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:::::::I think you're drawing very poor conclusions from what I've written on this page. Surely there are better uses of your time. --[[User:MZMcBride|MZMcBride]] ([[User talk:MZMcBride#top|talk]]) 00:54, 15 January 2010 (UTC) |
:::::::I think you're drawing very poor conclusions from what I've written on this page. Surely there are better uses of your time. --[[User:MZMcBride|MZMcBride]] ([[User talk:MZMcBride#top|talk]]) 00:54, 15 January 2010 (UTC) |
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:::::::: If you weren't being cagey about what you did and did not know, and what you did and did not do, I'd have to spend less time asking questions to figure it out, so yes, there are better uses of my time. I think I'll go take some bios off my watchlist. [[User:Hipocrite|Hipocrite]] ([[User talk:Hipocrite|talk]]) 00:57, 15 January 2010 (UTC) |
:::::::: If you weren't being cagey about what you did and did not know, and what you did and did not do, I'd have to spend less time asking questions to figure it out, so yes, there are better uses of my time. I think I'll go take some bios off my watchlist. [[User:Hipocrite|Hipocrite]] ([[User talk:Hipocrite|talk]]) 00:57, 15 January 2010 (UTC) |
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:::::::::I have no problem with people asking questions. Even if they're incriminating or provocative or incendiary or whatever—my talk page is open to all. But please don't ever mistake that to mean that an honest or straight-forward response is what you'll always (or even sometimes!) get. :-) Happy editing, Hipocrite. --[[User:MZMcBride|MZMcBride]] ([[User talk:MZMcBride#top|talk]]) 01:00, 15 January 2010 (UTC) |
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== Hmm? == |
== Hmm? == |
Revision as of 01:00, 15 January 2010
Dump reports
Would dump reports be a more viable option for the fair use image query I suggested on WT:DBR awhile ago? I remember we ran into the problem that some fair use images use text as the fair use rationale versus a template, but maybe these dump reports can weed out the standard fair use text? Perhaps by using the header I suggested. Anyways, I just thought of it and wanted to ask. Merry Christmas! Killiondude (talk) 23:18, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
- Perhaps. Might be easier to just query the API for the titles.... Do you have a list of words you'd want to exclude? "fair use"? Is that it? --MZMcBride (talk) 23:27, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
- === Fair use in X === is the header given in several pages that show examples of text fair use rationales. Do you wanna just exclude those items? WT:DBR#Files is where I brought up the categories that would be involved. Killiondude (talk) 23:46, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
- Hm. We might get a lot of noise in the report if we just do that header. Maybe exclude "fair use rationale" anywhere in the page text (on second thought). Killiondude (talk) 23:59, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
flagged revisions
If flagged revisions is accepted into the enwikipedia, will it take the place of protecting a page? BtilmHappy Holidays! 01:21, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
- It depends which configuration is enabled. Wikipedia:Flagged protection has the potential to replace page protection. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:25, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
Is this regex possible?
Is there an "end of file" special character in regex? I am trying to match pages like User talk:Red walnut, where the final section is the "Please update your status with WP:VG" note from Xenobot. Alternatively, could you help us out with a db query that shows last revision datestamp and last revision user for the talk pages of those listed at Wikipedia:VG/MEM#Unknown ? Thanks in advance =) –xenotalk 15:50, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
- I don't think there's an end of file character. $ is for end of lines. I suppose if you had . matching newlines, $ would be the end of the file if it's unbounded.... I can get the list of top users / timestamps, but probably not until the end of today. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:08, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
- No rush - thanks. –xenotalk 16:11, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
- Stepping in as a stalker. If using perlre style regexes, and the "s" modifier is given, $ will match the very end. I think. tedder (talk) 17:37, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
- Done: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=334788657 (I didn't format it 'cause I'm lazy and I didn't know what format you wanted.) --MZMcBride (talk) 21:14, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
- No formatting? Clearly there is no love in this relationship ;> j/k - thanks!
- Thanks for the input tedder. For some reason it's not working for me as
- Done: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=334788657 (I didn't format it 'cause I'm lazy and I didn't know what format you wanted.) --MZMcBride (talk) 21:14, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
- Stepping in as a stalker. If using perlre style regexes, and the "s" modifier is given, $ will match the very end. I think. tedder (talk) 17:37, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
- No rush - thanks. –xenotalk 16:11, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
(?s)'''xeno'''bot .*? September 2009 \(UTC\)\</small\>\</div\>$
Bot thing
I need you to create all of the red-link submission pages at Wikipedia:WikiCup/Participant or Wikipedia:WikiCup/2010. On all of those pages, take the text from User:IMatthew/Msg and put it in there. Please and thank you! :) iMatthew talk at 21:38, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
- Done. –Juliancolton | Talk 15:55, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
International talk page delivery
Hoi, just a quick heads-up that I replied to your reply on Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost#International talk page delivery. It's been a couple of weeks since your reply, so you may not have noticed it. :-) Jon Harald Søby (talk) 00:21, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
Bernstein Bot
It looks like one of the functions of your Bot is to update the list of FA by length. If that is the case, I wonder if it would be possible to do the same for GA? If there are too many GA for a single page, perhaps a page for just X# of the longest ones and X# of the shortest ones? Шизомби (talk) 21:16, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
- Is there a category for all GAs and where would you like the output? --MZMcBride (talk) 22:12, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
- Thanks! Category:Wikipedia good articles and Wikipedia:Good articles/By length would probably be a good spot. A quirk of GA is that the category appears on the talk page, so some additional bot instruction might be needed to have the article name appear in the list rather than the talk page. Шизомби (talk) 22:30, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
- Done (sort of): Wikipedia:Good articles/By length. I can adjust the limits to whatever you'd like (currently they're both set at 1000). It looks like some of the entries are "wrong" because the talk page has been split from the article. For example, Libby (Lost) is listed because the talk page using the category is at Talk:Libby (Lost). --MZMcBride (talk) 23:00, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
- Thank you - it looks like it may be listing them right now on the basis of the talk page length, rather than the article length? Шизомби (talk) 23:46, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
- When you have a chance, could you check the above, whether they're listed on talk page length or article length? Thanks for your help so far! Шизомби (Sz) (talk) 22:05, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
- Sorry, I meant to reply to this earlier and forgot. The pages should all list their article size. However, there is some database corruption at the moment (see Wikipedia:Database reports/Announcements), so a few of the entries are wrong. If you want, you can list some examples of pages that are listing the wrong size and I can verify with that it's corruption and not another issue. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:43, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
- When you have a chance, could you check the above, whether they're listed on talk page length or article length? Thanks for your help so far! Шизомби (Sz) (talk) 22:05, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
- Thank you - it looks like it may be listing them right now on the basis of the talk page length, rather than the article length? Шизомби (talk) 23:46, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
- Done (sort of): Wikipedia:Good articles/By length. I can adjust the limits to whatever you'd like (currently they're both set at 1000). It looks like some of the entries are "wrong" because the talk page has been split from the article. For example, Libby (Lost) is listed because the talk page using the category is at Talk:Libby (Lost). --MZMcBride (talk) 23:00, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
- Thanks! Category:Wikipedia good articles and Wikipedia:Good articles/By length would probably be a good spot. A quirk of GA is that the category appears on the talk page, so some additional bot instruction might be needed to have the article name appear in the list rather than the talk page. Шизомби (talk) 22:30, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
Spam time
Spam time as discussed on Wikipedia Talk:Meetup/DC 9, Sadads (talk) 13:53, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- Is there a message already written and a target list? --MZMcBride (talk) 16:04, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
From the VP thread, perhaps you didn't see
MZMcBride, it has been suggested that you were the "person running the site." Do you know why people would say that? If it was not you, could you tell us who it was? Feel free to email arbcom-llists.wikimedia.org. I, for one, would appreciate candor. Cool Hand Luke 19:26, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- It's my understanding that the person running the site (in the non-technical sense) had an e-mail exchange with ArbCom and Jimmy at the beginning of October. (I was lightly involved in an e-mail exchange (though looking at the e-mails in my archive, ArbCom wasn't CC'd on the ones I was involved in), though the thread (very) quickly died. If you have particular questions that relate to my involvement in Wikipedia, I'd be happy to answer them (here or via e-mail). But I can tell you right now that any questions or poking that doesn't directly relate to Wikipedia won't get an answer. I don't delve into your off-wiki activities; the same respect should (and will) be extended to me. (And, yes, I took that village pump off my watchlist as it was a classic lose-lose situation. Long responses were admonished; short responses were admonished. I have better things to do than be chastised by people with little (or no) insight into the particulars of the situation (if a situation even exists!).) --MZMcBride (talk) 19:33, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- If ArbCom wasn't cc'd, why do you claim it was a conversation with ArbCom? Cool Hand Luke 19:38, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- Hmm, a bit of confusion on my end, apologies. I'll try to clarify. I got an e-mail from Jimmy on October 2, 2009 from Special:EmailUser asking about this. I replied to him (and CC'd the other person who I consider to be "running the site"). That e-mail thread lasted about two or three replies and died that day. I assumed (I don't know if mistakenly or not, you'll have to check the ArbCom archives) that Jimmy had sent an e-mail to the ArbCom list or had received his information from the ArbCom list. He clearly had been informed by someone about the site; I assumed it was someone on ArbCom / the general ArbCom mailing list. I never personally had any e-mails from the ArbCom list and I don't believe the other person did either. The other person has told me that their e-mails came from an individual Arb, which may explain some of the confusion here. I also spoke to at least one Arb about the site, though not via e-mail. If you could check the ArbCom archives for very late September / very early October, it might add some clarity here. "ArbCom knew" is a funny expression indeed. ;-) --MZMcBride (talk) 19:54, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- Thanks! Cool Hand Luke 20:09, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- If ArbCom wasn't cc'd, why do you claim it was a conversation with ArbCom? Cool Hand Luke 19:38, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
Cremepuff
Since I was the person who filed the reports at ANI which led to both blocks, I have input to make to the un-block discussion (obviously). Your instruction that I withold my perfectly reasonable opinions (or weren't they reasonable? Do you have a problem with any particular ones?) is not terribly polite, and I don't intend to heed it. ╟─TreasuryTag►Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster─╢ 08:33, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
- I don't know what ownership of articles has to do with any of this, but your posts aren't helping matters and have the (slight) appearance of grave-dancing. I've asked you politely to stop posting there as you've clearly had poor interactions with Cremepuff222 in the past. Please heed my advice. --MZMcBride (talk) 08:38, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
- I'm not going to argue about it. I will not keep away from the Cremepuff page because I have perfectly valid input. If you have a serious problem with that, feel free to make a drama of it. ╟─TreasuryTag►consulate─╢ 08:40, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
- (talk page stalker) Well, I think I missed why you are referring to each other as Cremepuff (cute nickname, I guess). Otherwise.. what? Might this be time to go get a cuppa coffee? TreasuryTag, it sounds like MZMcBride thinks your posts to user talk page are making the situation worse, not better. tedder (talk) 08:56, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
- We're talking about User talk:Cremepuff222.
- TreasuryTag, it sounds like MZMcBride thinks your posts to user talk page are making the situation worse, not better. Well, that's what I assumed from MZMcBride's use of the phrase "your posts aren't helping matters" – but thanks for your valuable interpretative assistance. But what made you think I needed any aid in understanding such a simple concept? ╟─TreasuryTag►prorogation─╢ 09:00, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
Brrrrr. It's cold this morning. Cup of tea, anyone? APK whisper in my ear 12:40, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
- Treasury, I know you were singled out by Cremepuff to be the object of his infantile postings, and it's clear that you feel strongly that he should not be unblocked. That's a perfectly valid and reasonable reaction. The point is that your current postings to Cremepuff's page are not helping. Any admin who has been following this situation will already be aware of how he chose to deliberately annoy you, and I think you can trust that your strong opposition to his unblock is a known quantity. Sometimes the wisest course of action is to simply disengage with a particular user, unwatchlist their talk page, and forget about your past troubles with them. There are thousands of other vigilant users who will catch on to it if he starts up with his previous bafflingly idiotic behavior should he be unblocked, which doesn't seem all that likely in the near future anyway. And I'm not just saying this, I practice it myself, and I can assure you it makes your Wiki-time far less stressful to occasionally purge your watchlist of the user and talk pages of those you have had disagreements with. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:58, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
Re Your recent reversal of my block
Please see here. Sorry for the confusion. KnightLago (talk)
signpost help
Halp! I'm publishing the 'post for Ragesoss, who's busy. Here's the message: Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Subscribe/Message Can you post it through the bot for me? Thanks :) -- phoebe / (talk to me) 16:44, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
- Should start in a minute or two. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:40, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
- Heh, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=336313926&oldid=322292156 --MZMcBride (talk) 01:15, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
Undertow
[1] I feel it is for me to undo this revocation. I screwed up so I should make ammends. Best wishes. Pedro : Chat 20:58, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
- Ah, excellent that that's been sorted. Thank you, Pedro. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:36, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
- Hi Larabot - and bless your little algorithmic innards - thanks for the notice, but I only created the page as a redirect to the referenced Ian J. Mason. The redirect page was later turned into a BLP page by an anon user. Your work is appreciated but your attention needs to be directed to User:222.154.142.84. Maias (talk) 00:25, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
Software update problems? (Animated gifs frozen ...
Animated gif on my page froze (and have heard report of another).
(Checking the uploaded copy in table, no problem, but .en display version is frozen.)
Also div absolute positioning has all shifted (up). [That problem has disappeared]
NOTE: I mentioned this at Village pump (Technical)... QUESTION: Anywhere else I should report this? Proofreader77 (interact) 01:35, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
- bugzilla:19173 looks about right. Roan has been playing with GIF support lately, but he's not around at the moment. No idea about div positioning.... --MZMcBride (talk) 04:24, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
- Many thanks. (The absolute placement error [which I verified with another editor], seems to have cleared up.) Proofreader77 (interact) 05:37, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
Vandalizing BLPs
Is it true that you have just given a banned editor, Thekohser, a list of BLPs to vandalize? (Link)
Roger Davies talk 04:25, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
- No. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:28, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
- Let's rephrase the question: were you being truthful in that WR post? Steve Smith (talk) 04:30, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
- Ask Mr. Kohs. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:34, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
- Roger, what on earth gave you the idea that Thekohser would vandalise them? Majorly talk 04:38, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
- He said he will, though he uses the euphemism "breaching experiment". How else do you characterise adding bogus information? Roger Davies talk 04:45, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
- I have a difficult time believing that Mr. Kohs would do anything to actively harm a biography of a living person, given his writings on the subject. I think the same can be said of me. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:46, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
- That's not the point though is it? Adding any bogus information is vandalism. It is also disruptive because it requires editor time to undo it. Roger Davies talk 04:51, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
- The list never ends.... I've also started looking at aggregate statistics for unwatched biographies (non-redirects in namespace 0): tools:~mzmcbride/misc/unwatched-bios-count.txt. Though, my main focus at the moment is supposed to be climax. I'd say it's about 80% finished. Just need to get those final bits in place.... --MZMcBride (talk) 04:57, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
- Can we please keep this on topic? Did you supply a list to Mr Kohs or not?
- Will you also please supply, by email, the list of 8062 articles to ArbCom? Thanks, Roger Davies talk 05:07, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
- Sent. Please let me know if you need anything else. Cheers! --MZMcBride (talk) 05:19, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
- Yes. A direct reply to the earlier question. Have you or have you not sent a list to Mr Kohs? Roger Davies talk 05:28, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
- I've already answered this question and the other questions posed here. Do you have any further questions? --MZMcBride (talk) 05:31, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
- In no sense have you answered the question, you evaded it. What I am seeking is a direct answer to a direct question. Have you or have you not sent a list to Mr Kohs? Roger Davies talk 05:56, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
- Of course I did. You asked if I supplied a list to Mr. Kohs and I answered "Ask Mr. Kohs." You asked if I gave Mr. Kohs a list of biographies to vandalize. I answered "No." (You can append "of course not" to that answer, if you'd like. Have you seen my BLP work?) My answers haven't changed, Roger. I'm not sure what the big deal is here. Is there a reason you seem so infatuated here? --MZMcBride (talk) 06:39, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
- Yes, he answered the question immediately, if you cared to look. Majorly talk 18:26, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
- I did. And he didn't :) He used a semantic wriggle instead. Roger Davies talk 18:59, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
- Yes, he answered the question immediately, if you cared to look. Majorly talk 18:26, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
- Of course I did. You asked if I supplied a list to Mr. Kohs and I answered "Ask Mr. Kohs." You asked if I gave Mr. Kohs a list of biographies to vandalize. I answered "No." (You can append "of course not" to that answer, if you'd like. Have you seen my BLP work?) My answers haven't changed, Roger. I'm not sure what the big deal is here. Is there a reason you seem so infatuated here? --MZMcBride (talk) 06:39, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
- In no sense have you answered the question, you evaded it. What I am seeking is a direct answer to a direct question. Have you or have you not sent a list to Mr Kohs? Roger Davies talk 05:56, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
- I've already answered this question and the other questions posed here. Do you have any further questions? --MZMcBride (talk) 05:31, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
- Yes. A direct reply to the earlier question. Have you or have you not sent a list to Mr Kohs? Roger Davies talk 05:28, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
- Sent. Please let me know if you need anything else. Cheers! --MZMcBride (talk) 05:19, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
- The list never ends.... I've also started looking at aggregate statistics for unwatched biographies (non-redirects in namespace 0): tools:~mzmcbride/misc/unwatched-bios-count.txt. Though, my main focus at the moment is supposed to be climax. I'd say it's about 80% finished. Just need to get those final bits in place.... --MZMcBride (talk) 04:57, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
- That's not the point though is it? Adding any bogus information is vandalism. It is also disruptive because it requires editor time to undo it. Roger Davies talk 04:51, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
- I have a difficult time believing that Mr. Kohs would do anything to actively harm a biography of a living person, given his writings on the subject. I think the same can be said of me. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:46, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
- He said he will, though he uses the euphemism "breaching experiment". How else do you characterise adding bogus information? Roger Davies talk 04:45, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
- Roger, what on earth gave you the idea that Thekohser would vandalise them? Majorly talk 04:38, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
- Ask Mr. Kohs. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:34, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
- Let's rephrase the question: were you being truthful in that WR post? Steve Smith (talk) 04:30, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
(od) Thanks for the direct answer. Incidentally, approximately how many articles were in the list you sent Mr Kohs? Roger Davies talk 18:59, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
Apparently I'm being discussed in private on the ArbCom mailing list. Perhaps I'll be CC'd on one of these e-mails at some point. It certainly would be nice if people would act in the open. Transparency is one of our core values, after all. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:19, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
- It's not one of Arbcom's though. I'd watch your back, MZ. Before you know it, you'll be desysopped for your very abusive behaviour. Majorly talk 18:26, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
- Indeed, it is. Though I'm having a tough time squaring script-generated lists of soft targets, guides to successful sockpuppetry, and the creation of sockpuppets and proxies, with transparency in its conventional sense. Roger Davies talk 18:59, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
- Roger, how is "no" not a direct answer? —Dark 00:21, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
(Roger) Is it true that you have just given a banned editor, Thekohser, a list of BLPs to vandalize? (MZMcBride) No.
- How is that a "semantic wriggle"? It seems completely and utterly clear to me. Why is arbcom having this stupid witchhunt anyway? Majorly talk 01:20, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
- It's a wriggle when it's utterly contradicted by "Have you or have you not sent a list to Mr Kohs?". "Of course I did". Roger Davies talk 04:33, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
- How is that a "semantic wriggle"? It seems completely and utterly clear to me. Why is arbcom having this stupid witchhunt anyway? Majorly talk 01:20, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
- And treason. You forgot treason, Roger.
It's your turn to answer my question, for what it's worth. "I'm not sure what the big deal is here. Is there a reason you seem so infatuated here?"
And you can put down the flamethrower any minute now. You've now accused me of vandalizing biographies, creating sockpuppets and using proxies, and evading your questions, all of which are demonstrably false. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:14, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
- Accused you of vandalizing biographies, creating sockpuppets and using proxies? No, I haven't accused you of anything of the kind. Mr Kohs is though suggesting that he will do it and, for all we know, may have done by now.
- Here's what policy says: "Vandalism is any addition, removal, or change of content made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Wikipedia". Is a "breaching experiment" vandalism? You tell me. Will it force the Foundation's hand? Probably not. Will it compromise the integrity of Wikipedia? Probably yes.
- You know which articles Mr Kohs will experiment with as you gave him the list. The obvious solution is for you to ensure that they are not subject to vandalism.
- You know, thinking about it, while this has great potential for lulz, the clandestine thing seems very un-Wiki.
- There is a very real problem with unwatched BLPs. And loads of wiki solutions. An obvious route is for you to set up a wikiproject to deal with them. You're a popular guy with great energy, it would be easy for you to set up and recruit. With 58,000 articles, it would need to be on a grand scale but that's do-able. You could model it on the huge Milhist drives, with worksheets and so on. The options could be: CSD, source, watchlist, re-redirect. A hundred or so editors and a dozen enthusiasic admins could break the back of the problem completely in a five to six weeks. Think it over. Roger Davies talk 04:33, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
(edit conflict) (unindent) I wrote a mini-essay below about my views on the value of watchlist data. You might be interested. In short, my conclusion is that it's almost completely without value for a variety of reasons. According to my research, a person has a three-fourths chance of selecting a biography that is "effectively unwatched" (has fewer than five watchers). The harsh reality is that it's trivial to insert whatever information you want into most biographies without detection or any type of review. And this is doubly true for users as experienced with MediaWiki and Wikipedia as some are. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:46, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
- I agree with you. You may be interested in my views (as an individual) about BLPs. We're singing, in many ways, from the same hymn sheet. However, the prospect of a mass delete of all 58,000 articles seems unlikely, not least because it will cause a massive civil war to break out between the inclusionists and deletionists. The knack therefore is finding a way forward that will cause least disruption, while still achieving most of the main goals. This is not a simple problem and it is unlikely to fixed by a single solution. Roger Davies talk 06:18, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
- Bump. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:28, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
- It seems Mr. Davies has gone awol... at least, on the wiki. Who knows what is being discussed behind your back? Majorly talk 23:34, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
- Apologies. In my capacity as a human being, I had a day or two off :) Roger Davies talk 04:33, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
- It seems Mr. Davies has gone awol... at least, on the wiki. Who knows what is being discussed behind your back? Majorly talk 23:34, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
- Bump. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:28, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
Good to see our crack team of arbs hard at work, continuing to ask the wrong people the wrong questions. Simmer down, Roger. Either toss out some evidence to back up your laughable claim that MZ is abusively sockpuppeting or retake your seat.
That said, clearly the interest is related to unwarranted self-importance, wherein ArbCom feels it necessarily to involve themselves in all things off-wiki. Lara 03:31, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
- There's a real underlying problem and I don't think that guerrilla tactics is the solution to it. Nor does trying to characterise this as an Us -v- ArbCom help. Some positive suggestions made above. Comments welcome. Roger Davies talk 04:33, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
- I'll comment!
- It's understandable that there would be concern about sharing information that can't be found by a someone without SQL access. Back in the day, all admins had SQL access. As MZMcBride outlines below, the information is important to break down how we stand with what is a biography of a living person. As my example above in another thread showed from Special:Random three times to find a pretty much ignored biography, this is an issue.
- MZMcBride has answered your queries. It may be quizzical to you, but perhaps it's not so much. Do you or I know that he actually gave Kohs unwatched bios? We don't, he said to asked Mr. Kohs. I am an actual friend of MZMcBride, and even I don't know if the articles are legit. He told me to ask Mr. Kohs.
- In my view, Roger, if anything has come from this it is to advance the issue of how we deal with biographies. As you may or may not know, I'm working with Cary in coordinating the Biographies of living persons task force and MZMcBride's reports are more than extraordinarily useful in these new queries as we move into the next six months of the task force.
- Let's all assume good faith that we care about BLPs, and that things have been misinterpreted and taken out of context. It's good to see that we're working on an open dialog, and hopefully we can move it to a constructive forum. Keegan (talk) 05:40, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
- First, on the issue of whether MZM gave the list to Mr Kohs, he has provided conflicting answers. I'm more inclined to take his second response ("[Me:] Have you or have you not sent a list to Mr Kohs?". "[MZM:] Of course I did".) at face value than his first because it is consistent with the conversation betwen MZM and Mr Kohs at Wikipedia Review. The whole thing could be a set up, of course, but we'll get the answer to that in March when Mr Kohs does or doesn't publish his "results".
- I do assume good faith with MZM: Mr Kohs less so. This does not mean though, despite his obvious sincerity, that giving the list to Mr Kohs was necessarily a good judgment call nor MZM's re-publication of his "Guide to socking" on Wikipedia Review was a good idea.
- The easiest and quickest way forward is probably an accelerated drive of some description. I see the indefatiguable Julian has expressed interest. Roger Davies talk 06:32, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
- There's a bit of confusion here (at least partially my fault). When I said, "Of course I did," I was responding to the first part of your post, not the second. <Roger> In no sense have you answered the question, you evaded it. <MZ> Of course I did [answer the question]. You asked... The piece in brackets I thought was implied, but re-reading it and seeing your comments makes it clear that it wasn't. My apologies for that confusion. I agree that a biography drive might be a good idea, though it would likely take some time to setup properly. Lara and John Vandenberg were tossing around the idea of a "BLP week" with some sort landing page to get people involved. Seemed like a pretty decent idea to me. --MZMcBride (talk) 07:10, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
- Let's also not lose sight of the real issue here, which is that 1/ Kohs cares more about the BLP problem than any arbitrator, and 2/ Kohs alleged experiment will allegedly serve to point out Wikipedia's continuing failures in the area of BLPs. I haven't read the thread, as I don't participate on WR anymore, but considering my relationship with each of them, I'd say the project is in good hands. Furthermore, there are more important things to do than create drama around those attempting to fix the biggest problem this project has... in article space, anyway. Lara 12:43, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
- You've got to be joking, Lara.
- 1/ Greg Kohs does not give a shit about BLPs. To give a shit about them, it means that you have care and concern for the living person(s) involve and seek to mitigate the risk of their Wikipedia entries. Kohs doesn't care about that, all he cares about is that it is a vulnerability to Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation. To that in, he only cares to prove that he is smarter than us, and if this were his show we wouldn't have any problems.
- 2/ His experiment won't do shit, either. Woo hoo, add a sentence, alter something, publish the results. Who cares? This happens on a minute by minute basis in recent changes. It's a fucking wiki, that's the point of the model. Should his experiment "prove a point" it's that he's just trying to prove a point, and we have policy on that. There is no power to him in this "experiment" because it's obvious how it's going to turn out.
- 3/ Glad that you don't participate anymore. Wikipedians can be frustrating with their bickering and hollering, AN/I is like a cafeteria table hosting kids. WR is a cafeteria table for adults. I prefer neither approach, because maturity cannot be found there. Folks on WR can scream about BLP all they want, and they do. Do they do anything to proactively fix it? No. If Kohs wants to claim he cares about BLPs, he can put his money where his mouth is and fucking be constructive, instead he'd rather have a neener-neener ego boost by proving that Wikipedia is wrong. Not mature, not adult, and certainly not productive. This is why he is banned. I know you're reading this, Mr. Kohs, and as I find your socks I will block them. I also know this won't stop you. Bottom line: Grow the fuck up. This is the internet where you can be as manipulative as you want. I'd love to see you in a board meeting. Keegan (talk) 20:49, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
- I think this is probably a case of misunderstanding of motivations and intentions that would have been easily solved by more direct questions and answers. MZMcBride's response to my e-mail in a non-arb capacity, which he has now published below actually allays any concerns I might have had about the meaning. I have replied further to his e-mail, with some technical ideas related to his "climax" project and he's free to publish that e-mail if he wishes. I think the reaction here is borne out of a worry about anyone vandalising BLPs for any purpose, precisely because members of Arbcom are aware of the severity of the BLP problem - unfortunately, there is nothing we can collectively do about it because content is outside of the Committee's remit. As an individual, however, I want to help in any way possible and I hope some exchange of ideas with MZMcBride and anyone else with good ideas might help with that Fritzpoll (talk) 13:16, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
- Thanks for revisiting the issue, Roger, and for taking it from the approach of BLPs. Keegan (talk) 06:56, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
- Let's also not lose sight of the real issue here, which is that 1/ Kohs cares more about the BLP problem than any arbitrator, and 2/ Kohs alleged experiment will allegedly serve to point out Wikipedia's continuing failures in the area of BLPs. I haven't read the thread, as I don't participate on WR anymore, but considering my relationship with each of them, I'd say the project is in good hands. Furthermore, there are more important things to do than create drama around those attempting to fix the biggest problem this project has... in article space, anyway. Lara 12:43, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
- Roger is talking about this. Sole Soul (talk) 01:09, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
- Yes, I know. Lara 01:11, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
Have you considered the potential of such a breaching experiment to be contrary to your intended purpose? Knowing what I do of Mr. Kohs, I sincerely doubt that he will intentionally do harm to the subjects. However, are you aware of the push back that will inevitably result from some disparate quarters in the community due to the very nature of a breaching experiment involving a banned editor? That will inevitably make it more difficult to enforce the BLP policy and improve our shortfalls in that area. It is also not difficult to imagine the harm that could result from even "harmless" vandalism. Even barring any substantive harm from the edits themselves, there are ethical concerns about results that could be distressing and harmful to the subjects. Have any of the subjects granted consent for becoming poster children for the English Wikipedia's BLP issues when this experiment ends and their names are published online? (One could make a point that people do not issue their consent to be on Wikipedia in the first place. However, there's a world a distinction between that and purposefully using them as the subjects of a breaching experiment.) I have no doubt that you mean well, but this seems to be at least a questionable way of addressing the issue. It is a method filled with ethical and practical concerns. Vassyana (talk) 20:26, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
- A known enemy is always better than an unknown enemy. Every day, people conduct their own experiments on pages all over Wikipedia. ("I wonder how long this will last....") There's nothing that can be done to stop it. If you wanted to target a specific set of pages, categories and template usage reports are easily available to anyone. That isn't to say that any of these experiments will add any insight. I could likely write the outcome of most of these experiments without ever conducting one. They'll more than likely just re-confirm what we already know about our ability to detect bad edits. Is conducting an experiment on biographies ethical? I don't know. I wouldn't do it. As I said, I don't think I'd gain any insight or produce anything substantive from the work. But if others are going to do it, I'd rather it be monitor-able (and revert-able). I don't believe this will have any impact on the status of our local biographies of living people policy, the proposed global policy, or the BLP problem. I think it will be a fairly useless experiment that few on this site will notice or pay any mind to. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:35, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
userspace links bot- alternate view of it
I've been confused because this report seems to have pages that don't actually have userspace links. Anyway, I reprocessed the output into this: User:WikiBacon/Database reports/Articles containing links to the user space version 2. Just thought I'd share it with you. tedder (talk) 22:25, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
- It looks like it's missing yet another template that calls {{REVISIONUSER}}. Bleh. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:28, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
- Mine's missing that template, or yours is missing it, or what? I don't understand what you are saying. tedder (talk) 04:18, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
- The report generates all articles that contain links to namespace 2 (User) or namespace 3 (User talk). It then excludes pages using certain templates (like {{db-meta}} and {{under construction}}) as they include links to user pages ("This page was last edited by Username (Contribs • Log) 26 days ago."). I imagine the false positives you're seeing are coming from a template I haven't properly excluded. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:21, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
- Mine's missing that template, or yours is missing it, or what? I don't understand what you are saying. tedder (talk) 04:18, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
Fancy a quickie?
This is very low priority, so at your convenience.
Need to know what talk pages have the following arrangement:
|archiveheader = |
or
|archiveheader = }}
This is because the KingbotK plugin was molesting certain MiszaBot settings and this will fail the archiving. –xenotalk 20:38, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
- Off to Wikipedia talk:Dump reports with you! Post there and I'll try to take a look in the next week. The biggest issue at the moment is that the dumps are a bit behind, so I'd be scanning page text from about December 1, 2009. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:06, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
Biographies o_o
From an e-mail I'm currently drafting:
If we assume that a page with fewer than five watchers is unwatched, it comes out to 336,043 biographies out of 427,085. That’s roughly 78% of biographies or a three-fourths chance of randomly choosing a biography that is “effectively unwatched.”
--MZMcBride (talk) 21:08, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
- x_x JamieS93 21:20, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
- That is the least surprising thing I have ever read. Well, that and when Michael Jackson died, but that fell under BLP recently deceased. Did you hear about that? I'm pretty sure that article was watched, though. I'm willing to bet that Sue Castorino isn't, and that was my third hit on Special:Random. Keegan (talk) 21:27, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
- Sue Castorino has (had) two. –Juliancolton | Talk 21:32, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
- I'm going to assume that expects that User:Corvus cornix watched the article, and the user hasn't edited in over a year. The other watcher would have been the article creator by default. What a great job. Keegan (talk) 21:44, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
- It now has six watchers. Let's post all problematic BLPs on MZM's talk page to get more attention. –Juliancolton | Talk 21:49, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
- I'm going to assume that expects that User:Corvus cornix watched the article, and the user hasn't edited in over a year. The other watcher would have been the article creator by default. What a great job. Keegan (talk) 21:44, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
- omg private info! Killiondude (talk) 21:37, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Juliancolton? ;) NW (Talk) 21:38, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
- Sue Castorino has (had) two. –Juliancolton | Talk 21:32, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
- So, I was bored and clicked Special:Random four times into four different tabs. I swear to God the second tab was David K. Clark. Good grief. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:57, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
Full e-mail reply
With permission of the person I was replying to, I'm publishing my reply in full. The gist of the original message was asking about my views on the value of watchlist data. I've very slightly edited the reply to remove the name of the recipient and my e-mail address.
Hey --
The fundamental issue here appears to be a series of misunderstandings regarding the significance of “unwatched” versus “watched” biographies. I’ll try to clarify some of these misunderstandings in my reply.
For our purposes, we’ll assume that all biographies are in “Category:Living people.” This obviously isn’t true, but it makes life easier to say it is. As of today (January 11, 2010), there are 427,085 non-redirects in the article namespace in “Category:Living people.” Of those 427,085 pages, 58,074 have 0 watchers. However, this number is largely irrelevant, unhelpful, and misleading for a number of reasons. The primary reason is probably the most obvious: we don’t know who is watching a page. The Toolserver allows access to aggregate watchlist information, but it continues to mask the attached user info for watchlist entries. When someone says “58,000 biographies are unwatched,” it’s not a particularly accurate description. What they’re saying is that 58,000 biographies are watched by 0 users. But there are thousands of biographies that are watched by a few users. We don’t know if these users are active, if they’re bots, or if they even use their watchlist.
This is why the recent brouhaha over my alleged involvement with Mr. Kohs seems particularly empty. Knowing whether or not a page is watched is almost completely irrelevant. If you could determine who was watching the page, it would become relevant. But there’s no way to do that currently and there likely never will be.
A few more statistics to keep in mind: if we assume that a page with fewer than five watchers is unwatched, it comes out to 336,043 biographies out of 427,085. That’s roughly 78% of biographies or a three-fourths chance of randomly choosing a biography that is “effectively unwatched.” Some of these obviously will be watched by users who check their watchlist every few minutes. But I would say with reasonable certainty that a large majority of these pages are being watched by users who are either inactive, bots, or are otherwise not aiding the monitoring of biographies.
Anecdotally, I visit Wikipedia several times every day and check my watchlist fairly regularly. But with so many titles watched, I regularly miss edits. So even if you could determine which pages are watched by active users who regularly check their watchlists, there’s no guarantee that a specific edit is going to be checked or not checked.
Every edit shows up in the RecentChanges feed, which is monitored by a number of people. Most of these users do not watchlist the pages they revert vandalism to. It’s also fairly trivial to mask a nefarious edit by subsequently doing a partial revert or adding content elsewhere to the page. As most watchlists are set to only show the top edit, changes can very quickly be buried.
There are at least two further issues to consider with regard to watchlist data. The first is that making a binary distinction between “unwatched” and “watched” biographies ignores the philosophical issue that a biography having 0 watchers is as much due to chance as it is anything else. It primarily comes down to whether or not the page creator chose to keep the “watch this page” box checked when creating the page. And it comes down to whether subsequent users chose to add it to their watchlist. When considering this, the line between a page having 1 or 2 watchers or 0 watchers becomes even blurrier and more irrelevant.
Lastly, there is the volatility of the data itself. If someone were to get a list of all biographies that currently have 0 watchers and they added 10,000 biographies to the watchlists of six users, the number of “unwatched biographies” would quickly drop to nearly 0. Does that mean that all biographies are now watched? Of course not. Again, there’s a more philosophical question of what being a “watched” page really means.
As you can likely glean from my commentary here, I place little value in the watchlist data. I’m currently working on a project codenamed “climax”[1] that looks at measurable attributes of biographies to try to determine high-risk or problematic biographies. One of the components that is supposed to be implemented is “number of watchers,” however it’s still quite unclear how effective this data (or the overall project) will ultimately be. Any help with other metrics or doing the data analysis would be very much appreciated.
One way to combat some of the issues we’ve been seeing is to enable “patrolled revisions.” This would allow users to check a revision for its quality and mark it as patrolled, a binary status saying that the edit was “good.” There is consensus to enable patrolled revisions on the English Wikipedia, however the development work in this area has been excruciatingly slow, as I’m sure you’re aware.
And, of course, FlaggedRevisions may or may not be effective in this area. My personal opinion is that FlaggedRevisions will not scale to the English Wikipedia. I would like to see it tested and I’ve pushed for a much quicker release timeline. However, this is largely motivated by my desire to figure out if it will work at all so that if it turns out that FlaggedRevisions is unusable, other technologies and developments can be implemented. Everybody is waiting for FlaggedRevisions to come along and save the day, but I strongly suspect that this will not happen. And until this is made clear, there will not be much incentive to work on secondary solutions.
Regarding list generation, I have no problem and would be more than happy to provide you with any desired data. All I ask is that the request be clear (redirects vs. non-redirects, which namespaces, which categories, which templates, number of watchers, etc.). I sent the ArbCom mailing list an attachment containing the 8,000 or so non-redirects in the article namespace tagged with “Template:BLP unsourced” that have 0 watchers. Further requests for lists can go on my talk page or in my e-mail inbox.
Apologies in advance if this e-mail is difficult to understand—I’m quite tired at the moment. If you would be so kind, I’d like your consent for me to post my reply to you on-wiki. Technically speaking, I don’t need your consent, but if there’s anything in this message that you feel shouldn’t be made public, please let me know. I would hate to see such a lengthy (and researched) response sit inside a private inbox, especially as others might be interested in some of the commentary expressed here.[2] I’m more than happy to remove any identifying information if necessary.
I hope you’re doing well.
MZMcBride
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MZMcBride/climax
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=337261886#Biographies_o_o
--MZMcBride (talk) 23:30, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
- Good to read. What do you think is a useful way to knock these numbers down? I was thinking about seeing if there was any interest in forming a drive or a Wikiproject where we look over these 58,000 articles (BLP, no watchlist), in general and specifically the 8,000 BLP/Unsourced Tag/Unwatchlisted, and tag, reference and see what we can do to lower it. I've been thinking about going through the list that was provided to ArbCom.. if they're unwatched and unsourced, they've probably not ever been checked for notability, NPOV, etcetera. Perhaps post a request to the Article Rescue Squad as well? Just thinking out loud, but I do agree that this is an area where we definitely could use improvement.
- I do agree that Flagged Revisions is not a magic bullet. No one tactic or plan will be. (edit, additionally) Not only that, but It's not something really ArbCom can "fix". We can certainly bring it to the attention of the community, but how we fix it has to come from the community and it has to be done BY the community. SirFozzie (talk) 07:33, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
- I'll try to be a bit more succinct in my reply here. :-)
The goal isn't to knock these numbers down. What we've known for a long time, but haven't really done much about, is that watchlisting pages simply doesn't matter in this case. It slightly increases the chance of a bad edit being spotted if the watcher is active and checking their watchlist and happens to notice the edit. But given the variables involved, this is prone to not happening pretty regularly.
I think "patrolled revisions" could be very useful for this. Special:RecentChangesLinked/Category:Living people lists all recent changes to pages in Category:Living people. It's pretty slow to load, though. Using something like Special:Tags might be more efficient, though neither has the patrolling part activated. Something could be hacked up on the Toolserver to track patrolled revisions semi-manually, but really this is something that should be done in MediaWiki properly (and the feature already exists, it just needs to be enabled).
This would fundamentally change the overall dynamic of how we currently operate, esp. with regard to vandalism patrolling. Rather than having a bunch of people sitting at their Huggling stations all jumping on the same edits en masse, you would have distributed workload, where people can patrol edits and others then don't have to duplicate the effort. The same is true for watchlists. Rather than ten people seeing a change on their watchlist and diff'ing it, one person can mark it as patrolled and then others know to not be suspicious.
However, these features come with costs. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. There's a possibility that building a better mousetrap will lead to smarter mice, so to speak. That is, that better monitoring and detection of obviously-bad edits will just lead nefarious users to insert more subversive content. It's unclear how likely this possibility is. (It's equally unclear how often this is done currently.) If we see a new pattern of bad editing emerge, it could cause worse content to last longer.
Another concern with patrolled revisions is, as always, the quality of those doing the patrolling. If people see a <ref> tag and automatically click the patrol link, it can allow for an easy vector for bad content to slip in (and be "sanctioned"). Most users who primarily do anti-vandalism work are not the same people who would be able to spot bad references.
Two final points: (1) I agree that there's no magic bullet here; and (2) I disagree with your view regarding the role of the Arbitration Committee here. The Arbitration Committee members could reasonably be called the leaders of the project. They're installed to deal with content disputes and to protect the overall encyclopedia. There aren't many people who don't view the BLP problem as the number one priority for the English Wikipedia (outside the Wikimedia Foundation :-/). There's a moral imperative for the leaders of this project to step up in this area. I'm not advocating for the creation of a Reich over the Community, but some genuine leadership is desperately needed. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:28, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
- I'll try to be a bit more succinct in my reply here. :-)
(unindent) Agree we need leadership (mentioned it in my election campaign), but the community at large is hostile to Arbcom taking leadership roles to the extent that if we actually tried to do anything, it would be undone post haste. I am very open to suggestions as to what we could do Fritzpoll (talk) 18:39, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
(od) I'm surprised about your disagreement regarding the role of ArbCom. Doing the right thing the wrong way is one of the worst things that can be done. Due to the sad facts of human nature and social groups, the right thing becomes associated with the sins (real or imagined) of the wrong way. If ArbCom does more than highlight the issue and ask the community to resolve it, it will become a travesty. Generally speaking, the community isn't going to see noble experienced editors who care about the BLP issue trying to make a difference. They're going to see ArbCom grossly overstepping its bounds and trying to amass authority. BLPs and BLP enforcement will suffer significant damage from the resulting contrarian pushback. Vassyana (talk) 20:05, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
- (replying to both of you at once) I think you're thinking of this as the formation of a (yet another) committee or a formalized process or something like that. That's not what I'm getting at and I agree that such a move would be met with a lot of pushback (and rightly so). What I'm talking about is using your standing on Wikipedia to push for reforms, not as an Arbitrator but as someone who has gained the trust of a lot of editors here. It may not be egalitarian or wiki or whatever, but the reality is that certain editors exert more influence on this site than other ones. A lot of them happen to be Arbitrators, though that's not true across the board by any measure. Those with the political and social capital should use it to push for deletion of non-notable biographies or enforce our notability guidelines or just check a few biographies to see, for example, if they should be in Category:Living people and try to get others involved. Each Arbitrator's user page gets viewed hundreds of times in a month; if even one or two people some work to be done and helped a bit, we'd be better off. There's a lot of "the elephant problem" when dealing with biographies—that is, people see that it's such an obstacle and don't realize that you're still going to have to eat it one bite at a time, regardless of its size. Take a look at WP:DBR#BLP and WP:DBR#BDP. If that kind of thing doesn't suit your fancy, ask me or ask others for ways to generate lists of things you do want to work on. There are plenty of resources available, it's simply a matter of utilizing them. Advertise on your user or user talk page; encourage other editors to get involved; vote in deletion discussions for non-notable biographies; work on resolving a {{citation needed}} tag in a random biography; re-examine our notability guidelines (esp. those relating to porn stars and criminals). There's plenty to be done, and when the leaders of the project step up (admins, Arbitrators, and other respected editors alike), the broader community will notice and follow. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:18, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
(delurking) It's interesting how people ask ArbCom to step outside its mandate when it would be a shortcut to getting something they want. Lillian Hellman once said "I cannot and will not cut my conscience to suit this year's fashion." MZM, this wouldn't be quite so worrisome if you could produce correspondence where you wrote "Hi there, I'm an administrator at Wikipedia and have determined that none of our volunteers are keeping an eye on your biography. I'd like to give your name to a sitebanned editor who's planning to run a little experiment, with results to be published in March. That okay with you?" And got a response that says "Sure, I'm down with that." But it doesn't look like that conversation happened. There's a serious ethical issue here. As you know, my views on BLP have a lot to do with the subject's consent. Durova397 21:05, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
- I addressed some of this directly above. I'm not asking for the Arbitration Committee to step outside its remit. But simply because people are Arbitrators doesn't mean they can't help move the project forward in this area. To the contrary, these are the people who are (at least supposed to be) the most trusted and respected editors on this site. Using this influence and capital to push for stronger standards and better biographies seems reasonable to me.
The point you raise with ethics here isn't received lightly. Though, given the option between a defined experiment and the (even more) ad hoc "experiments" that vandals and other bad users conduct every single day on this site without any review, it makes this all a bit grayer. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:23, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
- On matters of policy an arbitrator has no more standing than any other Wikipedian. They are not the leaders of this website: they are a set of people elected to remedy behavior that strays too far outside of policies. Those policies include WP:POINT. It does look like the ethical issue is received lightly. You have handed that list of BLP subjects to a person who used to run a Cafe Press store that sold underwear with my portrait on it. Durova397 21:49, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
- I'm going to disengage from this discussion with you, Durova. Let me first say that I regularly am amazed by your creativity and your dedication to Wikipedia. Truly, I am. That said, you have a simply awful tendency to insert rhetoric and emotion into your replies (perhaps only when it comes to the subject of biographies of living people) that hijacks any other part of the message. I ran into this issue with you a few months ago when trying to discuss the merits of a dead tree standard for biographies of living people. I've now run into it again here. It's a poisoning of the well, and I'm not willing to drink. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:51, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
- MZM, if you mistake that for rhetoric then wait two months for those BLP subjects to discover you've used them as pawns. Wait until people contend that you don't care about BLP at all--they'll say it's just a smokescreen for a game of brinksmanship to test your political muscle. You've abused your position of trust to facilitate BLP vandalism. It doesn't help your credibility that you've also published a guide to evading checkuser. You're risking a serious backlash when the risk isn't necessary. Want to do something about BLP? Let's coauthor a guide for BLP subjects to request courtesy deletion. I'll get it published in a mainstream venue offsite where it'll reach the right audience. Let's start a drive to get the dead trees standard into policy. But right now? What it looks like is you're gunning for the arbitrators to desysop you for the second time in less than a year. If you're serious about the principles you claim to believe in, then hand the arbitrators the same list of BLP subjects you gave to Greg Kohs. We'll work out the rest from there. Durova401 03:35, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
- I'm going to disengage from this discussion with you, Durova. Let me first say that I regularly am amazed by your creativity and your dedication to Wikipedia. Truly, I am. That said, you have a simply awful tendency to insert rhetoric and emotion into your replies (perhaps only when it comes to the subject of biographies of living people) that hijacks any other part of the message. I ran into this issue with you a few months ago when trying to discuss the merits of a dead tree standard for biographies of living people. I've now run into it again here. It's a poisoning of the well, and I'm not willing to drink. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:51, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
- On matters of policy an arbitrator has no more standing than any other Wikipedian. They are not the leaders of this website: they are a set of people elected to remedy behavior that strays too far outside of policies. Those policies include WP:POINT. It does look like the ethical issue is received lightly. You have handed that list of BLP subjects to a person who used to run a Cafe Press store that sold underwear with my portrait on it. Durova397 21:49, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
A sudden drop
Looking at tools:~mzmcbride/misc/unwatched-bios-count.txt, it seems pretty clear that someone took the list of 8,000 biographies (sent only to arbcom-l) and added them to his or her watchlist. Which Arb was it and why?
[snip] 58113 22:30, 13 January 2010 (UTC) 58114 22:59, 13 January 2010 (UTC) 50134 23:33, 13 January 2010 (UTC) 50135 00:00, 14 January 2010 (UTC) [/snip]
--MZMcBride (talk) 07:36, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
- Looking into it, but it does seem rather pointless if someone has watchlisted the articles, given your essay above on why it isn't an effective means of protection. Fritzpoll (talk) 08:23, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
Wikistalk
Hi MZMcBride - and thanks for all your great tools on the toolserver! One question - is Wikistalk down? I am getting the following errors below. Thanks for the help. 7 01:44, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
Wikistalk Errors
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Traceback (most recent call last): File "./wikistalk.py", line 315, in <module> contribs[user] = pagesEdited(cursor, namespace, user) File "./wikistalk.py", line 148, in pagesEdited ''', (dbname, namespace, user)) File "/opt/ts/python/2.6/lib/python2.6/site-packages/MySQLdb/cursors.py", line 173, in execute self.errorhandler(self, exc, value) File "/opt/ts/python/2.6/lib/python2.6/site-packages/MySQLdb/connections.py", line 36, in defaulterrorhandler raise errorclass, errorvalue ProgrammingError: (1146, "Table 'toolserver.namespace' doesn't exist") |
Wikistalk problem
this causes wikistalk to fail, reporting "ProgrammingError: (1146, "Table 'toolserver.namespace' doesn't exist". Cheers. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 02:49, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
- Oops. I didn't notice the similar question above. I've turned this into a subsection to combine the two. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 03:18, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
- S1 was reimported a few hours ago. I believe something is misconfigured currently (specifically the sql-s1 host seems to be missing its copy of the "toolserver" database that provide things like namespace names). If you're interested, watch this ticket for updates. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:50, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
- Thanks. Will watch for the fix. 7 05:58, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
- This appears to be fixed (thanks, River!). Now if only wikistalk didn't suck so much.... (You can watch User:MZMcBride/wikistalk for updates to the code itself.) --MZMcBride (talk) 15:45, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
RfD nomination of Diabeetus
I have nominated Diabeetus (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) for discussion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at the discussion page. Thank you. MW talk contribs 17:20, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
Category:Archaeology in Ukraine
I noticed you deleted the category of Archaeology in Ukraine on Jan. 5th, and I'm wondering why that is, since there are some articles linked to it, and I plan on adding more in the immediate future. I am going to re-establish the Archaeology in Ukraine category. If you intend to delete it, please talk to me about it first, as otherwise I will take it as an act of vandalism. Thanks. --Saukkomies talk 01:18, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
- Okay, apparently I cannot create this category without your approval. So, why was it deleted? I would love to know... --Saukkomies talk 01:21, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
- Thank you! --Saukkomies talk 08:09, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
BLP test
Hi MzMcBride, One question about this BLP test that I understand you have supplied data for. Is this a retrospective test, checking and fixing a sample of unwatched BLPs and measuring the proportion that are currently vandalised; a passive test watching a group of unwatched BLPs to see if they become vandalised and whether this is fixed but not fixing the observed vandalism; or an experiment whereby the Bios are to be deliberately vandalised and the response of the Wikipedias community is then observed? Apologies if this has already been covered - but if so I've missed that part of the thread. ϢereSpielChequers 15:08, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
- As I'm not conducting the test and have very limit participation in it, I can't answer specific about what will or won't be done as I simply don't know. I'll direct you to Thekohser and this thread at the Wikipedia Review. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:07, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
- Thanks for your reply, I've now posted the same question on User talk:Thekohser. I haven't previously had dealings with that user, but I hope your confidence in supplying a banned user with that data is not misplaced. May I take it that though you didn't establish exactly how this data would be used, you would only supply data of that nature to someone who you were confident would treat it with appropriate care? ϢereSpielChequers 18:21, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
- I don't think this data is very sensitive in nature. I outlined my views on that above (#Full e-mail reply). I made it clear to Mr. Kohs that nothing nefarious should be done with the data. His actions are his responsibility. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:55, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
- So, to be clear, you do not believe he will take the data you gave to him and use it to more effectively vandalize articles (by targeting articles for vandalism that are less watched than other articles he might target for vandalism)? Thanks! Hipocrite (talk) 21:56, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
- Again, read what I wrote above about "unwatched" vs. "watched" vs. "effectively unwatched" pages. I feel like I'm getting the same questions because people aren't reading what I've written (extensively). I don't believe Mr. Kohs would actively harm biographies of living people. The same can be said for most editors here and in the world. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:40, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
- I fully read your above statements. You are pointing him at bios that are less watched than other bios. I think that is a serious error - if it turns out I'm wrong, and it's not a serious error, we gain very little. If it turns out I'm right, do you think it would be appropriate for you to lose toolserver access, given your inability to judge the negative effect of your actions? Hipocrite (talk) 00:48, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
- I think you're drawing very poor conclusions from what I've written on this page. Surely there are better uses of your time. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:54, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
- If you weren't being cagey about what you did and did not know, and what you did and did not do, I'd have to spend less time asking questions to figure it out, so yes, there are better uses of my time. I think I'll go take some bios off my watchlist. Hipocrite (talk) 00:57, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
- I have no problem with people asking questions. Even if they're incriminating or provocative or incendiary or whatever—my talk page is open to all. But please don't ever mistake that to mean that an honest or straight-forward response is what you'll always (or even sometimes!) get. :-) Happy editing, Hipocrite. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:00, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
- If you weren't being cagey about what you did and did not know, and what you did and did not do, I'd have to spend less time asking questions to figure it out, so yes, there are better uses of my time. I think I'll go take some bios off my watchlist. Hipocrite (talk) 00:57, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
- I think you're drawing very poor conclusions from what I've written on this page. Surely there are better uses of your time. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:54, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
- I fully read your above statements. You are pointing him at bios that are less watched than other bios. I think that is a serious error - if it turns out I'm wrong, and it's not a serious error, we gain very little. If it turns out I'm right, do you think it would be appropriate for you to lose toolserver access, given your inability to judge the negative effect of your actions? Hipocrite (talk) 00:48, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
- Again, read what I wrote above about "unwatched" vs. "watched" vs. "effectively unwatched" pages. I feel like I'm getting the same questions because people aren't reading what I've written (extensively). I don't believe Mr. Kohs would actively harm biographies of living people. The same can be said for most editors here and in the world. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:40, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
- So, to be clear, you do not believe he will take the data you gave to him and use it to more effectively vandalize articles (by targeting articles for vandalism that are less watched than other articles he might target for vandalism)? Thanks! Hipocrite (talk) 21:56, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
- I don't think this data is very sensitive in nature. I outlined my views on that above (#Full e-mail reply). I made it clear to Mr. Kohs that nothing nefarious should be done with the data. His actions are his responsibility. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:55, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
- Thanks for your reply, I've now posted the same question on User talk:Thekohser. I haven't previously had dealings with that user, but I hope your confidence in supplying a banned user with that data is not misplaced. May I take it that though you didn't establish exactly how this data would be used, you would only supply data of that nature to someone who you were confident would treat it with appropriate care? ϢereSpielChequers 18:21, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
Hmm?
I'm curious why you think that my account is compromised? SirFozzie (talk) 23:07, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
- Funny, I'm curious why you think Cool3's account is. (For what it's worth, unified login makes posting here no better than posting at Meta to say you're not compromised. Or a double agent. Who knows!) --MZMcBride (talk) 23:08, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
- Oh, this is per CheckUser, and has had multiple CU's sign off on this. I've asked another arbitrator to speak up on the ArbCom-L mailing list, but I find your lack of faith disturbing... SirFozzie (talk) 23:13, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
- And done. Sorry, no evil twin Fozzie here :) SirFozzie (talk) 23:14, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
- Oh, this is per CheckUser, and has had multiple CU's sign off on this. I've asked another arbitrator to speak up on the ArbCom-L mailing list, but I find your lack of faith disturbing... SirFozzie (talk) 23:13, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
Have to say, I'm a little curious why you turned up to protest the request the desysop request five minutes after it was posted to Meta. At the point where you posted your protest there was no mention how it had been compromised.[2] And then once the arbitrators made a formal announcement, it turns out to be the sock of the same banned user to whom you recently gave a list of unwatched BLP articles. You also unblocked him less than a month ago at Meta. Only one other time in the Meta permissions page's last 500 edits did you post there. Strange nexus of coincidences? Or did you you know before the arbitrators announced it that Kohs had an admin account at en:wiki? Durova401 00:40, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
- I have to say Durova, that your comments on MZ's talk page are making me lose respect for you. :-( That is a wild thing to postulate. I somewhat closely monitor the steward's request page there too, and I'm not active on meta at all. I have a feeling that's what happened here. Killiondude (talk) 00:47, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
- (ec) The only other comment he posted there in the recent history was a bland statement about how deflagged editors can seek reflagging. Today MZM suggeted that an arbitrator had a compromised account. Stong stuff. Killiondude, can you cite any other occasion where MZMcBride protested a deflagging request at Meta? Even in mild terms or days after it occurred? Durova401 00:54, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) I didn't know. And as I said above, I find it very, very difficult to believe that Mr. Kohs was the person behind this account since 2005. My rudimentary research suggests he got hold of it in the past few months. There's a suspicion that this relates to a topic posted at Wikipedia Review in which an unidentified user offered to sell his administrator account. However, nothing substantive has been demonstrated to this effect—it's purely speculation for now.
Without any post to Cool3's local talk page and nothing visible in the logs on-wiki, I (still) don't think it was unreasonable to ask for evidence of wrongdoing or compromise before the stewards acted. Do you?
If you want to go around asking whodunnit-type questions, there is at least one other editor who is far more involved in this (hint: think judge, jury, and executioner).
And, yes, Mr. Kohs' block at Meta was poorly formed and quickly overturned by me. Post hoc ergo propter hoc? Or maybe it's one of those other logic fallacies you've fallen prey to. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:52, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
- MZMcBride, the other day I suggested you settle this BLP experiment matter by handing ArbCom the same list of unwatched BLP articles you had given to Kohs. It doesn't appear that you have taken that advice. So, it's established that you share secrets with Mr. Kohs that you withhold from ArbCom. Your own actions today raise reasonable suspicions that he may reciprocate by sharing secrets by you. You profess a belief in openness. Please answer directly: did you know Mr. Kohs was operating an admin sock and withhold that information from the arbitrators? Durova401 00:58, 15 January 2010 (UTC)