Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 18:07, 1 April 2012

Hello, and welcome to my talk page. If I post on a talk page please respond there. I'll be watching it for a while. No need to {{talkback}} me unless you think I missed it. If you start a conversation here, I'll reply here (unless you request otherwise, here or on your talkpage), so please watch this page. ⇒ Start a new Talk topic.

Precious

	reviewing eyes
	Thank you for reviewing in the Contributor copyright investigations/PumpkinSky! Paraphrasing (I hope not too closely): If everybody who reads this looked at one more article it could be over today. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:18, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

It is over, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:17, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

For a quick view, 719 of 729 articles were found with no problems. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:40, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

You may be interested in thoughts that Geometry guy thinks should become an essay, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:59, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

See also ... we'll never know the true story (6 March) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:18, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Recommended reading: Great Dismal Swamp maroons, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:38, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Now --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:17, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Khazar is back as Khazar2, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:26, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

I know. Amalthea 08:23, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

When you said "I know", did you mean that Khazar is working for Human rights and the progress of this project again, or also the alledged identity of BarkingMoon and PumpkinSky (see "essay" above, also about who forms the "community", the admins, the editors or the readers)? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:12, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

I know that Khazar has returned to editing. I'm not sure I understand what you want to say with "alleged identity", but in my opinion it is not helpful to ponder that at this point. Amalthea 10:19, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

It was pondered before, see above, with Geometry guy, but I understand that you didn't know that? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:22, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

← The identity of BarkingMoon and PumpkinSky was pondered about at many places. What I said is that I don't think it's helpful for anyone to continue the pondering at this time. Amalthea 10:45, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

I agree, I should have pursued a clarification last year (also see above), only I was too distressed then, I didn't even know what "ArbCom" means, and I did not know how to interpret "let sleeping dogs lie". --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:08, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Clarification: it has been pondered also several places that BarkinkMoon and PumpkinSky are NOT the same person, collaborating yes, but two people (my POV also) - people with feelings, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:38, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Tales of Amalthea

What is this about deleting Tales of Amalthea? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wesley J M (talk • contribs) 23:13, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi,
well, as you know the Misplaced Pages community requires that a topic must meet our notability guidelines to have a stand-alone article. Like I described at Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Tales of Amalthea, I don't believe that the topic at hand currently meets the relevant guidelines detailed at Misplaced Pages:Notability and Misplaced Pages:Notability (web). In particular, this is a new and unfinished web project that is not yet covered in-depth by reliable third-party sources.
Amalthea 11:20, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

I just added to the article, saying at the beginning where I have seen the names of the creatures before. Take a look.

OK, but that does not change the current notability of the website. As long as the website or project itself is not getting press coverage or coverage in other reliable sources, I don't see that we can have an article on it on Misplaced Pages. Amalthea 14:23, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Setting up a company wiki

Amalthea,

Another ‘crat suggested via email that I contact you.

Executive summary

I have a corporate website and expect to be soon moving my webhosting from SiteTurn (who suck) to Fat Cow. One of the main reasons for Fat Cow is they are highly rated for web‑hosting provider that supports MediaWiki (Host-Finder.net). I want a company wiki to use as a collaborative writing tool on some lengthy, structured, and highly technical medical documents. I am interested in MediaWiki 1.18.1, which, as far as I know, is the engine running Misplaced Pages. But I need help in configuring it so it is a private wiki; which is to say, so visitors must be logged in before they can read any content.

Details

Virtue of a wiki for collaborative writing

I’ve long recognized that MediaWiki—as exemplified by Misplaced Pages—is an awesome and ideal collaborative writing tool with a wide variety of virtues like…

• a continuous running history “article” history (“document” history in this case) all the way to day-one,
• one‑click ability to undo edits,
• ability to read rendered text and read the code of all previous versions,
• ability to copy text or code from sections of articles in an old version and transplant it to the current version,
• ability to see who made what edits when,
• ability to add pithy comments to edits,
• ability to look at ∆ edits between two versions,
• accompanying talk pages to engage in lengthy discussion.

All of this makes MediaWiki the ideal collaborative writing environment for complex and lengthy documents. Emailing Word-docs back and forth and looking at edit comments is an absolutely abysmal experience if you have three or more editors in the mix. Google-docs is an improvement but still falls far short of a wiki.

Configuring the wiki for private access

However, all I intend to have Fat Cow do for me is enable the raw wiki—not configure it. I will need to go into the new wiki and set myself up as a bureaucrat and set up privileges and passwords. What I want is to configure it so visitors can’t even view the main page without entering a username and password. From what I can read at MediaWiki (Manual:Preventing access#Restrict viewing of all pages and Manual:User rights#List of permissions), there are at least a two very different techniques to set restrictions so all un-logged-in visitors can’t view content…

1. Via the Apache’s wbserver tool.htpasswd, which could prevent everyone from seeing even the main page (Apache.org: “htpasswd - Manage user files for basic authentication”), or
2. And via a combination of $wgGroupPermissions, which can also require username and password to read content, in combination with $wgWhitelistRead which would allow me to exempt the main page so visitors can log in there.

From reading the MediaWik, even though non-logged-in visitors can’t *view* pages, with clever guessing of the path names to files (and I think images are “files” on a wiki), un-logged-in visitors could still download files.

At least, the above is my *understanding* of how permissions to restrict reading of our company wiki would work. I know enough about permissions and setting myself up as a ‘crat to make myself dangerous and appreciate the fact that I should seek help. It appears that if I wasn’t careful with $wgGroupPermissions, I could make it so even *I* couldn’t log in—that’s my worry, anyway.

And, of course, since I am an experienced wikipedian and the others collaborating on the documents would be shear novices, I would set myself up as the ‘crat and would give the others the normal privileges that typical registered editors enjoy.

There are a few templates like {{nbhyph}} (one that I advocated for) I would like to get transplanted.

Seeking your help

I can see why I was also referred to you; it appears that you also operate a bot.

Could you help? If not, could you suggest some venues on Misplaced Pages for me to make this appeal? Could you leave a short note on some of your haunts pointing to this thread? I was thinking of posting at VillagePump but I imagine that there must be places where technically minded ‘crats and developers hang out that would be even better.

Contacting me

Please respond either by placing a {{talkback|Amalthea}} on my talk page, or via email by going to my user or talk pages and using Misplaced Pages’s built-in email facility—either way, I’ll receive an email. Once we have a backchannel going, I can share more details. Regards, Greg L (talk) 02:15, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

A lot of information, but I'm not sure what you are actually asking?

You said you need help in configuring it to be private. The best approach will depend on the detailed circumstances:

• Does it have to be accessible via Internet in the first place? Yes, contributors will be on different sides of the U.S.
• Is it feasible that the site maintainer manually sets up accounts for webserver access control? Yes. There will only be three or four contributors.
• Is it really necessary that it's /completely/ hidden? What's good enough for the ArbCom wiki should be good enough for you? Files can be configured to only be viewable if you're logged in. Not necessarily / OK. I have a programmer friend who might be able to set Apache to provide front-end protection to the entire wiki if that proves desirable. Fat Cow could also do it.

Other questions:

• I'm not sure that anywhere on Misplaced Pages is a good place to ask about setting up a MediaWiki installation. Indeed, this is not en.Misplaced Pages-related conversation, but then, non-pertinent threads aren’t entirely unknown around here. Besides, the whole concept of running one’s own wiki—one that works exactly like Misplaced Pages—is a concept not many are aware is a viable option and this thread might be of general interest to other wikipedians who have a similar need. More to the point, I can’t think of any other place in the world where there is so much talent and expertise in setting up a wiki.
• Trivial templates like {{nbhyph}} can simply be copied. Use Special:Export/Special:Import for more complex pages OK
• As long as you have access to the database you can't ever lock yourself out Good.

Does that help? Amalthea 11:12, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

I’ve emailed you since discussion beyond the above general technical details of how wikis work and are configured and how they can be useful for many other purposes should be conducted off Misplaced Pages. If you aren’t interested in further discussing this, please delete this thread or state as much here. If you interested in further discussing this, you can respond to the email I sent. Until then, thanks. Greg L (talk) 14:40, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

WP:Sockpuppet_investigations/William313

I have replied to the message you left. Regards. Farine (talk) 14:19, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, handled now. Cheers, Amalthea 18:57, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

FYI - question about 172.130.252.250. Mtking 02:28, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Teahouse invite

Thanks for your assistance on the template! The things I learn are the right thing to do in one place, are the wrong ones in another. :) I will check with the Teahouse founders regarding the licensing of the images. heather walls (talk) 19:14, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Amalthea 14:38, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Think you missed the follow up here. :) Leaving it in your hands since your comment seemed to point to something. -- DQ (ʞlɐʇ) 22:48, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Right. I'll see what needs to be done, thanks! Also thanks for chipping at the SPI backlog over the weekend, even though I read you're not quite back to full health yet!
And for something completely unrelated, since I've now had a number of first-hand experiences of webhost ranges being used disruptively I've done a 180 and now rangeblock them quite liberally ... :\
Cheers, Amalthea 14:35, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

No problem. My health is not something that is going to be a statically calming down over time (well at least not in the immediate future), and since it's related to personal things, i'm going to keep that discussion off wiki, but feel free to poke me off wiki to.

I find it interesting that you did make that 180, although you did give me something that I needed, and was to use a little more discretion and a few more grains of salt before blocking them. I want to hear your opinion though on possibly making webhosts hardblocked (when we get edits from it) or some derivative of that, a policy. Of course then CUs might have to issue several more IPBEs for legit editors, but we'll see. -- DQ (ʞlɐʇ) 19:53, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Pre-vet

I know this discussion took place back in July, but I've noticed lately that WP:SPI often has a backlog, and I'd like to help with that so I was wondering if you would still be willing to pre-vet me? - SudoGhost 18:52, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

For an SPI/CLERK? ;)
Gladly, but it is likely going to take me a couple of days. Any closets full of fresh skeletons I can expect to find?
Cheers, Amalthea 21:34, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Other than possibly this embarrassingly inappropriate behavior (which I did apologize for), I'm not aware of any sort of skeletons. I'd also like to help out with WP:AIV and WP:AN3, but if after looking into it you think an RfA wouldn't be appropriate, I'd be more than happy to help on WP:AIV as a non-admin clerk. :) - SudoGhost 22:03, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

I haven't forgotten you, by the way. Obligations are keeping me rather busy. :/ Amalthea 19:13, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Not a problem, I understand. If I ask something of you then I'm on your time, not the other way around. :) I'm in no hurry. - SudoGhost 19:21, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Sockpuppet Case

Thanks for your help with the Misplaced Pages:Sockpuppet investigations/TheREALCableGuy case. This guy is in Charlotte, NC and for some reason has an obsession with MeTV and I think I drew his ire when I reverted his edits and pointed out his sockpuppetry. I only hope he doesn't continue to utilize new IPs. He claims his edits are not vandalism, but the insertion of incorrect facts (the MeTV edits to WDSU) are not in keeping with the spirit of the wiki. Also, I have worked hard to keep the style of the NOLA TV wiki pages consistent and his latest round of edits were a deliberate attempt to provoke me. Sore bluto (talk) 22:21, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Magic pixie dust

Otherwise known as the Checkuser Log? T. Canens (talk) 23:46, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

You are referring to Someone? If it was merely the log I'd use much more careful language. In this case I can make a more definitive call, but I'm not comfortable discussing the details publicly. Since you may be handling the case I can send you some more details by e-mail. Amalthea 08:26, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Geonotice

I'm trying to figure out what I did wrong here because a bunch of the other entries on the page had single quotes, not doubles. Thanks. MBisanz 18:21, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Single quotes are fine as string delimiters, but you then can't use unescaped single quotes ("You're invited ") inside the message. Amalthea 00:22, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Ahh, thank you very much. MBisanz 01:04, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

User:Flyer22

SPI

Amalthea, thanks for all the work you do, including at Misplaced Pages:Sockpuppet investigations/TheREALCableGuy/Archive. As you surmised correctly, I am "monitoring the situation". Whether I'm reasonable or an idiot remains to be seen. When I get a moment I'll drop you a nice barnstar or a kitten or something as a token of appreciation. Drmies (talk) 15:01, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, and good luck with him! From the little I've seen he seems enthusiastic and does not want to be problematic, so I would hope that this can be worked out. Amalthea 19:00, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
	Right on, Amalthea. Thanks for your work in the SPI department. Drmies (talk) 16:10, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

TheGeneralUser (talk) 20:20, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Billy Hathorn

Hello, I see you were active recently at Misplaced Pages:Sockpuppet_investigations/Billy_Hathorn/Archive. I think 68.203.251.2 might be making edits in the same patttern. These edits are what sent me looking. Novaseminary (talk) 03:11, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Left comment at User talk:Orlady#Billy Hathorn. Amalthea 08:44, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Confirmed on behavioral grounds. I blocked the IP for one week. He has used this IP in the past; earlier I had noted it on a list. --Orlady (talk) 15:17, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

It frustrates me that he has been unreceptive to past efforts to get him to acknowledge the issues with his editing in order to get his account unblocked. --Orlady (talk) 15:21, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Actually, Novaseminary pointed out a different IP than the one you blocked, and he has just left a brief comment there: User talk:68.203.251.2#Billy Hathorn. Amalthea 23:13, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

You never did understand

Buck 11:37, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

And I don't understand that either it seems. Amalthea 11:44, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Mailed you again. Not sure if you plan to scuttle those as well. Amalthea 11:45, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Mediawiki:Gadget-popups.js bug

hi.

so there is this function:

function removeTitle(a) {
	a.title='';
	if (a.originalTitle) { return; }
	a.originalTitle=a.title;
}

this is clearly a bug (you empty a.title and then copy the empty value to originalTitle, which ends up always empty) - it should probably be something like

function removeTitle(a) {
	a.originalTitle = a.originalTitle || a.title; //if originalTitle is not empty don't touch it.
	a.title='';
}

peace, קיפודנחש (talk) 15:24, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Help us develop better software!

Thanks to all of you for commenting on the NOINDEX RfC :). It's always great to be able to field questions like these to the community; it's genuinely the highlight of my work! The NOINDEX idea sprung from our New Page Triage discussion; we're developing a new patrolling interface for new articles, and we want your input like never before :). So if you haven't already seen it, please go there, take a look at the screenshots and mockups and ideas, and add any comments or suggestions you might have to the talkpage. Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:47, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Jack Merridew / user:Uncontroversial Obscurity

Hey Amalthea. I've been cleaning up some of Jack Merridrew's accounts and I'm confused about user:Uncontroversial Obscurity. It's a Jack Merridrew sock account, and the arbitration committee prohibited him from using any account other than Balong. Yet after Ironholds blocked him last year, you undid his block. What's going on? Raul654 (talk) 14:50, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

See Xeno's edit in the page history of the user page, or the explanation on Ironholds' talk page back then: The account was used in compliance with Arbcom motion, not abusively. It was later retired.
Quite in general though, I don't think it's good or helpful for you to do any kind of cleanup there, I believe you and Alarbus were in a discussion that apparently was rather personal/emotional, and this situation is complicated enough as it is.
Cheers, Amalthea 18:07, 1 April 2012 (UTC)