think it through. I'm not looking for someone to do it for me—only need some 'there's really no way to do that part' or 'try this way' sort of feedback. If you have the time/inclination, let me know and I'll write it up in an email so I don't clutter up your talk page with my train of thought. Thanks. Maralia (talk) 19:36, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I actually work best with discussion on-wiki, so feel free to "clutter up my talk page" as extensively as you like. What, exactly, are you trying to do? Happy‑melon 12:04, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Okay, here goes! I want to make a utility template, essentially a categorized list of current FA candidates. The problem it's meant to address is that the FAC team doesn't want to sort the main FAC list by category, but some reviewers have indicated they would review more articles if they could more easily find FACS of interest to them. This would not be an official template—merely something for users, and perhaps wikiprojects, to transclude in their own workspace as an easy reference to open FACs. It would have to be manually updated, but I should be able to handle that, as there are usually only 10-15 ingoing/outgoing FACs per day.

Visually, what I want is very simple; here's an abbreviated version on the right. For an idea of scale, there are about 25 categories total. The number of articles that would be listed is roughly 100.

The sticking points on design are (1) I want it to autohide all category sublists by default except categories explicitly parameterized to it for expansion (i.e., I want a reviewer who's a language buff to be able to expand languages only); and (2) I don't want the actual data list to be a pain in the neck to update (so, ideally not buried in display code nor split amongst umpteen different subpages).

That's my dilemma. Any brilliant ideas for a plan of attack? Maralia (talk) 05:37, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Just a ping in case you've lost this in the depths of your talk page :) Maralia (talk) 04:55, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, yes I had lost this - too many other things to keep track of. What you need is something along the lines of this, which calls a base page like this with a different "show" parameter. The sections to be expanded are passed as parameters to the first template: using {{User:Happy-melon/sandbox2|lang=yes|music=yes}} would expand the language and literature and music sections, but not the media section. I hope this is useful for you. Happy‑melon 16:30, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Excellent, that solves the big issues. Thanks very much for your help. Maralia (talk) 21:02, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Double redirects in speedy templates

Someone undid your move from db-nonsense to db-g1, and in the process created a bunch of double redirects. Discussion is at WT:CSD#Double redirects in speedy templates. --Coppertwig (talk) 01:42, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Template:AARTalk

Hi Happy Melon, The template AARTalk seems to need a fix. I noticed you were recently editing it so I thought I would ask you for help (since I am not yet skilled in the art of Template fixing). The problem is that the parameter "needs-taxobox" does not work. The parameter that does seem to work is simply "taxobox". The end result of this is that there are now hundreds of articles in the Category "Amphibian_and_reptile_articles_needing_a_taxobox" because user Ciar tagged those articles with "needs-taxobox=no" (via the AARTalk template) not realizing that the template currently ignores "needs-taxobox". This is also an issue with "needs-photo". Is this something you can help fix? Or maybe point me in the right direction? Thanks. —Noah 09:44, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Yay! You fixed it. Many thanks. I'll keep an eye out for any other issues. —Noah 16:20, 22 February 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Noah Salzman (talk • contribs)

Deletion Review for Template:Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame inductees - Readers Poll

An editor has asked for a deletion review of Template:Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame inductees - Readers Poll. Since you closed the deletion discussion for this article, speedy-deleted it, or were otherwise interested in the article, you might want to participate in the deletion review. Jazzeur (talk) 04:45, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

It was already listed at TFD - what would have been the harm in letting the TFD discussion run its course? In fact, why not simply recreate it now, close the DRV, and let TFD handle it? I'll make this suggestion at the DRV as well. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:51, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

If you have no objection, can you undelete it, close the DRV, and create a new TFD linked to the previous one as user:edgarde has requested? I think we may have lost user:Jazzeur over this, which I think would be a shame. Wikipedia:WikiProject Jazz has no FAs, 3 FFAs, and only 3 GAs. We desperately need editors willing to work in this area. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:31, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! -- Rick Block (talk) 15:44, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Persian Gulf mediation

Er, where are we on this? - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 17:14, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I was referring to this. It seems to have stalled, and I somehow thought you admins have secret batphone communications or something, and would have talked to CloudNine about this stuff. - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 17:43, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Saxophone peer reviews

I don't think I'll be able to get to them today, but I will certainly read through the articles and do some reviewing within the next week. Cheers, Kakofonous (talk) 20:05, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Templates

Thank you for unprotecting the templates, and thank you especially for creating db-meta/new etc.

Oh, wow, you know how to do bots? I want to learn how to do bots. Do you know how I could find the source code for a simple bot, or any other useful instructions for getting started? I tried using Perl and LWP, and was able to download some web pages automatically but not able to download any Wikipedia pages, (they came out blank,) let alone figure out how to edit any pages. I think if I had the basic code for downloading and editing pages I could write lots of complicated stuff.

Re spotting the AN/I thread: no problem, I just happened to look at AN/I and there it was.

I guess we're both interested in templates. You seem to be like me: you don't just do some work, you think about how to fix things so the work will be better-organized from now on.

I created db-a1/new and db-a1/doc. Please check whether I did them right, and then I'll create the others. Thanks a lot for your help! --Coppertwig (talk) 01:06, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for the pointer to the bot instructions! I think it's just what I was looking for. --Coppertwig (talk) 01:23, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

archtransit

In these edits [3] [4]

You left the section "Technically, it might not have been archtransit" on the page while archiving the rest - was this intentional? —Random832 15:43, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Meta Banner

The new Wikipedia:WikiProject Oceans would probably be more than willing to use the template in the construction of their banner. My guess would be to use the image used on the page and userbox. John Carter (talk) 17:10, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Disaster management indicates on their page that they might be interested in getting assessments as well. John Carter (talk) 18:08, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Category=

Howdy, the category= is still not working quite right on Commutant. The way you are doing it seems superior to a template. You are just using a parameter whose default value is ... well the default. It seems natural, and doesn't require a new page.

However, {{unreferenced}} has complicated category adding code. Perhaps it would be better to surround that whole section with the {{{category}}} parameter thing?

Not sure how to best paste the code here, but probably this is easy to read when you edit this page. At any rate, I just went back one revision, and added the {{{category| directly after the comment, and the }}} directly before the next comment (and checked in an external editor that this was where I wanted it).

<!--Transcluded categories begin here-->{{{category|{{#switch:{{NAMESPACE}}||Talk=[[Category:Articles lacking sources {{#if:{{{date|}}}|from {{{date}}}|}}]][[Category:All articles lacking sources]]{{#if:{{{date|}}}|{{#ifexist:Category:Articles lacking sources from {{{date}}}||[[Category:Articles with invalid date parameter in template]]}}|}}|}}}}}<!--{{Unreferenced}} end-->

Notice that there are three times that categories are added. Your recent edit only fixed two of them. Now, I tried WP:NULL edits on Commutant, but it is still picking up the extra category. JackSchmidt (talk) 15:11, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Your next edit fixed it. Thanks. Any reason not to just use the category parameter once? I think it is equivalent, other than hopefully using less cpu. JackSchmidt (talk) 15:15, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

No, no particular reason. It was just that I wanted to make as few modifications as possible to a very high-profile template, so I didn't want to risk breaking one or more of the parser functions when a slightly more messy fix worked and was less likely to do any damage. Happy‑melon 15:17, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Template junkie

I'd like to help out with templates, especially along the development lines.

I fixed a problem with Citation, but I don't have permission to make the change. I figured I'd look for unprotected templates that needed work. Clearly a *new* template is unprotected, so {{add cats}} seemed like a good idea.

I can probably fix some of those image templates, but that is basically just copy-paste, so I'd like to do something a bit more useful. JackSchmidt (talk) 16:15, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Semi-protection for Cillian Murphy?

Hi there -- a question for you. Over at Cillian Murphy, there's an anonymous editor who's been coming by every so often for 10 days to change Murphy's birth year. Do you think it would be appropriate to semi-protect (I think that's the one that bars anons) for a short period, in order to either end this person's disruption or force them to get a login, in which case we could use their talk page? Thanks, Melty girl (talk) 18:14, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you so much! --Melty girl (talk) 21:08, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

AN header

[5] You should be aware in the future that many bot configuration templates (including MiszaBot's) do not work if they are indirectly included onto the page. —Random832 20:11, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually, that's the other thing - I couldn't find where you actually put the code into the header page, either, other than the purge link. Well, not an issue anymore in any case - someone else restored NEWSECTIONLINK to the page, and now the archive stuff is fixed. —Random832 20:28, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

POV tag on Second Amendment page

Thanks for your attention to this. I also agree with your assessment that readers are sufficiently warned of that is something is up when they see the full protection tag, and that many might guess correctly that the reason is a neutrality dispute versus other potential reasons. Though, I wonder if you have considered the potentially beneficial effect of a POV tag as a positive motivation to discuss and negotiate. Without the tag, I see a pattern at that article where the editors favoring the status quo are not motivated to engage in discussion. With the tag, all parties would share a motivation to work out the differences. I can understand if you disagree, but I am just curious if you considered this beneficial effect of a POV tag. SaltyBoatr (talk) 16:04, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

One more question, sorry. Your edit summary said "not done per previous rationale". I missed the previous rationale, where can I read it? Thanks. SaltyBoatr (talk) 16:20, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. If you check, the page protection was not over the POV tag, It was protected at my request[6], to preempt a quick back and forth edit war, eight revert edits between 22:34 and 22:45, involving Yaf and myself. I felt it wise to have a cool down and move the discussion to the talk page instead of escalating into a edit war. Also, considering that the user Adam10, who removed the POV tag, gave an edit summary with the words "(rv: though it's disputed, there is NEVER going to be a concensus..." basically stating that because the Second Amendment issue is so intractable and that there is a POV dispute, that the dispute is hopeless and the tag is not needed on hopeless POV issues. Indeed, it seems silly to think that with the ongoing heated discussion on the talk page that there is any question whether there is a POV dispute. Obviously there is a POV dispute. The disagreement isn't about whether agree or whether we disagree. The disagreement is about whether Yafs inserted text is neutral or not. Everyone there agrees we disagree of this, therefore there is consensus that there is a disagreement over neutrality. SaltyBoatr (talk) 23:34, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

hidden-delete-reason issue

My advice, given this post of yours would be that those spans should be kept, but the id= should be changed to class= to avoid the possibility of a page with two delete templates not being valid according to a W3C XHTML 1.0 Transitional (what Wikipedia uses) evaluation, which requires that ids on any given page be unique for that page. Now, that might be an issue for some scripts using getElementById, but it's ultimately better code, so I figured I'd let you know. Hope that helps, Nihiltres^{t.l} 20:02, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Skylla the Copyeditor

I have decided to take a break from my pet article for an as-yet-to-be-determined amount of time. The writing of an article of limited importance does not seem as useful, or as immediately gratifying, as assisting with articles that need further development. There is also the fact that the book I am writing about is "organized" in a fashion that makes me think of a caffeinated chipmunk!

I have now signed on as a fellow copyeditor, in the interest of being a more involved Wikipedian than I have been of late. Though I must admit my free time has suddenly become something of a scarce commodity, I will attempt to contribute at least a few hours a week to editing duties. SkyllaLaFey (talk) 02:08, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Previous PRs

Thanks to your efforts, it is now possible to autolink the previous PR with a reasonable amount of confidence: see e.g. here. Cool huh? Geometry guy 20:00, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

citation template

Your recent edits to the citation template have broken some uses of it; see Tarski's plank problem for an example. R.e.b. (talk) 15:52, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Tarski's plank problem is still displaying incorrectly on my browser even after you added the missing colons. I suspect this may be some weird cache problem that will eventually clear itself: if it's displaying OK on your browser there is probably no need to do anything more. R.e.b. (talk) 16:11, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

The error on Tarski's plank problem vanished after I made a trivial edit to the page, so it was almost certainly a cache problem and I think everything is OK now. R.e.b. (talk) 16:14, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

your comment on Yarrow talk page

Hello, thank you for your comment on the talk page requesting the specific information we would like edited to the protected article. The specific request is this: Please remove the sex offender and american criminals category, until that can be discussed and determined on the talk page. Thank you--Jkp212 (talk) 21:12, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

deletion script

The script only looks at the wikitext itself, not the expanded versions of the templates, so it won't be affected as long as the templates have the same name for the same meaning. —Random832 14:27, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Archiving

Ya, it was you. :-) MiszaBot doesn't tolerate the template condensed - the parsing algorithm in its current state expects one parameter per line - when it's condensed, it will read the archive parameter as empty, which equals /dev/null. Cheers, Миша13 20:44, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Draft RFAR

Over at User talk:Carcharoth you mentioned you were considering an RFAR over BCB. At the time I thought you and other more experienced users were going to do it, but I guess we all decided to try WP:AGF one more time. I'm going to start compiling diffs and what not this evening and was wondering if you had any experience at the style and formatting of a proper RFAR? MBisanz ^talk 23:20, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Well my mouse broke tonight and the touchpad isn't well suited for diff parsing. Really the issue is that BC edits across 3 accounts (BC, BC2, BCB) and edits a lot over those accounts very fast. Right now the policies I'm going to focus on in my search are BOT, NPA, CIVIL, CDP, CONS and possibly 3RR, depending on what a sampling of diffs show. The guidelines I was thinking of pursuing were POINT, WQT, HAR, DISRUPT, Wikipedia:Categorization of people. I think the problem an RFAR would face is that the arbcom would say "discussion is still occuring, change is still occuring, come back another time". But the real issue is that BC keeps moving on to new tasks that cause new problems without seeming to learn caution from the old mistakes. And then of course there are certain users who are new to the debate, who don't help things with their inflammatory language (no clean hands kinda thing). Any ideas who to include as named parties? If I go by people who have interacted with BC, it will easily be a list of 30+ people, but if I just go with those who have edit-warred with him, it'll be one or two newbies, who really won't show the best side of the case. I'll probably ping you when I have something written that I need to find diffs for. MBisanz ^talk 09:34, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Ok, is this sort of thing [7] and issue? He substed it, but didn't show he edited the other guy's comment? MBisanz ^talk 15:53, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I would say that this is actually a very useful edit, adding extra links without changing any of the meaning (and removing some unwanted displayed wikicode). I wouldn't see this as a problem. Happy‑melon 15:57, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Ok, since it was a simple subst, it probably isn't a problem. I've gotten through the BC discussion history for the last month at User:MBisanz/RFAR. It seems that the BC2 discussion history is just as verbose. And I ahven't even tackled yet the actual editing violations. MBisanz ^talk 17:01, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

The draft looks interesting, to say the least. You might want to augment the diff labeled "threatening a user who criticised BCB" with this diff, showing the 51 notifications BCB subsequently left on that talk page in just over six minutes.Oops, it was there all along. Might want to note that the two are connected, however. BC clearly added a line to his code to duplicate the notification sent to the original uploader to also spam MickMacNee's talk page with them. That definitely classifies as harrassment, and a violation of the BOT policy.

I think the ArbCom is more likely to hear the case if you make more of the fact that there are clearly two sides to this argument - it is not just BC being uncooperative or BCB being aggressive. He's taken a terrible amount of stick for doing a job that really does need to be done... or does it? A finding of fact that clarifies the deadline in the foundation resolution, and what has to happen to images once the deadline is reached, would be invaluable in what will be a perpetual argument for as long as wikipedia permits any non-free content. The routine findings that CIVIL, NPA, POINT, etc, apply, can't hurt, and would help remind editors that, however bad they think BC's attitude is, there is never a justification for poor behaviour on their part. I'm not sure how best to word it, but trying to give the impression that this is a mess that the ArbCom need to clarify, rather than a bad editor that they need to restrain, is more likely to produce a constructive outcome. Happy‑melon 22:49, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Well it would seem someone noticed my work or thinks exactly like I do Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration#BetacommandBot. MBisanz ^talk 02:25, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

You think it was pre-emptive? Who knows. I know some people work on arbitration cases and requests off-wiki for this very reason, but I've never gone that far yet. Carcharoth (talk) 08:49, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't know, but it's not a piece of limelight I would particularly covet. They do seem to be a bit confused as to what they're asking for right now, and the Arbs seem disinclined to accept a confused case, so perhaps our best effect now would be to explain why the case needs ArbCom help to sort out. Since I'm the only one of us that hasn't made a statement, if you have any tidbits you think I should include, do dump them here. Happy‑melon 08:58, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Maybe something that is shorter than what MBisanz and I have said, but still highlighting the most important points. Some points above that I haven't seen so far are: "But the real issue is that BC keeps moving on to new tasks that cause new problems without seeming to learn caution from the old mistakes" and the (more minor) point that Betacommand has sometimes been commenting under his alternate account, Betacommand2 (talk · contribs), which confused me on at least one occassion. Carcharoth (talk) 09:08, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

{{Infobox Officeholder}}

Thank you for updating the officeholder infobox. However, I've noticed that there's a minor error with the update, here's the code to fix it. Thanks. --Philip Stevens (talk) 16:31, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Amsoil

• From Amsoil RE: Edit request. "Not done This edit request appears to present a POV - please establish consensus for it on this page. Happy‑melon 19:57, 10 March 2008"

Could you be more specific? It seems to be very straightforward, The company offers 1 product that has been certified.

It is the very essence of the controversy surrounding the company - it does not allow it's oil to be tested by outside entities. This is unusual and controversial in the oil industry, where API, ACEA, GM, Volvo, MB, BMW, Ford, etc, certification is the standard.

Please help by describing how the factual recounting of a controversy becomes a POV. 22:30, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Categories and templates

Could you please explain your edits to WikiProject Aerosmith? Looks like a mess to me. Janadore (talk) 12:48, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Articles are in a wrong and some still in categories you've deleted. *-Class pages are now in the main category *-Class articles. Why the new name anyway? A list does not require a rating anymore. Was there a discussion about all this somewhere? The meta-template should be tested by QA and not on WP:AERO's project banner. Janadore (talk) 14:15, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to know if all Category-, Template-, Image- and Portal-Class categories getting renamed from "articles" to "pages". Why does a List-class article not require a rating anymore? Should that be a new standard? Janadore (talk) 11:11, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Template stuff

The draft templates are done! (may still need to be checked over.)

With this edit, plus this edit the hatnote at the top of WT:CSD with links to the subpages for discussion of the template wordings got removed, apparently. I'm not sure if that was intentional or not, but I'd appreciate it if you would put it back Feel free to discuss this if yo u disagree. Thanks. --Coppertwig (talk) 01:41, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I hate to bother you, but

Greetings Happy-melon. You appear on top of your editing game and I was praying you might look at something (Please): The Sound of Music & The Sound of Music (film) share the same Cultural references (ie In popular culture). It more than appears the references refer to the film rather than the show. I am led to believe the section for the musical should be deleted. What do you think? Please also see the Talk:The Sound of Music. Thank you for your kindness and time. Please tell me if I am wrong. Master Redyva ♠

In my opinion, the The Sound of Music#Cultural references is by far the better of the two, but they appear to be distinct entities with little overlap. Remember that any cultural references in the film article should clearly indicate that they are parodies etc of the film - if there is ambiguity (a single song is parodied, for instance) then that should be assumed to be about the musical, not the film. If I had to choose between them, I would delete the film section. Fortunately, of course, we don't have to. Happy‑melon 19:03, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Question for you

I was looking around the wiki and I can't seem to find if there is an area to request some coding done. It's similar to the DYK clock. Is there such a place I can ask for assistance?

Thanks for your time and helping keep this place clean, §tepshep • ¡Talk to me! 21:04, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

There's Wikipedia:Requested templates, but nowhere to ask for really hardcore coding :D. That's why we have the Category:User template coder-5 etc. What, exactly, do you want to do? Happy‑melon 21:08, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Wow. I totally passed that over, thanks for the link. I'm looking for a template that pretty such says how long it is until the next "2 week period". I don't even know if it would be possible to do that. It's for the Ohio Portal (P:OH), so users know when all the selected content will be updated. I checked the list while writing this and noticed you're on it. Could you do something like this, or point me to somebody who has the time to if you're too busy with admin business? Thanks for all of your help again. §tepshep • ¡Talk to me! 22:03, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Template:Country data Holy Roman Empire

The IfD has closed and the image still remains. Could you please place the flag back into the template? If the flag is proved to be wrong we can simply upload a new one and all uses of this template will be reverted with it. Thanks! (Although can you make that flag an alias (eg png) rather than the default flag. Centy – reply• contribs – 04:31, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

db-disambig

Hi, Happy-melon. Can you tell me why this was done? Thanks. -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:48, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Protection policy

I still think shorter is better but after sleeping on it I find myself uninterested in having a long discussion on the different ways of laying out policy pages and their relative merits. I leave the rewrite in your hands. – Steel 18:35, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

db-copypaste

Thanks for fixing the {{db-copypaste}} template. But can you find a way to restore the {{sd-copypaste}} prompt that was originally in that template? It was there for a reason. --Blanchardb-^{Me•MyEars•MyMouth}-timed 02:14, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

I would like to thank you for spending a couple of hours cleaning up the editrequested requests, however disabling the template and not making the edit on semi-protected pages was very unhelpful. Please note that on the Barack Obama page no one has noticed the request, and updated the delegate count fully four days after the primary. Fixing editprotected requests can be done by any registered editor, not just by admins, on semi-protected pages, and commenting on the merit of the edit can be done by everyone. Disabling the template should only be done if the edit has been made or rejected. 199.125.109.36 (talk) 21:50, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi there, and thanks for your contributions, particularly to Template talk:Editprotected. I rarely hold much hope when going through an IP's edit history, but your contributions appear to be fairly solid, which makes me wonder why you haven't created an account for yourself. As well as enabling you to edit semi-protected pages, it would enable you to build up your own reputation - I'm not the only editor who is surprised to see constructive contributions coming from an anonymous user! Happy‑melon 22:32, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I read an article once that said that surprisingly most edits are made by people who make only a few edits - they cited one IPuser who made extensive contributions to an article, and made no other edits. I just fail to have any interest in registering a name. So instead I push the envelope to see what I can do as an IPuser. I see people who make as many as 500 edits a day, but most are not of much substance, or even any substance. It often takes me an hour to make one edit, with all the research it requires. 199.125.109.36 (talk) 22:48, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

That's fair enough - it takes all types to make an army, or a Wiki :D. Happy‑melon 22:56, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Re: China

The reason why the article has been protected is because of a very persistent sockpuppeteer who has only God knows how many "sleeper" socks. If you speak to User:Alison, she'll confirm that reasoning. And this was also brought up many time on WP:ANI, and it was decided that protecting the article til further notice was the most viable option to stop this sockpuppeteer. (range blocking was not an option as it would take out half a city's ability to edit). nat.utoronto 21:52, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for redirecting the Dupre entries. Reggie Perrin (talk) 22:08, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Confusing

sorry? Happy‑melon 22:41, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Sorry. I don't think very fast. Or I like to think about what I do. 199.125.109.36 (talk) 22:51, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Don't worry, it makes perfect sense now. Happy‑melon 22:55, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately for some, Wikipedia is not very important to me - I have much bigger fish to fry, but I don't like to see it be un-useful either. 199.125.109.36 (talk) 23:23, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

{{Infobox Website}} edit

I've re-enabled this request. It has zero impact on existing infoboxen and allows editors to eschew what is often a pointless attribute. Whether or not it is an enormous burden to specify it isn't the point. Templates are protected to prevent vandalism and project disruption, not for administrators to decide what other editors' free time is worth. If the attibute is specified, as in your eBay example, it will still be used. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 23:29, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

That's entirely reasonable. I will leave the tag and wait for another admin's perspective. Happy‑melon 13:04, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Melonbot request

Hi, I was wondering whether you could use melonbot for the participants of WP:HALO. It seems that a lot of people sign up but make few if any contributions so it would be useful to rank by participation. There is a list of partcipants and articles so just notify at the discussion page if there is anything else we need to do. Also, thanks for making such a useful bot! Cheers, James086^{Talk | Email} 04:15, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the swift implementation! Much appreciated. James086^{Talk | Email} 09:33, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

9/11

Hi, Happy-me:

you decided that we would first need consensus to add a tag which displays that there is NO consensus among editors. Can you explain the logic behind this reasoning? Would this not allow one side of the argument to get their way, and obscure from our readers the fact that the article is in dispute, faking consensus where there is none?

Would you please take a look at the survey, and tell me how you are beholding the situation? Perhaps you missed the issue?  — Xiutwel ♫☺♥♪ (speech has the power to bind the absolute) 16:00, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

First, remember that when dealing with editprotected requests, admins are not supposed to exercise much judgement about the merits or demerits of any arguments expressed over a dispute, but merely to apply consensus and common sense. My personal POV is that the article is generally good, but that the summary style of the "conspiracy theories" section is overly short; and should explain in more detail the more mainstream theories and the evidence behind them. This is entirely irrelevant, as I should not allow that perspective to influence my decision. If you feel I have not been sufficiently objective, you are welcome to readd the tag with a suitable note asking for a second admin opinion.

The above would qualify as my 'official' response. A more informal reason, but one which I couldn't really put in my rationale, is that I found the entire argument completely ridiculous. What are you planning to do if/when you got the POV tags restored? You're arguing over whether you should tell the readers that the article is broken. Why aren't you trying to work out how best to fix it? If a substantial number of editors think that the "conspiracy theories" section is POV, copy the text to the talk page and hack around at it until you can get an NPOV version that you all agree on, that you can ask to be added back in. Then you won't need to argue about POV tags, because the section won't be POV anymore. Happy‑melon 16:18, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Constructing a poker hand

On second thought, "construct" is probably the better choice, since the player does get to make one or more choices about what cards he sees. Thakks. PhGustaf (talk) 20:10, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Jyllands posten cartoon controv edit

Hi, you rejected a request to make a change to the JPMCC article [8] asking me to build consensus for the edit. Any suggestions on how I do that? thestick (talk) 20:52, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Basically keep doing what you're already doing. You started a discussion, which is the right thing to do. Unfortunately for you the discussion seems to be leaning against the edit, but there's not much you can do about that. Keep working on the discussion and try and reach a consensus that the edit is good, then readd the tag. Essentially the editprotected tag was just a bit premature. Happy‑melon 20:54, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, so far I've gotten only two replies but they weren't related to the edit - the first one was about general politics (unrelated), the second was talking about the category edit (unrelated) , but I get the idea - thanks. thestick (talk) 20:57, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Dual Band Blade Antenna

This is my first article from scratch, ideally, I would like to make it unsearchable until I can complete it to an acceptable letter while still reserving the subject (search item) and opening it up to edits. It will take at least 3 weeks to complete. I am requesting this amount of time before deletion. Also, I have just started reading through the help articles for TOC and the like. Is there a way to use LaTeX for most of the doument (not just math)? Thank you for your feedback. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cwru53 (talk • contribs) 22:20, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for moving my article to my user space. I have much to learn.--Wallace (talk) 17:49, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Template talk:Recent death

Hi, I don't know if you misunderstood my request, but I can't see why I should take the matter to WP:TFD... I wasn't asking for a merge or redirect but to change the wording to "This article is about a person who has recently died. Information may change rapidly as it becomes available." so we don't have thrice as much text in the recent death template as in the current event template. --SABER^EXCALIBUR! 10:47, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

But if you're going to do that, why not go the whole hog and convert to a soft/hard redirect to {{current}}. That's a TfD suggestion. Doing anything less is a pointless half-measure. Happy‑melon 15:03, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Pointless according to you who wants to see them merged, but not to me who wants them to have an equal amount of text. It's already been TfD'd and kept, sure, I could try it a second time though I suspect there'd be little success. --SABER^EXCALIBUR! 21:12, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

A Simple Plan

Regarding my editprotected request on A Simple Plan (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs), I think there was some misunderstanding regarding my request. If you could check out the talk page and look again, I have tried to make myself more clear. Thanks! /Blaxthos ( t / c ) 18:28, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Regarding this, I think the removal of the summary is a HUGE mistake, not to mention arbitrary at best. Despite this nonsense, I'd write another one, but some wiki-thug like Blaxthos, a proven subversive that only edits when it is in his own political or personal interest, would just throw it out using a nonsensical interpretation of the rules. This sort of thing is why serious people ignore Wikipedia. Drstrangelove57 (talk) 02:16, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Wow

Thanks for trying to help by posting additional policy support and general guidance, even if it seems to have landed on deaf ears. That guy is unbelievable... I kinda stumbled across that one as well, and had no idea what kind of disagreement I was stepping into (as it apparently began long ago). Regardless, policy (as well as consensus) seems clear; I'll try to make some constructive edits soon. /Blaxthos ( t / c ) 17:16, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Unbelievable is precisely the word I would have chosen, more appropriate words being unbecoming of someone in my position within the dispute :D. Quite apart from not knowing a thing about the book, I can't really get involved with the rewrite personally, but I'll keep watching. Good luck - let me know when you've got something reasonable and hopefully I can remove the protection and add it back in, and we can all get on with other things :D. Happy‑melon 19:00, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm glad to know that while you two can smirk and rib each other about what a card the one person who cares about the article is, the A Simple Plan entry itself sits ruined, with the placeholder intro being pathetic and with a perfectly good summary resting in the garbage. Nice. Drstrangelove57 (talk) 19:34, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Please attempt to assume that other people care about the article just as much as you do. Remembering that there is no immediate deadline, that the article as it stands forms a perfectly acceptable stub, and that I have every intention of restoring the plot summary when it is of a suitable form, describing the article as "ruined" is somewhat sensationalist. If you do not wish to participate in working constructively on this particular article that is your prerogative - there are many other areas of Wikipedia which could benefit from your energy and enthusiasm. Happy‑melon 20:25, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Good improvement

Thanks for improving the wording on WP:CSD. You did a good job capturing the essence. I hope this makes things easier. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:15, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

How do I...

I'm trying to edit an article, and the writer of the article suggested that I could copy it into my sandbox, work on it, and copy the revision over the original. Do I just highlight, copy, and paste, or is there a special way to just "pop" it over where I want it? Damn, I cannot wait to stop being such a newbie! I keep picturing the lovely day when simple procedures do not balk me. --SkyllaLaFey-- (This will be "unsigned", because I'm using my laptop and the special little squiggle key is broken!) —Preceding unsigned comment added by SkyllaLaFey (talk • contribs) 02:40, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Copy and paste is the most effective and efficient way. Somewhere in the huge box of mostly useless special characters below the edit screen is one for the "special little squiggle key" (that really brightened up my day :D). Or it might be one of the buttons up the top - I can't remember (I've hidden all the extraneous stuff from my edit window). Happy‑melon 18:38, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Template talk:Editprotected#Changing formatting

Hi. I'm guessing the above was written with my edits in mind. Fortunately, the page was still on my watchlist.
Following my contribution, I looked at the page on IE and Firefox and saw no problem. Since, though, the edits were some straightforward formatting, I wasn't surprised. Will there ever come a time when Wikipedia is able to sort out the strangely wide spacing between lines other than those in paragraphs of article text? Sardanaphalus (talk) 16:24, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi, and yes, it was. Essentially the problem with your edit is not the fix itself (I'm not sure exactly what you considered broken so I can't comment on its effectiveness) but rather that by using overly-specific formatting you made it more difficult for the rendering to be customised to work on a wide variety of browsers. Wikipedia's biggest problem with page display is the vast range of browsers and appliances used to access our content. Do you have any idea, for instance, how your version would have displayed on a PDA or iPhone? Neither do I, but the chances of it going horribly wrong are dramatically increased by using formatting that is optimised specifically for one or even a couple of browsers. The more generic the formatting, the more easily disparate browsers can interpret it to produce, if not quite what the author had in mind, at least something that doesn't look hopelessly awkward. I'm not saying that your formatting definitely did break on browser X, just that unless you've checked every possible configuration (a virtual impossibility) you can't know, and to be safe you're always best off going for the more generic formatting. Happy‑melon 17:12, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I guess I don't like going for the generic formatting when it works against the encyclopedia's legibility, at least as far as desktop/laptop computers are concerned. Not so much with the {{editprotected}} template, but with e.g. wrapped lines within templates that look like separate entries. Perhaps a "simplify formatting" filter for PDAs, iPhones, etc, rather than a cramping on style elsewhere. Thanks for your thoughts. Sardanaphalus (talk) 18:50, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Removed nbsp (and therefore COinS) from Cite journal template

It seems that you inadvertently removed nbsp in this edit. Can you please add it back? --Karnesky (talk) 23:24, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

That's really wierd - it certainly wasn't deliberate: I know how much of a mess attempts to change that nbsp have already made :D !! Happy‑melon 10:36, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

In any case: thanks for fixing it! --Karnesky (talk) 13:50, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Copyright tags and copyright issues

Hey Happy-melon, I've been thinking - particularly after nobody really participated in our brief discussion of image tags, and all of my involvement in other aspects of copyright issues, that we ought to get ALL (not just speedy) copyright & image tags organized and create some place to explain clearly what tags to use when (and maybe even why). I'll start this in my userspace if you think it's a worthwhile effort not duplicating work others are currently doing (I know there's a lot of reorganizing going on at CSD). Let me know.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 01:16, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Organising our massive and burgeoning collection of image copyright tags, particularly the fair use ones, is a titanic task that I know I don't have the tenacity to complete - although I'd support to the hilt anyone who was game to try it. I think as soon as we've got the new CSD templates in place I'll take the di-series to TfD and get them redirected. Coppertwig is already champing at the bit to reorganise the CSD warning templates. My next project is going to be the pp-series, which are used for marking protected pages. So yes, if you're up for it, you'll have my full support, although it's not something I would have the determination to attempt myself. Happy‑melon 10:43, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, you can go ahead!

See Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Section break 4. --Coppertwig (talk) 23:44, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

My CSD-U1

Hi. Thanks for telling me why I can't delete my "secret page". However, is there any way I can do so? Other criteron? After all, could I not simply move the page from User Talk: into User: and then {{csd-u1}}?

Thanks in advance,

Mⁱc_rochip ⁰⁸ 13:57, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

P.S. Do you want a go trying to find my secret page [ones that haven't been tagged with Template:Tlx-csd-u1]]? Be prepared to spend 15 minutes on it... :D

You could quite happily PROD them - I doubt anyone's going to object. Or MfD. They're just not really applicable to any CSD category. Incidentally, User:Microchip08/Extremely obvious - but I have far too little patience for things like this :D. Happy‑melon 14:33, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Great, thanks. Oh, and there's always the cheater's list... Mⁱc_rochip ⁰⁸ 14:48, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Deletion of User talk:Nicholas Perkins/Archive Aug 2007 and User talk:Nicholas Perkins/Archive Sep 2007

I should have noted on the pages that the information has been moved through to User_talk:Nicholas_Perkins/Archive/2008/Feb. However if it is a question of the page history then no problem.

In either case I will blank the pages in question. Nicholas Perkins (T•C) 13:57, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, you should have noted that using the |rationale= parameter, but no worries. If you still want them deleted, just let me know - it seems no history will be lost. Happy‑melon 14:34, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for the oversight. I'd appreciate if you could delete both for me. Thanks again. Nicholas Perkins (T•C) 06:37, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Can editors be given an option on journal volume font?

I just noticed articles getting bit by that change. Please see Template talk:Cite journal #How about giving editors an option? for a suggestion. Thanks. Eubulides (talk) 21:39, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Template:Db-g12

This edit: [9] broke the user notification line, see: Template talk:Db-meta#Wrong parameter on user message.  Andreas  ^(T) 23:32, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

fixed.  Andreas  ^(T) 14:41, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Banner shell on Adolf Hitler

I like the other version better too, but with this many projects it just takes up too much space. Also the documentation for the shell templates specifically say not to just go switching from one to the other based solely on your own opinion, so kindly don't do that. Especially hiding it in another edit and neglecting to mention it in your edit summary. Thanks much. Equazcion •✗/C • 13:09, 25 Mar 2008 (UTC)

I did mention the conversion to 'nested' format in my edit summary, and there is no subsitute for being bold. However, there's certainly no justification to edit war over it, and I'm not that fussed one way or another, so we can leave it as it stands. Thankyou for retaining the most important part of that edit, which is that ArticleHistory should not have been included. Happy‑melon 13:53, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay. Sorry for my accusatory tone but it looked like a "sneak" to me :) Nevermind then. Equazcion •✗/C • 14:08, 25 Mar 2008 (UTC)

Restore interlang links on RC please?

I've found them useful ... if it is a community decision, please let me know where the discussion was held. Thanks. --Aphaia (talk) 09:53, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

{{pp-meta}}

Hi Happy-melon. I have left responses for you at Template talk:Pp-meta#Too abstract?.

--David Göthberg (talk) 02:54, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi, would you mind taking a look at the changes I've made to {{pp-meta/sandbox}}? I think it's nearly ready for use, but I'd appreciate your input at Template talk:Pp-meta. Thanks, Nihiltres^{t.l} 16:58, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Unauthorized task

Hi,

I've proceeded to block MelonBot as running an unauthorized task. No BRFA have been failed for the "px" fix task, and I have no idea of what made the bot do this [10], somebody said the phrase "waste of system resources" and may very well correct in his assumption, but I'm looking forward to your response on the subject. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 02:09, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

One thousand subpages is absolutely excessive and is a waste of system resources. I have no idea what's going on here -- no BRFA that I can find, no mention on the bot's user page, and I can't fathom a possible reason for needing all of those subpages. If I could "doubly block," I would. But Snowolf beat me to it. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:12, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Wow. So, from what I can tell, this bot work was to resolve the pxpx issue. What I can't seem to be able to figure out is why, if Template:Click was causing an issue, that Template:Click wasn't simply fixed. Do a quick validation for the width parameter to see if it's an integer, if so append px, if not leave the parameter alone. It's a remedial if-then-else statement that would require one edit to a template rather than thousands of edits.

In addition to all of these issues, it seems that the regex you used is borked: example. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:58, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

For a background on the issue, please read Wikipedia:ClickFix. The template was broken in a manner that no one could think of a way to easily "fix" using the tools we have available. Any method of coding the template in the new environment would cause it to break in one or other format, except the esoteric hack MZMcBride describes, which I can't off the top of my head think how to code using the parser functions we have available, and no one thought of last night. The issue is not restricted to {{click}} - Category:ClickFix maintenance categories contains half a dozen categories filled by my simple maintenance code. Category:Infobox Airline needing ClickFix contained over three hundred entries last night, all of which have now been fixed without such a hack. The issue was causing problems with thousands of pages. I acted quickly to make the issue as easy to resolve as possible. I asked for alternative ideas well before starting MelonBot on this construction project, and alerted VPT before it was even 10% complete. Naturally I would have appreciated any alternative suggestions; as I said on WP:BN, it's not exactly like I wanted a thousand pages in my bot's userspace.

MZMcBride's fix to {{click}} makes continuing MelonBot's run through Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Click unnecessary, so this task will not be continued. As such, I would like to request that you unblock MelonBot. Naturally I could do it myself, but that would be inappropriate :D. Many thanks in advance, Happy‑melon 12:52, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I don't mind unblocking your bot, but, I want to make sure we're clear on the bot policy. "Bots must be approved before they may operate.". This is for good reason. If unblocked, will you seek approval in the future, for tasks that you are not approved for? SQL^{Query me!} 13:16, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I reserve the right to run bot tests and minor tasks in its userspace, but I accept that the approval process is there for a good reason; MelonBot will not run substantial tasks that have effect outside its userspace without suitable approval. Happy‑melon 13:21, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

No, you will not run any tasks that have effect outside its userspace without suitable approval. And, even if a bot is working only in user space, it is often still appropriate to get approval. If that's going to be followed (ie - if you're going to follow policy), I see no problem with unblocking. Martinp23 13:27, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Reasonable. I wasn't trying to wriggle, I was just thinking of activities like the CSD template update, which I would simply have done under my own account if I didn't have a bot-flagged one. But if policy and, more importantly, the community's interpretation of policy, is that such trivial tasks should be approved, then I shall seek approval for them: MelonBot will not perform any tasks which have effect outside its uerspace without suitable approval. Happy‑melon 13:48, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

1,000 user subpages would have substantial effect even though they're in userspace. Equazcion •✗/C • 13:25, 26 Mar 2008 (UTC)

I don't agree; they represent 0.001% of the English Wikipedia's total page count, 0.0005% of its total edit count, and (at a rough guess) 0.000000001% of the total size of its text table (assuming an average page-size of 5kB). They did not appear in Special:RecentChanges or the default view of Special:Newpages; and unlike BCB's null edits which ended up on the mainpage, these pages aren't going anywhere. Plus they serve a useful function - admittedly not as useful now as they were before MZMcBride offered the alternative fix, but still valid. They haven't stopped working just because there's a more elegant solution out there. Happy‑melon 13:34, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

The point, of course, being that in the future, you should not run a bot that creates 1,000 user subpages without first seeking approval. The outcome of this particular instance notwithstanding. Equazcion •✗/C • 13:36, 26 Mar 2008 (UTC)

Again, I do not agree. We are not a bureaucracy, the approvals process is not there for its own sake. It is there to prevent bot operators using their bots in a manner which damages the encyclopedia (something which MelonBot has regretably and inadvertently done here in as much as use of an improperly-written regex caused edits like this, which I have now (AFAIK) fixed by hand). If a bot were routinely creating thousands of user subpages without approval for no apparent reason, that would be different. If a bot were creating hundreds of thousands of user subpages, that would again be different. But if editing {{ambox}} isn't going to crash Wikipedia, making a thousand new pages with a single period in them certainly isn't. If I ever feel the need to create a thousand user subpages again, you can be assured that there will be a good reason for it. And if it is likely or even possible that the operation will have any effect outside userspace, I will request approval. But I will not clutter up Wikipedia with needless paperwork to run MelonBot in its own userspace. Happy‑melon 13:48, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

The approval process is there so that bot owners such as yourself won't take the decision upon themselves as to what will and won't damage, or be a burden on, Wikipedia; as well as, I should add, on its administrators, who shouldn't need to keep tabs on bots to make sure they aren't doing things they're not supposed to be doing. I wonder how many more pages this bot would've created had it not been blocked. The approval process is there for a reason and you can't just declare your right to ignore it in certain situations. Dare I say, that's why nobody's unblocked it yet. If you want to lobby for a userspace exception to the bot policy, then do so, at the policy's talk page; but making a declaration here doesn't excuse you from it. Equazcion •✗/C • 15:36, 26 Mar 2008 (UTC)

I am sure that any potential unblockers are indeed awaiting the outcome of this exchange. In answer to your question, the answer is "none" - the bot completed its assigned task of creating exactly one thousand user subpages, and would have created no others. I had been intending to avoid mentioning it, but it did not escape my notice that this block was instituted when the bot account had been completely inactive for over four hours. This issue may have been confused by the fact that two tasks were running simultaneously: firstly, the creation of those user subpages, and secondly, a regex find-and-replace run across all pages transcluding {{click}}. To clarify, the block was (as far as I am aware) instituted primarily because of the second task, some edits of which were corrupted by a poorly-written regex, which was furthermore unapproved. I have accepted above that that second task was inappropriate without approval, and will not be continued or repeated; nor will other tasks which involve editing pages outside MelonBot's userspace.

It is clear that we have differing opinions on how the bot policy applies to bots' edits in their own userspace. While the bot policy represents the codified rules, bot operation, like all areas of Wikipedia, is also governed by consensus and precedent. As such, and since I very much doubt we will reach any agreement here of our own accord, I will request, and naturally be bound by, clarification from one or more members of the Bot approval group: to what extent is a bot permitted to perform edits in its own userspace without explicit WP:BRFA approval, provided that those edits are clearly performing a useful function? Happy‑melon 16:18, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I'll venture to guess that their answer will be far less than the creation of 1,000 subpages, even if they're in userspace. But, they are of course the ones to ask, and I'm glad you're willing to do so. So I'll just await their response. Please post a link to that request once you've made it. Thanks. Equazcion •✗/C • 16:28, 26 Mar 2008 (UTC)

{{BAGAssistanceNeeded}} :D Happy‑melon 16:30, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I've always been of the opinion that userspace is OK so long as it's within policy (ya know, WP:NPA, and friends), and it's not abusing system resources. For something "extreme" (20epm is extreme, as is 1000 subpages @ 20epm), "when in doubt ask" is probably the best way to go. SQL^{Query me!} 20:12, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

By the by, I've unblocked your bot. I think you understand what's going on here. I would have gotten to it earlier, but I was AFK. SQL^{Query me!} 20:16, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

If testing in userspace is okay without bot approval, that should probably be added to the bot policy. Equazcion •✗/C • 20:35, 26 Mar 2008 (UTC)

Thankyou very much for that clarification, SQL. Happy‑melon 21:02, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Frankly, you seem to be missing the point. A software change was made that broke some things -- it happens from time to time. And you took initiative to find a solution to the problem, which is great. However, had you run your ideas past other BAG members in a bot request for approval, one of them undoubtedly would've asked "Why the hell are you creating 1000 subpages?" Another member would've probably taken a look at the template syntax and found the solution that I did. Instead, you created all of these subpages, ran an unapproved bot to do so, and that bot also used bad regex which ended up breaking pages. And then you tried to defend yourself with a "this is not a bureaucracy" statement. Absolutely not.

I see that you also tried to argue that this isn't a waste of system resources because the amount in comparison with the whole is pretty negligible. Of course, you're right, the reality is that 1000 extra subpages isn't going to crash the servers or put the Foundation into bankruptcy. But when you consider the fact that everything you use is donated and that these pages were essentially useless, it becomes a different story. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:45, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm certainly missing your point, or perhaps more likely we're missing each other's. Certainly my solution was not the most elegant, and perhaps a member of BAG would have proposed a more efficient alternative. Perhaps, however, the BRFA would still be sitting there and infoboxes across wikipedia would still be displaying mile-wide images. We'll never know. What surprises me most is that the part you appear to be taking the greatest offence at was the part which didn't damage the encyclopedia! I could extend your thought process to note that, yes, everything here is donated, including my time, your time, and MelonBot's server-time; but I have no interest in participating in a philosophical argument over who owes a debt to whom. MelonBot damaged Wikipedia through an unapproved, faulty regex, is sorry, and won't do it again. That, in my opinion, is "the point". Happy‑melon 21:02, 26 March 2008 (UTC)