User talk:Rich Farmbrough/Archive/2013 March

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Wikidata weekly summary #47[edit]

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
  • Development
    • Extended diff view to include references now
    • Fixed bug where incorrect statements revision was shown in diff view
    • Added first version of Linked Data interface (RDF/XML); will be accessible from Special:EntityData
    • Updated the demo system
    • More work towards using Solr for our search
    • More investigation and fixes of search issues
    • Fixed several bugs in the entity selector and improved its behavior
    • Worked on refactoring of how our widgets use the toolbar
    • Worked on implementation of missing data model components in JavaScript
    • A lot of bug fixing
  • Events
  • Other Noteworthy Stuff
    • Rollout of phase 1 (language links) on all remaining Wikipedias is still planned for March 6
    • Next update on wikidata.org is also planned for March 6. This will have bugfixes and if all goes well string as a new available data type.
    • Proposal was made to the Hungarian, Hebrew and Italian Wikipedias to be the first batch to use phase 2 of Wikidata (infoboxes). Scheduled timeframe for this is end of March
    • d:Wikidata:Database reports has some useful reports like the list of most used properties
    • The interwiki shortcut :d was changed to always use www in the resulting link (to prevent editing issues on other URLs).
    • The list of available properties is growing and a whole bunch of new ones are being discussed
    • Reasonator gives you a nice adapted view of an item about a person
    • Items by cat helps you find missing items in a certain Wikipedia category
    • A few more additions to d:Wikidata:Tools that you should have a look at if you’re editing statements
    • We now have more than 2600 active users on Wikidata. Thanks for being awesome. <3
  • Open Tasks for You

Oxford Meetup 4[edit]

Thank you for attending the third Oxford Meetup, and it was a pleasure meeting you. Thank you also for creating the page about the fourth Oxford Meetup; please sign up if you think that you are able to attend - if the date or venue are unsuitable, please comment at its discussion page.

Please spread the word to anybody else who you think might be interested. The next UK meetup is London, 10 March 2013. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:00, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Articles to be redirected[edit]

Richard, you are listed as the creator of Category:Articles to be redirected. What is the purpose of this category, exactly? There are zero entries (which odd enough appears as a backlog) and I have no idea if there's a tag that puts it here or what. Ego White Tray (talk) 04:51, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's an ancillary to the currently unused {{Stub redirect}} at least. It is perfectly OK (in fact splendid) for these categories to be empty. As to the reason it appears in in Category:Wikipedia backlog, that is due to {{Backlog subcategories}} which could be made smarter if that is seen as useful. Rich Farmbrough, 20:52, 6 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]

Moon landings were faked listed at Redirects for discussion[edit]

An editor hasI have asked for a discussion to address the redirect Moon landings were faked. Since you created had some involvement with the Moon landings were faked redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so).  Ryan Vesey 07:53, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This redirect is bringing a small trickle of hits to the target page, and is therefore useful. There is no NPOV, the redirect term is a sensible phrase to enter in the search bar. Rich Farmbrough, 21:00, 6 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]

The Signpost: 04 March 2013[edit]

Delete/block[edit]

MfD/speedy

Block

These are likely socks of a banned user. Rich Farmbrough, 14:23, 8 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]

User:Kevin[edit]

If anyone wishes they can copy this to the motion page as "Comments by uninvolved..."

While I would normally say "restore his tools" - this was no only a one-off, but a one-off that involved unblocking, which is far less harmful than a wrongful block, I am very concerned that at Signpost comments Kevin requests that the outing which started this whole thing be repeated. This, for me, casts severe doubt on his judgement. Privacy is a principle that most Wikimedians, and, increasingly, society at large, take very seriously. Aside from that I would wholeheartedly support restoration of the admin bit. Rich Farmbrough, 15:28, 8 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]

Wikidata weekly summary #48[edit]

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

Gagging[edit]

Talk page stalkers may be interested that there is an attempt to gag those accused at Arbitration Enforcement by limiting their responses to 500 words, and to limit community involvement in the process. Rich Farmbrough, 21:22, 9 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]

New quote for the day[edit]

...please remember that we are all volunteers working towards the same purpose, and while disagreements may arise, there is always time to stand back and attempt to understand one another. from Hersfold's resignation. Shame he didn't discover this earlier. Rich Farmbrough, 03:18, 13 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]

Test[edit]

Country Overall name of legislature Name of house House level Term (years) Voting system Seats Population per seat[1] GDP per seat ($Milion)[2][3]
 Afghanistan National Assembly[4] House of the People (ولسي جرګه Wolesi Jirga) Lower 5 Single non-transferable vote 249 122,168 119
House of Elders (مشرانوجرګه Meshrano Jirga) Upper 3, 4 and 5 majority and appointed by the president 102 298,234 291
 Albania dummy Assembly of Albania (Kuvendi i Shqipërisë) Unicameral 4 proportional closed list 140 20,226 177
 Algeria Parliament[4] People's National Assembly (al-Majlis al-Sha'abi al-Watani) Lower 6 proportional open list 462 61,833 439
Council of the Nation (al-Majlis al-Umma) Upper 5 indirect vote and appointed by the president 144 257,638 1,830
 Andorra dummy General Council of the Valleys (Consell General de les Valls) Unicameral 4 proportional closed list 28 2,789 161
 Angola dummy National Assembly (Assembleia Nacional) Unicameral 4 proportional party list 220 84,081 525

Dummy date 07:53, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference en.wikipedia.org was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference ReferenceA was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference ReferenceB was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ a b Native name not available

Test 2[edit]

Extended content
  • test
  • test
  • test
  • test
  • test
  • test
  • test

Dummy date 07:53, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 11 March 2013[edit]

Wikidata weekly summary #49[edit]

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
    • Development
    • Design improvements to the SetClaim API module
    • More work on implementing the simple inclusion syntax that will be 1 way to access Wikidata data on Wikipedia
    • More work on Lua (the second way to access Wikidata data on Wikipedia)
    • Added parser page property to hold entity id in client. This fixes:
      • bugzilla:45037 - don’t show edit link if noexternallanglinks has suppressed all Wikidata links
      • bugzilla:44536 - have the edit link go directly to the Q### pages, instead of Special:ItemByTitle which shall make the link be more reliable and work for all namespaces
    • Selenium tests for deleted-property-handling
    • Selenium tests for multiline references
    • Selenium tests for add-sitelinks-from-client
    • Selenium tests for Entity-Selector-as-Searchbox
    • Selenium tests for language-table
    • Implemented in-process caching for entities
    • Lua support to access the repo data and implement getEntity (so you can use stuff like entity = mw.wikibase.getEntity("Q1459") in Lua modules)
    • rebuildTermSearchKey is now ready for production (this still needs to be run but once done it will make search case-insensitive)
    • Improved error reports from the API
    • Ground work for better edit summaries from the API
    • Added a table of content to item pages
    • Added debug functionality to be able to investigate why it takes longer than it should for Wikidata changes to show up on recent changes and watchlists on Wikipedia
    • Finished implementation of References-UI
    • Implemented GUID generator in JavaScript
    • Worked on fixing a bug related to deleted properties where the UI would display wrong information
    • Minor fixes/additions to the JS datamodel implementation
    • Minor bugfixes in Statements-UI
    • More work on RDF export
  • Discussions/Press
  • Events
  • Other Noteworthy Stuff
  • Did you know?
    • If you add a Babel box to your user page Wikidata will show you items and descriptions in other languages you speak as well without you having to switch the language
    • Want to know which items use a certain property? Try the “what links here” link on a property page
  • Open Tasks for You
Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Global message delivery 18:38, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#Globalizing Cricket[edit]

In the 1755 laws, provision was made to allow an injured batter to retire and to resume his/her innings at a later time (a further indication that such injuries were relatively common), but not to be replaced or substituted. Presumably due to the suspicion that such a regulation would be flouted (and the ramifications this would have for bets placed on matches), an additional law decreed that the umpires were to be judges ‘of all frivolous Delays; of all Hurt, whether real or pretended’ (Rait Kerr 1950: 97–98). Globalizing Cricket: Englishness, Empire and Identity, Dominic Malcolm

So the volume does not make the claim that this appeared in the 1927 agreement. Rich Farmbrough, 22:01, 18 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]
--

Nomination for deletion of Template:Nowikify[edit]

Template:Nowikify has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. GoingBatty (talk) 17:13, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

And my comment is "Undelete, subst, and delete. Rich Farmbrough, 22:02, 18 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]

--

Glad to see you back[edit]

Glad to see you back! --Orlady (talk) 02:03, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Rich Farmbrough, 02:13, 20 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]

References[edit]

FYI, references need only be given a name if they are used more than once in an article. A reference name needs only be in "quotes" if it contains more than one word separated by a blank space. Thus the quotes in <ref name="Threat"> are unnecessary. -- Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 07:07, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. I am actually aware of both these facts. Rich Farmbrough, 07:14, 20 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]

Kumioko[edit]

You can read some of the story here and here, also here, here, here, here, here, here, and here   LittleBen (talk) 03:53, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sigh, I have seen most of that, but of course more abuse by Fram had to be part of the picture. Thanks for the update. Rich Farmbrough, 04:07, 20 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]
FYI, it was Kumioko who added that, not me. I certainly have no objections to you removing it, but he may put it back. 28bytes (talk) 04:13, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes I realised, subsequently. And if he reinstates it I will leave it there, I understand the message he was sending, even if I question the efficacy of it. Rich Farmbrough, 04:17, 20 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]
  • I was disappointed to see your personal attack on Sandstein here. Maybe you didn't read this or this (including my submission here)? LittleBen (talk) 09:54, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sandstein wishes to cut down the discussion on Arb Enforcement, so that he can block more people, faster and for longer. That seems to be his modus operandi. The good of the project is secondary to thoughtlessly implementing dictats he doesn't understand. He has made that clear at least. Rich Farmbrough, 09:58, 20 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]
  • Right after SMC was cautioned for wall-of-text wikilawyering threats, and personal attacks, he launched into an attack on Fyunck (you didn't read my submission). SMC didn't get blocked as a result, he just got a one-month topic ban.
Er.. and what entitles Sandstein to do that? Notice also he imposed on Fyunck his proposed limit of 500 words. Looks like Sandstein is making up the rules as he goes along and implementing them. Always a bad sign. The point is not whether SMC was a naughty boy (which is not unlikely as tempers get heated at MoS) but abuse of process by an admin on Arbitration matters. I have not looked at this in detail, but that is what it looks like, and it conforms to the impression that I get that Sandstein enjoys telling people what to do, and dispensing "sanctions". Rich Farmbrough, 10:17, 20 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]
  • You can see SMcCandlish, as well as Hans Adler, threatening Sanstein in the SMcCandlish archive above. It takes a lot of courage for an admin. to stand up to such threats and intimidation.
  • On the sports field, players who repeatedly foul or attack other players are sure to get a yellow or red flag. Players (or spectator cronies of players) who threaten the referee to try to get a penalty reversed are likely to be removed from games for the whole season. The excuse that a player is "important"　and "has a clean slate" and so should not be penalized for repeated fouls and attacks on other players is laughable. LittleBen (talk) 10:11, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Actually I hadn't seen it. But it seems to me a problem that SMCandsish (a hugely prolific editor by the way) withdraws his request at 06:07, 11 March 2013 (UTC), and subsequently a day or so later, Sandstein sanctions him for making a frivolous request. I have not interacted much with Sandstein as far as I can remember, prior to his absurd block of me, but he does seem to be very much desirous of exercising power. I have also seen him closing misplaced AE request with threats to block. Hardly collegial. Rich Farmbrough, 10:09, 20 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]

Can you give me diffs to the threats? Rich Farmbrough, 10:20, 20 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]

  • The link to the threat in context is in my submission, and I also cite the threat. You can see the story about how a mob to lynch Fyunck was canvassed here. Also see this. The 500-word limit is currently being discussed, but it was applied to both sides. In the end, SMC went over his 500 words by a factor of about six or seven. LittleBen (talk) 10:32, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Whoa you were talking about threats to Sandstein during the AE request, not something that happened back in Novemeber last year! Rich Farmbrough, 10:48, 20 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]
  • The November threats were echoed in SMC's filing the complaint, i.e. repeating the threat even after being cautioned against such behaviour. The other threats by SMC amount to "he and his army would have Sandstein removed as an admin. if he persevered with this". That's surely no different from threatening the referee on a sports field.
      • And on point 2 - how can Sandstein apply a rule that is still being discussed (and rejected)? Like I said it looks like he's just doing whatever he wants. Rich Farmbrough, 10:49, 20 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]
  • Admins are human and unpaid and have lives outside Wikipedia. It is unfair to force them to read 6,000 words from one side when the other gets only 500 words. I agree that third-party submissions can be a problem. I've bumped into one abusive person who spends all his time on WP passing judgement on other people at ANI (pushing for blocks or bans, even though he has no experience in the topic areas), and contributes virtually nothing to WP content. LittleBen (talk) 11:03, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Yes I was one. But believe me it takes far longer to write 6000 words than read them. And the subject (it is usually the subject) is forced (on pain of being sanctioned unheard) to write and spend vast amounts of time on these venues. I have (little or) no objection to someone announcing "TLDR" on a normal talk page, or even on ANI, but at Arbitration level, the stakes are pretty high. Rich Farmbrough, 11:16, 20 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]

OK I found Hans Alders section. These are not threats. Hans Alder sees Sandstein as being on a "Power trip" and needing reining in. This is pretty much the same conclusion I have come to independently. Hans does not even suggest launching an RFC/U on Sandstein. I understand that diacritics are a vexed question, and I have no opinion on the behaviour of the parties in the dispute, since I don't know about it, but even assuming that SMC is behaving badly it does not give Sandstein carte blanche to write the rules for AE, let alone impose apparently unilateral sanctions not recognised by policy or usage. Rich Farmbrough, 10:29, 20 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]

  • He is deciding the word limit by discussion with others, not unilaterally. The idea is that when the average user can make his case in say 500 words, the other side should not get six times that for wall-of-text threats and wikilawyering. LittleBen (talk) 10:37, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes and this is a bad idea. In my arb case I had about 5 people making allegations at 500 words each and only 500 words to respond. I was done up brown, as a result. (I was also in dispute with the drafting arb, but that's another story.)
There is no reason to think that the number of words allows threats, and as for wiki-lawyering, that is clear when it is being done, and usually it is those making the accusations of wiki-lawyering that are doing it, in my experience.
All the best. Rich Farmbrough, 10:43, 20 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]
Sandstein's delay in responding was a result of his listening to others who were urging him to reduce the proposed topic ban to one month—and he was asking for another admin to close the discussion, but apparently nobody else had the courage to take the flack. SMC's withdrawing the complaint was apparently just (as Sandstein says) an attempt to avoid sanctions. All the best. LittleBen (talk) 10:51, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe no-one else thought it was a good idea. Just saying. Rich Farmbrough, 11:21, 20 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]

Kumioko reply[edit]

I posted this in one other place, 28bytes talk page. That is all I intend to do but I wanted to respond here as well. Greetings all, I saw a lot of traffic with my name on it today so I just wanted to make a couple passing comments. First, thanks Rich for the kind words in the various venues. I appreciate it but there's no need to spend time defending my actions. This place isn't worth it to me anymore. If they would prefer to give the tools to users like Sandstein, Fram, Sarek and others that want to block everyone and open up months long Arbcom cases against every editor they don't agree with, then manipulate policy so they are even more powerful and can do even more they don't need contributors like me who want to build an encyclopedia. 28bytes is right, I am fed up with this place, the toxic culture, the us and them admin to editor attitudes and with the politics of it all. I wanted to contribute but the power elite just want to insult and bully so I don't have time for that crap.

Next I want to clarify a couple other things. Clean start is an ineffective crap policy and should be deleted since the culture here doesn't support it. You can't do a clean start without being dishonest and you certainly can't do it with the same user name. Eventually someone will call you out for socking. People edit what they are interested in so the only way to make a "clean start" is to edit stuff outside your interests (because presumably you were editing within your interests prior) and that's unrealistic. Most of the time you have to say on your page I used to be X and now I am Y. That's not a clean start, that's a name change and is pointless. Its a hypocritical nonsense policy.

I also want to clarify that I did not suggest Sarek be desysopped, Arbcom did that, I just supported it and I still do. Sarek used to be a great admin, over the years he has become callous and no longer listens to the story. He levees severe blocks without hesitation. That is not the type of Admin we need here. Sandstein is a powermonger and Fram is an idiot and there are plenty more bad ones out there as well just like these three. If we get rid of some of these bad admins maybe some of the 640+ others will start participating if some of the jerks are moved out of the way. Right now there isn't any room to get past the big ego's. Anyway, I expect this to be deleted as atacks or whatever. It doesn't matter, I just wanted to explain some things and set the record straight. Not that I beleive for a second anyone cares. As you can see I am still a little pissed off. Kumioko138.162.0.44 (talk) 16:46, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't blame you. I pretty much agree with most of what you say, and I shan't peruse your unblock any further right now, unless I hear form you. I am, however, pleased to have put a maker in the sand, making it clear that (whatever else was going on) the block summary is wrong. I shall also follow up on the abuse of checkuser rights, as this is the second time in a few months that I have seen this happen, and it is inimical to the community, and demonstrably wrong (unlike some other matters which it might be claimed are subjective). Rich Farmbrough, 20:03, 20 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]

Message[edit]

Left you a message on Meta-Wiki. πr2 (t • c) 22:57, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Another. πr2 (t • c) 23:44, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

---

Great Answer[edit]

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Thanks for the answer.U2_Girl! (talk) 13:13, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Olympic results index[edit]

I was interested to see the first edit from someone else to this page. I have tried to get some feedback from others about the article and most people seem to think there is no need for it; that perhaps it should be made into a template. I would be like to hear if you had any views on that? If it were to be a template there would be the laborious task of putting it into all the necessary articles and I don't have a clue how to create a template. Jodosma (talk) 12:37, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It would be too large for a navbox, in my opinion. However it could be a set of navboxen, though similar ones probably exist. Rich Farmbrough, 13:37, 21 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]

Teahouse talkback: you've got messages![edit]

Hello, Rich Farmbrough/Archive/2013 March. Your question has been answered at the Teahouse Q&A board. Feel free to reply there!
Please note that all old questions are archived after 2-3 days of inactivity. Message added by TheOriginalSoni (talk) 20:09, 21 March 2013 (UTC). (You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{teahouse talkback}} template).[reply]

HIV project[edit]

I hope that you have been well, Rich.

At the last Wikimania you showed me an outline for an HIV project on Wikipedia. Could you point me to that again? Someone else has another project and was discussing it at meta:Talk:Wiki_Project_Med#Interested.3F_HIV.2FAIDS_in_.28sub-Saharan.29_African_languages and I was thinking to make a connection between that and whatever precedent exists. We are starting to have several pieces to connect. Thanks. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:58, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If you don't mind me interjecting, our English articles on HIV could use a good update as well. Articles like AIDS in Africa are relying on 4 year old data, and the situation has changed significantly in many cases due to effective wide scale epidemic reduction programs. Gigs (talk) 17:58, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I agree. And that's part of the reason the project got stuck. I wanted to make sure we had good data to translate. I also wanted to make sure the right (most important) stuff for public health purposes was present. Rich Farmbrough, 20:47, 21 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]
Would you like to discuss it on the aforementioned page? Apparently there's a local enwiki initiative to translate medical articles too. Can we coordinate? πr2 (t • c) 22:37, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A barnstar for you![edit]

The Special Barnstar
For helping me with an old, annoying problem. Spitfire19 T/C 06:11, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! Love my barnstars! Rich Farmbrough, 06:43, 22 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]

The Signpost: 18 March 2013[edit]

Wikidata weekly summary #50[edit]

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
  • Development
    • Rolled out new code on wikidata.org. The new stuff you probably care about is:
      • Improved references. They can now have multiple lines. This should make references much more useful. You can now have one reference with for example values for each of the properties "book", "author", "page" to describe one source.
      • Fixed the prev/next links in diff view (bugzilla:45821)
      • d:Special:EntitiesWithoutLabel now lets you filter by language and entity type
    • Widget to add language links on the Wikipedias directly: added setting to enable/disable it per wiki and made it available for logged-in users only
    • Widget to add language links on the Wikipedias directly: improved layout / size
    • Made it so that the “edit links” link on Wikipedia is also shown when the corresponding item only has a link to this one language and no other languages
    • Submitted improved Apache config patch to make wikidata.org always redirect to www.wikidata.org, which is awaiting code review and deployment.
    • Improved the script that is responsible for taking Wikidata changes to the Wikipedias
    • Added a few ways to better debug the script responsible for taking Wikidata changes to the Wikipedias. This should help with investigating why some changes take way to long to show up on the Wikipedias.
    • Started work on automatically adding edited items to the user’s watchlist (according to preferences)
    • Finished script for rebuilding search keys, so we can finally get case insensitive matches in a lot of places
    • Support for multi-line references in diff view
    • Selenium tests for inclusion syntax
    • Improved parser function (that will be used to access Wikidata data on the Wikipedias) to accept property ID or label
    • Increased isolation of data model component to increase clarity and visibility of bad dependencies
    • Worked on schema access in the SQLStore (of the query component)
  • Discussions/Press
  • Events
    • 3rd Media Web Symposium 2013
    • Wikidata trifft Archäologie
    • SMWCon Spring NYC
  • Other Noteworthy Stuff
  • Did you know?
    • When you edit a statement there is a little wheel in front of the text field. This lets you choose between “custom value”, “unknown value” and “no value”. “No value” means that we know that the given property has no value, e.g. Elizabeth I of England had no spouse. “Unknown value” means that the property has a value, but it is unknown which one -- e.g. Pope Linus most certainly had a year of birth, but it is unknown to us.
  • Open Tasks for You
Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Global message delivery 00:21, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Friendly note[edit]

Please, please, please do not use AN/I to report edits that require oversight/revdel. As the massive red pagenotice that pops up every time you post to AN/I says, in bold, "If the issue concerns a privacy-related matter, or potential libel/defamation, do not post it here." Follow the instructions at WP:RFO instead or contact a recently active sysop via email. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 02:37, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I emailed Oversight on Wednesday- nothing happened. I spoke to an oversighter on IRC on Thursday and was told it would be resolved soon. Nothing happened. I spoke to another overnighter on Friday and was told it's being discussed and discussion is normally very fast. Nothing happened. Seems oversight is broken, so I decided to give it a kick. Rich Farmbrough, 02:54, 23 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]
ROTFL. -- Ohconfucius ping / poke 03:02, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Which seems to have worked! But.. it shouldn't have been needed. Rich Farmbrough, 03:03, 23 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]
Hallelujah! -- Ohconfucius ping / poke 03:27, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I strenuously object to you sullying my name at AN/I without the required courtesy of a notification. Don't ever let it happen again. Carrite (talk) 06:04, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • I think you are being too touchy. I never mentioned your name, and took steps to avoid ANI. I also made it clear that the outing was inadvertent, a far as the Wikipedia side of things goes. Rich Farmbrough, 19:02, 23 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]

Concerns about recent edits at Environmental impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill[edit]

I've left one of them here petrarchan47tc 05:07, 24 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement[edit]

I have started a section regarding your edits at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement. Fram (talk) 10:25, 25 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

wikilove[edit]

User:Slowking4 has given you a Gerard Langbaine award! By your becoming a target of the "malignant assiduity" of those who level charges of errors.

They read wikipedia "only to detect plagiarisms." [3]

Spread the goodness of Gerard Langbaine awards by adding Gerard Langbaine, award to someone's talk page with a friendly message! slowkingFarmbrough's revenge⇔ †@1₭ 00:12, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Nice. Rich Farmbrough, 00:19, 26 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]

hi[edit]

I was just looking at[4]

I don't know if it matters but the 3 sources I see are the same url. If you like I can update them. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 20:59, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks: the second should be 533431126 and the third 533580322 . It might be best to ask a clerk to make the changes. It is interesting that no-one else noticed. Rich Farmbrough, 21:47, 27 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]

"Buggy script" woes?[edit]

You're not the only one. [5] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.67.164.188 (talk) 14:51, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ban him! Funnily enough there was a bug in Horsefeld's ArbBot while "my" case was being hears. He gave me a lot of grief for mentioning it! (Lese majesty again?) Rich Farmbrough, 21:49, 27 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]

March 2013[edit]

To enforce an arbitration decision, and for violating the editing restrictions that apply to you as described in the arbitration enforcement request mentioned above,
you have been blocked from editing for 1 year. You are welcome to make useful contributions once the block expires. If you believe this block is unjustified, please read the guide to appealing arbitration enforcement blocks and then appeal your block using the instructions there.  Sandstein  23:08, 25 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Reminder to administrators: In March 2010, ArbCom adopted a procedure prohibiting administrators "from reversing or overturning (explicitly or in substance) any action taken by another administrator pursuant to the terms of an active arbitration remedy, and explicitly noted as being taken to enforce said remedy, except: (a) with the written authorization of the Committee, or (b) following a clear, substantial, and active consensus of uninvolved editors at a community discussion noticeboard (such as WP:AN or WP:ANI). If consensus in such discussions is hard to judge or unclear, the parties should submit a request for clarification on the proper page." Administrators who reverse an arbitration enforcement block, such as this one, without clear authorisation will be summarily desysopped.

You were in a rush, was there consensus at AE? Did you not want your question answered? Do you think one Arbitrator represents the whole committee? Do you think it right to wreck an Arbitration process by you desire to be a part of a Milgram experiment? Rich Farmbrough, 23:50, 25 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]
When you blocked me previously you said "You are welcome to make useful contributions once the block expires." Why did you say that if you are going to block me for making useful contributions? Rich Farmbrough, 23:57, 25 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]

Aside from Sandstein, who else rendered this decision? I am not well versed in the arbcom case, so I don't want to jump to conclusions, but I always thought AE cases usually had 3 or more administrators chiming in.--MONGO 02:32, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]


WP:IAR.

If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it.

Using "rule" semi-loosely as standard (somewhat inflexible) arbcom procedure, this is ridiculous. I fail to see how this block does anything but prevent the improvement or maintainence of wikipedia. I'm really tempted to post this on Sandstein's talk page too, but alas, discresion is the better part of valor. Tazerdadog (talk) 03:36, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Rich, the ice has been thin for many moons, I'm not sure if you understood quite how microscopically thin it has been over the last year. I guess you eventually fell through—although as always it was likely not your intention, just a consequence of stepping heavily. I have been hoping it would not be the case. Lets try again in a year; you already managed to get a year more out of it than I expected. —Sladen (talk) 10:09, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is, Sladen, that stepping heavily is not needed. The restriction I am under states "anything that appears to be automation" - to Sandstein this edit appears to be automation. If changing a single character is automation, I am effectively banned from editing anyway. I was ridiculed by Coren for saying this. I was ridiculed by Risker for saying that I shared her distaste for having to constantly look over my shoulder. Can anyone say there is not dysfunction here? Rich Farmbrough, 12:01, 26 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]

Tazedadog, IAR works, when if tested, the consensus of the community or those making difficult judgements agree with the decision to IAR. So, IAR is about ignoring red tape, not about ignoring the will of many. In this case, IAR doesn't really help Rich, and neither does the arguing/attacking of Sandstein above. Rich can try, but based on past experience I can make an educated guess about the outcome. —Sladen (talk) 10:09, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A whole year? That's too severe. GoodDay (talk) 11:15, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • According to the notice above, this can be amended or overturned, "following a clear, substantial, and active consensus of uninvolved editors at a community discussion noticeboard (such as WP:AN or WP:ANI). If consensus in such discussions is hard to judge or unclear, the parties should submit a request for clarification on the proper page". Already three people have posted here supporting Rich. Surely nobody is perfect; admins. are human and so sometimes make errors. LittleBen (talk) 14:08, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It should be noted that a one year block is what Sandstein wanted to impose when Fram submitted the AE last time but was talked down by community uproar. The fact it was a year this time can be attributed to the short time frame (only 13 hours) which limited the amount of dialogue from the community. Virtually everyone who watches AE knows that Sandstein favors the extreme end of the spectrum and rarely takes comments into consideration. Its also well known that he is pretty much the only one who participates in AE making it a one man show. It goes without saying that this decision is too severe, it goes without saying that it was going to happen because no matter what Rich did, Fram was going to watch until Rich did something that would justify a block. He's been trying for years to get Rich banned from the project and its unfortunate that the Arbcom and AE fell for this rope a dope. Rich, a lot of us do not agree with this, that much is obvious. My suggestion would be to show ENWP their loss and do what you do best on the other wikis. Simple always needs help as does commons and Wiktionary. There is a lot of work to be done at Wikidata and Wikivoyage too. Good luck and I hope someone with a level head sees how truly stupid and punitive this block is. There is absolutely nothing preventative about a one year block of a longn time user for frivilous edits. KumiokoCleanStart (talk) 01:02, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
What an appalling block. Having just been through his contributions, I see no edits even close to vandalism or even automated. The fact that a block has been imposed on the basis of one edit is just WP:BOLLOCKS as far as I'm concerned. Rich Farmbrough is a very useful editor here and for some editor to unilaterally impose a site ban on him for editing using external tools (what exactly is wrong with that, by the way? When I used to edit Wikia, copying and pasting sections into Microsoft Word and making numerous replacements via the "Find and Replace" function was a common task!) is absolutely outrageous. This is not the Wikipedia I used to edit four years ago.--Launchballer 22:37, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Milgram experiment[edit]

Hi, Rich. Your point about a Milgram experiment was well found and striking. I have featured it as "wikiquote of the week" on my talkpage. Bishonen | talk 11:23, 26 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]

I would have felt a little unkind mentioning, but Sandstein admits that he doesn't understand why he's making blocks, and is just a tool of authority. (He also suggests that I can appeal the restriction, but blocks me for a year when I try to do so.) Rich Farmbrough, 13:41, 26 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]
<redacted what might appear to be a personal attack, but less so than the statement you made above.> Sandstein says doesn't understand why the original restriction was made, but he blocked you for violating it. That's different than saying he doesn't understand why he's making blocks. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:46, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes of course, that was exactly my point. "I'm electrocuting you because the man in the white coat said so." The Milgram experiment has been reconstructed over the decades, in different countries and in different demographic groups. Consistently a significant portion will follow the instructions. Rich Farmbrough, 22:07, 26 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]
Actually 'understand' is probably the wrong word here. They simply said they didn't know. What they do know as they expressed is there is a process which we can presume they trust leading up to the restriction and which allows the restriction to be lifted. It's far more similar then a law enforcement officer enforcing an arrest warrant then the Milgram experiment. In many cases, the details they know about the case are limited and often they will have no desire to engage in discussion with the person they are arresting about the alleged unfairness of the case. Nil Einne (talk) 22:50, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That is exactly the point of the Milgram experiment. People obey authority, including (and especially) those in positions of lesser authority, despite their moral qualms, if any. And they don't examine the reason behind those orders, they don't even ask what the reason is. Rich Farmbrough, 16:42, 27 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]
It worked out pretty well so far for the lemmings! Oh wait! KumiokoCleanStart (talk) 22:28, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I doubt anyone pressured Sandstein to block you. Sandstein has a more legalistic approach to Wikipedia DR than I personally agree with, but he goes about it in a thoughtful way and he reaches his decisions independently of what other people tell him to do. And, I doubt he has any moral qualms about the block. So the Milgram experiment isn't a good analogy. You might be thinking of the Zimbardo experiment, which describes an awful lot of Wikipedia these days. I wouldn't single out any particular editors. 50.0.136.106 (talk) 06:43, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 25 March 2013[edit]

Dafuq?[edit]

You are actually still blocked? I give up, I thought I had seen everything. Anyway, a drive-by note in the unlikely event you had not spotted it, the delightful Giovanni di Stefano is spending much of the next 14 years as a guest of Her Majesty. I'm sure he would want us to represent it as such, rather than the coarser terms "banged up" or "jailed". Made my week. Guy (Help!) 01:19, 29 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It is a shame, he is undoubtedly a very capable man, and could have made significant contributions to society had he chosen to. Moreover, though I am relieved he will not be able to threaten or harass people for some time, his bolt was shot as a fraudster. Rich Farmbrough, 16:09, 29 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]

Script advice[edit]

Rich, After some extensive testing of my sources script, I'm still slightly concerned about how slow it runs. Occasionally I get a windows error message when the script seems to stall, I click to continue and it invariably finishes the job without a problem. So long as I know there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the mechanics or programming I'm OK, but it's annoying nonetheless to have that popup on long articles.

I was wondering how I can make it run more efficiently, and eliminate the stalling. I had some advice on this script, but my programming skills are limited so I don't know how to even implement it. Any other help or suggestions would be appreciated. -- Ohconfucius ping / poke 01:41, 29 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at User:Ohconfucius/test/Sources_subscript2.js, (1) Avoid compiling the Regex more than once. (2) Consolidate the regexes to avoid compiling variants, so that you end up with (Ukrainian Independent Information Agency|United Press International|Xinhua News Agency). —Sladen (talk) 02:04, 29 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for that. I'm afraid I need to explain that I didn't actually write the code myself. I borrowed the backbone and plugged my regexes into it mechanically. Aside from applying a bit of layman's logic, I don't really understand where it may be compiling twice, for example. -- Ohconfucius ping / poke 02:31, 29 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
new Regexp() is the compliation, which is saved into re, and then executed once with regex(). The for(;;i++)for(;;j++); loops are causing several hundred compilations. The regexs are similiar that they can probably be combined, thus causing only a total of three compilations and executions. —Sladen (talk) 04:05, 29 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
So you mean I should start by making my regex more efficient, like what I have just done, or that I can simplify the loops further. or perhaps both? -- Ohconfucius ping / poke 04:54, 29 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This edit increases the complexity of the regex, but with the advantage of compiling a fewer number of regexes overall. My suggestion (see two paragraphs above) is go further and to concatenate all of the strings into a single (very complex) regex, and then to have less iterations of the loop (which is the expensive part). You could use a loop to the concatenation, then compile the resulting lengthy regex at the end of the loop. Ideally you'd go even further into compiling each regex once, then cacheing the compiled form and then executing them against multiple pages. That said, please ensure that if it is made to run faster, there is still time to adequately review each change before saving. —Sladen (talk) 13:36, 29 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The speed of the compilation and running are effectively independent of review time. Go => wait => diff => review => save or not - the machine parts run in series with the human parts not in parallel. RF
You will (should) get a modest speed-up by expanding stuff like (Fox (?:News(?: Channel|)|Business Network|Broadcasting Company)) - this is because bayer-moore-horsepool is faster with longer strings. You can also get a speed gain by listing the elements of the match in decreasing probability of matching. Having said that there are two other factors, one is that we are searching the entire article (as far as I can see), in many cases, rather than just the text in the citation template, say - this could get you a factor of between 10 and 100. Another matter is that the "bits" server which serves the .js scripts and other "bits" (I suppose) seems to have been struggling for about a year - this seems to have caused problems for me from time to time, that manifest as you describe. Rich Farmbrough, 16:31, 29 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]

Wikidata weekly summary #51[edit]

Extended content
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
  • Development
    • The first 11 Wikipedias can now include data from Wikidata in their articles (If you want to see it in action see the infobox at it:Torino)
    • Worked on automatic summaries for statements
    • Worked on making properties accessible from the client using their label so you can use {{#property:executive director}} instead of {{#property:p169}} for example
    • Made qualifiers ready for the next deployment (Please test. See details further down.)
    • Selenium tests for qualifiers
    • Fixed some issues related to QUnit testing
    • Worked on improved handling and code design of multiple snak lists in the UI (qualifiers, references)
  • Discussions/Press
  • Events
    • Newline 2013
  • Other Noteworthy Stuff
    • We’re currently carefully monitoring performance after the deployment of phase 2 on the first 11 Wikipedias. There seem to be a few small issues. As soon as they are resolved we'll deploy on English Wikipedia. All other Wikipedias are planned to follow very soon after that.
    • Bye and a big thank you to Anja, Silke, Jens and John who are leaving the development team at the end of the month and will work on other cool things. You’ll be missed!
    • Ever had any doubt about the possibilities of Wikidata? Talk to Wiri!
    • We worked on reducing the time it takes for Wikidata edits to show up in the Wikipedias and made some progress. Daniel posted an analysis
    • We started running a script on the database in order to make search on Wikidata case-insensitive. This should be finished in a few days and then search should be more useful.
    • In addition to the above we have rolled out a new search box that suggests items. This should also make finding things on Wikidata a lot easier for you.
    • We’re making some progress with Internet Explorer 8 support but there are a lot of issues with it (some outside our control). It’s unclear at the moment how much we can improve it still without spending an unjustified amount of time on it. You can follow the progress at bugzilla:44228
    • Edits are now auto-confirmed for users with more than 50 edits and account age 4 days: bugzilla:46461
    • Do you need old-style interwiki links for a sister project for example? This is for you
    • The Wikimedia Foundation applied as a mentoring organisation for Google Summer of Code again. We have proposed some Wikidata projects for students to take up if the Foundation is accepted again. At least 2 other organisations that applied also propose Wikidata ideas. More details on that once we know which organisations are accepted.
    • Denny hacked together a tree of life based on data from Wikidata
    • Wikidata was added to wikipulse
    • A template to retrieve data from Wikidata if no local value is set
  • Did you know?
  • Open Tasks for You
    • See note at the end of this weekly summary
    • Help test qualifiers (m:Wikidata/Notes/Data model primer#Qualifiers - see also example statements there) on the test wiki so we can roll it out with the next release
    • Did you file a bug report for Wikidata or did someone else do it for you? Please take a minute to check if it is still valid. (Thanks for filing it btw!)
    • Add some missing descriptions to those items with the same label?
    • Hack on one of these

Could I have 2 mins of your time? As I’ll be working on some other projects for Wikimedia Germany as well from now on the time I can spend on Wikidata will be reduced. This means I’ll have to figure out what is useful to spend time on. If you’re reading this could you let me know for example on this discussion page? Also if you have ideas how to improve the weekly summaries please post them. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk)

Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Global message delivery 20:38, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

A barnstar for you![edit]

The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
Sorry to hear that you were blocked again. Makecat 13:25, 30 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! Barnstars cheer me up in these dark days. Rich Farmbrough, 14:51, 30 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]

Error needs fixing[edit]

An accidental deletion of some text by a new user. Rich Farmbrough, 14:53, 30 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]

Fixed, thank you, Rich. An error made over a year ago..! I guess it's not one of our most intently-watched articles. Bishonen | talk 15:16, 30 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]

Notification regarding you at 28bytes.[edit]

Hi. I feel as if you were treated unfairly by 28bytes when you questioned his motives. I have engaged him in combat. Please peruse his talk page for recourse efforts. Greetings. Mr. barbers773 (talk) 19:19, 30 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your efforts, but I really have no issues around 28bytes motives. I merely feel the block was wrong. Note that 28 bytes made a reasonable offer to unblock, and Kumioko is now commenting from a different account. The only outstanding matter is the abuse of checkuser.
On the English Wikipedia, CheckUsers asked to run a check must ask for (and be given) clear evidence that a check is appropriate and necessary.
This seems to be endemic, in that I have run across two clear examples without looking for them. Rich Farmbrough, 19:37, 30 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]

Here's a beer to go with that kitten![edit]

I saw that you got a kitten to play with while you are in exile for the next year so here is a beer to help as well. Kumioko (talk) 17:05, 31 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! ("I can haz beer?" Drunk kitten is drunk... ) Rich Farmbrough, 22:21, 31 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]

A kitten for you![edit]

I can't believe you were blocked for something so minor. Have a kitten to cheer you up.

Revolution1221 (talk) 16:58, 31 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Kittens are fluffy and cheerful and one can never have too many (though I did once get reverted with the edit summary "...too many cute kittens..."). Rich Farmbrough, 22:31, 31 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]

CC-BY-SA3 and Wikipedia graphs please add[edit]

I have been interested in getting some of the community's graphical products released under free licenses. There are issues, of course, there always are. But they may be resolvable. Here is a list of graphs and their status - please feel free to add. Note that WMF data is released under a free license.

Item URL Current license Free license requested
Page views https://www.stats.grok.se None stated 1 April 2013 RF - by email
Server stats nagios "probably free" 2103 RF on Meta
Ganglia [=db33 Example] RRDtool is open source. Data is released

Rich Farmbrough, 22:38, 31 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]

Addendum:

17:47, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

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