User talk:Xeno/Archive 16

This is an archive of past discussions with User:Xeno. 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.

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Archive 14

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Talk:Dead Rising 2#Survival Horror?! (was: Personal Attack?)

Hi. Thanks for the support in the archived section I made last Saturday I think it was. For a while, I've been involved in a discussion over whether Dead Rising 1 and 2 were survival horror here. I thought it was closed and shut. Someone new popped up recently and launched something that seemed possibly like a personal attack. Was it? My responses here and here I hope didn't cross the line of personal attacks themselves? --Thejadefalcon (talk) 15:49, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

No problem... I'll take a look right after lunch. It's Whopper Wednesday and I'm hungry. –xeno^talk 16:01, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Pah! Lunch is for the weak. Meh. I'll have to read your reply on Saturday because I'm about to go. Bump this thread on Friday so that it doesn't get archived please. --Thejadefalcon (talk) 16:04, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

The "responsibility" remark could be seen as incivil but I don't see any personal attacks. Though you shouldn't sign as "Sarek of Vulcan" because there is an admin with that name. If it can be reliably sourced as a survival horror, it should be noted in the genre. If there is some disagreement in the industry that it is a survival horror, and it's a notable disagreement, I could see it being worked into the article somehow. –xeno^talk 16:33, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Bump =) –xeno^talk 17:00, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. There's an admin called Sarek of Vulcan? Seriously? Sorry, I had no idea. I just figured that Spock was overused and I just rewatched Unification and I decided that Sarek is probably my favourite Vulcan. Hmm... must choose new alterego. And I don't suppose you know of any way to shut the topic, because I'm getting bored of it. To be honest, I can't find anything either way at the moment, though Google is screwing around with me and IGN won't work and let me get at their review of the game. Is there any way for me to shut down the topic peacefully without responding to bizarre comments like this? "Wikis are vastly superior, as they allow for: Detail, Original Research, Speculation, Theories, The Truth without Sources, Opinion, and much more... Wikipedia allows for false information, for that reason, and such." If you reply after, say, 12:00 can you bump the topic again so I can see it on Tuesday and reply (if it needs a reply)? --Thejadefalcon (talk) 09:44, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Don't let someone wear you down so easily if you know you're right and policy, guidelines, and reliable sources are on your side [1]. –xeno^talk 14:26, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Oh, damn, now I've got you and LOL involved. Sorry. Didn't mean to. Great. I've caused a hassle again. ... did you at least win? As for policy, guidelines, RS et all, I wasn't totally sure if they were on my side. I'm glad they are. --Thejadefalcon (talk) 16:13, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Actually, rereading this, I suppose this section would be supported by policy, right? "Say Nintendo and Game Freak were to state that Pokémon... Geode was a survival horror game (yes, it's an odd analogy, but stick with me). Game reviewers would say how good it was at that task. If it was an awful survival horror game, then they could say what they believe it should be labelled as, but it is still labelled as a survival horror until the developers state otherwise." --Thejadefalcon (talk) 16:15, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

If the developers say the game is a "survival horror" we should note that - even if we don't think it's true (i.e. Six Days in Fallujah). Same goes for reliable sources. If there is some notable disagreement that is talked about by reliable sources, we can include a note about that as well. In a nutshell: reliable sources trump truth/personal opinion any day. –xeno^talk 17:04, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

New newsletter

Xeno- The new newsletter is ready to go. Would you mind delivering it? Here's the current issue. (Guyinblack25 ^talk 02:30, 1 July 2009 (UTC))

Done! –xeno^talk

Deo Volente & Deo Juvente

Again, Thank you. Deo Volente and Deo Juvente, Xeno. — Mikhailov Kusserow (talk) 11:56, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

No problem =) –xeno^talk 14:27, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

The WPVG Newsletter (Q2 2009)

The WikiProject Video Games Newsletter
Volume 2, No. 4 — 2nd Quarter, 2009
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Newsletter delivery by xenobot 15:48, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Your talk header

Per "As this page and its related subpagesc are automatically released under the GFDL, you are free (and encouraged) to copy whatever you wish, but I'd appreciate a quick note letting me know." I am letting you know that I have shamelessly stolen user talk:Xeno/Editnotice to use on my talk page. Cheers! t'shael^chat 20:39, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

No problem! Shamelessly enjoy it =) –xeno^talk 03:13, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

But...

... but... but destroying Wikipedia isn't against policy. Pout. SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 19:47, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Srsly, nice closure. SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 19:48, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Yea, just handwringing left as far as I can tell. Crazy den of pigs, I tells ya. –xeno^talk 19:48, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

disallow

Re I had noticed some filters said disallow and others said warn in their heuristics; mine said warn, and that I could ignore the warning, and post anyway by hitting "save page." When I tried to save, it would not post, but kept returning to the same warning.

I did vacate the cache, clear history, delete cookies, turn off the computer, change browsers and the rest while doing the long list of edits in my abuse filter log, in case it was due to my browser settings.

In addition, the last administrator's noticeboard incidents tag on my account goes with another IP. It's not even an edit made by this IP. The program should not be attaching warnings to the wrong account.

At least, unlike anybot, it's victims are insiders, not the readers.

--69.226.103.13 (talk) 06:00, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Strange. I will try to reproduce this behaviour. –xeno^talk 17:29, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

In uninstalled and reinstalled my browsers based on a similar error occurring in my e-mail. Turns out the browsers had nothing to do with the e-mail, but it seems to have worked for this problem.

Can you exempt my IP from this [2]. That's the latest work around suggestion. --69.226.103.13 (talk) 02:21, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Okay. I think there's one filter that doesn't matter, the repeated characters. The developer needs to fix that one to not target redirects for taxa. --69.226.103.13 (talk) 02:25, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

WP:OWNFEET

A worthwhile article I think and something I am always bashing on about so although ChrisRDRT wrote it I am kinda the instigator! (But didn't suggest he wrote it, that credit goes to him.) I have subbed it and so you may wish to cast your eye over it once more.

ChrisRDRT particularly focuses on mass edits but actually it applies to every edit, I am kinda a serial incrememntal editor (see for example the nineteen edits I made to Ipswich to Ely Line the other day) but EVERY EDIT STANDS ON ITS OWN FEET i.e. at any point, a reader looking at that article will see an article that is more correct, more intelligible, and more appropriate than the previous version, you don't step backwards to go forwards. That can take some planning.

I have a bit of an essay on this on my user page and I might incorporate a little of that into this article since, as I say, I don't think it necesarily is confined to broad shallow edits but also deep narrow ones. So when I work on translating an article, for example, I do it bit by bit and each edit makes the article a little better. Not perfect of course, but it does not make it WORSE.

Best wishes and thanks for all your good work. SimonTrew (talk) 17:14, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I certainly agree with the sentiment. You never know when someone will view the article. I'll take another look after your additions! –xeno^talk 17:18, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Quick Request

Would you mind closing this post for me? A couple editors, User:Hersfold (an admin) and User:User:Mrschimpf have said that the section requires no admin action. I attempted three times to boldly close the thread, but was reverted by User:Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (who started it). Since Hersfold has said it requires no admin action, having an admin close it would look better than me trying again. If you wish not to get in the middle, I will completely understand. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 03:40, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Looks like it has been closed. –xeno^talk 02:43, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Advice needed

Per User talk:Vianello#As for some advices (permalink), an admin from the Vietnamese Wikipedia could use some advice about dealing with page-move vandals. Since the admin that was asked doesn't know what to do to combat this vandalism, I've contacted you to see if you can give him some advice. If you can help, please reply at User talk:Vinhtantran#Re: Mass vandalism (to keep discussion centralized since I've posted this message at the talk pages of several admins). Thanks, Cunard (talk) 00:34, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Posted there.

"Uploader" Userright Question

This wouldn't disallow people from uploading images would it? Cause I upload, with F-URs, a good many for radio stations and television stations. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 03:36, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

No, no. Not at all. It just a right that allows a brand new users to upload files, rather than waiting out the 4-day autoconfirmed period. –xeno^talk 03:37, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

But it can also be removed from any user to stop uploads.. which I think it can be removed already, at least part of being blocked.. just like admins can disable email function and such, no? - ALLST✰R▼^echo _{wuz here} 03:39, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

(ec)Thanks for the quick response. To be honest, I didn't know that brand new users couldn't upload files until 4 days. I learned something. Thanks for the quick explanation :) - NeutralHomer • Talk • 03:41, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

@ASE - No, the userright doesn't give us the ability to prevent autoconfirmed users from uploading files. Essentially the "uploader" userright is redundant after 4 days/10 edits.

@NH - no problem =) –xeno^talk 03:42, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Iron Fist

I was browsing the Portal (video game) and Narbacular Drop talk pages, and I noticed an edit war from which you had emerged victorious. I'll just say... Any normal person would have given up against such a recalcitrant opposing party. I usually ask myself "Is it worth it?" To me, it wasn't. To you it was. You rightfully defended yourself (dignifiably if I may add) and for that, you've earned my respect. Robert M Johnson (talk) 16:50, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

heh! That was some time ago. I recall it being a little tiresome, but we came to an agreement eventually and ended up with a pretty decent article in the doing. Thanks for the note =) –xeno^talk 17:14, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Bambifan101

Hi Xeno, can you please see the above case about Gossip--girls-xoxo (talk · contribs)? You have blocked the user as a sock, and CheckUser has confirmed that they are unrelated. Cheers, Tiptoety ^talk 03:36, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Hm. My duck sensor seems to need calibration. Thanks for the note! Unblocked. –xeno^talk 03:52, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Meh, we all make mistakes. Cheers, Tiptoety ^talk 04:28, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Favour

Can you look at Special:Contributions/Hyper Lulz Beam and tell me if my duck sensor needs to be re-calibrated? -t'shaél^chat 20:51, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Not actionable at present... Probably leave 'em to it... –xeno^talk 20:54, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I'll keep an eye on them. Thanks, xeno. -t'shaél^chat 20:56, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

N.B. User was eventually indef'd by someone. –xeno^talk

Yeah, I thought, and still do, that he's Jarlaxle. That's why I brought him to your attention. :) Thanks, xeno. t'shaél^chat

You're probably right. I'm just a bit of a softie. Timestamps removed to speed up archiving =) –xeno^talk

Rorschach Archive gobbled up one of the Arguments Pro

Xeno, I really like the way you're archiving the Rorschach talk page and maintaining the section headers, especially the section headers that describe a specific argument. But I think you might have let one of the headers slip away into the archives by accident. [3] Argument Pro #5 is missing. I'd like to think that future readers will be able to look back and quickly and easily satisfy themselves that we considered all aspects. If they find their thoughts represented, then maybe that will inform them about the need to bring up old subjects, again. I know I've found this to be quite daunting. Your help is appreciated as I continue to lay down a structure upon which to better view the the arguments of my fellow wikipedians. Danglingdiagnosis (talk) 07:45, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Oops- yep, that was just an oversight on my behalf. Fixed, thank you for pointing that out. cheers, –xeno^talk 13:18, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Funeral of Michael Jackson

Full protection of a current event would be a bad idea, and I'm not quite sure about how "unquestionable" you want to get. These are pretty clearly in violation of the NFCC, and it would be nice if someone else would help remove them. Who's heading for a 3RR violation? J Milburn (talk) 23:16, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree that full protection is going to stifle non-image based improvements on the article. FYI, The "smarten up" was directed at everyone participating. I think that because there's widespread disagreement whether these violate NFCC, 3RR exemptions won't protect you. I'm certainly not going to enforce this because I think that NFCC #1 probably applies here, but I would just advise you to be cautious in light of this. –xeno^talk 23:19, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm miles from 3RR- I've removed one of the images twice, and the others once. I think you'd struggle to find an admin who would be willing to block me for removing these images- "widespread disagreement" or not. Some people not liking it doesn't suddenly mean that policy doesn't apply, much to the dismay of many editors when faced with the NFCC. (I hope I'm not coming across as ratty. I'm a nice guy, I just think our NFC policies are important.) J Milburn (talk) 23:34, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Again, not that I would even think of enforcing it because I think you're right here, but by my count you're at 4 reverts. It doesn't matter if it was different images. I'm not saying this to admonish you, but just to advise you to be cautious. And no, you're not coming across as ratty. Cheers, –xeno^talk 23:37, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Another task for tools

Hey Xeno,

I have another task that could use somebody who uses tools. This AFD has 140 articles nominated in a mass nomination. I closed the AFD because with 140 items it is IMPOSSIBLE to discuss any of them intelligently, but I really do not want to go through 140 articles and removing the AFD notice tag and placing the "kept" tag on the talk page. Any chance you (or one of your TPS) could use one of your tools to do so?---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 00:58, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

O my! I can certainly do this, but I'm just about to head out for a late dinner. If one of my TPSers (who have really tapered off in recent days, sad face) doesn't get to it, I'll do this when I'm back. –xeno^talk 01:01, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks (FYI, I'm a TSP'er, just don't post that often.)---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 01:03, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Done (n.b. also some discussion here). –xeno^talk 04:11, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Vandal

Wow. I just got my userpage vandalised. I'm like... popular or something. I believe the edit summary was referring to this edit, which I undid here (notice the edit summary). He has blanked his talk page to remove warnings on multiple occasions and, though I haven't had time to look through everything, doesn't seem to be very constructive an editor. *has a strange sense of glee that he got vandalised* --Thejadefalcon (talk) 11:46, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

I remember the first time I was vandalized I felt like I had really "arrived" as a Wikipedian. Congrats ;p –xeno^talk 13:22, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

That was what I thought too. *wants to be vandalised more often now* --Thejadefalcon (talk) 15:40, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

heh. This userbox may encourage it somewhat. Are you done with the section above? I've been keeping it on the page with a hidden fake timestamp. –xeno^talk 15:44, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the userbox. :P I doubt it, but is there any way to get it to count automatically? And yeah, I've finished with the above thread. Thanks for helping me. I've thrown all of my willpower at getting broadband of my own, but, well, these are the options that internet providers gave my community. Virgin gave us a dreadful experience when we had modem (tried charging us for £200 that we didn't use) and my grandparents just switched from BT because they were too expensive (and that was just with a phone line, let alone internet as well). --Thejadefalcon (talk) 10:14, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Not that I know of... That would be quite the feat. And yes, you really need your own internet connection. =) –xeno^talk 13:24, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Meh. Thanks anyway. My mum's on the next computer over, talking with some guy from BT called Theo. She accused him of being a bot. *snickers* --Thejadefalcon (talk) 15:20, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

One of those live chat dealies? They do tend to C&P canned responses a lot. –xeno^talk 19:03, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Happy face

Because of all the sad faces I keep seeing recently. :) Cheers, your Friendly Neighborhood Talk Page Stalker 08:45, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

This made me happy, thanks! I always pretended that everyone used white as their default background :) Nja²⁴⁷ 09:19, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

hehe. Thanks, this made me smile =] –xeno^talk 13:22, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

heh... no I use the bluey one! –xeno^talk 13:22, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Hey Xeno, thanks for your help. I tried emailing you that United Furniture Warehouse Article, let me know you you can't access it —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.185.191.18 (talk) 17:59, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Userfication Request

Hello,

Two of my articles, The Armed and These Are Lights were deleted yesterday for lack of notability. I sourced a newspaper article and a few official websites for the band and their album was produced by one of the most famous producers in their genre and the article had more content than those for some other similarly notable(in my opinion) bands, however I guess it wasn't enough to establish notability.

Regardless, can you please userfy the two pages for me so I can have the content off of them that I wrote because I would like to use it for a blurb elsewhere?

Thank you.Ashgromnies (talk) 18:28, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

See User:Ashgromnies/The Armed & User:Ashgromnies/These Are Lights. If you can improve them to satisfy WP:BAND / WP:NALBUMS, then you could consider moving them back into the mainspace. Maybe drop me a line first to take a look. –xeno^talk 18:33, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

User indexing RfC

Thanks for running the bot job. I can parse out a list of everyone who has participated if you'd like so that we can make sure not to leave anyone out, though we'd have to exclude the people already notified or who have participated in the new format. Gigs (talk) 01:04, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm a little confused, do we need to re-ping? I pinged them already... –xeno^talk 01:24, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Everyone who participated? The list looked too short, but I admit I didn't compare. Gigs (talk) 03:02, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Everyone who participated in the RFC, yes. I built a list of links on the page, converted to talk pages and filtered to user talk. Kind of inelegant, I hit User talk:Jimbo Wales by accident. I didn't go all the way back (i.e. to the initial 3 discussions you pinged), because I figured the people who got your pings either don't care or haven't visited yet in which there's no need to re-ping them. –xeno^talk 03:16, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

OK, good enough. Thanks again. Gigs (talk) 03:36, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Yoghurt

I ran into the problem with a generic quantification wording such as 'common', 'mostly', 'best', 'worst', etc. as needing sourcing when there's some disagreement. "common among English speakers" maybe source it with the Google search results to back up the 'common'? This page has been surprisingly controversial so it's a suggestion to avoid a debate over the phrasing. Alatari (talk) 04:45, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

While the Google results do indeed show it's common among Canadian websites, citing it would probably be shot down as original research (as was my fridge-check ;>). I'll see what I can do about finding a reliable source. –xeno^talk 12:51, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm back

Hello thon in my back, I quote "Take two and call me in the morning" and since your comments are important to the disscussion, please write comments in the on going disscusion. GamerPro64 (talk) 15:24, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm trying to get away from that conversation and simply agree to disagree. I've made my position clear why I feel that all three consoles need to be represented in a print version of Wikipedia if it ever gets made during this gen, and if WP 1.0 really scorns video games articles, then we should ensure to put the most necessary articles for a print encyclopedia as "top" importance. –xeno^talk 15:28, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Feefo

Hi,

I recently tried to upload a page about Feefo but it has been deleted. Could you please get it reposted or explain what changes need to be made? I have written the copy to follow the format and style of a number of other businesses posted on Wikipedia including Xerox, Amazon, Diebold etc and it has been written in a factual style simply explaining what the company is and what its product does without making any claims. I understand that you may not believe that Feefo is of enough interest to merit such a listing. However, it is a brand that is being seen on a large number of third party websites and has been used by many thousands of consumers in the UK. An increasing number of large brands such as eBay, Amazon, Debenhams, Asda etc are recognizing the value of customer feedback systems. Feefo is one of the leading providers of customer feedback systems and it is used by over 100 UK online retailers and websites. Over 325,000 customer feedback comments have been posted on these various websites by UK consumers through Feefo. Feefo is currently undergoing a rapid expansion programme and is launching in the USA, Germany and Australia. It is a brand that will be seen on a growing number of consumer facing websites, providing a kitemark of quality and trust for consumers. It is therefore a term and brand that is likely to be searched by consumers worldwide and Wikipedia is one of the first places they will look. Please can you reconsider the merits of having an entry for Feefo. Many thanks, Ed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Edward Lennox (talk • contribs) 16:19, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

I've userfied the content to User:Edward Lennox/Feefo. You need to improve the article to the point that it meets our inclusion criteria outlined at WP:CORP, at which point you should contact me or another administrator and ask if it looks ok to move back into the mainspace. –xeno^talk 16:22, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

And again

[4]. Please note that not only does this IP not respond on the article's talk page, it does not even respond on its own talk page! --RCS (talk) 12:21, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I commented at their talk page, please let me know if they continue w/o discussion or rs. –xeno^talk 12:59, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, sorry I wasn't around to help; it looks like Black Kite got to them. Let me know if they show up again and I'll apply semi-protection to the page. –xeno^talk 16:35, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Script

Also do User:Allstarecho/wplgbt.js. Thanks. - ALLST✰R▼^echo _{wuz here} 17:04, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Done, cheers. –xeno^talk 17:19, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

AN edit summary

Your recent edit summary at AN made me smile. When I first encountered the outage yesterday, I clicked on the fundraising link. Except that was down too because of the outage. Doh!--Fabrictramp | talk to me 17:58, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

As a further irony, I got an error message the first time I tried to add the resolved tag =) –xeno^talk 18:00, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

filter work

Thank you for your filter work. The abuse filter is a permanent record. The first reaction is that the user is a vandal, crook, pedophile, terrorist. That's why is it shocking when one sees their own username in the list! User F203 (talk) 18:09, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes it's permanent, but don't sweat it. See the note at the top of the filter log: Entries in this list do not necessarily mean the edits were abusive. –xeno^talk 18:11, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Trout

Don't slap me with one. Law_{type! snype?} 09:08, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

'tis a little late, no? –xeno^talk 12:29, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

thanks

thanks for the low-down. We was mentally unstable, so since we have been on new medication we think we want to give it another try. We'll see how it goes. --Street Scholar (talk) 18:45, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Best of luck. –xeno^talk 18:45, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Difference

There is a clear difference from people encouraging me in my position and posting second hand smears against someone else that, if posted by the original person, would be a clear violation of civil. Also, I wouldn't disrupt an RfA or RfB with such rumors and innuendo. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:19, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

You're right in that there's a difference, but I still believe in "Diffs or it didn't happen" - across the board. That being said... your response time is astonishing. Have you thought about working in emergency services? ;> –xeno^talk 19:20, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, you know, there was a reason why I was looking there. :) By the way, I don't say stuff like that to harm anyone. I just say it to show that I actually bothered to ask people before pursuing something if I was crazy. I stopped making unilateral judgments about big things a long time ago. It is safer that way. Ottava Rima (talk) 20:06, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, it rings hollow. Makes it look like you're trying to lend more support to your position than actually exists (as no one can verify if you've received said emails) and doesn't do you any favours. Jmho. –xeno^talk 20:09, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

It can ring hollow, I don't mind. When I pursue something, I prefer to pursue something on my own without anyone else. However, many people tend to start out in such a situation by claiming that you need to take the advice of others and the rest. I like to put it out front that I already sought the advice of others and that I know what to expect in the situation. Ottava Rima (talk) 20:25, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Linking videos and other languages

Hello My name is Harald. I am trying to create an article but have a question and I would be most appreciative if you can help me with that. How do you paste a video file in the aricle? Can it be linked (URL) to another source/web page?

Can i create article in two different langueses let's say: English and Deutsch both about one classical artist (conductor)

Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Musicfan1977 (talk • contribs) 01:05, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Videos should probably be linked in the external links section, i.e. as follows:

== External links ==

[http://www.video-location.com/video1/ Description of video]

You can create an article in two different languages, but I am not familiar with the de.wiki's inclusion guidelines. To access the de version of the article you just type de:article name into the search box. I.e. to see the Deutsch article on "Earth" you would type de:Earth. See also wp:interlanguage linking. –xeno^talk 02:45, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Questions from BlazerKnight

Hello, Xeno. I'm a longtime Wikipedia user and created an account some time ago. I would like to begin contributing to the site but am intimidated by... well, everything. I found out about the adoption programme and would like your guidance. Thank you! (Please note that I am contacting several adopters at once) BlazerKnight (talk) 01:47, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

My reply here.

Thanks for the adoption. Coupla questions: Is there a way to check the ranking (start class, featured article) of an article easily? Or do I have to find the corresponding page on that article's WikiProject? Also, I'm having trouble with edit summaries - I'm not familiar with the terminology and abbreviations. And can an edit summary be edited later? I made a mistake in one early summary... BlazerKnight (talk) 09:48, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

The ranking and importance as assessed by the relevant WikiProjects can be seen at the talk page of the article. It is sometimes collapsed in a show/hide box. See also User:Xeno/wikiadopt#Reviewing articles... As far as the abbreviations, you could try WP:Alphabet soup or WP:Glossary to look things up you don't understand. Edit summaries can't be edited after the fact, but you could make a WP:Dummy edit to correct an error; if you felt it important. –xeno^talk 12:18, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Alright, thanks. Yeesh, the terms in the glossary is gonna take some time to internalize. :P By the way I plan to work on Ragnarok Online soon. I left quite a lengthy message detailing a todo list of sorts on its talk page. Maybe you can take a look and see if I'm on the right track? Thanks. :) BlazerKnight (talk) 12:34, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

I took a brief glance and it definitely looks like you are on the right track. Yes, the article does look a little bit gameguidey (especially the table of professions). You might look at other MMOs that are GA or FA class for an idea of how things should ideally be structured and how much weight should be given to gameplay elements. But it looks like you're ready to dive right in, so go ahead and be bold and start implementing your suggested changes. People may revert if they disagree, but then you can discuss it. This is the WP:BRD cycle that drives article development. –xeno^talk 12:45, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

By the way you don't need to leave talkbacks anymore, I have this page watched. I went to look for other good MMO articles, and they are few and far between... Final Fantasy XI is the only one I recognized so far. Also, looking at my own list now, I realize I have my work cut out for me, haha. Thanks for taking a look. BlazerKnight (talk) 13:18, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good =) Let me know if you had any specific questions. –xeno^talk 13:31, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

I have been poking around in your Wikiadopt page and it was extremely useful. Especially learning about the gadgets tab in preferences. Question: you mention "Other types of pages are graded outside this criteria. Lists are no more than that, long lists of topics that all relate to the main theme of the list. Lists don't provide any prose, and any references are there simply to confirm that the topic does meet the criteria for inclusion." What about lists like List of Bleach episodes (season 9) which not only has episode synopses, it is rated as a featured list. Is this a new development and the info you posted outdated?

Also I plan on uploading a low-res, personal screenshot for Ragnarok Online (from the Southeast-Asian version), transcluding Template:Non-free game screenshot and Template:Non-free use rationale, filling all needed fields. Any part of the procedure that I missed? Retroactively signed, BlazerKnight (talk) 01:18, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Probably. Please be bold and update the lesson accordingly (I'll take a closer look later, just heading out the door). I haven't read these in a long while, probably Aug '08 =) I think that's right, a bot will eventually tell you if you get it wrong... –xeno^talk 00:43, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I'll try updating that later. By the way what time are you usually active? For me, I'm most likely to be around from 0800 to 1200 hours, UTC time. BlazerKnight (talk) 01:18, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Hm, I typically start around 1200 UTC. –xeno^talk 03:09, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Slashdot

Yeah. Gigs (talk) 23:32, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Happy belated first edit day!

HAPPY FIRST EDIT DAY!

from the BIRTHDAYCOMMITTEE

Wishing Xeno/Archive 16 a very Happy First Edit Day!

Have a fantastic day!

From the Wikipedia Birthday Committee

--I dream of horses If you reply here, please leave me a {{Talkback}} message on my talk page. @ 15:37, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

O, thanks! I didn't even noticed =) –xeno^talk 15:38, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

WP:CHU

Yeah, I usurped this account with T'Shael. Please see here. :) Javért | ^Talk 15:37, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Ah, you must be suffering from re-attribution lag. Apologies =) –xeno^talk 15:39, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

No problems. :) They said it may take a couple of days to re-attribute all my edits since I had 10,049 or something. Best, Javért | ^Talk 15:41, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I had the same issue. A dev had to manually re-attribute them. –xeno^talk 15:41, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

I may be quiet and not say anything. I like having a blank filter log. :) How long did you wait before it was decided that a developer would have to manually re-attribute your edits? Javért | ^Talk 15:46, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

I think it was about 3 weeks. –xeno^talk 15:48, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Request

I was wondering if you could review my recent RFA activity when you have the chance and maybe provide a few pointers. I was also fixing up some of my nomination questions when I remembered that we had an earlier run in on the whole New York State controversy. I was the one who notified you about it and I think that you moved it back. Thanks a lot. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 23:39, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

I think the main thing people are looking for at RFA is that you are actually vetting the candidates you're voting for, so try to provide some substantive reason for your !vote, whether be it support/oppose/neutral. –xeno^talk 12:26, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Oh shoot, I meant to say my deletion stuff. I can't believe that I did that. And I just provided a lengthy explanation for the RFA of GrooveDog. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 19:44, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Many thanks

Many thanks for the text number which you left at Wikipedia: Village pump. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 21:14, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Don't thank me, thank the person who pointed it out. I'd actually never heard of it until then! –xeno^talk 23:24, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Some Help Needed

There is someone editing from CBS Radio HQ in New York via 170.20.11.116‎ and has been vandalizing pages. This has been happening every couple days, not enough to take to AIV or even ANI. Since this is a clear COI, is there something that can be done? - NeutralHomer • Talk • 23:43, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Is it vandalism though? COI doesn't mean you can't edit if the edits are factual. You could try WP:COI/N, or explain to me which edits are problematic. –xeno^talk 23:55, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

The one I caught was this complete wipeout of an entire section. I Warn4IM'd the user for that vandalism. From the talk page they have been warned numerous times for other vandalism. Not sure which ones are those, but that is alot of vandalism for one anon user and since it is licensed to CBS Radio, they should know better. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 01:54, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

My only concern is that there are also a lot of non-rolled back edits emanating from that IP. Are they constructive? –xeno^talk 02:47, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

I went back to June 1 in the edits and there seems to be alot of editwarring on the Rob Johnson (news anchor) article, some drive-by vandalism, some more drive-by vandalism, and alot of editing to CBS Radio and CBS Television owned stations which (since this is a CBS Radio IP) is a clear COI. Other than that, it seems there is not that many problems as I once though. My main concern is the COI problems and the many many vandalism warnings. But from June 1 to Present, they have mostly behaved themselves....mostly. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 02:58, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Interesting

While I don't agree with your interpretation of things or your decision to unblock those three accounts, I do not really have any objection to it. With the slashdot article, and the half dozen articles that followed it, we are basically in a flood of static and these three will not add much. Either I am wrong about at least two of those accounts being sock puppets of an existing user, or their continued editing will eventually betray which editor. Either way the result will be interesting. While generally on the same side of this debate I have very happy to see that we differ in some areas. I am not a fan of polarized debates, I think it is essential that there be nuance in the opinion of each person to come to a truly reasonable conclusion. Keep up the good work. Chillum 02:26, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Based on my discussions with the three users, I am fairly certain DF is distinct from P1 or ZG. And I am certain that P1 and ZG are distinct, albeit users who work closely together. The possibility remains one of them may be a sock of a regular, but as I said I have my doubts about this. Since CU turned up nothing at this point we need to assume they're not. Thanks for your note... And I agree, it's certainly been an interesting debate. =) –xeno^talk 02:45, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Though perhaps you might have consulted the blocking administrator first. It is the considerate thing to do, and our blocking policy does recommend this practice when unblocking users. I accept that in cases of unambiguous error that such a consultation is not needed, but I think there is certainly some ambiguity here. Not a huge deal in my books, but I cannot speak for Jayron32. It occurs to me in hindsight that you may have consulted with Jayron via IRC or another venue, if so then kindly smack me with a trout. Chillum 02:40, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Since Jayron was just carrying out a CU's findings, and the private evidence I received provided insight into those findings, I didn't really think a discussion was important. But you're right, a courtesy ping might have been worthwhile - I claim lazyness =) (ec: nope, I didn't so you're safe from fish =) –xeno^talk 02:45, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Like I said, not a huge deal for me. Can I assume that the private evidence that you refer to is that P1 and ZG both had separate e-mail addresses issued by the same institution that they were able to receive a message from and respond to? If so, and these addresses are in line with their stories then I can understand your point of view. I am not asking for any details that would comprise privacy mind you.

I fully understand the need for private evidence in such circumstances and am willing to accept your interpretation and description of that evidence. I have relied on such evidence myself in the past. While I will try to assume good faith I will also keep my eyes open for the tell tale hints that true sock puppets invariably drop. Chillum 03:11, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that's an accurate description of the private evidence. –xeno^talk 11:40, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Unblocking Dolphinfin

Not that, after reviewing the full bredth of the discussion you had at the relevent talk pages, I necessarily disagree with you unblocking him, it would have been something of a courtesy to at least notify me that you were considering doing so. In general, its a good idea to bring the blocking admin into the discussion. --Jayron32.talk.say no to drama 03:25, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Based on the information I received, it is highly unlikely that Dolphinfin is Psychology12345. Whether they are a sock of another user is another question, but since CU didn't bring up any further connections beyond the tenuous "likely" to P1 I didn't see how further discussion would have been worthwhile beyond a courtesy. Personally, I didn't thinkg blocking any of the accounts was necessary, they had stopped changing the article page after my warnings, so it kindof gave the appearance of silencing dissent through blocking which was undesirable given the climate of the debate they were engaged in. Though, since the CU came back as "confirmed", I don't fault you. You are right that I probably should have at least dropped you a note, but since you were just carrying out a checkusers' finding; which I was able to interpret differently based on private evidence, it was a little different than a block placed at your own discretion so I didn't think you would mind. –xeno^talk 11:40, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Just as a little more background from my point of view (which is what I would have told you had I been contacted), I was responding to an ANI request for an uninvolved admin to act on the positive CU results, and that was my first and last involvement. I reviewed the CU results, which were both positive (usually "likely" + clear behavioral connection + new account is good enough in most of these cases) and it looked like a clear case. Being uninvolved, I did not know the full story. Now that I do, I agree with you --Jayron32.talk.say no to drama 12:02, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I think your actions were fine coming at it from the outside and based on the information you were given I would've likely made the same decision. FWIW I initially misread your statement (I read "Note that ... I necessarily disagree" ... coffee does wonders; I should ensure I'm through my first cup before responding ! LOL). cheers, –xeno^talk 12:39, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Canvassing for meatpuppets?

I know nothing about slashdot but went on the website. In a section entitled "Your rights online" (clearly implying that the side in favor of suppression wants to limit people's rights) Gigs wrote ""Editors on Wikipedia are engaged in an epic battle over a few piece of paper smeared with ink. The 10 inkblot images that form the classic Rorschach test have fallen into the public domain, and so including them on Wikipedia would seem to be a simple choice. However, some editors have cited the American Psychological Association's statement that exposure of the images to the public is an unethical act, since prior exposure to the images could render them ineffective as a psychological test. Is the censorship of material appropriate, when the public exposure to that material may render it useless?" Now, if I went on a psychology listserve or website with a comparable message, I'd probably be blocked or sanctioned as quickly as dolphinfin was after having been falsely accused of sockpuppetry. Indeed, some people were even preemptively threatening the psychologists involved in the ROrschach discussion not to do such things (asking newcomer-psychologists in favor of suppression, "how did you find out about this discussion?"). But apparently canvassing by Gigs is acceptable? Why the double standard?Faustian (talk) 14:15, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

An interesting question, Faustian - and you're right, you would probably be raked over the coals if you had contacted a similarly skewed (as I commented at Talk:RT, slashdotters are generally of the "information wants to be free!" mindset) group of people. To somewhat alleviate your concerns though, one-off comments by drop-in anons and recently registered are (hopefully) going to be weighed appropriately, much the same way the comments from the presently SPA pro-suppression accounts will be weighed. That being said, Gigs is an outsider to the debate so I'm not sure if you could call it 'canvassing' (as we don't know his stance) as much as you would call it wanting to get one's comments on the slashdot front page. FWIW, I also raised the issue at an off-wiki venue some time ago for outside comments here. As I commented at Gigs talk page, additional outside viewpoints are always helpful. –xeno^talk 14:28, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

(to faustian)I didn't categorize it in "Your rights online", Slashdot editors did. They also edited my description, as is common, though it is mostly intact from what I submitted. I have participated very little in the debate (mainly only to comment that I considered the policy proposal forum shopping). In any case, it could hardly be considered inappropriate canvassing, no more than any journalist writing any article about Wikipedia. As Xeno pointed out, anyone new who joins the debate with a drive-by comment can be weighed appropriately. I'd also note that the response from the greater outside attention has hardly been one-sided... Slashdot may have a bias, but it is still a general readership news site. Gigs (talk) 15:32, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

So if "as a journalist" I wrote a brief piece on this, with a link to the talk page, on the Bullettin of the American Psychological Association" this would not be canvassing?Faustian (talk) 16:13, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

You are heavily involved in this debate, and so is the APA. I don't think the canvassing guidelines apply, your concern is more in the realm of the meatpuppetry policy. Given the neutrality of my story, my lack of investment in the debate, and the mixed composition of the Slashdot audience (as many seem eager to remove the images as to keep them), I don't think you could claim that this was anything like meatpuppetry. Gigs (talk) 16:44, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Dead Rising 2/Survival Horror

They're back. Since you got involved last time, I figured you might want to know. I've attempted to reason with him/her once more, but I don't forsee me having much luck given his reaction last time. --Thejadefalcon (talk) 15:37, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

You should provide an in-line ref for the survival horror statement. –xeno^talk 15:51, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

A whatsit? --Thejadefalcon (talk) 15:52, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

an inline ref... ...is a [[survival horror]]<ref>{{cite web|url=http://xyz.com|title=Dead Rising is a survival horror}}</ref> –xeno^talk 15:58, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

It was from a magazine though. --Thejadefalcon (talk) 16:01, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Then use cite magazine! lol =] –xeno^talk 16:45, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

And that is done how? I couldn't find anything. Besides, it's only on the talk page right now, wouldn't a citation be rather pointless for it? --Thejadefalcon (talk) 12:03, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

You use template:cite magazine... The citation would be useful to close off the discussion. –xeno^talk 12:43, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Oh, bloody hell, that's a big citation. I think I'll have to wait until I get broadband. I'll keep him busy until then. --Thejadefalcon (talk) 14:29, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

You don't have to use them all. Just use the title, date, publication, author, month, year. –xeno^talk 14:39, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

That's good. You'll still have to wait a bit though as I don't actually know what those are. --Thejadefalcon (talk) 14:48, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Userbox migration

I have started migrating userboxes. Just did the first 3. And I'll be doing more today. I'll try to finish all of them today (in the Category:Jewish Wikipedians corner I adopted).

If the guys running bots to update the links need some reminder, could you please take care of that? Debresser (talk) 05:54, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Should we also move school related templates? Like {{User YU}}. Could you find a link to where this is mentioned? Debresser (talk) 05:55, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Since this whole migration thing comes from the Germans, I had a look what they do with school related templates. They have kept them as templates. If so, I'm finished. I've moved 13 templates to userspace. I'll update you here, and you'll inform User:Xenobot/workspace. You need the old or the new names? Debresser (talk) 06:31, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Both names; old name first, new name second (as follows) –xeno^talk 11:48, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Template:Old name - User:UBX/new name

Debresser (talk) 14:59, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Erm...Did you clear it with L'Aquatique before moving all thsi stuff into her userspace? I think it might be better these go under User:UBX –xeno^talk 15:49, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

User_talk:L'Aquatique#Jewish_userboxes. I see you put the redirects back. So much for "People are periodically running bots that update people's userpages to point from the old location in template space to the new location in userspace." Debresser (talk) 16:20, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Ah sorry, didn't notice that. I thought she was still inactive. Yes, that's an outdated statement,... The bots (that don't run anymore) used to use that particular userbox to know what to migrate... My bot doesn't need it so we can just leave the redirects in place for now. –xeno^talk 16:49, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

She is inactive. Unfortunately. Do you know what's up with her? A shame those bots stopped their tasks. Was that because the work is almost done? Isn't there a bot that is ready to be reactivated? Nice bot you have then. :) Debresser (talk) 19:40, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I thought she had actually agreed, not just agreed through silence! I'm not sure what happened to her, she just up and disappeared one day. The reason the bots are doing it anymore was because yes, most of the migration was done. My bot still does migration but it doesn't run off those helper userboxes. –xeno^talk 19:57, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

I hardly met her, but she seems like a nice editor. Anyway, I'll see where AWB gets me with those links. What's the trick? Just change all links/transclusions indiscriminately? Debresser (talk) 20:42, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Sure, if you want to try do them yourself. Just go into the Find/replace module and put "find" Template:Blah replace with User:L'aquatique/blah. Then you make the list from "What transclude page (all ns)" and run 'er. Let me know if you need more help on this. –xeno^talk 20:46, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

I'd manage, and I'll keep you informed. Only transclusions? Debresser (talk) 20:53, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

You can update links at your discretion, too. –xeno^talk 20:54, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

It's not going to work with AWB. Some pages transclude from the template and some from the userbox, and AWB doesn't catch those that transclude redirects, etc. Or manual (which is a no), or your bot (whenever you'll be ready to start it). Debresser (talk) 23:17, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Dieudonné M'bala M'bala

Hi Xeno, this is it: the edit-warring IP is back, still refusing to renounce his scare quotes and to take into account what is written on the talk page. Could you semi-protect the article now? Thank you, --RCS (talk) 07:39, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Whoo-hoo, Xeno!? I hope it is on your watchlist, at least. Cheers, --RCS (talk) 17:52, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

I do. The problem is that the IP is now discussing on the talk page so semi-prot would be inappropriate. Dispute resolution as suggested there might be a good idea. –xeno^talk 17:55, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Dear Xeno: "The problem is that the IP is now discussing on the talk page" - where? --RCS (talk) 19:19, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't look at the time stamps properly. Sorry. Yes I'll watch and sprotect if he returns and doesn't address your rebut. –xeno^talk 19:22, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

user:(

To make me happy, could you just unblock it for me. I noticed you bothered to restore his talkpage. Thanks, Pzrmd (talk) 11:45, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't think issuing a ceremonial unblock is necessary. At the time, the username ran contrary to the policies and practice. See the talk page for the history of complaints. –xeno^talk 11:50, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

What if Docu blocked User:VeryVerily? Pzrmd (talk) 11:54, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't think your hypotheticals are particularly relevant. –xeno^talk 12:44, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Repeat Vandal

This guy has been warned numerous times for changing the distributor name in film-related articles such as this, despite being told again and again that the original distributor is what is labelled rather than what they currently are. While I don't mind all that much in terms of getting my edit count up, it's getting frustrating if the guy is just blind to edit summaries or if he's simply an idiot with nothing better to do. --Thejadefalcon (talk) 12:01, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps try a non-templated message on his talk page? –xeno^talk 12:45, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

What? "Bugger off"? If he doesn't listen to the templates, why would he listen to a non-template? --Thejadefalcon (talk) 14:29, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Because templates might not accurately explained what people find problematic with his edits. –xeno^talk 14:32, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Hmm... very well. I'll give it a go. --Thejadefalcon (talk) 14:37, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Done. --Thejadefalcon (talk) 14:49, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

It didn't work. They did it again. If you look at the history, you can see it's basically been an edit war between him/her and me, with TheRealFennShysa popping up to revert the first one and thus alerting me to the false information (I had no idea, to be honest). --Thejadefalcon (talk) 09:49, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Bot needed

Hi. I think we need a bot to help with this issue. Any chance you could come and take a look and offer a suggestion? Thanks. Chimpanzee - User | Talk | Contribs 22:55, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Replied there and

Fixed.

Deletion review for User:Programmer13/Vandalism Patrol

An editor has asked for a deletion review of User:Programmer13/Vandalism Patrol. Because you closed the deletion discussion for this page, speedily deleted it, or otherwise were interested in the page, you might want to participate in the deletion review. Drew Smith What I've done 04:05, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

DRV was unnecessary, as it was the user him/herself who requested deletion. As you had contributed to the project, I see no problem userfying it to you. I will bring a new MFD in a little while, as the previous one was closed early due to the original users' pre-empting of it. –xeno^talk 04:25, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

I thought that perhaps I should bring this to your attention. Best, — Javért |^Talk 04:16, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the note. –xeno^talk 04:25, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

No problem. You know me and my paranoia. ;) Javért |^Talk 04:26, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

This is a reminder to myself that the above DRV was seemingly filed to make a point, and the filer may in fact have no intention of improving the page which I trans-userfied in good faith. If no edits are made to the page in question to bring it up to our userpage standards, I will delete the same sometime after 04:15, 21 July 2009 (UTC) –xeno^talk 17:26, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

The DRV was not pointy. My MFD of Service Awards was. And I do intend to make significant changes to the "vandal patrol", starting with changing it to a simple award system similar to the service awards.Drew Smith What I've done 02:48, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

All the better, then. I still must bring an MFD to ensure the new page meets consensus. Based on what you design, I will likely vote again to keep. –xeno^talk 02:54, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

well, its mostly done. Just some aesthetic's, and a few minor issues left over. Hopefully this will evolve and catch on as the service awards did.Drew Smith What I've done 03:26, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Keep at it. –xeno^talk 14:51, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

MfD coming for the Vandalism Patrol?

per [6] do you plan to start an MfD sometime? Maybe answer this on my talk page, Jack already started a thread which is how I became aware again. Thanks. ++Lar: t/c 14:49, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

My replies here.

WP:STUB

Hi- Need your help and clarification about which template to use for creating stub templates. I had updated the instructions here: [7] and it got reverted, stating that the metastub templates were not deprecated. Could you straighten this out? Thanks much --Funandtrvl (talk) 01:12, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

I've pointed to the straw poll. –xeno^talk 01:51, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your help!! I voted in the straw poll too. :-) --Funandtrvl (talk) 02:10, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

My talk page

In the past, you have raised a concern about my talk page "wizard" system. I have changed this to an FAQ-based system (User talk:Stifle/FAQs), and would appreciate your feedback at User talk:Stifle/FAQs/feedback or elsewhere. Stifle (talk) 12:02, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

My reply here.

Cite Magazine

What the sodding hell is wrong with this citation?

<ref name=L4D Logo><ref>{{cite journal|last = Amrich|first = Dan|date = July 2, 2009|title = Only on Xbox 360: Left 4 Dead 2|journal = Official Xbox Magazine UK|issue = 49|page = 43|publisher = Future Publishing|accessdate = July 21, 2009}}</ref>

I've tried everything I can think of, but I've given up. --Thejadefalcon (talk) 14:57, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Probably the fact that you've got two opening ref tags. –xeno^talk 15:07, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

All of my citations are fouling up right now. I've got this one to work...

<ref name=“Kotaku Preview”>{{cite web|url=http://kotaku.com/5151456/aliens-fight-predators-again-in-2010|title=Aliens Fight Predators Again in 2010|first=Mike|last=Fahey|publisher=[[Kotaku]]|date=2009-02-11|accessdate=2009-07-21}}</ref>

... but this one doesn't.

<ref name=“OXM 47 Preview”>{{cite journal|last=Channell|first=Mike|date=2009-05-07|title=Aliens vs Predator|journal=Official Xbox Magazine UK|issue=47|pages=32–39|publisher=Future Publishing|accessdate=2009-07-21}}</ref>

--Thejadefalcon (talk) 15:15, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

It's because you are using curly quotes ( “ ) , try using just the regular quotes ( " ). These look the same in the rendered font but they should look different in the editing window. –xeno^talk 15:17, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, Jade, it really was that simple! The moral of the story? Get broadband so that you don't have to type up an entire article offline on Word which automatically uses curly quotes. *grumbles furiously* Thanks. --Thejadefalcon (talk) 15:22, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

=). You can try to save as unicode text (UTF-8) which might prevent goofy stuff like that. –xeno^talk 15:23, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

I prefer not screwing around in case I forget how to turn it back. :P I prefer curlies anyway. Here's what I was trying to accomplish. --Thejadefalcon (talk) 15:29, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Also, this for the Left 4 Dead thing I started this thread with. --Thejadefalcon (talk) 15:32, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Nice expansion! How closely are you paraphrasing? –xeno^talk 15:38, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

I blame LotR:C for the practise. :P And it's not all that close barring Kingsley's quote, which was word-for-word. Unfortunately, the AvP thing got edited soon after, in ways that my sleep-deprived mind decided were stupid and foolish and I got my complaint on. Serious question: should I, in future, avoid Wikipedia until I've woken up? --Thejadefalcon (talk) 09:33, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

← Yes, I find myself typically writing foolish things prior to finishing my morning coffee. =) –xeno^talk 12:44, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Maybe you are like me? =) –xeno^talk 14:18, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Warning! This user functions at a sub-optimal level before their morning coffee.

who's using it?

Probably, except in recent years I can never make a cup of coffee that doesn't taste disgusting so I went off it. Regardless, *ganks* And, err, thanks for not banning me or anything. --Thejadefalcon (talk) 15:10, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Your hand-hacked table was interfering with the beautiful arrangement of my coffee box (4 lines of text instead of 3), so I fixed you up. –xeno^talk 15:22, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Nooo! To be honest, I couldn't have fixed it myself anyway without staring for half an hour. I just nicked that from someone. --Thejadefalcon (talk) 15:29, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

re: SDPatrolBot

Re Sure, it should be very easy to add, as it already does this for CSD A1 and A3. I'll add A7 right now, are there any other CSDs you think it should ignore after page length has substantially increased? Cheers - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 17:41, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Can't really think of any others, nope. Thanks for the quick response! –xeno^talk 17:44, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

New page patrolling

Please see this thread and consider giving new page creators some breathing room before tagging their pages for deletion. In this case, you tagged within 2 minutes of creation. Unless it's an attack page or something, give the editor some time to work with the article. Thanks, –xeno^talk 17:27, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Admittedly I was on the fence in regards to this article and perhaps should have simply tagged it for improvement or as a stub. I allowed my review of the creator's block log to skew my opinion on an unreferenced bio. And I realize I misunderstood the inapplicability of G4's to speedy deletes.

But in general, as a NP patroller I feel that my purpose is to filter pages on creation. With the volume of speedy deletes we generate, there are going to be occasional disputes regarding our reasoning. However, in the vast majority these proposals for deletion are necessary soon after creation or the article will be lose the benefit of input from an experienced editor unless someone on recent changes happens to notice the article as it is being modified. If bad articles slip past this initial screening I feel it would increase the workload of the pool of editors as a whole. This is just my own personal philosophy and I will attempt to avoid causing you too many headaches in the future. Thank you again for the clarification on the G4, I am always seeking to improve my knowledge of the guidelines so my efforts on the project are more accurately focused. LeilaniLad (talk) 17:45, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Two minutes still seems a little swift for an A7. WP:NPP encourages to patrol from the bottom, otherwise we can turn off new contributors. I didn't realize about the block log, so I guess that's a bit of an explanation. Cheers, –xeno^talk 17:48, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Wilco. I will retrieve larger groups of new pages from the IRC and start from the bottom in the future. Thank you again for your time.LeilaniLad (talk) 17:54, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Keep up the good work. –xeno^talk 17:58, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Procedural nomination

That's the first time I have ever seen someone nom an AfD, then !vote to keep it. I understand your rationale, but it still made me chuckle. Thanks, Doc Tropics 18:05, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

heh, I had to re-nom it because I was the one who speedily closed the original MFD and subsequent DRV. –xeno^talk 18:10, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

AfD concerns

This has nothing specific to do with the issue we discussed earlier, but I was would appreciate it if (as an active admin) you could give me your two cents on an issue I have discussed with other editors regarding AfD debates. The concern is, with the increase in traffic Wikipedia has seen over the last few years the proportion of editors concerned with notability seems to be diminishing rapidly. There are far more people editing on Wikipedia as a lark, that are disinterested in core principles such as notability and verifiability. Those that are working to improve the project as a whole seem to be relegated to a minority. And as the more project-minded editors are becoming a minority it is becoming harder and harder to maintain notability and accuracy of information in articles. I guess the question I am rambling towards is; As AfD debates are settled via a consensus, what happens when the majority of Wikipedians are unconcerned about foundational guidelines? I have talked to several senior editors in the past who have quit after debating extremely obvious AfD candidates (intelligently and calmly referring to Wikipedia policy) but have been drowned out in the consensus by people that didn't seem to be concerned with them (the term one such editor used to describe the situation as that the project is "fundamentally flawed"). This is an issue that has been of growing concern with me and has been the largest contributing factor for my moving from editing individual articles to new page and recent change patrol. I would be very interested if you could offer me any insights you have gleaned with your time editing here. Again, I know you're busy, but I thank you in advance for your time. LeilaniLad (talk) 18:41, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

An interesting concern!... I must admit, I don't spend much time at all in deletion processes, in fact, the only thing that brought my attention to the above situation is the WP:VPM thread. That being said, administrators are instructed to weigh arguments based on their merits and grounding in policy. Is your concern somewhat theoretical, or prophetic, or have you indeed seen articles kept that don't really meet our notability guidelines? If so, have you tried bringing them to deletion review? –xeno^talk 18:48, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Placeholder

Hi, from looking at this discussion there does seem to be consensus to rollback the placeholder removal. Are you still willing to do that? I tried to do it myself but couldn't get it to work. The only difference I had with the script was that my browser automatically closed after I deleted an image/page. :) Garion96 (talk) 21:24, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I meant to get to that.

Doing... –xeno^talk 21:51, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Final run... –xeno^talk 00:00, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Done. I'll have a log shortly... –xeno^talk 00:17, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll have a look at the log this weekend. See if some should be reverted or not. Garion96 (talk) 13:30, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

log

start: 2009-07-20 21:56 end: 00:10 (2h 14m)

5 thousand, 703 edits (42.6 epm)

edit summary: clean up, remove placeholder image using AWB

rolled back

5603 instances.

not rolled back

1151 instances. (+12)

edit summary: clean up, remove placeholder image, removed Stub tag using AWB

rolled back

72 instances.

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

1     19:54, 13 July 2009 Caitríona Ruane 
2     19:45, 13 July 2009 Leigh Cappillino 
3     19:23, 13 July 2009 Diana Eccles, Viscountess Eccles 
4     18:55, 13 July 2009 Rae Baker 
5     18:50, 13 July 2009 Diane Sands 
6     16:56, 13 July 2009 Josephine Teo Li Min 
7     16:55, 13 July 2009 Nicole LeFavour 
8     16:48, 13 July 2009 Ara Celi 
9     16:18, 13 July 2009 Gretchen Fraser 
10    16:13, 13 July 2009 Emily Zurrer 
11    05:30, 14 July 2009 Emma Richmond 
12    04:36, 14 July 2009 Samantha Jade 
13    03:31, 14 July 2009 Salma Agha 
14    03:29, 14 July 2009 Lisa O'Hare 
15    15:45, 13 July 2009 Julie Donaldson 
16    15:28, 13 July 2009 Linda Jackson (politician) 
17    14:43, 13 July 2009 Randa Abdel-Fattah 
18    14:29, 13 July 2009 Joanne Campbell 
19    14:19, 13 July 2009 Garrison Starr 
20    14:10, 13 July 2009 Sarah Cook (rower) 
21    02:26, 13 July 2009 Kim Holland 
22    02:25, 13 July 2009 Ruth Wedgwood 
23    16:22, 12 July 2009 Vanessa Stacey 
24    15:54, 12 July 2009 Courtney Shealy 
25    15:53, 12 July 2009 Jolie Justus 
26    15:51, 12 July 2009 Miraildes Maciel Mota 
27    15:46, 12 July 2009 Carol Harrison 
28    15:05, 12 July 2009 Katherine LaNasa 
29    14:31, 12 July 2009 Hannah Tointon 
30    14:29, 12 July 2009 Loui Batley 
31    14:17, 12 July 2009 Susanna Reid 
32    12:59, 12 July 2009 Victoria Spence 
33    12:56, 12 July 2009 Kaahumanu II 
34    12:50, 12 July 2009 Joanna Chmielewska 
35    12:32, 12 July 2009 Imogen Cairns 
36    14:15, 11 July 2009 Le Jingyi 
37    14:15, 11 July 2009 Alison Newman 
38    13:09, 11 July 2009 Deborah Batts 
39    12:32, 11 July 2009 Nanette Milne 
40    09:22, 11 July 2009 Briana Scurry 
41    00:15, 9 July 2009 Tracy Louise Ward 
42    23:41, 8 July 2009 Sarah O'Flaherty 
43    23:27, 8 July 2009 Kamini Kaushal 
44    10:14, 8 July 2009 Tracey Fuchs 
45    02:08, 8 July 2009 Kristina Anapau 
46    19:30, 7 July 2009 Neelam Kothari 
47    17:10, 7 July 2009 Nancy White 
48    16:30, 7 July 2009 Brandi Sherwood 
49    15:35, 7 July 2009 Hope Powell 
50    15:19, 7 July 2009 Barbara Flynn Currie 
51    15:14, 7 July 2009 Elaine Youngs 
52    14:45, 7 July 2009 Elizabeth Kostova 
53    14:23, 7 July 2009 Jenna Russell 
54    13:37, 7 July 2009 Julia Duffy 
55    11:25, 7 July 2009 Larissa Meek 
56    02:52, 7 July 2009 Polly Shannon 
57    19:21, 6 July 2009 Darina Allen 
58    16:43, 6 July 2009 Sian James (politician) 
59    14:49, 6 July 2009 Sheila Taormina 
60    09:34, 6 July 2009 Sheila Gish 
61    05:25, 6 July 2009 Pamela Reed 
62    02:45, 6 July 2009 Beth Howland 
63    02:42, 29 June 2009 Ajay Naidu 
64    02:35, 29 June 2009 Ahmet Piriştina 
65    02:12, 29 June 2009 Peter Soulsby 
66    01:58, 24 June 2009 Richard Taylor (mathematician) 
67    11:57, 23 June 2009 Terry Austin (comics) 
68    05:41, 23 June 2009 Greenville-Pickens Speedway 
69    00:57, 23 June 2009 James Rado 
70    00:57, 23 June 2009 Jack Docherty 
71    06:25, 22 June 2009 Selamawi Asgedom 
72    06:02, 22 June 2009 David McLetchie

not rolled back

36 instances.

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

1	 16:29, 13 July 2009 Alice Stewart
2	 14:34, 13 July 2009 Deborah Anderson
3	 05:00, 13 July 2009 Dee Roscioli
4	 04:41, 13 July 2009 Anna Madeley
5	 03:39, 13 July 2009 Amina Annabi
6	 15:17, 12 July 2009 Barbara Turner (basketball)
7	 15:06, 12 July 2009 Valora Noland
8	 13:49, 12 July 2009 Lisa Aziz
9	 12:12, 12 July 2009 Susan Denberg
10	 10:20, 12 July 2009 Trini Alvarado
11	 13:07, 11 July 2009 Neena Gupta
12	 12:26, 11 July 2009 Marlene Johnson
13	 22:46,  8 July 2009 Shunza
14	 13:17,  8 July 2009 Brittany Bock
15	 02:51,  8 July 2009 Chris Connor
16	 02:12,  8 July 2009 Esther McVey
17	 01:57,  8 July 2009 Jennifer Rizzotti
18	 17:55,  7 July 2009 Inka Grings
19	 17:44,  7 July 2009 Joan Diener
20	 14:01,  7 July 2009 Jan Francis
21	 13:43,  7 July 2009 Joyce Jimenez
22	 13:32,  7 July 2009 Rain Pryor
23	 11:40,  7 July 2009 Edith Summerskill, Baroness Summerskill
24	 16:02,  6 July 2009 Justine Greening
25	 09:31,  6 July 2009 Nicole DeHuff
26	 07:06,  6 July 2009 Lesley Judd
27	 06:47,  6 July 2009 Busy Philipps
28	 02:46,  6 July 2009 Nancy Sit
29	 00:32, 29 June 2009 Edward McMillan-Scott
30	 06:17, 24 June 2009 Giovanni Lajolo
31	 03:47, 24 June 2009 Frankie Banali
32	 03:46, 24 June 2009 Jerry Uelsmann
33	 01:58, 24 June 2009 Carlos Gomes Júnior
34	 01:47, 24 June 2009 Steven Isserlis
35	 04:32, 23 June 2009 Josef Masopust
36	 04:18, 23 June 2009 Derick Heathcoat-Amory, 1st Viscount Amory

Chicago tagging

I thought you were going to create a bot. The best way to do this is with a bot. Are you doing it by hand or AWB instead?--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 02:40, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm doing it with a bot (contributions), running AWB (and WP:Plugin++). Which is what I'm offering to help you do; if you had the inclination. Otherwise I can run it after Indiana. –xeno^talk 02:42, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand what you are doing and I do not use AWB. What are you offering me? Are you telling me your bot runs AWB?--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 03:26, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

I wanted to help you learn to use AWB, as a bot, to do tagging. It's a fairly straightforward. But if it's not up your alley, then I understand. For WikiProject tagging, my bots use AWB with a plugin written by Kingboyk designed to make it very easy to do tagging tasks of this nature, both manually and by AWB-Bot. –xeno^talk 03:33, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

About four people have retired from WP who have run past bots for me. I would loke to learn AWB, but I am pretty busy. How would I start to use it?--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 03:45, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

The first thing to do would be to download it - see Wikipedia:AWB#(2) Download. You will net the .NET Framework installed on your computer (this is free to install). See the instructions at WP:Plugin++ as well, move the Kingbotk plugin to the main AWB directory so it gets loaded automatically. Then you would click "Plugins", "Add Generic Template" for the Chicago wikiproject template and fill in the fields. You then need to make your list, change the criteria to "category" and put the category or categories (seperated|by|pipes) you want to tag and click "make list". Then you just set up your edit summary, click minor edit, and then click start and off you go. When not in bot autosave mode, it will prompt you before committing any changes. You're already approved under TonyTheTiger for AWB use, so I would just see if you can get the hang of tagging before filing a BRFA. Ask me if anything is unclear. See the below screenshot as well. –xeno^talk 03:56, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

User talk:Divini

I will respectfully defer to your judgment and I won't object either way. But please also keep in mind the recent block evasion/socking: [8], [9]. Cheers, Cirt (talk) 04:02, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Hm, someone should explain to them we don't allow role accounts of that nature. If he already has a new username that isn't promotional in nature, he ought just continue with that. –xeno^talk 04:04, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

WP:INDIANA tagging by Xenobot

Can your bot do this task?

Hey, I was wondering if you're bot could do this task. I'm asking everyone in the Template substitution bots category, so if someone already accepted the task (besides me), just ignore this. Thanks. AHRtbA== ^Talk 13:44, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Probably, but it looks like something that will require my full concentration so I might not be able to get to it until the weekend. FWIW, the correct category is Category:WikiProject tagging bots and the tool would be User:Kingbotk/Plugin. –xeno^talk 13:54, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. I looked in that category, but it seems that they didn't do what the task requested. If you could just leave a note on the task saying that you'll get to it, so no one else thinks that it's not assigned, that'd be great. Thanks. AHRtbA== ^Talk 14:30, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

I'd prefer to leave it open for now; I've never done a more complicated tagging task of this nature, so if there's someone more familiar with it, they should take it. –xeno^talk 14:34, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Reminder to self to action this over the weekend. –xeno^talk 17:48, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

The weekend was busier than I expected. Will see about getting to this sometime this week. –xeno^talk 12:41, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Doing... –xeno^talk 19:20, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Done –xeno^talk 12:56, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Report: 6422 edits. I pasted the 240k list of pages edited to http://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:WikiProject_Indiana/Article_alerts&oldid=303930504#Pages_edited_by_tagging_bot_in_July_2009 . To see the edits themselves click here and go backwards. Or, click here for 5000 / 1422 edits. –xeno^talk 13:31, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Mistagging reports: Moved to User talk:Xenobot Mk V/requests

Thank you!

		The da Vinci Barnstar
		For being so helpful and saving a ton of time using Xenobot to tag WP:INDIANA's many untagged articles, I thank you. Cheers my Canadian friend! :) —Charles Edward ^{(Talk \| Contribs)} 14:32, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

No problem! It was my first large-scale tagging task, so thanks for the practice (and the shiny! =) –xeno^talk 14:33, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you

...very much for your recent assistance! I could eventually have accomplished that myself, but "eventually" could have been a dauntingly long time. Thanks again :) Doc Tropics 20:15, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

No problem! –xeno^talk 20:18, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Interwiki ref

Re With pleasure. Question for you - does that take care of the "unreferenced" issue? --User:AlbertHerring ^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!} 20:27, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Not necessarily, it's the same thing you're doing now, you just avoid using a template that calls another template. –xeno^talk 20:30, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

OK. Here's the thing (as I said on the other talk page) - the only reason I tagged them with BLP was because someone requested I do that. I had hoped that the translation template would cover the issue; in my experience it has in the past. Also, for what it's worth, I believe that there have been offers to help sort and expand the articles once they've been created. --User:AlbertHerring ^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!} 20:32, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Technically other wikis are not considered reliable sources, so the BLP-unreferenced tag is probably still a good idea. I think you can do without the "major revamping" tag though, since it's not really accurate. –xeno^talk 20:34, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Very well. The main reason I put it up there was because I was afraid someone would come along and mass-delete them before there was a chance at improvement (which, as I said, I understand is forthcoming.) Sorry if this has caused an unholy mess; I tried doing something similar, basically, on a smaller scale, and it seemed to go over well, so I thought it might work out as a way to get some much-needed stubs created. --User:AlbertHerring ^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!} 20:36, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

eh, you're acting in good faith, I don't think it's really an "unholy" mess =) –xeno^talk 20:40, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm glad that's understood. :-) Still...if you want me to hold off for a bit, I can. (There are some fly genera that need stubbing, and I know I can get a source for those.) --User:AlbertHerring ^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!} 20:41, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Well you should at least wait until the ANI runs its course and then proceed based on whatever is decided there. –xeno^talk 20:47, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Right. Flies it is. And probably some rivers, too...those are safe. (Well, unless you're in one, editing using a faulty connection.) --User:AlbertHerring ^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!} 20:49, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Image placeholders

Hi there. I just noticed you have been restoring image placeholders that had been removed with the link to an ANI discussion that asserts that no decision to remove these has been made. That is actually incorrect. A decision was reached to remove these placeholders at Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Image placeholders last year. It appears that nobody has gotten around to doing it yet though. Just thought I'd give you a heads up.Plumadesabiduría (talk) 14:46, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

"Use of these placeholders in neither encouraged nor deprecated", "There is no consensus to remove the placeholder images from articles as a rule." –xeno^talk 14:52, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Mega Man 2

I saw that was semi-protected. That underlying IP range has also been rangeblocked for 1 week. I'm not sure if both are necessary. Perhaps you could lift the semi-protection unless you think that the IPs will start hopping around like moles. Thank you, MuZemike 16:40, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Unprotected thanks for the note =) –xeno^talk 16:41, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I was right. That user just hopped IPs. I think we can use that semi-protection, now. MuZemike 22:25, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

It stopped I think? –xeno^talk 13:28, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Minor but important: Tagging and BLPs

Hi, how are you? I saw this edit and though I'd make a small remark. It would be better to put leave the template {WPBiography}} on top and put new templates below them, because it contains the important message with guidelines about biographies of living persons. Debresser (talk) 20:11, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree, but the plugin I'm using currently places it at the top no matter what. A poor excuse, I know. I will leave a suggestion for the AWB programmers. –xeno^talk 20:18, 23 July 2009 (UTC) (see User talk:Kingbotk/Plugin#Put templates below the BLP template)

Thanks. Debresser (talk) 20:30, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

I think I discovered a workaround, by turning on the "Biographies" tagging plugin, I can have it ensure it gives itself primacy. I just have to skip non-bios on the first run until I can run the plugin in a do-not-tag-when-no-tag-exists-mode. Thanks for the note about this. –xeno^talk 06:21, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Fixed

Just curious

Why do a few Wikipedians spell vote with an exclamation mark prefix? • S • C • A • R • C • E • 15:02, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Because discussions aren't supposed to be a vote. So people "not vote" on things. (! is the "not" symbol in programming and logic). Kindof an in-joke, really. –xeno^talk 15:04, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Because they're stupid.^[1] --MZMcBride (talk) 18:18, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

BOT for alt text

Good day to you, I was woindering if there was already a BOT that does stuff with images. I have been working fairly closely with the Alt text issue that has been enforced lately and its possible that a bot could be useful for some things that are related to alt text of images. I was thinking about starting to work on one but since you seem to be in the know on bot related atuff and AWB I thought I would ask you if there was one already. Here are the things that I think I could reasonably do with an AWB assisted bot, but there are probably more.

Remove HTML from alt text (alt text does not support HTML)
Remove wikiformatting from alt text (alt text does not support wikiformatting)
Rearrange the info contained in an image link to be in the correct order (this would be a hard one for me to do so I would need help from someone who is better at regex or bot programming.)
Add a Tag to the article or article talk page that the article needed alt text. (Although I don't know about doing this yet since most articles don't have it (alt text) yet).
Add alt text to certain images (the image and the definition for said image would be based on consensus and should be images with large numbers of links to articles such as the state or national flags, military rank insignia, military awards, etc).
replace flagicon to flag.
Also possibly replace Image: with File: (only if another edit is being performed at the same time)

Now 1, 2 and 4 would require regex and or a custom module, all would need consensus before I did them and I know I would need to get permission to run a bot and do a test run and I think we should address each one individually, but I think they are all doable. I was also thinking that having a page similar to the AWB typos page that shows what the bot is looking for would be useful. Sorry for the novel.--Kumioko (talk) 15:53, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

(I re-arranged order) 1 through 3 will require someone much cleverer than I. 4 is probably not a good idea since I would guess an extremely small percentage of our articles actually have alt-text, so we would be tagging every article with images. 5-7 are pretty easy, though 5 would be unnecessary if bugzilla:19906 gets done. –xeno^talk 16:01, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick response, is there an ETA of when the bug will be addressed wether fixed or not? I could do 1 and 2 although I would want someone who is really good at regex to double check it.--Kumioko (talk) 16:16, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

No guarantee that it will be fixed in the near future or ever =) –xeno^talk 16:16, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Ok, so as someone who has experience with bots, which one or ones would you suggest starting with and what do you think my chances for success are? --Kumioko (talk) 16:23, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

My go to guy for these things is User:MZMcBride. I think 1 and 2 are pretty critical. I'm not sure that 3 is even a problem, (I don't think the order is set?) but I'm not an expert on images. –xeno^talk 16:25, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

(undent)Ok thanks I will ask him what he thinks as well, the reason 3 becomes an issue is because I have seen in several cases where people slide alt text in before the caption. I have also seen.--Kumioko (talk) 16:46, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Alt text is supposed to come after the caption? Help:Images is wrong then! –xeno^talk 16:53, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

A few comments. A lot of these seem to be cosmetic changes. While arguably helpful for editors, most of them will have absolutely no impact for readers (or on the HTML output of the page).

[[File:Foo.jpg|alt=test 1]] → alt="test 1"
[[File:Foo.jpg|alt=test 2]] → alt="test 2"
[[File:Foo.jpg|alt=test '''3''']] → alt="test 3"

Also, as I'm sure you're aware, changing Image: to File: or {{flagicon}} to {{flag}} will have no impact. The syntax order, as far as I'm aware, has absolutely no impact on rendering. If our documentation says otherwise, it's likely wrong, though you're free to show me test cases. :-)

Adding a tag to articles needing alt text would be crazy. (a) I would imagine 99% of articles would be tagged; and (b) tagging would simply disrupt readers and provide very little benefit to editors.

Point 5 seems reasonable enough if I understand it correctly, though using a bot in place of a proper software solution (where alt text could be applied once for all image usage instances) seems a bit silly. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:08, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the speedy reply, so as I understand it, in your opinion none of these seem like they are needed, is that correct? If that is the case I agree in that some of these are cosmetic but I don't think we should leave trash lying around if we can help it and since adding alt text is relatively new editors are likely to treat alt text syntax as they would anything else in WP and add HTML and or wikiformatting to it and we should start cleansing them now before we end with hundreds or thousands of images with trash in the alt text area. Also in regards to point 5 I agree that if a reasonable software solution is implemented it would become OBE but since we don't know when or if the solution will be implemented (and it likely won't be anytime soon) it would be even more silly to manually edit thousands of images with potentially just as many varying descriptions when we can program a bot to do it much faster and more consistently. --Kumioko (talk) 17:35, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Based on what MZMcBride said, I think it's best if we tell the AWB devs to include your suggestions in the regular "cosmetic changes" matrix, then AWB users will apply them when they edit the article for other reasons (if they keep general fixes turned on). –xeno^talk 23:55, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Exactly. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:20, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

New user rights group

What do you think about a new user rights group that gives members the ability not to leave a redirect behind when moving pages? You're a sensible chap, so I wanted to get your opinion. Thanks, Javert ^{I knit sweaters, yo!} 00:02, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Hm... I don't think that would go over well with the community as it can be used essentially as a delete button. –xeno^talk 00:03, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Hmm.. I see your point. No matter how useful it would be, it could possibly be seen as a "back door" to adminship, not unlike dolling out the "abusefilter" right to non-admins? Javert ^{I knit sweaters, yo!} 00:07, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Pretty much. I could see it being included in some kind of "trusted" usergroup that included rollback,acc,autoreviewer,etc. We've got so many rights these days, it might make sense to create such a group. –xeno^talk 00:09, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, and we could possibly raise the "prerequisites" for giving out such a right. Just throwing ideas around now, but I believe that this one is a good one. Just needs some more work. Javert ^{I knit sweaters, yo!} 00:12, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Not that its any of my business but I have often though that moving pages could be a seperate right. --Kumioko (talk) 00:16, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

If I may chime in, a "no redirect" right could be given to non-admins who are experienced vandalism fighters. The criteria would need to be higher than rollback, since it could be misused more easily. But I could see its usefulness for fighting page move vandalism. Vicenarian ^{(T · C)} 00:19, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks thats what I was thinking but I did poor job of explaining it. --Kumioko (talk) 00:34, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

←In addition to having demonstrated a need for a "no redirect" right, I think time would be a major factor in granting it. Twenty-five hundred edits and three months, for instance. And apologies to xeno for hijacking his talk page. :) Javert ^{I knit sweaters, yo!} 00:38, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

It should be noted that this flag already is built into MediaWiki as "suppressredirect," automatically granted to sysops and above. It's also given to Global Rollbackers (meta), trusted users who fight vandalism interwiki, especially on small wikis with few administrators. Vicenarian ^{(T · C)} 09:22, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but not grantable locally. Someone should perhaps review the past discussions on making a "trusted" usergroup and see what the major objections were and then make proposal that addresses them to make a 'trusted' usergroup with all these rights. (Maybe throw edit-fully-protected in there as well) –xeno^talk 13:29, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

That's a good idea. Do you happen to have a link to the relative discussions, or know where I could start searching? Thanks, Javert^{I knit sweaters, yo!} 20:18, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

They would most likely be in the archives of the village pump. –xeno^talk 20:25, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. Javert^{I knit sweaters, yo!} 20:26, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Happy xeno's Day!

User:Xeno/Archive 16 has been identified as an Awesome Wikipedian,
and therefore, I've officially declared today as Xeno/Archive 16's day!
For being such a beautiful person and great Wikipedian,
enjoy being the Star of the day, dear Xeno/Archive 16!

Peace,
Rlevse
~

A record of your Day will always be kept here.

For a userbox you can add to your userbox page, see User:Rlevse/Today/Happy Me Day! and my own userpage for a sample of how to use it. — Rlevse • Talk • 00:04, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Sweet! Thank you =) –xeno^talk 03:29, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

American task force tagging

No objections to the changes - the text was deliberately left as plain as possible so that it could be manipulated in a text editor as need be for optimal bot formatting. If your changes accomplish that, then so much the better. Does this mean that you will be handling the bot request? :) Many thanks, Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 03:17, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, see User talk:Xenobot Mk V/requests#WP:USFILMS. A possible snag might be that there is no "Films" template support in WP:Plugin++, I'll probably request that shortly. Else, I will just try to replace a find&replace to make up for the lack. –xeno^talk 03:18, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up on the start of this, xeno. Lugnuts (talk) 06:35, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

An article noted "keep" was speedy-deleted?

Your Xenobot had the following notation for the Matilda Hunter (fictional character) page: closing AFD per Balloonman, result was KEEP without prejudice to individual re-nom. However, it appears as though someone's notation for speedy deletion took effect already and deleted the article. Can you explain why an article that was intentionally marked as KEEP then be subjected to a speedy delete? Thanks, Shymian (talk) 09:52, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Matilda Hunter (2nd nomination) Enigma^msg 11:43, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

^What Mister-E said. The "mass-close" as keep wouldn't supercede previous individual decisions. –xeno^talk 12:47, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Chris Mordetzky

On February 19, it seems you removed semi-protection, but the log doesn't show the initial protection. It doesn't appear the article was moved. Do you know why this is? Cheers, Enigma^msg 11:37, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, maybe it was protected before 11/2007 under another name? Enigma^msg 11:38, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes I think it was here: [10]. Remember "moving protection settings" is a fairly new feature. –xeno^talk 12:48, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject TRANSWIKI

Hi. In light of recent events and community concerns about the way in which content is transferred I have proposed a new wikiproject which would attempt to address any of the concerns and done in an environment where a major group of editors work together to transfer articles from other wikipedias in the most effective way possible without BLP or referencing problems. Please offer your thoughts at the proposal and whether or not you support or oppose the idea of a wikiproject dedicated to organizing a more efficient process of getting articles in different languages translated into English. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 12:59, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Ehem

*Cough* Chimpanzee - User | Talk | Contribs 13:44, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

hehe... will get to it! =) –xeno^talk 13:45, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

This is

Done, please double-check my work. It might make sense to tweak {{Dts vgr}} in order to be able to accept (the) region paramater(s), or create a new template, to make this easier. –xeno^talk 15:40, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

My Userboxes is messed up

Can you or you bot organize my userboxes? Should I use the "|" symbol, or it just does'nt work for me? If it does'nt work for me, can you do that? JMBZ-12 (talk) 16:38, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Something like this maybe? –xeno^talk 17:06, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes! Like that. Thanks a lot. JMBZ-12 (talk) 17:22, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

My mentorship

Hi xeno. I have not seen Franamax for a couple of days now. I finished updating the article to the best of my ability. User:Igorberger/Sandbox . I am just wondering what to do next? Thanks, Igor Berger (talk) 16:33, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

I can't quite recall the terms of your unblocking... was it only to work in your user sandbox and on mentoring? –xeno^talk 17:03, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

I am not a 100% sure, but I think (per second chance) after I have finished the article, it is suppose to be checked. If the work is satisfactory I am suppose to be given regular editing privileges per AN decision. I do not mind and do appreciate mentoring on ongoing bases. This will make my transition to come back much smoother. So while I am editing in public space, if I have questions, problems I can bring them up to my mentor. Igor Berger (talk) 17:32, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

I think it's best we wait for Franamax (talk · contribs) to make that call. They've been away less than 48h... Continue working on the article, or perhaps create additional userspace sandboxen to work on other articles. –xeno^talk 19:37, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

I will wait for Franamax for a while. See what happens. Thanks, Igor Berger (talk) 20:12, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

I think the specific terms were "reach an agreement with your mentor". I'd asked Igor to play in the box for a "few" days so I could see what his intentions were at various articles. In the event, the work has been confined to the single sandbox and I've just delivered my fairly rigorous critique there. That's all about content, and it's not sufficiently bad that I would seek to prevent Igor from editing articles. I've noted this at User:Franamax/Igorberger#Editing_Oden_Icebreaker under "Directly editing articles".

Obviously, if the mentor should encounter a four-day perfect storm of RL events (don't ask!), decisions may need to move out to familiar admins. Pretty sure I'm back on the case though. Igor can proceed to make mainspace changes, though I'd prefer to discuss the Oden article a little more for now. I've been watching all the way through. Franamax (talk) 12:08, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Hi

Hi Xenocidic, Just dropped by to say, i'm kindof back. Probably get back into Wikipedia probably when my own site is complete. ConnorJack (talk) 19:52, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

welcome back! –xeno^talk 19:52, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Mistagging notes

Where are the notes and what is going on?--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 21:37, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

If your bot tags subcats we are going to have a lot of problems, especially with railroads.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 21:39, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

See User talk:Xenobot Mk V/requests#Mistagging reports: CHICAGO. –xeno^talk 02:35, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

I have replied.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 05:25, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Request for mediation not accepted

A Request for Mediation to which you were are a party was not accepted and has been delisted.
You can find more information on the case subpage, Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Rorschach test.

For the Mediation Committee, Ryan Postlethwaite 21:45, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

This message delivered by MediationBot, an automated bot account operated by the Mediation Committee to perform case management.
If you have questions about this bot, please contact the Mediation Committee directly.

Thank you...

...for the kind words. They are greatly appreciated, as were your kind words earlier (in case I wasn't suitably grateful for them at the time...likely not, given the state of my so-called mind last week).

I just needed a couple of days to back off and cool down. Though this really wasn't a spur-of-the-moment decision...it's been a while brewing, and things just came to a head with the ANI. Ah, well...I'm back, now, and don't intend leaving any time soon. :-)

Once again, many thanks. --User:AlbertHerring ^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!} 02:31, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

No problem. If you ever need to bounce ideas about AWB tasks around, feel free to drop in. –xeno^talk 02:33, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Scream queens

I forgot about that. I've since added five appropriate tags to the page in addition to one that was already on there • S • C • A • R • C • E • 02:59, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Question re: RFA

In lieu of the wikibreak of Balloonman, I was wondering if you could tell me if you think that I should start up the ol' RFA preparation engine so that I can throw my hat in the ring in the next week or so. If so, would you be so gracious as to nominate me? Please answer at the time which best fits your schedule.

P.S.-Forgive the fanciness, I think that it adds more excitement to these rather drab talk pages.Kevin Rutherford (talk) 01:39, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm not great at writing noms, but I will see what I can do. If you can find someone who is more active in the RFA process, that would be ideal. I can write a co-nom statement in that case. –xeno^talk 20:28, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

That would be great. I'll find someone trustworthy enough to do that for me soon. I might be able to coax Balloonman out of his break, but only for this. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 23:31, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

If you haven't been monitoring Balloonman's talk page lately, you won't know what is happening concerning me. Apparently I am "canvassing" my RFA by posting on his talk page. You might be dragged into it by another editor since I mentioned you. Since you're really the only other person who knows about this right now, Balloonman thought that you might want to take a look at this: How to nominate somebody for RfA. Well I hope that you're having a better day than I surely will have with all this drama. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 13:41, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't pay much attention to that. It doesn't come close to being WP:CANVASS. –xeno^talk 13:46, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Apparently there are people with nothing better to do than accuse others falsely. So you think that you could nominate me though? Kevin Rutherford (talk) 13:57, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

I still think you should find a nominator willing to fully review your history and write a proper nom. I am not good at these types of things. But I will draft what I would write as a co-nom in the next week or so and then if you don't have a nom by then, you can make your decision to proceed at that time. –xeno^talk 14:02, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Okay, see you in a week. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 14:05, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

I've been nominated. Thanks in advance. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 01:36, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

← Co-noms are suppos'd to go on before the transclusion. Oh well, saved me some writing =) –xeno^talk 03:26, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I know that this is completely random, but what is your name? Kevin Rutherford (talk) 15:30, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

xeno =) –xeno^talk 15:36, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Not wanting to out you, but the full name I believe is Xeno Cidic. Amalthea 16:04, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

hehe, true =p –xeno^talk 16:06, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

At the risk of this sounding like an "I told you so", Kevin, but I kind of predicted the issues that have come up in your current RfA one month ago. I'm surprised that you didn't clarify your answers in response? Amalthea 16:03, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
Yes, that was sage advice. Kevin - your head is in the right place, but I think you're a little over-eager. –xeno^talk 16:06, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Self prod

All those guys were done back when I had no idea what I was doing... I prodded a bunch more today, in fact :P If all my prods go through I'll have ~15 articles total I've created in my wiki-career. --Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 21:55, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

New stubs

Hi Xeno, some of the stub templates transclude Portal:Switzerland/Stub that I use to generate Portal:Switzerland/New articles. As you are standardizing the messages, I was wondering in which part of the template I should put it, e.g. in Template:Switzerland-politician-stub. BTW thanks for your voice of reason these days! -- User:Docu at 04:36, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Hm. I didn't notice that transclusion when I passed through... (note to self: [11]) Is this a regular practice among other stub-types? I will have to write this into my find/replace logic. You can just tuck it anywhere, it has no visual effect right? I'd say right after the closing }} brackets of asbox. (and no problem!). –xeno^talk 04:39, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Then Template:Switzerland-orienteering-bio-stub should be ok? I'm not sure if there are any others, probably not. I got the idea (and the script) from fr.wp. I don't mind re-adding them. It's probably quicker than to change the search/replace. -- User:Docu at 04:49, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that's perfect. Don't worry, I'll do the stubs using this template separately and ensure the pointer stays there. Will have to keep an eye out see if other subjects are using this. Thanks for the note! –xeno^talk 04:51, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Deletion

How do I delete pages? Can I delete pages that belong to me (i.e. user page (though that's not what I'm deleting)) or do I have to go to an admin for everything? --Thejadefalcon (talk) 10:49, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

If it's in your userspace, you can add {{db-u1}} to the page and an admin will delete it. If it's not userspace, and you are the only author, you can use {{db-g7}}. –xeno^talk 11:49, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

The first was the one I wanted thanks. --Thejadefalcon (talk) 15:09, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Done. I wanted my two sandboxes removed. Someone I know's been sniffing around the web for me and I wanted to vaporise the evidence of one of my fanfics before they nicked it in vengeance for a (well-deserved) slight against them. On a related note, is it possible to have two sandboxes such as 'User:Thejadefalcon/sandbox' and 'User:Thejadefalcon/sandbox-2'? --Thejadefalcon (talk) 15:17, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Yep, you can have as many sandboxen as you need. –xeno^talk 15:18, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. And they're already gone. Thanks, random admin I've never heard of but claims to be new so that's probably why! That brings to another question. "Sandboxen?" "Userboxen?" Don't those go against the laws of spelling and grammar? --Thejadefalcon (talk) 15:22, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Of course not! What's the plural of Ox? =) –xeno^talk 15:24, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Urgh, that's awful. What psycho came up with that one? --Thejadefalcon (talk) 15:27, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

The userbox or the plural of Ox? For the former, it was made in my honour =) –xeno^talk 15:32, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I meant the person who came up with the plural of userbox. *sighs* --Thejadefalcon (talk) 15:37, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, if it makes you feel any better, the official page still uses the erroneous "es" suffix. –xeno^talk 15:40, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Yay for official pages! --Thejadefalcon (talk) 15:44, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Protection

Might be a good idea to protect the page. --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:58, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Yea... What an unfortunate time for it to expire =) I'll seek protection if it keeps up. –xeno^talk 18:02, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Request self-block and full protection

Would you please block me indefinitely and full-protect my userspace? --JBC3 (talk) 20:28, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

You've got a nice clean block log. Are you sure you want to tarnish it, i.e. in case you ever decide to return? –xeno^talk 20:38, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm sure. I never want to be associated with this username again. --JBC3 (talk) 20:43, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Alrighty... Thanks for your contributions. –xeno^talk 20:45, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

AWB use approval

Hah, sorry about that! Staxringold _talk^contribs 21:14, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

The further irony is that you could have just added yourself ;p –xeno^talk 21:15, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

[12] ... but you don't have to because admins are approved by default! heh... Won't hurt, I guess. –xeno^talk 21:21, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/ThaddeusB

I wanted to take a moment to delivery a personal thank you (not "thank spam" :)) for your involvement in my RfA. (It passed 117-2-7 in case you hadn't seen.) It was an honor for me to have your support, as I have long considered you to be among the top administrators on Wikipedia. I appreciated your kind words about by bots and clue level and look forward to serving the community in my new role.

Thanks again, ThaddeusB (talk) 04:25, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Handwritten thank-yous hurt the typing hands! cheers, –xeno^talk 12:28, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Rorschach test

Thank you for posting on my page. I had given up on the issue, and frankly on the wikipedia itself. But I am willing to give it another try.

I have to say that Ward3000 work is truly commendable. He is truly a trooper. I can't believe he has been soooo patient for all this time. I don't doubt that he has lost his temper a few times (who wouldn't in all that time).

I am just concerned that the discussion format is terribly unorganized and it favors rambling vs rational argument. There are many arguments being brought up on both sides, as soon as any progress starts to be seen in one argument the losing side becomes disinterested and goes on to another argument. So there is never a conclusion.

I pointed out how it was to everybody's benefit to reach a true consensus instead of strongarming the others and that a prerequisite was that people should be willing to look for the greater good. I thought about blowing the whistle on this issue before but I did not because I thought more harm would come than good. But now the devil is completely out of the bottle, I really do think that situations like this alienate many valuable contributors. If they are not alienated already, not just psychologists but scientists in general (I know the scientific community is not a cohesive group).

Anyway, I am willing to help to engage in a rational argument If you think it's worth it.--Dela Rabadilla (talk) 03:19, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

No doubt. The argument is now sprawled across... well... three subpages, the talk page, and a user's subpage policy proposal. The debate has been slashdotted and also reached the front page of the New York Times. Formal mediation failed, I think ArbCom is the likely next step. Perhaps that will bring some order to the chaos. –xeno^talk 03:23, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

The front page of the New York Times? Wow! With respect, I don't think that ArbCom (or even Mediation) is necessary. In my opinion, the consensus is clear. There are two vocal users (Mirafra and Danglingdiagnosis) and one less vocal user (Faustian) who support the proposal. Everyone else, including a list of non-vocal editors, oppose the proposal. Axl ¤ [Talk] 19:30, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, Arbcom would more deal with the behavioural aspect, rather than whether consensus exists. (Since they claim not to deal with 'content issues' anyway). I wish it wasn't necessary, but the debate rages on despite what appears to be consensus for the current version. –xeno^talk 19:38, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Retired admins?

Hi. I've seen this question raised at ANI and AN a few times, but never paid close attention. I know you're there fairly routinely. :) What's the consensus on handling admin status for admins who go bye bye? OTRS got an e-mail about a block issues in 2006, and I went to check on the blocking admin only to find that (though still an admin), he hasn't edited in... Well, in two days, it will be three years. Is the community all cool with this, or should somebody look into removing his admin status until and unless he decides to come back? ([13]) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:29, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Proposals to remove admin status from inactive admins has been shot down pretty much every time someone has proposed it. But feel free to unblock without their say-so =) –xeno^talk 12:39, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Actually, the writer just wanted his talk page restored so he could request unblock there. Have done. :) But noting the long inactivity, I wondered where the community was sitting on that. I don't think I've ever read one of those threads all the way through. Now that I know, I'll go on about my business. :D --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:43, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

The objections basically center around a "no net benefit" and the fact that an inactive admin's account is no more vulnerable than an active ones (perhaps even less so due to it not being used and thus not susceptible to sniffing and the like). –xeno^talk 14:36, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

and admins do come back sometimes (I did, after a long stretch). if they had been desysopped in the meantime, and wished to return to a life of adminning, it might be harder to succeed in an RFA (tho whether this would be good or bad is subjective). Syrthiss (talk) 14:54, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, most of the time the people suggesting some kind of inactivity-based desysopping state that adminship will be re-granted without question upon the admins' return, but others believe that once a process is in place things will change (or something). –xeno^talk 14:55, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd be willing to agree to regranting +sysop if an admin returns. Most of the "retired" admins though, are never coming back. Sadly, the discussions on WT:RFA ended up with people split down the middle on the issue. Enigma^msg 21:47, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

It's mentioned at Wikipedia:PEREN#Demote inactive admins even. Amalthea 23:06, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Signature

How do I change it so that it's more colourful? Like yours: you've put it in bold and "talk" is in superscript. Other have totally changed what the thing says. --Thejadefalcon (talk) 15:38, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

You can set your signature in "Preferences". –xeno^talk 15:40, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Ah. I've seen that before. Now I just need to figure out how to write the coding. Hmm... Help? --Thejadefalcon (talk) 15:44, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Just test it out in a sandbox =) You can use HTML code and/or wikicode. If you look at other's signatures, you can see how they did theirs. See Wikipedia:How to fix your signature if you run into any snags. –xeno^talk 15:50, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I just deleted my sandboxen! Onoz! --Thejadefalcon (talk) 15:54, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I've created it roughly.

Thejadefalcon ^{Sing your song}_{The bird's seeds}

How do I a) change the colour and b) when you move your mouse over my contributions, the line basically crosses it out. Is that possible to fix or should I put up with this minor irritation? --Thejadefalcon (talk) 16:06, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

  Ignore the second part. Most folk use Firefox which doesn't underline =) –xeno^talk 16:09, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I got five pages of shades of green to choose from from List of colors. Will those work? And do I need to write the name of the colour or will those random numbers do? --Thejadefalcon (talk) 10:15, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

You can use the numbers. I think you need to put them in quotes , so blah –xeno^talk 13:41, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

One bit of Rorschach input

I know this issue has been drawn out to the point where every concievable argument pro and con has likely been covered, but there is one point I could not find in any of the (many) pages of discussion. Where there has been discussion of "unintentional harm" cause to readers who see the images without meaning to, no one seems to have brought up the point of people using the information presented to intentionally skew the results of said test. I have a cousin who does psychological work for the New York penal system and he stated that this test is widely used to help establish the mental health of inmates. He was less concerned that the images were posted than the fact that common interpritations for these images were included as well. His concern was that anyone who wished to skew the test towards an inaccurate favorable result would be readily assisted by the ease of availability of this information if it is included in Wikipedia. This is not so much a concern of mine, as my personal opinions don't enter into my actions on Wikipedia. However, it was (what appeared to be) a valid concern and I had not seen it included in the discussion. As an adendum, the reason I am posting this on your talk page is that I could not determine where on the voluminous discussion page of this article it would be appropriate to insert a new argument. Sorry to take up your time. LeilaniLad (talk) 02:46, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I think this topic has been touched on briefly but never fully examined. I suppose the best place to make an "net-new" argument would be Talk:Rorschach test/images#New arguments go here, but it would also work as a section 8 on "Arguments Con".

I also try to divorce my personal opinions from my actions here, but if I may play devil's advocate: If someone is trying to "cheat" the Rorschach (rather than simply possessing a casual passing interest, as someone who might read about it on Wikipedia), I am afraid to say they will not be stopped by one website moving an image below the fold (or displaying less of them). However, I see your point: Wikipedia distilling and organizing the information in a succinct fashion. I have a hopeful trust in the words of Ward and Faustian when they say that Rorschach tests are never used as the sole basis for a diagnosis. –xeno^talk 03:06, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I think the first (or maybe second) of SPAdoc's interventions touched upon this point, and my reply to him did, too (and even in his latest posting, I think he stressed that the issue he sees isn't really with accidental viewing but intentional). --LjL (talk) 14:05, 1 August 2009 (UTC)