User talk:CBM/Archive 5

Energy
Thanks for taking a look at it. You may find that blocking the user will be necessary, as he's continuing to make changes. From his most recent comment on my talk page (unsigned, at the top), and from comments he's made to other users' talk pages, it appears he considers himself an expert on the subject of energy (he has apparently had articles published to other web sites, or something), and that no one else is qualified to make changes to his edits. Robert K S 13:40, 1 May 2007 (UTC)


 * It looks like the split, although poorly implemented, was probably warranted in the end. So I don't want to unilaterally undo it. I left a comment at Talk:Energy(Physics) to find consensus on the right name. I'll ask User:Hallenrm to collaborate more on talk pages. CMummert · talk 13:48, 1 May 2007 (UTC)


 * It may have been warranted, but may I suggest that the energy page as of 24 hours ago would serve as a better starting point than the present mess? As for that user, I can only respond that I am not optimistic about his improvement in the area of constructive collaboration.  A review of the talk pages will show that he is prone to ad hominems and assumes all edits to be attacks on him unless the logic of them is laboriously explained.  The energy article is de facto his and no one else's; the split of the article expands his "domain". Robert K S 13:54, 1 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Please propose that on the talk page, and if there is agreement to go back to that version it is easy enough to do. I don't want to unilaterally revert the changes because that just moves the discussion backwards rather than forwards.  My hope is that when Hallenrm sees that others are also interested in improving the article, rather than just reverting his edits, he will be more amenable to discussion. CMummert · talk 13:57, 1 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I believe that I, and others, have said enough about this article on that talk page, and on the user's, and on the talk pages of other users involved in this. What more can I say?  The user is inflexible and incompetent, and can only frustrate other users.  As I don't want to be seen in the same category--taking up the article for myself--I will refrain from making any more edits or comments there.  But it is my opinion that this article will never be sorted out until changes are able to be made free of the user's "administrative oversight".  Thanks again for looking, Robert K S 14:03, 1 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Please don't give up. I have asked Hallenrm to use the talk pages more - let's wait and see if he does before deciding that the cause is hopeless. In the mean time, go ahead and make some conservative and necessary edits to the articles. If he reverts those, he will need to have a very good reason. CMummert · talk 14:06, 1 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Now, I understand the genesis of your comment on my talk page, you did so on the request of K s Robert. I have indeed no objection to your comment, but I only request tou to please go through the history of the article before intervening. I split the article because for quite sometime I have been noticing a notice on the discussion page that the article is getting too fat for comfort. Today, I cared to visit the style page that details some guidelines. I saw that the Energy page before my edits was about 80% related to physics, so I split the article in Energy (Chemistry), Energy (Biology etc. U am writing this because I believe in adult civil conduct and do not run to other editors fir help like KSRobert, and I do not believe that the Wikipedia is dominated by editors like yourself who go about behaving like godfathers (we call them DADas in IndiaCharlie 17:51, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

could you change the dispute template in Intelligent design back to what you had?
i don't want you to get in a wheel war with FM, but his immediate reversion of your dispute tag in the ID article is really a POV edit. FM is saying that the disputes (regarding WP:NPOV, WP:NOR, and WP:A) are there because guys like me don't really understand what is going on. that very characterization of the dispute is FM's POV and is IMO wrong. i would change it back, myself, but do not have editing priviledges to that article which is protected. i would appreciate it if you would let FM know that, outside his own comments, he just cannot characterize opposition whichever way he wants. r b-j 17:09, 1 May 2007 (UTC)


 * The protection tag is not a big deal; anyone can check the block log to see why the page was protected. CMummert · talk 17:40, 1 May 2007 (UTC)


 * as you wish. but you were right and FM is wrong.  it is protected because of bona-fide disputes to content. r b-j 01:32, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Hello
Could you give a hint regarding your mention of me on your user page? Recently, I've overhauled Portal:Creationism, and started work on depopulating Category:Articles lacking sources from December 2005. Or is there an unrelated concern? Addhoc 13:32, 2 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I liked the links and category tracker on your user page, and rather than duplicating them I just added a link so I could remember where they are. It did look odd, so I moved the category tracker to my tools page so that I don't need to link to your user page any more. CMummert · talk 13:54, 2 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for explaining. Addhoc 14:29, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Deleting /SortName and /Dates for mathematicians
I've now copied the subpage data for mathematicians into a single /Data page, as suggested by Salix Alba. This has the advantage that there are fewer subpages, all the data is in one place, and the data structure can be extended or modified if needed.

For hygiene and clarity, I think it would now be a good idea delete the /SortName and /Dates subpages, since these are now obsolete. I could do this by appending to all 294 pages using AWB, but this would take time, and would make a lot of work for the admins working on speedy deletion, since in principle they would have to check the history for each one. Is there a faster way for an admin such as yourself who knows the history of these pages to clean up? Geometry guy 17:15, 3 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, I'd be glad to delete them. You can check  my progress here.  I'll delete them in small groups over the next day or two.  They frown on making too many edits too quickly, and it's too boring to wait ten seconds between clicking the delete button. CMummert · talk 17:57, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Many thanks - and just to confirm that your list is exactly right. Geometry guy 18:42, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I think people are probably tired of seeing Wikipedia Talk:WikiProject Mathematics beginning with all the tables stuff, and it has mostly just been me keeping the thread alive, so I'd like to archive it even though 7 days are not yet up, unless you have any objections, or you think it will interfere with the bot. After a short pause, I hope then it would be welcome to remind everyone about the maths rating scheme and how it is much more useful now thanks to the automation you have implemented. Geometry guy 21:25, 4 May 2007 (UTC)


 * There is no problem if you archive that section early; the bot will not be confused. I'm pretty busy this weekend, so my responses here may be delayed. CMummert · talk 10:55, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Template:Infobox Officeholder

 * Thank you for updating the Template:Infobox Officeholder. There are however some minor problems (spacing mainly) that could only be seen with the template in use. I've corrected the problems here, would it be possible for you to copy and paste the code into the template. Thank you. --Philip Stevens 18:46, 3 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Done. CMummert · talk 18:54, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you. --Philip Stevens 18:59, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Template_talk:Unreferenced#Point_of_this_template
I posted a response on Template_talk:Unreferenced as an aside, I want to point out that it was not and is not my intent to say the unreferenced articles are candidates for speedy delete because they are unreferenced. Rather the fact that they are unreferenced indicates a higher likelihood that they are candidates for speedy delete for some other reason. My posts (new and old) are probably not real clear on that. Also I fairly strongly took a position opposite of yours, no offense is intended. I can see what you are saying, "just because it the article is unreferenced does not mean that it not verifiable, or that it does not have potential and attempts should be made to bring up to expectations rather then just delete it." I agree with that, but the point is that unreferenced material is subject to deletion "Subject to" being the key phrase and an unreferenced is part way to being deleted. (dang I get long winded sometimes) Jeepday (talk) 02:16, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Protection removal question
Im having some trouble getting the family guy episode list unprotected as it had the same editing disputes that existed for the lost page that you unprotected... Wondering if you could work your magic and get the family guy one unprotected as well..thanks Grande13 16:29, 6 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I unprotected it, in hope that the content disagreementw ill not turn into edit wars. For the record, the "right place" to request unprotection is WP:RFPP. CMummert · talk 01:48, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

POV pushing
and his puppet have been pushing a pro-barefoot ideology into inappropriate places. I tried reporting Boris to WP:AIV once, but they delayed action so long that I never found out why they eventually failed to block him. Just read some of their contributions. For example, they make a big deal of how Kagura (InuYasha) supposedly hates footware, despite the fact that she has never expressed any such opinion in any of the manga or anime that I have seen. Also, they keep adding and re-adding images that have no proper copyright information, just because they show people barefoot. JRSpriggs 05:46, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Information icon
Thanks for fixing the information icon. It's good to see it working and validating. El T 09:58, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Vital articles and mathematicians
It occurred to me that it might be useful to have a Vital articles page among the WP 1.0 pages. I think this would be relatively easy to do, because it would work in exactly the same way as the generation of the History page from the "historical" parameter (using the vital mathematics articles category and same long table row format etc.). As usual, if you agree this is a good idea, I'll sort out any changes needed to the Field page format template once VeblenBot has produced the data. Geometry guy 12:48, 7 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I think you already noticed, but I added a vital articles tally to the math tables. CMummert · talk 17:47, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, thanks! I fixed a couple of templates to reflect this. Meanwhile, however, the addition of five more mathematicians seems to have screwed up the table in a way that completely mystifies me: compare User:Geometry_guy/Mathematicians with WikiProject_Mathematics/Wikipedia_1.0/Mathematicians. These pages have identical source, but the latter does not display the last entry (Selberg): instead this entry messes up the importance column. I've experimented with all sorts of possible causes, but I just don't understand how templates can behave differently in Wikipedia space than they do in User space. Furthermore, the problem goes away when explicitly substituting from VeblenBots page. Geometry guy 18:07, 7 May 2007 (UTC)


 * The problem is that we are running into the "pre-expand include size limit" which caps the amount of data that can be transcluded onto a particular page (this is documented somewhat cryptically at Template_limits). I didn't expect to run into this so soon, but I think that because the names of the templates are so long we hit it sooner. You can look at comments in the HTML source of those two pages to see that the one is right against the limit and the other is not. The solution is going to be to put more of the parsing into VeblenBot and less in the templates. I will have to think about it and come back with implementation recommendations. Note that we will eventually run into the same problem with all the other pages, if they get long enough. CMummert · talk 18:42, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I wondered if there was some limit like that, but didn't understand why the "Last update" line was still in both versions. Now I get it: the truncation happens at the last "Mathematician row format" template expansion. Thanks for the explanation, but how annoying to run into this just when I thought we were home and dry! I can think of a few things we could try to get around this without any substantial change to the bot code. I find the first of these the most aesthetic, but it probably just postpones the inevitable! (Although maybe that gives us breathing space to come up with a longer term solution.)
 * 1) Move the templates into template space, with shorter names. (I only put them in subpages because they seemed too technical and specific to put in template space.)
 * 2) Use "subst:" in front of the various row formats in VeblenBot's output. (I played with this at User:Geometry guy/Mathematician data.)
 * 3) Move the VeblenBot transclusion out of Field page format, and let VeblenBot update the WP 1.0 pages more directly.

One good news is that all of this probably kicks into touch my overly ambitious dream to separate form and content! Geometry guy 19:40, 7 May 2007 (UTC)


 * The first one does just postpone the problem; the other pages will eventually catch up just because of the size of the comments subpages, ignoring the rest of the formatting. The second idea is good but based on the comments in the HTML source of that page it looks like it doesn't make that much difference. CMummert · talk 19:57, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I still think the first one may be worth doing, because at the moment only the mathematicians page is up-against-the-wall. The second one is a bit ugly, but note that I only substituted the first dozen or so templates as proof of concept. I'll do the rest now, so you can see how it looks. Meanwhile, I have shortened the mathematicians template, and made one substitution, so that the mathematicians page does not embarrass the project :) Geometry guy 20:27, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Re second approach: complete substitution now done at User:Geometry guy/Mathematician data. The page is now long, but it should offer a more significant saving on the pre-expand limit. Geometry guy 20:40, 7 May 2007 (UTC)


 * There is a problem with substitution that I didn't forsee. The bot uses a library to upload files, and the library gets confused if things are substituted because then the version on the server doesn't match the version that was uploaded. I think the right thing to do is to do the substitution, at least some of it, when the table is created.  The templates are a good idea, but the developers seem to frown on using them in this way. CMummert · talk 20:57, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I didn't fully understand these comments. Anyway, the "subst:" solution seems to save about 0.5MB (25%). I still prefer ideas one and three because of the huge unreadable pages generated by the second idea. For the first option, do you have any naming suggestions? I would go for something like,  and  , but that is just off the top of my head. I begin to wonder if this would make much difference though. It seems to me that such a change in template title would only save about 50 bytes per use, e.g., about 7600 bytes in the mathematicians page. The bulk of the cost is in the body of the template, not the name. Geometry guy 21:27, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I see you've got the substituted version going. Am I right in thinking that my third idea is no good? I haven't fully understood what the limit applies to, but if it applies to how much can be transcluded into a given page, then the third idea fails, whereas if it applies to how much can be transcluded from a given page then it works. I guess the former, but the documentation is, as you say, not entirely transparent. Geometry guy 12:23, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

I think the third idea indeed does not work: see User:Geometry guy/Mathematician data and User:Geometry guy/Mathematicians. I was able to break both of these by enlarging the Mathematician row format template. However, in the process, I discovered that the "noinclude" part of the template really matters to the pre-expand count (the cryptic documentation seems to contradict itself on this point), so I followed the advice to transclude this from a /doc subpage. This saved a considerable amount of pre-expand: a completely unsubstituted version would now weigh in at around 1.8MB, and hence could cope with about 20 more mathematicians before breaking. Geometry guy 14:02, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

The problem in detail
Here is a better summary of how it works (I have run into this problem elsewhere). When the wiki engine generates the HTML for a page, it recursively expands all the templates. One way to visualize this is as a tree of template invocations. While doing the recursive expansion, the wiki engine keeps count of the total size of the source code of the templates in the tree, before they are processed. This is the "pre expand include size". If this gets too large, the wiki engine stops recursively expanding templates. The entire size of the source of each template at each node of the tree is counted, including noinclude sections, but templates inside noinclude sections are not recursively expanded, so only the length of the name of the template counts. Each template gets counted multiple times if it occurs are multiple locations of the tree.

The point of this is to prevent the wiki engine from being forced to produce extremely large pages. The limit is high enough (2 MB) that an ordinary page will never come close to reaching it. The articles where it tends to be an issue are lists of television show episodes that use a template for each row of a very long table. In our case, we have the same problem - one template for each row of a long table.

On to the second problem. VeblenBot uses some prewritten software to interface with the wiki - there are functions to fetch a page, fetch the contents of a category, upload a page, etc. I didn't write this software, and I don't want to rewrite it. The upload function expects that the version on the server after an upload matches the version that was uploaded, and will report errors if they differ. If the uploaded version includes subst calls, then the version stored on the server will replace these as it should. So I can't make the bot upload pages that have subst calls in them.

I think that the best solution, unfortunately, is for the bot to do the table row formatting itself. It won't be possible to change the formatting on-wiki, but as more math articles get rated this problem will come up in all the tables, so we might as well take a future-oriented view.

I like the Data subpages for mathematicians, though. I think I will have VeblenBot download these into a local cache and parse them so that the table can include their information. But I will need some time to implement that. CMummert · talk 14:53, 8 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Many thanks for these great explanations! Regarding the main issue, I think I understand now, and would like to use your explanations to update the cryptic (and partly wrong) documentation, if you don't mind, that is. There is one point I need to clarify, though: "If this gets too large, the wiki engine stops recursively expanding templates." If I have understood correctly, the wiki-engine keeps a running total of size of the source codes of all the templates in the tree which have been expanded so far. Now my understanding from the documentation is that the wiki-engine does not let this total go over the limit: instead it refuses to expand a template whose source code is large enough to take the sum over the limit, and moves on to the next node. In principle, then, it actually continues with the recursive expansion, although in practice there will come a point where there are no more templates in the tree which are small enough to expand. Have I got it right?


 * Regarding the second problem, just for my curiosity, how did VeblenBot manage this then?


 * Regarding the ultimate solution, I would be more inclined to take the view that if a page is hitting the pre-expand include limit, then it is probably getting too large anyway. The mathematician table is already pretty big. The fact that it is sortable makes the size just about manageable for the moment, but this won't last. This suggests to me that we should optimize the pre-include size for the moment, and break up the page (e.g. by century, importance, or whatever) when it becomes too large. Similarly, with the other pages (which still have a long way to go). What do you think? Geometry guy 15:47, 8 May 2007 (UTC)


 * The software continues trying to expand templates, and refuses to do any particular one if doing so would put the total over the limit - see User:CMummert/Sandbox3 for the way that I tested this. My explanation is informally correct but wrong at the technical level; I looked through the source. The wiki engine uses recursive function calls to expand the templates; each recursive call will abort if it would go over the limit, and then the parser will go on to the next template. So please point that out if you edit the documentation.


 * Re the second problem, the upload itself works, but the software reports an error because the version stored on the server doesn't match what was uploaded. This is a technical limitation of the wiki interface software I use, and would be very hard to fix. CMummert · talk 16:07, 8 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks. That fits with what I have read elsewhere. Actually, the documentation looks correct after all, it is just so badly written that it seems to be wrong! I still haven't got the issue for the second problem: if the upload works, then who cares if the software reports an error message?! Geometry guy 16:44, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

The problem solved
When this problem first arose, you were surprised to hit it so soon, and you were right! However, it wasn't the length of the template names: I've tested this using a template; it only saves about 10K. Instead it was the documentation of. This template is transcluded several times, even after substitution for the mathematician row format. I've fixed this in the recommended way, and saved about 800KB! The mathematicians page will now need to double in entries/comments before it breaks, and at this point, the third question I raised becomes seriously relevant! Geometry guy 19:04, 8 May 2007 (UTC)


 * That's brilliant! I rewrote Template limits; please fix anything that is unclear or let me know and I'll fix it. That page needs to be clear to people like you and me, not just to developers, for it to have any use. CMummert · talk 23:46, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Very good: already at a glance it looks like a huge improvement, but I will scan through it carefully soon to make sure it is friendly even to template neophytes like me ;) Meanwhile, I hope VeblenBot can return happily to the Mathematician entry (or the essentially identical WP 1.0 Mathematician row format) templates without offending the wikimedia software :) Geometry guy 00:30, 9 May 2007 (UTC)


 * VeblenBot uploaded a new page this evening and it appears to work. The pre-include size is only 1100KB. CMummert · talk 01:13, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

It looks good to me. Meanwhile, I have announced the state of the art on WT:WPM. Geometry guy 01:59, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

The recent drive by Cronholm and myself to make the assessment coverage lest patchy may place a strain on the pre-expand limit for the algebra field, but I've /doc'd the "Table row format" (saving 200KB I think), and am hoping that this will be enough to keep us away from the dreaded 2MB limit. Geometry guy 02:43, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

IRC cloak request
I am cmummert on freenode and I would like the cloak wikipedia/cmummert. Thanks. --CMummert · talk 19:32, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Ward Churchill
Hi CMummert -

I think there was some confusion regarding my request at Talk:Ward Churchill. My request was to add a citation at a specific place in the article to replace a tag. I don't think the discussion that followed was responding to my request - I think it was just a continuation of an unrelated argument two editors were having in the section above mine on the talk page. If you ignore that argument I'm sure you'll see that the request is completely uncontroversial.

Please respond on my talk page.

Thanks, GabrielF 14:45, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for resolving. GabrielF 14:51, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

R.A.B.
Hello. I noticed you just unblocked the R.A.B. article. Perhaps I should point out that the Horcrux article has been blocked for exactly the same reason, concerning exactly the same paragraph, for considerably longer. Sandpiper 21:52, 8 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I unprotected it. For the record, the right place to request unprotection is WP:RFPP.

WP:RFBOT
Your recent bot approvals request has been approved. Please see the request page for details. — M ETS 501 (talk) 17:20, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

WP:RFBOT
Your recent bot approvals request has been approved. Please see the request page for details. — M ETS 501 (talk) 17:20, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Confirmed identity
Hi CM, thanks for the note. Not being a WikiMarkup guru, I failed to implement my own specialised version of the template properly. Nice to have that tip though, I've fixed some other double transclusion category problems as well. We all live and learn :) Best wishes. -- Cactus.man  &#9997;  23:25, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Vigorous
No need to be vigorous about it, I agree with you. What I believe is relevant here is the difference between Crotalus's reaction and Sarenne's.  &gt; R a d i a n t &lt;  13:48, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Done.  &gt; R a d i a n t &lt;  14:16, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Lost episodes
This matter has already been discussed at length and our policy recently updated to reflect the use of non free content in lists is not acceptable. This is the reason Episode list had the image parameter removed. There is nothing more to discuss on the Lost talk page. ed g2s &bull; talk 13:38, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

The discussion was nothing to do with the volume. It was that a plot summary contains no commentary of the image. If that one image is acceptable, then all the others could be justified, thus making our policy meaningless. ed g2s &bull; talk 13:48, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

We don't add on free content then work around it until it is justified. We use it when it is required by what we have. As the page was, there was no justifiable claim for a screenshot there. ed g2s &bull; talk 13:59, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

As I said, with regards to non free content, we have to be more strict. Content that is not justifiable must be removed. ed g2s &bull; talk 14:09, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't think so. Episode lists are no the place for in depth discussion of individual scenes. We have episode articles for that. I see no way in which the article could be modified within its scope to justify the use of a screenshot. ed g2s &bull; talk 14:17, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Editprotected table
I was already aware of the table. I answer mostly the technical requests, though, so the table isn't much of a benefit to me (it's normally obvious why the page is protected for technical requests, and I check CAT:PER often enough that I normally remember when the request was added and what it was about; I also have a script set up to add editprotected requests to my watchlist as if someone had edited CAT:PER itself). Thanks for letting me know, though! I imagine the table will be more useful for people who do CAT:PERs in pages protected due to edit dispute. --ais523 15:21, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Fair-use image issue
Cyde's argument looks to be a good one to me. I don't have any issue with a screenshot or two in a main show article, because such articles should as a matter of course be discussing the show's visual appearance, style, etc., and a screencap or two can be invaluable in illustrating that point. Some episodes may also have iconic, notable scenes (maybe the first time something of a sort was shown on television, maybe a scene that caused a ton of controversy, maybe one that was particularly praised or condemned by critics.) But in that case, the need for a fair-use screencap should make itself clear organically as the article is written-"Hey, we're discussing the X scene, that caused that massive controversy, but we don't have a picture of it!" But usually it's just "Well...we need a picture!" Oftentimes, that's nice but not really needed, the definition of decorative fair use.

What I might end up doing is creating some free-use, stylized images such as "Season X", usable together with "Episode X". Hopefully, that would satisfy both crowds-there would always be images to use to pretty up the article, and they'd be free-use, so fair-use wouldn't enter into it at all! Seraphimblade Talk to me 15:49, 11 May 2007 (UTC)


 * In Taxi Driver, it looks like it's gone about entirely the wrong way. I would agree that all the images are decorative, but the article text provides a perfect rationale for an image we could use! Specifically, the bloody murder scene is described in detail as a controversial, well-known centerpiece of the film. That is a circumstance under which a fair-use image serves an illustrative, irreplaceable purpose. Why aren't we using a shot of that?
 * In Star Wars, I'd mostly agree as well. The shot of the Massassi temple and its counterpart from Triumph of the Will is pretty critical to illustrate the film, but a lot of the others do appear to be pretty gratuitious.
 * Regarding different standards in different areas, I'd tend to agree that's a problem. I've proposed some solutions to that in general, but they involve some things that are Very Bad Words around here ("prescriptive policy", "put it to a vote if all else fails"), so I expect them to take some time to gain any traction if they do at all. Seraphimblade Talk to me 16:59, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Not vandalism?
Regarding your comment. If I understand you correctly, you don't think it's vandalism for a user to repeatedly state that the president-elect of France is an open admirer of France's most famous traitor and nazi-collaborator. In French politics, you could not come it with a stronger insult, something both the user and I know very well. Dusis 17:59, 11 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry, I must have missed that. I thought the issue was his mother's Greek heritage. There were a huge number of edits in the history, so I didn't go through every one of them. In any case, I tried to remind Showninner to include sources for everything, and you are justified in removing unsourced information from the article. CMummert · talk 18:03, 11 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I see. :-) Yeah, if it would only have been the Greek heritage thing (although almost certainly wrong) I wouldn't have thought twice about it. It was the allusions to supporting fascism and a traitor that made it obvious that the user intentionally vandalised it. I'm the first to admit that he did it subtle enough that it didn't look like obvious vandalism unless one is familiar with French history. Anyway, thanks for your advice! Dusis 18:44, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

PLEASE EDIT OR UNPROTECT BOBBY LASHLEY
HE HASN'T BEEN CHAMP SINCE BACKLASH THIS IS RIDICULOUS PLEASE DO SOMETHING69.182.122.131 19:00, 11 May 2007 (UTC)JakeDHS07

Veblenbot
Hey CM, I just went through all of the unassessed articles and rated them. However all of the articles that I rated still appear on the page. I was just wondering if the bot would do the job or if it would require a human to update the page. Let me know and feel free to double check my ratings and comments.Thanks so much--Cronholm144 04:14, 12 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Normally you would have to wait until tomorrow for the bot to run again, but I ran it again by hand, so the results should appear in about 10 minutes. C Mummert · talk 04:21, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick response.--Cronholm144 04:39, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Re: Circular redirects
They do get annoying when you have a bot that wastes resources unnecessarily because Special:Doubleredirects has twenty or so circular redirects that keep popping up. Will (is it can be time for messages now plz?) 02:38, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Technically, it could be an R1, as, if it's circular, it's redirecting to a page that doesn't exist. Will (is it can be time for messages now plz?) 02:45, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

OMG!!! WHY DID YOU DO THIS!!!
OMG!!! WHY'D U DELETE EVERYTHING I WROTE DOWN ON ARTICLES!!! FFS, THAT WAS MY Friend! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by DeathPissarro (talk • contribs) 14:44, 13 May 2007 (UTC).

Mathematics CotW
Hey CM, I am writing you to let you know that the Mathematics Collaboration of the week(soon to "of the month") is getting an overhaul of sorts and I would encourage you to participate in whatever way you can, i.e. nominate an article, contribute to an article, or sign up to be part of the project. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks--Cronholm144 18:22, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks
Thank you for unlocking KP episodes for us :) -- Ipstenu ( talk | contribs ) 13:35, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

TfD discussion of template(s) you have recently edited
Template:Sources is under discussion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. --After Midnight 0001 12:38, 17 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree that this TFD was strange. I tried to use it to get a situation fixed and I do think that we have gotten to a point of resolution as a result of working through this and some IRC conversations.  I would however be interested in any thoughts you may have on how this might have been handled differently.  While I did get the desired result, I often to find these types of situations and if I can make it easier on people to get these fixed, I am happy to try. --After Midnight 0001 04:16, 30 May 2007 (UTC)


 * In this case it worked out well, because the appropriate people seem to watch TfD. None of the village pumps is really appropriate, so your other option was to make a comment on the talk page of one of the templates. I think that things like this are never going to draw a lot of interest, so they get fixed by whoever has the most interest in fixing them. CMummert · talk 04:29, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

SHA-1
 - Hair chr m 03:30, 21 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I think it might be advisable to copy the output from the template onto your user page rather than using the template directly. This would protect against changes in the template file. That is, it would ensure that the committed identity message you display is the one which you intended to display. JRSpriggs 10:38, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Maths ratings
Welcome back! In your absence there has been a lot of progress on rating maths articles, and also some discussion about it, as I am sure you have noticed. Your opinion on the issues raised would be particularly valuable. Geometry guy 22:29, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Hi again. Your comment about using categories intrigued me, as I argued previously for making more use of categories. However, I am not yet convinced that they can replace the field system. Also I don't believe we should be aiming to rate all 15000 articles. But, before commenting at WT:WPM, I would like to know what you have in mind in technical terms, i.e., what will VeblenBot do with the category information, and what kinds of tables could be generated? Geometry guy 10:02, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

First impression: your implementation sounds fantastic! If you have some working code, could you sandbox a demo? Geometry guy 14:21, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I have working code to produce the list of rated articles in each category, but that doesn't give me much to post online.
 * I think that to implement this category system will require some significant changes to the bot script. Some ideas:
 * The current 'fields' could be removed entirely, or ignored.
 * I would make a config file that lists some "areas" such as Geometry, Topology, Foundations, Set theory, etc. These replace the fields. Each of these "areas" would get a row in the main table and have its own page. A single article could be counted in more than one area.
 * Each area page would give a summary table for that area. It would then either include detailed tables of the articles (like the ones that are produced now) or link to subpages with these tables. The subpages are there so that if we run into the pre-include limits we can offload some of the data.
 * This is still very much in the planning stage - I won't have time to work on the bot until next week at the earliest. Also I want to wait on Oleg Alexandrov who may release an updated version of some of the software libraries.
 * CMummert · talk 15:09, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not yet completely convinced that the fields can be removed entirely. In the description of the category hierarchy as a "directed acyclic graph (mostly)", the words "and that's about all you can say about it" should probably be added! An article often belongs to two or three categories, and each of these could be a subcategory of several other categories. As this is propagated upwards, some of these paths will converge, admittedly, but quite a large number of articles could end up being listed in many of the proposed areas.

I also liked your earlier idea to replace a category by subcategories when it becomes too large - I think this is a better way to handle pre-include limits than linking to subpages. However, this might not run as smoothly as one would like, because the category hierarchy branches out rather rapidly near the top. Anyway, some of these comments suggest that a review of the maths category hierarchy is needed.

Some planning and testing is certainly needed, and it may be better to develop the idea alongside the fields. Meanwhile, I have a couple of (hopefully) more minor suggestions/requests: Many thanks, Geometry guy 13:04, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Could the two tables in the main table be produced separately by VeblenBot (and then both transcluded)?
 * In view of recent discussions at WT:WPM, it might be helpful to also have a table of Field vs Importance.
 * I'd like to test the usefulness of having a separate "topology" field, even if the field system may soon be abandoned. Could VeblenBot generate a page from the "topology" field tag? I'll modify the maths rating template so topology pages link both to Geometry and Topology, and also the Topology test page.

I made an attempt to tidy the upper levels of the mathematics hierarchy today. Prior to this Probability and statistics was a subcategory of Applied mathematics and Set theory was a subcategory of Mathematical logic. Trovatore was (perhaps understandably) not happy with the latter revision. This presents another problem with using categories for ratings pages: stability. Anyone can alter the category hierarchy and this could dramatically affect which articles would be listed in a given category page, even to the point of breaking the pre-expand include limit! Geometry guy 01:03, 30 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Implementing the topology field, provided that the template links to the topology page when appropriate, would be trivial. That part of the code is extremely modular.


 * I can split the two tables pretty easily. The problem is that they will almost certainly no longer be the same width, at least not for everyone. Maybe we can wrap them both inside a larger table, or otherwise arrange for this when they are displayed one after the other. It will take some testing.


 * I'm not convinced that field/importance tables would be very useful, which is why I didn't implement them. I think the goal is to find a minimalistic way of presenting a lot of information, and of the three "main" tables that seemed like the one to skip.


 * You can always add feature requests at User:VeblenBot/Suggested improvements, so I don't forget them. CMummert · talk 02:56, 30 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I added (and tried to explain) the field/importance request to the list. Geometry guy 15:09, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Given your contribution to WT:WPM and your suggestion above to have a field labelled "Foundations" and another labelled "Set theory", I'm wondering how these might be populated using categories. Maybe you have a finer subdivision of Mathematical Logic in mind, or actually think it is enough to use a single category for the whole lot, like the current foundations field. I'm a bit curious, anyway! Geometry guy 15:09, 30 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I can partly answer this now: I think using categories instead of fields without refining the classification could easily double or triple the number of articles per page. An article like moment map, for example, could end up in algebra, geometry, analysis, mathematical physics, and applied! So a finer classification is likely to be essential to make this a workable replacement. On the other hand, it could bypass the endless debates about which field articles belong to, and might also lead to improvements and more care about the category hierarchy.


 * On an unrelated issue, I have unlinked topology articles from Geometry and topology, and would be happy if you changed the name of the latter to Geometry, though there is no rush. Geometry guy 23:29, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

#wikipedia-en-admins
Hello. I've given you level 5 access in Wikipedia, as you requested on IRC channels/wikipedia-en-admins. One 20:03, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Re:Mediawiki::Client
Hi CM. I upgraded my Mediawiki::Client routines which bypass saving to disk to version 0.31 of the client, but I am having trouble getting the encodings right (utf8 and all that). Things worked differently in version 0.2*. I'll need to fiddle more with it, perhaps next weekend. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:37, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I just saw your reply to Geometry guy above. I wonder, in what way would the routines I keep on promising and delaying affect your plans regarding the math ratings? Just curious. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:44, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
 * They wouldn't affect the functionality (presumably) but in principle I would rather do everything at once. Will the API be the same in the newer version? Anyway, the work writing new bot code is not high on my todo list, since I have some actual work to do. So don't hurry the release on my account. CMummert · talk 12:11, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
 * The API will be the same, so upgrading to the newer version should be rather simple. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:16, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Protection policy
Dear CMummert: Thx for your recemt comment at my proposed Unprotection para. I hope you have more to say.

I respectfully disagree with your interpretation of policy as to the case of Geometry. Longer-term protect is warranted if the high rate of vandalism is a continuing problem from unregistered or newly registered users. There semi-protect is, I believe, to block those unregistered or newly registered users who make up a disproportionate rate of of all vandalism, not to block unregistered or newly registered users as such. If non-vandalous unregistered or newly registered users also make up a disproportionately small fraction of all Edits, that strenghens the case for protection. Vandalism is disruptive and drains from constructive, either on an article in question or on a related one. --Thomasmeeks 23:39, 29 May 2007 (UTC) (minor edit)

Another film category rename?
Hi. I noticed the recent renaming of the stop motion film category. Many of the films affected also have the category Category:None-language films attached, which I don't believe is at all correct, simply at a grammatical level. I work in the film business in Canada and the term I've always used is "Films without words." Is that a term you like as well? Thanks, Shawn in Montreal 14:33, 30 May 2007 (UTC)


 * For the stop-motion rename, I was really just following up on a closed discussion. But I agree that "None-language" is nonsense, and I'm sure it came from changing "English-language" and "French-language" to the "none" language. Seems like a good candidate for a rename. CMummert · talk 14:36, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the quick reply! I've nominated it for a rename and we shall see.Shawn in Montreal 15:00, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Cat:Proofs and Cat:Mathematical logic
Please see my response here. --Zvika 19:15, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

LWB?
You meant to type in "AWB" in your recent contribs. I noticed this a while ago on my watchlist. If LWB stood for something else, please inform me what it is. --Sl g randson (page - messages - contribs) 02:03, 31 May 2007 (UTC)


 * LWB is a perl bot script I am developing (it shares some code with User:VeblenBot). All the edits are manually reviewed and approved, but it doesn't use a web browser interface. The L is for Linux and the WB is for AWB. CMummert · talk 02:29, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Participants
Regarding your last edit at WikiProject Mathematics/Participants: how did you decide who is inactive? I saw for instance that you moved User:Billlion to the inactive section even though he was editing Nicholas Higham two weeks ago. Was this just one mistake or may there be something wrong with your method? -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 15:01, 1 June 2007 (UTC)


 * User:Billion was already in the inactive section, but out of order at the very bottom. I didn't remove anyone who was listed as inactive, since it might be intentional. I used a script to get the timestamp of the most recent edit of everyone listed in the table, and anyone who hadn't edited (at all) since Mar 1 was moved to the inactive list. My script shows Billion's last edit to be today. CMummert · talk 15:28, 1 June 2007 (UTC)


 * From the history, Billion listed him/herself as inactive from the beginning. I left a note for Billion about it. CMummert · talk 15:32, 1 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I see, I should have looked better. How could I have thought that you made a mistake?! Sorry. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 15:50, 1 June 2007 (UTC)


 * You were right to ask about it - I make my share of mistakes, and sometimes more. CMummert · talk 16:25, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

WP:RFBOT
Your recent bot approvals request has been approved. Please see the request page for details. --ST47 Talk 19:40, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

VeblenBot
Hi - I thought I'd mention that VeblenBot didn't do an update, in case this is by accident, and you didn't notice. I hope all is well with VeblenBot, and it is not protesting at the extra workload! I guess it deserves a pay rise ;) Geometry guy 12:29, 2 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the VeblenBot update, and welcome to your new home! I was saddened to see all the vandalism at your old user page, and will miss the old user name, but life goes on! Very best wishes Geometry guy 18:42, 2 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for letting me know about it. I realized (too late) that it wouldn't run last night, because I had moved the scripts to a new location and didn't update the bot's crontab in time. I hope that the username change won't cause too much confusion. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 19:03, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

VeblenBot is down on 2007-6-2
The computer that VeblenBot runs on is having hard disk problems, so VeblenBot will not be running tonight. The code is completely backed up, fortunately. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 21:06, 2 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Please pass on my best wishes to VeblenBot for a speedy recovery :) Geometry guy 23:44, 2 June 2007 (UTC)


 * It's back up now, and I ran today's update by hand. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 04:48, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Reverted part of an edit you made to Template:User committed identity
I just wanted to let you know that I reverted part of an edit you made to Template:User committed identity (diff) LinuxMigration 05:39, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Avoid redirect of talk page in your signature
It appears that your signature still contains a reference to User talk:CMummert which has been redirected to this page. You might want to change that. JRSpriggs 08:46, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Welcome, CBM
I found it ironical that User:CM, whoser username you wanted to usurp, wrote contributed to an article which you requested to be speeded. Was your encounter with that editor at that article accidental or not? :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 13:19, 3 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I found that user when I was looking though Special:Listusers. It was clear that CM was a COI account to promote a band, for example they signed their image uploads with the band's email address . The images got deleted within days but the article sat untouched for a year - I think the band moved to myspace . &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 13:47, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Change of ID
Did I miss a notice somewhere that you were changing ID? It's a little confusing. --KSmrqT 18:34, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
 * See Changing username/Usurpations, and another section somewhere under about the CBM request. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 19:53, 3 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry for the confusion. I hope that most people figure it out pretty quickly, when they try to come to my talk page. Anyway, the change is recorded in the user logs here. The usurp request was archived automatically and is at Changing_username/Usurpations/Completed/2. For admin name changes, there is also User:NoSeptember/admin_username_changes. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 20:40, 3 June 2007 (UTC)


 * My watchlist includes users, often new, for whom I have left messages. One day I see the name CBM, and think to myself, "Hmm, I can't remember what I said to this unfamiliar person or when I said it." I certainly do not monitor the name change pages! Eventually I figured it out, but think of all the folks who will now see a new name in mathematics discussions and not realize it is a familiar editor with a changed name. I would recommend dropping a note to WT:WPM. (By the way, what is a "Uniersity"?) --KSmrqT 09:41, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

GR and SnS
Hi Carl - you may have noticed that there has been some trouble recently at General relativity about User:SteakNShake, a username created on May 4th, but which only started editing on May 31st, and with one agenda: a very disruptive POV-push at General relativity. There are concerns that this might be a sock puppet of EdGerck (as part of his "stress-testing" of WP), but there isn't any evidence for this at the moment beyond motive and time of day of edits. The reason I am writing, however, is that this user's latest edits seem not to appear on the contribs for the user. I was surprised by this so I cleared my cache, but still find a discrepency between the history at the GR page and Special:Contributions/SteakNShake. Do you too? Any explanations? Geometry guy 00:03, 4 June 2007 (UTC)


 * This may be a problem across the board: contribs post 22:00 UTC appear not to be recorded. Still, I think it was useful to let you know about the concerns there have been regarding this user. Geometry guy 00:16, 4 June 2007 (UTC)


 * It's probably some technical problem causing the database to lag. There were similar problems a few weeks ago where watchlists were lagging a couple hours behind. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 01:38, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Importance vs priority
There seems to be some agreement that it is helpful to make more use of the word "priority" rather than "importance" in maths ratings (both terms are used by Wikipedia 1.0). I have changed the maths rating template so it displays "Top Priority" (and so on) instead of "Top Importance". Consequently, I would also like to rename the categories to names like Category:Low-Priority mathematics articles (several other WikiProjects do this). I guess this requires a small modification to the code used by VeblenBot, so that it looks in the new categories instead of the old ones. It would also be helpful if its output used the terms "Top Priority" etc.

I think it is better to keep using the phrase "Articles by importance" (and not rename the corresponding category), because the tag in the maths rating is "importance=". This is also an argument for making an exception for the "Unassessed importance mathematics articles" category - however, I know that such exceptions have been a nuissance in the past, so would be happy with "Unassessed-Priority mathematics articles" instead. Let me know what you think, Geometry guy 15:15, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

PS. I think something went wrong with the update last night: quite a few articles were missed, and some Class assessments were not picked up. Probably this was just caused by the various technical difficulties WP was having at the time.


 * You should mention the rename to Oleg Alexandrov. I can change VeblenBot, but he will know how to take care of the change for WP 1.0 bot. I don't know what's up with the database system - VeblenBot is getting errors back from its queries. I'm looking into it. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 16:02, 4 June 2007 (UTC)


 * This has cropped up before when other WikiProjects wanted to change terminology: see Wikipedia_talk:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team. I will let Oleg know anyway. Geometry guy 17:15, 4 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the link - now I see more of how WP 1.0 bot works. I'm stil working on VeblenBot (it's an error or change in the database API, not in my code, so I have to find someone who knows what's going on). &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 17:19, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot won't be affected by the importance being changed to priority.

Carl, the problem you mention is quite serious, and I think it goes beyond IP change. I started a discussion at WP 1.0 talk page. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:49, 6 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Curiously, in the latest update, the low-importance articles seem now to all be counted (870 vs 663), but there are still problems picking up classes in the lists of articles by quality. It is strange that emptying stub class has had this effect. Geometry guy 01:16, 10 June 2007 (UTC)


 * It was not the emptying of the categories. I know because I verifed the bug was still occurring with the emptied category this morning. Most likely a developer did something to make it work; I filed a bug about it which might have caught someone's eye. Anyway, I have restored the stub category now. I'm running the bot again as I type this, and it appears to be running correctly. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 01:31, 10 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Great! And the problem with picking up classes in the lists of articles by quality has also gone away. A fine moment to celebrate exceeding 2500 rated articles! Geometry guy 01:43, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm happy to switch the categories in the maths rating tomorrow am if you are ready to modify VeblenBot's code accordingly. Geometry guy 00:48, 12 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Sure, I'll be glad to do it. I'll watch for the maths rating template to change, and update the code to use the categories listed there. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 02:42, 12 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Okay, template now changed and the new categories are slowly populating. I didn't change "Unassessed-importance mathematics articles", but instead switched "Unassessed mathematics articles" to "Unassessed-quality mathematics articles" for consistency and clarity. If these exceptional cases are a pain to code, feel free to change them. I'll fix the WP 1.0 templates once the new categories are no longer redlinks (it requires an admin to move categories, I think). Geometry guy 11:12, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
 * PS. I also changed the template so that geometry articles link to the .../Geometry page instead of the .../Geometry and topology redirect. I figured that you might have time to fix this bit of the code at the same time :)

Block review
Slash, who apparently requested to be blocked due to a compromised account, is claiming to have regained control and wishes to be unblocked. Since you know the situation here, I'll leave review up to you, just wanted to let you know. Seraphimblade Talk to me 14:31, 5 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I'll contact the user to see what's up. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 14:59, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Re: Bizarre edit
'k thanks. I have no idea what "otrs" is, and from reading WP:OTRS I can't fathom how it could possibly apply, but I'll ask zscout since you said it came from him... Cheers, Tom e rtalk 13:24, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Edit request on Talk:Jerusalem
I couldn't tell if you were aware that the reason Patricknoddy made an edit request at Talk:Jerusalem is because his account was created less than four days ago (although you are correct that fulfilling his request does not require an admin). --  tariq abjotu  14:16, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

IRC cloak request
I am carl-m on freenode and I would like the cloak wikipedia/cbm. Thanks. --&mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 00:03, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Dash it
Thanks for your input at MOS Dash talk. You may be interested in Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_%28dashes%29. Tony 01:42, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Copy of FC Barcelona squad
I've created the FC Barcelona squad article that was deleted. I'd like to have a copy of it to use in a new article: FC Barcelona season 2006/07. Thanks. --ClaudioMB 23:43, 10 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I copied the contents to User:ClaudioMB/FC Barcelona. Here are a couple points:
 * Please take care to significantly change the article when you recreate it. Recreating the same article under a different name after the AFD result is delete is not considered acceptable, and the article may be deleted again if the content is very similar to the deleted version.
 * You were the only contributor, so the deleted edit history is not a problem.
 * When you are done with the copy in userspace, tag it with db-user and an administrator will delete it. You should take care of it in a reasonable amount of time, say a month or two.
 * Happy editing &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 02:32, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Bplus category
As you know tha Bplus category is not detected by WP 1.0 bot, and so articles in this category have to be listed in another category as well. Previously, this was B, although this was not mentioned anywhere and I hadn't noticed this issue before. I guess VeblenBot forms the B-Class page by taking the B category, and removing items in the Bplus category. Anyway, following recent changes, it seems more sense to me to categorize Bplus with GA and I've changed the maths rating template to reflect this. Do you agree? If so, I guess VeblenBot's code needs another minor modification. If not, I (or you) can revert my change to the template. Geometry guy 21:59, 13 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I noticed the change in my watchlist but didn't think about the fact that I needed to change the code. It was a simple thing to fix, and I ran a manual update to make today's table correct. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 02:53, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

This seems to be working okay for the table (although it would probably be better to have the GA column come before the Bplus column). However, the GA-Class page is picking up Bplus articles at the moment, suggesting that there is another point in the code that needs a tweak. Geometry guy 00:37, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

dash it
"The en dash may be used in a page name that contains a range for which an en dash is used in the body of the page, for example, Eye–hand span. Page names should not contain hair spaces, however, even in the rare case of a range forming part of the title, for example, History of the Soviet Union (1985–1991). Note that years of birth and death should not be used in an article title to distinguish between people of the same name"

"Eye–hand span" isn't a range: it's a relationship. It still demands an en dash. So why not go back to the previous statement, which I thought covered it? And can you remove "Note that"?

We plan to recast this whole page soon, in any case. Tony 12:28, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

The new MOS guidelines may have a bearing on matters. Tony 12:29, 14 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I thought the previous statement
 * "When creating an article, a hyphen is now not used as a substitute for an en dash in the title."
 * wasn't direct enough about them being acceptable. I wouldn't want to see "American English spelling is now not the standard spelling on Wikipedia" either. Also the word "now" was redundant (this isn't a description of past or future style) and the phrase "When creating an article" was not ideal because it referred to the subject of the sentence, "hypen," which cannot create an article. Basically, I was just copyediting. I have made further edits to reflect the other concerns you mentioned. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 12:49, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

VeblenBot and determining protection level
On occasion, User:VeblenBot seems to have trouble determining the protection level of a page (I think you brought this up yourself a while ago); it seems that the protection level is given by JavaScript variables near the start of a page: var wgRestrictionEdit = ["sysop"]; var wgRestrictionMove = ["sysop"]; Perhaps the bot could be made to use this source of information? (It isn't very important, just thought you'd like to know.) --ais523 17:40, 14 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for pointing that out; I know I've seen it when looking through HTML source but I never connected it with VeblenBot in my mind. I added some code to the bot to fall back on HTML scraping when the ordinary algorithm (parse the logs from api.php) fails.  I also fixed a regexp error that made the bot fail to read log entries with an empty protection summary. Between the two, I expect the bot will have a greatly reduced confusion rate. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 19:23, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Re: editprotected
It seems a lot of users try to add their request like this:. I thought it would be better if that actually worked. Cheers. --MZMcBride 04:17, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Ideas for VeblenBot
I hope to come up with more interesting thoughts than this here (hence the optimistic title), but my first comment is that, um, WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Start-Class mathematics articles has now hit the pre-expand include limit, sigh. Geometry guy 00:38, 16 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I will fix it this weekend. That being said, I want to think about how it can be fixed.  One option, which I am fond of, is to split the page into two pages but not change the formatting. Let me know if you have any better idea about how to do it. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 14:06, 16 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, it definitely raises some longer term questions. For instance if we split into Top/High and Mid/Low, then it won't be long before the Mid/Low page is knocking at include limit's door. Maybe all the class/priority combinations should be separate pages. The class pages would then either transclude the relevant pages (which would be fine for FA, A, GA and B+) or link to them (B, Start and Stub). How does that sound? Geometry guy 19:46, 16 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Another option is this: the script keeps track of how long the page is, and when it reaches a certain threshold, it ends that page and begins another second page. So at first the cutoff would be in the middle of Stub-class, later it might be inthe middle of B-class and in the middle of Start-class, etc. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 19:52, 16 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I guess you mean cut-offs in Low/Mid/High/Top-Priority. I don't like this idea so much, because one of the things editors seem to enjoy doing is comparing similar articles to check the importance level is right. Geometry guy 20:59, 16 June 2007 (UTC)


 * OK, I'll do the tables separately. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 02:30, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Ordinal numbers
Thanks for your answer. I have replied. --Doradus 12:07, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

TOR
Hi, thanks for your reply. Stammer 04:58, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Clarification
Disabling the e-mail link for Cyrus XIII, that was an accident. The rest of the situation, I've explained in multiple comments to other people which I don't feel like rehashing again; if you care, you can just read my contribs. DS 16:40, 17 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the reply. I was just leaving a note. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 16:50, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Infobox Officeholder
Thank you for updating Infobox Officeholder, unfortunately since the changes a problem has occurred on some of the pages it's linked to. Would it be possible for you to copy the code from here and put it into the template. That should fix the problem. Thanks. --Philip Stevens 06:25, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
 * No need for you to do it now, ais523 has done the edit. Thanks anyway. --Philip Stevens 14:18, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

POV protected
You have declined to include the link to award given by TMMK to the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu for social cohesion efforts. Anwar 16:00, 18 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, I declined to make any edit to that page. The link is no big deal, once the page is unprotected you will be able to put it in yourself. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 16:01, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I was reverting vandalism. I removed links to fundamentalist websites and copyvio images. SATP is a fundamentalist website. None of the articles published therein seem to be well-sourced. TMMK was awarded numerous times by the Governor of Tamil Nadu for their social schemes. You can google easily for supporting links. TMMK is not a political party. TMMK literally means Tamil Nadu Muslim Progress Movement. They awarded the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu for social cohesion efforts. TMMK is the spokesman for minorities in Tamil Nadu.  They are well-known for organising mass rallies for affirmation action.  In a recent rally in Chennai, atleast 1 million Muslims participated (out of a total population of 4 million). TMMK also fought for compensation and concessions to non-Muslim victims of tsunami.  There are very few organisations like TMMK that work for social unity. By tagging them as fundamentalist, Baka was pushing hysterical POV with fake tags in edit summary. He was revert warring despite being a subject of a ongoing ArbCom case.
 * How long will the article be protected without any updates or new links? Should I wait until Bakasuprman is acquitted in the ArbCom case?

Anwar 16:06, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Article question
Do I have your permission to re-write article "Fue Por Ti"?  ThinkBlue  (Hit BLUE) 19:38, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
 * You got it!!!!  ThinkBlue  (Hit BLUE) 21:23, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

MagicalPhats
Don't know if you caught this and this edit to WP:ANI by MagicalPhats. I reverted him and I've left it up to you to decide what to say to him or to take action against him. I don't know if you're around right now or not but I'll keep an eye out on him too. Metros 23:12, 18 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I tried to warn him again.  Like I told him, if he gets blocked I'm not going to unblock him.  He does seem to have kept busy in his userspace, except for those two bizarre edits. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 23:23, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

MagicalPhats 2
Copied from his talk page in case you aren't watching it:

MagicalPhats, I think that starting a new account with a blank slate might be a good idea. As I said yesterday, you are not the only person here. The reason your page was deleted is that there systems for detecting broken redirects and your page was listed as one. Then a volunteer who was trying to keep the encyclopedia functioning removed the broken page. It was not in any way a personal attack against you, just a normal cleanup function. Your aggressive response is what led to your being blocked. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 23:08, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I was only fixing the double redirects displayed at Special:DoubleRedirects. I didn't realize it would be any kind of an issue, I was just trying to help. :) -Mike Payne 00:16, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

WPBiography fix
Well, its line 16 only without the word wrapping. So, I better copy the entire code excerpt:

! colspan="2" style="text-align: center" | WikiProject Biography

to be changed with

! colspan="3" style="text-align: center" | WikiProject Biography

Sorry for not contacting you earlier, I forgot to watch the WPBiography template. &mdash; Shinhan  &lt;&thinsp; talk &thinsp;&gt; 17:47, 19 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I made the change. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 17:53, 19 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks. &mdash; Shinhan  &lt;&thinsp; talk &thinsp;&gt; 18:00, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

hiccup, not in maths ratings for a change
Hi Carl - User:Mangojuice has recently deleted the talk page of Hiccup as a G8. Since the article exists, the reasoning is clearly false. I don't know how best to proceed, but I am confident that you do. If you don't have time for this I will take it to another admin I know :) Geometry guy 22:05, 19 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I'll ask MangoJuice what's up. Most likely it's just a mistake. Rumors of admins being unapproachable are greatly exaggerated, by the way, so you shouldn't hesitate to ask yourself when something doesn't make sense. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 22:18, 19 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Yah, basically that was just accidental. I was trying to delete a talk page that redirected to Talk:Hiccup and I didn't realize I'd been rerouted.  Mango juice talk 11:53, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks both. Now, contrary to the title of this section, I think there might be a hiccup in the main table: Unassessed class isn't showing up again. I guess this is a knock-on effect coming from one of the recent changes to the code. Geometry guy 17:11, 20 June 2007 (UTC)


 * The problem was the may bot was set to read the list from Category:Unassessed quality mathematics articles but the template was not populating that category. I changed the template and ran the bot again. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 19:58, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I've moved your edit to the includeonly section, so the template itself doesn't get added to the category. Does that mean Category:Unassessed mathematics articles is now redundant and can be deleted? I will investigate a bit myself, but let me know if the bot uses it. Geometry guy 20:19, 20 June 2007 (UTC)


 * The bot currently doesn't use it, but does link to it. I think it's helpful to have one category for articles that are unassessed in any way - quality, priority, or field - to make it easier to go through and clean them up. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 20:31, 20 June 2007 (UTC)


 * At the moment we have Category:Unassessed mathematics articles, Category:Unassessed quality mathematics articles, Category:Unassessed-Priority mathematics articles and Category:Unassessed-field mathematics articles, with inconsistent hyphenation and capitalization. This is partly a result of a misunderstanding/disagreement we had, which I am happy to resolve in any coherent way. I prefer the unassessed categories not to have a hyphen, which means moving the field category to Category:Unassessed field mathematics articles. The importance/priority category could be either Category:Unassessed priority mathematics articles or Category:Unassessed importance mathematics articles: I guess both require some special programming, and I have already indicated my mild preference for the latter. Then Category:Unassessed quality mathematics articles fits this pattern nicely: I've done the switch for the WP MATH 1.0 template and the maths ratings template. I see what you mean about an "Unassessed anything" category: I think we should try to implement that. Geometry guy 20:56, 20 June 2007 (UTC)


 * No problem, let's go with:
 * Category:Unassessed field mathematics articles
 * Category:Unassessed quality mathematics articles
 * Category:Unassessed importance mathematics articles
 * Category:Unassessed mathematics articles
 * VeblenBot updated, categories created, old categories deleted. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 21:05, 20 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Great! In fact I saw your intentions in the redlinks before I read this reply, and have meanwhile been filling in several minor points to make this work smoothly (check my contribs if you are curious). There is still some text to rewrite, but the structure is perfect. Geometry guy 21:27, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

the automatic
sorry for continuing to revert edits on the automatic discography but i do not understand why the 'Other Appearances' section continues to be removed, it belongs in the article?

with regards to album artwork how do i gain rights/whatever to show it in the article? Surely if the artwork is available on there website, and countless other sites it should be fine to have it here?

thank you Jacksack


 * It looks like the last editr to remove the images mistakenly removed that section. I put it back. As the fair use images, you may want to start by reading this document. The standards here are higher than at other sites and are higher than the law requires in many cases. The document explains in detail. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 22:14, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:S-suc
Template:S-suc has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. KuatofKDY 05:56, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

User categories
Hi, I noticed that you closed some user cat deletion listings as "delete", but the categories don't seem to have been depopulated and deleted. Is this just a hold up until a bot gets to work on it? --Tony Sidaway 12:33, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

VerblenBot for Version 0.7
Hi, I was just wondering when you will be able to update User:VeblenBot/Version 0.7/MainTable? It doesn't need to updated every two days as you did before, but it seems to have stopped altogether. Can you let me know when it will run again? Thanks, Walkerma 04:11, 20 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I ran it this morning, and fixed the crontab so it will run every morning UTC. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 21:10, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks a lot! I plan to extend use of it beyond the V0.7 page, so I wanted to be sure it was working.  Cheers, Walkerma 20:35, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Spoiler tags
Please note that spoiler-season has been redirected to spoiler as a result of a TfD. As part of the close all existing instances of "spoiler-season" have been replaced with "spoiler", so whatlinkshere for spoiler will have about 50 links.

This mostly affects one class of article: Stargate.

Please handle removal of spoiler tags from these articles with special sensitivity. --Tony Sidaway 06:33, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Spoilers in Books section of Uplift Universe
Hello. We seem to disagree on whether or not the Books section of Uplift Universe should have a spoiler warning. Please see the Talk page of that article for my reasoning. Great Cthulhu 15:43, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Category: Armigers
Why was this category deleted? -- Evertype·✆ 17:50, 22 June 2007 (UTC)


 * The deletion log entry says "2007-05-30T07:14:41 Conscious (Talk | contribs | block) deleted Category:Armigers" (Categories for discussion/Log/2007 May 19)" but it's incorrect - the actual deletion discussion is at Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_May_21. The details are there. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 17:54, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, this is most unfortunate. See my comments here: -- Evertype·✆ 18:11, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Spoilers in the "Agent Bishop" page.
Twice now you've deleted spoiler tags in the Agent Bishop page. While I agree that one need not classify his entire origin as a spoiler, I see no reason to eliminate the tags surrounding info on the episode Head of State. As you may or may not know, the episode has yet to air normally; while it is allegedly available On Demand, that is an option available to only a small fraction of the show's audience, and therefore, any information regarding the episode is usually considered a spoiler.

Ian

65.218.145.132 12:27, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Your Snowball Clause
There are two flaws to your argument.
 * 1) The Snowball Clause talks about common sense prevailing. Isn't creating a user-friendly environment common sense?
 * 2) "If an issue is run through some process and the resulting decision is unanimous, then it might have been a candidate for the snowball clause." If I would have been aware of the of the deletion, then it wouldn't have been unanimous. If every WikiProject had been notified which it should have for a fair and accurate outcome then it might not have been deleted at all. Kingjeff 15:58, 23 June 2007 (UTC)


 * This is not the first nomination of cross-namespace WikiProject redirects I have seen. I don't believe your arguments would result in the article being kept, because the broad consensus for the self reference policy would outweighs a local consensus about the utility of these redirects. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 16:02, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

The fact is I should have been informed about this which I wasn't. Kingjeff 16:04, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Section headings for subtables
Hi Carl - when we set up the importance subtables, you warned me that VeblenBot doesn't generate the section headings, so they would have to become part of the templates. So I put them in the templates. Just recently, though, VeblenBot has started generating the section headings itself, so now they are duplicated! Do you want me to remove them from the templates, or will you change back the code? Thanks - Geometry guy 14:27, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Veblenbot has finally become a sapient being, and has taken upon itself the task of generating section headings. Carl, have raised a fine young bot. :)--Cronholm144 14:35, 24 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I disciplined the bot, and I don't expect it will generate any more of those headers. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 18:21, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Please take note that a Deletion Review has been requested for: Category:Wikipedians by political ideology
An editor has asked for a deletion review of Category:Wikipedians by political ideology. Since you closed the deletion discussion for this article or speedy-deleted it, you might want to participate in the deletion review. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ramdrake (talk • contribs).

WikiStalking
Are you following my every edit? It seems strange that you would show up here after over a disagreement about a deletion review. Kingjeff 05:14, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I was working on CAT:PER, which is one of the admin tasks I regularly perform. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 05:21, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

WP:CITET fields
CBM, I see you are traveling and may have a lot to look over on your return. I added a note for you at Template_talk:Cite_journal. If a reply is necessary, please use my talk page. Thank you. -Susanlesch 23:17, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Mediation
A request for mediation has been filed with the Mediation Committee that lists you as a party. The Mediation Committee requires that all parties listed in a mediation must be notified of the mediation. Please review the request at Requests for mediation/Danah Boyd, and indicate whether you agree or refuse to mediate. If you are unfamiliar with mediation, please refer to Mediation. There are only seven days for everyone to agree, so please check as soon as possible. --Elonka 23:57, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Request for Mediation
This message delivered: 12:16, 27 June 2007 (UTC).

Bibtex
Hi Carl, could you provide (for testing purposes) a list of some 100 reference templates showing up in Math articles, please? Later, I'll need the complete list. I have no clue how big this is going to be, though. Do you?

Thanks, Jakob.scholbach 23:10, 28 June 2007 (UTC)


 * There are two different types of reference templates: the citation ones, and the cite * ones (cite news, cite web, etc). Any preference which ones? It would be easiest if you send me an email (use the link on the left) and I will email you back the data. I'll be doing some driving this weekend and likely won't be able to send them until the middle of the coming week. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 05:14, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Re: Template:Birth date and age
That's a tricky problem in general, and a design flaw with the way that selfref's being used. Ideally, selfref would never be used directly, only by other templates (for instance, maybe srdabheader would be a good name for selfrefs at the top of articles), so the usage for each individual case in which it's used could be checked whilst still retaining the functionality. (The idea is that a mirror should ideally get a database dump and a copy of MediaWiki or at least its parser, blank selfref in their copy, and rerender the pages; I'm not sure how many mirrors do this in practice.) class="selfreference" is something I added myself, both for the benefit of scripts that look for selfrefs in the output of a page and possibly so that mirrors could simply hide selfrefs by changing CSS, but the selfref not being in the output at all is obviously preferable to it merely being hidden by CSS. If the need to find out the WLH for selfref is sufficiently great (for instance, to convert them all to some other template that references selfref using AWB, or probably just for whatever reason you had in mind when you asked me the question, as not a very big reason is needed in my view), temporarily removing the selfref from birth date and age shouldn't be much of a problem, especially if the non-selfref version isn't caught in a database dump. The situation at the moment (especially with respect to parameter 2, which is a bit of a hack) is not a very good one, though. --ais523 08:08, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

request Incidents review, please
Can you poke your head over at Incidents at independent parks for me, please? I've added the recent Playland incidents (removing the 2 names that were posted elsewhere on WP from older items) per our recent discussion. My question is regarding the difference between living people vs those who have died regarding the posting of names. Is the policy strict on "no names, all the time", or just "no names, living"? If you can use that page as a reference for me (it's shorter than the others) to advise what is obviously wrong per policy, then I'll make the appropriate changes on all the Incidents pages that I've been trying to diligently maintain. Thx! SpikeJones 13:50, 30 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Those incidents pages are really in great shape, by the way - very professionally written and well referenced. There has been a general shift in the BLP policy recently from a focus mostly on accurate referencing (which you have done well) to a focus both on sourcing and on balancing the information presented with the notability of the person. In every case, though, if there is a genuine reason to include the name then you can justify it on the talk page and include it (one example might be if the victim becomes known for advocacy like Christopher Reeve did after his injury). If only thing we know about the person is that they were injured, then probably the name doesn't belong (if we include it, our article will likely be one of the first few hits on a google search for the person's name, or the only hit if they have a rare name). The BLP policy uses "living" in the title but I think there is some agreement that it does apply to the dead in certain cases (for example, libeling the recently dead is certainly bad). Unless someone else argues for removing the names of victims killed by park accidents, I don't think that those names need to be removed right now. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 18:05, 30 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the compliment re those pages; I've tried to make sure each summary is notable, suscinct, factual, and properly cited (rideaccidents.com and other websites don't provide citations, for example, or allow people to post their own reports without verification). If I interpret what you're saying correctly, if the victim is merely injured as opposed to killed or otherwise dies, leave their names off?  Basically: superman girl = no name, rye playland death = listing of name is okay? Or should I just go and pull all the names off of each incident regardless of how it's handled? Or is it a judgement for each one, such as the Mission Space death that resulted (directly or indirectly) with Disney changing the ride? SpikeJones 14:44, 1 July 2007 (UTC)


 * It's a judgment call for each incident. Especially for incidents involving still-living people there should be a presumption in favor of privacy unless there is a reason other than the incident for which the person is notable. The interpretation of BLP for incidents which result in fatalities is not clear to me yet. A recent arbcom case didn't reach a conclusion about whether BLP applies only to living people. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 19:55, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Hyphens and dashes at WP:MOS
Thanks for your reminder, CBM. In fact I will not be pursuing things with hyphens and dashes. I am disappointed with recent developments involving some other articles, and people's unwillingness to work together to coordinate articles. I don't want to waste the considerable effort that these things call for, and I have therefore simply and silently backed away from Wikipedia editing, for now. Please proceed in whatever way you see fit. I may come back later. I'm not sure. I should put a note at my talk page. –&thinsp; Noetica ♬♩&thinsp;Talk 02:38, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Subpages of Sandbox
I deleted many subpages of the sandbox that had not been edited recently, as part of general housekeeping. The function of the sandbox is for testing edits, and once the testing is completed the edits themselves don't need to be kept. If you would like, I will be glad to send a copy of any of the deleted subpages of the sandbox to you by email. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 05:46, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Sockpuppetry?
Hi there. What's the deal with User:Tiger white, is he blocked or not? It's suspected that he's a sockpuppet of User:98E and looking back at my history, I actually remember interacting with 98E. They both upload images relating to hip hop artists and South Park. Spellcast 10:18, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Update: In fact, not only that, but also Crash Bandicoot. You can even compare their contributions (specifically the image namespace): Special:Contributions/98E & Special:Contributions/Tiger_white. Spellcast 10:26, 10 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, he certainly isn't blocked, because he is editing. I'll ask around to find out what's going on. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 12:13, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I've also posted this on User_talk:Dmcdevit with more evidence. Spellcast 12:36, 10 July 2007 (UTC)