Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 05:46, 12 January 2010

Older discussions are available in the page history.

Dump reports

Would dump reports be a more viable option for the fair use image query I suggested on WT:DBR awhile ago? I remember we ran into the problem that some fair use images use text as the fair use rationale versus a template, but maybe these dump reports can weed out the standard fair use text? Perhaps by using the header I suggested. Anyways, I just thought of it and wanted to ask. Merry Christmas! Killiondude (talk) 23:18, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps. Might be easier to just query the API for the titles.... Do you have a list of words you'd want to exclude? "fair use"? Is that it? --MZMcBride (talk) 23:27, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

=== Fair use in X === is the header given in several pages that show examples of text fair use rationales. Do you wanna just exclude those items? WT:DBR#Files is where I brought up the categories that would be involved. Killiondude (talk) 23:46, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Hm. We might get a lot of noise in the report if we just do that header. Maybe exclude "fair use rationale" anywhere in the page text (on second thought). Killiondude (talk) 23:59, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

flagged revisions

If flagged revisions is accepted into the enwikipedia, will it take the place of protecting a page? Btilm_{Happy Holidays!} 01:21, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

It depends which configuration is enabled. Misplaced Pages:Flagged protection has the potential to replace page protection. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:25, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Is this regex possible?

Is there an "end of file" special character in regex? I am trying to match pages like User talk:Red walnut, where the final section is the "Please update your status with WP:VG" note from Xenobot. Alternatively, could you help us out with a db query that shows last revision datestamp and last revision user for the talk pages of those listed at Misplaced Pages:VG/MEM#Unknown ? Thanks in advance =) –xeno 15:50, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't think there's an end of file character. $ is for end of lines. I suppose if you had . matching newlines, $ would be the end of the file if it's unbounded.... I can get the list of top users / timestamps, but probably not until the end of today. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:08, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

No rush - thanks. –xeno 16:11, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Stepping in as a stalker. If using perlre style regexes, and the "s" modifier is given, $ will match the very end. I think. tedder (talk) 17:37, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Done: http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?oldid=334788657 (I didn't format it 'cause I'm lazy and I didn't know what format you wanted.) --MZMcBride (talk) 21:14, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

No formatting? Clearly there is no love in this relationship ;> j/k - thanks!

Thanks for the input tedder. For some reason it's not working for me as

(?s)'''xeno'''bot .*? September 2009 \(UTC\)\</small\>\</div\>$

but it's more an academic question now, given that I have the query which should help me identify the stale pages better anyway. –xeno 21:16, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Bot thing

I need you to create all of the red-link submission pages at Misplaced Pages:WikiCup/Participant or Misplaced Pages:WikiCup/2010. On all of those pages, take the text from User:IMatthew/Msg and put it in there. Please and thank you! :) iMatthew  at 21:38, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Done. –Juliancolton |  15:55, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

International talk page delivery

Hoi, just a quick heads-up that I replied to your reply on Misplaced Pages talk:Misplaced Pages Signpost#International talk page delivery. It's been a couple of weeks since your reply, so you may not have noticed it. :-) Jon Harald Søby (talk) 00:21, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Bernstein Bot

It looks like one of the functions of your Bot is to update the list of FA by length. If that is the case, I wonder if it would be possible to do the same for GA? If there are too many GA for a single page, perhaps a page for just X# of the longest ones and X# of the shortest ones? Шизомби (talk) 21:16, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Is there a category for all GAs and where would you like the output? --MZMcBride (talk) 22:12, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Category:Misplaced Pages good articles and Misplaced Pages:Good articles/By length would probably be a good spot. A quirk of GA is that the category appears on the talk page, so some additional bot instruction might be needed to have the article name appear in the list rather than the talk page. Шизомби (talk) 22:30, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Done (sort of): Misplaced Pages:Good articles/By length. I can adjust the limits to whatever you'd like (currently they're both set at 1000). It looks like some of the entries are "wrong" because the talk page has been split from the article. For example, Libby (Lost) is listed because the talk page using the category is at Talk:Libby (Lost). --MZMcBride (talk) 23:00, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Thank you - it looks like it may be listing them right now on the basis of the talk page length, rather than the article length? Шизомби (talk) 23:46, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

When you have a chance, could you check the above, whether they're listed on talk page length or article length? Thanks for your help so far! Шизомби (Sz) (talk) 22:05, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant to reply to this earlier and forgot. The pages should all list their article size. However, there is some database corruption at the moment (see Misplaced Pages:Database reports/Announcements), so a few of the entries are wrong. If you want, you can list some examples of pages that are listing the wrong size and I can verify with that it's corruption and not another issue. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:43, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Spam time

Spam time as discussed on Misplaced Pages Talk:Meetup/DC 9, Sadads (talk) 13:53, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Is there a message already written and a target list? --MZMcBride (talk) 16:04, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

From the VP thread, perhaps you didn't see

MZMcBride, it has been suggested that you were the "person running the site." Do you know why people would say that? If it was not you, could you tell us who it was? Feel free to email arbcom-llists.wikimedia.org. I, for one, would appreciate candor. Cool Hand Luke 19:26, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

It's my understanding that the person running the site (in the non-technical sense) had an e-mail exchange with ArbCom and Jimmy at the beginning of October. (I was lightly involved in an e-mail exchange (though looking at the e-mails in my archive, ArbCom wasn't CC'd on the ones I was involved in), though the thread (very) quickly died. If you have particular questions that relate to my involvement in Misplaced Pages, I'd be happy to answer them (here or via e-mail). But I can tell you right now that any questions or poking that doesn't directly relate to Misplaced Pages won't get an answer. I don't delve into your off-wiki activities; the same respect should (and will) be extended to me. (And, yes, I took that village pump off my watchlist as it was a classic lose-lose situation. Long responses were admonished; short responses were admonished. I have better things to do than be chastised by people with little (or no) insight into the particulars of the situation (if a situation even exists!).) --MZMcBride (talk) 19:33, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

If ArbCom wasn't cc'd, why do you claim it was a conversation with ArbCom? Cool Hand Luke 19:38, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, a bit of confusion on my end, apologies. I'll try to clarify. I got an e-mail from Jimmy on October 2, 2009 from Special:EmailUser asking about this. I replied to him (and CC'd the other person who I consider to be "running the site"). That e-mail thread lasted about two or three replies and died that day. I assumed (I don't know if mistakenly or not, you'll have to check the ArbCom archives) that Jimmy had sent an e-mail to the ArbCom list or had received his information from the ArbCom list. He clearly had been informed by someone about the site; I assumed it was someone on ArbCom / the general ArbCom mailing list. I never personally had any e-mails from the ArbCom list and I don't believe the other person did either. The other person has told me that their e-mails came from an individual Arb, which may explain some of the confusion here. I also spoke to at least one Arb about the site, though not via e-mail. If you could check the ArbCom archives for very late September / very early October, it might add some clarity here. "ArbCom knew" is a funny expression indeed. ;-) --MZMcBride (talk) 19:54, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Cool Hand Luke 20:09, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Cremepuff

Since I was the person who filed the reports at ANI which led to both blocks, I have input to make to the un-block discussion (obviously). Your instruction that I withold my perfectly reasonable opinions (or weren't they reasonable? Do you have a problem with any particular ones?) is not terribly polite, and I don't intend to heed it. ╟─TreasuryTag►Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster─╢ 08:33, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't know what ownership of articles has to do with any of this, but your posts aren't helping matters and have the (slight) appearance of grave-dancing. I've asked you politely to stop posting there as you've clearly had poor interactions with Cremepuff222 in the past. Please heed my advice. --MZMcBride (talk) 08:38, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm not going to argue about it. I will not keep away from the Cremepuff page because I have perfectly valid input. If you have a serious problem with that, feel free to make a drama of it. ╟─TreasuryTag►consulate─╢ 08:40, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Well, I think I missed why you are referring to each other as Cremepuff (cute nickname, I guess). Otherwise.. what? Might this be time to go get a cuppa coffee? TreasuryTag, it sounds like MZMcBride thinks your posts to user talk page are making the situation worse, not better. tedder (talk) 08:56, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

We're talking about User talk:Cremepuff222.

TreasuryTag, it sounds like MZMcBride thinks your posts to user talk page are making the situation worse, not better. Well, that's what I assumed from MZMcBride's use of the phrase "your posts aren't helping matters" – but thanks for your valuable interpretative assistance. But what made you think I needed any aid in understanding such a simple concept? ╟─TreasuryTag►prorogation─╢ 09:00, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Brrrrr. It's cold this morning. Cup of tea, anyone? APK whisper in my ear 12:40, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

• Treasury, I know you were singled out by Cremepuff to be the object of his infantile postings, and it's clear that you feel strongly that he should not be unblocked. That's a perfectly valid and reasonable reaction. The point is that your current postings to Cremepuff's page are not helping. Any admin who has been following this situation will already be aware of how he chose to deliberately annoy you, and I think you can trust that your strong opposition to his unblock is a known quantity. Sometimes the wisest course of action is to simply disengage with a particular user, unwatchlist their talk page, and forget about your past troubles with them. There are thousands of other vigilant users who will catch on to it if he starts up with his previous bafflingly idiotic behavior should he be unblocked, which doesn't seem all that likely in the near future anyway. And I'm not just saying this, I practice it myself, and I can assure you it makes your Wiki-time far less stressful to occasionally purge your watchlist of the user and talk pages of those you have had disagreements with. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:58, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Re Your recent reversal of my block

Please see here. Sorry for the confusion. KnightLago (talk)

signpost help

Halp! I'm publishing the 'post for Ragesoss, who's busy. Here's the message: Misplaced Pages:Wikipedia_Signpost/Subscribe/Message Can you post it through the bot for me? Thanks :) -- phoebe / (talk to me) 16:44, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Should start in a minute or two. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:40, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Heh, http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?diff=336313926&oldid=322292156 --MZMcBride (talk) 01:15, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Undertow

I feel it is for me to undo this revocation. I screwed up so I should make ammends. Best wishes. Pedro :  Chat  20:58, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Ah, excellent that that's been sorted. Thank you, Pedro. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:36, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Ian Mason

Hi Larabot - and bless your little algorithmic innards - thanks for the notice, but I only created the page as a redirect to the referenced Ian J. Mason. The redirect page was later turned into a BLP page by an anon user. Your work is appreciated but your attention needs to be directed to User:222.154.142.84. Maias (talk) 00:25, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Software update problems? (Animated gifs frozen ...

Animated gif on my page froze (and have heard report of another).

(Checking the uploaded copy in table, no problem, but .en display version is frozen.)

Also div absolute positioning has all shifted (up).

NOTE: I mentioned this at Village pump (Technical)... QUESTION: Anywhere else I should report this? Proofreader77 01:35, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

bugzilla:19173 looks about right. Roan has been playing with GIF support lately, but he's not around at the moment. No idea about div positioning.... --MZMcBride (talk) 04:24, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Many thanks. (The absolute placement error , seems to have cleared up.) Proofreader77 05:37, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Vandalizing BLPs

Is it true that you have just given a banned editor, Thekohser, a list of BLPs to vandalize? (Link)

 Roger Davies 04:25, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

No. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:28, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Let's rephrase the question: were you being truthful in that WR post? Steve Smith (talk) 04:30, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Ask Mr. Kohs. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:34, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Roger, what on earth gave you the idea that Thekohser would vandalise them? Majorly talk 04:38, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

He said he will, though he uses the euphemism "breaching experiment". How else do you characterise adding bogus information?  Roger Davies 04:45, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

I have a difficult time believing that Mr. Kohs would do anything to actively harm a biography of a living person, given his writings on the subject. I think the same can be said of me. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:46, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

That's not the point though is it? Adding any bogus information is vandalism. It is also disruptive because it requires editor time to undo it.  Roger Davies 04:51, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

The list never ends.... I've also started looking at aggregate statistics for unwatched biographies (non-redirects in namespace 0): tools:~mzmcbride/misc/unwatched-bios-count.txt. Though, my main focus at the moment is supposed to be climax. I'd say it's about 80% finished. Just need to get those final bits in place.... --MZMcBride (talk) 04:57, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Can we please keep this on topic? Did you supply a list to Mr Kohs or not?

Will you also please supply, by email, the list of 8062 articles to ArbCom? Thanks,  Roger Davies 05:07, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Sent. Please let me know if you need anything else. Cheers! --MZMcBride (talk) 05:19, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes. A direct reply to the earlier question. Have you or have you not sent a list to Mr Kohs?  Roger Davies 05:28, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

I've already answered this question and the other questions posed here. Do you have any further questions? --MZMcBride (talk) 05:31, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

In no sense have you answered the question, you evaded it. What I am seeking is a direct answer to a direct question. Have you or have you not sent a list to Mr Kohs?  Roger Davies 05:56, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Of course I did. You asked if I supplied a list to Mr. Kohs and I answered "Ask Mr. Kohs." You asked if I gave Mr. Kohs a list of biographies to vandalize. I answered "No." (You can append "of course not" to that answer, if you'd like. Have you seen my BLP work?) My answers haven't changed, Roger. I'm not sure what the big deal is here. Is there a reason you seem so infatuated here? --MZMcBride (talk) 06:39, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, he answered the question immediately, if you cared to look. Majorly talk 18:26, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

I did. And he didn't :) He used a semantic wriggle instead.  Roger Davies 18:59, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

(od) Thanks for the direct answer. Incidentally, approximately how many articles were in the list you sent Mr Kohs?  Roger Davies 18:59, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Apparently I'm being discussed in private on the ArbCom mailing list. Perhaps I'll be CC'd on one of these e-mails at some point. It certainly would be nice if people would act in the open. Transparency is one of our core values, after all. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:19, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

It's not one of Arbcom's though. I'd watch your back, MZ. Before you know it, you'll be desysopped for your very abusive behaviour. Majorly talk 18:26, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, it is. Though I'm having a tough time squaring script-generated lists of soft targets, guides to successful sockpuppetry, and the creation of sockpuppets and proxies, with transparency in its conventional sense.  Roger Davies 18:59, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Roger, how is "no" not a direct answer? —Dark 00:21, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

(Roger) Is it true that you have just given a banned editor, Thekohser, a list of BLPs to vandalize? (MZMcBride) No.

How is that a "semantic wriggle"? It seems completely and utterly clear to me. Why is arbcom having this stupid witchhunt anyway? Majorly talk 01:20, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

It's a wriggle when it's utterly contradicted by "Have you or have you not sent a list to Mr Kohs?". "Of course I did".  Roger Davies 04:33, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

And treason. You forgot treason, Roger.

It's your turn to answer my question, for what it's worth. "I'm not sure what the big deal is here. Is there a reason you seem so infatuated here?"

And you can put down the flamethrower any minute now. You've now accused me of vandalizing biographies, creating sockpuppets and using proxies, and evading your questions, all of which are demonstrably false. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:14, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

• Accused you of vandalizing biographies, creating sockpuppets and using proxies? No, I haven't accused you of anything of the kind. Mr Kohs is though suggesting that he will do it and, for all we know, may have done by now.
• Here's what policy says: "Vandalism is any addition, removal, or change of content made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Misplaced Pages". Is a "breaching experiment" vandalism? You tell me. Will it force the Foundation's hand? Probably not. Will it compromise the integrity of Misplaced Pages? Probably yes.
• You know which articles Mr Kohs will experiment with as you gave him the list. The obvious solution is for you to ensure that they are not subject to vandalism.
• You know, thinking about it, while this has great potential for lulz, the clandestine thing seems very un-Wiki.
• There is a very real problem with unwatched BLPs. And loads of wiki solutions. An obvious route is for you to set up a wikiproject to deal with them. You're a popular guy with great energy, it would be easy for you to set up and recruit. With 58,000 articles, it would need to be on a grand scale but that's do-able. You could model it on the huge Milhist drives, with worksheets and so on. The options could be: CSD, source, watchlist, re-redirect. A hundred or so editors and a dozen enthusiasic admins could break the back of the problem completely in a five to six weeks. Think it over.  Roger Davies 04:33, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) (unindent) I wrote a mini-essay below about my views on the value of watchlist data. You might be interested. In short, my conclusion is that it's almost completely without value for a variety of reasons. According to my research, a person has a three-fourths chance of selecting a biography that is "effectively unwatched" (has fewer than five watchers). The harsh reality is that it's trivial to insert whatever information you want into most biographies without detection or any type of review. And this is doubly true for users as experienced with MediaWiki and Misplaced Pages as some are. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:46, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Bump. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:28, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

It seems Mr. Davies has gone awol... at least, on the wiki. Who knows what is being discussed behind your back? Majorly talk 23:34, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Apologies. In my capacity as a human being, I had a day or two off :)  Roger Davies 04:33, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Good to see our crack team of arbs hard at work, continuing to ask the wrong people the wrong questions. Simmer down, Roger. Either toss out some evidence to back up your laughable claim that MZ is abusively sockpuppeting or retake your seat.

That said, clearly the interest is related to unwarranted self-importance, wherein ArbCom feels it necessarily to involve themselves in all things off-wiki. Lara 03:31, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

There's a real underlying problem and I don't think that guerrilla tactics is the solution to it. Nor does trying to characterise this as an Us -v- ArbCom help. Some positive suggestions made above. Comments welcome.  Roger Davies 04:33, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I'll comment!

It's understandable that there would be concern about sharing information that can't be found by a someone without SQL access. Back in the day, all admins had SQL access. As MZMcBride outlines below, the information is important to break down how we stand with what is a biography of a living person. As my example above in another thread showed from Special:Random three times to find a pretty much ignored biography, this is an issue.

MZMcBride has answered your queries. It may be quizzical to you, but perhaps it's not so much. Do you or I know that he actually gave Kohs unwatched bios? We don't, he said to asked Mr. Kohs. I am an actual friend of MZMcBride, and even I don't know if the articles are legit. He told me to ask Mr. Kohs.

In my view, Roger, if anything has come from this it is to advance the issue of how we deal with biographies. As you may or may not know, I'm working with Cary in coordinating the Biographies of living persons task force and MZMcBride's reports are more than extraordinarily useful in these new queries as we move into the next six months of the task force.

Let's all assume good faith that we care about BLPs, and that things have been misinterpreted and taken out of context. It's good to see that we're working on an open dialog, and hopefully we can move it to a constructive forum. Keegan (talk) 05:40, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Roger is talking about this. Sole Soul (talk) 01:09, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I know. Lara 01:11, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

userspace links bot- alternate view of it

I've been confused because this report seems to have pages that don't actually have userspace links. Anyway, I reprocessed the output into this: User:WikiBacon/Database reports/Articles containing links to the user space version 2. Just thought I'd share it with you. tedder (talk) 22:25, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

It looks like it's missing yet another template that calls {{REVISIONUSER}}. Bleh. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:28, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Mine's missing that template, or yours is missing it, or what? I don't understand what you are saying. tedder (talk) 04:18, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

The report generates all articles that contain links to namespace 2 (User) or namespace 3 (User talk). It then excludes pages using certain templates (like {{db-meta}} and {{under construction}}) as they include links to user pages ("This page was last edited by Username (Contribs • Log) 26 days ago."). I imagine the false positives you're seeing are coming from a template I haven't properly excluded. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:21, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Fancy a quickie?

This is very low priority, so at your convenience.

Need to know what talk pages have the following arrangement:

|archiveheader = |

or

|archiveheader = }}

This is because the KingbotK plugin was molesting certain MiszaBot settings and this will fail the archiving. –xeno 20:38, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Off to Misplaced Pages talk:Dump reports with you! Post there and I'll try to take a look in the next week. The biggest issue at the moment is that the dumps are a bit behind, so I'd be scanning page text from about December 1, 2009. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:06, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

So no front-of-the-line service for your ole pal? I see how it is. *sniff* =] –xeno 21:09, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Biographies o_o

From an e-mail I'm currently drafting:

If we assume that a page with fewer than five watchers is unwatched, it comes out to 336,043 biographies out of 427,085. That’s roughly 78% of biographies or a three-fourths chance of randomly choosing a biography that is “effectively unwatched.”

--MZMcBride (talk) 21:08, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

x_x JamieS93 21:20, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

That is the least surprising thing I have ever read. Well, that and when Michael Jackson died, but that fell under BLP recently deceased. Did you hear about that? I'm pretty sure that article was watched, though. I'm willing to bet that Sue Castorino isn't, and that was my third hit on Special:Random. Keegan (talk) 21:27, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Sue Castorino has (had) two. –Juliancolton |  21:32, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm going to assume that expects that User:Corvus cornix watched the article, and the user hasn't edited in over a year. The other watcher would have been the article creator by default. What a great job. Keegan (talk) 21:44, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

It now has six watchers. Let's post all problematic BLPs on MZM's talk page to get more attention. –Juliancolton |  21:49, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

omg private info! Killiondude (talk) 21:37, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Juliancolton? ;) NW (Talk) 21:38, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Full e-mail reply

With permission of the person I was replying to, I'm publishing my reply in full. The gist of the original message was asking about my views on the value of watchlist data. I've very slightly edited the reply to remove the name of the recipient and my e-mail address.

Hey --

The fundamental issue here appears to be a series of misunderstandings regarding the significance of “unwatched” versus “watched” biographies. I’ll try to clarify some of these misunderstandings in my reply.

For our purposes, we’ll assume that all biographies are in “Category:Living people.” This obviously isn’t true, but it makes life easier to say it is. As of today (January 11, 2010), there are 427,085 non-redirects in the article namespace in “Category:Living people.” Of those 427,085 pages, 58,074 have 0 watchers. However, this number is largely irrelevant, unhelpful, and misleading for a number of reasons. The primary reason is probably the most obvious: we don’t know who is watching a page. The Toolserver allows access to aggregate watchlist information, but it continues to mask the attached user info for watchlist entries. When someone says “58,000 biographies are unwatched,” it’s not a particularly accurate description. What they’re saying is that 58,000 biographies are watched by 0 users. But there are thousands of biographies that are watched by a few users. We don’t know if these users are active, if they’re bots, or if they even use their watchlist.

This is why the recent brouhaha over my alleged involvement with Mr. Kohs seems particularly empty. Knowing whether or not a page is watched is almost completely irrelevant. If you could determine who was watching the page, it would become relevant. But there’s no way to do that currently and there likely never will be.

A few more statistics to keep in mind: if we assume that a page with fewer than five watchers is unwatched, it comes out to 336,043 biographies out of 427,085. That’s roughly 78% of biographies or a three-fourths chance of randomly choosing a biography that is “effectively unwatched.” Some of these obviously will be watched by users who check their watchlist every few minutes. But I would say with reasonable certainty that a large majority of these pages are being watched by users who are either inactive, bots, or are otherwise not aiding the monitoring of biographies.

Anecdotally, I visit Misplaced Pages several times every day and check my watchlist fairly regularly. But with so many titles watched, I regularly miss edits. So even if you could determine which pages are watched by active users who regularly check their watchlists, there’s no guarantee that a specific edit is going to be checked or not checked.

Every edit shows up in the RecentChanges feed, which is monitored by a number of people. Most of these users do not watchlist the pages they revert vandalism to. It’s also fairly trivial to mask a nefarious edit by subsequently doing a partial revert or adding content elsewhere to the page. As most watchlists are set to only show the top edit, changes can very quickly be buried.

There are at least two further issues to consider with regard to watchlist data. The first is that making a binary distinction between “unwatched” and “watched” biographies ignores the philosophical issue that a biography having 0 watchers is as much due to chance as it is anything else. It primarily comes down to whether or not the page creator chose to keep the “watch this page” box checked when creating the page. And it comes down to whether subsequent users chose to add it to their watchlist. When considering this, the line between a page having 1 or 2 watchers or 0 watchers becomes even blurrier and more irrelevant.

Lastly, there is the volatility of the data itself. If someone were to get a list of all biographies that currently have 0 watchers and they added 10,000 biographies to the watchlists of six users, the number of “unwatched biographies” would quickly drop to nearly 0. Does that mean that all biographies are now watched? Of course not. Again, there’s a more philosophical question of what being a “watched” page really means.

As you can likely glean from my commentary here, I place little value in the watchlist data. I’m currently working on a project codenamed “climax” that looks at measurable attributes of biographies to try to determine high-risk or problematic biographies. One of the components that is supposed to be implemented is “number of watchers,” however it’s still quite unclear how effective this data (or the overall project) will ultimately be. Any help with other metrics or doing the data analysis would be very much appreciated.

One way to combat some of the issues we’ve been seeing is to enable “patrolled revisions.” This would allow users to check a revision for its quality and mark it as patrolled, a binary status saying that the edit was “good.” There is consensus to enable patrolled revisions on the English Misplaced Pages, however the development work in this area has been excruciatingly slow, as I’m sure you’re aware.

And, of course, FlaggedRevisions may or may not be effective in this area. My personal opinion is that FlaggedRevisions will not scale to the English Misplaced Pages. I would like to see it tested and I’ve pushed for a much quicker release timeline. However, this is largely motivated by my desire to figure out if it will work at all so that if it turns out that FlaggedRevisions is unusable, other technologies and developments can be implemented. Everybody is waiting for FlaggedRevisions to come along and save the day, but I strongly suspect that this will not happen. And until this is made clear, there will not be much incentive to work on secondary solutions.

Regarding list generation, I have no problem and would be more than happy to provide you with any desired data. All I ask is that the request be clear (redirects vs. non-redirects, which namespaces, which categories, which templates, number of watchers, etc.). I sent the ArbCom mailing list an attachment containing the 8,000 or so non-redirects in the article namespace tagged with “Template:BLP unsourced” that have 0 watchers. Further requests for lists can go on my talk page or in my e-mail inbox.

Apologies in advance if this e-mail is difficult to understand—I’m quite tired at the moment. If you would be so kind, I’d like your consent for me to post my reply to you on-wiki. Technically speaking, I don’t need your consent, but if there’s anything in this message that you feel shouldn’t be made public, please let me know. I would hate to see such a lengthy (and researched) response sit inside a private inbox, especially as others might be interested in some of the commentary expressed here. I’m more than happy to remove any identifying information if necessary.

I hope you’re doing well.

MZMcBride

http://en.wikipedia.org/User:MZMcBride/climax
http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?oldid=337261886#Biographies_o_o

--MZMcBride (talk) 23:30, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikistalk

Hi MZMcBride - and thanks for all your great tools on the toolserver! One question - is Wikistalk down? I am getting the following errors below. Thanks for the help.  7  01:44, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "./wikistalk.py", line 315, in <module>
contribs = pagesEdited(cursor, namespace, user)
File "./wikistalk.py", line 148, in pagesEdited
''', (dbname, namespace, user))
File "/opt/ts/python/2.6/lib/python2.6/site-packages/MySQLdb/cursors.py", line 173, in execute
self.errorhandler(self, exc, value)
File "/opt/ts/python/2.6/lib/python2.6/site-packages/MySQLdb/connections.py", line 36, in defaulterrorhandler
raise errorclass, errorvalue
ProgrammingError: (1146, "Table 'toolserver.namespace' doesn't exist")

Wikistalk problem

this causes wikistalk to fail, reporting "ProgrammingError: (1146, "Table 'toolserver.namespace' doesn't exist". Cheers. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 02:49, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Oops. I didn't notice the similar question above. I've turned this into a subsection to combine the two. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 03:18, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

The S1 database was reimported a few hours ago. I believe something is misconfigured currently. If you're interested, watch this ticket for updates. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:32, 12 January 2010 (UTC)