Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 03:34, 9 February 2007

Welcome! (We can't say that loudly enough!)

Here are a few links you might find helpful:

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If you have any questions or problems, no matter what they are, leave me a message on my talk page. Or, please come to the new contributors' help page, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! Or, you can just type {{helpme}} on your user page, and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions.

We're so glad you're here! — Lost 11:37, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Stub types and welcomebot research

Hi again... Well Misplaced Pages gets lots of new articles every day most of which are stubs. Unless they are correctly categorised, the stubs may just get lost. Adding a relevant stub tag automatically adds a relevant category to the article which helps when people with related interests come to work on the stubs.

Regarding the welcomebot research category, I think its a project by some people who are trying to gauge the editing patterns of new editors. You will get more details at the top of Category:WelcomeBotResearch, which you may have probably already seen. Let me know if any more help required. Cheers. — Lost 11:53, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Regarding your edit to Parallax:

Your recent edit to Parallax (diff) was reverted by automated bot. The edit was identified as adding either vandalism, link spam, or test edits to the page. If you want to experiment, please use the sandbox. If this revert was in error, please contact the bot operator. Thanks! // VoABot II 22:46, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

So the bot fails to spot the vandalism, but reverts me when I try to fix it? That's really not a lot of use, you know – Qxz 22:54, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

PediaPress

I was looking into your request to have the {{prod}}'ed article undeleted when you pulled the request. If you look at the deletion log, there was a PROD deletion, a WP:CSD#G11 deletion, and a garbage article deletion. Be aware 1) that the PROD'ed article was essentially identical to the CSD#G11 deletion, so the recreated article, if not significantly improved, may well be deleted again as advertising. I recommend either following the guidance at Misplaced Pages:Amnesia test about finding independent sources and seeing if you can create an article therefrom, or just converting the link on Misplaced Pages to a sentence explaining the business. GRBerry 06:41, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Citation templates

From Misplaced Pages:Template messages/Sources of articles#Citations of generic sources:

"The use of Citation templates is not required by WP:CITE and is neither encouraged nor discouraged by any other Misplaced Pages citation guidelines. They may be used at the discretion of individual editors, subject to agreement with the other editors on the article. Some editors find them helpful, while other editors find them annoying, particularly when used inline in the text. Because they are optional, editors should not change articles from one style to the other without consensus."

Emphasis mine – Qxz 23:09, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Why post this to my user talk page? Is it really necessary to smack me in the face with a WP page that tells me I'm somehow wrong about something? I never said that it's imperative that we do convert all references to that format, I'm saying that I believe we should do it. There's no need to come around just to tell me that I should have no right to say that (I do) when I haven't even made a big deal out of it yet. —msikma (user, talk) 06:58, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Re: Robotchicken1886

Re your message: Call me an optimist. However, if he comes back, I will gladly extend the block for a longer or indefinite time. -- Gogo Dodo 19:29, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages in popular culture

Hi, I noticed you just edited this Misplaced Pages in popular culture. For some reason, it's been fully protected, and {{editprotected}} requests are piling up on the talk page. Could you possibly take a couple of minutes to make those edits? They're all very small, they'll only take a few seconds. Thanks – Qxz 11:30, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

No problem, all minor fixes, all done. Let me know if there's any more. Proto::► 12:05, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

1993

Thanks, didn't notice that little header. --Averross 18:15, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism patrol

Hey, thanks for helping out doing RC patrol, it's always needed. I've been noticing notes you've left on a vandal's page and I wanted to make a suggestion. I'd suggest going up in sequence through the test templates, rather than skipping to test 4 (or other "last warning") after a test 1 or 2. While not everyone does this, it is encouraged. It makes it easier to block the vandal, since it's clear that they've received the full set of warnings (Many admins will remove a vandal from AIV if they've not got the whole set of warnings). Also, there's a chance that the vandal will desist after a few warnings. It's also easier for the next person if you go in order (e.g. if someone leaves a t3 for the first message, do I leave a t4 for the second? Go back to t2?). Anyway, you can do with this advice what you want, I just thought I'd let you know my thoughts on it. Hopefully I haven't been too annoying by leaving you bossy messages as my introduction to you! Let me know on my talk page if you have any questions or want to discuss anything. Thanks again for doing RC patrol! Hopefully see you around. Peace, delldot | talk 19:59, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

OK, sorry to bother you then. Peace, delldot | talk 21:56, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages

Thank you, but if I've given the impression I have an ounce of sense, I owe you an apology. ;-D SlimVirgin 20:56, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

See my reply at talk:Misplaced Pages. I know it's frustrating, but don't take it out on the guy who unprotected the article for a legitimate reason. If you had taken a look at my protection summary, you would have seen why I unprotected the page. In the future, you better watch those personal attacks. We don't tolerate this on Misplaced Pages. Nishkid64 22:42, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Don't call me "hopeless optimistic" and don't go on and say "finally, someone with sense" after SlimVirgin re-protected the page. There are many newly registered users and IPs that participate in ACIDs, and with the semi-protection, they will not be able to edit. I unprotected the page (and would only keep it unprotected for 3-4 days) so that these users could freely edit the page. As I said, there are hundreds of people who are watching the page, and dozens of them spend their time looking at their watchlist or RC patrol. These people can surely spend their time reverting vandalism on Misplaced Pages, as it is what they came here to do. As for the article history, that shouldn't matter. People can just go back into the history if they really want to see the constructive improvements to the article. Also, I want to stress that I did not unprotect because I was being optimistic and hoped vandalism would die down. I unprotected only because it was this week's ACID, and I would have unprotected by the end of the week. Nishkid64 23:35, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

For you :)

		Glen's Anti-Vandalism Barnstar!
		Glen is thrilled to award Qxz with this small token of appreciation and acknowledgement for exceptional performance in the art of troll extermination, cruft elimination and for ensuring Misplaced Pages is safe for public consumption... You are a legend, please keep up the great work! Glen 23:49, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Re: Your vandalism accusation

"An example of blanking edits that could be legitimate would be edits that blank all or part of a biography of a living person." --Misplaced Pages vandalism guidelines

Marjorieconnolly 01:36, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

OSCAR

Thanks for pitching in and making that happen. I had forgotten all about that. :)  — MrDolomite | Talk 19:45, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Tiger

Uhh... how does adding a fact to an article constitute vandalism?

I don't know how that managed to appear on the page, considering I did not write it during my edit. But could you at least revert the legitimate fact I added?

I don't agree with you

You stated on the petition talk page: "There are no plans to discontinue this" How can you prove that? Do you know that people fought and died for the right to vote for elected representation in many countries and have that right entrenched in a constitution? Here it is all at the discretion of the board which is the same thing that goes on in a dictatorship. The board can do whatever it wants. It has complete control; they can decide to give the donations to pay high salaries to big corporate bosses or spend it all paying board members to fly them around the world to go on various "retreats" The servers and bandwidth only cost about $50,000 a month as far as I can tell. The bylaws also said that we should be given notice of all changes to the bylaws and elections (if you read it carefully I think you can figure that out) but no proper notice was given of any of those attempted changes. In fact if you read the Florida statutes it says that we are supposed to have an annual meeting, did the board ever have an annual meeting? NO. It has been operating in secret all these years being totally unaccountable to the (former) membership. If tomorrow the board past a resolution stating that all the members of the Board were to be personal friends of Brad Patrick that would be perfectly legal under the bylaws as they are now written. How is that fair? How is that respecting our rights as volunteer contributors? Many people were thinking they were volunteering because they could participate in an open and transparent organization. The people who "took" control have perverted that into a board that does mostly everything in secret who has employees give "notice" on obscure web pages and expects that all us volunteers have to check every web page on Misplaced Pages and if we don't it is our hard luck. You think because someone says that they will do something that they are obligated to do it? About three weeks ago Jimbo Wales told me he was going to write to me a few days later because he was too busy flying out to California (from Rotterdam) before he went back to Florida (that was around the 20th). Now I just found out he was here in NYC giving a talk at NYU on Wednesday and he didn't even bother to write me and tell me that (I live in NY and was at NYU a few days ago going to a talk by real friend of mine Madison Smartt Bell who just published a new and fascinating book on a real revolutionary, not an internet crackpot). Jimbo is too busy to respond to us "peons" -- we are not important to him, he has much more important things to do and so what if he promises a volunteer something and does not follow through, after all we are all working for nothing here, so our time is worth nothing, unlike him because he *is* the Foundation; that million dollars *he* just raised is for *him* and his *pals* to use to keep us enslaved as the real workers that make his fame and fortune possible. Think about it, the only edits I could find that he has made recently (besides deleting defamatory stuff that people complain about) were to change the history of Misplaced Pages to erase Larry Sanger as co-founder.. I guess when you are an internet millionaire (he runs and *owns* a company that has about 40 employees and his just received *private* financing from Amazon.com) and prophet even though you tell everyone else not to edit their articles you can do so yourself because who is going to tell you to stop doing that? Eh? No man is above the law, but someone is above "Official Policy" at Misplaced Pages. Food for thought. Alex756 15:36, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Arthur William Bden Powell

Agree to the speedy deletion. After it's gone I will replace with another article all my own work. GrahamBould 15:53, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

You were right

My finger moved too fast. Musical Linguist 18:23, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Memory (short story)

Why the speedy delete? Nareek 03:05, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

  :Oh--never mind! Nareek 03:11, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Speedy deletions

Please, if you tag something that might be transcluded somewhere else for speedy deletion, like Talk:American Foxhound/Comments, add <noinclude> around the speedy deletion tag. Otherwise, it can make it annoying to figure out where the speedy deletion tag is coming from, especially when CAT:CSD is filled up. Thanks. --BigDT 03:45, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Talk page speedy deletions

It is my understanding the {{db-blank}} is not appropriate for use on talk pages. From what I remember, blank talk pages should just be left alone since they're not hurting anything, and they'll only have to be re-created if someone then wants to use them. The only CSD criteria for talk pages, I believe, are G6: Housekeeping, G8: Talk pages without a main page, G9: Office actions, G10: Attack pages/libel, and G12: Copyright infringement. I'm just trying to make sure a valued contributor like yourself isn't wasting time on unnecessary work... happy editing! timrem 05:24, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Short pages

If you don't already know about it, see User:Zorglbot/Shortpages. —Centrx→talk • 07:11, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

your warnings

could you indicate what level the warning you are posting, so it will be easier for later warnings and blocks to be applied if needed? _→AzaToth 01:42, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

how do you do it...

I decided today to try my hand at vandalism reversions using the "recent changes", and I was fairly quick, but 4 out of 5 have already been reverted by you by the time I click history! Number one, kudos for your tireless effort, and number two, how are you so quick(as I might want to speed up my process as well)...Thanks for contributing to Misplaced Pages!--Vox Rationis 02:36, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Your message to another user

"I wrote these messages myself, they don't follow the "levels", which I don't see the need for anyway. There's a warning, and a final warning, and after that I report them to AIV.

If someone blanks a page and writes "Penis" three times, are they realistically going to stop if you issue a third warning, or would it be better to just report them and get them blocked as soon as possible? (It's a rhetorical question).

If I've warned someone before and they vandalise again, I leave them a final warning. If they still haven't figured it out by the time they've read that, then they're not going to contribute constructively. It's the administrator's call in the end, but by this stage they deserve to know. Remember that users often manage to vandalise two or three times between warnings.

And yes, those of you who seem to enjoy imposing petty rules are being too bossy. I just warned myself by mistake (the buttons are like right next to each other) and not only was it reverted, I got told to go and read the policies! Spend your time dealing with problem users, not picking at us. Thanks – Qxz 20:08, 31 January 2007 (UTC)"

I couldn't agree with you more. If I find a vandal that has gone unnoticed and has hit an article umpteen times with spam, blankings, obscene stuff whatever I jump in with the last warning maybe the 2nd to last blatant warning if I am being generous. I am not going to say "oh you may have put "penis penis" unintentionally umpteen times on a page in case you did this by accident blah blah blah. I am going to slap them on the wrist and hit em with warnings. Its an easy common sense call. You can easily tell a vandal from someone experimenting. Keep up the good work --Xiahou 02:38, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Your counter-vandalism tactics

Hey, I was just doing some RC patrol and for quite a few pages that I went to revert, you had already reverted them. Bravo, you are an asset to the wikipedia community with your quick action.

However, I do have to question your methods of using one warning then a final warning tag. In some sense, this may constitute biting the newbies. I scanned through your talk and your message above, in which you believe that placing more warnings won't help the situation. I realize that wikipedia warnings don't have a 100% guideline and they can be placed at the discretion of other users. However, I think it's far too harsh to give users two warnings. Some of these people truly ARE experimenting. For example, on one user he edited 3 times, you reverted, and he edited right after you; you gave him one standard and one final warning. Don't you think he was just experimenting to see if anyone would notice and see how fast it would get reverted back? And don't you think he didn't have TIME to notice his warnings?

You have to realize that warnings are there for constructive purposes as well. If he hasn't seen your first warning, then placing a final warning is unnecessarily harsh and does not help the situation at all!

I'm not telling you what to do, I just hope that you can assume good faith with these newbies. After all, many are IP users and if they are on public machines, you don't want innocent users slapped with a bright yellow bar telling them they might be banned! Hobbeslover 05:33, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

RE: Jack Johnson

I don't see how you have come to the conclusion that I vandalised Jack Johnson's page, I actually made the page revert back to its state before it was vandalised. I had nothing to do with the vandalisation. I trust you will make an apology to me and withdraw your complaint. I am a huge fan of Jack and I would never write such ridiculous comments! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 168.105.127.220 (talk) 6 February 2007

Aristotle

Hi! Looks like I messed up a vandalism revert, and you sorted it out. Sorry if i gave you any trouble. Philip Trueman 19:34, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Good work

		The RickK Anti-Vandalism Barnstar
		I award this barnstar to Qxz for continually beating me to vandalism reverts this evening. Good work 22:40, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Elizabeth Smart (pt. 1)

I am really confused, I just got a message from someone saying for me not to vandalise a page on Elizabeth Smart, I was the one whom left a message on the page asking for Misplaced Pages to remove someones rubbish which they had write on there regarding her. I dont know how to remove swear words, graffitti etc so thats why I left a message asking for Misplaced Pages to remove the idiots scrolling and asking for the person to be banned from posting if they persist on leaving rubbish and I have just logged in and find I am the one who has a warning ! That doesnt make sense. I am trying to help and I am the one being warned, whats that about ? As Misplaced Pages clearly cant see I am trying to help then can someone please tell me how I can remove peoples graffitti and rubbish left ?

Elizabeth Smart (pt. 2)

I am not quite sure how to email you directly but my reason for typing what I did was that Elizabeth Smart was my great Aunt, although I never met her my grandmother told me much about her and so I think I have quite a reason to be upset if someone is using vile and I mean vile language regarding a relative of mine. Perhaps you need to look back at what was said and you can see for yourself what I mean. Misplaced Pages should be more responsible in letting people edit. For example if a swear word is used, there should be an automatic block if the system picks up a swear word used in an edit. This would help at least somewhat. Otherwise people will consider sewing if slanderous words are being used about peoples relatives. I appreciate your time and in bringing your attention to this matter.

Sincerly

Adam

Your PROD of Abdul Rahman Husseini

It looks to me like your prod was for the vandalized version of the page - in which case the right solution is to revert the vandalism (as I did). If your prod was about the unvcandalized version of the page - I object; if you still want it deleted - feel free to use AfD. Eli Falk 11:27, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

wrong revert!!!!!!!!!!!!

In ], I only edited the top info box of the article. but you reverted me! I just noticed that anon user prior to me has done the vandalism. please if you have done that by a robot, fix it. --Pejman47 22:40, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I just saw the diff. you are right, but I only changed the info box and clicked on the "save page", do you any cause for this? --Pejman47 22:47, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

thanks for your comments. In future, I will try to use the "show preview" bottom. Again thanks. --Pejman47 22:55, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

User:67.174.27.138

User actually vandalised Misplaced Pages:Disambiguation after your stage 4 warning - did you realise? Refsworldlee(eds) 23:45, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

No prob. Refsworldlee(eds) 23:52, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

YOU WERE NEVERR A MEMBER

Alex756 wrote:

You stated on the petition talk page: "There are no plans to discontinue this" How can you prove that?

See the Meta page I referred you to. If you don't believe me, ask a member of the Board.

Do you know that people fought and died for the right to vote for elected representation in many countries and have that right entrenched in a constitution?

This is hardly the same thing. You aren't comparing like with like.

Here it is all at the discretion of the board...

As it always has been. The Board has always had the ability to define "contributor" for the purpose of the elections, currently specifying 400 edits. There's nothing to stop them specifying 1,000,000 edits and having nobody able to vote — except good faith and common sense, neither of you have factored into your argument.

...which is the same thing that goes on in a dictatorship.

No, it isn't. Again, you are not comparing like with like.

The board can do whatever it wants. It has complete control;...

Within reason, yes, provided it is compatible with the Foundation's goals. That has always been the case.

...they can decide to give the donations to pay high salaries to big corporate bosses...

No, they can't. That would be incompatible with the Foundation's goals.

...or spend it all paying board members to fly them around the world to go on various "retreats"

No, they can't "spend it all" this way. They do indeed spend some of the money this way. A very, very, small fraction of it. I'd argue that's an acceptable use of funds.

The servers and bandwidth only cost about $50,000 a month as far as I can tell.

Actually, it's slightly more than that, and remember that $50,000 a month is $600,000 a year, and that's before you factor in depreciation and increasing costs caused by the inevitable continued growth of the projects. The proceeds of the last fundraiser (about $1 million) will barely see out the year.

The bylaws also said that we should be given notice of all changes to the bylaws and elections (if you read it carefully I think you can figure that out) but no proper notice was given of any of those attempted changes.

I agree that the changes were sudden and unannounced, contrary to the bylaws, and that this may be viewed as a problem. However, this is a procedural complaint. In addition to this, you are complaining about the content of the changes, and I disagree with this part. You seem to be claiming that some right has been taken away; I fail to see that this has happened.

In fact if you read the Florida statutes it says that we are supposed to have an annual meeting, did the board ever have an annual meeting?

Yes.

NO.

No, really, it did. In fact the board has been meeting a lot more often than annually. It's had one meeting this year already, and it's only Februray. See http://meta.wikimedia.org/Wikimedia_meetings.

It has been operating in secret all these years being totally unaccountable to the (former) membership.

"All these years"? It's only been in existence for three and a bit, and it's spent most of that time doing nothing at all. The recent changes to the bylaws are part of the current push to actually get things going.

If tomorrow the board past a resolution stating that all the members of the Board were to be personal friends of Brad Patrick that would be perfectly legal under the bylaws as they are now written.

Oh, don't be rediculous.

How is that fair? How is that respecting our rights as volunteer contributors?...

You have precisely two rights; the right to leave, and the right to fork.

Many people were thinking they were volunteering because they could participate in an open and transparent organization.

Open and transparent? Well they can forget the Board, then, they should be more worried about the administrator cabals.

The people who "took" control...

You make it sound like some sort of hostile takeover. Half of them were elected, by us (well not me, because I wasn't here, but "us" the community).

...have perverted that into a board that does mostly everything in secret who has employees give "notice" on obscure web pages

It was posted on the Foundation website, linked from the home page. Given that Wikimedia projects operate almost exclusively over the Internet, how else do you suggest they do it? You want them to phone you up in person and tell you?

and expects that all us volunteers have to check every web page on Misplaced Pages...

They don't have to check any pages on Misplaced Pages. Though I recommend you do so anyway; there's a lot of interesting stuff buried in there.

...and if we don't it is our hard luck. You think because someone says that they will do something that they are obligated to do it? About three weeks ago Jimbo Wales told me he was going to write to me a few days later because he was too busy flying out to California (from Rotterdam) before he went back to Florida (that was around the 20th). Now I just found out he was here in NYC giving a talk at NYU on Wednesday and he didn't even bother to write me and tell me that (I live in NY and was at NYU a few days ago going to a talk by real friend of mine Madison Smartt Bell who just published a new and fascinating book on a real revolutionary, not an internet crackpot).

You're confusing Jimbo's own personal life, arrangements and relationship with you with the Board and its goals.

Jimbo is too busy to respond to us "peons" -- we are not important to him,...

Well, there are a lot of us. I count over 3,000,000 registered user accounts on the English Misplaced Pages alone. He can't attend to all our individual needs in person.

...he has much more important things to do and so what if he promises a volunteer something and does not follow through, after all we are all working for nothing here, so our time is worth nothing, unlike him because he *is* the Foundation; that million dollars *he* just raised is for *him* and his *pals*...

With all due respect, you're just beginning to sound ignorant now. Jimbo has no personal control over that money, or over Misplaced Pages, (which he once owned but has now donated to the Foundation) or over the Foundation. He was once chair of the Board, and two of the Board members were essentially friends of his who did as they were told. However, neither of those things is true any longer.

...to use to keep us enslaved...

Oh, please. The two rights that we do have more than take care of this. Right to leave and right to fork, remember?

as the real workers that make his fame and fortune possible. Think about it, the only edits I could find

You're not seriously using EDIT COUNT to judge the activity of the BOARD, are you? For goodness' sake... even the Editor Review people know not to do that.

...that he has made recently (besides deleting defamatory stuff that people complain about) were to change the history of Misplaced Pages to erase Larry Sanger as co-founder..

Yes, he has been engaging in an edit war with his co-founder. I certainly don't condone that, but that is an entirely separate (and in the scale of things, unimportant) issue from any Foundation business.

I guess when you are an internet millionaire (he runs and *owns* a company that has about 40 employees and his just received *private* financing from Amazon.com)...

Are you referring to Wikia? That's not solely under his control, or even close to it. See Wikia, Gil Penchina, Angela Beesley. I think you're also overestimating his personal assets a little, though obviously that's a private matter and I have no figure for it.

...and prophet even though you tell everyone else not to edit their articles you can do so yourself because who is going to tell you to stop doing that? Eh? No man is above the law, but someone is above "Official Policy" at Misplaced Pages. Food for thought. Alex756 15:36, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I can't even be bothered to respond to that. Forgive my laziness – Qxz 09:20, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Why does that not surprise me, after all you joined here after the bylaws were changed, you don't really have any standing to be part of this debate.

• WelcomeBotResearch