User talk:MZMcBride

---

• October 2007 – February 2012

About proposed update of Www.wikimedia.org

Less than a year, I decided to raise this issue on the forum. Please support if supported ;) --Kaganer (talk) 15:32, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I commented over there. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 22:12, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Monobook issues

Who broke something for Monobook? Talk:Main Page#Issues clicking the "discussion" link :( Killiondude (talk) 21:12, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Fixed. It may have been my fault. Sorry about that, if so. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:20, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

No worries. Thank you for looking into it and fixing. Killiondude (talk) 22:57, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Support

You can help me?title carliitaeliza201.220.233.214 02:48, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

What do you need help with? --MZMcBride (talk) 02:48, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

TB

{{tb|User talk:Philippe_(WMF)}} Philippe (WMF) (talk) 15:18, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

God Almighty, that fucking template is here now too? --MZMcBride (talk) 01:46, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

sbm. Killiondude (talk) 06:59, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

w: interwiki link

It struck me tonight that it would make sense for the w: prefix to lead to the language of Wikipedia that one has set in their preferences rather than currently leading everyone to the English language one. Though, perhaps this is one of those legacy things where the English one was first and therefore probably has links predating the advent of the other Wikipedias? Just one of those "hmmm" moments. Killiondude (talk) 06:59, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Talk:CentralNotice/Calendar#POTY 2011

You have new messages

Hello, MZMcBride. You have new messages at Talk:CentralNotice/Calendar.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

-- Rillke (talk) 11:35, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Fundraising

Fundraising could use some love. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:20, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

{{Sofixit}} Theo10011 (talk) 06:15, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

I temporarily fixed that banner, but need to find a better long-term solution (which I have a couple ideas for). To answer your question, I'm no longer officially involved in fundraising or CentralNotice stuff and haven't been for a while, but I tend to still poke around unofficially. User:Pgehres (WMF) is probably the best person to ping about these things now. Kaldari (talk) 22:14, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Wonderful. Thank you! (I need an MZlist to track who to talk to about things like this... hmmm.) --MZMcBride (talk) 01:06, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Template

Hello your highness, can you import or copy the like template to Meta? Theo10011 (talk) 18:50, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Does your machine not have a copy/paste function accessible? Killiondude (talk) 20:12, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Feature not available in the Global South™! :( Theo10011 (talk) 20:18, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Sure, done. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:25, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

 Like Thank you! Theo10011 (talk) 12:48, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Global South

I have a feeling some people don't realize that Australia is in the southern hemisphere. Also, that not every place outside of San Fransisco is filled with illiterate tribal people who need outreach. Sigh. I think some of the people around here would do better joining the Peace Corps instead of working on a project that revolves around an encyclopedia. Ottava Rima (talk) 18:36, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Heh. I wonder if Wikipedia has an article (or even mentions) San Francisco elitism. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:02, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

It's debatable if its only limited to San Francisco, or even Cali. It's some malignant form of political correctness that compels some people to think of the rest of the world as disenfranchised and underprivileged in need of social equality. tl;dr - Don't forget that kid in Africa (he actually prefers ios over android). Theo10011 (talk) 19:18, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

*whoosh* --MZMcBride (talk) 22:35, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

If only we could get rid of all copyrights and have billions of pictures of free porn (with 95% of it devoted to white penises). That will surely make the world a better place! Ottava Rima (talk) 00:56, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

It is kind of funny for you to accuse me of baiting when your original point that I referred to above was actual baiting. :P Ottava Rima (talk) 03:20, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

EdwardsBot @ ar.wiki

Hello. Thanks for contributing on Arabic Wikipedia, please request bot flag. Thanks in advance.--Avocato (talk) 16:35, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

db-query, please?

Hello. I'm checking delisting requests at Talk:Interwiki map. I was going to remove some sites but thought it would be wise to first check if those interwikilinks are used anywhere. Could you please run for me tswiki:MySQL_queries#List_of_interwiki_links_from_all_wikis for the following interwiki prefixes?

• allwiki
• BenefitsWiki
• AbbeNormal
• AIWiki
• BEMI
• CANWiki
• CanyonWiki
• Demokraatia
• EcheI

I'm interested to know if any of those interwikilinks is still in use anywhere, how much instances, etc; so I can know if it's a good idea to remove them or not. Thanks in advance for your help. Regards. -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 14:00, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Request

Hello MZMcBride, As editor of This Month in GLAM I would like to get access tot the global delivery. Can I request that here? and can I read more information about what I should do with the next delivery? Thanks! Greetings - Romaine (talk) 09:03, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Hi. Sure, I added you to Global message delivery/Access list in this edit.

The bot's instructions are here: Global message delivery/Instructions. It's mostly a matter of updating Global message delivery/Spam. If you examine the /Spam page's page history, it should be fairly clear how the bot works. Let me know if you have any questions and feel free to send test deliveries with the bot. Just know that once you tell the bot to start and it starts, it's kind of like hitting "send" on an e-mail: there's no undo. :-)

And w:User:EdwardsBot/FAQ may be of interest. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:36, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Ok thanks! It seems easy, in about two weeks we'll see how easy it is in practice with the next TMIG newsletter. Greetings - Romaine (talk) 07:40, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Pageinfo-footer

It seems that your tool has died, so I removed it from the list, because of recent global deliveries that refer to that page would make a lot of projects copy a dead link. Otherwise, if it's came alive again, please revert my edit. Thanks. ✒ Bennylin 14:01, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Histlegend may also need to be updated. ✒ Bennylin 15:42, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi. The tool is not dead. There have been a wide number of Toolserver issues lately, mostly involving database corruption, but the tool should generally be working. It's certainly working for me right now. Let me know if you notice brokenness and I can investigate. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:27, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

www.wikimedia.org template

You have new messages

Hello, MZMcBride. You have new messages at Talk:Www.wikimedia.org_template.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

–Krinkle^talk 11:08, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Asides

Re: "I doubt all of them can even edit Meta-Wiki" - this is just rude, not funny. What gives? –SJ talk  06:29, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, it wasn't really intended as rude. Some Board members are community members and have a lot of editing experience. Some Board members do not. (The same is true of Wikimedia Foundation staff members, whose editing I've studied for years.) I honestly wasn't even sure all of the Board members had accounts here, but it seems I'm mistaken. I stand by my doubt that every Board member will comment individually, as I still don't think that's likely to happen (it's difficult enough to get everyone to agree on a letter, much less respond to the mounting walls of text), but I'll strike the unfair aside now. Sorry about that. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:37, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Testing

Beep boop. --EdwardsBot (talk) 03:32, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Request for an account on the “Foundation Wiki”

Erwin Mulialim

• Reason why I need an account :

• Previously, I would like to introduce myself that I am an active “Editor” on Indonesian Wikipedia (WBI = Wikipedia Bahasa Indonesia) as a username: “Erwin Mulialim”.
  For Complete Information, Would You Please Visit Here or Click Here.
  
• The reason that I want to create an account on “wikimediafoundation.org” are :

1. I want to be actively involved in contributing for translating the pages on the website “wikimediafoundation.org” into Indonesian.
   I noticed there are a lot of pages on the website “wikimediafoundation.org” that has not been translated into Indonesian, and one of the example could be found here.
2. And I would like to actively take part for involved in publishing materials for the website “wikimediafoundation.org”.
3. I am also actively involved in several projects of the Wikimedia Foundation, especially those directly related to the Wikimedia community in Indonesia.

• Thank-You Very Much. ~~ Erwin Mulialim^(talk) 16:40, 2 March 2013 (UTC).
  
  

• E-mail address : “erwin.mulialim@outlook.com”.

This e-mail address is being prioritized for special handling all matters relating to all projects at Wikimedia Foundation.

• Thank-You Very Much for Your Kind Attention, Your Help and Your Concern to Me.

May GOD Bless You Always! ~~ Erwin Mulialim^(talk) 07:16, 4 March 2013 (UTC).

• I can only say: “Thank-You Very Much” for your kindness and sincerity of your heart that has given this account to me.
  I pray that GOD will always reward the kindness of yours by giving abundant blessings upon you and give success in any job of your works.
• Once again Thank-You Very Much for Your Kind Attention, Your Help and Your Concern to Me. ~~ Erwin Mulialim^(talk) 07:58, 4 March 2013 (UTC).
  
  

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EdwardsBot @ ar.wiki (2)

Hello. I'm sorry to tell you that I've blocked your bot at the Arabic Wikipedia, since it runs without bot flag, although I asked you before to request it. Anyway, I will be happy to unblock your bot as soon as it has bot flag. You can put your request here. If you need more help, just talk to me anytime. Best regards.--Avocato (talk) 19:16, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Sorry, I honestly have difficulty editing over there. Is there a way to make the editing textarea not be RTL? It's making it really difficult to fill out the template parameters for a bot request. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:18, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for responding. Can you just fill this template and save the page? I'll do the rest.--Avocato (talk) 21:46, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Apparently copying and pasting the text into a text editor works. Okay, done. Let me know if you need anything further. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:54, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

P.S. Something on the edit screen is loading over HTTP instead of HTTPS. Probably some JavaScript somewhere. I'll poke at it quickly.

Found it here. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:06, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Done: I unblocked the bot and granted it bot flag. Regards.--Avocato (talk) 22:50, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Great, thanks!

Though as I said here, someone else is going to have to take over this bot or we'll need to find a better solution for delivery bots (or a delivery bot, I suppose). I can't be expected to seek approval on 700 wikis. That's insanity. Perhaps we could add a rule to centralized delivery lists that you must have local approval of EdwardsBot... or at least a warning. Hmm. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:58, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Talk:Www.wikipedia.org template#Sandbox

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Www.wikipedia.org template#Sandbox. This is related to a post you made about a month ago at Talk:Www.wikipedia.org template#Re: Multiple updates needed – Allen4names (talk) 00:48, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Idiocy at the English Wikipedia

Copy of my e-mail to w:en:User:Ryan Postlethwaite:

---

Hi.

You seem to have revoked my talk page access and re-blocked me for adding links that were (and are) already on my talk page in various other sections. Just search the page for "http://wikipediocracy".

You also seem to have deleted revisions that other oversighters have been unwilling to delete.

Can you explain, please?

MZ

---

Offending talk page post (still not fully redacted...):

---

The issue is essentially that the English Wikipedia doesn't control what content the wikipediocracy.com domain serves. The main page (<http://wikipediocracy.com/>) and other pages (such as <http://wikipediocracy.com/tag/wikipedia/>) are dynamic (i.e., their content is based on, for example, whatever posts were most recently made or whatever posts were tagged with a particular keyword), but any page on that domain is potentially problematic.

You could possibly envision a scenario in which certain URLs were changed (by a nefarious sysadmin) after being posted to this wiki to redirect to a nasty place (e.g., <http://wikipediocracy.com/?p=269> could be changed to redirect to a different post or to a different domain altogether). Or, even more nefariously, a sysadmin could take old links found on this site and only redirect to a nasty place based on being clicked by a user on the English Wikipedia (using an w:en:HTTP referer). It's trivial to redirect URLs; for example <http://pruebita.com/loldong.jpg> appears to be a w:en:JPEG image URL, but it redirects to a completely different site. All of this is as true of wikipediocracy.com as it is of nearly any Web domain.

As I see it, the English Wikipedia community has repeatedly decided not to ban links to this site (as opposed to, say, encyclopediadramatica.se, which is blacklisted locally), so indefinitely blocking users for linking to wikipediocracy.com seems a bit crazy. Again, I think AGK simply overreacted. That said, there's an essay somewhere around here describing a "no admin willing to unblock" scenario. I can't remember exactly where, but it may apply here. We'll see. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:22, 14 March 2013 (UTC) Hmmm, I suppose w:en:Wikipedia:Community ban is what I was thinking of. Hmmm. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:45, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

---

One follow-up edit has been lost, alas. :-( --MZMcBride (talk) 02:57, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Never mind, nabbed it from browser cache. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:35, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

So shame on me now

I knew you were trouble when you walked in. Killiondude (talk) 21:43, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks

I'll try to get up to speed as quickly as possible. Ched (talk) 20:28, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

My pleasure. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:49, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Request for an account on the Foundation wiki/template

Wouldn't this work? πr² (t • c) 04:09, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Try it and see? --MZMcBride (talk) 04:12, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

ಠ_ಠ. Killiondude (talk) 05:17, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

I've watched this video four times now. I love it. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:29, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Guillom

This discussion was moved to Talk:User_groups#Guillom.

Testing...

Hello. --EdwardsBot (talk) 01:50, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Testing...

Hello! --EdwardsBot (talk) 02:05, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Exit Interview

Hiya. I don't know if you saw, Sue agreed to an exit interview (#old news?)User_talk:Sue_Gardner#Exit_Interview. Anyway, I have been kinda off-and-on with some stuff and not been online much. I haven't had the time to follow up yet, I will in a few days. In the mean time, if you want to get started by dropping messages(wikimedia-l?) and soliciting questions - please go ahead, this was your idea from what I remember. Or you can always wait and have me come up a day late with a dollar short. ;) Theo10011 (talk) 16:20, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi.

Yes, I saw. ;-) Wikimedia exit interview/Sue Gardner is already growing.

I actually made a request of you here to post to wikimedia-l. I can wait for you to follow up. I'm in no rush. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:04, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Whatever happened to this? It was your idea, you wanna follow up on this? There were enough questions the last I saw... Theo10011 (talk) 16:03, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware, Sue is still ED and there's been no replacement announced. The interview needs another round of advertising, but I'm not sure I want to do it and I'd kind of planned to wait until there was a "she'll be leaving on X" announced. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:14, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Got ya. Theo10011 (talk) 09:41, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Links to Single User Login finalisation announcement

Hello, next time please link Special:MyLanguage/Single User Login finalisation announcement.[1] --Nemo 10:53, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Is Special:MyLanguage documented? (Bah, it's a red link!) I tried to use it yesterday on wikimediafoundation.org and was unsuccessful. --MZMcBride (talk) 13:38, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Template:Ll#Purpose has some information, but it's not really documented unfortunately. It looks for the subpage with user's language code. If it doesn't exist, it uses the main (English) version. PiRSquared17 (talk) 13:42, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Right. I guess "documented" was a little ambiguous there. There's documenting the feature itself. And then there's also documenting to use this feature with GMD at Global message delivery/Instructions. I'm not sure how anyone would know to use this Special page. The red link certainly isn't helping. --MZMcBride (talk) 13:46, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Superscripts

You've done us a favour. But there are more, littered further down. And yes, "15" should have a comma by standard practice. thx Tony (talk) 02:50, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Eep, nice catch. Fixed all that up. And I brought up the inconsistent date format issue at Talk:Wikimedia Foundation elections/Board elections/2013#Date format. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 03:04, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Comment on your recent blanking of MediaWiki:Edittools

See MediaWiki_talk:Edittools#Please_restore. PiRSquared17 (talk) 17:31, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Discussion concerning your bot on the English Wikinews

User talk:LauraHale#Global message delivery and Talk:Global message delivery/Targets/Tech ambassadors. PiRSquared17 (talk) 00:29, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! --MZMcBride (talk) 01:03, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

About global message delivery

For instance Wikimedia Highlights from April 2013, zh is not the most preferred translational option, because of two forms of Chinese characters: zh-hans and zh-hant, zh usually do not get translated. So If there will be any version of zh-hans or zh-hant in meta, global message delivery probably should send zh-hans or zh-hant first, but not en. Thanks. 乌拉跨氪 (talk) 17:54, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi. I didn't send out that message. I think you want to talk to Tbayer (WMF) (cf. this edit). --MZMcBride (talk) 22:17, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Your recent edit to Www.wikivoyage.org template

Hello. Your recent edit to the www.wikivoyage.org template (which you did not sync to /temp) seems to have caused a problem. Now the vertical scrollbar is hidden, so it is difficult to see the privacy policy and image credit links at the bottom. Does this look okay? PiRSquared17 (talk) 18:56, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi. That looks fine to me. Sorry about the /temp page. I was kind of surprised that nobody else had fixed that and it was just a quick edit. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:27, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Wikivoyage logo discussion

It's a pity that we have to deal with a logo takedown request. Please do help make the process better, but I wish you would pose constructive solutions rather than just tearing down other people's efforts to improve matters.

Sure, we could fight the request; but it would be a huge pain; no chance that they would just back down. It's hard to argue that there's no source of confusion particularly when a bunch of our own community members noticed it and even complained about it. If I had caught that aspect of the original discussion I would have pushed not to use that logo in the first place. There was no other logo in the top 5 with such a problem.

As for the 'RfC vs. one-off selection' debate: this is a red herring; please help dispel it. We should pick some ad-hoc method soon: clearly we need to have a renewed discussion about logo choice even if there's some supermajority that wants to keep the old logo. And we should find out how long the wikivoyagers think they need to reach a decision in a way that they're comfortable with. –SJ talk  17:23, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

From my perspective, there's a growing culture of making decisions in San Francisco and letting everyone else know about them later. This is certainly not restricted to the Legal and Community Advocacy team. It extends into many technical decisions as well.

Transparency is a value, but we have a document (Logo selection procedure) with unknown authorship and we're waiting to see if the cease-and-desist letter at the center of this controversy will be posted. Community is a value, but it's okay to remove people from volunteer roles without notice or warning on a whim without any justification. It's death by a thousand cuts and it's left me pretty disillusioned and annoyed. Wikimedia is morphing into a place that's much more difficult to love. A lot more staff, a lot more bureaucracy, a lot less community. I don't know. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:03, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

This is a valid concern. Focus on the "making decisions in SF" process and not on the decision. When you get annoyed, you attack even things that are not problematic. It is hard to separate underlying concerns from a general lack of gruntle. In this example: I'm not sure why the WMF doesn't publish the C&Ds received, but I don't recall that ever happening. Similarly, bulk-posted documents with an off-wiki history has been happening for years - on Meta and on the projects. Both may be worth changing, but they're not new.

As for whims and justification... I don't know what the trigger was either. But I mentioned to you months ago when you were up in arms about a main page redesign that you were not helping matters by provoking others who felt responsible for how that wiki looks. And you are now the one pushing for on-wiki bureaucracy :) Beam, mote. What we really need is less bureaucracy on all sides. –SJ talk  03:52, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure I'd call posting to a talk page an attack (re: cease and desist letters). And I think the FBI–Mike Godwin affair involved letter publishing, but I'm too lazy to look. We also publish DMCA requests, as I noted. Though Maggie may well be right about waiting.

Both on-wiki and off-wiki document preparation are common, but depending on the nature of the document (and as a general rule, really...), it's important and incredibly helpful to see what came from where. It's certainly an ideal, but Sue has led by example with her narrowing focus and guiding principles documents. Trademark practices discussion seems to be headed in a better direction.

And I think there's something to be said for taking your own actions on the wiki, whether they're edits or desysoppings. There's also something to be said for simply assuming that any action taken by a user is by that user, not by the organization they work for, their boss, or anyone else.

I don't recall anyone being up in arms about a main page redesign. I remember several people pushing, for years, for the page to be updated. What's wrong with me? This included starting a discussion here about doing so. Oh well. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:05, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Email

I've send you an Email. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 14:34, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Replied. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:18, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 13:22, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

File:Kohs with MyWikiBiz screen.jpg

Hello, I consider the deletion rationale appropriate, so I'd like you to reverse your undeletion and open an undeletion request so that I can comment there. Otherwise, I'll open an RfD. It doesn't change much, let me know. --Nemo 09:14, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

I moved the photograph to Commons. If you still want to delete the photograph, take your concerns to the Commons community. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 13:13, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Hi. The image has now been moved to Commons (and deleted locally), so I think Michaeldsuarez is correct that Commons would be the appropriate venue. That said, I'm happy to help if I can. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:51, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Penance

Ocaasi right now

1. Apologies, obviously.
2. I'm on SpamBot probation for now.
3. Thanks for going easy on me.

Ocaasi (talk) 14:48, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

User_talk:Ocaasi#Links

What about cases like this? PiRSquared17 (talk) 15:21, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Heh, perhaps we should require that spammers only use external link syntax. Or perhaps prefix every link with "m:".

Better yet would be to stop spamming altogether. ;-) A global message delivery checklist might be nice, but I doubt anyone would read it. Sigh. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:21, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

I think you might be interested to see that we (Tech News) have actually implemented such a checklist at Tech/News/Manual after this week's fiasco that I caused. odder (talk) 20:01, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Oh, that's wonderful. I've added Tech/News/Manual to my watchlist and I'll make a few tweaks shortly. Thanks for putting that together! --MZMcBride (talk) 20:59, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

polish Wikibooks

Hi! your "bot" - EdwardsBot give us really unnecessary informations, I`ve reverted yours bot changes about X!'s Edit Counter. Karol Karolus (talk) 14:41, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Sorry. I am responsible for that message. The request to publicize this request for comment seemed quite reasonable. After all, it is about privacy. You can remove any message the bot adds, sure, but don't blame MZMcBride for this one. Blame me... PiRSquared17 (talk) 14:44, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Yeah... I have no idea why that went out to the full distribution list. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:13, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

I take full responsibility for that. PiRSquared17 (talk) 16:57, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Was there some way to translate this message before it was sent? Not everybody speaks English :) E.g. about tech news I have notifications on translator's list and it's nice. --Base (talk) 18:47, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

EdwardsBot on barwiki

Hi MZMcBride,

your EdwardsBot does its edits on barwiki on bar:Wikipedia:Autornportal but that's the wrong page. Could you please change the target page to bar:Wikipedia_Dischkrian:Autornportal?

Thank you very much. With kind regards. --Holder (talk) 18:38, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi. This was fixed by PiRSquared17. Thank you, Holder, for reporting the issue and thank you, PiRSquared17, for correcting the distribution list! --MZMcBride (talk) 21:38, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Hello. Regarding this revert, I think that the user was trying to subscribe, not add another user, who was already listed, on another wiki. Do you think it is a reasonable assumption that he meant to change it to have "user = Arystanbek", but forgot to? His previous and next edits would also seem to suggest so, especially because these three were all made within a 10 minute period. So: should we fix his subscription (almost surely what he wanted) or make him do it himself? PiRSquared17 (talk) 02:49, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Oh, you're probably right. I was too tired to fully investigate and given that EdwardsBot has already now delivered to w:kk:User talk:Mdann52, it seemed prudent to just revert for now. Feel free to re-add the (appropriate) entry if you'd like. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:51, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Done I have re-added it (with the correct username, of course). I also delivered the most recent edition of Tech News, which s/he would have otherwise received. I even fixed the problems with the news message (like [2]). PiRSquared17 (talk) 03:06, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

You're wonderful. Thank you! --MZMcBride (talk) 12:33, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

PRISM

Thanks so much for expressing your voice on the PRISM page. Though I haven't taken any firm stand on the issue, I appreciate your reasoning, especially with regards to the limited mission of the Wikimedia movement. odder (talk) 19:59, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

:-) --MZMcBride (talk) 20:58, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

HTTPS switch

Hi. I know we are switching to HTTPS, but I think there will be issues with mixed content due to imported tools.

For instance, [19:12:19.557] Blocked loading mixed active content "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Lupin/popups.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript" @ https://bits.wikimedia.org/meta.wikimedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=ext.centralNotice.bannerController%7Cext.uls.i18n%2Cime%2Cinit%2Cinterface%2Clanguagenames%2Cpreferences%2Cwebfonts%7Cext.uls.webfonts.repository%7Cjquery.client%2Ccookie%2Ci18n%2CjStorage%2Cjson%2CmwExtension%2Ctipsy%2Culs%2Cwebfonts%7Cjquery.uls.data%2Cgrid%7Cmediawiki.Uri%2Capi%2Cnotify%2Cuser%2Cutil%7Cmediawiki.legacy.ajax%2Cwikibits%7Cmediawiki.libs.pluralruleparser%7Cmediawiki.page.startup&skin=monobook&version=20130821T021052Z&*:268 is from my FF console. Maybe a notice should go out? If I simply change all URLs to // or https:// will that fix it? Killiondude (talk) 02:15, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi K.

This particular instance is coming from User:Killiondude/monobook.js.

Yes, switching to // or https:// should resolve the issue. There's open and ongoing debate about which is better (protocol-relative or HTTPS).

It seems like some browsers will not load insecure resources over HTTPS by default. This may be pretty disruptive to users who have hardcoded http:// resources in their personal JS or CSS. Site-wide JS/CSS has probably already been switched over by others. Putting out a notice may be a good idea. Go for it. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 02:20, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

I'll fix my .js page later and possibly post a public announcement later. Tangentially, Special:Notifications shows no notifications for me. I didn't get a flag when you linked my userpage. And yes, I checked my prefs to see that I have notifications enabled for mentions. Killiondude (talk) 03:15, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

OTRS

I noticed a stale request...[3] You may want to update that "soon". --Nemo 08:27, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

From what I understand, it'll be rejected/declined in short order. :-) Thank you very much for the kind words, though. That was sweet of you. --MZMcBride (talk) 12:33, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Gadgets across projects

Hi, I would like to have your feedback regarding Grants:IEG/Visual editor- gadgets compatibility. (it is related to your RFC here, though it isn't the main focus but a side benefit of it). If you have any comment or idea regarding it, please comment in Grants talk:IEG/Visual editor- gadgets compatibility. Thanks! ערן (talk) 14:32, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi ערן. Thanks for the note. I'll take a look. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:43, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

You called?

You called, master? I'm not even sure why I got that message from edwardsbot tbh. Or why you decided to remove me from the access list at some point. :( Theo10011 (talk) 20:37, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi pumpkin. It looks like you were one of the earliest (ab)users of global message delivery. That would be why you received a notification that the system will soon be revamped. Regarding the access list, you were added (by me) in this edit and removed (by someone other than me) in this edit. As far as I can tell, your personal account (Theo10011) never had access. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:35, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

ihu too. Theo10011 (talk) 09:49, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

[4] - heh. I snerked. Theo10011 (talk) 23:17, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Good idea, bad idea, or great idea?

Hello MZM. I recently created a client-side (JS) tool that basically does the same thing as Synchbot, but currently doesn't support preference changing (TODO). Do you think this is a good temporary solution for global userpages and global scripts? PiRSquared17 (talk) 16:45, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi. I think such a script certainly has potential use-cases, but global user pages and global scripts really ought to be handled by smarter software.

Do you have any interest in learning PHP? Given that CentralAuth is already in place, adding logic to auto-import Special:MyPage/global.js or display Special:MyPage on foreign wikis shouldn't be too difficult. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:41, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

If it's so easy, why aren't bugzilla:14759 and bugzilla:13953 resolved? There have been commits on gerrit. Those bugs are 5 years old, and there's no way I can solve them if the devs haven't been able to in that period of time. PiRSquared17 (talk) 17:53, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't think anyone said it was easy, just that it shouldn't be too difficult. Age doesn't always correspond to complexity or difficulty. In the case of bugzilla:14759, as you note, there's already a start at gerrit:7300. It looks like the original author is busy, but you could easily pick up where he left off. :-) The same seems to be true of bugzilla:13953 and gerrit:7274. Rather than spending time writing JavaScript hacks, I personally think your time would be better spent getting those two Gerrit changes merged. But obviously it's entirely up to you how you spend your time. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:06, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Wiki portals

Re this change: this may have been necessary for the Wikipedia portal, but it has now caused the Wikinews, Wiktionary, etc. portals to look misaligned (no longer circular). A CSS "left" value of 5% there would be an improvement; perhaps the WP portal needs an inline style to fix the alignment on that portal only.

While you're at it, do you think you could change the Wiktionary portal to not use the English-only textual "logo", but instead the multilingual tiles logo? Or if you think that's too controversial, at least fix the almost-collision with English at the top of the logo? Thanks, This, that and the other (talk) 10:37, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi. I really don't like dealing with those portals. Feel free to submit edit requests for www or MediaWiki:Gadget-wm-portal.css or whatever. --MZMcBride (talk) 14:09, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

@This, that and the other: The logo issue: Talk:Www.wiktionary.org_template#Logo. PiRSquared17 (talk) 20:42, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Beginning of MassMessage, end of EdwardsBot

Hi. You're being contacted as you're listed as an EdwardsBot user.

MassMessage has been deployed to all Wikimedia wikis. For help using the new tool, please check out its help page or drop a note on Meta-Wiki.

With over 400,000 edits to Wikimedia wikis, EdwardsBot has served us well; however EdwardsBot will no longer perform local or global message delivery after December 31, 2013.

A huge thanks to Legoktm, Reedy, Aaron Schulz and everyone else who helped to get MassMessage deployed. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:36, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Woohoo! --MZMcBride (talk) 02:40, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Great, and thanks to all of you! PiRSquared17 (talk) 02:42, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

RIP. Killiondude (talk) 22:22, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your stewardship. Without you, how would I have learned so gracefully and royally how not to screw up mass messages. You were and remain a lynchpin of our technical development. Nice fucking work on this. Ocaasi (talk) 15:30, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the kind words. I appreciate them. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 17:57, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

How will the Global message delivery/Access list be converted to MassMessage? How can the users on the list use the MassMessage on Meta? Romaine (talk) 21:49, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

There's currently a discussion about who should be granted the 'massmessage' right. PiRSquared17 (talk) 23:50, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

cf. MassMessage#Limitations --MZMcBride (talk) 02:29, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Editor @ ar.wiki

Hello. I would like to inform you that I have granted you editor flag at the Arabic Wikipedia, all your edits there will be automatically marked as patrolled. Best regards.--Avocato (talk) 06:42, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Thanks! Though I'm not sure how much I'll be editing at ar.wikipedia.org anytime soon. I received a separate Echo notification about the user rights change as well. ;-) --MZMcBride (talk) 21:01, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Choices of battles

It occurred to me, Wikipedia comes under attack from many sides; on what criteria does it choose which battles to fight? Wikipedia fought against SOPA. It defended against Larry Sanger's allegations, rather than bowing down to the pressure and removing all the images he wanted removed. It defended against the FBI's allegations concerning misuse of the FBI logo, rather than removing the logo.

So why is it that, whenever Fox News or similar sites falsely accuse Wikipedia of being "home base" for pedophiles, or makes misleading comments about the external links to GirlChat, BoyChat, etc. Wikipedia is quick to give in and ban the users and blacklist the sites? Facebook seems to have likewise given in; after they too got attacked by the gutter press, Zuckerberg hasn't been heard from much on the issue of letting kids on the site.

I suspect it's because people generally only care about their own freedoms. When people are kids, they might feel that kids should have more rights; but when they become adults, they stop caring as much because the issue no longer affects them as much. Likewise, if people attack a minority viewpoint, why should those who hold the majority viewpoint care?

People who have grown accustomed to exercising power over others often are reluctant to relinquish it, because holding onto it seems to serve their purposes. The average parent probably likes that the laws put in a position of being able to control his child (theoretically). It's one of the last few privileges of that nature that are left, now that husbands aren't allowed to similarly dominate their wives by controlling all the marital assets, using corporal punishment against them, etc.

Children are basically in the same position that women, blacks, etc. were in many years ago of having severely abridged property, contractual, sexual, etc. rights. The parallels are actually rather striking; 19th-century doctors believed that 'true' women felt little or no sexual desire, and that only abnormal or 'pathological' women felt strong sexual desire", and today many people claim that children lack sexuality unless they've been abused. The concept of childhood innocence, or lack thereof, has parallels in the concept of female innocence and the fallen woman. Like the blacks who, if they ran away, were returned to their masters, the fugitive child who runs away is returned to his parents.

The state, of course, loves situations in which one group of society is being subjugated under another. If white slaveowners depend on the government to help them keep the slaves under control, then the government can count on the slaveowners' continued support and allegiance. Likewise, the government can count on parents' support by saying, "Without the state, who would help you keep your kids in line?"

Many of the expansions of government power in recent years have been for the purpose of keeping kids from going off and forming relationships that their parents would not want them to partake of, or from being influenced to do so by learning the truth. Recordings of sex involving children, for instance, are not only a potential stimulus of sexual excitement to those who are into that sort of thing but also a form of evidence, revealing what happened and possibly something about the state of mind of the participants (as indicated by body language and so on). There could be some truths that the government doesn't want people to know about, which is why it bans that content from the market.

Maybe the problem is that while Jimbo's worldview seems to be a combination of Randian Objectivist and Stallmanian anti-copyright sentiment, he apparently never incorporated the radical pro-liberty sentiments of the Mises Institute crew, such as Doug "Just Set Kids Free" French, into his philosophy. As a result, his defense of freedom only went halfway. We needn't stop where he left off, though; we can take that philosophy to its logical conclusions.

We can, at the very least, open the door for people to criticize the current political state of affairs. Or, if we don't do that, we can at least allow people to criticize the fact that society won't let them criticize the current political state of affairs. In this post, I am criticizing the restrictions against criticizing the restrictions against criticizing the restrictions against adult-child sex, which makes it a meta-meta debate. At that point, it's not even what Harris Mirkin termed a Phase I struggle; it's more like a Phase Zero struggle.

It occurs to me, part of the point of kicking people off of Wikimedia wikis is so that, if they're going to carry on their wiki activities, they have to do so on their own wikis, such as BoyWiki or NewgonWiki. But how does that keep children safer, when children can simply go to those wikis, if they want to meet those people? Or they can continue to meet pedophiles on Wikipedia; the only difference being that those are undercover pedophiles who haven't made their proclivities openly known. People who go to Wikipedia to meet kids for illegal purposes would probably make an effort to avoid making it possible for people to connect that account to off-wiki identities and pro-pedophile viewpoints anyway.

It's not really about protecting children, or even protecting Wikipedia's reputation, in my opinion. Wikipedia could, after all, stand up to the gutter press and say, "We're not censored, and we believe that to suppress a viewpoint on such grounds would violate our principles." Then the gutter press would probably go away, as they usually do when confronted in that manner. I think what really happened was that people who wanted to suppress those views anyway used those concerns as an excuse. Leucosticte (talk) 03:46, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

These posts of yours are filled with pedophile propaganda, talking points, and tropes. Bleh.

Even if we immediately accepted all of your views as mainstream and normal, it's still increasingly clear that at least part of you wants to use Meta-Wiki as a battleground in some advocacy campaign. That is, this isn't specific to child protection at this point... anyone openly advocating for anything (abortion rights, gun control rights, prayer in schools, etc.) in the same way that you cling to this issue would be seen as someone with an incompatible agenda who needs to move along. I've now explicitly told you to stop posting in the subject-space about this. No new essays, hopefully no new multi-paragraph posts, no more discussion of this from you. Drop it and move along. If you decide to ignore this advice, you'll be banned. If you decide to heed this advice, you may still be banned, but there's a slightly lower chance of it. As Abd notes on your talk page, you're sticking your finger in sockets. Of course that will have consequences. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:22, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Sigh, well, you're the one who's a sysop, and no other sysop is taking my side, so I guess you win, regardless of policy or principle. Those other issues — abortion rights, gun control rights, prayer in schools — weren't singled out for censorship the way that dissident views on adult-child sex were, nor were abortionists, gun owners, or religious students singled out the way pedophiles were. You're not suppressing a debate about adult-child sex or pedophilia; you're suppressing a debate about policy itself. "Meta" is by definition a place for discussion of "meta" issues, such as policy. If you're trying to suppress that sort of discussion, then I think that you are the one who has an agenda incompatible with the site's purpose. But as I say, there is nothing I can do about it, because I don't have the power. It sounds as though you're closing the meta-meta discussion too. Leucosticte (talk) 04:36, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm an admin both here on Meta-Wiki and on mediawiki.org. :-) I have little doubt that you can't be a long-term, productive contributor in both places—and many more—should you choose to be.

As for this talk about "battles" and "opponents," I find it a bit silly. You've surrendered faster than the French! ;-) --MZMcBride (talk) 04:43, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
MZMcBride, did you block that user on behalf of the WMF?—

You may appeal this block to the Wikimedia Foundation or to its Board of Trustees.

I was not aware that the WMF was in charge of reviewing, or that it could review, local unblock requests. I guess that's another way of saying, that he will remain blocked, even though he didn't violate any Meta policy. The WMF should certainly do whatever they think is in the best interest of the project, and what protects their reputation, but there were better ways to go about this than an out of process block. ~ DanielTom (talk) 09:47, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi DanielTom. Leucosticte was not blocked on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation. He was blocked on Meta-Wiki for repeatedly misbehaving on Meta-Wiki. You can read his talk page history or recent contributions to learn the specifics that led to this block. Typically the Wikimedia Foundation does not get involved in reviewing local unblock requests, but this isn't a typical case. Given that there's no local Arbitration Committee, the avenues to appeal are more limited on this wiki, as I understand it. The Wikimedia Foundation, its Board, or the stewards could step in, though it seems unlikely any of them would.

Regarding the block being "out of process," I'm not sure what you mean. Which process are you referring to? Leucosticte was explicitly and clearly warned to step away from this subject and chose to try to make a public spectacle. If you disagree with the block, you can find another local administrator to review. --MZMcBride (talk) 14:26, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Was removing Leucosticte's talk page and Email access appropriate? --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 14:10, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:53, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Why? --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 22:37, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Why what? If you have a legitimate question, ask. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:22, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Why do you believe that removing Leucosticte's access to his talk page and "Special:Email" is appropriate? --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 02:49, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Well, I figure those options are built in to the block form for a reason. This specific case seemed like reason enough to use those options given the concern about Leucosticte's behavior. He was attempting to create a spectacle over an issue he'd been expressly told to avoid, so it was time for a break from Meta-Wiki. As with DanielTom, you can seek out another local administrator to review the block, if you'd like. Though in the (limited) feedback I've received about the block, the most common question was "why not indefinite?" Shrug. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:20, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Meta:Requests_for_help_from_a_sysop_or_bureaucrat#Leucosticte. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 12:44, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm chiming in here, unasked. I'm not a big fan of Mises Institute, but I've never heard any hint about deviance and child exploitation among them. I still haven't, despite Leucosticte's claim about Mises's director Doug French. Mr. French reviewed a book that advocated greater responsibility for youth between the ages of 14 and 26. He emphasized post-pubescent everywhere. The book he reviewed did too:

Age is simply not a reliable measure of adultness once people are past puberty.....

There was no mention of children, and no mention of pre-pubescent teens having sex with each other, nor with adults! Leucosticte justifies his predilection with false attribution.--FeralOink (talk) 21:24, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Were it allowed for me to do so, I would clarify what I was talking about. Leucosticte (talk) 05:47, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Uh, Special:EmailUser/FeralOink. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:15, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Editor@meta.wikimedia.org

Hi,i translate some page in meta to Arabic and i want get me editor flag, and I'm also a editor, rollback, and reviewer in arabic Wikipedia, and thanks--A. Latreche ^✉--21:36, 06 march 2014 (UTC)

Hi. Sure, done. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:19, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Great, Thanks!--A. Latreche ^✉--07:22, 07 march 2014 (UTC)

Request to update Wikimedia Foundation contact page

Hi MZMcBride,

I noticed that you were active on this page and had permissions to edit it.

Please update Wikimedia Israel's address to: 7 Carlebach St., Tel Aviv, 6713211, Israel.

Thanks in advance, —Ynhockey (talk) 07:57, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi Ynhockey. I updated the relevant template. You can request an account on that wiki at WMFACCOUNT, if you'd like. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:50, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Your RfB

Hello MZMcBride! I've right now closed your request for bureaucratship as withdrawn as that is what you probably wanted. Kind regards, -Barras talk 06:40, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

I just saw this, and want to offer my condolences. I consider that, in general, wiki decision-making process is badly broken, never really was that hot, and the best users have been leaving, for years, as a result. Long-term, the quality of discussion has been declining. Wikis work very well for efficient collaboration, when there is no controversy. They can work very badly when controversy arises that needs deep judgment and consideration of evidence and arguments. Increasingly, it is not evidence and arguments that prevail, but numbers, and appeal to knee-jerk impressions. Policies are neglected and violated regularly, and there is, at the same time, no correction of policy to reflect actual practice, or, alternatively, community will to enforce the policies. It's become mob rule.

A series of decisions, made early on, that seemed like good ideas at the time, set all this up.

I see what you were doing with the request, offering to help. Good luck in whatever you do. --Abd (talk) 01:28, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

• I didn't realize you had a request going. I should really check in more on Wikipemia matters. Sorry to see how ugly that got. Killiondude (talk) 20:23, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

I quoted you

As a courtesy, I wanted to tell you that I cited your wise and hyperbole-free reasoning, back in Aug 2013, regarding someone's bugzilla filing. Said bugzilla filer has now escalated the perceived issue into an edge case extraordinaire, please see this allegation of WMF privacy insensitivity re banned IP users.

I'm sorry for dragging you back into it. I'm almost sorry for interjecting myself into it!--FeralOink (talk) 20:14, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Hey

Hey buttercup! It seems I have missed some good stuff around here. Stop talking nonsense about disengaging - it doesn't suit you. You'll start running out on a lot of good stuff if you keep up that kinda crazy talk. It's not like en.wp is any more civil than here, or any other place for that matter, there's just more eyes(and opinions) than here.

Also, ihu. Is KD still dead? And remember, Only you can prevent forest fires! Theo10011 (talk) 22:22, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Re:

Hi, I've replied on my own talk, thank you for writing me. --M/ (talk) 15:07, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Appeal

Is it permissible to appeal your revert to Requests for comment for Meta:Requests for help from a sysop or bureaucrat, or would you consider my making that appeal to be a blockable offense? Leucosticte (talk) 13:43, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

The latter, of course. You knew the answer before you asked the question. Stay away from this topic altogether, in every and any form, on this wiki. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:34, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Actually, no; I thought it was possible that (1) censorship of meta-topics might be considered different than topics themselves; and/or that (2) it might be considered bad practice to cut off the ability to appeal sysop-imposed topic bans to the community. Leucosticte (talk) 10:51, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Stratcon 5

Your thoughts, links, categories would all be welcome.  ! What are your favorite lists of priorities on various projects? Where do the mediawiki community gather such things these days -- in tracking bugs, on the wiki, in other public-but-fragged tools? –SJ talk  08:17, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi. We have all sorts of wish lists, especially if you consider scattered Bugzilla bugs and ideas within editors' heads. But in terms of strategy, I'd like us to figure out what to do with the sister projects. Looking at Grants:APG/Proposals/2013-2014 round2/Wikimedia Foundation/Proposal form, Wiktionary gets no mention. Wikinews gets no mention. Wikiquote gets no mention. A passing mention of German Wikiversity. No mentions of Wikibooks, Wikispecies, Wikisource, etc. How many mentions of Wikipedia?

Is housing a project sufficient? Is it a child project (a sister project) if it isn't ever fed or nurtured or given any direct attention? It seems like we must resolve this for both the good of the Wikimedia Foundation and the good of these projects. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:26, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

The problem with change management

I think some still don't get it, so I added a line: [5]. Do you think it's clear enough, without being too direct? (Please comment on the essay's talk.) --Nemo 06:58, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Letter petitioning WMF to reverse recent decitions

The Wikimedia Foundation recently created a new feature, "superprotect" status. The purpose is to prevent pages from being edited by elected administrators -- but permitting WMF staff to edit them. It has been put to use in only one case: to protect the deployment of the Media Viewer software on German Wikipedia, in defiance of a clear decision of that community to disable the feature by default, unless users decide to enable it.

If you oppose these actions, please add your name to this letter. If you know non-Wikimedians who support our vision for the free sharing of knowledge, and would like to add their names to the list, please ask them to sign an identical version of the letter on change.org.

• Letter to Wikimedia Foundation: Superprotect and Media Viewer
• Letter on change.org

I'm notifying you because you participated in one of several relevant discussions. -Pete F (talk) 22:15, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Superprotect letter update

Hi MZMcBride,

Along with more hundreds of others, you recently signed Letter to Wikimedia Foundation: Superprotect and Media Viewer, which I wrote.

Today, we have 562 signatures here on Meta, and another 61 on change.org, for a total of 623 signatures. Volunteers have fully translated it into 16 languages, and begun other translations. This far exceeds my most optimistic hopes about how many might sign the letter -- I would have been pleased to gain 200 siguatures -- but new signatures continue to come.

I believe this is a significant moment for Wikimedia and Wikipedia. Very rarely have I seen large numbers of people from multiple language and project communities speak with a unified voice. As I understand it, we are unified in a desire for the Wikimedia Foundation to respect -- in actions, in addition to words -- the will of the community who has built the Wikimedia projects for the benefit of all humanity. I strongly believe it is possible to innovate and improve our software tools, together with the Wikimedia Foundation. But substantial changes are necessary in order for us to work together smoothly and productively. I believe this letter identifies important actions that will strongly support those changes.

Have you been discussing these issues in your local community? If so, I think we would all appreciate an update (on the letter's talk page) about how those discussions have gone, and what people are saying. If not, please be bold and start a discussoin on your Village Pump, or in any other venue your project uses -- and then leave a summary of what kind of response you get on the letter's talk page.

Finally, what do you think is the right time, and the right way, to deliver this letter? We could set a date, or establish a threshold of signatures. I have some ideas, but am open to suggestions.

Thank you for your engagement on this issue, and please stay in touch. -Pete F (talk) 18:42, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Notice of review of adminship

Hello MZMcBride. In accordance with Meta:Administrators/Removal and because you have made fewer than ten logged administrator actions over the past six months, your adminship is under review at Meta:Administrators/Removal/October 2014. If you would like to retain your adminship, please sign there before October 08, 2014. Kind regards, Barras talk 14:18, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

In a word: ugh. I'm not annoyed with you (that would be shooting the messenger, I suppose), but I'm most certainly annoyed that this process is still alive. It's user-hostile and self-defeating. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:53, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Invitation to the CentralNotice-admins list

Hi! This bulk email is to let you know about a mailing list used to communicate bug reports and new features in CentralNotice, and to facilitate conversations between the admins. This message is being sent to you because you have the privileges to use the CentralNotice admin interface.

If you use CentralNotice to post or modify notices, please consider joining the list by visiting this page and subscribing yourself:

   https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/centralnotice-admins
   

Thanks,

Adam Wight (talk)

00:23, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Fundraising Tech,

Wikimedia Foundation

AF

Hi. How are you? I was trying to modify a filter with restricted options and when I was about to save the change, the system told me I didn't have the apropriate permissions. Searching the wiki I found this archived thread you started pointing out the problem. Since I was away I could not comment on that, but I have just created phab:T76270 and CC'd you on it. Hope you don't mind. Best regards. — M 18:55, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Notice of review of adminship

Hello MZMcBride. In accordance with Meta:Administrators/Removal and because you have made fewer than ten logged administrator actions over the past six months, your adminship is under review at Meta:Administrators/Removal/April 2015. If you would like to retain your adminship, please sign there before April 08, 2015. Kind regards, Matanya (talk) 13:57, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Greetings from the dark side

Greetings your majesty! Been a while since I heard from you. Not even an errant greeting or a snide remark with ambiguous reference? - Are you losing your touch, sugar? Well, I missed ya! Hope you and yours are well (is that an acceptable midwestern greeting? I learnt it recently). I don't read the lists no more, even if I did, I'd notice your absence there as well. Being inactive is usually a good sign or a bad one for real life - I hope it's the former. Just in case, you're on en.wp and slacking off on meta - represent bortha! [sic]. Also, ihu! Theo10011 (talk) 21:09, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Theo10011: Hi! I'm still around. Come chat sometime. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 01:01, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Hey Dude, can you take a look at Engineering vision? I don't know if the title fits with what I'm trying to do there but It's similar to your Principles on Mediawiki, I think. Either way, I'd appreciate it if you can take a look, edit away or leave your wonderful feedback on the talk page. Thanks. ihu. Theo10011 (talk) 20:31, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Global CSS/JS migration

Hello MZMcBride. You have global scripts in User:MZMcBride/global.js, which you import using your local JS pages. Since August 2014, your global.js and global.css pages are loaded automatically on all wikis. Since you already import them yourself, you may experience script errors or tools being added twice. Do you want me to remove the global imports from your local pages using Synchbot (without changing any other content)? —Pathoschild 18:59, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Hi Pathoschild. toollabs:meta/userpages/MZMcBride looks quite neat. Thank you for the very polite offer, but I think I'm okay. :-)

Tangentially related, I've found the lack of global CSS and JavaScript on fishbowl wikis to be annoying. In trying to move some JavaScript-loaded CSS from User:MZMcBride/global.js to User:MZMcBride/global.css, I broke customized styling on wikis such as wikimediafoundation.org, where I currently only manually pull in global.js. Sigh. I guess I should fix that someday.

I'm also thinking that some of my CSS customizations probably ought to be part of core, such as removing the ugly background from MonoBook. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:32, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

How can we improve Wikimedia grants to support you better?

Hi! The Wikimedia Foundation would like your input on how we can reimagine Wikimedia Foundation grants to better support people and ideas in your Wikimedia project.

After reading the Reimagining WMF grants idea, we ask you to complete this survey to help us improve the idea and learn more about your experience. When you complete the survey, you can enter to win one of five Wikimedia globe sweatshirts!

In addition to taking the the survey, you are welcome to participate in these ways:

• Respond to questions on the discussion page of the idea.
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Last call for WMF grants feedback!

Hi, this is a reminder that the consultation about Reimagining WMF grants is closing on 8 September (0:00 UTC). We encourage you to complete the survey now, if you haven't yet done so, so that we can include your ideas.

With thanks,

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Skin reset bug

Thanks the useful global.js code you provided in that bug, it has already saved me countless clicks. --MF-W 02:49, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

All Legoktm's work, of course. :-) Regarding phabricator:T114208 specifically, I'm not really annoyed with the incident happening; shit happens, people make mistakes, etc. But what I am fairly annoyed with is the response, which I've found to be sad and lacking. After more than a week, we've still not identified the root cause. That's simply unacceptable. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:23, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi

wanna be friends

Central Notice follow up

Hi there! I'm not entirely sure if I follow everything that was mentioned in the comments on your other talk page, but I think I didn't quite use the right language in my initial request. I was referring to Central Notice, and it's there that I have added the Irish Survey to the calender. We are hoping to start the campaign on the 22 February, so we are not far off the 10 days out that you suggest. I have been in contact with a few people from the Foundation, so everything I have done so far is on their recommendation. We will have a link to a Qualtrics survey in EN and GA to run on both language Wikipedias. I hope that is a bit clearer? Thanks for your help! Smirkybec (talk) 00:09, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi Smirkybec. Do you have text you want to use for the banner? Do you know how the banner should look? --MZMcBride (talk) 13:18, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi again. I've been having a hard time trying to find examples of banners, but something similar to the current on the elections should work. As for text something along the lines of Are you editing Wikipedia in Ireland? Participate in this survey to share how Wikimedia Community Ireland can support you! Which in Irish would be An bhfuil tú ag athrú Vicipéid in Éirinn? Páirt a ghlacadh sa suirbhé seo a roinnt conas is féidir le Wikimedia Community Ireland tacaíocht a thabhairt duit! With the link to the survey in the word survey/suirbhé, and the meta page for Wikimedia Community Ireland. Any suggestions that you have would be gratefully received :) Thanks again Smirkybec (talk) 00:45, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi Smirkybec. I've been traveling and was largely away from the wikis for a few days. It was a nice break. :-)

I can create this banner campaign during the day on Thursday, February 18. I think the process should basically be a matter of duplicating the currently running stewards elections banner and tweaking the text and other parameters.

Just to confirm: you ideally want to target users who speak Gaelic (ga) and English (en) on ga.wikipedia.org and en.wikipedia.org? --MZMcBride (talk) 05:09, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Hello again! Glad to hear you had a nice break :) and thanks so much for getting back to me. That all sounds perfect, and yes, we would like to run it on both the GA and EN Wikipedias, targeting people logging in from Ireland (not to sure of the mechanics of that bit yet). I can supply you with the hyperlink to the survey then, as I haven't activated it yet, just to allow me a bit more time to proof read it. Thanks again for your help it is very much appreciated! Smirkybec (talk) 14:21, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Links:

• https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:CentralNotice&subaction=noticeDetail&notice=Irish+User+Survey%2C+February+2016
• https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralNoticeBanners/edit/irish_user_survey_february_2016

I'm still working on this. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:31, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Okay, kind of working now:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gabe_Barcia-Colombo&banner=irish_user_survey_february_2016&uselang=en&force=1
• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gabe_Barcia-Colombo&banner=irish_user_survey_february_2016&uselang=ga&force=1

How does all of this look to you, Smirkybec? --MZMcBride (talk) 23:18, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Fantastic - thanks so much! I have emailed you the link for the survey, so almost all systems go :) One of my follow Wikimedians improved the translation into Irish which is An gcuireann tú Vicipéid in eagar in Éirinn? Glac páirt sa suirbhé seo chun inis conas is féidir le Pobal Wikimedia Éireann tacú a thabhairt duit. Again, thanks very much! Smirkybec (talk) 18:51, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi Smirkybec. I've attempted to update the translated text. I also updated various settings at <https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:CentralNotice&subaction=noticeDetail&notice=Irish+User+Survey%2C+February+2016> (setting the start and end dates more appropriately, enabling the campaign, etc.). It would be really nice if someone could double-check all of my work here and ensure that all of the functionality is working properly, including the ability to dismiss the message. The CentralNotice and Translate extensions can be difficult to work with at times and more rigorous quality assurance and testing could only help here. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:12, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

That's fantastic - thank you very much, I'm going to forward your request for testing to the members of the Irish User Group (who are not all based in Ireland) to look at testing. Thanks again Smirkybec (talk) 22:41, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Inspire Campaign on content curation & review

I've recently launched an Inspire Campaign to encourage new ideas focusing on content review and curation in Wikimedia projects. Wikimedia volunteers collaboratively manage vast repositories of knowledge, and we’re looking for your ideas about how to manage that knowledge to make it more meaningful and accessible. We invite you to participate and submit ideas, so please get involved today! The campaign runs until March 28th.

All proposals are welcome - research projects, technical solutions, community organizing and outreach initiatives, or something completely new! Funding is available from the Wikimedia Foundation for projects that need financial support. Constructive feedback on ideas is welcome - your skills and experience can help bring someone else’s project to life. Join us at the Inspire Campaign to improve review and curation tasks so that we can make our content more meaningful and accessible! I JethroBT (WMF) 05:38, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

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Request for Input - New Central Notice request process

Hello!

Back in February I emailed the CN-admin list regarding part of my role to look into the Central Notice process and see where we could make improvements including: the campaign process; its functionality or lack thereof; and fundamentally the documentation that supports it. You can see many of the issues that I identified at CentralNotice/Process_Review. If there is anything additional that you feel has been left out then please feel free to leave any comments on the talk page.

My first task is to improve the requesting of campaigns by communities and affiliates. I am looking to set up a more formal request process, similar to those used in many projects. The aim is to: increase the transparency of Central Notice; improve the support provided to affiliates (including making such support more consistent); to provide a forum for community input into campaigns.

I have been working on a very rough strawman version of the process and I would be interested in hearing you comments about what such a process should involve and what you think it would require. Please feel free to leave such comments at the process talk page section. I would like to have a working page in place by the end of May. This would not need to be a final version. The process can be improved upon over time as we learn about how well it works.

Given your role as a Meta Administrator who is active in the area of Central Notice, I encourage you to:

• Review the strawman request page and request template and make changes as you feel necessary
• Leave comments
• Join the centralnotice-admins mailing list
• Feel free to contact me to discuss this further via: my talk page, jseddonwikimedia.org or on IRC (Nick: Seddon)

Regards

Jseddon (WMF) (talk) Advancement Associate (Community Engagement) -- 02:52, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi. I commented here: Talk:CentralNotice/Process Review#A couple of thoughts. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:07, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Participate in the Inspire Campaign and help address harassment!

Through June, we’re organizing an Inspire Campaign to encourage and support new ideas focusing on addressing harassment toward Wikimedia contributors. The 2015 Harassment Survey has shown evidence that harassment in various forms - name calling, threats, discrimination, stalking, and impersonation, among others - is pervasive. Available methods and systems to deal with harassment are also considered to be ineffective. These behaviors are clearly harmful, and in addition, many individuals who experience or witness harassment participate less in Wikimedia projects or stop contributing entirely.

Proposals in any language are welcome during the campaign - research projects, technical solutions, community organizing and outreach initiatives, or something completely new! Funding is available from the Wikimedia Foundation for projects that need financial support. Constructive feedback on ideas is appreciated, and collaboration is encouraged - your skills and experience may help bring someone else’s project to life. Join us at the Inspire Campaign so that we can work together to develop ideas around this important and difficult issue. With thanks,

I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 17:46, 31 May 2016 (UTC) (Opt-out instructions)

Announcing a new mailing list for Meta-Wiki administrators

Hello!

As a regular administrator on Meta-Wiki, you're allowed to subscribe to the recently created metawiki-admins mailing list. This is a closed mailing list for announcements, asking for help and discussion between Meta-Wiki administrators. If you wish to subscribe, please fill the form at this page and then contact Savh or MarcoAurelio via Special:EmailUser using your administrator account so they can verify the authenticity of your request and address. You'll find more information on the mailing list description page. Should you have any doubts or questions, feel free to contact any of us. We hope that this tool is useful for all.

Best regards,
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Teahouse and Flow

I wasn't trying to pick a fight here, MZ. Sorry if it came off that way. FWIW, I am grateful that you helped fix that particular special snowflake when it broke in October 2014. I'm not a software developer, so I'm not sure how much use I can be with the two Phab tasks you pointed out. Regardless, if there's a way you think I can be of help, let me know. They seem like sensible features to me. I'm happy to work with you, and I promise to be civil if you are willing to show me the same courtesy. Jtmorgan (talk) 21:35, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

toollabs:checker not correctly checking transclusion

Hi. For the past little while I have seen that the checker tool fails on some works in that it reports pages as being transcluded, though they are definitely not.

https://tools.wmflabs.org/checker/?db=enwikisource_p&title=Index:Swedenborg,_Harbinger_of_the_New_Age_of_the_Christian_Church.djvu

It shows all pages as being transcluded, yet the /307 to 312 are most definitely not transcluded. This phenomenon only seems to be recent works, another being https://tools.wmflabs.org/checker/?db=enwikisource_p&title=Index:Poems_of_nature,_Thoreau,_1895.djvu

Older works like https://tools.wmflabs.org/checker/?db=enwikisource_p&title=Index:A_London_Life,_The_Patagonia,_The_Liar,_Mrs_Temperly.djvu display correct information.

If you could give it a poke at some time that would be great. It is beyond my mediocre skills. Thanks.  — billinghurst sDrewth 13:36, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Hi billinghurst. I'm not sure I understand the issue. /307, /309, etc. do seem to be transcluded, according to s:en:Special:WhatLinksHere.

In general, I have a lot of difficulty remembering this tool and how it works, so you'll have to bear with me a bit when discussing bugs. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:52, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Ah thank you for outside eyes! Sometimes we can get so 'face against glass.' There is something buggy in ProofreadPage as it is recording links as transclusions. There is no evidence that /309 is transcluded and it shouldn't be in the Index. Accordingly, I have created Phab:T159095.

The checking tool is used to check for what is transcluded to main namespace of a work (well that is how we use it, it just checks for transclusions wherever, and that has been sufficient for our usage.) It allows us to identify which works have been transcribed but not transcluded (missed works); or pages that have not been transcluded to main (ie. missed pages). Very useful tool as I found 50 proofread or validated works that had been transcribed and not transcluded (weird!), and about 20+ works where a chapter was missed, or stopped short, or images missed.  — billinghurst sDrewth 23:25, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Reading Tpt's comment in the phab ticket, can we look to amend the tool checker so that it only classifies the transclusions for those based on what is transcluded to the main namepsace, either only that test, or that test as the default?  — billinghurst sDrewth 11:16, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Hi billinghurst. Can you provide an example link and describe (or upload screenshots or whatever) what you would like to see instead? Or maybe we can find some time to chat about this synchronously? --MZMcBride (talk) 05:06, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

I am not requiring a change in the form of presentation, more wishing to change the selection criteria. At the moment this result presents those transcluded based on transclusion only, I would like to have this based on transclusion to ns:0.

So on this test, change table header labels to "Transcluded to main namespace" and "Not transcluded to main namespace", change the selection criter to filter to that test. In this example that would move to "Not transcluded to main namespace" /2 /3 /4 /12 /157 /158 /159 /160 (I check these pages are not transcluded AND if the rest of the work has been properly transcluded)  — billinghurst sDrewth 12:00, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

From memory we don't match waking hours time well, so other F2F would have to be around the weekend.  — billinghurst sDrewth 12:36, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Hi billinghurst. The code is here: <https://github.com/legoktm/checker/blob/207b72b8/checker/checker.py>. I pretty much completely forgot that this is on GitHub now. I'm... looking at it a bit. I guess we touch this tool (really this script) every three years (2011, 2014, and now 2017)? --MZMcBride (talk) 05:56, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

If one builds robust tools that are fit for purpose, then it probably doesn't need fixing until someone else breaks or changes something else. :-)  — billinghurst sDrewth 09:25, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Hi billinghurst. I made these changes for you. Thank you for being so explicit about which results should be in which section. The source code changes are now awaiting review and approval from Legoktm here: <https://github.com/legoktm/checker/pull/2>. I updated the live version of the tool so that you can see and test the changes: <https://tools.wmflabs.org/checker/?db=enwikisource_p&title=Index:Anthony_Hope_-_The_Dolly_Dialogues.djvu>. Assuming this looks okay, I guess we can close phabricator:T159095. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:20, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Ah, I see now that phabricator:T159095 is already closed. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:24, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the fix, I really appreciate your work for the WS community.  — billinghurst sDrewth 01:25, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Mail

—MarcoAurelio 07:40, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Hi MarcoAurelio. Thanks for the note. I just replied. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:13, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Just to confirm that I've received the mail. Thanks. Also, as I consider you an expert in wikisyntax, code, etc., could you please give your input in a temp-RfA that has just been opened? Thanks. —MarcoAurelio 12:05, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Hi MarcoAurelio. I guess this is referring to Meta:Requests for adminship/Plagiat? Thanks for the heads-up, I left some notes there just now. I'm currently confused why the user is requesting admin rights. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:40, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

It looks like both issues (the RFA and your e-mail) got resolved today. Nice. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 03:57, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

User:Exactly. Let's draft defensive players from UCLA and Stanford says no smart Gm ever

First off, thank you for reverting his vandalism to my page. Second, what will happen with his spurious global ban request (diff)? Purplebackpack89 05:06, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Hi. We should try to avoid engaging with users like this, I think. I just set the page back (reverted) to a prevision revision. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:09, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Properly removed by MZMcBride. (ec, and thanks!) – Ajraddatz (talk) 05:10, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Let me ask you this: If this guy wasn't vandalizing and he had a real username, would his global ban proposal have passed? I get the feeling one of the things he's banking on is that most global ban proposals are approved. Purplebackpack89 17:21, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Most are approved because most are serious. No accounts are globally locked without an investigation... – Ajraddatz (talk) 17:30, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Hi Purplebackpack89. I really wouldn't worry about it. As Ajraddatz notes, the stewards and others do due diligence to ensure that requests are appropriate and reasonable. In the worst case scenario—somehow nobody notices you're a fine user and you get globally blocked—you can be globally unlocked to remedy that. There's no need to be worried. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 03:40, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Broken titles

Hi. Any idea about how to fix User:MarcoAurelio/Sandbox? Or we can leave them as they're? Regards, —MarcoAurelio (talk) 13:13, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Hi. I guess we could delete pages such as Broken/Evaluation portal/Library/Featured? --MZMcBride (talk) 13:53, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Hi. @Harej (WMF) fixed them all. Thanks! —MarcoAurelio (talk) 10:52, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Unused pages?

Hi there. These two look like unused pages. Are they deletable? There are a lot of pages clogging up Special:PrefixIndex/Template:Main Page/WM News. For instance, Template:Main Page/WM News/Sec is used, but all of its transclusions are in templates that don't appear to be used??? What is going on here. Also, how does this work? I wanted to know how the orange color change I made permeated to that website. Also, thank you for knowing everything! Killiondude (talk) 05:32, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Hi Killiondude. I don't know much about those pages. You could ask White Cat about them, since they seem to be his doing, looking at <https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Main_Page/WM_News/Note/Code&action=history> and <https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Main_Page/WM_News/Sec&action=history>. Template:Main Page/WM News/Note/ with the trailing slash is pretty weird.

If it were me, I'd just mark the pages for deletion and notify the contributors, maybe using some user script. And if nobody objects, delete the pages in a week or two. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:53, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

SVG i18n

Hi. I'm inviting comments at Grants:Project/Glrx/SVG i18n. Glrx (talk) 00:34, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Feedback not requested

[6] Killiondude (talk) 06:43, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. I guess GVarnum-WMF also made edits such as <https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Recentchangestext&diff=115616&oldid=99489>. I'm not really clear why, since getting feedback from site visitors was often useful and helpful for keeping the fishbowl somewhat maintained. All of wikimediafoundation.org is going to turn into some corporate-y WordPress site soon enough, I'm told. It's pretty sad to see the move away from the wiki model and toward "e-mail this generic e-mail address". --MZMcBride (talk) 01:43, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

But it gives them a reason to hire more people because the volunteers won't be able to help out with maintaining it. Like I said on the other page, this isn't for the volunteers though, it's for the ones Katherine cares about, you know, the donors! 2601:5CC:101:5DEB:95BA:D5C3:683C:12E 02:29, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

Adminship...

Hello MZMcBride. It is with sadness that I have to inform you that because you've made less than 10 edits in the last 6 months, as per Meta:Administrators/Removal, I had to ask that your administrator permissions be removed. I know you have made more than 10 logged actions in the past six months and I think the current wording of the policy can certainly be improved to prevent things like this in the future, because I dislike this outcome; but I feel the policy is clear in requiring at least 10 edits in the last 6 months before even considering if the admin has been using their permissions or not. Best regards, —MarcoAurelio (talk) 21:59, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

Hah, wow. Good grief. I've been making 10 dumb logged actions every few months to try to comply with the unfortunate activity requirements on this wiki and even that wasn't sufficient. I don't really agree with having activity requirements at all, but if we must, any kind of edit or logged action in the past year should be sufficient in my opinion. --MZMcBride (talk) 07:34, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Transclusion checker - Index:Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Volume 3.djvu

Hi,

For some reason the checker returns no information for this index page, but does for the other 5 volumes in the series. The only difference I can see is that Vol 3 does not use the standard header template. Chrisguise (talk) 09:04, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

Hi Chrisguise. Can you please provide a URL showing what's not working?

I'm told there's also s:en:User:Inductiveload/scan_transcludes.js but I've never used it. Perhaps that JavaScript tool could replace the need for the "checker" tool? --MZMcBride (talk) 21:43, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Can't see transcluded pages

It's not showing me anything when I try to do a transclusion check for The South Staffordshire Coalfield- it's just giving me a blank. 192.107.137.243 20:24, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Hi there. I'm not sure I'm following. What URL is giving you a blank? --MZMcBride (talk) 21:34, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Probably https://checker.toolforge.org/?db=enwikisource&title=Index%3AThe+South+Staffordshire+Coalfield+-+Joseph+Beete+Jukes+-+1859.djvu. I ran across it for https://checker.toolforge.org/?db=enwikisource_p&title=Index:Fifty_Candles_(1926).djvu. These are the links provided by interface message on every Index:-namespace page on enWS (and, I would guess, most other Wikisourcen).

I'm not aware of any recent on-wiki changes that are likely to have affected this, but I do know there has been some change down in MW that affects in what way the associated Page:namespace pages show up as deps and/or transclusions for the Index: page. I'm extremely fuzzy on the details, but it does seem one likely suspect. And if that's the case this problem should be pretty much universal and 100% reproducible with any Index: page. I'll try to dig up more details on this but I'm drawing a blank right now. Xover (talk) 12:05, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

Oh, that was easier than expected: this commit was what I had in mind. Apparently, PRP recently changed in such a way that the relevant dependency info now needs to be grabbed from the templatelinks table rather than the pagelinks table. Xover (talk) 12:12, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

Hi Xover. Thanks for the info. Is the checker tool still used and needed? I'm told there's now s:en:User:Inductiveload/scan transcludes.js and I'm wondering if this JavaScript tool could replace the need for the older checker tool.

I currently don't have shell access to Wikimedia Cloud Services Tool Labs Toolforge Toolserver since I was blocked. I commented on mediawiki.org that Wikimedia Foundation Inc. is corrupt and bad and that the Web team is a particularly egregious demonstration of this. This statement is entirely true, of course, and a decades-long total lack of support for projects such as Wikisource is more evidence of just how bad and corrupt the umbrella organization is. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:28, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

You'll certainly get no pushback for me regarding the WMF's failure to support Wikisource properly, and I have my own long list of complaints regarding their priorities and failings as an organization. My main concern there would be that they appear to have fallen into the trap of thinking that the WMF "owns" the Movement—in fact, that they are the Movement—and have started to view the on-wiki communities more or less the same way Facebook and other social media companies view their users. When they plan, act, and communicate based on that world-view they alienate the community a little bit more every single time, and eventually they'll turn the Movement into Wikia.

In any case… The checker tool is currently the standard way enWS checks whether a work is fully transcluded, which is a key part of our workflow and quality control. If the checker is (semi-)permanently borked we'll have to evaluate our options, including forking or reimplementing it directly, and cleaning up and Gadgetifying the mentioned user script. In any case, thanks for maintaining it all these years (to both you and Lego), and for looking into this. Xover (talk) 09:43, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

Hi Xover. I agree with you entirely and I really appreciate you saying so. After years of this bad behavior from Wikimedia Foundation Inc., it's nice to have validation from others who are also suffering from its chronic mismanagement. I'm reminded a bit of the intro paragraphs of Experiments, which are as true today as they were when they were written almost a decade ago.

I pinged Lego and he should be able to take a look at this bug. Otherwise I should be unblocked in a couple weeks, assuming the technical conduct cabal hasn't extended it. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:19, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

@Xover: should be fixed now, could you verify please?

Long-term I think we should aim to get this integrated into ProofreadPage itself as a special page or something. I thought we had filed a bug for that a long time ago but maybe not? Legoktm (talk) 21:49, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

@Legoktm: Verified (quickly, with the above two links, not in depth). Thanks!

I am not aware that there's a Phab for integrating this into PRP. It's probably a good idea, and one among many quality-of-life improvements it would be nice to have in PRP (but even just getting volunteer patches reviewed and applied in a reasonable time is currently not realistic, so I'm not holding my breath (see the above rant)).

That being said, in light of the comments above, I've started looking at gadgetifying the above mentioned user script and tweaking it such that it could potentially be a replacement for the off-wiki tool. This community is pretty conservative when it comes to their tools and workflow, and I'm not yet certain the API is reliable enough, but if it works out I'll at least propose it and see what the uptake is.

I have no idea what this tool's use is on non-English Wikisourcen, and there are relevant differences in practices, so I can't really guess what their stance would be. Xover (talk) 15:13, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

Filed as T308092, I posted some usage metrics by Wikisource there. Also, do you want to be a maintainer of the tool? I can add you to the tool and GitHub repo. Legoktm (talk) 02:35, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

@Legoktm: Thanks!

Not sure I'd be much use as a maintainer here: my Python-fu involves a lot of googling and cut&paste; and I'm not at all familiar with the app / deploy framework it seems to be using (Flask; and my knowledge of redis stops roughly at "It is a thing which exists.").

BTW, if anyone happens to know of any actual examples of using Continuing queries with the Action API from mediawiki.api Gadget code I'd love to see one right about now. It seems stupidly hard to do for something so basic. Xover (talk) 19:39, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

If you can share your code, that would make it easier to help. In general, I'd recommend posting to Tech, asking in the #mediawiki or #wikimedia-tech IRC channels, or posting to wikitech-l. Though you have mine and Lego's attention on this talk page, so posting here might also get the job done. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:07, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

Well, right now I'm banging my head against the fact that continuing queries requires resending the original query with the addition of the magic params returned; but the original query has variable bits (a list of page titles) so it can't just dumbly be hard-coded in the callback. Meanwhile, mw.api/jQuery is trampling all over the callback's argument list so I can't pass the variable bit in using the usual workarounds (IIFE, factory function, etc.). Trawling insource:// for on-wiki examples the best I found were (ab)using await to make the API requests synchronous.

If you're interested you can see my full tale of woe in s:User:Xover/Gadget-sandbox.js (No pointing and laughing please! ;) ). It's got an attendant .css too; and both are loaded by a proxy-gadget so it's executing more or less as a normal gadget (vs. a user script). If someone had the spare cycles to help that'd be awesome, but mostly I was just hoping there was a bit of documentation or a prominent and "standard" example that I'd missed. I'm surprised this bit was so either hard or non-intuitive: e.g. since continue requires it, why doesn't the callback get fed an object from which it can grab the original query? Or on which it can call a .getNext() method to automatically refire the original request with the current continue values? Xover (talk) 21:29, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

(Hi, @MZMcBride poked me.) @Xover I think most of your problems are the result of variable scopes in JavaScript. If you enable CodeEditor, it will actually give you a warning when you do this ("Functions declared within loops referencing an outer scoped variable may lead to confusing semantics.").

In the loop where you have the batch variable, all iterations of the loop are actually using the same variable, and when you refer to it from the callback function it's still the same variable, and you get confusing results because they all end up using the final value used in the loop. Here's a simplified example (using i instead):

for (var i = 0; i < 3; i++) {
	setTimeout(function() {
		console.log(i);
	});
}

This loop will actually print 3 three times, rather than 0 1 2.

The best way to avoid this is to make the loop body into a function, and pass everything you need as parameters. Each function then gets its own variables.

function doStuff(i) {
	setTimeout(function() {
		console.log(i);
	});
}
for (var i = 0; i < 3; i++) {
    doStuff(i);
}

Or if you hate functions and enjoy creating little challenges for people reading your code in the future:

for (var i = 0; i < 3; i++) {
	setTimeout(function(i) {
		console.log(i);
	}.bind(this, i));
}

(I think you actually tried to do this, but forgot the .bind(…) part?)

Hope that helps. Matma Rex (talk) 22:08, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

And as for handling the continue parameters, you can just do the following:

$.extend(query, data["continue"]);

Or if you're feeling modern, this should work the same way:

Object.assign(query, data["continue"]);

Matma Rex (talk) 22:58, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

@Matma Rex: Thank you! Again you come to my rescue! :)

The issue wasn't variable scoping, in that I hadn't even gotten around to looking at that. It was the fact mw.api tramples the argument list to the callback: I wasn't getting the same batch every time, I was getting a jqXHR object where I was expecting the batch primitive string value. But your hand-holding above nudged my brain enough to recall that .bind()ing the argument (and a dummy this) to the function was the standard-ish way to handle that from jQuery-land. And it works, yay! Current code is here and I always appreciate suggestions for improvements should someone's obsessive tendencies be tickled by my amateur efforts. :)

@Legoktm / @MZMcBride: Now that it works / seems workable I'll make it available as a non-default Gadget on enWS and ask the community to test it. If they're happy with it we can propose phasing out toolforge:checker, and maybe give the non-English Wikisourcen a nudge in that direction too. I'll keep you posted.

PS. Object.assign() was, I believe, added in ES6 so it can't be used in Gadget code (but I'm sure all Gadget developers transpile their CI from Visual TypeScript anyway </sarcasm>).

PPS. Am I just dumb to think this is way way too much effort and complication for getting lists of wikipages (or cats or...)? Is there any obvious and fundamental reason why mw.api() can't pass the callback an object where the original query is stashed? Or even a modified one containing the "continue" parameters already integrated, ready to hand to a new mw.api.get() call? Or even a mw.api.getNext() that just does all that for you, just supply a callback? I found the docs for this to be spectacularly bad (the old rawcontinue docs are actually better). Doing insource:// searches on enWP and Commons (the two projects with the biggest technical communities) in MediaWiki: and User: (where on-wiki JS mostly lives) for relevant keywords I found lots of examples that used old rawcontinue, and one or two that "solved" it by using await. I found not a single Gadget or user script that actually used continue. I'm sure they exist somewhere. Probably. But this makes me think that maybe it's not just me that's too dumb to figure this out: maybe it's the API+client library that's dumb in this area. Xover (talk) 10:13, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

@Xover

"Object.assign() was, I believe, added in ES6 so it can't be used in Gadget code" – It can, although it won't work on some browsers, so I'd use $.extend. Gadgets only can't use ES6 syntax, but they can refer to functions introduced in ES6.

"way way too much effort and complication for getting lists of wikipages (or cats or...)" – I'm confused, it doesn't seem like that much effort to me. The trick is to just merge the "continue" object from the response into the parameters in your query. I think no one felt it was worth it to have a helper function for this, I just wrote one and it's 5 lines:

function getWithContinue( api, params, batchCallback ) {
	api.get( params ).then( function ( resp ) {
		batchCallback( resp );
		if ( resp.continue ) {
			$.extend( params, resp.continue );
			getWithContinue( api, params, batchCallback );
		}
	} );
}

Example use:

getWithContinue( new mw.Api(), {
	action: 'query',
	titles: 'User_talk:MZMcBride',
	prop: 'links',
	pllimit: 50
}, function ( resp ) {
	console.log( resp );
} );

One could make a more high-effort helper that would also handle slicing the "titles" parameters, and then merge the responses into one instead of calling the callback multiple times, but…

I think that might actually a good thing that gadgets often don't do this, because you don't necessarily always want to handle all results, because it may turn out that there's 100,000 of them and you won't know until you've fetched them all. For many tools it makes more sense to display the first 10 or 500 and a note that there are more results; and if you really want to show all results, then you probably should write some kind of paging in your interface, at which point you're forced to handle this more manually anyway. Matma Rex (talk) 19:36, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

You both have this under control, but in case they're helpful, Krinkle pointed me toward <https://global-search.toolforge.org/?q=%5C%5B.continue.%5C%5D&regex=1&namespaces=2%2C4%2C8&title=%28Gadgets-definition%7C.*%5C.%28js%7Ccss%7Cjson%29%29> and <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Query#Example_4:_Continuing_queries>. I'd forgotten about the global search tool. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:50, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

"Let me Google that for you"? :)

Global search looks awesome (didn't know about it, or had completely forgotten it, so definitely bookmarking), and brings much better results than my manual insource:// searches (but then, the search term is better than what I came up with; mainly because you won't come up with that particular search term until after you've figured out how to do this). But my point there wasn't that there were no search hits, it was that all the ones I went through in the time I had were pretty useless as examples for my purposes (using rawcontinue, faking synchronous operation with await, etc.). I'll trawl through them to see if I find better examples in the better search, but I was kinda hoping for more hand-holding in the docs.

And I think mw:API:Query#Example 4: Continuing queries kinda proves my point: it's too terse (even as an API reference; and this is supposed to be extended docs) to make even the obvious bit (resend original query merged with continue params) needlessly hard to grasp when coming at it blank, and it's completely useless at explaining to someone how they would actually implement this in their own code. And this is the only documentation for this aspect of the Action API that I've been able to find. Something like Matma Rex's example utility function (caveats apply) would be great example code to have in the extended API docs somewhere. Even better if it was accompanied by an explanation of how it works, at close to tutorial level.

The standard for docs for Gadgets and user scripts shouldn't be "Only explain the stuff that's not already obvious to Krinkle and Matma Rex" (that's a pretty short list I'd wager), but rather "Hand-holding for hobbyist programmers [read: scripters] with limited volunteer time, most of which goes to content and only occasionally do technical stuff".

I've gotten "way above and beyond" interactive help here, and I'll bet I would have gotten similar hand-holding from IRC or wikitech-l, so I've both gotten my problem resolved (Gadget is deployed and announced to the community at enWS) and am very grateful for all the help! But I'm also kinda waving the flag that this all could have been easier (with some more smarts built into mediawiki.api) and not have required me to bug lots of people who already have too much on their plate (with better docs, and docs aimed at dunces like me). Just in case I should manage to interest someone smarter into doing something about it. :) Xover (talk) 08:59, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

I added a real example to mw:API:Query#Example 4: Continuing queries. Matma Rex (talk) 20:08, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

I need the help of a translationadmin in moving a page

Dear MZMcBride,

How is your day going? I don't mean to take so much of your time. I raised a little issue on Babylon's Talk and would be so lucky to have you help out. Thank you Danidamiobi (talk) 22:17, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

Snitch Bot

Hi. I am not sure if you are aware. The bot in IRC when you pull them up (ie click on its name) it reveals its IP. This is the only bot I have seen that shows it’s IP as others are cloaked. I’m not sure if you intended this or not.

Thanks, PDL (Simple WP) PDL^{Talk to me!}_{OMG, What have I done?} 06:48, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Hi PDL. Yeah, the bot no longer has a cloak. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:24, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Hi Thanks. I did submit it to phabricator and it looks like they may be working on the issue as they issued it as a security vulnerability. PDL^{Talk to me!}_{OMG, What have I done?} 16:36, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Update to commentlinks.js gadget

I am about to update my comment links gadget to link the comment's timestamp rather than add a separate [ link ] button. If you prefer the old style, that gadget will be available at commentlinks-v1.js. As before, this gadget is experimental and may stop working at any time, see T275729 for the task to make this a proper feature. Thanks, ESanders (WMF) (talk) 12:13, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Meta:Mañana nominated for deletion

Hello. An item which you created or have edited substantially (Meta:Mañana) has been nominated for deletion. Please see the ongoing discussion at Meta:Requests for deletion. Thank you. ToadetteEdit (talk) 12:55, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

checker.toolforge.org fails for main page links

https://checker.toolforge.org/?db=enwikisource_p&title=Index:Piper_Little_Fuzzy_(1962).djvu shows every page as transcluded even though only I've only published some of the chapter subpages. I believe this is because of the Proofread of the Month template which causes each page to be shown as backlinked from the Wikisource Main Page. To fix this bug I suggest that the Main Page be explicitly excluded when checking for links from the main namespace. Duckmather (talk) 15:57, 22 October 2024 (UTC)