User talk:AllyUnion/Archive12

Inactive pages

Hi there! Template:inactive sounds good (I've changed the layout to a colorful box though, as per most such templates). I think two months for the talk page sounds fair. Thanks for your help! What about doing something similar for any page in the Wikipedia namespace? Or is that unfeasible? Yours, Radiant_* 12:07, May 9, 2005 (UTC)

• Hm, good point, marking all of Wikipedia namespace is rather controversial. The point is that the Wikipedia namespace is a mess, and it's sometimes difficult to distinguish relevant content from old debates. I'll see if I can think of a better way of doing that, or failing that it would be good to get consensus first. But am I correct to understand that it is technically possible? Radiant_* 11:06, May 10, 2005 (UTC)
  • Technically possible, yes. -- AllyUnion (talk) 23:29, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
    • Cool, thanks for the help. Radiant_* 11:18, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

NekoDaemon

Hello. NekoDaemon is now marked as a bot. If you ever need this flag removed, please ask at meta:Requests for permissions. Angela. 20:42, May 9, 2005 (UTC)

CfD visibility discussion

Hello,

There has been some discussion in Wikipedia talk:Categories for deletion#Visibility of CfD votes on categorized pages about the desire for CfD candidates to somehow show up on the watchlists of categorizers, whether or not they have the categories themselves watched. It seems like the only reasonable way to do that, barring source code changes, is to have a bot populate talk pages with some new template resembling Template:tfd. I'm willing to rough-in a bot that would do that, but I do not want to step on your toes. Would you care to join the discussion? TreyHarris 00:28, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Spam in sandboxes

Some people have taken to silly link spamming of sandboxes. Would it be worth to remove external links when checking the sandboxes? Giving spammers any slack just doesn't feel right :) Zocky 08:29, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

I was thinking that we could remove them periodically, like every hour or fifteen minutes. That would still allow people to test how it works, but make it less worthwhile to spam. Do many people use the public sandboxes for large-scale tests? I suspect most do it on their own subpages. Other options are to check manually (yuck) or suffer the spam (yuck yuck), or hope that it's just a fad (which would be nice). Zocky 20:54, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

CfD bot

Someone recently fixed all the heading levels on WP:CFD so that headings start at ==2nd level== instead of =1st level=, per the MoS. However, now the bot's transcluding the new archive day between two '='s, breaking the table of contents (see [1]). Could you fix that when you have a chance? --Azkar 00:42, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

• As to automating the 'old debates' infobox - great idea! Radiant_* 08:16, May 12, 2005 (UTC)
  • Seven days sounds reasonable, because after that any discussions are likely to be closed. They are still accessible, of course, as the naming is rather obvious. Radiant_* 07:52, May 13, 2005 (UTC)

Protection/unprotection for pywikipediabot

You asked on sourceforge for protection and unprotection for pywikipediabot. See User:Gdr/protect.py. Gdr 22:38, 2005 May 12 (UTC)

Automatic protection for Main Page? What do you propose? Gdr 08:13, 2005 May 13 (UTC) P.S. Why is your talk page protected?

I think that the only way this is going to work is by integrated the protection and unprotection for images into the processes that update the templates that appear on the main page.

(It would be straightforward to write a bot that would (1) protect all images on the main page; and (2) unprotect all images with Template:Mprotected that do not appear on the main page. However, this wouldn't really be a solution: unless you ran the bot very frequently, there would a window of opportunity for someone to vandalise an image after it appeared on the main page and before it had been protected. The times when new images appear on the main page are quite predictable (e.g. midnight UTC for the selected anniversary) and the images are chosen some time in advance. So I don't like that idea.)

In the process for updating Template:Did you know, which is documented rather sketchily at Wikipedia:Did you know/Guide you protect the image before updating the template. There are similar steps in the processes for updating the other templates. So I think the right thing to do is to assist in automation of the existing processes, which is what I'm doing with DYKbot. Gdr 20:41, 2005 May 14 (UTC)

sandbot messasge

Currently, the private notice in the sandbox looks like this:

We politely ask you to leave the line above alone. As this page is for editing experiments, this page will automatically be cleaned every 12 hours.

I recommend this instead:

Please leave the line above alone, but feel free to edit the sandbox below the header. As this page is for editing experiments, this page will automatically be cleaned every 12 hours.

The reason I recommend this is that some newbies are afraid to edit the sandbox and don't know what it's exactly for. Even with the header template message, "Feel free to try your formatting skills here" and "We politely ask you to leave the line above alone" could cause them some confusion.

Please change the sandbot script and use my version or a similar one.

Thank you. — Stevey7788 (talk) 00:34, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

How about: Feel free to try your formatting skills here beneath the first two lines. As this page is for editing experiments, this page will automatically be cleaned every 12 hours. -- AllyUnion (talk) 01:57, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Feel free to try your formatting and editing skills here beneath this header and notice. As this page is for editing experiments, this page will automatically be cleaned every 12 hours.

Slight change, but clearer. Deal? — Stevey7788 (talk) 03:46, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Feel free to try your formatting and editing skills here beneath the above header and this notice. As this page is for editing experiments, this page will automatically be cleaned every 12 hours.

If you're going to be that specific... Might as well clearly define it. -- AllyUnion (talk) 04:29, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Works for me. I think it sounds a little too authoritarian, but only a little. -Litefantastic 17:04, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

I think the current warning is acceptable, but it could be a little better. To state the obvious, we want to:

• Keep it simple and friendly
• Encourage editing experiments
• Discourage header vandalism (deliberate and accidental)

How about Hello! Feel free to try your formatting and editing skills *below* this line. As this page is for editing experiments, it will automatically be cleaned every 12 hours. (I think this has the right emphasis without being confusing or intimidating. Also, IMHO we don't need to be overly specific; newbies might be confused about what the "header" is for instance. Just say "edit below this line".)

P.S. I spoke to Angela a few months ago about somehow permanently "cementing" the header in the sandbox but she said it is not really possible unless we make it a Special: page - which is not a priority at this time. Sandbot (and vigilant users like Stevey) are the best "header policing" solution for now. If (and when) Wikipedia reaches critical mass, then we may have to revisit the idea of a permanent solution.

P.P.S. I remember what the warning was like several months ago... it was along the lines of DO NOT EDIT THIS LINE OR THE ONE ABOVE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES OR YOU MAY BE BLOCKED WITHOUT WARNING. LOL, that is not very inviting and it is a tempting invitation for vandals! -- FP ^{<talk><edits>} 04:42, May 13, 2005 (UTC)

I like FP's suggestion. Changing to that. -- AllyUnion (talk) 00:39, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

"We politely ask you to leave the line above alone" sounds like Wikipedia has administrators who are strict schoolteachers in everyday life. "Hello" is very friendly to everyone. — Stevey7788 (talk) 20:26, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Do we even need the header message? Doesn't the Sandbot put the header back in if it disappears?  DrZoidberg 20:24, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

The problem is that Sandbot would have to be more active without it, I bet. Some people may take the whole "Please leave this line alone" as a joke and change it... Then to discover the header is gone. -- AllyUnion (talk) 22:03, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

VfD/Yesterday

Hi there! I've noticed that for the past few days, VfD/Yesterday doesn't update and instead links to the day before yesterday. FYI. Radiant_* 09:04, May 13, 2005 (UTC)

For some reason, the bot was logged out. Wait a few days please. -- AllyUnion (talk) 00:31, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Blank page after closing?

Not sure why, but the bot left the page almost empty. [2] Kappa 00:20, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Take a closer look at the Wikicode. [3] If you know anything about HTML comments, an HTML comment begins with <!-- and ends with -->. The reason why the bot blank the page was not its fault. It was because someone took out the > in the first HTML comment that says: <!-- New votes to the bottom, please. --. -- AllyUnion (talk) 00:33, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Substub

Hi AllyUnion - the vote over at tfd was for Template:Substub to be deleted, and it's in the queue awaiting deletion. General feeling at WikiProject Stub sorting is that turning it into a redirect for its last few days would make sense, to sort of ease the transition. I could go ahead and unprotect it myself and do the job, but would feel happier getting your okay for the unprotection first (since it was your (good) idea to put it on there). PS - nice photos! Grutness...wha? 11:28, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

You wrote: I would feel much better if a bot could go through and change all the substubs into stubs... but a redirect is fine for now. Well currently there aren't any, so a bot isn't really needed. Category:Substubs has been pretty much cleared. Grutness...wha? 01:37, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Trek references

I added a list of the major reference works that are often cited when writing about Star Trek to the main article. It has been mentioned that this is not quite what is meant by references, but IMO the only way to do a fully cited article is to abandon what has been written and write something from scratch, which isn't feasible (not to mention unfair to past contributors). I imagine some folks treat Wikipedia like they would a thesis or essay, but I don't really work that way - not with a simple website. Anyway, I started the list so hopefully something can be done with it. If push comes to shove, I'd recommend citing only those books dated in the 1970s since those are key works and the sum of their knowledge forms the basis for what longtime Trekkers like me know about the show. Cheers. 23skidoo 14:11, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm willing to bet the explanation of who Berman is probably got lost in a previous edit. Good catch, there. "Star Trek Creator" could be considered a reference along the lines of Shatner's books (I could also have listed autobiographies/biographies of Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, James Doohan, Deforest Kelly, Leonard Nimoy and Walter Koenig as well -- yup, they all wrote books (except for Kelly who was biographed posthumously). I recall there being two biographies of Roddenberry published, one of which was considered quite controversial but I can't recall if it was Star Trek Creator or the other one the title of which I forget. 23skidoo 20:30, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Upload message

If you want to use an exclusive free license other than the GFDL, you must upload your files to the Wikimedia Commons.

Is this true? For example, is the uploading of public domain images to wikipedia prohibited? My understanding was that the following is true:

If you want to use an exclusive free license other than the GFDL, you are encouraged to upload your files to the Wikimedia Commons.

Lupin 19:53, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Public domain is ineligible for copyright status... I don't believe it can be re-licensed under the GFDL. -- AllyUnion (talk) 19:59, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

OK, but what about the non-GFDL free licenses which are allowed on the commons? Is uploading images under these licenses actually disallowed on en, or

merely discouraged? Lupin 20:01, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

I put the text as: other than the GFDL or public domain. Fair use is permitted, but that small notice is against anyone who wants to exclusively use a free license such as the BSD License to license their images. -- AllyUnion (talk) 20:11, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I may be being dense, but I'm still not really clear what the policy is. Are you saying that if I find an image licensed only under the BSD license, then I may not upload it to en, but I may upload it to the commons? Also, are the following free licenses allowed on en? I thought that they were, but the current wording on Upload seems to me to exclude them from en.

• Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
• GNU General Public License (GPL) / GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)
• Free Art License [4]
• EFF OAL

Lupin 20:20, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Star Trek

Hi Coolcat. I would like to work together to push for Star Trek to be a featured article. However, I feel that the article as it stands is a mess and requires a complete rewrite. The information presented is fine, but it seems to be lacking certain information and links. Please help by contributing your opinions to Talk:Star Trek. Thanks. -- AllyUnion (talk) 22:57, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Gladly. --Cool Cat ^{My Talk} 00:10, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

CfD header

Did you see this: Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2005 May 11? Did you add the header? I kind of like it. Radiant_* 07:49, May 18, 2005 (UTC)

Schools on VfD

I finally dragged it to a global discussion because the local discussions weren't helping. Wikipedia:Schools. Radiant_* 07:49, May 18, 2005 (UTC)

A Star Trek bloopers article?

I wanted to bounce an idea off you. What do you think about an article based upon Star Trek bloopers? The original tapes have some notability because of their proliferation in the 1970s (in fact it could be said that the controversy over their unauthorized distribution anticipated current film piracy concerns). But beyond that, I could see us having some fun describing the different TOS, TNG, VOY, and ENT bloopers that have been released. I wouldn't suggest summarizing every Trek blooper - that could get boring - but some of the more popular ones might be worth noting, stuff like Shatner saying "Have no fear, Sargon is here" or Tuvok running away from a dark cave, or the newly classic "Martinis at T'Pol's" blooper from the season 1 gag reel. Thoughts? 23skidoo 23:30, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

FFXI Wiki

You might be interested in this FFXI Wiki. --Gahoo 19:21, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Protection

Uh...? Developed country is the first and only page I have protected, and I unproteted it and removed the tag simultaneously, after 24 hours. Did I miss something? Nothing is more likely, mind you, as the whole protection/unprotection procedure is a little intimidating the first time. Or, hey, did you simply mean that this maneouvre was unnecessary:

>13:56, 23 May 2005 Bishonen unprotected Developed country (just to put the {{protected}} template in there)

Right? I have mysterious editing powers that override the protection?

I'm replying on your page, as I usually do, but it unnerves me a little to note that it is protected. So, I can still edit it, but is it a faux pas and abuse of my superpowers to do so? Anyway, thanks for telling me, that'll come in useful! Bishonen | talk 09:51, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

How do you create your own bot?

I want to perform some archiving tasks and also some categorization and stub categorization. I know I need to ask permission to do it (use a bot), but before that I wanted to know how to program one... Does it use C, Java, PHP, wikilanguage? Thanks. Paulo Oliveira 11:46, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll look at the workframe when I have the time. I will also need to read about Python first, but I think it mustn't be too hard. As for the task I intend to do, these are mainly about automation. Automatic categorization, automatic redirections, etc. Detail will follow on my talk page. Paulo Oliveira 10:21, 26 May 2005 (UTC) (talk)

My Titles

If I weren't laughing so hard, I'd be writing up an Rfc on you for - what did someone recently accuse me of so eloquently? "Eternal demonising" of me or something similar. Bless you - the pain of being demoted to BJAODN's 2nd Curmudgeon by that new guy has been alleviated by your work. --Mothperson 12:21, 25 May 2005 (UTC) wait a minute - now that song is on my talk page!!! You fiend.

Fidel

Please can you unblock Fidel Castro. I can barely see an edit war last night. I am in the middle of major edits to try and resolve the problem, and feel I am being punished (I wanted to continue my edits this morning) for the sins of others. The only real solution to this page's problem is a thorough rewrite, but that cannot happen if the page is protected. Protecting will never solve the deeper problem, SqueakBox 14:58, May 25, 2005 (UTC)

Category:Wikipedia guidelines

I've been looking into the history and rationale for the creation of Category:Wikipedia guidelines and deletion of Category:Semi-Policy. I see that you were the one who created Category:Wikipedia guidelines. Can you point me to any discussion that were done before the creation of that category? BlankVerse ∅ 09:53, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

History of Star Trek

Your question is pretty broad. There are two major works on the subject. During TOS's second season, Gene Roddenberry and Stephen Whitfield co-wrote "The Making of Star Trek" which described in intense detail how the show came to be. It's from that source that names such as Captain Winter, the USS Yorktown (original name for the Enterprise) and other tidbits of the characters originate. About 10 years ago, Robert Justman and Herbert Solow, who produced TOS, wrote Inside Star Trek: The Real Story which covered the entire run of TOS and included a number of controversial claims (such as the affair between Roddenberry and Nichelle Nichols, the fact Gene composed an "impossible to sing" set of lyrics for the theme song so he'd get a cut of the royalities, etc.). And of course all the main cast either wrote autobiographies covering the early years, or biographies were written about them. For post-TOS history, as in the rise of fandom, I'd recommend "On the Good Ship Enterprise" by Bjo Trimble who organized the 1960s equivalent of Trek United, and Making of the Trek Conventions by Joan Winston which chronicles the beginnings of that element of Trek fandom. Of all the books I mentioned, these last two are the hardest to find, as you can imagine. Hope this helps. 23skidoo 13:59, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

This is definitely something that's worth doing the research for, but what one needs is time and resources. I have the resources - most of the books I mentioned including Trimble's book and the Trek Conventions book which is selling on the collectors market for a lot of money. Problem is, I just don't have the time to work on such a project at the moment. I could give a general outline from memory (Roddenberry pitching the show to CBS who turned it down in favor of Lost in Space; NBC and Desilu rejecting the show until Lucille Ball championed it; the controversy over Spock and the initial plan to have a female first office; the decision to air a monster-of-the-week episode first which some feel doomed TOS from the start; the write-in campaign that saved the second season; Harlan Ellison vs. Roddenberry, etc.). Problem is if you want sources cited I couldn't do that given my time restrictions. But maybe if we just created an outline and worried about sourcing later, it would give us a start? 23skidoo 19:02, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

I just added a very fast and dirty outline from memory to the Temp page. There are no doubt some errors to be smoothed out, but it's a start. 23skidoo 02:06, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

WikiProject Category Archival

Hi Radiant!, I told you that the archive is 6 months if the page is not edited, and 2 months if the talk page hasn't been edited. What do you for pages like: User:Gracefool/Wikiproject D&D which are in the category? Should I only change pages that have a format of "Wikipedia:WikiProject *"? (Where * means any word, phrase, name, etc). What about User:Zocky/Sandbox? What about Wikipedia:WikiProject/Template? Can you give me your list of exceptions please? -- AllyUnion (talk) 09:56, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

• It's been established that WikiProjects may reside in userspace for whatever reason. If the user tags something as cat:wikiproject, and it becomes inactive, then cat:inactive wikiproject is appropriate. That includes Peregrine 981 and Gracefool. Also, some WikiProjects don't have 'WikiProject' in their title, such as the LGBT notice board and Statistics Department. I'd say the sole exceptions are Wikipedia:WikiProject (the main page) and Template:WikiProject. Thanks, Radiant_* 10:06, May 27, 2005 (UTC)
  • But not Wikipedia:WikiProject/Template? -- AllyUnion (talk) 10:07, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
    • No, because nothing links there in the first place. Radiant_* 10:10, May 27, 2005 (UTC)
    • Oh yes, and please make an exception for subcategories (which shouldn't be moved period, otherwise cat:inactive may end up in cat:inactive :) ). Radiant_* 10:13, May 27, 2005 (UTC)

European English

Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/European_English should be removed from the Votes for Deletion List. I turned the personal research article into an acceptable stub. Thanks. Nobbie 14:16, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

Who let the dogs out?

I think this is how World War I started. Actually, it was while I was trying to plot revenge that you became an inspiration. So consider yourself a muse. (omg, I did not make that ghastly pun, and I'm not even thinking about cold pizza. -- not Mothperson 14:39, 27 May 2005 (UTC))

Bot policy

I am not sure what is unclear: the reason or the implementation. I guess the former one.

It is my lucky day when I do not revert a dozen of anon vandals in my watchlist. Therefore each time I refresh my watch I browse thru anon contributors. In my watchlist at least 30% are vandals. If a bot runs, I don't see these anons, so to spot them I have to look into histories of articles last edited by bots. If the last edit was by a logged user I trust he spotted the vandal (with the exception of redlinked user name: chances are it is a newbie or even vandal too). Looking into histories is a burden both for me (I have >3,000 pages on watch) and for wikiengine. That's why I'd like for a bot to report who edited before him.

Of course, simple-minded vandals will be spotted anyway. But in rarely edited pages and with deliberately clandestine vandals one better be on an early warning alert level. mikka (t) 19:13, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

...

<> I see. I didn't think about this. But again, how does the "recent changes" work? I don't think it accesses full histories in the whole my watchlist. mikka (t) 21:01, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

Bot hiding: This will not help me to see anons that edited immediately before bots. mikka (t) 03:50, 31 May 2005 (UTC)