Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 06:21, 27 July 2006

If you see me around too much, scold me and tell me to get back to work. :) If you're looking for new tools to be created, there are a number of toolserver developers currently active. If you want one of my tools to be tweaked, I'm fine with another toolserver developer making reasonable changes to any of my tools (all of my source code is easily accessible, and they can either make their own copy, or ask me to copy their changes to my script). --Interiot 22:50, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

edit counter tool

Thanks for the realtime edit counter tool. I like it so much that I created this userbox to reference it on my userbox page. Maybe others would like to use it.

-- Gbeeker 05:23, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Improvement suggestion

Thank you for the useful tool. Do you think it could display, beside the raw number of edits, also the number of DISTINCT pages edited, to help deal with newbies' etc. repeated saving of the same article within minutes? Obviously it is already partly contained in the "contribution tree", but one still has to count the lines (semi)manually.

Thanks a lot, --Malyctenar 10:41, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

P. S. I would also appreciate putting some of the parameters into the page's TITLE, but I can do without that.

Work

You've made 21 edits since posting that notice! (/me scolds Interiot) I'm sorry to see that you won't be around much for a while. Your contributions to the toolserver have been invaluable! And now I have no one to go to to inquire about the toolserver status - well, except IRC. Good luck on your project! --M@thwiz2020 20:34, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Is the edit counter working again?

Is your edit counter working again? I noticed that on your (April 2006 archive) page that DaBpunkt got replication working again, and you say that there is a bug in the replication. However, for my edits, the same number is displayed in your edit counter as is displayed in Kate's/river's edit counter. — Super-Magician (talk • contribs • count) ★ 22:22, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Both run in the same data, so if one is busted, the other one is too. Titoxd 22:22, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

And no, it is not correct, as Flcelloguy's Tool (which runs on live Misplaced Pages data) says you have 1363 total edits. Titoxd 22:26, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Articles created by

I would LOVE a run of your "Articles created by X" for me. I've been wondering for a while just how many articles I've made. I wonder how many I'm still the only contributor on. :) --Golbez 06:14, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

No problem, it should be here in a couple minutes. --Interiot 09:55, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you very much. :) How long will it be there? --Golbez 02:00, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

No problem. I can remove it on request, otherwise it'll be there... for a while. The toolserver has a lot of disk space, and the reports aren't very large. --Interiot 03:05, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I've been looking for such a tool some time now. Would it be possible to run it for me, Jon Harald Søby@nowiki? (Oh, and again I must compliment you for your extremely good edit counter. It's been there for a few months now, and I'm still amazed by it!) Jon Harald Søby 10:27, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Should be here soon (cross your fingers, you're the first non-ASCII username I've tested this with (this is the only script I really specify non-ASCII information via the command-line with)). --Interiot 10:23, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Fantastic, man! Thanks a lot! Jon Harald Søby 19:50, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I'd also like a list of articles created by me. Thanks! jareha 09:52, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Should be here soonish. --Interiot 10:23, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks again! jareha 11:39, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Your edit counter

Why is the edit counter no longer updating from the English wikipedia?

Jean-Paul 13:36, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Toolserver currently has a replication lag for enwiki of about two days and some change. It's the database that's lagged, not Interiot's edit counter. :) ~Kylu (u|t) 04:23, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Tool Request

I was wondering if you could consider making a tool that could show the edits of an IP range. It would certainly help with dynamic IP vandalism, and in targeting range blocks. Let me know if this is feasible, and if you are interested. I don't know if this should be tied to the database replication, as it would need to be as close to real time as possible, but you're the programmer. Happy editing! Prodego 01:36, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm interested in some anti-vandalism tools, yeah, though I'm going to be busy until September. Also, I'm not sure how else it could work other than the replication... it could scrape things via HTTP/HTML, but the devs really look down on that, and it's really bloody slow. --Interiot 01:44, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Request to help us with vandalism statistics

There is currently a thread on the village pump started by my estimate that 82-92% of vandalism is from anon users, (see user:Cool3/Analysis if you'd like to know more about that figure). However, my study has several problems. So, it has been suggested that perhaps with your help we could better gauge vandalism. Do you think you could write a tool to go through edit summaries and find vandalism reverts then see what percentage of these reverts reverted an IP as opposed to a logged-in user? Thanks a bunch. Cool3 19:15, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I probably don't have time to work on wikipedia development until September. Also, if the analysis ends up needing to diff wikitext contents, then the toolserver wouldn't be of help, since it doesn't have access to the wikitext of pages. --Interiot 20:11, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Thought you should know...

...about the change (speaking of which, the editcounter does not seem to have noticed it). Cheers! BD2412 T 05:11, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Tool 2

I have several problems, but I think the main one is that if I go to here:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=User:Interiot/Tool2/code.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s

I just get the source code. I have tried Safari and Firefox on Max OS X. Here is my monobook.js. I haven't used monobook.js before, but your Tool 1 worked fine. Stephen B Streater 12:25, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Try taking the "if" part off... I'm... not sure it would hurt, but I'm not sure it'll help either. --Interiot 18:50, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

That's how I started off - same result. Perhaps you have not set the MIME type of the file correctly. This affects our mobile phone downloads anyway. Or I could have this completely wrong. Stephen B Streater 19:21, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

I borrowed the link from the userbox above and it works on my PC at work: User:Interiot/Tool2/code.js Stephen B Streater 17:49, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

This one also works on my Mac at home. Stephen B Streater 19:05, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

But not my phone - this says it doesn't work on IE - despite actually running on Opera. Stephen B Streater 17:21, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I've found that it won't work on an iBook G3 running Mac OS 10.2 and Safari, but will work on a G4 hunting Tigers on Safari. :) (This is off topic to this header, but could run an articles created by x thing for me as well?)—WAvegetarian•(talk) 21:44, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Yup, it should show up here sooner or later. --Interiot 21:49, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks —WAvegetarian•(talk) 22:10, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Undead

When you got some time, would you be so kind to update http://tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/reports/output/undead.txt ? -- User:Docu

No problem, it should be updating. --Interiot 18:48, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. It didn't quite give the results I expected (articles with year of birth, but no year of death or "living people" category). Well, maybe there are just no articles left. -- User:Docu

Looks like... the program aborted before finishing. Somebody should fix that... --Interiot 08:54, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Ok. In the past gmaxwell ran a similar query on a hourly basis. It listed easily 100 new entries per day. As it has been about 2 months since, there could be a backlog of 6000 entries. -- User:Docu

new wiki

Hi Interiot, the developers recently created a new wiki, called "Misplaced Pages incubator". It is intended for test-Wikipedias: provisory Wikipedias in languages that have no domain of their own yet. They were conceived in early 2005 and were formerly located on meta-wiki. The domain is http://incubator.wikimedia.org/. It would be very useful if you upgraded your edit counting tool with this new wiki, especially since all of the edits on these test wikis have been transferred to it and with the deletion of the test-wikis on meta they will perish. Thanks in advance, Steinbach (fka Caesarion) 16:23, 4 June 2006 (UTC).

Do you know what its database name normally is? (eg. "inwiki"?) I'm not sure whether it's being replicated over to the toolserver... (I can look into this a little bit, but usually the people on #wikimedia-toolserver are the ones who handle the back-end stuff like updating the list of available wikis on the toolserver, and/or replicating new ones if needed) --Interiot 18:47, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

The database name is incubatorwiki. Jon Harald Søby 19:29, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Looks like we don't have it replicated to the toolserver yet. (is it really really new? is it part of a different database cluster?) Anyway, could you bring it up in #wikimedia-toolserver, and ask if one of the DB admins there could get it replicated to the toolserver? --Interiot 19:32, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

This is the oldest revision of any page, dated May 10th. So it's quite new. Jon Harald Søby 19:42, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Usually I can at least access the new database myself shortly after it's created, even if it's not available via toolserver webpages. Since it's a couple weeks old, I suspect it's part of a different DB cluster, and may take some extra work by DaBpunkt or something to get it replicated over. --Interiot 19:48, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Identified problem with tool/bot you are using

On this edit, it seems you may have used some sort of tool to, among other things, replace semi-colons with commas in order to align the page with the Misplaced Pages Manual of Style on Disambiguation pages. However, in doing so, you replaced semi-colons that were part of the name of a book and a computer game, respectively, so that it is no longer the correct title or link. -- Centrx 01:22, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

It's not a tool, it's just vim, with manual search/replace, I just got a little too fast/overzealous. I'll be more careful. Thanks. --Interiot 03:13, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Simple code copy

Instead of having people copy code, why don't you have them subst it? Just say "copy & paste {{subst:User:Interiot/Tool2/Code}} (or whatever the page is) into your monobook.js", because some of us are just too clumsy with code to even copy it. (You should see me work with Perl.) — SheeEttin {T/C} 01:34, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Why did you change my userpage?

Jamie 16:48, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

it does not matter now. Jamie 08:04, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Re: {{linkless}} + {{disambig}}

Thank you for pointing that out, and you're right, the perfect disambiguation page just has one inbound link, and that's from the applicable list of dab pages in the project namespace. I will work avoid doing this in the future, and I see you've already fixed the pages in question, thanks! --W.marsh 23:03, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Images with multiple uploaders

Regarding images with multiple uploaders.... would it be possible to notify both the latest and earliest uploader (or all uploaders)? I made a minor tweak to Image:ScoobyDooGameDesign.jpg, and then was requested by OrphanBot to resolve the copyright issue. Since I wasn't the one who downloaded it from somewhere else, I'm not the best person to resolve the issue, so I had to move the message to the original uploader. Per above, you have a whitelist that allows uploaders to say "this is a minor tweak"... do you have a list of terms that I can use? ("optimized using optipng" isn't appropriate for most of my tweaks) Does the whitelist term have to be the entire edit summary, or can I add things after it? (eg. I usually prefer to explain my minor tweaks as much as possible). Thanks... --Interiot 19:45, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry for taking so long to respond. If you include the word "tweak" or "tweaked" in the upload summary, OrphanBot will know you aren't uploading a new image. --Carnildo 03:44, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Edit counter

Hi, Interiot, nice edit counter, but I just noticed that at least in my case, while it seems to find my edits it also seems to "credit" to me edits I didn't make. Looking at , the first few are correct, but then we see some incorrect entries:

• Noblesse Oblige (disambiguation)
• Chekov (Stargate)

Then a whole bunch of correct entries, until we hit

• Bus drivers
• Sergio Pitol

Then some more correct entries, then

• Anatone

And so on. Any ideas what is going on? Among other things, does this mean that my edit count is way overreported by the counter? I have a vague memory trace I might have voted thumbs down in an AFD for Bus drivers, but I am pretty sure I never edit that article! Puzzled ---CH 09:26, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

The toolserver data is corrupt, see the blinking message, an external edit counter, or #wikimedia-toolserver. --Interiot 09:59, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Interiot, I did see that message (it is hard to miss), but I don't understand it. You might rewrite it to explain that the results are likely to be incorrect in certain ways for certain reasons, since I guess this is what you were trying to say. Actually, if it is really that bad, maybe you should disable it entirely? ---CH 14:52, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Articles I created.

Hi Interiot! Could you please run that tool of yours to check what articles I created? I have the nagging feeling, I forgot to list some. - Mgm| 10:02, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

No problem, see here in 5-30 minutes. --Interiot 10:04, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

me too please. Why not publish this bot as an offical one ?--Procrastinating@ 12:00, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

It'll be here soonish. The tool needs some kind of throttling, since it takes a very long time for the script to run. Code could be written to make sure that no single user refreshes their list more than, say, once a week, and that the total number of updates per hour isn't too large, to prevent a single user from requesting the report for many different users, and thus DOSing the toolserver. That code just hasn't been written yet. --Interiot 12:09, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

I (HardDisk, dewiki_p) would request such an report, too. Greets,HardDisk 11:33, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

PS: Your editcounter is genius!

Of course it is. ;) The list should be here in 3-30 minutes. --Interiot 11:35, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

:-) thanks! HardDisk 00:13, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

For the sake of updating my new page archive, can you please send me a list of what I've started so far? Thanks for listening. --Slgrandson 12:18, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

If you need it for en.wikipedia.org, we'll have to wait until DaBpunkt finishes and brings the enwiki data back up. (and you might need to remind me once it's back up) --Interiot 12:20, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the effort, yet the report is simply wrong. I know of at least 3 more articles I created that are not listed, and articles that have a history predating my first edit. --Procrastinating@ 12:07, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

The report does not mention any articles after April 12, as the database is corrupted, and tends to give more wrong answers than correct ones. --Interiot 12:00, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Pardon me, can I get a list of articles I created, and can I also

get a list of articles that were deleted? --Masssiveego 08:29, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Articles created will be here in 5-30 minutes. Articles deleted... I don't have the query quite worked out for that yet. --Interiot 08:37, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

More edit counter

And yes, I read the red box, but it seems that the toolserver dropped the enwiki database completely? Titoxd 22:08, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh, wait... it is dropped. Titoxd 22:14, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes. Hopefully enwiki won't be corrupt for recent data once DaB brings the database back up. --Interiot 22:28, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Any estimates on how many weeks that'll be? --Carnildo 23:03, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

DaBpunkt said "It can take hours or perhaps a few days (worst case)". See #wikimedia-toolserver for the latest info. --Interiot 23:12, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Awesome. Now I don't have to wait over a minute for my edit count Will (_@) T 23:28, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Need a clarification

On welcoming and coddling newbies, I've been advising them to use your tool1 (which tonight says I'm a total newbie sans any edits, sniff) to find an admin or ten with similar Wikiwork habits as their own WikiTime, so they can work smart and spread the load as it were.

I figure the script tool wouldn't be good for this as I'd infer it'd be tied to the specific user. More to the point, is it capable of building the nice user time charts which they need to find the suggested mentors?

Secondly, is this database snafu (which has run, what, several months now?) ever going to be robust again, or should we all just plan on going up another damn learning curve and learn to put up with scripts? Not that I care a rat's arse for my edit counts themselves, but the statics (especially on others without much in the way of a user page) were darn useful in figuring out how to address an edit and it's editor! Thanks // FrankB 04:20, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

The script tool? I think Flcelloguy's may do some graphing, but I'm not familiar with it. My tool is still semi-useful... it doesn't get all edits wrong, and if a user was editing long before April 2006, I think the time-graphs aren't too inaccurate.

As far as when it will be fixed... I'm not personally involved in fixing it (per the sign above, I'm supposedly supposed to be concentrating on work issues), please talk to DaBpunkt or others on #wikimedia-toolserver. --Interiot 05:46, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

OKAY— thanks. DaBpunkt is a lead! Good luck w/RL needs! // FrankB 19:03, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Something wrong?

I tried to check my editcount on June 9,2006 but it was not working. It said "This user does not seem to have any edits, or they don't exist". But, before this, it was working fine. Is there something wrong or will it be fixed soon? Please tell me. Other than that, the reaplication lag looks fine. --Acs4b 00:04,10 June 2006(UTC +8)

Same Problem, also tried some other usernames without success Pyrotec 17:29, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

The data set for the English Misplaced Pages is being reimported and resynchronised on the toolserver following some integrity issues. robchurch | talk 22:24, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

It is still working for my accounts in other languages. GilliamJF 09:42, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

• It says en.wikipedia.org data is no longer updated. Can't you see it? Read the rules on the site. Than you will see it. FellowWikipedian 21:48, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

SERENATA

Are you in the process of deleting the SERENATA article again???!!! -Emir214 10:23, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

The real name of the choir is SERENATA. What if we rename it instead to SERENATA (choir)? What do you think? -Emir214 05:49, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the laugh!

Thanks for the barnstar. :) Perhaps it's not good to lampoon specific pages, but there are so many that need work. --Interiot 12:00, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Trouble with external use of tool

I'm trying to run your code on another wiki server. Here are the pages in question:

http://www.orthodoxwiki.org/User:ASDamick/monobook.js http://www.orthodoxwiki.org/User:ASDamick/counter.js

As far as I can tell, I'm following the directions correctly. When I run it, I get the initial input box, but then the browser briefly flashes the code at me and goes blank, as though the page were empty.

In any event, I'm using Firefox for Windows, and OrthodoxWiki is running a pretty recent version of MediaWiki. Thanks in advance for your help. —A.S. Damick 01:54, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Update: I had been using this version of your code, but I updated it with the version found here on Misplaced Pages. It seems to work now. Thanks! —A.S. Damick 02:08, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Tool 2 Source Code

Forgive me if this has already been posted somewhere, I'm too lazy to read through your archives. Anyway, I was wondering how you got the <form> <input type=text . . . stuff onto wikipedia. I thought that MediaWiki converts it to "&ltform&gt". I was looking at your source code for the tool, but it's way over my head. Could you tell me how you managed to get it onto the page?

--Primate 02:13, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

MediaWiki software does restrict the HTML tags that are allowed. However, once you get someone to run some Javascript code of yours, you can use DOM to create any HTML tag without restriction. In most cases, people don't go giving random people permission to make them run javascript, so the tag-bypassing feature isn't overly scary, but is this case, it's useful enough that some people will go to the trouble. --Interiot 12:00, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Image Tagging Image:Super Mario Bros box.jpg

This media may be deleted.

Thanks for uploading Image:Super Mario Bros box.jpg. I notice the 'image' page currently doesn't specify who created the content, so the copyright status is unclear. If you have not created this media yourself then there needs to be an argument why we have the right to use the media on Misplaced Pages (see copyright tagging below). If you have not created the media yourself then it needs to be specified where it was found, i.e., in most cases link to the website where it was taken from, and the terms of use for content from that page.

If the media also doesn't have a copyright tag then one should be added. If you created/took the picture, audio, or video then the {{GFDL-self}} tag can be used to release it under the GFDL. If you believe the media qualifies as fair use, consider reading fair use, and then use a tag such as {{fairusein|article name}} or one of the other tags listed at Misplaced Pages:Image copyright tags#Fair_use. See Misplaced Pages:Image copyright tags for the full list of copyright tags that you can use.

If you have uploaded other media, consider checking that you have specified their source and copyright tagged them, too. You can find a list of 'image' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Misplaced Pages page when you are logged in), and then selecting "Image" from the dropdown box. Note that any unsourced and untagged images will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Vic Vipr _C 11:58, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Edits don't work

I followed these instructions: his tool does not work with Internet Explorer.

  1. Open your user javascript file (most often monobook.js).
  2. Edit the page and copy-and-paste the code below.
  3. Go to User:Interiot/Tool2/code.js.
  4. Press the "control" and "F5" buttons on your keyboard at the same time (the page will now refresh).
  5. Enter your username into the box and choose "submit".
  6. Your edit count should appear!

and when I refresh (if FF or IE) all I see is code. Can you help? Rlevse 21:12, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

I have the same problem. Try this link. Stephen B Streater 21:23, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

That's where I see code only. Rlevse 21:32, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

This page gives me code, but the link I gave you (which I scavenged from a user box above) works for some reason. Perhaps there's a clue in there somewhere. Stephen B Streater 21:36, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Neither one works. Rlevse 21:39, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

I couldn't work this out. Empty the Web cache and/or try again later perhaps. Stephen B Streater 21:43, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

PS

• Username Rlevse
• Total edits 9663
• Distinct pages edited 3236
• Average edits/page 2.986
• First edit 19:25, 15 November 2005
• (main) 4403
• Talk 951
• User 653
• User talk 1530
• Image 296
• Image talk 57
• Template 54
• Template talk 26
• Category 84
• Category talk 52
• Misplaced Pages 981
• Misplaced Pages talk 133
• Portal 410
• Portal talk 33

Stephen B Streater 21:52, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

THANKS!Rlevse 21:55, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

VandalProof and Interiot Tool

It seems the reason this didn't work is that my monobook already had code for VandalProof in it and I'd added the edit tool code after it. VP stopped working when I tried it that way and began working again when I took out the edit tool code. I suspect the same reason is why the edit tool did not work. How should I set this up so both programs work? Right monobook only has the VP code and VP works fine. Rlevse 12:08, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

That probably means that the code for the edit tool has a syntax error. As soon as Javascript hits an error, it stops executing anything after it. Different browsers have different/annoying ways to view javascript errors, but if you have Firefox laying around somewhere, I recommend using it and its Tools>Javascript Console. (usually clear the console, then reload the page) --Interiot 12:45, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

The problem was that I'd copied the "pre" tags when I dropped it in my monobook. Now I get the username prompt, then it says "Retrieving data...", but then I get an "Unresponsive script" warning box on your Interiot account and my Rlevse account, but on a friends Coffeeboy account, it works--he only has 213 edits and you and I have thousands. Hmm. What should I try now? Rlevse 20:54, 13 June 2006 (UTC)...a bit later...do I just have to keep hitting continue on accounts with lots of edits? Rlevse 20:57, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

• Yep, that seems to be it. BUT, one last issue. On the article tab of my monobook, the code looks "broken" (ex: you can't see the refresh directions, dotted lines are there, etc), but if you view if by selecting it in history, it looks fine. What is causing this? Interestingly, the programs work. Rlevse

Tool2

Is it possible to add "deleted edits", like the original tool had? Thx. - CrazyRussian talk/contribs/email 00:22, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

It would only work if you're an admin. And, congratulations on your recent RfA. Even then, I'm not sure it could work... I don't think there's any remotely on-wiki way to list all of one person's edits that have been deleted, are there? --Interiot 12:00, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Unrelated, but since it's a "Tool2" heading...

Jude made the basic script, I modified it for Tool2, figured you might like it and/or want to have a peek:

A script which adds "Edit counts" to the toolbox (only tested in win/firefox) ~Kylu (u|t) 17:50, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Kylu: Check out User:Haza-w/User cactions. --Rory096 08:11, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

In reply to Interiot's question, no. There is no centralized place where deleted revisions can be retrieved on-wiki. The only possible place would be Special:Asksql, but that was disabled a long time ago... Titoxd 22:22, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

At long last!

The editcounter for EN is back up (after half a week on hiatus), and now it's time you gave me the new pages list. --Slgrandson 16:55, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I was about to go "omgomgomg ]" but it seems that the data is still a little out of date: 556000 seconds and counting.... æ² ✆ 2006-06-14t18:02z

The lag is about 6:6:50:xx (d:h:m:s). Seems the new data hasn't been replayed... Will (message me!) 22:29, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

6 days 14 hours according to the text version. and I'm supposed to be getting an A* for my maths GCSE? Shame on me! Will (message me!) 22:32, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, but now the data that was corrupted is now fixed. On the other hand, all the new data now being replicated is still corrupted. Meh.

Slgrandson, the report will be here soonish. It's still cut off at April 12th though, as I don't know when the new cutoff between currupt and non-currupt data is yet. I'll try to calculate that tonight after work, and regenerate it. --Interiot 23:55, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I think it's all good data. Looking at OrphanBot's edit count doesn't indicate any obvious out-of-place edits any more. --Carnildo 00:25, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Woah, that's the coolest 24-hour graph I've seen.  :)

Okay, maybe you're right, the data may be 100% good. I re-ran Slgrandson's report with the latest data, and all the pages I looked at after April 12 look good (it seemed to be another script that was sensitive to the corrupted data). --Interiot 00:54, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

So you're saying that en_latest_revid is having issues but the replication otherwise seems okay? æ² ✆ 2006-06-15t18:45z

Yeah, that tool probably has some flaw about it, I guess. I had thought it was accurate, but oh well. Yeah, all seems well (other than replication being down currently). --Interiot 23:18, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Looks like replication's gone bad again. OrphanBot's listed as editing in a number of namespaces that it doesn't edit. --Carnildo 17:51, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

replication lag

hi Interiot, love the tool, bought the t-shirt man! :-) anywho, it sez the replication lag is 18 hours! it has been going up like this for quite some-time. is there a problem? have a nice day. --Suleyman Habeeb 05:13, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, replication is off, for now. It's actually several days behind, as the lag you're seeing is the lag with respect to Adler (the server for most Wikimedia wikis) not Ariel (the database server for the English Misplaced Pages). Titoxd 06:58, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Is there ANYTHING anyone can do to help cut into the lag? Its almost at 1 and a half weeks now. Just curious. American Patriot 1776 21:50, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Tool 2

Tool 2 does not seem to work for me in Netscape - Here I only have Netscape and IE.--Irishpunktom\ 11:51, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Your monobook.js seems to be empty. You need to fill it out with the bits to get the Tool2 code to trigger. --Interiot 13:39, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

DOM

I tried what you said about inserting html through the DOM, but I can't seem to get it to work on MediaWiki. It works fine when I run a normal HTML file from my computer. I've been experimenting with User:Primate/sandbox.js, and I even inserted

document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="' 
    + 'http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=User:Primate/sandbox.js' 
    + '&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s"></script>');

into my monobook.js, I don't know if that helped at all. Is there a tag or code I'm missing, or is MediaWiki just mad at me? I'd appreciate it if you could tell me what I needed to do to get anything to work in my sandbox.js page.

Thanks.

--Primate 15:18, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

That should work. If you're on Firefox, can you try the Tools > Javascript console to see what kind of errors you might be getting? --Interiot 21:30, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Suggestion for Tool 2

At the moment, tool 2 doesn't work well for large numbers of edits. Would it be possible to have a streamlined version that doesn't process the edits, but just checks if there's another page and either adds 5000 and moves on, or counts the edits, and then just displays a total? That should be relatively fast even for 1000s of edits, and while knowing the various namespace totals is useful, an overall total is better than nothing. You could add an option to filter by namespace too, I guess. Thanks for a great tool, though! --Tango 22:52, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

It's probably possible... I keep hoping the toolserver will become functional though, so I can implement new features rather than re-implementing old ones. I didn't realize everyone was using it for RFA though, ahhhh. --Interiot 00:46, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Without the toolserver, it's pretty much all we've got, and edit counts are (regretably, but unavoidably) very important in RfA. Is there really much chance of the toolserver getting fixed? And even if it does, will they correct all the corrupt data? --Tango 12:15, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

There's a number of things that lean me away from development in Tool2... I don't have any time to code for wikipedia right now. There are more reasons than just edit counters to get the toolserver working again (StubSense and CatScan are more obviously productive), so I'd rather put any dev time I have into getting the toolserver working. There will never be a dearth of edit counters. If the toolserver does start working again, there's a possibility that Tool2's use will be discouraged by MediaWiki developers, as it's a very inefficient use of wikipedia's resources. --Interiot 14:04, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Userbox Feed

Hello. I wondered if the userbox feed is being updated any more or if it has been discontinued. If you want to respond here, that's fine, or you can respond at my talk page. --Think Fast 22:38, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

It should actually update from time to time... is the cache functionality not working properly? I've manually cleared the cache, maybe it will work now. --Interiot 00:47, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

It's now updated. Thanks for your help. --Think Fast 02:41, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Edit Counter

Hello Interiot. When I typed in the URL for your Edit Count, it seemed to be removed. What the hell happened, and, can you please put it back on? Thank you. Weirdy 06:54, 20 June 2006 (UTC).

Hrm, both Tool2 and Tool3 seem to be working for me. What specifically are you trying, and what specific error message are you seeing? --Interiot 07:37, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

It's not removed as far as I can judge, but it is terribly behind: the replication lag is 50 hours at the moment. Steinbach (fka Caesarion) 11:47, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Your "Tool"

When I added your tool to my Monobook.js, and I "purged" my Page Cache on Mozilla, it started doing things that are not meant to happen, such as whenever I click on a link Mozilla creates a new page on my toolbar ( a new window pops up, instead of connecting within the same window). This applies to all sites that I attempt to connect to.

Could you explain this?

Cheers,

Booksworm Talk to me! 08:21, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

It's not Tool2. Press and release your shift/ctrl/alt keys a few times to make sure they're not stuck. Check your Tabs settings in Mozilla. --Interiot 11:54, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Please delete my monobook subpage

Hey Interiot, I am sorry but can you delete my monobook.js page because my Mozilla wont let me edit and my IE will. I don't want to be kept from editing, so we you delete that page? Thank you! Red Director 03:47, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, for the typo. So will you delete that page? Red Director 03:48, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

You can blank it via MSIE as well then? Anyway, it's deleted. --Interiot 03:54, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

cswikisource

Hi. Since yesterday I cannot get any answers if I try to get edits for cswikisource_p for any user. The answer is This user does not seem to have any edits, or they don't exist - an obvious nonsence, I should have about 1000 at least. -jkb- 22:02, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Hrm, that's odd, the information is in the database, it's just not showing... I'll look at this shortly. --Interiot 01:04, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

It works since yesterday, thx, -jkb- 09:22, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

The King

I saw your disambiguation page and wondered why no reference to a male Monarch, but there is a disambiguation page King which includes other references to people called "the king". Perhaps your page should be a redirect page. I'll leave it to you to decide. --Richhoncho 15:22, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

The page isn't owned by anyone, least of all me (I didn't start the page). Anyhoo, feel free to add a {{mergeto}} notice or otherwise merge/redirect if you want. As a more conservative edit, I added a "See also: ]", as you're right, they do refer to a few of the same things. --Interiot 15:27, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

List of articles created by me

May I have a report created of all the articles I've created, like your list? —THIS IS MESSEDOCKER (TALK) 17:32, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

If it's not too muhc trouble, I'd quite like one as well... Shimgray | talk | 17:35, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

No trouble at all. They should be here in 5-30 minutes... . --Interiot 18:40, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Could I have a copy too? Thanks Agathoclea 06:39, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

sure thing. --Interiot 06:48, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you very much -- Agathoclea 19:04, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! Shimgray | talk | 17:22, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

May I have a report like this as well? Thank you! — Catherine\ 07:09, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Sure thing, will be here in 5-30 minutes. --Interiot 07:34, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

And me please? — Garykirk | 11:58, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

here you go. --Interiot 14:56, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Toolserver TOC

Uh, why is TDS's article contribution counter listed twice on the TStoc? I'm trying to figure out where the duplicate entry is, but I can't find it... Titoxd 07:07, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

I... only see one of them? Did you manage to fix it, or are you still seeing two? --Interiot 07:14, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

I still see two. I don't get it, I've deleted the cache and all the other usual tricks... Titoxd 07:30, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Ahh, I see the two you mean. I see the same thing, yes. I have a small trick up my sleeve... /home/interiot/tstoc.txt is a file that gets overlaid on the meta.wikimedia.org data, allowing toolserver account holders to add data that is private or shouldn't be edited by random users (eg. I may add a largish HTML pop-up description for each tool at some point, and didn't want to go to the trouble of mucking around with HTML-filtering to prevent malicious javascript). It's overlaid, but the one thing that needs to be common between the two files to allow them to overlay is the URL... and the two URLs point to the same thing, but don't overlay so well. Anyway, problem should be fixed for this now, I just removed the old (now unneeded) overlay data for that specific tool. --Interiot 07:39, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

So that was it... ah. And I was going nuts trying to figure out what was wrong on the muggles' side... it's fixed now in my screen too, BTW. Titoxd 08:17, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

WP:INT

Mind if we reappropriate this shortie for Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Integration? -Ste|vertigo 01:49, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't know how many people use the shortcut. While I thought the page refered to the first tool (Tool1, not to Tool2 or Tool3), making it a page for a deprecated tool, other users seem to assign other meanings to it, so it's possible other people will have opinions on the shortcut. But in lieu of that, I went ahead and reappropriated it for you. (though if the integration project goes inactive without acquiring many backlinks, I may eventually redirect it to Misplaced Pages:WikiProject edit counters, just because it has a few (talk page) backlinks relevant to external edit counters) --Interiot 02:35, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

CAT:CSD

A discussion on the use of headers for the page Category:Candidates for speedy deletion is currently being discussed at Category_talk:Candidates_for_speedy_deletion#Category_Header_Information. Your input would be welcome. — xaosflux 01:55, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

My

I went to the Interiot tool and typed in my screenname "RainbowSprinkles" and it said This user does not seem to have any edits, or they don't exist I have MANY edits and I DO exist! LOL! I typed in Kylu's name and it worked! Respond on my talk! RainbowSprinkles 13:45, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

The toolserver is only replicated up to June 10th, and so doesn't know about any of your edits yet. It's better to use the Tool2 instead. --Interiot 14:22, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks

Just used your Tool2 edit count script, and have to say it's about 100 times easier to use than Flcelloguy's!

EVOCATIVEINTRIGUE TALKTOME | EMAILME | IMPROVEME 18:35, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

My article creation page thingy

Could you please update this? Thank you. íslenska hurikein #12 _(samtal) 13:40, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Sure. It should be here in a wee bit (note the change in URL to include the "enwiki"). --Interiot 17:04, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Article creations

May I have a report created of all the articles I've created in the Finnish Misplaced Pages? There my username is Hartz (.../articles_created_fiwiki_Hartz). Thanks. --HartzR 09:50, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Should be here in a few minutes. --Interiot 10:56, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

lag link

I seem to have lost the link to the lag of Ariel. DO you have it? Thanks. American Patriot 1776 19:10, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Leon's graphs? (To infinity, and beyond!). --Interiot 23:32, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Heh. Is there any schedule to get that fixed? Titoxd 00:36, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I've heard several stories, I'm not sure which ones are the root issue(s):

1. enwiki replication is slowing down dewiki/et.al. replication, and they're waiting for a faster hard drive to be installed before turning on enwiki replication again
2. enwiki replication is slowing down dewiki/et.al., and they're creating a second toolserver for enwiki replication only (erm, though Robchurch has said this isn't the case, and the email says that the 2nd toolserver is a non-database computer, so this is probably not correct)
3. DaBpunkt's enwiki replication script is corrupting data, and that needs to be fixed before replication can continue

I'm pretty confused about the first two though. --Interiot 02:31, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

It was a white page with just a few lines of text on it I believe. It was also a live feed. American Patriot 1776 04:53, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

This maybe? Replag is just a single SQL query that most people on the toolserver have, so it's available in a variety of forms (two IRC bots, a couple of different web pages, at the top of many of my and duesentrieb's webpages, ...). --Interiot 05:26, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that's it. Thanks! American Patriot 1776 21:41, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Last I heard, they'd turned on the replication script, found it was corrupting data, fixed the problem, dropped the enwiki data and replicated from a database dump, turned the replication script on again, found it was corrupting data again, and turned it back off. --Carnildo 00:37, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

tweak for editcounter

Hi, Interiot.

The English Wikisource recently had a custom namespace (Author: and Author talk:) created. On the editcounter it displays as "Unknown namespace 102" and "Unknown namespace 103". Is there anyway this can be changed to display the actual namespace? Namespace 102 is the "Author:" one, and 103 is the "Author talk." Also, when you click on the "Unknown namespace 102" link, it brings up a list of pages and how many each of them have been edited, but it doesn't make the pages in the "Author:" namespace as it should. This is not a major issue, so only worry about this when you want. Thanks!—Zhaladshar 20:42, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Yup, should be working now. --Interiot 23:30, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Undead

Would consider running the "undead" report once more? Possibly with longer timeout value. -- User:Docu

DaBpunkt is the one killing queries, in an effort to keep dewiki replag down. Anyway, yeah, it's restarted. --Interiot 13:06, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Did it go through? undead.txt didn't update. -- User:Docu

Account Finder

Your account finder tool () does not find accounts at test.wikipedia.org. It may be that the account was not set up recently enough, or it may be a genuine problem. Thank you! —Daniel (‽) 16:37, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Articles created

Could I get a report of the articles that I created on the German Misplaced Pages as de:Benutzer:Liesel. Thanks Liesel 17:50, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Sorry it took so long, I've got to make this so end users can more directly run it. Anyway, here it is. --Interiot 14:06, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

No problem. Thanks. Liesel 14:46, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for the entry at Lisls german page. I read there from this nice script. And the disabled Editcount is a very helpfull tool ie. for easier infos about admin-candidates. (I can see there more esealy the lemmas where i have knowlege about.) // I hope for you that your efforts to make the script for created articles so that end users can run it more directly are successful. I would have also a list from my created articels. I'm de:Benutzer:Fg68at. And can you also made a list of de:Benutzer:Hansele? Thanks Fg68at de:Disk 13:41, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't know at this time, but 1 hour bevore you leave me the message he ask in "Questions to Misplaced Pages" for such a Tool. :-) Now, he say "Thanks, Super!" :-) --Fg68at de:Disk 08:21, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Fg68at told me about the nice feature you created to get a list of all articles one has started. I would be interested in such a list both for my German and my English Misplaced Pages activity, if you would be so nice as to run the necessary scripts.--Bhuck 10:55, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Yup, no problem, see the top two entries here. --Interiot 15:00, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

enwiki replication

DaBpunkt has gotten all known replication data-corruption issues fixed, and replication is running again. If it doesn't negatively impact dewiki replication, it will continue. If it does impact dewiki replication, they'll stop enwiki replication and wait for the faster hard drive to be installed on the toolserver. --Interiot 14:36, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

There's still corrupted data on the server. What are they planning on doing about it? --Carnildo 20:08, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

What kind of corrupted data? Any examples? Titoxd 21:59, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the underlying corruption is, but if you look at OrphanBot's edit counts, you'll see edits in places that OrphanBot doesn't edit, such as the Portal Talk: namespace. --Carnildo 00:07, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

There's about of corrupted data (june 7 - june 10). I'll ask DaBpunkt next time he's back on whether he plans to replay the whole thing again, or if there's a way to patch up this data. Anyway, it looks like enwiki replication is turned off again, until they get the disks? --Interiot 01:38, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

StubSense problem

I did a query on Category:Cornwall and here's the resulting list: I'm concerned because it lists 6 stubs has having {{Cornwall-stub}}, which doesn't actually exist. What could be causing this? ~ Amalas rawr 18:49, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Those articles did have {{Cornwall-stub}} at one time, until the template was deleted... the toolserver data is ~1 month old, so it doesn't have the latest-greatest information, but StubSense is still largely useful as long as you remember that caveat.

1. Cornish Yarg cheese
2. Fry an Sprys
3. Great seal sanctuary
4. ...

The toolserver may also be back to real-time sooner or later. --Interiot 02:03, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Editcounter again

Sorry to be bugging you about the editcounter this late in the game, but I was wondering if you could recommend a system or program that would list all of my edits? I tried to look at some of the java ones, but my technical expertise in java code isn't that great, so I need help finding the best one that you would recommend. I liked your system, is there another one that is similiar to it? I'm sorry if I have asked any of the same questions as the ones posted above, but I just want to check and see how addicted to Misplaced Pages I am. Thanks. --Nehrams2020 18:56, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Tool2? --Interiot 01:56, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Features disabled

The following features have been disabled pending review by a lawyer to make sure that they comply with German privacy laws (the toolserver is housed in Amsterdam, but is owned and controlled by the German Wikimedia group):

• the daily graph on the edit counter (although the underlying data is fully publically available, it's possible that displaying analysis of this public data falls afoul of German profiling laws)
• the weekly graph on the edit counter
• the monthly bars on the edit counter
• the contribution tree

This is a decision by the German Wikimedia group to limit possible legal liability. These features will be re-enabled once they're reviewed by a lawyer and confirmed to not cause any legal liability. --Interiot 15:48, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi, could you tell me how long it will take to do this? --84.156.175.24 16:40, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

It's an estimation, so don't hold me/WMGermany to it, but it's estimated that they'll be able to discuss it with a lawyer on Monday (July 17). --Interiot 16:45, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

In case of negative response from the lawyer, there's a way a user will be able to access this kind of informations on his own edits? Maybe it would be possible to have a link, some thing like "Snowdog My talk My preferences My watchlist My contributions My stats Log out" that depending on the project in which is logged into, will redirect to the correct editcount page. --Snowdog 00:20, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Anything owned by global Wikimedia and hosted in Florida would still be legal (eg. Misplaced Pages:WikiProject edit counters). Opt-in might work on the German-owned toolserver, but will almost certainly be as difficult for end-users to use as installing a Java app for the first time. (I don't know of any easy way for the toolserver to verify that a user is who they say they are, whether linked to from monobook or not) --Interiot 00:56, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Sigle sign-on? extended to the toolserver? --Snowdog 16:04, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi, just few words of support - your tool is doing great job with or without the now disabled features. If it would be of any help, I personally can opt-in for them (although I almost do not use them). Greetings, Goldie (tell me) 10:26, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I don't have any implementation yet that makes the edit counter capable of opting in, since I'm not sure whether that'll be necessary yet. Thanks for the thoughts though. --Interiot 10:50, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi. Maybe the counter could be made into a special page or would this be too much for Wikimedia servers? --Nux 12:46, 17 July 2006 (UTC) PS: validator for the counter - most are because you've missed some </li> and type of <script>. Also most links don't have & converted to &amp;

That might be possible. I'd be surprised if someone else hadn't written one already since so many non-wikimedia wikis seem interested in edit counting.

Anyway, de wikimedia has advised me to implement an opt-in feature as it may take the lawyer a while to respond. So... I guess I'll try to do that this next weekend... --Interiot 00:44, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Indeed they have. It's just not enabled. Titoxd 06:08, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

note to self

Note to self: encoding problems . --Interiot 16:33, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Spanish stubsense

I don't mean to be a bother, but I was wondering if any progress has been made on stubsense for the Spanish wikipedia. There's a fair amount of work to be done over there, and before I hop in and do it manually I thought I'd ask to see what the tool status is. Thanks! --Spangineer (háblame) 16:52, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

It's not complete yet. I have to rewrite some parts of StubSense since Spanish wikipedia mainly uses categories for stubs, not templates. I suppose this would be pretty useful to have? --Interiot 00:34, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I think it would be useful—there are thousands of stubs that should be in more specific stub categories, and going through the categories manually is quite a job. I know you're busy though, so if it's too much work that's fine. --Spangineer (háblame) 13:50, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

StubSense database

Something's screwy with the database StubSense is using. I just tried a query on Category:Channel Islands and the top of the list with 313 entries was {{Russia-stub}}. I checked to make certain that there wasn't an inappropriate subcategory, and there wasn't one. Caerwine Caerwhine 17:20, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Could you give the URL used when running this? (I'm having trouble reproducing it) Also, did you click on "link" and try to investigate one or more specific links to see if they were in a subcategory or not? --Interiot 00:39, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

I normally go for the max 4000 entries, so I used this link. I noticed I wasn't getting anything notably screwy at the default 100 articles. I've checked going down from Channel Islands, and I tried going up from a couple of the links provided, but going up led to some very lengthy and trips up the categories tree. Caerwine Caerwhine 20:34, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with the subjects to know which of these are good or bad, but the trail seems to be: --Interiot 11:37, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

• Category:Channel Islands
  • Category:Jersey
    • Category:Geography of Georgia (country)
      • Category:Black Sea
        • Category:Black Sea countries
          • Category:Russia

Aha, but in this specific case, Category:Geography of Georgia (country) was created on June 9th, a period for which the toolserver data is corrupt (the toolserver data doesn't match the on-wiki data), and that's the reason. So, in this case, you're right. DaBpunkt will be fixing the corrupted data sooner or later. Sorry 'bout that. --Interiot 11:42, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Category philosophy

(Someone should probably write a tool that lists all categories that are the parent of a given article (per GMaxwell's suggestion). The category structure is really weird in places, and going deep often gives unexpected results (eg. "Duracell" is eventually listed underneath Category:Vehicles... Vehicles > Electric vehicles > BEV components > Electric batteries > Duracell. Each step makes some sense, but the conclusion (that duracell is a vehicle, or is even related to vehicles) is completely wrong). Without having more information, I assume something similar is happening in your case. --Interiot 00:53, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

(happened to see this) The category structure is not a tree, but a directed graph. It may have cycles and all manner of other nastinesses. The fundamental "upward" relationship should not be thought of as "is a", but simply "is a member of" (with no special formal semantics attached). Since the categorization is done by humans, and there is no software enforcement (of anything), I think the only rational conclusion is that categories are useless for any sort of formal analysis. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:46, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I certainly agree that categories don't convey any specific relationship currently, and that different people have different ideas about the relationships that should be conveyed by categories. I basically argued your standpoint with GMaxwell previously (that categories are too messy to be used in category-recursion tools, though with the caveat that hopefully as these tools become faster and more widely used, that people will hopefully start to treat category relationships more formally). GMaxwell's standpoint is that categories could be cleaned up with less effort than you might expect. I threw out a couple examples, and in those cases, he seemed to be right, that there's usually one rational change that could be made that made the example useful for more formal analysis. In one case, it would have been difficult to convince others that the change was needed or would be productive, but again, the changes are relatively small, and if tools like these are used by more people, it might be possible to move towards more formal relationships. (with the "list all parent categories of this article" functionality being hilighted by GMaxwell as the first place to start)

(though maybe "formal" isn't the right word for what I'm thinking of... I don't know if categories can lay out a semantic web any time soon, but hopefully incremental changes can be made that allow tools to answer a few more very basic kinds of questions)

(and as an aside... I thought that cycles aren't allowed by current category policy (not that they don't happen, but that they could be easily fixed)) --Interiot 03:30, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I think the basic issue is that the one relationship (category member) is actually used simultaneously for different semantic meanings. For example, the "is a" relationship is very common, but many categories also include as a member the "defining" article of the category and other related topics (see, for example, Category:States of the United States which contains U.S. state - does this mean the article U.S. state is a state?). At one point, I spent a fair amount of time on categories but I stopped paying much attention a while ago (too much of a clusterf*** if you get my drift). Samuel Wantman has been trying to rationalize the simultaneous multiple uses of categories for quite a while. The current stance on cycles is "discouraged, but allowed", see Misplaced Pages:Categorization#Cycles should usually be avoided. There's always discussion on WP:CG's talk page about this if you're interested. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:10, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, certainly it's because other things than "is a" are used. The example of "defining" article isn't so much of a problem... the cl_sortkey is usually " " or "*" in that case, so that could be ignored well enough.

One example where "is a" might not be enough... I think there should be a category that ties all automobile-related categories together, even though they're not all "is a" the same thing (Category:Auto parts are parts, Category:Car manufacturers are companies, Category:Auto shows are events, ...). So "related to" or something might be needed as well.

But again, even if it's not possible to construct a full semantic web, maybe it's possible to say "all categories under this one are isa relationships", which would allow you to answer at least let you answer a few more questions than is currently possible. --Interiot 04:57, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Oh my fucking god, my eyes have been opened. Can't some of these be changed? (list of all parents of Category:Electric vehicles):

• Category:Geophysics
  • Category:Plate tectonics
    • Category:Continents
      • Category:Europe
        • Category:History of Europe
          • Category:Socialism
            • Category:Human rights
              • Category:Anti-war
                • Category:Tax resistance
                  • Category:Simple living
                    • Category:Sustainability
                      • Category:Energy conservation
                        • Category:Green vehicles
                          • Category:Electric vehicles

So categories are sometimes just random free-association with little to no meaning? --Interiot 11:25, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Multiply by 100,000 categories getting populated by 10,000 active editors most of whom are not programmers (and thus are unaware of things like "is a" relationships) and you start to get the picture. Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Categories is probably the right place to talk about this if you're interested. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:25, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I came here looking for more about your tool, but since I find myself referenced, I have to join the discussion. I have to agree with Rick. I think the nature of a Wiki makes it almost impossible to come up with a clean taxonomy for categories. But I think the more important point is that categories are not just a system of classification, but a tool for helping people browse. If you go to a category you are looking for articles about the subject. Sometimes the relationship of the aricles to the topic is an "is a" and sometimes it is a "mentions this or is related to this". Sometimes it is a bit of both. This gets even fuzzier when you go up the categorization hierarchy. If we limited the relationship to "is a", I think categories would be much less useful, and the politics of maintaining them would get much worse. I've seen many NPOV battles about category inclusion related to the "is a", "relates to" distinction. I'll give you an example. Matthew Shepard is in Category:Hate crime. I spent weeks trying to settle a dispute where an editor insisted that he should not be in that category because Matthew's murder was not technically a hate crime. Another position you could take is that Shepard the person does not belong because he is not a hate crime. But his article spends many paragraphs talking about hate crimes, and his murder focussed attention on hate crimes, and stimulated attempts at hate crime legislation. Someone looking for articles related to hate crimes would likely want to find that article. There is definitely utility in having his article in the category. Categorization is not classification of the titles of articles, it is about creating a web of knowledge, and helping people browse. -- Samuel Wantman 09:00, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

I think that it's realistic to simply make sure that the further up you go, the more general categories become. According to that, it wouldn't be a problem to put Matthew Shepard under Hate crime. The chain I list above goes more general, then more specific, then more general... doing this allows parents to wind their way around to eventually having nothing in common with the bottom article. 2) If you want to browse, use wikilinks. Feel free to put wikilinks in category pages. Just don't make a parent category be more specific than the things below it (except for when cycles are specifically needed). --Interiot 09:14, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree with what you are saying. Many of the connections in the example above do not belong. Instead of being subcategories, many of these should be replaced with a manually created "See also:" links on the category page. I once proposed that we have "related categories" coded into the software as well as subcategories for just this reason. -- Samuel Wantman 09:27, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

You can add ==See also== on any category page... --Interiot 09:34, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

I do this all the time. I've also added instructions to do this at Misplaced Pages:Categorization. -- Samuel Wantman 06:49, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

note to self:

SUL/DannyB doesn't work... it should most likely find cswiki cswikt csbooks csquote cssource commons meta test incubator frwiki skwiki ruwiki, but it's not. --Interiot 08:01, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Adding backup edit counter

I noticed that my Wikimedia user edit counter has not been updated for quite a while. Does this mean I have to add your backup edit counter (or at least something similar) to my page for the Wikimedia counter be updated? (Or is something else wrong?) Thanks. Wild Wolf 19:03, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

The data that the de.wikimedia.org counter is currently not being updated due to technical issues outside user's control. The get an up-to-date count, you'll have to use a counter that doesn't rely on the de.wikimedia.org's data... use Tool2 or Essjay's or something. --Interiot 00:01, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Category:Artificial satellites currently orbiting Earth

Thanks for your comment. Yes I do plan for it to include satellites that are in relatively stable orbits but are no longer functioning. I got the idea when I saw Category:Living people and I finally decided to make the category today. It will hopefully be helpful to people wishing to know more about whether certain satellites are orbiting or not. DarthVader 07:45, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Thank you

The da Vinci Barnstar I award this barnstar to Interiot for all the wonderful tools and lists and technical stuff he has created for Misplaced Pages. Steve block Talk 16:05, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Have a good wikibreak, hope to see you around again. --Interiot 00:28, 25 July 2006 (UTC)