Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2017 March 8

= March 8 =

Are BLPs statistically more likely to be semi-protected than non-biographical articles?
I'm not sure if this is the correct place to ask this, but this is a question that has been bothering me for years. Given our BLP policy, are BLPs statistically proportionally more likely to be semi-protected, particularly for longer periods (i.e. a month or more) than non-biographical articles? And as a side questions, what percentage of BLPs are currently semi-protected, and how does that percentage compare to the percentage of semi-protection among other types of article subjects? Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 14:26, 8 March 2017 (UTC)
 * If you have the inkling, the data is available for analysis. Special:ProtectedPages is the full list of all protected pages.  Category:Living people is all articles about living people.  Category:People is for all people.  PetScan is an utility that lets you develop lists of articles by category structure, so you can find all articles in subcats of main categories (like Category:People).  If one were so inclined, one could use some rudimentary programming skills to write a routine to take text dumps from those pages and utilities and cross reference the article titles to develop the stats you seek.  The stats don't exist yet, but one could create the stats from the available data with some work.  -- Jayron 32 14:46, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Where does Ajax come from?
I don't know when it started, but on my Windows 10/Microsoft Edge computer, when I click on the URL, I see a list of five of the web sites I have gone to. I don't know how or how often this list changes. I head to reinstall Windows when my Internet wasn't working right, so now I have a whole new list of five sites, which keeps changing, and I don't know how or why. On Wikipedia, I get a different list when starting to type a section heading or edit summary, and this isn't as useful as I'd like it to be since it tends to be alphabetical and some of those early items I would never use again.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  18:19, 8 March 2017 (UTC)


 * When you reinstall Windows, your user history is deleted. Any history from before the reinstall is gone. It is impossible for your computer to use the old history to give you suggestions that it used to give you. If you continue using your computer in the same way that you used to use it, the suggestions will likely become similar to the old suggestions. Is there some reason that you believe that your computer should somehow remember anything from before the reinstall? None of this has anything to do with where Ajax comes from. Ajax came from an old iframe hack in JavaScript that is now a nearly standard methodology to make asynchronous HTTP request in JavaScript. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 21:45, 8 March 2017 (UTC)


 * I'm pretty sure Ajax came from Achaea. -- Jayron 32 00:53, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I don't expect anything to still be there. The suggestions come from somewhere, and that's what I'm asking. On this site, it seems to be a complete list, while for URLs in general, I don't know why the specific sites are being listed.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  15:34, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Okay, the list of items is not CALLED Ajax, but it is somehow related and is not explained in the article. So where do the lists come from? One is for Wikipedia headings, one for edit summaries, and one for the URLs at the top of the screen. There is also a list of two items for searching in newspaper web sites, even though I have searched for many more topics.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  18:32, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Help accessing content from a very large torrent file
https://purl.stanford.edu/tf565pz4260 The link to the left contains a 4chan archive that contains posts from 2007-2013 (the /b/ forum was purposely excluded from the archive). I’m the creator of the Wikipedia article on the SCP Foundation and know that SCP-173, the first SCP, was posted in the /x/ forum during the summer of 2007 (I’m tempted to say in July, but this could be wrong). Unfortunately, the links are only available in torrent form and exceed 3 gigabytes, which is too big for my computer to download and not in a file type I’m capable of opening. Would anyone with experience using torrents be able to check whether the initial post was saved, or if there are even SCP Foundation posts from the year 2007 (they would be solely in the /x/ forum)? Finding the original post or even a few SCP Foundation threads from 2007 would be a huge contribution to the history of internet culture. I’ll also give a reference desk barn star to anyone who either finds the posts within the archive or who can confirm that they are not in it. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 22:12, 8 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I had already downloaded it, but all I can tell you about the archive is that it wasn't a sphere.
 * Ok, in all seriousness: a lot of people will be very reluctant to download a file of that size and search through it. In addition, this archive was compiled from selected threads; about 25,000 of them, and it uncompresses to 20GB, which even fewer editors will be unwilling to search. So it looks to be very difficult to search through and not very promising. However, from the readme: "To request a copy of this data package in uncompressed format, please contact the Stanford Digital Repository at sdr-support@lists.stanford.edu" ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants   Tell me all about it.  23:11, 8 March 2017 (UTC)


 * I've downloaded much larger torrents and I'm not unwilling to help, so I started your torrent. Unfortunately nothing happened, 0 bytes downloaded in about an hour. Guess the file is not available (anymore). I'll let it run for a day though.
 * Apart from that I don't see why you need our help. A 3GB torrent isn't large, nothing extreme. Please explain. (Even a movie is typically larger, HD movies much larger).
 * As for the file type (.7z), download winzip, install it, and you're good to go. Jahoe (talk) 23:45, 8 March 2017 (UTC)
 * B.t.w. I see 2 torrents. I've started them both. In the meantime, please specify exactly what to search for. Jahoe (talk) 23:55, 8 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm looking for a specific post containing the text available here (the actual post may be specifically titled "The Statue" or "SCP-173). I attempted to access the files myself, but was unable to get them open (If this is something that is actually really simple to do, then my apologies; I've had little experience with this type of file). Spirit of Eagle (talk) 03:52, 9 March 2017 (UTC)


 * There's not a problem in file size or format, but unfortunately the torrent is dead. That is: no seeds and just a few peers without data; 0 bytes downloaded in about 12 hours. That's typical behavior for a dead torrent. :(
 * Guess you should now email the repository like ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants described above.
 * You would need about 20GB of disk space, that should be available (or freeable) on an ordinary computer. They'll probably give you an ftp link, downloading 20GB may take time (hours), but you can use your computer for other things in the meantime.
 * Feel free to call back here if you need further assistance. :) Jahoe (talk) 11:26, 9 March 2017 (UTC)