Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 03:15, 20 January 2006

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West publishing is not a wiki

I do not agree with the statement that the situation with Misplaced Pages is equivalent to the decisions in West Publishing cases. Misplaced Pages can clearly be distinguished on the facts. How? it is two way, not one way and West just adds trivial stuff as a corporate entity, here you have a voluntary association with thousands of members (unless you confuse Wikimedia with Misplaced Pages, they are not the same thing at all). Moreover, there is the issue of a group copyright owned jointly, when you say you are working for Misplaced Pages this means you are representing all contributors, therefore the rights owned by the conglomerate of Wikipedians taken together is an exclusive right, no matter how you look at it as no one else collectively owns the rights. This is what makes wiki software a true innovation vis-a-vis copyright law. Copyright is owned collectively by a group on the wiki (no where else) and anyone on the wiki who decides to represent themselves as the spokesperson for the group can do so, as is often done and tolerated here as a matter of custom. I would not make pronouncements about law that are untested, just argue for all of the options that could be put forward, unless you want to sue Misplaced Pages to find out I doubt that we will have any clear cut answer, but my position is that Misplaced Pages does have a copyright as it is not the same as the software developed by the Free Software Foundation. Cheers. — Alex756 04:51, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I distinguish between the Misplaced Pages, a business unit of the Wikimedia Foundation, with a trademark I think is owned by that Foundation (if its ownership is clear at all), and Wikipedians. If the Misplaced Pages/Wikimedia Foundation owns the copyright it can assign it (perhaps accidentally as part of a print deal) or otherwise limit its freedom. That's a strongly negative result for a work intending to be free, so avoiding any possibility of the Misplaced Pages/Wikimedia Foundation owning the work is necessary to keep the work free. Avoiding the whole Misplaced Pages work being a collective work owned by all who have contributed any article is necessary to avoid any potentially infringing party contributing something to a few articles and then being protected from infringement claims as a co-author. Viewing each article as an individual work, owned only by those who have made a copyright-significant contribution seems like a safer course. Not as easy for taking infringement action becuase it's necesssary to find a useful subset of Wikipedians (those who have contributed article work) to be a sufficiently substantive part of a work that prevailing will harm the infringing work substantially. That is doable, provided he Misplaced Pages/Wikimedia Foundation is behaving properly. If it ever seeks to abuse its position, via soe future board we can't know about, the required support for infringement actions will dry up and it'll find itself powerless to take infringement action against forks seeking to behave properly. It's a very useful strategy to help to keep the work free. The usual indemnification clauses for a publication contract seems to me to be best provided for by insurance, not by discouraging contributors by trying to get them to indemnify for things happening in jurisdictions they don't contemplate, in forms they may never have contemplated - more a business argument than a legal one. Jamesday 01:02, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Your advice on an image sought

Hello Jamesday, could you please take a quick look at Image:mjf_1983.png and tell we whether or not using this picture on Montreux Jazz Festival this is indeed fair use. Thanks, Lupo 12:13, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Wow, that was fast! Muchas graçias! Lupo 12:19, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)

You wrote: Please refrain from engaging in the revert war over the redirect at Terrorism against Israelis. The matter is in discussion at the talk page of Violence against Israelis and that's the place to sort out what the article should be called. If you revert again prior to the matter being resolved by discussion I'll protect the page so resolution can happen through consensus rather than a revert war. Jamesday 16:35, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Yes indeed, the matter is under discussion when User:Viajero started editting that page and others it refers to...I have been reverting his edits. his edits are based upon the assumption that his view will prevail...it very well might, but the edits should wait for the discussion to resolve the matter, I would think. As can be seen from the edit which began the matter:

(cur) (last) . . 11:06, 10 Feb 2004 . . Viajero (#REDIRECT Violence_against_Israelis) OneVoice 18:28, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

JamesDay, please take a look at the text at the end of Talk:EdPoor it seems that the non-stop deletion of material and revision of articles is being persued by Viajero and Zero0000 on a number of other pages with the two acting in concert. OneVoice 19:26, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Copyright

Sorry. I didn't think that was fair use. --Ed Senft! 13:07, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The page where I got it doesn't said something of a permission. There are other pics with the advice to ask for a permission, but not at this one, so it think that no permission is needed. Sp4z 16:17, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Yes I realize that I made that mistake. I don't know if that image is fair use. Personally, I think it is ugly and might not belong in wikipedia (some ugly things belong in wikipedia though). Is this image fair use in your opinion? --Ed Senft! 17:35, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Swapping articles

Please don't do anything to the articles Bogosort, Stupid sort and Stupid sort swap temp or variations of them for the next hour. I'm swapping a new version of Bogosort which was written at Stupid sort with bogosort and someone renaming back part way through the move causes a random version to be deleted. In this case, it was the new one. I'll let you know when the swap and is complete so you can see why preserving the history rather than doing a copy and paste move was the course agreed in IRC discussion. Jamesday 17:54, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I am sorry about this matter. I had no idea. I saw swap in the title but the algorithm seems not quite related to swapping, though it is involved. So I just changed the name. Please regard this as an accident, careless. -- Taku 18:14, Feb 11, 2004 (UTC)

Copyright question

A new user asked me if it was acceptable to download images from Misplaced Pages, alter them, and repost them to Misplaced Pages. I told him it was, as I'm fairly sure, but I'd like some confirmation. This is OK, right? And is it in any way affected by the source of the image (e.g. fair use etc.)? Thanks very much, Meelar 22:24, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Request for Comments on Plautus satire

Your comments are requested on Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Plautus satire. →Raul654 05:14, Feb 19, 2004 (UTC)

I don't work for NASA. After receiving your message, I updated my user page to make that clear. NASA 22:26, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Is that possible? How do I change my name? I looked for it in the preferences. I want to change the name to FBI or CIA. NASA 22:59, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Plautus satire (again)

James - it appears that Plautus has decided to ignore what you have told him (to move to less conspiracy-theory suseptible articles), and has instead decided to take to expand his tin-foil hattery vandalism to include several other articles. A glance at his talk page shows that talking with him in an excercise in frustration. I think you might want to reconsider your vote at Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Plautus satire. →Raul654 02:17, Feb 21, 2004 (UTC)

USAF Museum images

I agree with you that the USAF Museum's conditions of use are probably over-reaching, in terms of copyright -- merely scanning, cropping, resizing, levels adjustment don't rise to the level of artistic output. The only legal leg they have to stand on is that SOME material in the USAF Museum's archives is not public domain, but donated from corporations or individuals and under different conditions of use, and the museum doesn't want the responsibility of keeping track of which images on their web site are from PD sources and which aren't.

It seems mostly, though, to do with a bad attitude. Firstly, a resentment of their scanning work being used by other websites. Secondly, that they want people to have to come to their website to get the info so that they get website hits to boast of (justifying their mission, I guess).

They offer the justification of 'well, you always had to come to our archives in person before to get USAF images, so it's not like we're taking anything away'. Well, they say on the same site that their archives are (post Sep 11 2001) closed to the public!

My considered opinion about the images being used on Misplaced Pages: we most likely have the legal right to do so. However, given the Museum's stated opposition to such use, we are probably better off using images whose source doesn't disapprove of the use; and sources where we can verify that the images are indeed public domain, which the USAF Museum won't do.

What is really stupid about the USAF site is that they say "Information presented on the USAF Museum web site is considered public information and may be distributed or copied", but then try and impose conditions. Now, I'm not sure what the precise legal definition of public information is, but on all other US Government websites that I have seen, "public information" is synonymous with public domain.

Their mealy-mouthed excuse about the Research division archives being indexed differently than the website is, in my opinion, a bunch of crap. THEY should have done the cross-referencing before putting the photographs on the website. Others, like the Naval Historical Center can do it, and the NHC is not exactly a huge organisation. The rules may "always have been this way", but that is no excuse for not changing things to reflect the internet. It also doesn't reflect post-9/11. Perhaps they should think about cataloguing their holdings properly? If they have volunteers who are willing to run a website, perhaps they could get volunteers who are willing to catalogue things. Also, perhaps they should not be running the website on a .mil domain if it is a private website.

All in all, I agree it is a completely ridiculous situation. I will email them to try and cajole them into changing the wording of their site. They certainly need to. David Newton 19:40, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

On the online law section, I've put in the relevant bits of current British copyright law to define what constitutes a work eligible for copyright in the UK. I've also found a definition on the UK Patent Office site that defines what exactly originality is for a work in the UK. David Newton 03:28, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Linkback

It appears that v2.0 of cc-by will have a linkback requirement: see http://creativecommons.org/drafts/license2.0 , section 4(d). CC summarised it as "Licensees will only be required to link back to licensors if (1) it's reasonably practical to do so; (2) the licensor actually specifies a URI; (3) that URI actually points to license information about the work". So, that's nice. Martin 20:02, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

ISS

I looked but could no longer find the article I read which claimed 75% completion of spacewalk tasks. Probably means they were wrong and pulled the article (or edited it beyond recognition) Rmhermen 22:49, Mar 1, 2004 (UTC)

Look, of course the editor was not a new user. It's obvious that it's Lance/Hector. But LanceMurdoch and HectorRodriguez weren't banned. This user has a problem with POV, but he's being singled-out because his ideology isn't popular. On the Stalin article, for instance, most of his changes were long needed. Please don't make a sweeping change back to the 2/28 version. 172 01:41, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Best Wishes

Hi, just received your wishes on my talk. I would like to give you my Best Wishes for Happiness, Good Luck and Peace Profound. Optim 19:11, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Deleted Userpages

• Yes, you can undelete my userpage/talkpage, and list them on speedy deletions. Optim 19:53, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

As you can see, this has the effect of redlinking everything Optim's ever signed. I agree the history should go at his request, but there ought to be a placeholder I think. - Hephaestos|§ 20:14, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

revert wars

I opened your talk page to thank you for illustrating how to interject in a numbered list without screwing up the numbering (I didn't realise it was possible)... then I notice you've made a great suggestion for refinement too.  :) Do you think it would be more useful to change the voting headings to say "I support the propsal with this amendment", "I am opposed to the proposal including this amendment" or something like that, so that people who were in favor of my idea can still vote to say that they prefer/like yours also? Otherwise none of the yes votes to my proposal can be considered to be backing your amendment, and perhaps some of them would prefer that? fabiform | talk 14:44, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Done! And I just realised that I had appeared to vote in a html comment in every section. Whoops, they were supposed to show as <!--- #~~~~ ---> for quick voting, not make me look terminally undecided.  :) fabiform | talk 15:42, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp.

The page you created, Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., is on VfD right now. Just thought you might want to know, in case you were planning to use it. Yours, Meelar 15:45, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Copyright question

Hi, Mikkalai has asked my advice on the issues raised at Talk:The Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire. I think you would be able to better help that I can, so I hope you don't mind me redirecting this question to you. Angela. 20:11, Mar 14, 2004 (UTC)

24 hour bans for edit wars

Hi Jamesday,

I've amended the proposal on 24 hour bans for edit wars. In short, the amendment calls for a quickpoll to take place before any such ban can be implemented. If you support this, I'd like you to add your vote in favor to the 24 hour ban vote, with the comment "with quickpolls".

Please also participate in the discussion on Misplaced Pages talk:Quickpolls.—Eloquence 22:16, Mar 14, 2004 (UTC)

Heh. Thanks for catching that sysop editing thing. I guess we've got a lot of repeat violators ... —Eloquence 22:47, Mar 14, 2004 (UTC)

Re: Freedom Tower

Hi Jamesday, this topic has already been discussed and resolved. It is true that these images are copyrighted and I clearly put it is copyrighted and the source which it was released to the public by the LMDC. If you have any more questions you can reply back on my Talk Page or the Freedom Tower Talk Page. -ZackDude

Again, the specification image of the Freedom Tower has already been discussed. It's actually still on my talk page. The image was re-released by me into the Public Domain and that is all to it. - ZackDude 01:31, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)

message

I intially agreed with your view apprently it depends on the time zone as to whether it is one day or not. GrazingshipIV 03:58, Mar 31, 2004 (UTC)

"Republican" Clarke

I think I understand your point, but I think we have a problem with the description of Clarke as a Republican. He served both Republican and Democratic administrations (all eight years of Clinton). To tag him "Republican" suggests a Republican critic of a Republican president, but his role is this dispute is more professional and perhaps personal than political, per se.

IOW, he is an advisor rather than a politician, which is suggested by mentioning his party identification, and should be viewed in a different light than if a well-known but maverick Republican like John McCain (for example) were to oppose Bush. Cecropia 06:40, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Polish

I don't suppose you want to take on yourself to standardize Krakow/Kraków or Gdansk/Gdańsk in the St Mary article and the relevant article titles. :) --Dante Alighieri | Talk 22:44, Apr 5, 2004 (UTC)

Meta sysop

Congratulations! You are now a Meta administrator. Please read the Meta:Deletion policy before deleting anything, and make sure you understand how to edit pages such as the fundraising page before doing so. Angela. 21:39, Apr 12, 2004 (UTC)

Fair use of music

Excellent! This means I'll go back to providing samples for a couple of artists. Thanks for the information. Fredrik 23:18, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Since I'm from Sweden, would that mean any infringements will be subject to Swedish law? Hmm. Anyway, the one clip I've uploaded before is media:Giant Steps.ogg, which is less than 30 seconds long and tagged with copyright information... Fredrik 23:44, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

eh James. Thanks for the m:Steward matter :-) It meant a lot to me :-) 'cause these were hard times. Feel free to criticize if I wander SweetLittleFluffyThing 20:06, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I'm sure it'll happen eventually.:)

Knowing myself, I am sure it will happen ;-)

Perhaps mediation?

Given the disputes you're involved in, have you considered the use of mediation between you and those you're disagreeing with as a possible way to resolve the disputes? Jamesday 21:28, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

"Mediation" will not likely resolve the disputes, as there is a cabal of "lying hypocrites" within Misplaced Pages that will not listen to reason nor act in "good faith", and will do and say "anything", including "bald-faced" lies, in their slanderous campaign to have me banned and censored and mostly due to my "unpopular" religion of cosmotheism that requires me to uphold the WHOLE TRUTHS of REALITY, for their own sake, without regard to egotism or self-delusion.-PV

Adminship

I have nominated you for adminship at sep11:Misplaced Pages:Administrators. --"DICK" CHENEY 16:00, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

I just wanted to let you know that Maximus Rex now has 80% support at sep11:Misplaced Pages:Administrators --"DICK" CHENEY 01:57, 16 May 2004 (UTC)

Scatman John

I replied to your comment. Check out my comment page. ---Dagestan

Hello--Jimbo The troll Slayer 05:22, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

From Chris Mahan

Answered your questions on my talk page. Christopher Mahan 15:47, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

Thank you for your questions. I've replied at User talk:Angela/Questions. Angela. 21:02, May 13, 2004 (UTC)

Your question

Just to let you know, I have posted my response to your inquiry at User:Michael Snow/Candidate statement and discussion. --Michael Snow 00:40, 14 May 2004 (UTC)

Opt-out

Hi. I'm active mostly at Japanese wikipedia, but interested in learning a bit more about how legal matters are handled here.

I saw your statement at Misplaced Pages:Submission_Standards/copyright_compliance_opt_out_application. I am wondering if I may ask you to tell me what that is about.

I understand that it is about enforcing potential GFDL violation. I also see that you are concerned about your licensee (esp. when they use your contents under different licenses such as, say, BSD or creative commons attribution).

But as I read the submission standards, the Wikimedia Foundation does not act as the exclusive compliance enforcement agent. More importantly, the standards seem to say that Wikimedia Foundation act only when certain conditions are met, and if you allow others to use your content elsewhere, then the Foundation does not enforce your right.

So, it seems you don't need to opt-out at all.

Thanks, Tomos 02:21, 14 May 2004 (UTC) (P.S. I check this page later, so you don't have to reply in my talk page or notify me.)

Please first look at the version as it existed at the time . With the current versions the concerns include:

• The agency grant threatens the freedom (as in speech) of the work. The Wikimedia Foundation may eventually receive a legal judgment against it which transfers its rights to a third party or a board 5 or 50 or 80 years from now may want to "encourage" large reusers to get licenses, perhaps to help it charitably distribute print versions. The agency agreement gives such an inheritor a weapon to use against reusers which wouldn't be available otherwise. We've seen some large formerly free projects go private in is sort of way and it's important to prevent it from being possible for this work. It's an unpleasant future I hope won't happen but contracts need to provide for unpleasant futures as well as pleasant ones. If you don't think it can happen, look at the SCO case to see how thin an argument needs to be for it to become very expensive for those defending their lawful rights to use something. This sort of situation is also why I grant other parties an agency to take legal action to enforce my rights against the Misplaced Pages.
  • The revised version helps to reduce the scope for this. In the earlier versions it was possible for the Misplaced Pages to stop distributing things needed to comply with the GFDL, then take legal action against people for not complying because it wasn't providing the information needed to comply. Note that I'm confident that the current board and Jimmy Wales wouldn't even remotely consider this - it's the legal judgment, Jimmy Wales hit by a bus and such cases I'm considering.
• The way Misplaced Pages works is generally that those most interested in a subject take care of it. In this case, that means that those with the greatest interest in a restrictive interpretation of the GFDL are likely to be the ones doing the enforcing. That's contrary to our objective of producing a widely reusable encyclopedia, in part because the GFDL terms are very unpleasant for most casual reusers - schoolchildren, for example, or bloggers who might want to use part of an article.
• It assumes that the community can't be trusted to decide whether something is worth signing up to stop. That also encourages excessive enforcement and makes reuse less likely. An explicit opt in for a specific case would tend to reserve legal action only for situations which are significant enough to matter, letting casual reusers do what we intend: use the work quite freely. I did volunteer to be one complainant in a case which was significant, using the DMCA/OCILLA article as the basis for a DMCA/OCILLA takedown notice.:) That case was resolved prior to that becoming necessary.
• It's not only the licenses I grant here which matter. I've written things elsewhere with licenses unrelated to those on my user page and then contributed them here. It's not fair for those other reusers to place them at risk of getting a takedown notice without asking me first so I can confirm that they don't have a license from me. It's also not unlikely that at some point I, writing under a pseudonym elsewhere, would receive a takedown notice for things I've contributed here and might then have unpleasant choices relating to compromising my own anonymity elsewhere. Those non-Misplaced Pages licensees have the right for the existence and terms of their licenses to remain private if they wish, without the Misplaced Pages sending a takedown notice forcing their disclosure.
• One requirement for sending a DMCA/OCILLA takedown notice is that the sender must be acting on behalf of an exclusive rights holder. That has the effect of preventing the sort of one licensee acting against another licensee situation I've described above, assuming only that the exclusive rights holder won't make baseless infringement claims. That's problematic here, because the agency grant is automatic - we don't ask whether there are any other licensees, we assume that there aren't. That undermines the effect of the exclusive rightsholder requirement and will result in us acting like the RIAA and sending invalid infringement notices. I don't want to be in that sort of company and I don't want the Misplaced Pages sending out invalid takedown notices in my name. The changes since I opted out reduce this possibility but it's still significant. An opt in system eliminates this problem, because opting in can require a declaration that the works haven't been licensed in any other way.
• I'm entirely happy to opt in to support action against people who I know aren't my licensees and who are doing something substantive in the way of infringement. Taking action against sites with a 10,000 Alexa ranking or individuals using articles just serves to harm our reputation, IMO, and gets in the way of the possibility of us becoming THE free (bear and freedom) encyclopedia of the internet.
• So, if you license your works elsewhere, or if you want to ensure that the work stays free even if bad futures happen, I think it's still best to opt out. Jamesday 17:06, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your informative explanation, Jamesday. Would you mind if I rephrase and confirm some of your points (some implicit) I find significant?

• Your action is not out of suspicion to the current Foundation or Jimmy. But it is a preparation to some of the worst-case senarios.
• The right to act as an agent could be transferred by a court decision to another party.
• Because the Foundation receives such a right from massive amount of contributors through opt-out system, it is indeed a powerful "weapon". Virtually only the Foundation can obtain such a collection of rights.
• The current opt-out system make it possible for the Foundation to wrongly assume that contents are not licensed elsewhere. (Or I should perhaps say that by not opting-out, users let the Foundation make wrong assumption?)
• Aggressive enforcement efforts based on that assumption could result in unreasonable legal and financial burdens on the side of the reusers. That has the effect of discouraging reuse.
• You think that the current version of the submission standards has small but still significant chance of allowing that possiblity.

Tomos 01:36, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

Yes, that's a good summary. You might want to look at the past GFDL infringement actions to decide whether you are comfortable with the significance of the cases where action has been taken. I'm comfortable with some and uncomfortable with others. Jamesday 15:30, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

Question regarding license compatibility issues

I have responded to your question at User:Anthony_DiPierro/questions. anthony (see warning) 11:46, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

And again to your followup question. anthony (see warning) 10:29, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

The White Nationalist FAQ was, apart from a POV piece by a banned user, also a copyright violation. Danny 01:38, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

Star of the County Down

I listed it on VfD again. There is nothing in the article to indicate why it needs its own article. RickK 02:43, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

Queick deletion of blatant nonsense is totally appropriate. RickK

I see that your talk page is protected because of that vandal so I'll at least temporarily reply here. The article in the version you deleted said at the end "This song shares its melody with the church hymn Led By the Spirit" and at the start contained the standard VfD notice. You gave in the deletion log the reason "03:26, 14 May 2004 RickK deleted "Star of County Down" (lyrics are copyrighted)". A quick Google search showed me its significance as an old Irish ballad. The notice told everyone that it was listed on VfD, the text gave some idea of its significance and you gave copyvio as the reason for the deletion. Again, please follow the copyvio, deletion and quick deletion policies. Jamesday 03:30, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

PD

Hi, could you comment here as I am not sure what you were saying yesterday, but I think it contradicts this: MediaWiki talk:PD-USGov. Thanks, Dori | Talk 00:34, Jun 2, 2004 (UTC)

Please Help Me

Thank you for your support. To make a long story short (or perhaps not so short), when I wrote the majority of my articles, I was an anonymous user. I believe that the site had some number to track my movements, and at any rate that number became attached to me. Because I was new to the site, I did not know that I wasn't allowed to put my name at the end of articles. In fact, I only began doing so after my mother (I am 19 years old) said that my articles were high quality and that I should take credit for them. Then Moriori sent me a message asking me if my articles were copyright infringements. I did not know how to use the user talk feature at the time, but I tried to reach him at his e-mail address. I am not very experienced with e-mail, and whether it was my ignorance of virtual communication, a malfunction of my computer or Internet service or a malfunction of his e-mail site I don't know, but at any rate I was unable to reach him. Later on my father suggested that I register using my own name so that it would be clearer that I was the author of the articles I'd taken credit for. This was when Moriori became convinced that I'd changed my user name (even though to my knowledge I never had one), and began spreading reckless reports that I was committing copyright infringement. It was around this time that I learn how to respond with user talk, and when Moriori repeatedly called me a "troll" (which I gather is a slang term for someone who commits copyright infringement) and with his propaganda won over some of the more powerful users of this site, he and I exchanged angry "user talks" in which he demanded that I remove my articles from the site and I threatened to sue him for libel for his false accusations. Although I repeatedly attempted to explain the situation to him, he simply continued to respond sarcastically and spread rumors about my "copyvio" as he calls it. A user who calls himself Raul654 also accused me of being a "PC Pusher", which, ignorant though I am of Internet slang, I would guess means someone who illegally posts copyrighted material. Moriori and his friends, being far more experienced in working on Misplaced Pages than I am, have gotten the upper hand in convincing nearly everyone on the site that I have violated copyrights. Although I sincerely want to take him to court, I realize that this may be impossible or extremely difficult since I believe he lives in New Zealand and I am sitting at a computer in Oregon in the United States. I have not copied any articles. In fact, I never so much as copied a full sentence from any of my research sources, but no matter how many times I tell Moriori this he simply continues to accuse me both directly and behind my back. I am convinced that he has become particularly determined to ruin me since the censorship controversy, but of course I cannot prove his motives. As for the articles that I censored, I was under the impression that I had every right to edit them, since another user had exercized a kind of political censorship by removing a line I wrote about Newt Allen, who is not in the National Baseball Hall of Fame, being kept out of the Hall "in spite of being far superior to a number of white inductees", a deletion that could be interpreted as racist. I care little about censoring indecent articles now, however, for I am at my wits ends about this dishonest persecution of me. I understand that you are something of an expert in law, and I am desperately in need of some kind of support or advice, since, as I said, Moriori and company are far more powerful on Misplaced Pages than I am. Thank you, and please help me. PS- Sorry, I just found out that PC in this case probably stands for "political correctness" and not "personal computer" as I had originally thought. At any rate this seems to indicate that the people trying to run me off this site have political motives. Thank you.User: Felix F. Bruyns

Note to Jamesday

I am sorry to say that I am leaving Misplaced Pages and will be unable to answer any response you may give me to my e-mail. I cannot convince the majority of users of my innocence, and Moriori and friends continue to persecute me incessantly. I am very grateful, however, for your attempt to help me, as you are one of the very few people on this site who has not bought into Moriori's lies. For your legal curiosity, I will tell you that he specifically stated to another user that I copied my article on Turkey Stearnes from the "African American Registry". If you go to that website you will see that their article on Stearnes is not even similar to mine, and it was not even one of the sources I used to do my research about him. This proves, of course, that Moriori isn't merely reckless and irresponsible-he is dishonest. Although I myself will be unable to respond to any messages, I would greatly appreciate it if you would spread the facts across the message boards on this site, since I registered under my own name and the majority of users on this site now believe that "Felix F. Bruyns" is a copyright violator. Thank you very much. User: Felix F. Bruyns

AFK

I'm on a trip and will be back in a few days. You may see my ghost computer on IRC without me. Jamesday 02:07, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Back - or will be on Friday daytime. Jamesday 04:57, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Source?

Jamesday..do you have a source for your addition to Bombe: Another is believed to exist, but at an unknown location in storage.? Thanks! — Matt 09:07, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Re: my bombe photograph - Yes, it was one of the bombe replicas created for the Enigma movie, and it's on display at Bletchley Park, where Alan Turing worked during the Second World War. They've got some great cryptography related stuff there - including an Enigma machine, and a complete working replica of the Colossus computer. - MykReeve 10:58, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Bombe

I am very jealous! I'd like to make a visit some day, but it's quite some distance from the UK (still, Bletchley Park isn't that far...). I've tweaked the addition about a second bombe, attributing it directly, because I think we have to be careful about including rumours concerning secretive government agencies (though I could well believe a second bombe is about somewhere...). — Matt 00:23, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I've been planning a trip to Bletchley for a while, if you wanted to meet up for a visit to the museum when you get to the UK; I've tried without success to convince my fiance that it'd be a fascinating day out... ;-) — Matt 02:32, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Images

Hi, I wasn't sure if fair use would cover all the images uploaded by User:Ta bu shi da yu. For example, I had questions about the publicity shot of Holly Valance (see Image:Holly Valance.jpg). I was hoping you could resolve these for me, and perhaps discuss with him (?) on his talk page if they're not covered. He seems quite reasonable, I'm just not sure. Thanks very much for your effort and your courtesy. Best wishes, ] 06:30, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Copyright infringements?

It's not clear to me where I have ever listed a possible copyright infringment on the images for deletion page. I listed one image which did not seem to be a copyright infringment at all, but for which wikipedia specific permission was given, which Jimbo has declared unacceptable. You know I know about possible copyright infringements. Don't act like you're telling me something I don't know. anthony (see warning)

I still don't think you understand what I'm saying. It wasn't a copyright infringement. That's why I didn't list it on Copyright Problems. Copyright Problems is for copyright infringments. If you want to broaden its scope to images which are not copyright infringements but are merely non-free, feel free to propose such an expansion. anthony (see warning) 12:39, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Adding attributes to pages demo

Hi, over on the Creative Commons "Get Content" planning wiki you suggested that you could demo how text substitution and category capabilities in MediaWiki 1.3 could work for CC's plans, and suggested asking here. Please do demonstrate. Thanks!

Houston Press

Glad to help! - I'm a bit intrigued to read that it is a 'solid neswpaper', presumably the converse in a Liquid Paper :-) MPF 19:37, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Database Error

Hello, I just got another error while trying to check my Watchlist:

SELECT cur_namespace,cur_title,cur_comment, cur_id,
cur_user,cur_user_text,cur_timestamp,cur_minor_edit,cur_is_new FROM watchlist,cur USE INDEX
(name_title_timestamp) WHERE wl_user=44062 AND (wl_namespace=cur_namespace OR
wl_namespace+1=cur_namespace) AND wl_title=cur_title AND cur_timestamp > '20040714103323' ORDER
BY cur_timestamp DESC
from within function "wfSpecialWatchlist". MySQL returned error "1104: The SELECT would examine 
more rows than MAX_JOIN_SIZE. Check your WHERE and use SET SQL_BIG_SELECTS=1 or SET
SQL_MAX_JOIN_SIZE=# if the SELECT is ok".

older≠wiser 22:38, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Hi, I just got an error checking my watchlist (days=0.5), which was working ok half a day ago:

   SELECT cur_namespace,cur_title,cur_comment, cur_id, cur_user,
   cur_user_text,cur_timestamp,cur_minor_edit,cur_is_new FROM watchlist,cur 
   USE INDEX (name_title_timestamp) WHERE wl_user=XXXXX AND 
   (wl_namespace=cur_namespace OR wl_namespace+1=cur_namespace) AND 
   wl_title=cur_title AND cur_timestamp > '20040714132602' ORDER BY cur_timestamp DESC

from within function "wfSpecialWatchlist". MySQL returned error "1104: The SELECT would examine more rows than MAX_JOIN_SIZE. Check your WHERE and use SET SQL_BIG_SELECTS=1 or SET SQL_MAX_JOIN_SIZE=# if the SELECT is ok".
(wl_user obscured by me)
Curiously, the page also showed that I had new messages, but there were none in the last week. Trying a second time did not show this, but still had the database error. --Zigger 02:06, 2004 Jul 15 (UTC)

Thanks, it is working OK now. older≠wiser 11:53, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The error has gone again on my list too, thanks. --Zigger 16:18, 2004 Jul 15 (UTC)

Thanks re: Image list

Thanks for running the SQL query for my image uploads -- I really appreciate it! Catherine | talk 18:53, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Request

James - please peruse Misplaced Pages:Copyright FAQ and fix anything you think needs fixing. In the fair use section, "The nature of the copyrighted work;" need an explination and I can't remember what that one means (I asked before and you told me, but I have since forgotten). I think the fair use section still needs a lot of work, but every other section is done, methinks. →Raul654 09:40, Jul 20, 2004 (UTC)

Substub support

Thanks a lot for your contribution to Misplaced Pages:substub. If you support the idea of having substubs (it's pretty controversial right now) then can you please list your name on Misplaced Pages talk:substub#Substub support? It'd be really great to have more support. Thanks! ] 22:31, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! ] 12:46, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

hi

Thanks for givin' me the news on ish. I'm going to beef it up some. If people still think it's inadequate after that, kill it. Kzzl

question

I found an article that's a little biased. It's good, long, comprehensive but some parts of it are not objective. Is a certain kind of tag appropriate here if I'm not confident making the needed changes myself?? {Clean up} doesn't seem quite right. Maybe I will try to do it myself. Kzzl

Vandalism

Do you mean a dynamic IP? And obviously the problem hax0r was working from a different location. _{Peace Profound!} --Merovingian✍Talk 03:43, Jul 31, 2004 (UTC)

Developer poll

Hi. I'd like to have your opinion on m:Developer payment poll thanks :-) SweetLittleFluffyThing

Summaries

Here is a start: m:Wikisummaries. I think I will begin in my user space on en. +sj+ 23:56, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

User:Mike Storm

James, can you speak to this guy please, he's going off on one, and since you supported his substub plan, he's more likely to converse with you. He has a lot of bark but no bite :) Dunc_Harris|☺ 23:02, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Nothin' ain't simple 'bout copyright

On the mailing list, Ray Saintonge <saintonge@telus.net> mentioned http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/okbooks.html#whatpd. That the site I had in mind when I was talking to you at the Boston meeting.

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/c-fineprint.html

It says thatpossibly a work published within the juridiction of the Ninth Circuit Court might still be under copyright if

a) The work was first published on or after July 1, 1909, and

b) The work was never published prior to 1923 with a copyright notice recognized by the US, and

c) The work was never published prior to 1923 in the United States, but

d) This might only apply to works that were not published in the English language.

Ain't that sumpin'? ] 14:55, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the followup - it's appreciated. Always more wrinkles in the weird and wonderful world of IP law.:) Jamesday 04:43, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Image:TrangBang.jpg

If you have a minute, could you please weigh in at Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Image:TrangBang.jpg? マイケル ₪ wants to remove the image ASAP, I have no opinion, and you talked about the fair use aspects on Image_talk:TrangBang.jpg. Thanks! -- ke4roh 21:43, Aug 7, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for calming this latest bout of copyright paranoia. 172 04:40, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Last time I was on wikipedia, which was several months ago if you look at my edit history (Sep 17, 2003), we ruled on the side of caution with regard to copyrighted content. Clearly things have changed. I can't say I feel right about putting copyrighted material on wikipedia, we shouldn't be dependent on non-free material. However, clearly I'm out numbered in my belief that it's not worth more freedom, or less legal risk, so I'll let it be. — マイケル ₪ 20:50, Aug 8, 2004 (UTC)

Another substub vote

I just wanted to let people know that there's another vote on substubs going on in Template talk:Substub#Survey. I know that this is a second vote, however, apparently it was originally intended to be only a vote about whether to keep the template message, but somehow evolved into a vote on the existence of substubs themselves. I know that you already voted in favor of substubs, so I wanted to get your support on this poll too. Thanks for your support! ] 23:32, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Hi. Do you when the VFD and copyright headings can be removed from the Trang Bang image. I'm not sure about the policy issues. Thanks. 172 04:58, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Please see the recent changes to Template:Fairuse. You're better versed than I am on this, so I want to defer this matter to you. Thanks. 172 09:16, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Copyright question re Beasts of England from Animal Farm

There's a discussion in progress at Misplaced Pages:Votes_for_deletion/Beasts_of_England regarding an article which consists—correction, formerly consisted—mostly of the complete seven stanzas of Beasts of England, from Animal Farm. I believe there is at least a question about the copyright status. And I believe that whomever inserted the line in the article saying:

Note: Lyrics are public domain, under 50-year death expiration. see copyrights

is oversimplifying. I'd appreciate it if you could make some knowledgeable commentary about this in the VfD discussion, near the bottom (where I've put a longish comment). My guess is that maybe it's OK, but not because it's in the public domain. I don't believe it is in the public domain in the U.S. My reason for believing this is that the UPenn Online Books Page says it isn't. I don't say we can't use it. I say if we can we need a clear rationale, and "50-year death expiration" ain't it. ] 20:19, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Image:Gibraltar Western Meditteranean from west panorama Spain Morocco STS039-10064173.jpg

Could you please provide an image copyright tag for this image? Thanks!--Diberri | Talk 22:51, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)

Template:PD-USGov

Hi Jamesday,

you have made edits to the license template for works by the US government that are released into the public domain. As it seems now, this is not the case worldwide - I posted a comment about it on the talk page. Could you have a look at it, please? Maybe the template text should be updated.

Best regards, --zeno 11:35, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Review?

Hey, as the original author, when you get a chance, could you take a look at the recent edits to Gulf of Sidra incident (1981). I'm just not sure about the overall picture... Thanks. jengod 20:51, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

Data Management Wiki Committee

Thank you for your contribution to one, or more, articles that are now organized under Data management.

Because of your previous intrest, you are recieving an invitation to become a founding member of the Data Management Wiki Committee.

The members, of course, will form and solidify the purpose, rules, officers, etc. but my idea (to kick things off) is to establish a group of us who will take responsiblity to see that the ideas of Data management are promoted and well represented in Misplaced Pages articles.

If you are willing to join the committee, please go to Category_talk:Data_management and indicate your acceptance of this invitation by placing your three tilde characters in the list.

KeyStroke 01:16, 2004 Sep 25 (UTC)

Thanks for the guidance

Thanks for the guidance about avoiding mass changes in favor of gradual changes so the community can gradually decide whether it's a good thing. I hadn't considered that approach, which makes good sense. • Benc • 06:36, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Query

? CryptoDerk 06:46, Oct 11, 2004 (UTC)

make sure external links are valid

At meatball, you removed two working links to wikibooks, and replaced it with a link to an empty page. Please make sure external links you create, especially to our sister projects, are in fact valid links. Thank you. Gentgeen 20:32, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

You're right, I created the page at the Cookbook but got the link to it wrong. Thanks for fixing it! Jamesday 11:08, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Good to see you

I've been reading some of your well thought out comments on the VfU page. Its good to know there are folks such as your self in our company. ] 00:03, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Any idea where I can find the deletion debate on Moanalua High School?

The notice was added

16:44, 17 May 2004 UninvitedCompany (vfd)

but I can't find the archived deletion debate. ] 18:04, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Redrawing illustrations?

By the way, what do you know about redrawing copyrighted illustrations? It suddenly occurs to me that all those line drawings I used to see in biology books with captions like "after so-and-so," which were basically just hand-drawn copies of other illustrations, may have been a technique to avoid copyright issues? Any guidelines, hints, wisdom, pointers to old discussions? ] 18:04, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

User: Train Spotter

Thanks for the note, but it makes no difference whether I control the account because similar ones are so easy to set up. Similar usernames aren't a problem. Redirects between user pages may be, but they're easy to find with "what links here". Anyway, I don't think it was a very serious attempt at impersonation. If someone really wanted to impersonate another user, the last thing they'd do is choose a user who edited the same article recently, and is therefore likely to be watching it.

By the way, my POV is anti-Bush. I'm amazed nobody's yet found the comments which I slipped into Data corruption ;-) ;-)

,,,Trainspotter,,, 11:39, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Elblag, Poznan, ...

Haie Jamesday,

I wonder why you removed the " the incorrect technical limitations header" ... as the cities are not Elblag but Elbląg, not Poznan but Poznań .... i tried once to move one of these cities ... it didnt work as the lemma was looking quite strange? .. I'm not to much in the technical details and agreements of en so it would be nice to tell me! ...Sicherlich 22:17, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

{{Wrongtitle | title=article}}

I saw you removed several {{Wrongtitle}} tags on several pages named incorretly. What is the reason for that?] 01:45, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

I'm wondering about that too. For instance, on Akcja Wyborcza Solidarnosc the point of the {{wrongtitle}} tag was that the correct spelling of the last word is Solidarność, but it's not possible to include the characters ś and ć in the article title. I'm reverting your edit until I see an explanation. ←Hob 04:07, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

BTW, I realize that you're a Wikimedia techie so you probably do know something I don't... but I haven't seen any indication that the non-ISO-Latin-characters issue has gone away yet, so please enlighten us... ←Hob 01:14, 2004 Nov 12 (UTC)

See Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (use English). Per the naming convention, the correct version of the article page name is without the accents, transliterated if required, or using whatever form is most commonly used in English (probably the English words of the same meaning in this case, though I didn't check). Jamesday 07:43, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Which creates only double standards - the nations that use ISO-Latin script are allowed to use their diacritics in wikipedia, while others should stick to incorrect names and stay quiet. Also, the convention you cited says explicitly that we should name our pages in English and place the native transliteration on the first line of the article unless the native form is more commonly used in English than the anglicized form. - which is exactly what this tag does. The {{Wrongtitle}} tag is but a workaround since the English wiki is AFAIK the only wiki out there not to upgrade to the Unicode, but it works pretty well as a temporary solution and could help in finding all the articles that will have to eventually be moved to where they belong - as soon as someone finally gets the Unicode job done instead of declaring that the thing is under control. ]]] 02:06, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC)

Finally, there's also a Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (technical restrictions) page, which sets the matter straight. ]]] 02:09, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC)

Undeletion

Hi, I was hoping you could take a look at John Ogonowski, Thomas F. McGuinness, Jr., and Jean Destrehan Roger. These three articles received a majority of votes for undeletion at VFU, but have not yet been undeleted. And now Texture is removing the listings from VFU saying that they are expired and no admin chose to honor the undeletion. anthony 警告 22:35, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Creative Commons

I added some categories to your user page to reflect the your releasing of changes for the Creative Commons licenses so we can track them. If you'd like to, you can use the {{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}} template instead. -- Ram-Man 02:58, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)

Kate's Tools

Thanks! Proteus (Talk) 13:36, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Protection of personal CSS and JS

Thanks for the info! I'll remove the protection right away. David Cannon 21:33, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Protection of personal CSS and JS

Thanks for the info! I'll remove the protection right away. David Cannon 21:36, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

RFC pages on VfD

Should RFC pages be placed on VfD to be deleted? I'm considering removing Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Slrubenstein, Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Jwrosenzweig and Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/John Kenney from WP:VFD. Each of them was listed by CheeseDreams. Your comments on whether I should do this would be appreciated. - Ta bu shi da yu 03:46, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Speedy Bot Policy

Please have a look over my responses to the bots policy change and the proposals I've made, then get in touch so we can arrange a chat in IRC and/or phone, so I can answer all of your questions about those respnses and find some way to get done what you want to get done ( a proposal I probably like in content, if not necesarily in details of method). Thanks. Jamesday 05:23, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I can't agree with major policy discussion taking place on IRC, phone, or email. It only contributes to the few deciding the issues when it should be kept as open as possible. Besides, we need a record of what the discussion was, so keep it on Misplaced Pages. – Ram-Man ] 14:34, Dec 13, 2004 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Computing

I didn't realise you guys existed, so I created Misplaced Pages:WikiProject computers. Sorry! As you kicked off the project, I was wondering what you thought of a merger? I have a little more structure, and it kind of looks like Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Computing has been abandoned (or fallen into disuse). I have some ideas and a vision of what I'd like to see happen with computing related articles... could I add vast amounts of my proposed structure into your project, or do you think that would just annoy everyone? - Ta bu shi da yu 14:25, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Image tag

Hi! Thanks for uploading the following image:

• Image:Earth icon2.jpg

I notice it currently doesn't have an image copyright tag. Could you add one to let us know its copyright status?

You can use {{gfdl}} if you wish to release your own work under the GNU Free Documentation License, {{PD-self}} if you wish to release your own work to the public domain, {{fairuse}} if you claim fair use of someone else's work, and so on. Click here for a list of the various tags.

If you don't know what any of this means, just let me know at my talk page where you got the image from, and I'll tag it for you. (And if you know exactly what this means and are really tired of the constant reminders, please excuse me. They will stop once the tagging project is complete.) Thanks so much. Denni☯ 03:47, 2004 Dec 16 (UTC)

P.S. You can help tag other images at Misplaced Pages:Untagged_Images. Thanks again.

Page-move vandalism

James: Due to confusion over the page-move vandalism of George W. Bush and U.S. presidential election, 2004, the pages' histories have been quadruplicated and duplicated, respectively. The problem, caused by User:Julie1984, was announced on IRC, and the result was that a lot of people tried to move the page back at the same time as other people were deleting the redirects. The result was that the actual pages were deleted, after which several people tried to undelete them at once. There were no developers on #mediawiki when the problem was occurring, so could you look into fixing the pages' histories? Thanks a bunch. ] 03:08, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Never mind, it appears Tim Starling is taking care of the problem. ] 04:59, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

User:Halibutt/GFDL

Thanks for the comments on my personal copyright tag. I'm not that much of a copyright geek and I must say I don't have much knowledge on the topic. Could you help me with the exact wording of the template? I want it to stay compliant to GFDL, mostly due to ideological reasons (I like wikipedia :) ), but I have no idea how to make your proposals into text shown in the copyright tag... ]]] 23:30, Dec 19, 2004 (UTC)

gl.wiktionary

Hi Jamesday,

as mentioned in IRC, i ask you about reseting my passwort at gl.wiktionary.org. I don't renember my IP, when i registered my nick. I normaly use the same password and the same e-Mailadresse when i register a nick (commons, wikiquote, wikipedia and so..)

Thanks for your help!

-- da didi 19:37, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, but i could get sent my password by mail. You don't have to do anymore! -- da didi 19:54, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Special:Upload

Just to let you know, it's leaking a href tags. - Ta bu shi da yu 03:32, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Tucson, Arizona and more

Hi. I saw that you voted on the RFC regarding Tucson, Arizona, and I thought you might be interested in commenting on a broader application of the formatting to other city articles. The discussion (for now) is at Talk: Tucson, Arizona#Other Arizona and nearby cities. (It might get moved to WikiProject Cities, if there's interest in doing so.) Thanks! kmccoy (talk) 02:39, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

More Abdel Qadir socks?

User:JAYJG just emailed me saying you'd said Alberuni was another of the hydra. Alberuni, of course, has an arbitration case against him at the moment. Just wanted to confirm this one with you first - David Gerard 09:28, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Loading data file for LinkBot

Hi Jamesday, You mentioned previously on the Misplaced Pages talk:Bots page that bots which want to load large amounts of data may be able to supply you with some kind of data file, which can then be loaded into the Misplaced Pages at a suitably non-peak time. Would I be able to take you up on that, for LinkBot? An example of the things that it is loading can be seen in the user contributions for this bot. I've tried to take things very slowly with this bot, and provide outlets for user feedback, and incorporate that feedback where it is feasible to do so. I think the LinkBot is now at the stage where the size of the data being uploaded can be increased (previously this was done in blocks on 100 pages). What do you think? Is this something that can be done by me supplying a data file to be loaded? If so how do we start? How many pages would you want to start with? e.g. 500 or 1000 pages? What format would the data need to be in? Also, if the data contains things like ~~~~, will those be converted into standard signatures if the data is loaded manually (which is what I'm hoping for)? Also the bot makes two types of edits (one where it adds a brief note to the talk page pointing to the suggestions, and one where it adds a new page with the actual suggestions on it) - is it possible to do both of these using a data file? Basically I'm more than happy to work with you to make this happen in an acceptable way, I'm just not sure how to get the ball rolling, or the exact mechanics of what I need to do, so any guidance would be most appreciated. -- All the best, Nickj (t) 02:05, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Image:Sykes-Picot bilevel work in progress.png

Hi. You uploaded Image:Sykes-Picot bilevel work in progress.png in Oct 2003 stating it was a work in progress and not to be used. Perhaps you could update the status or delete it? Thanks. RedWolf 05:45, Jan 13, 2005 (UTC)

Old user page versions

Thankx for deleting the old versions of my user page! Dbach 13:38, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks

James, thank you so much for explaining about the problems and fixes on the Open Facts page. It helps to hear that you're working so hard to fix things, and I will also be starting to make regular financial donations. Thanks for all the work you're putting in to keep the project going. Best, SlimVirgin 11:15, Jan 19, 2005 (UTC)

Fair use question

Heya, you appear to be one of the knowledgeable people on fair use around, if you have the time could you have a look at Image:Mesa-thumb-lg-3.jpg (which I suspect comes from here) and give your opinion on whether its use in Mesa, Arizona is fair use? I suspect it may not be. --fvw* 09:01, 2005 Jan 21 (UTC)

Even better, nice job, thanks! Just out of curiosity and for calibrating my fairuseometer, do you think it was defendable as being fair use? --fvw* 23:12, 2005 Jan 21 (UTC)

Hey Jamesday, that was exceptionally good work. I actually got it from Google images, and wasn't too sure of the source. Thanks. Ollieplatt 00:07, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard

I have replied to your attacks on me at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard. I would appreciate a response. And an explanation. RickK 00:10, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

The comments you suggest are personal attacks are here. Replies to your responses in subsequent edits. Jamesday 00:50, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Umlaut glitches

James, I've only just noticed this editing glitch. Whenever I preview or save an article that contains umlauts (two dots above letters) or acutes (forward slash above e), odd characters appear. This is even when I haven't edited the words in question. For example, at Helga Zepp-LaRouche the words Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität party (BüSo) became BŸrgerrechtsbewegung SolidaritŠt party. (If it happens on this page too, then both sets will look the same; if you get the umlaut, then for some reason, it's working on this page). I use a Mac, OS 10.2.8, with Safari 1.0.3. Best, SlimVirgin 23:08, Jan 24, 2005 (UTC)

SQL Queries

I draw your attention, in your role as a developer, to Misplaced Pages:Village pump (technical)#SQL Queries. - Mark 09:46, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply. There are issues there I would never have even considered, and I guess it's a good thing the developers are taking these steps to maintain privacy and security. Thanks also for the heads-up about my user page being screwed up. I knew when I made it that it would most likely be broken in one way or another; I was intending to make a more standard one in the next couple of weeks now that I have some time off. - Mark 02:08, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

database compression

I know you were involved with compressing many old histories, to preserve space in the database. Of course, that has a side effect of preventing some moves and deletions.

Would you consider uncompressing the histories of pages within the Template:, MediaWiki:, and Category: namespaces (and the related talk:'s)? This would greatly help us in performing many regular maintenance tasks, such as Misplaced Pages:Templates for deletion, which currently has a backlog of deletions due to the compression "bug". Because of their nature, pages in these spaces usually have fewer byte counts and revisions, so keeping them uncompressed wouldn't (correct me if I'm wrong) cause much of an impact overall. Please let me know on my talk page if this is possible. -- Netoholic @ 15:48, 2005 Jan 31 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. If the histories can't be uncompressed, then what is the process for us to get these pages deleted? -- Netoholic @ 15:18, 2005 Feb 2 (UTC)

In addition to the Template, Category, and MediaWiki namespaces, can you also leave out Image (and respective talks) in future compression runs? Thanks. -- Netoholic @ 15:54, 2005 Feb 15 (UTC)

Checking for private bots

Hi, I thought you might know or know who to ask. Has anyone checked the logs for page scanning from problematic IP's? E.g. checked Gzornenplatz 's IP to see if he is using a private bot to scan pages that he wishes tightly monitor (edit war on).--Daeron 20:27, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yes, it's called "Watchlist". Gzornenplatz 21:03, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

• Yes, it just occurred to me that while a page scanner is quick & easy, that updating the current list of desired targets would be much easier done via the "Watchlist" - and therefore if Gzornenplatz is Wik he could keep polling Misplaced Pages for any change in his "Watchlist".--Daeron 04:42, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

monobook.js

Hi James, since sometime this morning Misplaced Pages send me XHTML source that does no longer contain a reference to my private User:Lupo/monobook.js. A page load done at 08:39 (UTC) did include it, but later loads do not include it anymore. Pages served more recently are missing the "<script type="text/javascript" src="/search/?title=User:Lupo/monobook.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s"></script>" at the end of the <head> </head>. Could that be fixed again, please? Lupo 13:51, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Since I haven't found an existing bug report for this, I filed a new one at bugzilla, like you said. Lupo 20:04, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

And apparently fixed by Brion a few minutes later! Amazing! Lupo 20:14, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

meta-templates

We spoke briefly on IRC, about the impact of "meta-templates" (templates used to create other templates, like the Misplaced Pages:Stub categories ones). I realize the server impact for each one individually may not be large, but as a concept, I'm of the opinion they should be avoided where possible. I'm trying to make this case one one page, but need some input from someone like you, as the "database guy" :) Could you read over my comments at Template talk:Sisterproject#No meta-template, please. and give your input? -- Netoholic @

Thank you for providing such a nicely written description of the technical problems. I found it even more compelling than I had first assumed. As such, I've take some of our comments and drafted Misplaced Pages:Meta-templates considered harmful. I'd welcome your further input if there is anything I've missed. -- Netoholic @ 19:07, 2005 Feb 4 (UTC)

I also want to thank you for patiently explaining in detail the consequences of using meta-templates. To be honest, I thought taht Netoholic's description was so overwrought in regards to the one area that I am familiar with (topic stubs) that I found it hard to trust anything he was saying. I do have two additional questions for you. 1) Are there any problems with using a meta-template as just a common format page and then creating all of the "daughter" templates using the "subst:" feature? 2) Is it time to revisit Misplaced Pages:Protection policy and protected pages are considered harmful and, as a matter of policy, protect any templates that are used on a large number of pages? BlankVerse ∅ 21:38, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Security and stuff

You wrote on Misplaced Pages:Text editor support:

See the release notes for more details of what you need to do to modify a bot or tool to deal with this.

So I wonder, where is the link to the details? Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov | talk 01:29, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Usernames to be changed

Can you change contributor's username, since you are developer? If not, could you name someone who can? Because I have been waiting that someone would change my username for over half a year! And since last summer no developer has touched the requests on meta:Changing username. -Hapsiainen 02:39, Feb 5, 2005 (UTC)

I have not posted this message to every developer's userpage. This message is currently only in your talk page to prevent people from doing overlapping work. I believe you read the messages in your talk page, so why don't you respond? -Hapsiainen 16:00, Feb 16, 2005 (UTC)

No Follow

Left some comments on your page at Meta, just so you know --BozMo|talk 09:29, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Sisterproject metatemplate

Greetings. I left a question for you at Template talk:Sisterproject#Technical impact of templates like this. In brief, the question boils down to "Wouldn't this problem go away if the metatemplate were protected?" I look forward to your further input. Thanks, – Quadell 14:42, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)

Echo that. Isn't the problem only a problem when a template used in many places is altered? Each change of use is minimally expensive in itself. So using meta-templates is not in itself a bad thing, provided that the meta-template itself and the child-templates, once in place, are not fiddled with endlessly. --Phil | Talk 18:11, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)

New user list

Is there a special page for a list of new users? Like, something in RC format where it shows the time and date that a new account was created? -- AllyUnion (talk) 04:07, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Not currently a list of new accounts. Producing one for all wikis as a batch job is currently on my to do list (batch job because it's much more efficient). Account age is also being considered as a possible ranking or highlighting factor in recent changes and watchlists. No ETA for any of this though. Jamesday 08:19, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I was thinking it would be a good way to track down certain vandalism. -- AllyUnion (talk) 08:28, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Weird editing glitch

James, can you help with this? Anon IP 67.173.227.156 made an anti-Semitic edit at 04:33, Feb 15, at Anti-Semitism (begins "I realize some racist bastard is gonna delete this right away"). Here's the edit history

I deleted it at 04:42, Feb 15, but due to some editing glitch, the deleted post now shows up as having been added by User:Sfdan, who made an edit just before the anon IP and by me, who made an edit (to delete) just after the anon IP and Is there any way of correcting this? One editor has already written to me wondering why I wrote it. Best, SlimVirgin 05:11, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)

Special request for admin tool

James, Willy on Wheels is starting to become very annoying. When are we going to see a special sysop swap function be implemented? Deleting pages twice is getting very annoying. -- AllyUnion (talk) 12:56, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Contribution count

You have written, "You have made 22732 undeleted edits. If it's you who is repeatedly abusing the databases servers by asking for a list of 25,000 edits by you in one chunk, please stop. We have that 500 at a time limit and paging in steps of 500 for a reason." If I might beg to inquire, have you any reason to believe that I, in particular, have asked for a list of all my edits (for as far as I am aware, I have not), or have you merely posted this message on the talk pages of all individuals with more than 20,000 edits? -- Emsworth 21:07, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Vote on Talk:Gdansk/Vote

Hi. Since you have edited on pages with disputes about the names of Polish/German locations, I would invite you to vote on Talk:Gdansk/Vote to settle the multi-year dozens-of-pages dispute about the naming of Gdansk/Danzig and other locations. The vote has two parts, one with questions when to use Gdansk/Danzig, and a second part affecting articles related to locations with Polish/German history in general. An enforcement is also voted on. The vote has a total of 10 questions to vote on, and ends in two weeks on Friday, March 4 0:00. Thank you -- Chris 73 Talk 00:51, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)

Sockpuppet check

With Tim and Brion on break, I'm not sure who to talk to about getting a sockpuppet check. You're a developer who's pretty active on the community side... can you run one, or tell me who can? A certain user I'd hoped would eventually go away is still here, and I strongly suspect he's using an sockpuppets again. Isomorphic 22:06, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

See User:Isomorphic/Minions of the Church for a list that I and others have compiled of all the accounts we think are him. Most of those are old, so the IP logs wouldn't go back that far, but I'd like a check for password matches within that group. He's pretty sly, but I'm hoping he missed that trick. , 256, and EventHorizon were each his principle account at some point, so you might want to start there for password matches. It might also net some accounts I didn't know about.

Accounts that have been used in the past few months are EventHorizon, Crocogator, 160, and Ludocrat. Those I'd like IP checks for, if you can. I'm especially interested in the events surrounding Misplaced Pages:Requests for adminship/EventHorizon, where I believe he used a sockpuppet to nominate himself for adminship, and Ambition (cards), whose existence is the fundamental purpose of all this nonsense.

Thanks a lot, and sorry to dump all this on you. Mike has been doing this for well over a year now. It's becoming obvious that he won't stop until he's forced to, and getting some solid proof of his dishonesty would be a first step. Isomorphic 16:19, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

If you're going to do this, I'd be interested in knowing if 137.22.3.153 is EventHorizon's IP. If so, they're most definately Church. User:Oven Fresh/sig 01:58, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

For legal reasons, definitely match (and not check) the passwords. I run a small message board that's had problems with sock puppets and trolling and they pretty much always use the same password. There's been a study that most Internet users can only remember 4 passwords, and almost always use a "main" one. It cuts down the ambiguity. Checking the IPs would be "security breach" under the law; your target probably wouldn't know you did it, but if you ever announced it, you'd struggle to back down from that one. Even checking the passwords, if not granted permission by the user, is illegal. There was a facebook clone that got busted in May 2004 for that. Matching the passwords, if there's a program available to do that, would be legit. (That is, it keeps the PWs internal, but returns a response if PW1 = PW2.) Anything more will get you in really hot water. Swatara 05:18, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Note that Swatara has two edits to Misplaced Pages, the first of which created his user page. I leave you to draw your own conclusions. Isomorphic 21:22, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Since joining these discussions seems a popular pastime, let me give it a try: Iso, are you sure you aren't being extremely paranoid? Anyone can jump in these things by watching RC (like yours truly) and anyone can edit under an IP for any amount of time before registering an account (like yours truly). Swatara's account is new and he "suspiciously" stumbles into this discussion, ergo he's Mike Church? (Oh, sorry, I mean "we can draw our own conclusions"?) Can't we at least evaluate his claims at face value instead of pre-emptively accusing him? I know you don't want to hear this, but I'm going to say it anyway: assume good faith. 82.92.119.11 21:44, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Re the legal issues (as you asked on my Talk page). I'm afraid I don't know specific details. Anyway, what I do know is that there was a thefacebook clone last spring that tried to harvest passwords from various colleges not yet on the real facebook. They got busted pretty hard. As for IPs, it's more shady, but there's an implicit trust when people create user names that their IPs will be hidden. The username is supposed to have two functions (1) cover IP information, which might compromise security or spin the information (particularly if the source is a governmental or corporate authority) and (2) to collect a person's contributions (which might be under multiple IPs) under a single identity. To blow cover on IPs would compromise that first purpose. I don't know how strongly that "implicit trust" would hold up in court, but it's definitely not something you want to find out... and precedent would not be on your side. A hypothetical scenario is that a developer (or other person with IP-spy privileges) finds out that the CEO of his company is writing to articles about an industry, then reports (in some other context, such as a blog) "CEO -X- thinks that". This spawns speculation and potentially trade secrets are blown. The likelihood of this is tiny, but protection against litigation is all about avoiding those low-probability pitfalls.

I think the "sock puppet" issue on Misplaced Pages is not as severe as people make it. There are legitimate reasons for people to conceal their identities (most users don't reveal their offline identities, and aren't considered "sock puppets" for using a pseudonym.) To enumerate the illegitamite reasons for having sock puppets:

• 3RR violations. This issue is a result of bad policy, as much as problem users. A semivandal (not an explicit vandal, but overt POV soapboxer or other problem user) with multiple socks can paralyze legit users, and 3RR has no mechanism to encourage editing toward consensus. (Instead of encouraging positive behaviors, it merely punishes negative ones, delaying the problem for the time of the block but leaving the bitterness extant.) A better 3RR system would be that, whenever 3+ reverts per side (not person since it's impossible to tell) of an argument occur per article, the article is forked (e.g. Zionism => Zionism (1) and Zionism (2) for both sides, which will hopefully reconcile) with one talk page to settle the dispute. A more modest step in this direction is to eliminate tag-team reverting and sock puppetry by revising 3RR to 3-per-side.
• Multi-voting. This is dealt with socially, well enough, by the general attitude which discounts users with <50 edits on VfD and especially RfA. Most multi-voters are new users and don't have any sock puppets with serious history, so it's easy to call them out. Most long-going users with sock-puppets (and there are quite a few) exercise restraint.
• Ban-evading. This one's impossible to fix. Every society (Misplaced Pages included) has the problem of its persona non grata with no stake in it. Short of coercion, it's impossible to get them to follow the rules. Ban a user and you'll probably see socks, some never detected. If spotted, revert his or her contributions for content reasons, but that's realistically all you can do.

Relative to the particular Mike Church/Ambition issue, though, the "sock puppet" question may be interesting from a psychological viewpoint, but is utterly irrelevant. This is a content question (and I believe there is more than enough case for sending Ambition to VfD on content/fame grounds); the "sock puppet" issue will only make Mike win by fueling the growing suspicion of many that he is under a politically-motivated personal attack. Forget the "sock" issue entirely, send Ambition to VfD, and prosecute it on content grounds alone.

Finally, since User:Crocogator is a 7-month running sporadic user, I don't think he's a sock of User:EventHorizon, who was apparently completely absent from mid-2003 (he said "a year and a half" on his user page) to Dec. 2004. Even in the oddball chance that he was, EventHorizon declined the nom, so it wouldn't be a multivote nor a violation of policy. The deceptive element would be disturbing, and may be characteristic of Mr. Church (he left before I started editing) but not, on any basis I can construct, of EventHorizon. Swatara 07:59, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Apologies for the crap clogging your talk page. If such cases arise in the future, I will use email. Isomorphic 21:08, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Removing meta-templates

Following the issues raised with using meta-templates, I would like to change the stub templates to no longer use metapicstub or metastub. I'd like to know if this might cause a DoS-type attack or any other problems. At what article count does this become a problem? For instance, should I be worried about changing a template used in 200 articles? 500 articles? 1,000 articles? Or is this only a problem for 5,000/10,000 articles? Finally, when is the best time of day to do these changes? (Don't worry, I don't plan to do this until things are back to normal.) Thanks! --jag123 19:50, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I've begun to change the stub templates but I receive an error on those that are used on many articles, such as Template:Africa-stub, Template:art-stub, Template:actor-stub, Template:christianity-stub. The error is "Sorry- we have a problem...The wikimedia web server didn't return any response to your request." I'll continue to change as many as I can, but is there something that can be done about the others? Thanks! --jag123 18:47, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Interface glitch

James, I've lost your e-mail address. Please e-mail me privately about the interface glitch; you asked me a question which I hesitate to answer in public. -- Uncle Ed (talk) 22:14, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

Er, never mind. Anthere has taken the lead and managed it all. Again, I thank you for your utmost courtesy and attention to detail. Clearly, the right people are all in place, and you are one of the best! -- Uncle Ed (talk) 14:22, Mar 2, 2005 (UTC)

Page move bugs

• Somehow, Mikkalai's move of List of English words of Russian origin to Words of Russian derivation caused all of the editing history to be lost except for the most recent edit, mine. Contrary to what the history now says, I am not the sole contributor to that article. Is there any way to fix this? Uncle G 14:34, 2005 Mar 2 (UTC)
  • Goplat worked out a way of fixing it that appears to have worked. It's still worrying that a page move didn't carry the history over, however. Uncle G 17:06, 2005 Mar 2 (UTC)

Bring back quickpolls

I think it's time that quickpolls be re-evaluated as a solution to short term disputes between users. What say you? --Ryan! | Talk 05:13, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

Dev workflow

I'm trying to make sure i've got a good grasp on what development looks like as it relates to a remote /PHP/Mysql/wiki environment.

User a PHP/webserver (local) to develop and test code. Use SSH/SCP? to copy code up to server and test via browser? -- Dbroadwell 17:10, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Your copious reply was appreciated; it reflects the community at Misplaced Pages. I wholeheartedly agree that using a raw text link to communicate code to a live server would be, suicidal given the net today. On the code side of things, my real coding experience is about two years, so I fall into the highly procedural side of things. (Hopefully I'll grok it in the next year.) Your other suggestion of being able to copy articles is currently beyond me, though there is a place to implement it eventually. Loving the open source movement, I think I've found something I can do, for no more time than I would spend on the task anyway. There is a reasonable interface for Linkbot, that implies a tacit permission by the editor, with a very simple interface: Include a template like {{User:Linkbot/linkthis}} . Yielding and explicit parse able list of articles to do and something to remove from the article when done. The community was also exceedingly forthcoming with brainstorming ideas … it’s inspiring. -- Dbroadwell 04:37, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

User:©

This is the other account I wanted checked. Thanks for your response :) -- Grunt 🇪🇺 15:48, 2005 Mar 12 (UTC)

Proposed amendment revote - personal vs official capacity

Grunt said that I should talk to you, not him, about this.

I think you got "personal capacity" and "official capacity" confused in proposals A3.1 and A4.1 at Misplaced Pages:Arbitration_policy/Proposed_amendment_revote, so I have edited it. I feel confident that you and I agree on this, based on our similar remarks when casting "No" votes at Misplaced Pages:Arbitration policy/Proposed amendment ratification vote, but I wanted to let you know. (If you are not the author of proposals A3.1 and A4.1, do you know who I should talk to?) —AlanBarrett 16:22, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I did not write those proposed amendments to the policy. I strongly oppose them as they are written. If you are aware of anyone else who thinks I wrote them, please correct them and note to them that I strongly oppose them.

I did note that there was merit in splitting personal and official capacity. However, I oppose all four of the proposals which make the arbcom follow the directions of and report to the Foundation instead of this community. It's a massive and, IMO, very unwise change. Jamesday 13:10, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Categorization policy

Hi James, can you peek at the above proposed policy? The part about replacing lists with categories is something you probably want to know about. --iMb~Mw 15:26, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• I was going to ask you the same. As Meowbot pointed out, the current implementation of categories makes the proposal somewhat awkward. So could you please enlighten us if there are any plans to augment or modify categorization coding? See also User_talk:Brion_VIBBER#Categories and User_talk:Brion_VIBBER#Another category idea for some ideas on cross-category searches. Radiant_* 13:22, Mar 17, 2005 (UTC)
  • Thanks. Commented over there. I'll have a word with brion and the others as well - we definitely need to do something about the assorted category issues, to make them behave more like the normal pages peoople seem to view them as. The perils of something becoming popular.:) Jamesday 19:25, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• For what it's worth - I am a professional programmer, and while there probably are enough coders already, if there's a discussion on this I'd be happy to join it if people think that could be useful. Radiant_* 10:33, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)

Hardware status update

Hi Jamesday, could you please take a look at http://openfacts.berlios.de/index-en.phtml?title=Wikipedia_Status . Thanks :-) --217.9.26.233 17:50, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

IP check

I think User:VonBluvens may be the same as User:Earl Turner who was blocked for using misleading edit summaries. Could check if this is the case? -- Mgm| 19:44, Mar 17, 2005 (UTC)

WP:BOTS

If you don't mind, please take a quick look at my latest bot proposal. I'd like your thoughts and opinion on the matter. Thanks. -- AllyUnion (talk) 09:12, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sockpuppet check

67.67.114.200 posted this to Fadix' talk page. Since Fadix is part of a dispute, could you please check if this IP can be traced to User:Coolcat, User:Stereotek, User:Torque or perhaps Fadix himself? -- Mgm| 08:35, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)

suspected sockpuppets (same person, using multiple usernames)

THOTH, Davenbelle, Stereotek, Fadix Please advise me. I also posted this on Tim Starling's page --Cool Cat 01:11, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Absurd; check if you like. I'm no one's sock and I have none. — Davenbelle 02:30, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)

Results? --Cool Cat 21:57, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Limited availability

I'm not around much for the next month or so as I change country. Best to make requests of one of the other developers for now. Jamesday 08:29, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

deleting of old versions

haie Jamesday,

on de we wonder when it will be possible to delete older articles again? as we start to get first problems with people who copy from "so called deleted" versions of Copyvio-articles to create new articles .. thanks for your answer we could not find any informations somewhere...Sicherlich 20:43, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

thanks for the quick answer! ...Sicherlich 09:00, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

possible improvement for meta-templates

Hi - I've recently discovered Misplaced Pages:Avoid using meta-templates and have suggested on the talk page some potential solutions. One, in particular, seems like it might be feasible. The basic idea is to convert references to (at least parameter-less) templates into a server-side include syntax that would be understood (and processed) by the squid servers. With this change, if a template changes the only cache invalidation that would be necessary would be the template itself (rather than all pages including the template, or including a template including the template, etc.). I found a paper on the web that describes "edge side includes" which looks (to me) like an implementation of this idea, see http://www.oscom.org/attachment/72c7a5e5939d06b8545b6a41cc703144/af0bc06820a06da52903300a570fe891/Living_on_the_Edge.pdf Is this something you've heard of or considered? Thanks. -- Rick Block 23:29, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Zürich to Zurich

Zürich has been nominated on Misplaced Pages:Requested moves for a page move to Zurich. Perhapse you might like to express your opinion about this proposed move on talk:Zürich. Philip Baird Shearer 10:45, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

re: Legal status of m:transwiki

Good evening. I read your recent opinion on the m:transwiki#legal status process with great interest. You inspired me to read the statute itself and to re-read the text of GFDL. I come to softer conclusions than those you expressed and replied at m:Talk:Transwiki#Legal (not) status of some transwiki operations. I would like your opinion when you have a minute. Rossami (talk) 02:55, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

User:24.69.255.205

Hello James, I'm not sure what to do about this, so I'm leaving this note for you and one on WP:AN/I. The above IP keeps being blocked, I believe because of vandalism from User:Kracky. This is a Shaw proxy server and the block keeps catching legitimate editors too, even though this isn't their IP address. That is, it seems Misplaced Pages is only finding the proxy server in this case, not the individual IP address. One of the editors being inadvertently blocked has written to me a couple of times asking me to unblock him, which I've done, but it also means I'm unblocking the vandal. I don't know what the right thing to do is in a case like this. Best, SlimVirgin 22:13, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

Help Please

Sorry to bother you with this - I seem to have gotten myself in a mess shortly after registering my name - the "friend" that encouraged me to join said the only way I could defend the allegations that I am a sockpuppet or whatever of an anonymous account is to contact a developer - so I picked your name from http://meta.wikimedia.org/Developer which he sent me.

I have been accused of being an anonymous user on John Kerry. Knowing that I am not that user I am asking that you verify to the following users that I am not the anonymous user: http://en.wikipedia.org/User:Mel_Etitis, http://en.wikipedia.org/User:Mirv who made the allegations here: http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Requests_for_page_protection#John_Kerry and http://en.wikipedia.org/User:Mirv as well as on my talk page.

I am not sure if this is worth the trouble - and am in fact just thinking of blowing this entire site off, but in the name of honesty and defending myself from false accusations - can you help me. I made edits last night at these spots, before complaining that the Kerry page was blocked while I was trying to edit it:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=FOX_News&diff=0 *http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=FOX_News&diff=prev&oldid=12237521
• http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Republican_Party_%28United_States%29&diff=prev&oldid=12242369
• http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Republican_Party_%28United_States%29&diff=prev&oldid=12237400
• http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=User_talk:Symes&diff=prev&oldid=12238469
• http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Joseph_Goebbels&diff=0
• http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Oklahoma_City_bombing&diff=prev&oldid=12264363

and then when I complained first http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=User_talk:Mirv&diff=prev&oldid=12238373 and http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=User_talk:Mirv&diff=prev&oldid=12238476

Granted because I have been being coached a little through IM I have done some stuff I don't quite understand. Could you please help me - or if you can't point me to someone who would be willing to help me. TIA Symes 02:38, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Subst syntax

Substituting with subst: is often better than transclusion; but I think it is not often used. It is a bit cumbersome. Is there any reason not to provide a shorter atom? I was thinking of this:

{{":sometemplate}}

The rationale is that both the colon and the doubletick are shifted characters, and near one another on both the standard QWERTY and the improved Dvorak keyboard layouts. Thus it should be possible to demand substitution with almost equal ease as transclusion. What do you think?

On a related matter, I've been trying to work out a consistent method of documenting templates on their Talk pages. {{doctl}} survived a TfD, but it is still broken.

When it is mis-used, as a transcluded template, it works fine -- but of course this is useless; the new template creator needs to substitute it on the new template's Talk page and re-edit it with appropriate documentation.

When it is used properly, that is: {{subst:doctl|newtemplatename}}, it blows up in most hideous fashion. I have fiddled with the code no end, without success. I'd be very grateful if you could throw me a bone here. — Xiong熊talk 22:18, 2005 Apr 15 (UTC)

Sorry, can't help right now. Leave for a week-long business trip in a few hours, then get the joys of 7 days of final packing before changing country and then another trip. Hopefully someone else will be able to assist.:) Failing that, I'll be around again in 3-4 weeks. Jamesday 05:18, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Just an idea. Have a nice trip. — Xiong熊talk 23:53, 2005 Apr 18 (UTC)

Emergency measures

I did reply to your request for suggested emergency measures, on Misplaced Pages talk:Avoid using meta-templates#Emergency measures. I do sympathize with your need to do more with less, and I understand that it is not helpful now to look for new equipment later. Let's see if we can work together to raise community awareness of the actual issues, unclouded by the partisan bias of a certain user. — Xiong熊talk 01:48, 2005 Apr 16 (UTC)

Subst

When you have the time, check out Bug 2003: Allow templates to be marked call-by-value-only. I'd like to know whether this is a good idea or not, and if it would help. You would be the one to know. JRM · Talk 13:12, 2005 Apr 30 (UTC)

Interwiki Bots

Hi James. Seeing that you're a developer, perhaps you might have a different aspect on this matter. I've been thinking over the recent number of interwiki bot requests and I feel that introducing a more restrictive policy would slightly benefit the Misplaced Pages. I'd be delighted to hear your thoughts on the matter. Please see my comments regarding this matter at: Misplaced Pages:Village_pump_(policy)#Interwiki_Bot_Policy_Proposal. Thank you for your time. -- AllyUnion (talk) 08:26, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

Adding photos from space

Hello hello - I noticed you linked a beautiful space shuttle photo in Gulf of Suez. When you link these photos please include in the caption the orientation of the photo (eg in this case facing north). Please also disambiguate east and west by including left and right. Appreciate all your hard work! --Csnewton 20:29, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Invitiation to join the Wikimedia Research Team

Hello Jamesday,

I'd like to invite you to join the Wikimedia Research Team which I'm building on Meta with support from the Foundation Board of Trustees. Our goal is to work together to systematically analyze the needs of the projects, conduct research and collect empirical data, interview users, build relationships with outside developers, examine project proposals, and make recommendations to the Board for targeted software development.

I'm contacting you because of your keen understanding of database and server issues; I can think of no better person to inject a dose of reality into the sort of "blue sky" discussions we might have. I know that you're always busy, and it's fine if you take a while to respoond. Your involvement wouldn't necessarily mean any further time commitment on your part, but it would be nice to see you at meetings, and share ideas on the present and future of the project with you. If you're interested, just add yourself to the list of Current Members, and I will inform you about all future developments.--Eloquence* 16:25, May 26, 2005 (UTC)

Meta-templates

Hi there! I was asked to write a Signpost article on recent policy/rule/guideline debates. And I would like to say some things about templates (CoffeeRoll, for instance). Would you mind if I cited your words re: meta-templates considered harmful? I think it's something people would like to know. Yours, Radiant_* 15:58, May 27, 2005 (UTC)

• Never mind, the article is done now. I've simply used a link to your text, hope you don't mind. Radiant_* 12:36, May 30, 2005 (UTC)

Article Lists and Copyright

If you can, could you comment on the copyright issue presented at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles#Copyright?. Dragons flight 05:23, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)

I realized after looking at the talk that an outsider might have difficulty following the issue, so I'm going to take a moment to elaborate on the issue, just in case. As you know, since you were involved in advocating its deletion (, see March 2), a list of Misplaced Pages:Columbia Encyclopedia article titles was created in March 2004 and shortly thereafter deleted over concerns related to its copyright status. Now it is 2005, and other people have been created a similar list Misplaced Pages:2004 Encyclopedia topics based on articles appearing in the 2004 Encyclopedia Brittanica. My concern on that talk page goes to how can the latter be acceptable if the former was considered a copyright violation. Some editors have mentioned but not referenced unspecified subsequent discussions or opinions that both lists ought to have been okay. Since you were involved in the deletion of the original Columbia list, I was hoping you might be able to comment on that determination and whether the same problem seems likely to apply to the 2004 Brittanica list. Thank you for your time and consideration. Dragons flight 17:29, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)

Orphaned

You have links at the top of this page to the Lonelypages report. I hope they are a note to yourself to fix the report. It has been stuck at just showing 1000 titles for several months. -- RHaworth 16:46, 2005 July 12 (UTC)

Meta-templates vs Maintainability

I would be glad if you could spare a moment to look at Template talk:Coor#Discussion and give a developer's opinion. -- RHaworth 16:46, 2005 July 12 (UTC)

sep11.wikipedia.org

I don't think a September 11th Memorial is appropriate to have as part of Misplaced Pages. Ideally it should be transferred to a more appropriate organization for hosting and administration, or alternately, converted into a Wikibook. I'm not sure how the Sept 11 wiki came into existence, but I'm glad we're not doing new ones. I'm sure there are more appropriate places for such material. Kaldari 00:56, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

The thing that bothers me about sep11.wikipedia.org isn't that it exists, but that it is ostensibly presented as if it were part of Misplaced Pages. sep11.wikipedia.org does not follow the rules or conventions of Misplaced Pages and for all extents and purposes it should be seperate from Misplaced Pages. A memorial does not belong in an encyclopedia. The easiest step that could be taken in this direction would simply be to change the logo of sep11.wikipedia.org so that it is not a Misplaced Pages logo. I also believe that the domain name should be changed as well, following the convention of other Misplaced Pages sister projects. I think the way it is set up currently is confusing. Kaldari 18:49, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Merging edit histories...

... can we still do this? I thought that this was no longer possible! - Ta bu shi da yu 08:25, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Yet Another London Wikimeet

Heya James,

We're organising another London meetup, for Sunday the 11th of September; specifics still to work out, but it will probably be fun as ever, and involve a few drinks and a nice chat in a pub. As a freshly British inhabitant, I thought you might want to know. We'd love to see you there...

James F. (talk) 22:48, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for update ...

... however you do it ... of edit counts. Sfahey 21:56, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

First, thanks for updating the list. Second, per Wikipedia_talk:List_of_Wikipedians_by_number_of_edits#Data the "past month" counts are done inconsistently (article space counts since June, main namespace counts just June). I'm not sure it's worth rerunning the script to fix this, if you don't can you let me know you're not going to or edit the page to explain the anomaly? Last, any idea why the numbers are different from the numbers from Kate's tool? Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:05, July 26, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the update, Noel and I were working on using the dumps, but were getting major errors from gzip. I used your data to update Misplaced Pages:List of Wikipedians by number of recent edits, but have requests to include all users, and not just those with 1500+ edits. Do you think I can get a copy of your entire dump? Also, is it correct what Rick Block said about the main namespace only being June? If so, I need to fix the wording on the recent edits page. Thanks. ∞Who?¿? 20:19, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply.

Probably take care of it in a month or so, when it's time to update the page. Not a promise. Jamesday 04:29, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

That's ok, no big hurry, we couldn't get db acs and had our probs, so whenever we can get a total data list from your scripts, we'll just make use of that. Thanks again. ∞Who?¿? 05:11, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

response requested

Hi - Can you please respond at Wikipedia_talk:Avoid_using_meta-templates#Still_a_problem?? Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 12:40, August 2, 2005 (UTC)

User:Davidley lost password and bad email

From help desk:

My password doesn't seem to work (Or I recall it incorrectly). When I click on the "E-mail new password button" I don't receive an email (I've waited a couple of days). Either the email functionality isn't working or I did not have the correct email address on my user preferences. My username is: Davidley, and my email address should be "ley (at) cs.dal.ca" . Can anyone help me reset my password? Thanks.

Well, I don't know what process we have in place for this sort of thing. We can't just email him a password at the address given here. The user page in question is rather un-anonymous; I would go so far as to say that if anyone can demonstrate his real identity is David Ley of U Toronto, he deserves control of the username whether he can be shown to have created it or not.

In the case of a user who creates an account User:Modbloofool, makes a few edits, and then claims to have lost password with bad email addy, I'd say, hey, too bad, go be somebody else. But I think this case merits developer attention. — Xiong熊talk* 02:46, 2005 August 13 (UTC)

Being my usual buttinsky self, I have to say: can't he go be somebody else? He could register User:DavidLey and redirect his old page to his new one, making note of the how and why. He only has 61 edits, so I don't think edit count vanity would be important. JRM · Talk 03:11, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Silly me. Copying this to the help desk. JRM · Talk 03:11, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Hello, this is Davidley, as per the instructions on the help desk, I am posting a comment here in the hope that someone can reset/email me a password (email: ley @ cs.dal.ca) . Thank you. --64.231.174.234 13:44, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Davidley again here. Don't know how it is possible to "prove" that I am Davidley. My IP address listed here seems to be different from the one of my last post (I am on a Bell Canada DSL account, so I am pretty sure it is a dynamic IP). Other email addresses that might be more of a "proof" of who I am include: "david.ley (at) utoronto.ca" and "dave (at) ley.ca". I hope this is enought to convince someone to email me my password. Thanks, Davidley --64.231.174.234 13:50, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

If you use the forgotten password link an email will be sent to you "david.ley (at) utoronto.ca" address. You can then change the email address to the one you prefer. Jamesday 23:22, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Thank you! --Davidley 15:26, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Mr. Bene here with a situation similar to the fictitious Modbloofool. My argument for maintaining specifically the Mr. Bene user ID is consistancy and a certain level of anonymity - especially in the Web analytics front where I've been contributing relatively anonymously at the request of my employers. Previous edits should have come from this IP, and also a residential Rogers Cable IP block. "mrbene at gmail dot com" mail address association can be seen on (skip or don't skip the coralize script, it serves the same page) also backed up by early contributions Filterset.G. If it can be done, I'd be much appreciative, if not then, well...

Never mind, it arrived. Mr. Bene

Was about to tell you that the email address was already there and that I'd confirmed the link required to change it, if that was necessary. Glad it's working for you now. Jamesday 19:15, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

new users

Hi - There's been some willy on wheels incidents lately where he uses pre-created accounts (to get around the move restrictions). A couple of folks have suggested a special:newusers would be helpful. Perhaps one way to do an equivalent action would be to add a parameter to special:listusers, so a URL like http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Special%3AListusers&from=20050710152751 (the from string is a date) would work. Assuming that such an enhancement won't be coming soon, do you think you could whip up a list of the most recently created 1000 or 10000 users, ordered by account creation date, and post it someplace? I believe this would be extremely helpful. Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:34, August 27, 2005 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/European Union member states at the 2004 Summer Olympics

You might be interested to have a look. Regards. --Pgreenfinch 13:00, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Ping

Replied on my talk page. --Gmaxwell 07:08, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Request for moderator attention

Hello. Articles Derek Croxton and Anuschka Tischer are in AfD since September 9 but the AfD clearly failed. Articles are to be kept. I wonder if you´d be so kind as to remove them from AfD? Thanks. Doidimais Brasil 18:22, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

PostgreSQL

I just wanted to let you know I've replied to your comment re: MVCC on Talk:PostgreSQL.

While I've got your ear, I'm curious -- do you know if any thought has been devoted to using Postgres for Misplaced Pages? I realize the PG port for Mediawiki is less mature than the MySQL support, so it is probably not something to implement in the short-term, but if anyone's interested in considering it I would be happy to help in any way I can. Neilc 22:28, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

WP:1000 update

Hi, I know you are rather busy. I was wondering if you have time, if you could run your script on the new DB for September. You wouldn't have to update the page, there are a few of us who wouldn't mind parsing the data and updating it. If you get a chance, that would be great, but it's not important. Thanks. ∞Who?¿? 08:10, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

request for bureaucratship at tamil wiktionary

Hi, I am user:ravidreams, I would like to become a bureaucrat in the Tamil Wikitionary since there is no bureaucrat there till now. i have the same username there. I have got support from the community. you can find the elections page here . I was directed at meta wikimedia site to ask a developer regarding this and i hope i am asking the right person. thank you--Ravishankar 09:23, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Sept11.wikipedia.org

The front page links to non-exisitant wikipedia articles, some more than once. Rich Farmbrough 22:02, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

CSS in wikipedia

I appreciate your comments about the use of CSS and site-wide style sheets as opposed to templates at WP:AUM#Alternatives. Is there a better discussion point for the further integration of CSS with mediawiki? ∴ here…♠ 19:48, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Slovene Misplaced Pages

As you're one of the developers I'm turning to you with request to translate some on MediaWiki software, used on :sl. As of now we're still using english command for categories, but we wish to use slovene version (Kategorija instead of Category); some of associated commands were already translated, but this wasn't. Another translation is of Template to Predloga. Regards, --Klemen Kocjancic 10:51, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Someone else noticed the shenanigans in CC-2.5!

I was thrilled when I hit your user page and saw that someone else has noticed the nonsense with CC-2.5! I wrote some pretty fuming stuff when they put out cc-wiki, and I was both shocked and not shocked to see it quietly slipped into 2.5. One thing I've noticed is that the previous versions of CC seem to include an 'or any later' clause directly in the license, which seems pretty bogus to me if they are going to substantially change the character of the license. It's quite unfortunate, creative commons has the nice little system of modifiers.. they should have made a 'CA' (community attributed) and left it at that... But I guess greater powers are at play. Do you have any idea why this hasn't gotten more attention? --Gmaxwell 06:00, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

explain? I didn't see this addressed directly on the user page -- though I am curious about the whole 'opt out for info freedom' statement ∴ here…♠ 18:08, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

See the difference between 4.c in cc-by-sa-2.0 and cc-by-sa-2.5. This is a concern because CC-BY-SA-2.5 incorporates aspects of CC-WIKI, a license which takes attribution from content creators and grants it to website operators merely because they operate a website. CC-BY-2.5 doesn't go quit as far a CC-WIKI because it's is very vague about the subject. Considering that there have been a number of cases where internet resources have later commercialized their user created content and shafted their users in the process, we shouldn't take such a thing likely. The argument behind terms like this is that with highly collaborative works that the contributors copyright interest is individually very small and that the work was indeed the product of the community. This argument has two problems in most cases: one is that the work is actually highly collaborative; In most cases I can find it isn't, for example on Misplaced Pages the majority our longer articles were written by single people or a very small group of people who each made a copyright worthy contribution, and a zillion tiny changes by others. The second problem with the argument is that there seems to be a misunderstanding that a website operator (whom we can attribute to) is the same thing as a community (which is too ephemeral to receive attribution). Even in the case where it would be fair to attribute to the community what we end up doing is attributing to some website which might represent the community today, but the community could fork or move inmass and then find themselves having to grant attribution to a site they now dislike. If users wanted to contribute under that new license that is there call, but I hope you can see how inserting terms related to this in CC-BY-2.5 was a substantial change in character and was a mistake from an ethical and legal perspective. Because CC could have just as easily produced a new modifier tag (and didn't adjust the layman version of the license that you see before the 'legal code'), I can only conclude they introduced that clause into CC-BY-2.5 with the express intention of changing the licensing of existing work without the consent of it's creators, which I consider to be an indefensible and morally reprehensible act. There is also a degree of confusion about who encouraged the addition of this language because I was told conflicting things by the Creative commons folks and the Wikimedia foundation board when CC-Wiki was first released. I haven't been able to follow up more on this because the subject upsets me somewhat (as you might guess by my rant here :) ). --Gmaxwell 19:15, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

What is the correct course of action in protest to such an annoying development? Is phrasing such as the Jamesday's sidebar adequate? What about this opt out bs? Is there a better, more public, forum for this discussion? ∴ here…♠ 20:23, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

The CC mailing list is one suitable venue for the CC side, since it does mean that an author can't trust the presene of a CC license to protect their own interests, a lamentable development. Lessig used the CC wiki license for the new version of his book, the site there also had a statement that any contributors were giving up their moral rights. The submission standards grant of an agency to send infringement notices was a threat to the work, via giving one licensee power over other licensees and threatening the ability of others to reproduce the work, either through action of the agent or through a legal judgment transferring the assets to another entity hostile to the work, or simply through undue heavy-handedness. Basically: any concentration of power or authority over the work itself is a threat to the ability to reproduce the work, so we need to watch for and prevent such concentrations.

It's probably also getting to the time where we need to establish a second host for the whole work (meaning EVERYTHING in the database, including user accounts, and all configuration files), to provide a complete and secure full version if there's a problem with the first, be it technical disaster, hurricane, legal, political or whatever. Jamesday 21:45, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

From a technical perspective this wouldn't be too challenging initally, the subject came up fairly recently what it would take to accomplish this which caused me to make some evaluations. I've secured an offer to provide solid hosting, and I could cover the capital costs of approiate hardware... I'm willing to do much of the work. I was planning of maintaining my own database for the purposes of analysis but after getting access to toolserver that mostly closed that need. OAI link will be fixed, but we'll need it for toolserver and I presume the new answers.com branded site will need it too. I think the biggest challenges will be mediawiki development progress breaking stuff, and of course political. Perhaps I should work with a local chapter to establish such an alternate source? Your thoughts?--Gmaxwell 22:11, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Template transclusion

There has been some recent thought that certain templates should always be subst'ed, and a list is being compiled with the intent of having a bot automatically subst all those templates. The two main reasons are article stability, and server load. Since you're one of the experts on the latter, it would be appreciated if you could give your opinion on this. The relevant page is Misplaced Pages:Subst. Radiant_>|< 17:54, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:List_of_Wikipedians_by_number_of_edits/script

Hi James, I'm interested in launching that script for getting a list of wikipedians by number of edits in spanish wikipedia. For that I need few fields in user & user_rights tables. I wonder if you can provide me a dump of that tables just containing needed fields for querying my local database. Thanks very much. --porao (reply) 08:37, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

I would also like to request such script for Slovene Misplaced Pages (:sl), if you have any spare time! TIA! Regards, --Klemen Kocjancic 12:10, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Sounds as though I'll need to do some work on improving the script to make it a bit easier to run for all wikis. I'll see what I come up with... if I get something reasonably effective I'll run it myself on them all. Jamesday 03:07, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, that would be great! Regards, --Klemen Kocjancic 21:59, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

More bad templates

Some new so-called "logical" templates are being created (see Category:If Templates and Category:Boolean Templates) by a couple "clever" individuals who've found a way to hack the template mechanism into doing things it was not intended for. Rather than petition the MediaWiki developers (or write code themselves), they've put this kludge into effect and it is unfortunately growing rapidly. I'd like you to take a look at those and please comment on Misplaced Pages talk:Avoid using meta-templates#Logic templates. Thanks very much. -- Netoholic @ 14:51, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Please also have a look at the discussion that emerged on User talk:AzaToth#Misplaced Pages:Avoid_using_meta-templates. – Adrian | Talk 15:18, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

The discussion is now at Misplaced Pages talk:Avoid using meta-templates, and could really use some developer input. At the moment, the guideline tag has been removed from WP:AUM because there wasn't "consensus" about it. If you have a chance, I'm sure a comment from you would be very much appreciated. Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:46, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorry for nagging again. I tried to write a more complete discription of the dilemma under Misplaced Pages talk:Avoid using meta-templates#Proposal for "lazy templates". Thanks! – Adrian | Talk 08:25, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for commenting (and I assume my descriptions of how things work are close enough). -- Rick Block (talk) 21:05, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

multiple DB servers?

HI - Random thought - would it be possible to introduce multiple DB servers partitioning the load by at least namespace? Seems like one of the primary issues with wikipedia scaling is the reliance on a single database on the ultimate back end, and distributing the database among multiple servers would allow a X N scaling to be employed. At the Apache layer there'd need to be connections to each and each Apache would have to know where to go for what, but at a coarse level it seems like at least the namespace could be used as a DB selector. Going further, perhaps the main article namespace could be split by first letter as well (e.g. A-L on DB1, M-Z on DB2). Imagine, for example, if just templates were off on their own DB server. This wouldn't fix the cache invalidation problem when they're changed, but seems like it would help the page generation issue. Anyway - just a thought. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:49, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Good thought and exactly right. Yes, partitioning is already happening. One of the issues is en load, which is more than 50% of the total, so there's a definite limit on how far we can go without partitioning within a project. That's something I said we'd need in 2005, back in the early spring of 2005, around Jan. We've dodged it so far by adding more RAM to the database servers so they can handle a bigger working set; also by partitioning away the text of old revisions on to sets of database servers running on the apache web servers, to exploit their disks rather than filling the main database server disks. For a long time now, we've been sending the queries to servers based on project, because that improves cache efficiency. We're also in some cases now splitting the replication as well, so some servers don't even have all the data. This has a reliability cost because it decreases the number of servers available to switch to if the server just doesn't have the data, but it's necessary, we just need to ensure that we have enough so its not too likely to be a problem.

Changing the software to allow partitioning within a single project is going to be a massive task and it's not work which is glamorous, compared to things like adding nice new features, so it's not a surprise that it hasn't been done yet.

Longer term, one of the growth issues is how to keep up with the update rate. It's already eliminated the viability of database servers with 4GB of RAM replicating the whole database. Eventually, we'll hit the point where even keeping up with only en is a problem. IN this, templates help, because they decrease he amount of work needed to be done to get a change across multiple articles. But, templates are in the more near term a threat because they take out lots of servers for a while if a popular template is changed, delaying pages for everyone for all servers which are replicating that particular database. It's not so nice for humans but splitting a template into ten different versions signnificantly decreases the problems, even if all ten are identical, just split by article name or template which includes them (that is, partitioning just as you described, but based on how big the chunk of pages to be modified with each update is). Here's an example from a few minutes ago:

http://hashmysql.org/paste/viewentry.php?id=1214

I was using 30 second refresh so that "touch" update took between 10 and 40 seconds and delayed requests of users hitting the slaves by that long (in theory. The load balancing tries to shift the work around after a while and some queries might have been switched to the master, which is a DOS threat to the master). Those lines showing MASTER_POS_WAIT are the ones being delayed.

I've been asking for and largely getting schema changes to help deal with this and that's been of some use, but it's still a major concern, because we probably need to double 5 more times (takes us above Google's current traffic). Jamesday 21:23, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Template redirects

Greetings.

It is a commonly cited Misplaced Pages maxim that "Redirects are cheap." This refers to the fact that article redirects have minimal cost in terms of disk space, bandwidth, and presumably server load.

A question has recently arisen as to whether or not template redirects are similarly cheap. The issue of the "cheapness" of template redirects has become a particular bone of contention with respect to stub redirects. One group of folks holds that a strict naming convention for stubs should be followed, and that stub redirects (Template:Bike-stub → Template:Cycling-stub, for example) should be deleted or otherwise deprecated. Another group of folks holds that redirects are useful, and should not be deleted or otherwise deprecated if they adhere to the redirect policies as outlined at Misplaced Pages:Redirect and Misplaced Pages:Redirects for deletion.

It was suggested that one of the developers be approached, hat in hand, to ask for their sage counsel. So here I am. Are template redirects sufficiently expensive in terms of server load that they should be avoided? Or are they sufficiently cheap that they can be thought of as a trivial increase to the server load? Or do they fall somewhere in between?

Thanks for your time. All the best.
Ξxtreme Unction|_{yakkity yak} 10:15, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Don't take this as gospel until Jamesday confirms it (although I'm not a mediawiki developer I have a fairly good grasp of how the software works), but from my understanding article redirects should be cheap since the entire page corresponding to the redirected article can be cached in the squid front ends. Page views for such pages (that are in cache) are served entirely by these front end cache servers without hitting either the apache servers that run the PHP code that generates the page contents or the ultimate backend database.

Template redirects amount to a template invoked within a template, which is a technique that should be avoided (see WP:AUM) because of the database and cache invalidation load that is created. In this specific case (redirects for stub templates) as long as the number of articles including the stub template by either name remains reasonable, the cache invalidation effects aren't increased (i.e. from this perspective it doesn't much matter whether all articles include the root template or some include the root and some include the redirect). On the other hand, every time an article including the redirect is changed the apache server generating the new page contents has to fetch both the redirect and then the root template. From a database perspective, this means the work involved in fetching the template is roughly doubled.

The database is the one component in the architecture that can't be easily replicated (more money can buy more squids and more apaches, but architecturally there's a single database), so when generating the article contents (which happens at least once each time the article or any template it includes is changed) the database is usually the bottleneck. If all stub templates were invoked by a redirect the database load due to fetching stub templates would be double what it should be, so if this is X% of the total database workload eliminating the redirects would cut the total workload by (X/2)%. If 20% of stub templates are invoked by a redirect eliminating the redirects cuts this X% of the workload by 10%, i.e. reduces the total workload by (X/10)%. I wouldn't be surprised if X were in the neighborhood of something like 20 (meaning 20% of the total database workload is due to fetching stub templates), so even 5% of that would add up to 1% of the total workload.

My bottom line guess is that anything that can be done to reduce the overall database load by more than 1% is well worth doing and that stub template redirects should be deleted. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:28, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

On squid caching, note that normal redirects can be expected to cause a second copy of the page to be cached, wasting cache space, because of the "redirected from" text which needs to be added to the page. That's one technical reason why it's nice to avoid links to redirects in articles, though the technical issue wasn't a factor in our practice of avoiding doing that. This won't apply to template redirects though, since they don't generate such a page. Jamesday 00:12, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Template:Us-street-stub

I think it actually doesn't cause any extra load. If you click edit on this page, which uses {{us-street-stub}}, only {{US-road-stub}}, the "real" name, shows below. On the other hand, if us-street-stub had US-road-stub transcluded, both would show up. --SPUI (talk - don't use sorted stub templates!) 15:22, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I'd guess this is simply redirects being filtered out of the display (for example whatlinkshere for the redirect shows this page). Since the redirected template is stored in the source, it pretty much has to be fetched to regenerate the page It's perhaps possible that a database query for the contents of X, if X is redirected to Y, returns the contents of Y (X becoming a secondary key of some sort to Y), but I doubt it. If I were less busy I might look this up in the source. I'd expect Jamesday simply knows. -- Rick Block (talk) 20:01, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Your doubt is right - the redirect would be fetched, then the real page. Same for other redirects. Jamesday 00:12, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

As costs go I expect them to be fairly modest. But I'd rather not see them. Here's a quick analysis:

1. They are quite small so they probably don't add much extra to be cached. Will add one more page to be checked on the way to getting the content so it is an extra query when the page is being built. Probably fairly fast, but it's there and does need to be processed.
2. Redirects are index entries to help people, mostly readers, find things. Template redirects don't serve readers, only authors, who can be expected to try to use the direct template if they know about it. But sometimes they don't.
3. General practice is to seek to avoid redirects in links from one article to another, replacing the link to the redirect with a direct link.
4. They are unlikely to be changed regularly, so the issues with replication lag and slowdown and the issues with purging many pages probably don't apply.
5. But... they may prevent proper purging when the template they redirect to is changed. Now, I actually like this effect, because it reduces load... but it's probably something which would be unpopular with those who changed the template. I have not checked whether this supposition is accurate; it flows from the general design and there could be a special case to handle it. Probably isn't.

What I suggest is:

have templates like Template:Bike-stub contain text saying something like "Please replace this use of Template:Bike-stub with Template:Cycling-stub or Template:Motorycling-stub or whatever else might be appropriate".

This alerts authors to the existence of the other template(s) they might use, thus fulfilling the purpose of a redirect (helping people to find a resource), trusts that authors will try to follow our general practice of avoiding redirects in article text, while reducing load. The text will be seen in preview, generally, so it'll also dodge the saving of the unnecessary revision and subsequent edit by another author to change this redirect to a direct link to the other template.

Jamesday 00:12, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. Discussion is now underway regarding how best to implement your suggestion. There is currently some difference of opinion as to how conservatively to interpret your comments. In the event that you are interested in such discussion, you can find them in the lower reaches of both Misplaced Pages talk:Redirects for deletion and Misplaced Pages talk:Stub types for deletion.

All the best.

Ξxtreme Unction|_{yakkity yak} 13:09, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Templates and server load

Are there any server load issues we should be aware of regarding often-used templates, categories on those templates, or images on those templates? Many editorial and/or userbox templates are frequently used and contain both category (which would be redundant with Special:Whatlinkshere) and image (which sometimes is a scaled down version of a really big image). Radiant_>|< 22:39, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Images are of most concern to me because image serving load has repeatedly taken the site down or caused major load problems and remains a major scalability challenge for the site. For this reason, I suggest minimising the use of "decorative", "icon" or "hint" images and using them for "content" only, whenever this is practical. Content = whatever the article is about, a picture of an author or book cover or statue or similar. The issue has generally been simply the use and need to check the image, not its size. Category links seem generally to be regarded as useful, though large categories with more than a few thousand entries have been problematic and breaking down huge categories into smaller ones is likely to be useful. Jamesday 03:15, 20 January 2006 (UTC)