User talk:Hersfold/Archive 35 (November 2009)

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This page contains discussions dated during the month of November 2009 from User talk:Hersfold. Please direct all current discussions there. Thank you.

User:Betacommand Arbcom Enforcement Request

I don't see that you or user MBisanz take requiring User:Betacommand to act in a civil manner with any sort of seriousness. He's been allowed to personally attack and stalk me. Apparently he gets dozens more chances than anyone else. Filed. [1] --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 08:54, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

For clarity, there's a request at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Betacommand for you to look at Fritzpoll (talk) 09:40, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Template jargon

Hey Hersfold how are you? Its been long that we corresponded. I have come to you with a bizarre help. Actually I was developing Confessions Tour for GA but found that the infobox template {{infobox concert tour}} didnot have a provision for Alternate text for the images. Hence I tried adding it but its still not showing up. Will you please help me with it? I don't know what to do to make it work. --Legolas (talk2me) 10:41, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

In order to make this work as a parameter, you'll need to change how some of the parameters work, and adjust all current uses of the template accordingly; probably a lot more work than is necessary. The easiest way to do this would be to include the alt-text with the image code, as follows:

[[File:Imagename.ext|size|alt=ALT TEXT HERE]]

If you do this, you'll need to remove the alt parameter from the template to avoid confusion. Hersfold (t/a/c) 16:54, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
OK Thanks a lot. :) --Legolas (talk2me) 03:45, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

user:hAl edit warring again

Hi,

I'd normally have pinged Juliancolton about this (as he was the admin who actually issued the block), but he's on indefinite wikibreak. You declined hAl (talk · contribs)'s unblock request here; he eventually served his time, and immediately jumped back into tendiciously edit warring against a pretty firm and productive consensus at Office Open XML. Can you have a look? Cheers. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 12:13, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Blocked indefinitely, request for review posted at ANI. Hersfold (t/a/c) 17:14, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
Cheers. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 17:16, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Should Persecution of Falun Gong be renamed into something else?

That is the question that is repeated again here: Talk:Persecution of Falun Gong#Requesting Move. Since you are not an involved editor, would it be possible for you to provide an input? Thank you in advance for your time! --HappyInGeneral (talk) 17:37, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

I'd rather not, but thanks for the note. Hersfold (t/a/c) 18:05, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
That's OK, thank you! --HappyInGeneral (talk) 18:48, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

User_talk:Betacommand#Request_to_resolve_the_above

This dispute is getting overly heated and out-of-hand. I have made a suggestion at the above that might begin to resolve it in some way. I'm letting you two know because you're his appointed mentors, and therefore the more appropriate people to enable a resolution Fritzpoll (talk) 22:58, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Signpost: 2 November 2009

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Re: watchlist notifier

I've implemented your feature request; messing with the watchlist notifier tends to be hard to avoid excessive load on the servers, but the username is luckily one of the pieces of information that's inexpensively available. Note that you should be slightly careful with this feature; if two edits are made to the page in quick succession, or that page is edited and then another page you watch is edited, the notifier will only notify you about the most recent change, so it's always worth looking at your actual watchlist to see what happened. (Bypass your cache to get the improved script.) Hope that helps! --ais523 13:36, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I usually do anyway, but this should still help at a glance. Thanks a lot! Hersfold (t/a/c) 15:03, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

OTRS pending and bot

Is HersfoldOTRSBot working? I see it hasn't edited since September 1st, and I also saw File:Red-tie.jpg which has been pending since August 11th (see also commons:Commons:OTRS/Noticeboard#Image:Red-tie.jpg. Just wondering what's up. Thanks. -Andrew c [talk] 15:05, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm planning on updating the bot to reduce the number of messages it posts to user talk pages, since that was a frequent complaint. Unfortunately, I've had very little time to do so and haven't started yet. I hope to be able to run the bot within the next week or two - if things get super bad, I may just run it and to heck with the notice spam. Hersfold (t/a/c) 05:17, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
Yay! It's working again! -Andrew c [talk] 16:58, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

User:Polaron...edit war

This user is edit warring with me, violating the 3 revert rule and I let him know I do not want to edit war, but still continued. He has already been blocked because of this, late June. Please act quickly. This is going on at: Template:USLargestMetros...Thank-You House1090 (talk) 03:25, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

It looks like someone has already protected the template. In the future, you'll get a faster response at WP:AN3 or WP:ANI. Hersfold (t/a/c) 05:18, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
Thank-You for the info, thanks any. House1090 (talk) 05:40, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Request for WP:ARBCOM Mentorship

I have recently become interested in a position with the WP:ARBCOM Clerks. I would like to know if you would be a mentor for me in this area. I love to stay on top of things, espically here on Wikipedia. I feel that this is my first good chance to really get in and help Wikipedia. Please feel free to comment on how I've done so far, and I love constructive critism. Thanks for considering my request, I hope to be in contact with you soon. MWOAP (talk) 00:54, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Hey, MWOAP, sorry for the long delay. I've taken a look at your edits, and to be entirely honest, you don't have anywhere near enough experience yet. I can see that your account was registered back in 2007, but you've only been regularly editing since this year, and not very heavily at that. Arbitration Clerks are ideally users who have a wide range of experiences on the project, particularly within dispute resolution, and are users who have demonstrated that they hold the community's trust to be a dependable user. Clerks are also often administrators, as the tools assist in the execution of our duties. If this is something you'd like to get involved in at some point in the future, keep in mind that positions on the clerk corps are offered by the clerk corps based on a list of potential candidates we and ArbCom maintain. My advice to you would be to remain active, with particular attention to the "back-lines" duties, clearing out backlogs and the like. After a year or so, consider admin coaching or an RFA to gauge your standing in the community. Thanks for your interest. Hersfold (t/a/c) 03:42, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Signpost: 9 November 2009

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"References removed" tag

Hi. This edit was caught by the "References removed" tag while it shouldn't. Any idea how to avoid this? -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:30, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for the long delay - unfortunately, no. False positives like that are very difficult to weed out without making it miss a lot of the edits that actually are removing references. Sorry. Hersfold (t/a/c) 04:04, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Motto of the Day contributions

This is a general message to get people to contribute as we are running out again so if you could please do. Please also see Wikipedia talk:Motto of the day#The Future. Not to anyone who reads this, WP:MOTD/N. Simply south (talk) 22:11, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Invitation to participate in SecurePoll feedback and workshop

As you participated in the recent Audit Subcommittee election, or in one of two requests for comment that relate to the use of SecurePoll for elections on this project, you are invited to participate in the SecurePoll feedback and workshop. Your comments, suggestions and observations are welcome.

For the Arbitration Committee,
Risker (talk) 08:10, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Un-protect request

heya, i have recently been editing the pages of the british boyband A1 and i created a template for the band. when i tried to re-edit it came up that you had indefinitely protected the template for the band back in September 2008. Could you un-protect it please? thanks Mister sparky (talk) 03:36, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay. I'm unsure which template you're referring to - if it's Template:A1(band), that is not protected; if it's Template:Infobox Musical artist, that's fully protected and has been for some time, but you should be able to modify how that template displays from within the article itself. Does this help? Hersfold (t/a/c) 04:21, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Nangparbat sockpuppet?

Just an FYI, I appear to have stumbled upon a new sockpuppet at Placid56 (talk · contribs). The duck appears to be quacking, but I'll let you decide if my suspicion was correct. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 00:03, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I've been out for a while. Do you still need me to look at this? Hersfold (t/a/c) 04:23, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
Re your message: No, I think we're okay. I just noticed that the sockpuppeteer account has various notes to contact you and I thought you would want to know about it. The sockpuppet didn't make an unblock request, so my suspicious were probably correct. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 06:25, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Signpost: 16 November 2009

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Planning Discussions Now Ongoing Regarding DC Meetup #9

You are receiving this message either because you received a similar one before and didn't object, or you requested to receive a similar one in the future.

There is a planning discussion taking place here for DC Meetup #9. If you don't wish to receive this message again, please let me know. --NBahn (talk) 04:56, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Assistance at Bc's talkpage

There is an editor attempting to interact with Betacommand at his talkpage, regarding some actions (tagging, it seems) by Bc on an article page. It seems that the other editors command of English is not what it might be, may not have read or understood the template at the top of Bc's talkpage, and is generally unfamiliar with Bc. I am familiar enough with Bc to know that hoping he will carefully, comprehensively and politely explain himself may not be sufficient. As one of Bc's mentors, I wonder if it would be in your remit to assist in the editors queries before Bc does. I note that you are offline as at my writing this, so I am copying this to MBisanz also. LessHeard vanU (talk) 20:13, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

It would appear that my hope was indeed sufficient. LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:57, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

Hey Hersfold - thanks for the checkuser here. Have a most excellent evening. FlyingToaster 05:24, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Bot question

What is the purpose of this edit by HersfoldBot? It appears from the tag requesting the article be copied, and from the BRFA, that the intention is for this bot to be adding the template to articles that are essentially dictionary definitions only, while the article tagged is not a dictionary definition and contains material beyond the wiktionary article. At the time the article was tagged, this was the case, also. Is this bot still running, has someone already noted this issue?

--IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 06:11, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Which edit are you referring to? I'm not aware of any problems with the bot's operation recently. Hersfold (t/a/c) 06:19, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
Oh, sorry. An older edit, this one.
This edit also shows the bot adding a tag saying the article has been "has been successfully transwikied to en.wikt" but the article is not on en.wikt and it's a list that's unlikely to be included in a dictionary. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 06:24, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
The bot is unable to determine what is and is not a dictionary definition; it assumes that whoever doing the tagging knows what they're doing and is only tagging articles that are primarily, or could be easily converted into, a dictionary definition. It does have a limited stop-gap in that respect, where it will require particularly long articles be double-checked by a human (usually me) before being imported. In the case of Taking the piss, that article did at the time contain mostly information that Wiktionary would cover, albeit in much more detail than they would provide.
In the case of List of Q-no-U words, that is a case of one of the large articles that had to be manually reviewed. While the list itself is not likely to be included, it provided a wide range of definitions and etymologies that Wiktionarians can use. Importing the article helps to preserve the history if any of them are used. When the bot says a page was transwikied, that only means the page as seen on Wikipedia was copied along with its history to a page on Wiktionary in their Transwiki namespace. The bot does not and cannot convert a page into a properly formatted dictionary entry; that's left up to volunteers on their end to handle. My bot just does the middle work, and logs its actions.
In short, in both of these edits, the bot operated as expected. Hersfold (t/a/c) 06:37, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
I see. The definitions I saw that were directly copied were copied by a human, then? Not by the bot?
The TW templates are so huge they're ridiculous, and the article looked like a generic encyclopedia article, except for the information in the template at the top overpowers the entire article.
Is there a link to the discussion about applying this template that you know of? I will look at the template pages first, of course.
This template should be put on the talk page, not in article space, and I'd like to get this changed. For articles that are only dictionary definitions it's not a problem, as the article itself, as a dictionary definition is not worth much. But for a nice list like Q-no-U, the tag ruins the entire article. On the list a human editor removed the tag right away, but on piss the template sat on an encyclopedia article for 7 months. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 06:45, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
No. What happens is this:
  1. Someone tags an article as being largely a dictionary definition that should be moved to Wiktionary.
  2. I run my bot. It finds that article, and imports it to Wiktionary.
    1. If the article is very long, it asks for manual review and waits until that has been done before importing.
    2. If a page already exists on Wiktionary with the same title, it will not import the article, but will replace the move tag with TWCleanup2.
  3. When the move is done, it logs the move at the appropriate locations, and replaces the template with TWCleanup.
  4. Editors at Wiktionary then work to dress up the article the way they format them, and it's moved to their mainspace.
That's an issue with the templates, not the bot. If you can find a way to shorten them while keeping the important information present, go for it.
Not that I'm very aware of, but I have had some discussions with wiktionarians about what sort of things they're looking for in an import, and they were important to helping me design and run the bot.
I would recommend starting a community discussion about that, and not to just do it, if for no reason other than that it'll cause me to have to reprogram the bot and it's a substantial change from what's been done. The long delay on piss was in fact the reason my bot was made; that was moved on one of its earlier runs, as you noted. Such delays shouldn't happen as often, or at least won't be as long now. Hersfold (t/a/c) 06:55, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
Yes, it's not so much a problem with the bot as with the underlying process. I have to make sure I understand it, though.
I don't understand what you mean by the long delay on piss that was moved on one of your earlier runs-I see it's when you were testing and developing the bot. You mean, now, the template doesn't stay on the en.wiki article as long? Who checks the en.wiki articles with these templates?
Is there some place that explains the whole transwiki to wiktionary process so I can just read it, try to follow, then ask only questions about what is remaining rather than have you explain everything to me?
I would like the templates to not be in article space, basically. And, when the article is an appropriate topic for an encyclopedias as almost every noun in a dictionary will be, there's no need for the template to go on en.wiki articles-they're very distracting for the reader. On the other hand, when the article is simply a dictionary defintion that is distracting for someone coming to an encyclopedia, but it's the meat editors I need on this, as your bot is only following up on human tags. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 07:09, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
(outdent) Yes, there was a long delay for the piss article because at the time it was tagged, articles had to be imported manually by an administrator at Wikitionary. As a result, the process was severely backlogged. With my bot, which I try to run whenever the category starts to get a good number of articles in it, a page will be marked for transwiki no more than a month or so before it's dealt with in some way.
As for the process, try looking through Wikipedia:Transwiki log and m:Help:Transwiki - those should explain most of the process, or contain links to other pages with more info. Hersfold (t/a/c) 17:29, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the information. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 20:25, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Signpost: 23 November 2009

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ArbCom candidacy

Great to see you running for ArbCom. I was actually wondering if you'd be up for election this year - seeing you around gave me the impression that you'd make a great arbitrator. While I never urge anybody to run for ArbCom (it's obviously a tough job and I personally think people should decide for themselves whether or not to volunteer for it), I wish you good luck and hope you get elected. =) Master&Expert (Talk) 07:48, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Hersfold (t/a/c) 08:20, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Gmail

[2]: You might want to try changingSettings -> Forwarding and POP/IMAP -> POP Download to "Enable POP for all mail (even mail that's already been downloaded)", if you haven't done so, or switch to IMAP. Tim Song (talk) 20:25, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I knew there had to be a way to get it sorted out, but I didn't really expect it to be an issue. Oh well. Hersfold (t/a/c) 21:24, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I just wanted to wish those Wikipedians who have been nice enough to give me a barnstar or smile at me, supportive enough to agree with me, etc., a Happy Thanksgiving! Sincerely, --A NobodyMy talk 07:09, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Nangparbat

Hi Hersfold. Could help with this user Radar1X (talk · contribs)? I almost positive that he's a sock of Nangparbat (passed the duck test). Knowing him he'll probably come back with a new sock almost immediately and start reverting again so if you don't mind semi-protect the pages he's editing. I've informed YellowMonkey already, but he's usually busy and not as active in weekends. Thanks. Elockid (Talk·Contribs) 16:14, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

User taken care off. I'm sorry if I wasted your time. Elockid (Talk·Contribs) 23:31, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
No problem, I've been out this weekend anyway. Hersfold (t/a/c) 18:31, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
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