User talk:Mr. Stradivarius/Archive 22

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Signpost (6)

Holy cow, your talk-page is busy.

If you take a look at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Index again you will see that I did what I threatened to do: I moved all of the descriptions to a unified database and enabled editing links there and back again. The module I was suggesting earlier, a per-item section counter, is not necessary: the data is hard-coded in. Since new tags will require heavy lifting by maintainers, it seems reasonable to make adding the required hard-numbered parameter, | editnumber=N, a part of their job. So the workflow looks like this:

  1. Adds a tag using the tag template.
  2. Go to the Descriptions page and create a new tag description.
  3. Manually link the edit button to the description.
  4. Add the item to the module index list.

There's one last stage I frame that needs to be built, besides a little template work here or there. I need a module that, like in your Signpost script, automatically globs a tag—like VisualEditor or Jimmy Wales—into its associated search string—visualeditor or jimmywales respectively in this case. This will remove the redundant | tag_string=X parameter in the index, which right now basically does just that, but manually. ResMar 05:05, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

@Resident Mario: We are starting to have a worrying amount of tag duplication. We have duplicate tags in the index modules, and now we have this new tag page that you've made, which adds another place that we will need to keep in sync with the index modules. The problem is that when someone decides to rename a tag, they will probably rename it in one place and forget (or not know) about all the other places where it would need to be changed. This will result in the pages slowly getting out of sync with each other, and the usefulness of the data will decrease. How about this: we create another submodule of Module:Signpost that stores tag names, tag aliases, and tag descriptions. We use this module to generate your database page, and to normalise tag aliases both in Module:Signpost and in the tagger gadget. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 13:37, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
Tag descriptions need to be editable-by-section: this is the one element of the index that we actually expect users to get involved in. Generating new tags or removing old ones should only be done with or by Signpost editors who know what they're doing and are doing it a part of regular maintenance activities. I think instead we should keep the current system and remove all tag aliases except for the first one; and standardize the first alias as a text-transform Display Name -> displayname. So, name the tag, create a new item for it in the description list, then create a new item for it in the module's list.
To make it easy, I can put the required hard-coded section number into an edit-notice by doing a {{String count}} on == in the descriptions page (there may be a more elegant solution), and set up the template so that when a description entry does not exist it provides edit-links to both the descriptions page and to the module list. So: edit the index page, add a tag, hit preview, open each of the other links in a new tab, and follow edit-notice instructions from there.
I think that's reasonable. ResMar 14:06, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
Some further thoughts, having now "finished" doing things as they are now and having gotten a more complete picture of what the maintenance activities will look like.
Indexing
The ideal solution would be basically what you've described: a Lua database containing all of the tag metadata, or at least, at a minimum, their descriptions. My concern was that this would make it difficult to edit individual entries on their own, but I now realize that another user-script—something I described early on, but dropped after a while—could handle this problem: the user-script could embed a (modify) string at the end of the description, and allow users to change all of the parameters at once using a dialog much like the one you've written to tag articles with, saving the changes to a linked metadata Lua table. The same table would contain the display-name of the tag, as well as the reg-ex search string, and the concatenated display-name that's used as input for preloadparams= and for the article list maker. The current system is workable; but yours would be better. :)
Tagging
I'm not sure how technically possible this is, but I'd like to suggest a couple of improvements on your tagger.
Right now the workflow looks like this: hit edit, then replace the article headers and minor item headers with a template ({{Ib}} in the latter case; still have not written a template for the former case). Put the tags into the templates and save the page. Then hit "Manage tags" and submit what you've put together, without modifying input (otherwise, #jump won't work).
It'd be better if one could mouse over a header and it would change color slightly. Click, and you get a dialog box: here are the tags; do you want to add tags to this entry? If so, input them here; if the header needs to get converted to {{Ib}} along the way, it can handle that too. Click save and the changes in tags are sent to the Lua list.
We can handle the aliasing problem this way: as you input an entry a drop-down box comes up which tells you which tags match the input you have entered so far. So I enter arb and after a pause it brings up arbitration report and arbitration committee as possible options. ResMar 21:07, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
@Resident Mario: I like these thoughts. :) This is going to be a lot of code to write, though - I'll have to actually use my to-do list for once. Could you give a rough priority for each bit of code that needs writing? I should probably get the important stuff done first. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 21:14, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
Our primary task right now is to get the system completely worked out, at least in design, and to generate as complete as possible an initial list of tags for the Python script to pick up before we start manual processing. So, it makes sense to focus on the indexing scripting now. Also, further modifications to the tagger will depend in large part on whether or not you go through with a fully Lua data-table.
And while you finish up with the tagger I can go around talking anyone that will listen into contributing missing pieces to the tag-list. ResMar 23:34, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Voter template fireworks

Did you change the default output for the string count module? The voter template now explodes, unfortunately, something that was definitely not true last I worked with it. Maybe you ought to deploy that Lua version you were working on (low priority, though). If it breaks after just a month it's not really tenable. ResMar 04:47, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Japanese help

I believe that I promised to let you know about requests like this: w:ja:Wikipedia‐ノート:ビジュアルエディター. Japanese is one of the top priorities (perhaps it is even fair to say that it is the #1 priority), but it is not an emergency. If you have time to look into this type of testing any time during the next couple of weeks, that would be helpful. Thank you for your help, as always. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:59, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Re: User:UBX @ zh:User talk:Liangent

Done. Sorry for the problem. Fortunately there isn't a bot tagging user pages of non-existent account for CSD U2 here (while there is such a bot on zhwiki...).

Replying here in case you're coming to zhwiki less frequently. Liangent (talk) 11:33, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Thank you! — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 11:36, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
That account is global-locked :( Liangent (talk) 15:53, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
I'm familiar with the steward who locked it, and it was locked soon after I created the global account. Maybe I asked him to do so? I forgot the exact situation at that time anyway :/ Liangent (talk) 15:56, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
@Liangent: Ah, I didn't realise it was locked... that complicates things. Could you ask the steward involved? Or if that's undesirable, I can make a request at m:Steward requests/Global. Best — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 17:11, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
I found a steward on #wikimedia-stewards to unlock it and I've got its local account created. Thanks Shanmugamp7. Liangent (talk) 07:08, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
Thanks again, both of you. :) — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 08:44, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

May need semi_pp at Buckley

Not sure what's going on there now or why, but it's very disruptive. Can you do a semi-pp?? Thx AtsmeConsult 17:16, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

@Atsme: At Buckley? No-one's edited it since January... — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 20:19, 25 April 2015 (UTC)
Please accept my apologies, Mr. S - I forgot to include the wiki link. William_F._Buckley,_Jr. I am (little by little) prepping it for a GA review. AtsmeConsult 20:48, 25 April 2015 (UTC)
There's only one recent vandalistic edit, so I don't think it really needs protecting. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 20:57, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

British Foreign Office 'hardest languages' article

Did you manage to track this down eventually? I would love to have a look at it if you did...Coolazice (talk) 11:55, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

@Coolazice: I don't remember this article. Where did you see me mention it? Knowing the name or seeing the context would help, I think. — Mr. Stradivarius on tour ♪ talk ♪ 20:44, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

This was the original context.Coolazice (talk) 07:55, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject banners and Lua

Hello Mr. Stradivarius! Technical 13 recommended I get in touch with you for an idea I have. I'm working on WikiProject X, a project to re-design the WikiProject, and as part of that I'm working on a replacement to the WIkiProject banner system. The template I came up with, ProjectTags, removes a lot of the redundancy of having a box for each WikiProject, and will be an option for WIkiProjects that want to use it. It is intended only for WikiProjects that need nothing more than the basic article assessment system, since the goal is to present less information more clearly. Because it's intended to be minimalist, I am not about to propose requiring every WikiProject to use it. I am fine with projects that need dedicated banners because they've made them support all sorts of complex use cases, but I suspect most projects have similar use cases.

What especially will make this template shine will be the use of Lua to allow the input of multiple projects. This is far superior than the approach currently taken by {{WPBannerMeta}} of nesting templates within templates. This is where you come in—do you think this is something you would be able to help with? Any support you could offer would be tremendously wonderful. I have more information on the specification here. Thanks, Harej (talk) 19:56, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

@Harej: Sure, I can help you with this. We'll have to think about exactly what features we're going to support and how the projects will be displayed. Also we need to think about how the banner will be deployed to talk pages. Probably the best way to do that would be to have a bot substitute WikiProject banners for projects that have been converted, but this will require millions of edits, so we will need consensus among the community first. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 13:19, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
I'd suggest getting the Lua module written, and am willing to help if I can, first. That way it will be available for new wikiprojects. Then, I'd be happy to run a proposal for a T13bot (task list (1) · logs (actions · block · flag) · botop (e · t · c) · contribs · user rights) task to run through and convert the existing ones through WP:BAG. — {{U|Technical 13}} (etc) 13:38, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
Thank you both for agreeing to help with this. With respect to features, I am fine with making it support more features than my current mockup (which only supports quality/priority assessments) if those features are important to most WIkiProjects, but I am reluctant to make the template support too many features. Otherwise you end up with feature creep and a massive template that is almost impossible to support. Were there additional things you two had in mind that would be useful for the template?
For deployment, I will be working on a project-by-project basis for deployment. As the creator of WikiProject Women in Technology I'm already on board; I could probably also convince my friend who runs WikiProject NIOSH to switch over (the project is brand new and it's basically one person at this point). So that's two WikiProjects right there. I think we are more likely to reach consensus if we take the slow and steady approach. Thoughts? Harej (talk) 16:31, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
@Harej and Technical 13: Thinking about this some more, I'm not sure that we should be aiming for a solution that's guaranteed to only work for a subset of projects. That would create situations like this where some projects used the new template but bigger projects stuck with their own template. That would also mean that the "Message WikiProjects" button would only reach the smaller projects, who are less likely to have editors actively watching for messages. I think a better solution would be to implement this as a MediaWiki extension. That would enable all sorts of useful features, for example rating articles directly from the article page, rating articles by selecting the rating from a drop-down menu instead of by editing a template, and having the message button default to a special page if users don't have JavaScript enabled. Doing it as an extension would also make sure that it was properly written and secure, as any updates to the extension code would need to go through code review. The sticking points would be how to get all the projects on board, and working out how to deprecate the existing banner template system. It would be more work than writing a new Lua module, but I think the end results would be worth it. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 00:08, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
  • An extension sounds fine to me. Even better is that by it being an extension, it can be PHP and avoid needing to use JavaScript at all. I directed Harej here with the goal of a Lua module, because I knew it was something you were good at and I was under the impression that you were already working on some kind of WP banner template to Lua conversion. If we're thinking extension instead, I'm thinking it might not be a bad idea to get a little more input from Jackmcbarn perhaps. :) — {{U|Technical 13}} (etc) 02:33, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
What exactly would you want the MediaWiki extension to do? Jackmcbarn (talk) 15:00, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Incidentally, I do have a proposal for a WikiProject extension for the upcoming Wikimedia Hackathon in France. The idea is to streamline a lot of the work that goes into creating and maintaining WikiProjects. My question is, can we get an extension coded and deployed in the next two months? I doubt it. Code review takes a very long time, so I am inclined to think of an extension as a long-term project.

The ProjectTags concept is a good short-term solution. I am not too worried about the larger projects keeping their own banners, so long as there is a net reduction in banner usage. (We can probably also do without the "Message WikiProject" button for the time being.) At the same time, I would like it to support as many projects as possible. What would the template need to support in order to do this? Harej (talk) 18:36, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Support request with team editing experiment project

Dear tech ambassadors, instead of spamming the Village Pump of each Wikipedia about my tiny project proposal for researching team editing (see here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Research_team_editing), I have decided to leave to your own discretion if the matter is relevant enough to inform a wider audience already. I would appreciate if you could appraise if the Wikipedia community you are more familiar with could have interest in testing group editing "on their own grounds" and with their own guidance. In a nutshell: it consists in editing pages as a group instead of as an individual. This social experiment might involve redefining some aspects of the workflow we are all used to, with the hope of creating a more friendly and collaborative environment since editing under a group umbrella creates less social exposure than traditional "individual editing". I send you this message also as a proof that the Inspire Campaign is already gearing up. As said I would appreciate of *you* just a comment on the talk page/endorsement of my project noting your general perception about the idea. Nothing else. Your contribution helps to shape the future! (which I hope it will be very bright, with colors, and Wikipedia everywhere) Regards from User:Micru on meta. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MediaWiki message delivery (talkcontribs) 09:33, 30 April 2015‎ (UTC)

Wikidata?

Jackmcbarn, Technical 13, Mr. Stradivarius: Thinking more about this, we could use a Lua-based approach that relies on tagging information inputed into Wikidata. Individual WikiProjects have Wikidata entries (see e.g. wikidata:Q8486702), so that would work nicely with such a system. It would also help facilitate a system where, for example, articles that belong in $CATEGORY are automatically tagged as part of the WikiProject if $CATEGORY is tagged by that WikiProject. Thoughts? Harej (talk) 20:15, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

UniFirst

Hello Mr. S, can you help with proper method of documenting brands for an organization? I followed what I found on other pages and created table with citation to USPTO. BGpelham (talk) 12:10, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

@BGpelham: Other pages may or may not be good references depending on their quality and oversight by the Wikipedia community - there are some great ones out there, but there are also total duds. The main thing to remember is that a Wikipedia article shouldn't be a product listing - it needs to contain encyclopaedic information about a company. If there is enough to say about a UniFirst product to put it into prose and cite it to a reliable source, then it can probably go in, but plain lists of products or stores fail WP:NOTDIRECTORY, in my opinion. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 14:41, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Japanese source check request for UGSF

Hi. I see you have yourself listed as a Japanese translator. Apologies if this request seems trivial, but could you tell me whether this source (or its About page) supports the following paragraph?

In 2011, Namco retconned the Ace Combat series as the opening act of the United Galaxy Space Force series, an effort to combine all of the company's sci-fi game franchises into one long continuity. The other franchises include Galaxian, Ridge Racer, Star Luster, StarBlade, Bounty Hounds, and New Space Order.

I can’t read Japanese and no other editors have confirmed it, and it seems somewhat irresponsible to rely on machine translation when sourcing an encyclopedia. Specifically, does that source make any claim of retconning, and does it include all of those titles in continuity? Thanks. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 15:07, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Nomination for merging of Module:Br separated entries

Module:Br separated entries has been nominated for merging with Module:Separated entries. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. Jc86035 (talkcontribs) Use {{re|Jc86035}} to reply to me 12:31, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Signpost (7), Graphs

Hey, two things. First of all Iwanted to check in on how the Signpost script work is going: I will finally have time to return to this task a-fresh after the 21st. Second of all, have you seen the new mw:Extension:Graph that has been enabled across all projects? This will finally allow actually fully advanced data visualizations to be embedded into Wikipedia, and with the capacity for off-site data hosting, it stands to make Wikipedia almost dynamic—IMO the biggest front-end tech advance on-wiki since Lua implementation. I will into it in more depth after the 21st, but because it's a fully featured data visualization engine (one that IMO severely lacks case examples) it looks like creating visualizations with it manually will be burdensome. A job for another day for all the Lua writers out there is going to be reducing it to more manageable cases via templates. At the moment, the hover trigger appears to be at least partially broken for me. ResMar 20:03, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

@Resident Mario: I finally found the time to update Module:Signpost to allow tag aliases. The list of aliases is at Module:Signpost/aliases. I haven't updated the tagger gadget to respect the aliases yet, though. The Graph extension does indeed look exciting, and there's already been a bit of discussion about it at Wikipedia:Lua/Requests/Archive 5#Wrap new Graph tag. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 02:39, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
A VDE exists for this, which should make things significantly simpler. As Inkscape to SVG, so too Lyra to D3, I suppose. ResMar 18:18, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

ASPO

If you're an admin, feel free to delete that redirect, a bunch of articles refer to ASPO for Lamaze, but I should have checked that we actually had an article. μηδείς (talk) 03:07, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

@Medeis: Thanks for the message. Actually, I was thinking it might be better to create a stub for it. It seems notable - there's an entire book about the history of Lamaze that's independent of Lamaze International. However, the chapter about the popularisation of Lamaze in America, which would include the foundation of the organisation, isn't available on Google Books. I'll keep looking and see if I find anything else that would work as a source. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 03:12, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
Well, it's related to a nomination at WP:ITN, but the nomination itself will probably fail. It's (Lamaze) not something I am versed in myself, I was just hoping to clean up a redlink, and sloppily assumed the existence of the name meant the existence of an article on the subject. Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 03:24, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Syed Ali Shah Geelani

page syed ali shah geelani has been semi protected but what is written there is against Wikipedia guidelines. You are requested to change it what was written before as some one Human3015 is editing it and writing about the person in such a way to defame the image of great person. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jimroh (talk • contribs) 07:49, 18 May 2015

@Jimroh: I've had another look at Human3015's edits, and I don't see anything defamatory. Could you tell me what edits you're referring to, specifically? Best — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 10:31, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Mr. Stradivarius -Could you please see the edits done by 93.169.187.79 dated 17 May, to Syed Ali Shah Geelani which Human3015 has changed. There are Authentic sources and then why it was deleted?

protection on impalement

There is a misrepresentation of the request on protection on impalement. Talk:Impalement/GA3 was written and opened for over 9 days. It was an individual assessment. The concerns on the page was not addressed. User:OccultZone has hidden it with this revert: [1].

I seems that User:I am One of Many have informed "major" contributors to the article but neglected to inform User:94.72.205.97.96.52.0.249 (talk) 13:36, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

MfD: Wikipedia:Lua/To do

I've put Wikipedia:Lua/To do up for MfDeletion. -DePiep (talk) 00:01, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

Articlehistory

Hi there! Hope the last few months treated you well.

I did some research, and found that the old |gacat= parameter in T:AH has been truly defunct since mid-2007. Consequently, I bit the bullet and removed the parameter from the 70-odd talk pages that still (uselessly) employed it. If you have time to do a little cleanup, you could drop the gacat handling from the module (and from the documentation) and delete Category:Article history templates with deprecated parameters. For that matter, Category:Wikipedia good biographies and its subcats could go as well.

I've been meaning to tell you that the introduction of explanatory error messages has been a huge bonus for me. Users are noticing their mistakes and figuring out how to fix them, and the cleanup workload at Category:Article history templates with errors has been reduced to a mere trickle. Success!

Thank you so much for your work on the template. I was pretty concerned when you showed up with a Lua rewrite just as we were finally getting a replacement FAC bot; things could have really gone haywire there, but they didn't, thanks largely to your willingness to listen. I hope we can tackle some of the to do list later this year. Maralia (talk) 04:44, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

@Maralia: Thanks for going through all those talk pages. I've removed the gacat code from the module, the docs, and the to-do list. I've also removed Category:Wikipedia good biographies and its subcats, but I've left Category:Article history templates with deprecated parameters, as we might well use that in the future if we decide to deprecate the currentstatus parameter. Although I suppose we could always use a different category for that. And also, thanks for the kind words - I'm glad that the module and those error message descriptions are doing their jobs well. :) — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 13:44, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

AfD: Pantacles of Athens has closed

The Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pantacles of Athens discussion has closed as a consensus "merge." The closing admin, SamWalton, identified four of the 40 articles for further talk page discussion whether they should be merged to the list or maintained as stand-alone articles: Talk:Dandes of Argos, Talk:Philinus of Cos (athlete), Talk:Oebotas of Dyme and Talk:Eurybus of Athens. Your input is requested on those article talk pages. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 20:04, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Need help at Bhojpuri wikipedia (bhwiki) regarding Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation/sandbox

Hi Sir! I am from Bhojpuri wikipedia (bhwiki) and first of all, let me tell you, I don't know programing. Thus, I will tell you my problem in simple language.

One of the users at bhwiki converted our citation templates to lua based templates which use "Module:Citation/CS1" and its supporting other modules. my problem is that we use Devnagari script to write dates e.g. ०५ जून २०१५ for 05 June 2015. and this produces error because "Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation" does not recognize them as numbers and month name as month.

I saw you provided some script to a Benagali wiki user in the past and I modified it to devnagari script too and created a module named "Module:BhToEn" on my wiki. But I don't even know how to call this module within 'Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation" to get my work done.

All (I think so) I need is to provide converted dates to this "Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation" in English and when they get validated, re convert them back to Devnagari script to be inserted into citation. I have somehow modified and created another "Module:EnToBh" to convert back to devnagari dates but here too, the same problem, I'm unable to use it within this module. I have sandbox versions of all these modules where I can test, e.g. "Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation/sandbox"; but what to test?

Is it possible that you can help me in any way?--Satyam Mishra --talk-- 15:10, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

@सत्यम् मिश्र: Sure, all that you need to do is use the require function to call your module inside Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation. Can you give me links to all of the modules involved? I'll see if I can get it working. Best — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 16:04, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for such a quick response! here are the links of freshly created test templates and modules:
  • I have created a test template to use bh:टेम्पलेट:Cite web/sandbox which is now being used at bh:प्रयोगकर्ता:सत्यम् मिश्र/sandbox
  • This template uses bh:Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox, bh:Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration/sandbox, bh:Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist/sandbox, and bh:Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation/sandbox
  • I have modified your script (to get Bhojpuri date text into English) and created bh:Module:BhToEn and its opposite is bh:Module:EnToBh which can convert English dates into Bhojpuri.
This is all I have. --Satyam Mishra --talk-- 17:13, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Protection request

Hi Mr. Stradivarius! The page List of awards and nominations received by Taylor Swift has been experiencing a lot of vandalism from non-Wikipedia users lately. I am humbly requesting for a semi-protection on the said page for us to further improve the page and leave it without worrying for vandals. Thank you very much! :) Mat 1997 (talk) 03:07, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

@Mat 1997: Hi Mat, and thanks for your message. :) It sounds like you're looking for the page Wikipedia:Requests for page protection. Just leave a new request there and an admin will review it and grant it if appropriate. (I try not to accept direct requests for admin involvement on my talk page, as people can sometimes see it as playing favourites.) Best — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 12:30, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Marreese Speights vandalism fest

Hi, Mr. Strad. I just noticed that we have had a vandalism fest ongoing at the Marreese Speights article for the last two days. Apparently Speights must a dunk in a high-profile NBA game, and every self-perceived funnyman in North America has decided to mess with his Wikipedia article. Can you put the article on an appropriate level of lockdown so that IPs and newly registered users cannot continue to vandalize it? Thanks. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 04:39, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

  • Nevermind, sir. The newbie admin, NeilN, jumped on it. Thanks. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 04:49, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
    • Heh. Saw it at WP:RFPP. --NeilN talk to me 04:54, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
      • Thanks, Neil. Recently RFPP is not that fast to respond, but apparently there's a new sheriff in town. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 04:59, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
        • I don't know about that. I see a lot of processed reports by CambridgeBayWeather and other admins. Hopefully many hands make light work and all that. --NeilN talk to me 05:20, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Script stuff

Strangest of strange things, the close/relist AfD and Delsort script now seem to work and I did not refresh or logout/login since the time I noticed the problem! There seems to be a minor issue with the Delsort script in that it hasn't picked up the selected options, but no biggie. However, I do remember having this nice template link on the top menu that took me to the admin dashboard and that has disappeared, it's the admindash script from Plastikspork on my monobook.js. cheers. —SpacemanSpiff 13:13, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

@SpacemanSpiff: Let's go with the Delsort script first. Which one are you using, and which options do you mean? — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 13:45, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
I'm using User:Fox Wilson/delsort-monobook.js and it has the ability to just select a few lists rather than having to go through the whole list every time, I have India (WP:DSI) and Cricket (WP:DSC) as choices, but it shows the whole list on the sidebar and not just these two. cheers. —SpacemanSpiff 13:54, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
@SpacemanSpiff: Ok, I've had some time to look at the delsort code, and it appears that the way you describe is the way that it has always worked. You can add extra choices to the delsort list from your personal js page, but you can't remove any of the default options. (I've added a note to the documentation about this.) Probably the best way to get this fixed is to leave Fox Wilson a message on his talk page - he still seems to be around on and off. I could do it myself, but I'd prefer to focus on code that is actually broken first, rather than feature requests. Which brings us to the admindash script - I'll have a look at this probably later on today. Best — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 04:32, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
@SpacemanSpiff: I've played around with the admindash script, and it looks as though a MediaWiki bug has stopped it from working. It's working in the Vector skin, but not any of the others. I'll have a poke around the MediaWiki code later on to see if I can work out what's wrong. (Whatever it is, I think it must be affecting all scripts, not just this one, so it's definitely worth the effort.) — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 06:38, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, From the history of my monobook it appears i had to switch delsort scripts because the old one stopped working and that is likely the reason for my confusion. That is also very likely linked to your other point about the mediawiki issue with non vector skins. I'm guessing that I'm one of the last few holdouts against vector so this may not bea big problem. Thanks again for checking thisout. Cheers --—SpacemanSpiff 06:56, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
@SpacemanSpiff: Actually, it turns out that the script only working in vector was more of a PEBKAC problem than a MediaWiki problem - I was trying to load scripts via my vector.js page, which of course isn't going to work in Monobook. Testing it from my common.js page, it works just fine. Does the link appear for you? — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 09:25, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
I've transferred my scripts to common.js, everything else seems to work except the admin dash (when I use monobook; have also done the usual logout, refresh/bypass cache etc), but this is more likely a Ten-T error on my part than anything else, I'll figure out where I've gone wrong on this. Eitherways, I'll probably switch to vector soon (once I get myself to accept that the eyesore of the skin is more functional!), so this problem isn't likely to exist much longer. Thanks again for your patient help! cheers. —SpacemanSpiff 16:02, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
@SpacemanSpiff: Aha, on actually trying out your setup, it seems that your use of defineLink was causing errors, as the function in Fox Wilson's delsort script had not yet loaded. I've made this edit to add the code specified in the docs, which should fix it. Is the admin dashboard link appearing for you now? — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 23:35, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
  • Yes it is working now -- on my tablet, but i'm guessing it shouldnt be a problem on my computer. Thank you very very much! —SpacemanSpiff 08:42, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Signpost (8)

How's the tagger going? It's currently freezing the contents of the page for me without displaying anything, but I don't know if that's because of a bug you are aware of and working on or because you're testing things out. In web console the error seems to be "TypeError: dialog.luaTitle is undefined". I'll have a lot less time to spend on this once the summer is over, so I hope you're getting close.

It's not related to article tagging, but I wrote something too this week—an FC importer script. ResMar 18:31, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Yep, it's broken at the moment, so it's quite likely that it will stop all your other scripts from running. I'm in the middle of restructuring it more sensibly so that the Dialog class isn't doing all the work, which might take a bit more time yet. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 12:32, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
Good to hear! Let me know when you're done, then. ResMar 16:30, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Template translation help?

I've been trying to translate {{User8}} into French as fr:Modèle:U8, but I can't seem to get the languages to work properly - it works as expected with no project set, but setting English as the project results in Utilisateur:Nikkimaria instead of User:Nikkimaria. Any idea how to fix this? Thanks, Nikkimaria (talk) 19:01, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

@Nikkimaria: These edits should fix it.[2][3] "User" and "User talk" are the canonical namespace names as well as the localised English names, so they will work on every project. As long as "User" and "User talk" aren't displayed in the template output, it's fine to use them on other-language wikis. You could also check for the {{{Projet}}} parameter and use "User" or "Utilisateur" accordingly, but the simplest way is just to stick with canonical namespace names. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 23:26, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
Better, but the contribs, edit-count and email are still French-only - any way to fix those? Nikkimaria (talk) 00:07, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
@Nikkimaria: I've fixed the contribs, but the edit-count and email will be more difficult. You would need to pass {{{Projet}}} through to the subtemplates, and then adjust their output depending on it. That's a big change that I don't really feel comfortable making without being able to explain my actions in French. Plus, if you're going to do that, you may as well change the whole thing to use Module:UserLinks. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 01:02, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
If you can give me a step-by-step of whichever of those you think is better, I can explain it in French - it's the tech part I'm struggling with at the moment. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:54, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Endurance International Group

@CambridgeBayWeather:@CmdrSharp:@72.234.220.38:

hola Mr. Stradivarius and CambridgeBayWeather (and 72.234.220.38 & CmdrSharp).

I am Talking to question editing and some type of edit-war on the "Endurance International Group" wikipedia article.

I have read about and researched the company and see that the wikipedia article article is always changing. Sometimes it has a lot of infos, other times not.

I then read the talk page and see a lot of edits and "warning" between editors. I write you because you had "frozen" and reverted the editing based on request of some users.

But to me, these users seem to be wrong. Two users, "TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom" & "EvergreenFir" seem to be the ones who want to remove a lot of the information, other users such as "72.234.220.38" & "CmdrSharp" have disagreed but they do not seem to be as respected or have the power to change things. The best edits of this article seem to have come from "72.234.220.38" last month - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Endurance_International_Group&oldid=663398624 - but this editor seems to have given up. "72.234.220.38" and "CmdrSharp" and others have been in the Talk page, but their opinions, even some that show the correct Wikipedia rules on editing are not listened to and their edits are always removed. I think always by either "TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom" or "EvergreenFir".

I am not a good English speaker and it is hard to say that it seems others maybe trying to hide this company's informations? Perhaps not, and it still can be found in the History, but compare oldid=663398624 to the current article and you can see what I am thinking. Maybe I am wrong?

Can anyone step in and maybe try solve this? No one tried to do the mediation/arbitration that was mentioned in the Talk section. Is that the only way?

Nothing is perfect, but here to me it looks like "bad" has won over "not perfect".

I talk a lot so muchas gracias for your time & consideration.

Ricardo

Hi Ricardo. The two users in question have been reverting the content because it was unacceptably promotional. The huge list of clients in this version, for example, seems calculated to make the company look good. Wikipedia isn't a place to advertise your company. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 12:48, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
Hi Mr. Stradivarius, gracias for the very rapid answer. What is not seen is that these are not list of clients. All these names are this company, "Endurance International Group". They are brands of the same one thing. They all belong to company. The reason the article (before being reverting by the two users) is interesting is it shows how big this internet company is by buying so many other smaller companies.

Maybe other users also confused that it is not advertizing clients?

The better article also has other numbers about finances that the current one does not have. This is muy excellent for researching.

I am just low reader, not editor, but can I propose putting back the better full article and asking other editors to work together to solve any problems?

Again, so much thanks for reading. I hope I do not take up too much of your time.

Ricardo — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.159.192.85 (talk) 13:02, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Okamoto Industries

Since i am new to writing articles in wiki i would be thankful if you could help me with re-structuring my page which was deleted i.e. Okamoto Industries,INC. MarkCalvert9749 (talk) 10:05, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

@MarkCalvert9749: You should probably submit it as a draft before it goes into the main article space - see Wikipedia:Articles for creation. Also, you need to make sure it's referenced and neutral - see Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. And if you have a conflict of interest, make sure you read our conflict of interest guidelines. Best — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 10:55, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Just a nod of thanks from a random brony/autoconfirmed user

I noticed you set pending changes protection to stop the "persistent vandalism" (presumably by aptly named "anti-bronies") on one of my favorite pages, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fandom. I know it's your job to keep the wiki in order, but I figured you wouldn't mind the thanks anyway. Feel free to archive this immediately, as it doesn't really require a response. I'm just happy knowing I thanked you, regardless of recognition.--Macks2008 (talk) 04:57, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

@Macks2008: Not at all! It's good to know that my usually thankless task of patrolling WP:RFPP isn't quite so thankless after all. :) — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 06:28, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
Well, thanks and... you're welcome? Yeah, why not. LOL :D... Say, do you have a bot that automatically posts a welcome message on new users' talk pages when they message you, or was that manual message on my talk page? Anyway, I'm glad I could make you feel better about what you do :-). Keep it up! Wikipedia is my go-to for information, and as I'm sure you're well aware, every bit helps.--Macks2008 (talk) 22:03, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
@Macks2008: That was manual... or rather, done with Twinkle. But I pushed the button, yes. :) — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 23:11, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

SpamUserPage gadget

I saw your notice at WP:AN#SpamUserPage gadget. Competition for the new Twinkle block module? ;-) I've been doing a lot of the type of RCP that your gadget is designed to help with, so I'll definitely try it out in the next few days. Thanks for putting in the programming effort.  —SMALLJIM  17:15, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Suggestions

I have a few suggestions for SUPG:

  • The link to SUPG in the block reason should be inside of an HTML comment so it doesn't show up for the blocked user.
  • If the user has any non-deleted contributions other than their user page, the script should notify you somehow. (Perhaps send you to their contribs page instead of their talk page?)
  • Maybe add "softerblock" and "causeblock" presets that work like the "soft" and "cause" links on WP:UAA. (I wrote these for myself in my common.js.)

Thoughts? Jackmcbarn (talk) 21:45, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

@Jackmcbarn: Good suggestions, thanks. :) I've implemented the first and the third because they were relatively easy, and I'll have a think about the second. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 22:06, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
@Jackmcbarn: About the second suggestion - Anna Frodesiak mentioned that she will check on the user talk page for messages about the deleted article, so it's perhaps worth opening it even if the user does have non-deleted contributions. Perhaps if we detect any non-deleted contributions, then instead of going to the talk page automatically, we stop, output a warning saying "This user has n existing contributions", and give links to the contribs page and the user talk page. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 11:14, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
That sounds like a good idea. Jackmcbarn (talk) 16:04, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

soablock

When using the spam-only account preset, the non-existent {{soablock}} is posted to the user page instead of {{uw-soablock}}. See User talk:Anh83I08356288 where this happened for me. It looks as if the same may apply to {{adblock}} and maybe others.  —SMALLJIM  18:50, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

@Smalljim: Whoops, not sure how that slipped through. The template names should all be fixed now. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 22:03, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks. I'm finding the gadget useful, though opportunities to use it aren't cropping up very often, hence the next subhead...  —SMALLJIM  10:57, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

User talk page spam

Quite a few spammers use their talk page instead of/as well as their user page, (e.g. User talk:SANSKAR BHARTI CONVENT SCHOOL - see deleted version) so would you reconsider its operation on UTPs? Maybe we could have a tickbox to confirm user talk page deletion if the gadget is invoked from that page and the spammer is the only contributor to it. And then perhaps provide an option to also delete the user page (and other userspace pages?) if they're also spammed.  —SMALLJIM  10:57, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

I'll put that on the to-do list. :) The trick with user talk pages is making sure that they get deleted after you post the talk page notice, not before. That's not a problem with other pages, so you can delete and notify concurrently, but with user talk pages you have to take care of the order. Checking the page history adds to the complexity as well. It's a good idea, but I'll need a free afternoon for it. As for deleting multiple user pages at once, that would also be a fairly big coding job. Perhaps if there's a demand? — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 11:27, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
(I think you should swap "before" and "after" in the 2nd sentence!) Don't let me force you: the important thing is that it's your gadget, so you must only do what you think is necessary - someone can fork it if they want to add functionality that you don't. It's the usual problem - KISS or bloat :)  —SMALLJIM  11:39, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
Uh, yeah, before, not after. That's the one. :) — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 13:33, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Database query errors

Twice now, when doing a Delete, block and notify, I've received red error messages against the "Blocking" item: Error: [nnnnnnnn] Database query error., and against the "Notifying" item: Error: There was an error while trying to block the user, so notification was aborted. In both cases the first item "Deleting" reports Done in green as expected.

The first time was a couple of days ago on Fonofriend (talk · contribs), when the error number was [31763314], and it's just happened again on ATC Healthcare International Corporation (talk · contribs) with an error number of [b7c90039]. In both cases there was no block recorded in the block log, but on trying to block again, there's an "already blocked" message: you can see this on the Fonofriend account - which I haven't touched since. On the second account, however, I have unblocked and reblocked, and the block log now shows the unblock and the new block, but no previous block.

It's only an intermittent problem (and one that I've never come across before), so I wonder if it's some sort of race condition, possibly due to attempting to block too soon after deleting the user page???  —SMALLJIM  11:49, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

This looks like a bug in the MediaWiki database code somewhere, and I'm guessing that you are right that it's a race condition. It also sounds like a bug that's hard to track down and fix, but one that could possibly be worked around by making deletion and blocking sequential instead of concurrent. I'll make the quick fix for now - fixing the underlying bug will be hard, especially as I don't know PHP or databases that well. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 13:08, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
@Smalljim: Ok, I've forced blocking to happen after deletion in the script. Let me know if you keep seeing these kinds of errors. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 13:36, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Signpost (n)

Hey, so I'm thinking it's time to take the tagging to stage I: getting as much community input I can muster to help define all of the tags that we're going to be using. You can see the draft of the FTE that I plan to run next week here. Everything going well on your end? Thoughts? ResMar 23:04, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

@Resident Mario: Getting community input sounds like a good plan. We should probably add all of the tags we have already to that etherpad - let me see if I can add them programmatically. (The categorising will have to be done by hand, though.) As for the tagger gadget, not much recent progress, sorry. I have some time today that I can work on it, though, so watch this space. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 03:37, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
@Resident Mario: Good news - the SignpostTagger gadget is now back in operation, and it supports tag aliases. The code is also a lot cleaner, meaning that future updates should be less painful. The next step will be to add a way to edit tag aliases through the gadget, but I think that will have to wait for another day. For now, you can add new aliases directly to Module:Signpost/aliases if you want. (Remember that all the tags and aliases should be in lower case and stripped of all whitespace and punctuation.) — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 11:47, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
Excellent to know! I'll test it out a bit tomorrow to see how it works. ResMar 01:18, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

It looks like I'm the first person to use this module (here), which I thought was surprising! Many thanks for your many utility modules. Alakzi (talk) 16:54, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

You're welcome. :) I guess I never advertised it. Let me know if you find any bugs, and if you feel like implementing the symmDiff function, please feel free. ;) — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 23:15, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
Good news - I might've uncovered an itsy bitsy bug in valueIntersection. Duplicates are not removed till the very end, so if any of its arguments contain duplicates, they become part of the intersection. For instance, the return value of p.valueIntersection({"b", "c"}, {"a", "a", "c"}) is {"a", "c"}. I'm quite the Lua amateur, so I'll leave it to you to fix in whichever way you feel best. Alakzi (talk) 14:21, 7 June 2015 (UTC) [Sets also used extensively here now. Alakzi (talk) 19:50, 7 June 2015 (UTC)]
@Alakzi: That's by design - sets are collections of distinct objects, so a set of {a,a,c} is the same thing as a set of {a,c}. That is, unless I've made a horrible mistake. :) If you need to find shared values between two tables while preserving duplicates, I'm afraid you might have to roll your own function. (I'm not aware of any modules that do that at the moment, at any rate.) — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 10:18, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
I think you might've misunderstood; the module is preserving duplicates in tables. The output of the intersection between {a,a,c} and {b,c} is {a,c}, whereas it should be {c}. Alakzi (talk) 10:28, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
Ah, of course. I'll take a look at that now. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 10:41, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
@Alakzi: Well, it ended up being two and a half weeks rather than "now", but I've fixed the duplication bug. In the process of fixing it, I also discovered a similar bug in valueComplement, and a bad variable name in valueIntersection that had been undiscovered up until now, both of which are also now fixed. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 06:39, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
;-) Thanks a lot. Alakzi (talk) 09:31, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

(Barnstar archived)

Thank you! I have to say, I actually feel pretty tired after fixing all those scripts. :) — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 16:27, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
Congratulations! And thank you for taking on that huge task. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:01, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
+1 for fixing my pretty unnecessary copy of contribsrange.  —SMALLJIM  22:34, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Searching user script pages

Hi, would you know if there's a way to compile a list of all user scripts where User:Dr pda/persondata.js is imported? insource: doesn't seem to work with source code, like stylesheets, scripts and modules - perhaps those pages are not indexed at all. Alakzi (talk) 00:58, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

@Alakzi: I remember trying to do something like this with an insource regex search, but I couldn't get it working. In the docs it says, "They aren't efficient and we only allow a few of them to run at a time on the search cluster", so perhaps that's why. The normal insource search just searches words, as you say, so there's no real difference between insource and normal searches for .js pages. Script imports don't show up in links or anything, so search is the only reliable way that I know of. You could try something like this - after some refining you should be able to get the false positives down to a reasonable level. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 01:09, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks again. I thought I'd message everyone that the script has been deprecated, but with 220 imports, it's probably easier to build some kind of notification into the script. Alakzi (talk) 01:27, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
@Alakzi: You could just use a mass message - that's probably easier than altering the script. I can give you the user right if you like, as you seem trusted enough and technically savvy enough. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 01:39, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
We could try that - though I'm beginning to wonder if many would actually care to receive such a message, much less an automated one. It says there, "mass messages should only be sent to groups of users who are likely to want their attention drawn to the message"; I don't wanna be ruffling any feathers. :-) Alakzi (talk) 01:55, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
@Alakzi: I think that users would likely want their attention drawn to the fact that they are using a deprecated script, but it's your call. Perhaps adding something to the script is a good idea after all. How about changing it so that instead of adding persondata, every time you click the "add persondata" link it issues an mw.notify popup saying that the script is deprecated? That should be pretty easy to do and will stop people from using it to add persondata. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 02:38, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
That was suggested at the MfD; I think it's a good idea. I could see how it's done, but I've not got permission to edit another user's script. Alakzi (talk) 02:51, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
@Alakzi: If you want to code it up, you can do it in a personal .js page and then make an edit request at User talk:Dr pda/persondata.js. Or I can do it if you want - it shouldn't take that long. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 03:04, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
I'd be indebted. I know I could make an edit request, but I'm the lazy sort. Alakzi (talk) 03:17, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
@Alakzi: It is done. Let me know if you think the message needs tweaking. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 05:10, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
I could search the April 2015 dump if wanted (I think I have a version which includes user script pages). Johnuniq (talk) 03:33, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
Thank you, Mr. Stradivarius, and thanks for offering, John, but that's probably not necessary now. Alakzi (talk) 11:00, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks very much...

...for your support over at my RfA. I shall do my best to be worthy of it.

I also suspect you will appreciate it if I told you I don't intend to fiddle around. Hahahahahahahahahahaha *hack* (sorry) --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 08:39, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

👍 Like :D — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 13:03, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

New template for Italian books

Mr. Stradivarius:

Thank you **very** much for your work on the new template. If you don't mind, I'll go with Template:Sbn/sandbox given that it's "in place". More about the template below...

I looked at your User page and felt compelled to comment on two items:

  • WikiDefcon 4
After fixing 1000s of broken ISBNs, I came to a similar conclusion--vandalism is way down. That's good news. (Unfortunately, it's been replaced by lots of shamelessly self-promoting autobiographical articles....)
  • This user lives in Hokkaido.
Lucky you. In my younger years, I lived in Kakegawa for a short time. A couple of summers ago, my older son went to Tokyo for three weeks to attend a Japanese language course and to live with a host family. We quite like Japan.

Back to the template...

  • As you suggested, I tried putting a bad code (an ISBN instead of an SBN) into the template. Thought the template handled it properly--an attention-getting error message that clearly states: '978-0-12345-1234' is not a valid SBN code.
  • Only one ridiculously trivial request...
Any possibility of renaming the template from "Sbn" to "SBN" to match the acronym and to agree with templates such as Template:OCLC and Template:ASIN?

Thanks again for your work. Really clean, understandable code in the template. Knife-in-the-drawer (talk) 03:15, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

@Knife-in-the-drawer: Ok, I've moved the templates/modules to SBN. The message "'978-0-12345-1234' is not a valid SBN code" is from the module; Template:SBN/sandbox gives a less informative error:
  • {{SBN/sandbox|978-0-12345-1234}}{{SBN/sandbox|978-0-12345-1234}}
It would be possible to do something neater with that by using the |nomatch= parameter with Module:String#match, but as the code gets more complicated it starts to look better and better to just do it in Lua (in my opinion). Also, it's nice to hear from a fellow Japan-lover. :) — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 04:33, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you

(Barnstar archived)

@Anna Frodesiak: You're very welcome, and thank you for the barnstar! I'm glad that my scripts are finding use. :) (Also, I was just thinking how I would like a fly-eyeball barnstar. OK, I wasn't, but now I see that fly eyeballs are kind of cool.) — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 13:47, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Rollback tool

Hi, when looking around a bit I saw User:Mr. Stradivarius/gadgets/ConfirmRollback and I got really interested. I have been thinking about asking for rollback rights, but ended up using twinkle instead. Now with this alternative where you can control where the rollback link should be displayed and how it should behave, I am interested in trying it. I just have a few questions if you dont mind?

  1. Under section configuration it says that configuration goes into skin.js but when I click on that I end up at vector.js. Is that the same or what is happening?
  2. If after the installation is done and skin.js/vector.js is not modified and/or removed at a later stage, will that mean the rollback links will not be shown anywhere?
  3. I see this seems fairly new. Has there been any issues?

Anyway I really like what I have read. Nice work! Qed237 (talk) 15:51, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

I finally managed to find anwser to question 1 at Wikipedia:Skin#Customisation (advanced users) on my own, but I would appreciate an answer on the others. Thank you. Qed237 (talk) 14:33, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
@Qed237: Let me answer those in turn:
  1. Yes, skin.js is programmed to point to your current skin's JavaScript page, which in your case is User:Qed237/vector.js. If you want the rollback behaviour to apply to all skins, not just the Vector skin, you can put it in User:Qed237/common.js instead.
  2. Rollback links are shown by default, so they won't be hidden, no. This relies on JavaScript loading, though.
  3. No issues so far, and all my testing has worked. However, please let me know if you notice anything strange. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 15:28, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the answers, just some follow ups:
  1. I have some minor experience in programming, but I have no idea how skins and vector (and common) work so I trust in your installation manual, which you changed to commons?. As long as it works it does not matter to me.
  2. Okay, I was thinking about User:Mr. Stradivarius/gadgets/ConfirmRollback#Recommended where you set display parameter to none. That hides all the rollback links doesn't it?
  3. Sounds great, first I would have to apply for rollback-rights but also think if I want to start editing in common.js as I have never been in that "territory" before. — Qed237 (talk) 15:41, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
@Qed237: About #2: yes, that code hides the links with CSS, and then the gadget shows them again with JavaScript. This is to prevent a "flicker" effect where rollback links have the default behaviour until the JavaScript loads. If you turn JavaScript off, or if JavaScript fails to load for some reason, then the links will always be hidden. Usually the links should work just fine, though. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 16:08, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
Okay that sounds great. Once again I would like to say: Nice work! I will take a moment to think through my options (I can always continue using twinkle), but I am truly interested in testing this method. Qed237 (talk) 16:11, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Module:Dts

I wouldn't put too much effort into the current Module:Dts. I wrote that before I knew about the one at Module:Sandbox/Dts, and I like that one much better, since it isn't mainly written as a bunch of expandTemplate calls. Jackmcbarn (talk) 00:05, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

@Jackmcbarn: Ah yes, I remember that one. I see it even has test cases. I'll play around with it a little. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 00:55, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

MfD nomination of Module:Comma separated entries

Module:Comma separated entries, a page you substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Module:Comma separated entries and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Module:Comma separated entries during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. Jc86035 (talk • contribs) Use {{re|Jc86035}} to reply to me 04:15, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Have you heard of ...

Greetings, Mr. Stradivarius. I've lost contact with Codename Lisa. She's not responding on any of the many communication channels I've tried. Maybe this post is a shot in the dark but you and she have had some past contacts. Do you happen to know anything? Fleet Command (talk) 21:32, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

@FleetCommand: Sorry, no, I haven't heard anything from CL recently, and I don't have any special way of contacting them. Leaving a message on their talk page and/or sending an email is about as good as you can do, I think. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 22:06, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
"Their"? Who else do you mean? Fleet Command (talk) 23:49, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
@FleetCommand: That's the singular they - I'm probably just being overly politically correct. :P — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 00:46, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
Thanks anyway. Well, I guess I have one more reason to find CL: Her being a linguist and probably being able to tell me all about this "singular they" affair.
Fleet Command (talk) 10:37, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

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Send on behalf of The Wikipedia Library using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:31, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

GA topic names

It seems that some of the GA topic names listed at WP:GA/SM (which is where the documentation points users to choose a topic name) are not included in Module:Good article topics/data. The one that came to my attention was Computing and engineering. Can any missing topics be added to the Lua module please? SpinningSpark 13:47, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

@SpinningSpark: I've added some of the missing ones. Feel free to add more yourself - if you copy the other syntax on the page, you should be fine. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 16:06, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
Ta. SpinningSpark 17:08, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

Signpost (α)

Just a note, I overwrote my voter template with yours at the Signpost and embedded it in a new layout for the paper. You can see it in action here. Work on tagging progress, albeit slowly...ResMar 00:56, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Everything seems to be working, but can you fix the break issue displayed here? By adding a center tag when break is turned on, I think. ResMar 03:23, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
@Resident Mario: Could you be more specific? What behaviour are you looking for, and what does it look like for you at the moment? A quick screenshot might help. Also, what browser are you using? I seem to remember that I tried out some fancy new HTML to make the buttons line up properly, so it might be that the thing I used might not be supported in your browser. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 03:36, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
Firefox—sure, must be some HTML if it isn't working in Firefox :(. ResMar 03:40, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
Here. ResMar 03:41, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
@Resident Mario: Ok, so Firefox is supported, as that's what I used to test the code, and your screenshot is how I meant for it to look. :) What do you want it to look like? — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 03:44, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
Shouldn't the buttons be centered? I don't see the symmetry in this configuration. Maybe if it was left-ragged, sure, but right-ragged with an indeterminate margin on the left? I'd just do margin=auto and be done with it. ResMar 03:46, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
@Resident Mario: The group of buttons is centered, and the individual buttons are aligned to the left of that centered group. That was my attempt to get a centered look but to still have the text line up. That's not to say that's the best way of doing things, though. Just making everything center-aligned is also an option. Perhaps I'll work some demos up in a sandbox tomorrow to show the different approaches we might take. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 14:59, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Two small things

Hello Mr. Stradivarius. I've been using your SUPG a lot and it is great! Two small things I can't figure out that maybe you can help with:

  • I would love to have the "Delete and block" item higher up in the box so I don't have to scroll down to click it.
  • I would love to have it default to soa and not spamu.

If you can, and it is not too much trouble, I'd be very grateful.

Best,

Anna Frodesiak (talk) 05:31, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

@Anna Frodesiak: I've changed the default preset to be soa. That's one of the gadget's configuration options, so it was pretty easy. Moving the "Delete and block" item higher up should be pretty easy too - do you want it to go right at the top, or is there a set place you would like it to be? — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 06:13, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
Fantastic! Yes, please, the second item in the box would be great, right under {{spamublock}}
Many, many thanks! :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 06:28, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
@Anna Frodesiak: Ok, done it. Enjoy. :) — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 06:42, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
Perfect! Thanks you so much! :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 06:46, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Another useful script

Hi, User:Mr. Stradivarius and User:MusikAnimal.

Please see:

Could the spamscripts you've made be modified to do this?

Best,

Anna Frodesiak (talk) 22:38, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

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