User talk:Tim Starling/Archive 8

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[edit] changing usernames

Please take a look at those usernames that need to be changed or direct somone else to do that. Perhaps give some other people like admins the rights to do that.--Eliezer 06:37, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] vote on Wikisource

Hi Tim. As you might have noticed already, I have started to organize a new vote on language subdomains. There is a page where organization issues are currently discussed. One issue that have arisen is under which conditions a subdomain should be granted, if the vote passes. These conditions are currently being discussed on that page; however I believe the final decision will belong to the board. So I thought it would not be bad if you could say a few words on that... ThomasV 16:44, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sockpuppet check

Could you check to see if User:ABCD is likely to be the same as User:Aplank, User:AlexPlank, User:Greenmountainboy, User:Sennheiser, User:Perl, or User:Lst27? There's some rather heated discussion going on on ABCD's RfA about this. --Carnildo 22:23, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] ABCD

Tim, what is the story with ABCD? I intend to take the nomination down unless we have clarification that he is not a sockpuppet, which is the cause of a lot of negative votes? -- Cecropia | explains it all ® 22:54, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)


Hello Tim! Your ability to track down ABCD is quite impressive. :-)

If you have a moment to spare? There's just one little point where I disagree with you:

on Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/ABCD you state: "Well, you were wrong, identity is important".

I disagree and am saddened that you feel that way.

I know of several people on wikipedia, and on the internet in general who use alternate identities for differing tasks. There's many different reasons people might do this and I personally prefer to use a variant of the Turing test, which goes that if some identity acts in a consistent and reliable way, I'll treat that id as a real person, no matter who or what they might be irl.

I'd based my advice to ABCD on that principle, so unbeknowst to you, you were indirectly saying that I was wrong as well, hence the reply :-)

Thanks for your time! Kim Bruning 11:28, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Ukrainian Wikinews

Hello, Tim. In Ukrainian WikiNews all statistics working from 24, March. But project worked from March 21st.

For example: {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} show 3 articles, but all articles = >1000. Fix it please. And sorry for my bad english. Inetd 2008-06-10 21:08 UTC

[edit] More Alex (last name removed) (possibly)

Lst27, who previously admitted to being Alex (last name removed), is now up for adminship and denying it, saying that he was pressured into the admission. Would you mind taking a look to see what the technical evidence indicates? --Michael Snow 21:03, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] suspected sockpuppets (same person, using multiple usernames)

THOTH, Davenbelle, Stereotek, Fadix Please advise me. I also posted this on Jamesday's page Cat chi? 01:12, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Absurd; check if you like. I'm no one's sock and I have none. — Davenbelle 02:32, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)
However, if you are going to do a sock-check, you might want to include User:Cezveci (contribs) who just appeared and has only edited the Armenian Genocide article expressing the same Genocide-denial-POV as our Mr. Coolcat. — Davenbelle 09:23, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Developer assistence needed

Could you please check my IP addresses (Lst27) and prove that I am not the same person as AlexPlank, Perl, and his other sockpuppets? Thanks a lot! --Lst27 (talk) 01:28, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sockpuppet check

Hi Tim,

I have reason to believe that User:Vandalizor and User:Sjrdude are the same person, could you please check if this is the case. Thanks. Rje 20:08, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)

Ignore that, Sjrdude has just been blocked indefinitely for blowing his second chance from Thue. Thanks anyway. Rje 20:20, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)

Hi Tim - I'm going to ask the same thing, about User:NoPuzzleStranger and User:Starky. Could you check please? Thanks. Grutness|hello? 00:01, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] wikipedia:WikiProject Chemicals

Hi Tim, I was so free as to move your name under participation from an action list for work on improving chemicals articles to the now active Chemicals Wikiproject, one of the Chemistry wikiprojects. That old action list is now much updated, and being worked on, so it don't hold participants names any more. Gladly I invite you to further participate on the work. If this name move is incorrect, my apologies, and feel free to delete you from that wikiproject. Wim van Dorst 08:27, 2005 Apr 13 (UTC).

[edit] Yet more sockpuppets

Hi there! Sorry to bother you, but would you please consider running a sockpuppet check on a number of now-blocked vandals? All of these, by their editing style, show intimate knowledge of 'pedia proceedings, and are therefore very likely alternate accounts of other users. I believe someone should warn those other users not to do this again.

  • User:School deletionist and User:Navid (only edits are spurious VfD nominations, apparently to make a WP:POINT)
  • User:GRuder and User:G Rider (both impersonators of legit User:GRider)
  • User:Alkivar's_boyfriend (personal attack vs. legit User:Alkivar)

I hope this is not inappropriate. Thanks for your time, Radiant_* 12:00, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you...

for pointing me in the right direction in regards to Russell Tribunal. If there is anything I can do for you to help out in the future, please let me know. KC9CQJ 07:40, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Information Request

Gadfium recommended that I contact you regarding a certain user. Last month I had a vandal who decided to play around with my User page. I think this user has come back, this time misappropriating a name that I use for several e-mail accounts as his user name (User:CDThieme) and in effort to establish guilt by association, focuses on editing articles on homosexual topics. I was wondering if you could find out whether this user (who has been making edits only since I have started an extended business trip and have had infrequent access to the internet) is the same individual who was the anonymous vandal from last month. Unfortunately, the vandal used a dynamic IP address that traced back to a server in Chicago that almost everyone uses, but it would at least be an indicator of probability. I have my suspicions on who this individual is in real life. The IPs from which the vandal did his work are: 4.143.107.116, 4.143.110.40, 4.143.98.30. I thank you in advance for your time and efforts in this matter. —ExplorerCDT 23:36, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • Another IP to add to that list...4.188.213.145. Again, thanks in advance. —ExplorerCDT 22:28, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] User:¸

(contribs sample diff) This is a vandal who has been impersonating me. If possible I would like to know who he actually is, as it is obviously a new account of an existing user. Thanks, Radiant_* 07:10, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)

This is User:Himself!, User:Deletionism is Vandalism, User:Boox and User:195.188.152.10 -- Tim Starling 07:31, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)
  • Thank you. Radiant_* 09:44, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Signature bugs

You said - "Relying on obscure bugs in the parser to render your signatures is a great way to piss off developers. Please stop it."

Can you take a look at Bugzilla:1491, and reopen it? The ability to specify a transcluded page in the raw signature block is a Bad Thing. Think of all those DB links that are needed, or page caches which are flushed each time someone decides their signature is not fancy enough. I'd like to see any curly braces get dropped from signatures when they are rendered, so transclusion isn't so easily done, especially now with so many people using {{User:Username/sig}} along with the raw signature option. -- Netoholic @ 21:10, 2005 Apr 28 (UTC)

[edit] Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday. :) Angela. 09:26, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

Happy Birthday Tim!
Happy Birthday Tim!

[edit] Wikipedia is Communism

Tim,

Re the redirect of the UK W i C page to United Kingdom. Is that not potentially problematic? That page will show up in google searches. A better solution IMHO is either to delete the pages entirely so that they can't show up, or redirect all these pages to a special page on vandalism, telling the user who stumbles across them that they are vandalism and not representative of wikipedia, with attached to the message a real list of links to wikipedia, to allow someone who stumbles on them to discover the real wikipedia. Then each of these vandalism pages could be permanently locked, meaning that the SOB creating these pages cannot enter them to do anything with them, and cannot recreate them as they already exist. So every time this idiot creates a new page, all he actually creates is a new set of links to the one vandalism with links page, and as each page is locked he can never access them, or re-use their names again. If everything he touches is redirected to the one vandalism page, and permanently locked so that he then can never access again, he might eventually get tired of being 'checked' at every move and go away.

I think it would be a better solution than linking his nutty names to real articles, because it would avoid a new user stumbling on nutty names to real articles and thinking that strange names to real articles was someone normal on wikipedia.

Just a suggestion, FearÉIREANN\(talk) 04:54, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

It was only ever going to be there for a few minutes. When someone moves a page with a large history with lots of links to it, it makes the slave servers lag. Moving it back just doubles the problem. I was trying to do a cut and paste move, which is the best response in this scenario. At the same time, I was busy taking system administration measures to mitigate the problem. -- Tim Starling 06:02, May 6, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Edit alerts based on content

Please could you cast your eye over Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Edit Alerts Based on Content and give your opinion if it is technically possible in (a) the way were thinking or if not (b) some other way.

Cheers, Thryduulf 23:11, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] wikisource subdomains

Hello Tim,

We are beginning to organize things for the creation of subdomains to wikisource.org. I would like to draw your attention on a problem specific to this project. In wikisource, in order to tell if a 500-page book has been vandalised, our only method is to check its history. Therefore we need to preserve histories when moving texts to a new subdomain. In order to do that, you might remember that I asked you if it would be possible to create subdomains that are initialized with a copy of the whole database. The idea is to then delete pages that should not belong to the created subdomain.

In order to minimize the amount of work, I proposed a method. Could you please take a look at it: http://wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource_talk:Language_domain_requests#A_proposal_for_moving_pages

I would like to know if such a process would pose any technical problem.

thanks

ThomasV 23:31, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Preview text

Hi Tim. I understand that MediaWiki 1.5 is due for release fairly soon. Further to a discussion on the village pump, may I suggest that the piece of coding that sends

<<p><center><font color="#cc0000"><strong>Note:</strong> Remember that this is only a preview, and has not yet been saved!</font></center></p>

be changed to

<div id="previewtext" text-align:center;"><strong>Note:</strong> Remember that this is only a preview, and has not yet been saved!</div>

along with adding

.previewtext {color:#cc0000;}

to the MonoBook skin. This would allow users to customise this bit of design. In addition, it would get the code up to W3C standard! I hope you were the right person to come to... Cheers, Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 15:49, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikisource:Thanks and apology

Hi Tim!

As you know already, it looks like the language issues at Wikisource are finally over for good. Since it is all over now, I decided I should apologize to two people whom I am well aware that I bothered a lot (too much) while it was going on, namely you and Angela.

I do appreciate your help at the time setting up the Hebrew Wikisource, and I'm sorry things got so totally messed up when the issue of other domains took off. I'm well aware that it was partially my own fault.

I am aware that ThomasV has been in contact with you about technical issues for the near future, and I hope you will enjoy working together on it! I hope you can arive at good solutions for some of the short-term problems that lie ahead. ThomasV is a fantastic Wikisource contributor: Intelligent, polite, and with a lot of hard work on an extraordinary number of really good contributions.

Good luck! Dovi 12:54, May 16, 2005 (UTC)


Dovi: thanks for the recommendation. :-)
Tim: I know it will take some of your time, but I believe en.wikisource.org should be setup soon. The reason is that there is a lot of enthusiasm on wikisource following the vote, with many contributors willing to participate in the "moving pages" process. This process will take some work, and I believe it would be great to use this enthusiasm before it vanishes... Following the recent discussions on wikisource, I request the creation of en.wikisource.org, with an initial database that is a copy of the current wikisource database. Other subdomains will not be requested before a few weeks.
Please let me know if I should put my request on meta, or if I should ask somebody else if you are too busy.
Thank you. ThomasV 13:17, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
ok, following the discussion on IRC, I think we should wait. ThomasV 15:23, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Your statification tool

Tim, this query on WP:HD reminded me that you were working on a tool to make static versions of mediawiki wikis. Given the conspicuously worthy nature of this particular person's query, I wonder whether you may have some additional information on it that you might like to add to my answer there. Thanks. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 23:27, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Problems with SORBS DNSBL

I put this request on your page since you seem related to that bot. I believe that using the SORBS list for blocking users is a big mistake. Many dynamic IP addresses are marked as spammers, and even more are marked as open proxies. At the very least, enhance the "User is Blocked" page to include a reasonable appeal page. On a personal angle, I was blocked for the past few days, since my new ISP-provided permanent address was marked as an "open proxy". I think that the spammer identification services of SORBS are decieving and have low quality, and I urge you and the Wikipedia staff to stop using them.

-- lightstep (I'm not a user on en:)
Dynamic IP addresses are in the dul.dnsbl.sorbs.net zone. These addresses are often blocked from connecting directly to external SMTP servers, and rightly so. Dial-up users should use their ISP's SMTP server. However it's beside the point, since we don't block that zone, we only block http.dnsbl.sorbs.net. The SORBS HTTP proxy list seems to be the most accurate and comprehensive of any we've tried. They also have a system for retesting. If you recently acquired an IP address which is blocked, I suggest you request a retest by following the instructions at http://www.us.sorbs.net/faq/retest.shtml . The "user is blocked" page is not my responsibility, ask a sysop to change MediaWiki:Blockedtext. -- Tim Starling 09:33, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Blocklist

Hi Tim, it seems I´m on your bots blocklist and therefore couldn´t create an account at Wikimedia-Commons:

Your IP address is listed as an open proxy in the SORBS (http://www.sorbs.net) DNSBL. You cannot create an account.

What can I do? I´m a registered user at de.Wikipedia and en:Wikipedia. Jesusfreund 09:14, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

What is your IP address? -- Tim Starling 09:33, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Range block question

Hey, if you get a chance, look for me on IRC over the next few days, I have a complicated question for you. ;) --Dante Alighieri | Talk 18:36, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] stolen username

wikiquote:User:Netoholic was recently registered by a vandal. Can you please scramble the current password, and assign to that account the same email address as what's on my en:wikipedia account? I'll then just use the forgotten password mechanism to get into it. Thanks. -- Netoholic @ 22:24, 2005 May 25 (UTC)

Done -- Tim Starling 05:24, May 26, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] RE:HTML comments

Okay, thanks for the heads-up. I wasn't aware that using comments was frowned upon, and the occassion to which you refer is only the second time I have used them. Why is it that they are disapproved of? I do usually excise text to the associated talk page - but after seeing others use the HTML technique, I assumed it was acceptable.--Cyberjunkie 03:20, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Sock puppet/Proposal

Hi there! There has been some recent discussion on whether people should be held accountable for the actions of their socks (i.e. if someone creates a vandalist sock, the sock is quickly blocked, but should the original user be admonished?). I've put up such a proposal for public discussion at this page, and got quite a lot of supporting comments (in fact, the only opposition seems to be from people who think it's a good idea but redundant with existing policy). Since you're one of the main sockcheckers on the 'pedia I'll leave further decision up to you, but consensus seems to be that you're well within your right to seek out the main account of an abusive sockpuppet, if needed, and deal with that person accordingly. Yours, Radiant_* 11:20, May 30, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] raw MD5 cracker

A nice dictionary cracker is John the Ripper. It does not accept raw MD5 itself (at least last time I looked), but there are patches to add it. You can run it on the sockpuppeters' passwords to look for trivial ones. That should reveal if it is possible for some to be legitimate accounts (in which case I would notify them to use a stronger password of course)

[edit] HELP!

Hi Tim, how are you? I became an administrator on May 31, 2005, however my user page does not contain the administrator buttons. It looks exactly as before. I wrote to Cecropia about the problem and everything in the Bureaucrat Log seems fine but the problem still persists. Cecropia recomended that I write to you because you might be able to look into the database and find out what the problem is. I would like to mention that my son User:AntonioMartin has been an administrator for a couple of years. Once, when I first started, I was blocked and his account also appeared blocked. Maybe there is a relation with his account and my problem. He also has his own screen name in my AOL. account. Please try to help me, I would like to see those "buttons" on my page. Take care and have a nice day. Marine 69-71 18:42, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I tried logging in as you and everything appeared normal. You're using the "standard" (i.e. old) skin, there's a delete link and a protect link in your sidebar, block links in RC and rollback links on diffs. If you're looking for tabs at the top, they're not there because that's a feature of the monobook skin. -- Tim Starling 15:58, Jun 12, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Atoms

I admit to my ingnorance in this field (Super-heavy atom and difference between nuclear and atom physics). Tnx for fixing this category, however, I think that my adding a (close, after all) category in good faith to uncategorised article shouldn't be condemned. This is wiki - I add a category, somebody more knowledgable fixes it. If you go condemning everybody who added a wrong category - or wrong piece of info - to an article, you are sure to scare away a lot of new contributors, at least. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 11:24, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] CheckUser

Hi Tim Starling,
I'm one of the sysops at WP:PT and we been suspecting of 6 sucket puppets accounts that have been used to start small problems in discussions and polls and small personal attacks against other sysops.

Well, what I would like to ask is if you could "run" CheckUser on those users.

Thanks, Get It 02:43, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

If possible, the users would be: Glum, Manoel Rodrigues Júnior, Flipperpaulista, FML, 200.232.195.128 and 200.218.180.151.
Thanks, Get It 03:01, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Discovery of Australia

I'm disappointed that you give encouragement to this nonsense about the Portuguese discovering Australia. There is not a shred of evidence that Mendonca or anyone else saw Australia before Jansz in 1606. Adam 01:17, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

What, by reordering the paragraphs and re-adding the original section introduction? I certainly don't support it, but I don't intend on getting involved with the argument besides correcting the editorial mistakes of both sides. -- Tim Starling 01:23, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Special:CheckUser

I don't appear to have access to this in 1.5 on en! If it hasn't broken with the new version, it would be most useful to have again. Thank you :-) (I'd have popped onto irc, but I'm away from home this evening.) - David Gerard 28 June 2005 22:43 (UTC)

[edit] Benmore Peak Observatory

The article on Benmore Peak Observatory has been surprisingly contentious. One recent editor suggested that it is worthy of nomination to VfD. It is apparently an amateur astronomer's private observatory/yard. I'm almost inclined to nominate it to establish its place, one way or the other. Do you have any thoughts? -Willmcw July 1, 2005 10:40 (UTC)

I suggest you ask User:Evil Monkey about it. It's in his part of the world (South Island of New Zealand), and he is an astronomer-in-training.-gadfium 1 July 2005 19:49 (UTC)
It's a small dome, there are thousands like it. It's marketed to tourists. Someone attempted to promote it, talking it up on Wikipedia. But when faced with the prospect of NPOV, the owner apparently requested via info-en@wikimedia.org that it be deleted. That request was denied. I haven't been paying attention to it since then. I don't think the wishes of the owner should be important in a VfD debate, and my general inclusionist tendencies have me leaning towards keeping it. -- Tim Starling July 2, 2005 05:59 (UTC)
I don't know whether you've noticed Tim, but it's not marketed to anyone now. The losers have closed the site to outsiders! All this goes right to the heart of the matter: Are amateur astronomers really astronomers? I think it's clear to all intelligent people that they aren't. Amateurs should not be allowed to describe themselves as astronomers or scientists. What's the point of an academic system if it can be bypassed by pretenders who claim the credentials without earning them? I'm a scientist, a real scientist: I've invested years of effort and a lot of money earning the right to describe myself as one, and I resent having that achievement diluted and diminished by idiots who have no real understanding of Physics or Astronomy. There are still a few bogus sites here left to weed out of Wiki, but at least we got rid of the Benmore Peak Observatory entry. :-D

[edit] Node (Quantum mechanics)

Sorry, it probably may be because of a (bad) diagram. Please check if the info is correct; if not, please delete it. Thank you. — Stevey7788 (talk) 8 July 2005 02:27 (UTC)

[edit] What's possible?

Hi, I have come across two users who showed up on one article that I would swear was the same person. They use the same shorthand including a rare one that I have only seen them do and they write the same way, etc. One uses an IP out of Hong Kong and the other has a user name and swears he's out of San Diego even not logging in deliberately, I believe, to prove it. They meet all the sock-pup criterea accept the IP's. What's possible? Can hacker types manipulate IPs? Any info you can give me I'd very much be interested in hearing your thoughts. Carr 8 July 2005 19:27 (UTC)


Thanks so much for the information, it makes me feel better! Carr 23:10, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Block behaviour changes

Take a look at my comments at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Block behaviour changes. --cesarb 9 July 2005 11:16 (UTC)

[edit] I need your help

Hi Tim can you take a look at this and my talk page and the user contributions. I've blocked the IP for two days, I can increase it if necessary but I need a developer to undo the damage and do something to stop it happening again. Theresa Knott (a tenth stroke) 21:23, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Copyrighting IP Addresses at Wikipedia?

Sorry to bother you but, is this kosher? User:66.179.35.4 It seems that User:RJSampson is getting a little carried away. Am I wrong? I am also refering to the statement made here: [1] Carr 16:46, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Hi, Mr. Starling. I apologize that you've been asked to try and prove that I am a sockpuppet with another individual in Hong Kong (203.198.237.30). This is not something with which I would normally concern myself; I am relatively new here and merely found myself taken aback by an accusation that I was the same person as someone whose IP appeared to be registered in Hong Kong. While I'm not sure why the user Carr felt it necessary to attempt to prove that (s)he and I were one in the same, (s)he does appear to harbor some degree of resentment over a previous "edit war" over a politically oriented article. I have made every effort to disclose every IP at which I have been active, but that does not seem to have defused the situation. As I told Carr today, I realized I was being overly irate at the fact he tried to label me as a sockpuppet on his userpage (with the aforementioned Hong Kong IP). The fact is, his user page will not likely be viewed by many and I should have kept my shock and surprise in check. Having said that, I did edit his re-direct on my work IP address to my personal user page. The reason being two-fold: I mentioned the situation to the legal department of our company and they were not very happy about what's transpired. This is a COMPANY IP and not a PERSONAL IP, and therefore (as our lawyer advised) they did not want a public webpage attributed to me. Furthermore, I will be working for a new company as of next Wednesday and therefore will no longer have access to the IP in question.
I never made any mention of a Copyright as did the user Carr, but I simply made known the wishes of my former employer. As you seem to be more tech-savvy that I, I'd like to encourage you to vet my home IP address (67.116.208.73) against the IP address of the user in Hong Kong (203.198.237.30). Also, please compare our contribution histories if you get time. You will find that our only overlap is with two politcally oriented articles (which are sure to be hot-zones for conflict) among hundreds of other edits in totally different genres. Again, I do apologize for the fact you find yourself in such an odd position. However, when a young editor attempts to make public declarations about the nature of a company's IP address, the lawyers come out to feed -- and I really don't want to leave this company on a slightly more bitter note than necessary due to such a juvenile situation. Regards, RJSampson 07:56, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Reattributions

Salve, Tim!
I'm getting very close to 10,000 edits under my own name but I've several hundred more under the IP addresses User:66.213.119.98, User:66.213.10.5, and User:66.213.99.62. (The first under 10.5 is not mine, though.) Could you tell me what must be done to reattribute edits. Do you have to change each edit individually or can you do an entire address at a time? Thanks for your help. PedanticallySpeaking 14:55, July 15, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Request for sock puppet check

Hi Tim Starling,
Tom Haws, a WP administrator, suggested I contact you to track down some suspected sock puppet accounts of users that have been creating problems in discussions and engaging in repeated personal attacks against other editors.

All three are relatively new accounts, yet the users show a great deal of familiarity with WP. Also, the activity on all three is almost exclusively related the the Jehovah's Witnesses pages. Additionally, the edits and style of personal attacks suggests they are all the same individual.

The suspected accounts are:

Thanks in advance, --DannyMuse 16:51, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Talk to David Gerard -- Tim Starling 05:55, July 20, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Spot of trouble

[2] and [3] need to be deleted from the world entirely, as they contain the entire text of Harry Potter 6. Snowspinner 05:18, July 20, 2005 (UTC)

Done -- Tim Starling 05:55, July 20, 2005 (UTC)

Another one: [4] Snowspinner 20:01, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Degenerate(d) levels

Hi there. Thanks for pointing this out. I don't know what got me writing degenerated, maybe reading about degenerated workers ;)Karol 07:05, July 25, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Your unfounded and hurtful allegations

Hi Tim. I was shocked to find you had been slurring my otherwise untarnished name on a mailing list to which I do not subscribe. I refer you to Exhibit A, a post by you to the WikiTech-l mailing list. In it, you say "Unfortunately Mark didn't see my advice until much later, he lost interest in Wikipedia in the same week and didn't come back for 18 months." While it is true that I did not read your advice until much later, I most certainly did not leave Wikipedia for 18 months. It was only a month and a half that time. I tender as evidence of this Exhibit B, which clearly shows my consistent editing patterns. It also shows that a substantial chunk of my early edits are still attributed to User:Mark Ryan instead of User:Mark. I hereby request that you change attribution for these edits to my account, if possible. If you refuse to comply, I will drag you before the arbcom, or, failing that, I will sue you in a court IN TRENTON, NEW JERSEY. Someone told me that reattribution is impossible now (it might have been you; I can't be bothered searching my logs), but I need to know for sure. - Mark 14:36, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia bug with headings

Hi Tim,

I hope you don't mind me bugging you as I was referred by Redwolf24 :).

Anyway, if you go to the Microsoft page on WP - if you click edit on "Antitrust problems" or any of the sections after it, it edits the section AFTER the one you want to edit, and if you click edit on "External Links" then you get a blank edit box and if you hit save it it to the end of the article! It might have something to do with the embedded HTML comments I'm using but I'm not sure.

--Ryan Norton T | @ | C 22:30, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikimania presentation

Hi Tim. I read in the programme of the Frankfurt meeting that you gave a presentation on MediaWiki. Did you use either slides or a beamer, and if so, could I please get a copy of the presentation? I think this could be very helpful in my attempts to get MathML working, see m:Blahtex/How to make MathML work in MediaWiki. Cheers, Jitse Niesen (talk) 12:23, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wik/Gzornenplatz

I have requested arbitration involving NoPuzzleStranger as a reincarnation of Wik. I'm guessing that the technical evidence would not provide much information to prove or disprove this, but as it seems you're the most familiar with the technical evidence relating to Wik and the vandalbot, I thought I would mention this to you in case your evaluation might show something either way. --Michael Snow 19:18, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] quoting and development

Hi, I just wanted to let you know that I quoted you on Wikimedia [5] since I found some interesting text on your userpage. If you want please vote in my poll and survey] regarding this issue. As well, we also have some PHP libre software projects (http://nsk.wikinerds.org/ngwp/) ([http://nsk.wikinerds.org/won/) that we are looking to recruit pro bono open-source developers for, so if you ever leave this community we would welcome you. Wikinerd 03:54, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Open proxies

Hi Tim,
On the Dutch wikipedia we are suffering (seems to become persistent) from a vandal (vandalising user pages) operating via an open proxy. IP's are continuously blocked, but his list of available open proxies seems lengthy. Apparently the current protection does not work good enough (or is not set, I asked via IRC, but nobody seems to know). Can you have a look, please?
Btw, I had a look to this issue today (being not an expert, but know enough to understand). Would it not be a better strategy to check dynamically wheter an anonymous IP has an open proxy (by sending a request to your own domain with that IP as gateway), like Blitzed is doing? RonaldB-nl 22:14, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Logo on Indonesian Wikipedia

Hi Tim, I'm from the Indonesian Wikipedia. If you look at the Indonesian wiki on IE, you might notice that there are two logos with one overlaying the other. Do you have any idea how to fix this? Thanks. Hayabusa future 05:32, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] User page vandalism

Hi, Tim, I saw what was written in <!-- comments --> in your user page (I'm not a vandal; I wondered if the email address was some sort of code), and I just wonder why on earth Angela vandalised it once? It was a bit…weird. Jon Harald Søby \ no na 12:58, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

The email address is backwards, and Angela vandalised it because I was complaining on IRC that it didn't get vandalised often enough. She kindly obliged. -- Tim Starling 17:36, August 21, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Random Number

Thanks for looking at this. I'll keep a closer eye on the output in future and have a look at the theoretical properties of x^2 distribution - first time I've come across anyone using that in practice. The simplest way to improve a bad generator is usually to bin a few hundred values and serve one a random to the caller - that would require storage server-side though e.g. in a database table. Dlyons493 07:17, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Script

That portal script you're running is flooding RC. I added &bot=1 to the end of his contribs but that didn't seem to work. Could you bot-ize it? Thanks, Redwolf24 (talk) 08:30, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Watchlist Rollback?

Is there a way to make it so I can rollback things at my watchlist that I know are vandalism before I even look at them, as I can do with Contribs? Redwolf24 (talk) 04:43, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Not that I know of, feel free to submit a feature request. -- Tim Starling 04:59, August 28, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Disabling Inline Images

As the creator of MediaWiki:Bad image list, I was hoping to get your input on a similar feature request we're discussing: Wikipedia_talk:Toby#Similar_option. Thanks. -- Norvy (talk) 22:02, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard

Mark, I have created a new project page at Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard, and Secretondon suggested that I tell my fellow bureaucrats about it. It's designed as a forum where users with bureaucrat rights can discuss difficult situations, either beforehand (for advice about what to do) or after taking action (for review and feedback). It's similar to another page I created, which is starting to catch on (e.g., Jimbo used it this month): Wikipedia:account suspensions, which is not for 3RR or simple vandalism but for close calls and disputed blocks.

Please take a look at these new project pages and give some feedback. Good idea? Bad? Needs improvement? --Uncle Ed 12:04, September 1, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Polish Wikipedia

I got information that I can ask you about refreshing specialpages. On pl.wiki contents of specialpage:_nearly_every_ are a little bit not up to date. In the name of Polish Wikipedians can I ask you to refresh them (run a database query ?)?

Thanks for reading my english :) WarX

[edit] Is it a problem to have 500 instances of a template in a page?

Greetings. Over here we're creating a list of missing encyclopedia topics, and beside each article name is a list of links to Google, other encyclopedias, et cetera. But the Wikimarkup code is long and messy to deal with. A single line looks like this:

#[[F keys]] ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=F+keys wp] [http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awikipedia.org+F+keys gwp] [http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=F+keys g] | [http://www.britannica.com/search?query=F+keys eb] [http://www.bartleby.com/cgi-bin/texis/webinator/65search?query=F+keys co] [http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/search.aspx?q=F+keys en])

Which is output as:

  1. F keys (wp gwp g | eb co en)

Someone created a {{search}} template that would make the code much shorter and easier to handle. The line would instead simply look like this:

#[[F keys]] {{Search|F+keys}}

The trouble is, there would be 500 instances of this template per page (since there are 500 article titles listed on each page.) Would this be an unreasonable strain on the servers?

Thanks, – Quadell (talk) 11:24, September 6, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Help with undoing a Special:Renameuser command

Tim, I messed up royally (and, yes, not for the first time). May I ask your help? Since I can no longer ssh in and undo the rename of user:Trollderella to user:EnduranceFan I beg your assistance, kind sir. Uncle Ed 21:42, September 8, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] need help

greetings tim, i just got an assignment on quantum computing and im not really an IT freak and dunno much about computers. i read the passage below in talk quantum computing:


If I was a high school student, and I had the question "What is a quantum computer?", I don't think the introduction of this article would help me one bit. And the rest of the article would go straight over my head. Of course, a quantum computer is a very difficult concept, but surely the introduction could be made similar. For example, in lay speak:

A quantum computer works by simultaneously working out the answer of a question with multiple inputs at once. For example, a question might be "Is this the correct password?". The inputs are then every possible password, for example, "aaaa", "aaab", "aaac", ... , "zzzz". A classical computer would have to ask this question once for each possible password. However, in theory, a quantum computer would be able to ask the question for every password at once, and return the correct password as the answer.

Of course, the above description is in practice not true, for reasons that I don't understand to do with decoherence breaking down etc, but at least it gives a reader that has never heard of a quantum computer nor studied any quantum dynamics an idea of what all the fuss is about. I'm not going to edit the artile myself as I don't trust my own understanding of quantum computers, but it would be really nice to see an easy to read and understand description of what a quantum computer is in the introduction.

Your description is wrong. A quantum computer is only exponentially faster than a classical computer for a very small set of problems. It can't, even in theory, check all passwords at once. In fact, a quantum computer probably wouldn't be faster than a classical computer for everyday tasks like playing Unreal Tournament, since the "clock speed" in most quantum computer proposals is far slower than current classical computers. Anyway, about the introduction... I can't think of a better one, I'm always at a loss to explain these things to people who don't know quantum physics. -- Tim Starling 12:14, August 16, 2005 (UTC)


i do think the introduction is a bit hard, all i need to understand is the basics (only high school assignment). is it possible for you to explain it without getting too deep in the technical details of computers and go as far as uni year1 math (thats no bra-kets) and not too detailed into quantum physics? (like just use the level in your intro) i would really appreciate your help as i have no idea where to find an fairly easy description and its due very soon. the area i need to do is information transfer (i still dunno how can that be done by entaglement) and storage, and remember, only the very basics

thanks!!!

-protcer

[edit] New user log

Hi Tim,

Not sure if this is the place to ask, but I thought it was odd to see this happen in the user creation log:

  1. 11:03, 11 September 2005 MartianBeerPig newusers
  2. 11:03, 11 September 2005 Matthiasderaedt newusers
  3. 11:02, 11 September 2005 Lttlprdg newusers
  4. 11:00, 11 September 2005 MAUZ88 newusers (Created the user MAUZ88 (Talk | contribs))
  5. 10:59, 11 September 2005 AMLFILMS newusers (Created the user AMLFILMS (Talk | contribs))

It seems as if right at 11:00, the little blurb after the user name disappeared. Also, in the dropdown menu, the name of the log disappeared, being replaced with 2 blanks. Is there another change in the software taking place? --HappyCamper 15:08, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Add topical navigation menu(s) to every Wikipedia page

Hi Tim, I've been trying to pitch the proposal to add topical navigation menu(s) to every Wikipedia page, but so far, I haven't been able to figure out where this suggestion should go, or I just haven't drummed up much interest. Can you give me your views on the matter and where would be the proper place to post the suggestion. Thanks. — RDF talk 17:28, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] User login statistics

I run a genealogy wiki for my family, using the Mediawiki software. It is password protected, and I would love to be able to track user login statistics, such as who logs in and when. I have so far been unable to find any info on this anywhere. Any help would be greatly appreciated - thank you!

User:Alex Ramon

[edit] Nauruan interwiki link - once again

Hi Tim,
I already contacted you few months ago to corrext the interwiki link for the Nauruan wikimedia projects from "Nauri" into "Ekakair~u Naoero". Now, since we have one native Nauruan contributors who told us that "Ekakair~u Naoero" is old fashion and not used nowadays. He told us that the modern translation definitely is dorerin Naoero. I hope you can change that soon. Thanks a lot for your efforts. Best wishes and greetings! -- CdaMVvWgS 19:49, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Hello? Did you remark my comment? -- CdaMVvWgS 17:05, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] User:Coolcat-> User:Cool Cat

Hi Tim, awhile ago you renamed User:Coolcat → User:Cool Cat.

He has stated I intend to fix every entry linking to my old username — presumably the talk page links, too.

I feel that this is a highly disruptive idea.

Please see: this talk section and Coolcat prohibited from restructuring.

Thanks, Davenbelle 04:21, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Portal namespace

Well. We are discussing at es wiki about migrating portals from Wikipedia:Wikiportal/ to its own namespace. I already performed an experiment realizing that colon and slashes are just taken as normal title characters, not allowing for subpages and subpage templates, which is not good for the portals.

The question is how to tell Mediawiki that a new namespace is being created? (I am not sysop but I can forward the answer to any sysop, qu wiki sysop is also interested in doing so)

We might also want your not-to-be-called-PNIS bot.  ;)

— Carlos Th (talk) 23:15, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Internode transparent proxies

Tim, I got an email from you on the 8th September offering to put in the addresses of Internode's transparent proxies to the table of proxies where XFF Headers are respected. On 14 September I sent you the addresses 203.26.206.129 mfc9000.internode.on.net and 203.26.206.130 bfc9000.internode.on.net. Could they be placed in the table soon as some vandals are hiding behind them and having their real IP address would enable them to be tracked down easily. Notwithstanding the other problem of collateral damange when all Internode customers can't edit. Softgrow 00:17, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

This is done now. When I was looking through the logs, I noticed some that some requests (maybe 5%) were proxied for addresses in the 10/8 subnet. Such edits will continue to appear to be coming from the proxy, a 10/8 address is considered invalid. -- Tim Starling 19:40, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
Thanks! I'm not sure where the 10.x.x.x addresses are used, but at least 95% of Internode customers (including me) are off shared ips. Should the use of 10.x.x.x addresses be followed up with the ISP? Softgrow 21:13, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] request for bureaucratship at tamil wiktionary

Hi, I am user:ravidreams, I would like to become a bureaucrat in the Tamil Wikitionary since there is no bureaucrat there till now. i have the same username there. I have got support from the community. you can find the elections page here . I was directed at meta wikimedia site to ask a developer regarding this and i hope i am asking the right person. thank you--Ravishankar 09:26, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] SpecialPage Refresh Request

Not sure if you're the one to ask this, but if you are could you refresh the Double Redirect specialpage? It's down to under 100 entries. Thanks. --Kbdank71 20:21, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

An update of all special pages on all wikis started from a cron job at 04:00. That particular query (en double redirects) is running at the moment, it appears to have been going for more than 12 hours. -- Tim Starling 20:23, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
Thanks! --Kbdank71 18:15, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Tim, how often are those jobs scheduled? En double redirects has been cleaned out again, and I don't want to bother you if it's already running. Thanks. --Kbdank71 16:29, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Makesysop broken?

If the bureaucrat's special page for making users into sysops/bureaucrats is broken, would you please take over promotion duties while we wait for a fix?

A bureaucrat will close the nominations (as before), and then contact you to request a SQL query to be run. As I'm sure you know, it would look something like:

UPDATE user
SET rights='sysop'
WHERE user_name='My Kinda Guy'

I would really appreciate it, if you would be willing to take this on for a few days until the regular bcrat button is fixed.

Thanks! Uncle Ed 18:11, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

It's not broken, is it? -- Tim Starling 19:13, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
From the discussion and from bureaucrat Nichalp, I think Special:Makesysop is broken. Anyways, Uncle Ed left a rather ambigious message at WP:RfA on whether new nominations for RfA were suspended. I've decided to be conservative and fix the message to say that they are suspended. If you are willing/able to manually promote admins, feel free to change the message. Thanks! Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk | WS 19:59, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
Actually, scratch that- I think it's fixed. (Thanks, if you fixed it). Never mind, I'm going to be bold and remove the message. Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk | WS 20:00, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
I fixed it 10 hours before Ed left his message. -- Tim Starling 20:19, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
Thanks a lot for all your hard work! It's really appreciated! Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk | WS 20:38, 1 October 2005 (UTC)