User talk:Alai/Archive 10

Archive 1 - Archive 2 - Archive 3 - Archive 4 - Archive 5 - Archive 6 - Archive 7 - Archive 8 - Archive 9

My RFA

My administratorship candidacy succeeded with a final tally of 81/0/1. I wish I could have won you over, but appreciate the challenge you presented. I'll do my best to bear your criticisms in mind whenever I act as an administrator. Let's hope that in the future our interactions will be positive. Results of the candidacy are at Wikipedia:Recently_created_admins#Durova. Warmly, Durova 15:00, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Not recent anymore... For accuracy's sake, the page is at WP:RFA/Durova a.t.m. . -- Jokes Free4Me 16:14, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Please

do not feed the trolls -- Kendrick7 06:21, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

A word to the wise is sufficient. -- Kendrick7 18:38, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

I Need Help

I've been trying to create a new page but in vein....

for eg...I want to add this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helwan_University

But I can't...please, just create it for me...I've the data but I can't create the page...I always get the download manager asking me if I want to download "index.php"

--M.shady 08:26, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

---

thanks for replying...yet I want to know How old should my account be to create articles...btw I have the same problem with pix on Commons--M.shady 07:40, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks!

For checking. I have recently been the target of a vicious personal attack on WP by someone who obviously knows me IRL, so I retreated, tortoise-like, to regroup and regain confidence. So nice that somebody noticed. (Didn't stop me from keeping up with WP work, though, as you can see!) Cheers, Pegship 18:23, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

User Mikeabundo at Cosplay article

Just wanted to inform you that the user Mikeabundo is once more wreaking havoc in the Cosplay article regarding:

1. Adding a picture of a Filipina cosplayer that links to an adult site named asian-sirens.com - which, as someone had already pointed out in the talk page, does not make a very good general perception of cosplayers in general. (I'm not entirely sure if the cosplayer in said photo is a Filipina adult actress or similar with a penchant for cosplaying, but either way, I think sourcing a cosplay photo from an adult site is in rather bad taste.

2. Citing sources as a means of self-promotion; he cites two articles as his source for acknowledging cosplay as a Philippine mainstream, yet the article fails to confirm this. I have scanned the articles, and it would seem that the main reason for their inclusion revolves around the fact that he was a featured interviewee for both; the articles themselves fail to explain how cosplay is a Filipino mainstream, merely that cosplaying does exist in the Philippines. Again, this seems just another attempt by him to 'big up' links pertaining to him.

3. He has called some users who have attempted to revert these changes 'anonymous trolls' and similar, and has adopted a somewhat supercilious tone towards them.

You were one of the few admins I could find who dealt with the earlier issue regarding him (as per talk page), and since attempts at reaching a compomise with Mikeabundo has failed (I assume because none of the parties are administrators that can restrict his actions), I was hoping you could help out again, or at least refer another administrator who would like to help step in and sort things out by removing the issues listed above, AND protecting the page until an agreement has been reached. The Talk:Cosplay page is beginning to degenerate into a mudslinging competition of sorts. Thank you very much for your time; I hope this gets sorted out soon.

My bot

Alai, My bot has not created any new town articles since July. I am using it to post project banners on talk pages. I have plans to create more town articles. When I do program, I will make sure to create district level categories. Thanks, Ganeshk (talk) 18:19, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

We are working on merging the sandbox articles to the main article space. They were created in the sandbox since a article with the same name already exists. Once the job is done, the sandbox articles will disappear from the categories. -- Ganeshk (talk) 18:34, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Shall I write a program to add district level-cats to all Indian town articles? It can read the district name from the infobox and create the category. Please comment. -- Ganeshk (talk) 18:38, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Proposing a change in WikiProject India

Hi,

I'm proposing a major change related to WikiProject India. I'm trying to build a consensus. Your suggestions/views/ideas are very much valued. Please talk about it here. Cheers. -- Chez ^{(Discuss / Email)} • 06:03, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Ancient browser

OK um, im a little dyslexic so let me understand this, you think i have an ancient browser. nope, i have firefox 2.0, the page is sooooo long it. Thats the reason why it crashes every time i visit the page. sorry i wasn't more clear on that.--aceslead 21:17, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Cornwall stub

Hi, I saw you contributed to the debate about creating Cornwall stubs - This is just to let you know I've now created it, and have about 200 stubs in it, in addition to the approx 400 Cornwall geo stubs. DuncanHill 16:30, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Umm... I haven't created a 'regional bio stub' (by the way, what are the good reasons for not having them?) - I've created a general Cornwall stub. While it might be true that the one article you mention says next to nothing about his time in Cornwall, it may be that someone who knows about Cornish cricket will be able to expand on this, eg. did he play for Cornwall County Cricket Club,? DuncanHill 16:58, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with your contention that I'm using it as a regional bio stub or place of birth stub - what I have done is add it to stub articles that appear to me to have a Cornish connexion - of course other editors can change any stub or cat marker as they see fit. I think you will find that most of the articles I have stubbed as Cornwall-stubs were already in Cornwall-related cats, and many were already stubbed in other stub cats. Many are also not 'bio' articles. It may be that I have marked some articles as Cornwall stubs when they should not be - it's also probable that there are other articles I haven't stubbed that should be. If you have good reason to remove the Cornwall stub from a particular article then of course you should go ahead and do so. I would just add that my original message to you that I had created the Cornwall stub cat was identical to the messages I placed on the talk pages of the other users who had contributed to the discussion, and was meant as a courtesy to let you know what had happened. I will also copy this reply to your talk page. DuncanHill 18:12, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

If you think an article should not have a particular stub tag on it, then you could always remove it yourself - I had thought that was one of the point of Wikipedia. I note that you have only cited a single article. I am struck by the vehemence of your remarks - and am sorry if I have offended you in any way - tho' I don't see how. I do not understand your comment about me creating the stub contrary to the debate - the result was to create. Of course I shall be coming back to articles I have marked as Cornwall stubs - but I'm sure you will appreciate that (1) I can't do this instantly, and (2) the point of stubbing is to draw the attention of a wide range of editors who will each bring their own knowledge and perspectives to editing. This is the first stub I have created, and I am still comparitively new to Wikipedia. If your intention is to discourage inexperienced editors from contributing, then you are going about it in the right way. DuncanHill 19:06, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. As you say, you looked at two or three articles and found one where you disagreed with the stubbing. I don't know what an upmerged category is - you proposed it, but didn't explain what it is, and when I did a wikipedia search for it (after the debate had been closed), I couldn't find anything. If it means putting the Cornwall geo-stubs in the Cornwall stub and not having a Cornwall geo-stub, surely that would create an unmanageably large stub cat? Anyway, I have unstubbed the article you objected to, and don't think that any of the other ones I stubbed fit the circumstances you objected to. If users less experienced than me are complaining about not getting admin privileges - I don't really see what that's got to do with this specific issue. DuncanHill 01:28, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Have one

float

A Barnstar of Diligence for your efforts in sticking to the point on the Palestine-stub discussion. Cheers! Pegship 16:46, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Request

This is an odd request, but I noticed you offered on Category talk:Category needed to generate a list of articles from a database dump... this is a bit beyond my technical abilities, and I've been looking for someone who could do this for me. Is there any way you could provide me with a list of orphaned articles? (e.g. Special:Lonelypages) but from A to Z? I've been lead to believe it's not that complicated, but I know nothing about SQL so... still too much for me to figure out. Anyway, I totally understand if you can't, I just figured I'd ask. --W.marsh 01:05, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, the alphabetization isn't a real indicator... there are about 25,000 articles (mostly A through J) in Category:Orphaned articles, so do the math, there's probably 25,000+ more K-Z. I've been slowly running my bot through them with AWB for a few months, so there's no real rush... I just figured getting the full list would speed things up. So uh, again, I hate to be a bother but this is apparently something I'm not going to figure out on my own any time soon. Time isn't a problem, I'll be doing this project until someone else volunteers to take over, which is unlikely :-) --W.marsh 15:13, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh dear, well if it doesn't work the first time, don't worry about it... I'll figure out some other way of getting the list. --W.marsh 20:17, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, or the user space, because that's where I keep my list of orphan articles. Special:lonelypages is just pages with no incoming links period though, so that might be what the default queries return. Either list is useful... the one with just no incoming article links is probably substantially larger though. --W.marsh 14:40, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks so much... I really think this will do for now, my bot ignores ones that are deleted, not actually linkless and a zillion other reasons, so it should run pretty cleanly now that I have a list. It would be nice to eventually get the ones without incoming article links, if you can just ignore articles with just incoming links from my userspace (where I keep the list of orphans, I haven't really figured out a better way to list them yet) that should yield a list of untagged orphans, since I generate that list based on articles tagged with the linkless template. But I'd say wait until at least the next database dump, since I imagine it will take me some time to tag all of these.

But really, this list alone is a huge help already and I don't want to trouble you any further. I owe you a big favor now, just as long as it doesn't involve stub sorting :-P --W.marsh 14:21, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

stub category redirect

You are correct in assuming we did not need Category:Politics of Hong Kong stubs. I just put the redirect there as a sort of place holder until it got deleted. Thanks for taking care of that. =) ~ Amalas rawr ^{=^_^=} 14:23, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

"to delete" at SFD

I don't want to bother you too much, but do you think you could delete the stuff that's in the "to delete" section of SFD. They're the only reason I haven't transcluded those things into the archive page. I'd really like to get SFD cleaned up a bit, so if you get a chance to delete those, that would be great. Thanks! ~ Amalas rawr ^{=^_^=} 15:19, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Stubs

I meant that stubs have to be requested and approved, they can't just be created on the fly, like an article can. --NovaSTL 02:28, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Oceania television stubs

G'day Alai - have a quick look at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Proposals/2006/November#New Zealand split... it seems there are more NZ television stubs than you thought - enough to make an Oceania-tv-stub viable after all. Grutness...wha? 23:44, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Re: Palestine-stub

I was very much bothered by your unwillingness to consider putting convention aside in a case that very many people didn't believe it applied to, and whether you meant it or not, your snide edit-summaries and comments further conveyed a sense that you refused legitimacy to any other position. That in addition to your closing the discussion just as the possibility of compromise was at least being discussed, left me feeling quite dissatisfied with your general management of it. I hope that you take my comments into consideration for the future. Tewfik^Talk 17:10, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Considering that users from the other POV hinted that some form of "Palestinian" might be acceptable, as well as numerous users from the POV that I argued, I don't think it is fair to imply that I was alone in pursuing this 'compromise.' Additionally, I am not bothered by convention per se, but rather your interpretation of how to apply it here; for all your efforts you have only ensured that the current stub name does not reflect any hint of reality (ie that the West Bank and Gaza Strip are a territorial unit known as "Palestine"). And while it is beyond me how you can equate my continuing to point that out with less than professional remarks on your end, I don't wish to bicker, but as you seem to be a serious editor, I hoped that you would actually be able to take what I say into consideration. Tewfik^Talk 16:54, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Your offer for category #redirects

Hello. Thanks for your helpful offer on my talk page. I have not got access to the dumps myself at the moment. If you could run the query to find all the category #redirects occasionally and email me the output (or keep up to date at, say, User:RobotG/Category redirects) then that would be a fantastic first step. Is there also a query you could do that would tell me if there were any articles that were in non-existent categories? That would be useful because I could make the bot gradually remove the categories from the articles, or create category #redirects to the correct categories, or mark the categories with {{deletedpage}} as appropriate.

For the longer term, can you give me a quick tutorial how to get at the database dumps? I speak fluent SQL, but do you know where can I find a listing, entity model and/or explanation of the Wikimedia database schema? --RobertG ♬ talk 10:25, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Thank you very much for this, Alai, it will help a lot. My longer term plan now is to use User:Alai/redirect_art_cat and Category:Wikipedia category redirects together, as I was originally hoping.

Which dump did you get it from? Presumably you don't need the huge "full dump with history"!

Can I ask for a tweak? I don't need to know which articles are in the #redirected categories, merely a list of #redirect categories that are populated. (Unless, you have a use for both bits of information, of course?) I noticed the cross-namespace redirects too: it may be acceptable to just remove such categories from articles.

If you can run these queries regularly after each dump (eventually I hope I might be able to do it myself) then I think I may eventually get RobotG to convert the less-used {{category redirect}}s to #redirects as it goes, because any articles put into them will be picked up next dump. That will mean that your redirect_WCD_arts is redundant, because the category will only contain the few most-regularly-populated cat redirects, the ones that it will be worthwhile RobotG scanning through each time (for instance, Category:Living People has articles added every day).

None of this is decided yet, of course: it may not be possible using the python pywikipedia framework, and I may have to investigate other avenues. The changes to RobotG won't happen overnight, in any case!

Thanks again for your assistance. --RobertG ♬ talk 17:52, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Bot Curiosity

Hello, I was working on the Kevin Rahm article, and I noticed a double stub, that was caused by Alaibot in this edit. Its not the end of the world, but perhaps an improvement could be made to the code to prevent retagging a stub to a more specific stub, if the more specific stub already exists in the article? Not a critical situation, but perhaps it would be helpful? —Cliffb 10:53, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Re the templates

I've wondered about that... I've taken my code from WP:USRD/A so I'm not sure what the prob is though. --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 19:57, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Highway assessment code

I read and re-read your comment, but I think I need to see an affected page to know what's going on, in spite of the fact you fixed it. Is Category:California_State_Highway_stubs one of the pages? —Rob (talk) 20:46, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

thanks

Okay, I fixed that up a bit. I certainly don't want people to think I'm not interested. I get enough attention in real life (check out the "Fanboi ravings" comment below the RfA messages on my talk page for an example) that promoting myself here doesn't really fulfill any desires of mine. But I appreciate everybody's willingness to show confidence in me.--Mike Selinker 08:51, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

• I can give you hours of dissertation as to why those games aren't mathematically broken, but I'll let it slide since you're being nice. :^) --Mike Selinker 09:06, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Let us know if Gloria Mundi makes you set fire to your copy of Power Grid, then.--Mike Selinker 09:26, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

deletion

Hi! Just wanted to say thanks for seeing my side of the Orthodox Jewish community issue. Well, atleast I think you do. My problem is not with Orthodox Jews at all. I just feel that my hometown can be better represented than just an Orthodox Jewish community. Also, I am extremely upset now at IZAK's comment about concentration camps. I'm not sure if you caught it but that was really uncalled for. Helical Rift 10:34, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

WP:RFBOT

Your recent bot approvals request has been approved for trial. Please see the request page for details. -- RM 12:58, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

will you pl. check my message on talk pg of

ArmadilloFromHell‎ swadhyayee 03:37, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

WHEEL

Please look at WP:0WW. I pled on Pump for people to come over so it would have wider input but instead I got a certain special fellow who is busy razing it.

I agree that on first blush the shorter policy always looks better. But there are distinct and deep reasons for breaking wheel warring into violations of a bright-line rule and violations of a balancing test. Worse, these late edits demote bright-line policy to some sort of nut. One more edit like this and everything that 20 different thoughtful editors have put together over the last year will be rubble.

If you don't have time to dig through all the history at Wikipedia talk:Wheel war/Archive, I understand. You can start here or take my word for it that the page has gone through a great deal of careful evolution.

Before merge, both pages were guidelines; I tagged the merge as guideline, too; there it stood for a month. Major changes should be discussed on talk. Our friend first tagged it down to proposed, then brought in the bulldozer. Sneaky or not, it's not okay. These rules -- call them whatever you will -- have already been cited in ArbCom decisions; perhaps I should have been bold and tagged the page policy from the merge. I've had a lot of input on this page already and I want you in there now -- if you'll be so kind. Thank you. John Reid ° 07:20, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

SouthAfrica-sport-stub

Hello there,

I created a South Africa sport category on 13 Nov but I forgot to create the template. Today, while creating the template, I discovered that not "Sport in South Africa" article exists, as the existing template "Belgium-sport-stub" had. Do you have a suggestion on how to remedy this short of creating an Sport in South Africa article?--Thomas.macmillan 21:38, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

• I created it using the Sport in India template. Take a look and let me know if you think it can be improved.--Thomas.macmillan 21:41, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

• • If it should be so, then feel free to speedily move it.--Thomas.macmillan 22:04, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Munich stub categories

How can you oppose stub categories that fit within the project's scope. This project covers the creation and editing of articles related to the City of Munich, its buroughs, geography, transportation, culture, history and so on. It aims to expand Wikipedia's resources on Munich in a fair and accurate manner. By deleting these stub categories, you're going against WikiProject Munich's scope by unfairly treating the categories by limiting the resources of the project. Kingjeff 00:32, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

I do have a talk page template. DOn't get the stub categories deleted unless you're willing to replace it with something suitable. You not just going against me, you're going against an entire WikiProject. Kingjeff 02:21, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

I think Ignore all rules policy is the policy that should be inforced here since the current stub rules prevent WikiProject Munich from improving and maintaining Wikipedia's Munich-related articles. Kingjeff 17:20, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Start getting some credibility and I'll start believing you. Kingjeff 17:28, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Gaelic games stubs

Do i understand correctly that it was agreed to create a {{gaelic-football-bio-stub}} and {{hurling-bio-stub}}. I want to make sure of the names before i run awb on them (Gnevin 01:02, 22 November 2006 (UTC))

According to awb filtered list of the stubs their is 110 hurling stubs and 75 football , the above would proberly be best (Gnevin 12:40, 22 November 2006 (UTC))

Virtual classroom

G'day Alai - User:The Transhumanist has recently started an interesting project, a "virtual classroom" giving handy tips and quick summaries on how parts of WP work. I've written a quick run-down on how stubs work for it here. I'll announce it to the rest of WSS pretty soon, but I was hoping you might take a look to see whether there's anything I've missed. Though I know we don't always see eye to eye on stubs (especially on naming issues), I'd say you're the member of the project best able to double-check that I haven't made any silly mistakes! Cheers, Grutness...wha? 05:59, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Uncatstub

You will find that I have put more articles in uncatstub than anyone! I'm looking at doing a bot run of uncatstub as well. Rich Farmbrough, 21:59 24 November 2006 (GMT).

Except your bot! Rich Farmbrough, 22:11 24 November 2006 (GMT).

{{WPSS-cat}}

Oops, thought that had all been done - sorry. just inherited the stub and thought it had gone through channels and was ok. What do you want me to do, it looks a little suspect actually as there is currently only one entry in the Cat. However I don't believe that will stay that way for too long. Sorry again. :: Kevinalewis : ^{(Talk Page)}/_(Desk) 08:41, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Billiards

I and a few other editors, collectively Wikipedia:WikiProject Cue sports, are trying to clean up the "billiards" mess you commented saliently on at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 November 16#Category:Pool and Snooker computer games. Ironically, Americans (who insist that "billiards" means either "everything to do with cue sports", "only carom billiards games" or "only pool" — we Yanks don't seem able to agree) have stymied the debate. It would be of value to have some non-'Merican input over here at Talk:Billiards#Move of this article to "Cue sport". The gist is, we're trying to rename the fatally ambigous main cue sports article "Billiards" to "Cue sport" and work from there, but meeting signficant resistance that does not seem to grok that "billiards" means different things to different people. PS: I note that you did stop in to comment once, but the issue has moved along beyond the now-resolved question of whether the move was "non-controversial". — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 10:22, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

{{importance}}

Hi, I don't know if this is something for you (as the specialist stub-sorter and category-splitter), there seems to be a problem (clash?) with the category NN. There are many articles in that, and maybe they should be split into smaller chunks? Lately someone removed a large amount of tags from pages, where I think the tag was appropriate, maybe a solution is to change category there, and split the category up in small sub-categories? And, eh, well, if it is not something for you, just ignore and carry on with the good work! Cheers! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:01, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Amalas

Going ahead, absolutely, as soon as this is resolved. - crz crztalk 15:02, 28 November 2006 (UTC)