User talk:Tim Starling/Archive 11

Question about Special:Export

Hi Tim,

We are having some trouble using the manual parameters to the Special:Export tool. We want to be able to download the contents of a page when it was first created... the examples you show don't seem to get the first instance of creation. When we click on the examples you give on this page http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Parameters_to_Special:Export, we only get the xml dump of the most recent revision.

For example, this http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Export&pages=Main_Page&offset=1&limit=5&action=submit%27 only gave me the most recent revision of the main page.

Thanks!

Svmknicks (talk) 06:34, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Trying to use {{subst}}

Hi, I would be grateful for some advice. I am working on my own mediawiki. I need to be able to drop some formatted text into pages via the FCKeditor Template button, such that the formatted text can be visible for editing. There are no variables; I just want users to adhere to a standard style, in the simplest possible way.

Sorry, I'm very new to this. Any Clues??

Thanks MWAlex (talk) 21:09, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

New code of Special:MovePage

Hello,
Brion VIBBER did'nt work about The new code of Special:MovePage. You can do it?
Thank You! Agbad from the Hebrew Wikipedia

[http://www.ehow.com/how_2091741_make-patch-open-source-project.html Make a patch] -- Tim Starling (talk) 17:00, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Why do I need make a patch? The code in this page. Agbad from the hebrew wikipedia

So the changes can be seen, and so any improvements since the revision you started from won't be lost. Prodego ^talk 18:09, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Question

Hi. Just a simple question. How does Wikipedia hide the title on the main page without using [1]. I am looking to do this on another wiki using teh same software in the same way Wikipedia does it. Thanks. Tbo ¹⁵⁷(talk) 21:00, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

It is done using javascript and css. See Mediawiki:Common.js, and MediaWiki:Monobook.css and search for main page. Prodego ^talk 23:45, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Do you know which codes in particular are necessary to hide the title on the main page of the mediawiki software? Thanks. Tbo ¹⁵⁷(talk) 12:57, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

http://noc.wikimedia.org/~tstarling/

Hello! The resource [2] violates HTTP/1.1: although text is virtually in UTF-8, you give Content-Type: text/plain that means ISO-8859-1 have to be used (RFC2616 3.7.1.).

You should mark the media as Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

Incnis Mrsi (talk) 23:33, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

So sue me. -- Tim Starling (talk) 11:52, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

mw:API && Bug 12321

I know you manually disabled it until the patch to fix this came out and it was fixed in r28533. According to Special:Version en is running r29133, but I know that devs can, and do, do single file syncs with svn, so there's no good indication of what is actually running.

Anyways to cut to the chase I was wondering if the API hasn't been sync'd yet, or there's some other factor in keeping it disabled.

TIA. Q ^{T C} 09:29, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Bump, even a "I can neither confirm no deny" would be a good enough answer :) Just so I can have some sort of answer Q ^{T C} 02:47, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Note

• Wikipedia:Non-administrator_rollback#Counter-proposal

I've compared a proposal of yours to one of mine. (Hopefully accurately.) I'd appreciate any thoughts/comments you have, if you wouldn't mind. - jc37 20:55, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Well it appears it's a moot point. Anyway, I hope you're having a good day. - jc37 03:12, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Are you still interested

in crackpot watching? AFAIK you started the ancient Wikipedia tradition of watching Reddi (shortly thereafter joined by Wik, whatever that may tell us), but in this case it isn't Reddi but Oxyhydrogen#Brown's Gas and Hydrogen quackery in general. --Pjacobi (talk) 00:09, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Labeled Section Transclusion

I hear your pretty busy now but just thought i'd drop you a line that there is a proposal over at the village pump to install Labeled Section Transclusion on the english wikipedia. I hear your busy now and would be happy to bring it up again in a few weeks (or months or whatever) when time frees up.

Also, on a side note if there's anything I can help with in either your current project or any upcoming ones, please feel free to let me know. (I'm not sure what assistance I can offer, but would do whatever I could). Happy Editing! --omtay38 05:22, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Blacklist

Hi there, don't know if this is the right place to drop a line but anyway... There are some people who use Wikipedia in Portuguese who are definitely abusing the right of being administrators. Let's see what's happening: we've got a small site in Brazil offering information and news about the city of Itanhaém located on the Southern Shores of the State of São Paulo. We don't need wekipedia to help us increase our visits since we've got our own audience. Furthermore, there's absolutely no spam there. We don't do this as you can check it out at www.itanhaemvirtual.com.br Unfortunately, one guy who's an administrator named Reynaldo, with the generous help of another user, have put the site on the blacklist as spam!!! This way he is harming our reputation as a serious site and should be advised of what he's doing and the consequences. We believe Wikipedia is inteded for using with freedom and responsibility. Please, we kindly ask you to remove our site www.itanhaemvirtual.com.br from the blacklist as well as to keep in touch with the user who did this, in order to clear thins definitely. We won't post any link around here anymore, but we would like to have our site removed from the blacklist. Thanks in advance, Cunhambebe ;)

Nofollow whitelist (or greenlist)

Tim,

No sure if I should I-wikitech you or get you here. In May last year you wrote at interwiki links "Spam and link syntax shouldn't have anything to do with each other. If you want a nofollow whitelist, make a nofollow whitelist. It should be possible to link to untrusted sites using interwiki link syntax, and it shouldn't be necessary to replace all external links to a site with interwiki links in order to obtain the pagerank benefits."

Presumably no one could be bothered to do this any more? I only ask because another admin and I did this: Greenlist with a list of sites which I think could safely bypass nofollow. I guess Google and Yahoo will ignore nofollow on Wikipedia soon anyway so it is probably irrelevant. --BozMo talk 14:39, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Lir

Lir is back after his year long ban and wanting to edit his userpage. Unfortunately he can't log in. I remember you checking for socks and finding loads with the same password but Lir claims that you then changed the passwords and emails of them so that he can no longer log in. Can you remember if that's true? Theresa Knott | The otter sank 06:11, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't matter at all if it is true, especially since it couldn't possibly be proven without the ability to seize computer records that are two years old; in any case, the fact of the matter is, Tim Starling went out of his way to publically broadcast my password, I was then banned (while running for arbcom) specifically because I dared to ask his current wife to resign (imagine the conflicts of interest here), my password was then changed, and now my ban has expired... so I would like my password back, thanks. User:Lir

Well, for one thing, I didn't broadcast your password. I published a list of accounts which had the same password as you. I never imagined that you would be using a weak password which others would be using by coincidence. As for Angela: I did not care then, and do not care now, about what you think of her. It's not like you were the most influential person in the community. I have nothing against you, and I am doing my best to help you now. I have asked the other sysadmins to be nice to you should you go to them with this request.

I suppose your former password is now public knowledge, but I'd have to ask around to find out what it was. I don't remember it. But I wouldn't recommend using it anyway, since it'll only be a matter of time before someone logs in as you and changes it. What I'd recommend is that you either send yourself a lost password email to your old email address, or if you no longer have access to it, tell someone with shell access what your new email address is and have them change it in your account for you. Then recover your account via email, and pick a new strong password for it. -- Tim Starling (talk) 03:18, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't think he could send himself a new password to his old email because of the new confirm password thing that was put into place while he was banned. Theresa Knott | The otter sank 08:04, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't think I could ask someone with shell access because, quite simply, you have been so kind as to neglect telling me who exactly is in charge of such things; meanwhile, it is YOU who is responsible for the password problem, and you can sit around all day congratulating yourself on your judicious behavior, but the fact of the matter is that your little password page has been deleted from the Wikipedia for good reason, and replaced by all sorts of commentary critical of it, which certainly indicates that the clear consensus of the community is that your behavior was inappropriate. And don't be so inane as to suggest that you have nothing against me or don't care what I think; because, if you didn't have a grudge, I'd already have the password back, and in fact never would have lost it -- meanwhile, instead of cooperating, you are just dragging your feet and brushing me off with how "I am doing my best to help you" when in fact you have done absolutely nothing beside emit politically-correct statements. Actions, to be blunt, speak louder than words. Lir

Are you saying you don't have a password reminder email in your inbox? -- Tim Starling (talk) 01:19, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Sent it again just in case. -- Tim Starling (talk) 01:28, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

He's clearly got it now as he's logged in. Theresa Knott | The otter sank 13:13, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Very long reference URLs

Hi - would it be possible for the parsing software to insert linebreaks into URLs that are so long that they would otherwise go off the page? I see a lot of pages these days that are like this...

Evercat (talk) 01:27, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Columbus, Ohio, university region

I hope it's acceptable to ask for assistance here. I fear I merely picked your name from the list of admins based on its resemblance to my user name.

Something needs to be done with one of these articles: University District, Columbus, Ohio and University Area. They are largely the same, with much language in common, and deal with the university region of Columbus, Ohio. University Area appears to be a recent fork, largely created by a single editor, and I would recommend the deletion of that article. I cannot find anything there that especially needs to be moved over to the parent article for preservation, and the new article's name is essentially useless as a redirect. I will be happy to help if I can. Tim Ross·^talk 20:43, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Betacommandbot

Hi Tim, just to let you know I'm unblocking this account as the system resource issue is no longer. Rgds, Rich Farmbrough, 10:52 6 February 2008 (GMT).

Possible solution to anti-deletion bot problem

I have also listed the following to the administrator's noticeboard:

Attack the source of the problem:

1. Change the revision limit protocol to only take the size of the article and history into account, not the amount of edits. (if that makes a difference)
2. write in a permanent redirect (or add a normal redirect and protect the article) to a 404-like "article has been deleted, click to go back" page.
3. Progressively delete the original article.

Hope this helps,

BETA 00:17, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Template:Boardvote entry

A tag has been placed on Template:Boardvote entry requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section T3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a deprecated or orphaned template. After seven days, if it is still unused and the speedy deletion tag has not been removed, the template will be deleted.

If the template is intended to be substituted, please feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag and please consider putting a note on the template's page indicating that it is substituted so as to avoid any future mistakes (<noinclude>{{transclusionless}}</noinclude>).

Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:09, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Request for comment on main page deletion incident

As you made an edit to the incident listed in the Administrators notice board, it is requested that you confirm the details of the incident here (section 1.1.2)

This is as the incident is used as the basis of an argument and needs to be confirm by persons familar with the event

Regards --User:Mitrebox talk 2008-02-22 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.11.244.78 (talk) 07:50, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Redlinked User pages

Could you take a look at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Can.27t_get_to_contribs_and_Talk_from_redlink_User_names_-_need_help_ASAP? Thanks. Corvus cornix_talk 03:06, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Dev bots

I was going through accounts with bot flags and noticed that Pending deletion script (talk · contribs) has not edited (deleted) since May 2005 and that Portal namespace initialisation script (talk · contribs) has not edited since August 2005. Are these bots still active? Can they be deflagged? MBisanz ^talk 20:21, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't care. The bot flag doesn't give them any special privileges, they have full access regardless. They were marked as bots by people who didn't want to see their contributions in RC. -- Tim Starling (talk) 05:14, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

For the record, Bureaucrat WJBscribe has deflagged the account. AGK (contact) 17:20, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

E-mail

Hello Tim Starling, you have an E-mail from me. Thanks. Acalamari 16:53, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Congratulations

On your engagement, I mean. The progress with unified login is wonderful, too, even if it can't quite compete with the other news. --Michael Snow (talk) 17:45, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Congratulations, Tim and thank you for enabling Single User Login. This is a day all Wikipedians will remember: the day when SUL was first enabled. Thank you again. --Meno25 (talk) 18:37, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

SUL bug

Hello, (I'm at a public computer at the moment, where https is blocked and therefor the bugtracker is unreachable)

I'd like to inform you, that the e-mail comparism for SUL distinguishes between upper and lower case. My account at w:dsb couldn't be merged automagically, because the second level domain of the e-mail address was in upper case while it was in lower case at my (now global) account at w:de. --32X (talk) 19:58, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Please Help Me!

Hello,

I realize that you are a very busy person. However, I would really appreciate if you could assist me - I'm totally lost! I have to find out how to create a wiki in a way that only certain users can access and/or edit an article. I have been trying to figure this out for over 3 weeks. I really would appreciate your help. Can you help me please?

→Thank you. Rantrom (talk) 02:04, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

PT community new feature

Hi. The wikipedia pt's community is debating if we should implement a wizard similar to Wizard-Introduction. The only difference would be that, after the unresgistered user completes the wizard, the new article would be immediately created rather than being sent to revision. Could you please let me know if this new feature can be implemented in wiki pt? Thanks and regards, --Rodrigofera (talk) 17:04, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Help needed for the article "air-raid shelter"

I was trying to correctly enter the sources for the various sections of the article, but somehow have lost the last sections of the article. I really need the help of a system administrator to fix this. I don't know whether you are active again, Tim, after your illness, perhaps someone else might be able to help? Would be most grateful, Derek, Dieter Simon (talk) 01:20, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

spamblacklist

hi!
please have a look at my questions and suggestions at mw:Extension_talk:SpamBlacklist#more_detailed_manual_and_suggestions. i guess, you are the only one, who is able to respond to that. tia! -- seth (talk) 21:54, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

where to go from a straw poll

Hello Tim Starling
I recently started a thread on VPT to try to increase the number of rollbacks non-admin rollbackers can make before being throttled. Many admins who commented on VPT supported removing the limit entirely. Four days ago, I moved the thread to a new thread in WP:VPR and created a straw poll to gain consensus for the complete removal of the throttle on non-admin rollbackers' rollbacks. 30 users, including several admins, supported. Other than a couple of cynical entries, no one opposed or expressed neutrality. I am unsure of where to move forward from there, so I looked at m:Developer and chose your name at random. Can you tell me what I need to do to move forward to actually get the consensus of the straw poll implemented and/or tell me if I have not followed the proper avenues in my attempt to get the throttle removed? Thanks for your time. J.delanoy^gabs_adds 17:40, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

These things go on Bugzilla. This is bug 12760 and has been for four months -- Gurchzilla (talk) 18:32, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Bugzilla and then IRC. If you put it in Bugzilla alone, it might get ignored for months. -- Tim Starling (talk) 00:19, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

A question for someone who uses the software that runs Wikipedia

Would this break the software, or is the previous explanation given on that thread that: "the software doesn't record where in the article you make an edit" true, and if it is possible, could it be implemented? Just a question for you. Thanks in advance, Dreamafter (talk) 02:04, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Anything's possible. -- Tim Starling (talk) 03:49, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, not anything, see (e.g.) List of undecidable problems, and anything in List of NP-complete problems is probably not going to scale very well. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:56, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Possibility of a bot to help with SUL implementation

See Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard#Proposal for a bureaucrat bot. I was thinking that quite a bit of bureaucrat time could be saved by implementing a bot that would rename all users with zero edits and the same name as a global account. Only accounts that weren't attached to a global login could actually be renamed. It occurs to me though that this would hypothetically be something that Special:MergeAccount could do automatically, and I understand that the automatic merging of empty accounts was part of one of the early SUL pilots. So I was wondering whether it is worth trying to get the community to agree to a bureaucrat bot, or whether this is something better implemented through a change in the software? WjBscribe 17:50, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

It's better implemented through a change in the software. -- Tim Starling (talk) 02:07, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

I suspected as much - bug 14416 is about this. WjBscribe 09:12, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

AntiSpoof Bug

Could you please just go over Bug 14576 and Bug 13426. The requests are fairly simply, most likely taking less than ten to fifteen minutes to look over, but nobody has been paying any attention to them. Both bugs already have patches attached to them, so they just need somebody to commit them. I would appreciate it greatly. Thanks. — Parent5446 ☯ ^{(message email)} 19:22, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

They're not bugs, they're feature requests. Feature requests are more complicated than bugs because there are always trade-offs involved. -- Tim Starling (talk) 19:29, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

problems with static.wikipedia.org

Please check Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#static.wikipedia.org_being_crawled_and_indexed_by_google. I also left you a message on meta --Enric Naval (talk) 02:25, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Question

When looking at the history here I do not see my contribution, but when looking in the diffs, I am able to see my contribution. Why is this? (Only asking this of a developer) -- Cheers mate! CYCLONICWHIRLWIND ^talk 14:54, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Internal double redirect bot

Just out of curiosity what is the username of this bot? Am I able to see it? Following it's edits and seeing statistics of its edits on the toolserver could be very interesting. -- Cat ^chi? 09:01, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

User:Redirect fixer -- Tim Starling (talk) 20:10, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

WP:GO is archived weekly by a bot; the redirect fixer is causing a problem there. On other FA files, it's making at least 8 edits per week that need to be rollbacked. The checkmark should be off by default. Further info here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:07, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Sorting of subcategories

As you seem to have a very solid head on your shoulders, would you mind sharing your thoughts on Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 30#Sorting of subcategories? I was waiting to try and figure out how to go forward with this. Does this at all seem reasonable? ~ JohnnyMrNinja 07:41, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

You mean bug 1211? You can vote for it. It's a complicated bug to fix. -- Tim Starling (talk) 08:10, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Sweet. Thanks, you do know your stuff. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 08:24, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Redirect bot

This doesn't look right. MBisanz ^talk 12:33, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Japanese Wikipedia link on wikipedia.org

Hey, I noticed on the main portal that the "number of articles" info for the japanese Wikipedia looks a little weird. I was wondering if maybe you should change the code from

<!-- #6. ja.wikipedia.org - 3% --> <div style="position: absolute; top: 40%; right: 0%; background: #fff;" lang="ja" xml:lang="ja"> <a href="http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%A1%E3%82%A4%E3%83%B3%E3%83%9A%E3%83%BC%E3%82%B8" title="Nihongo"><big><strong>日本語</strong></big></a><br /> フリー百科事典<br /> <small>505 000+ 記事</small></div>

to

<!-- #6. ja.wikipedia.org - 3% --> <div style="position: absolute; top: 40%; right: 0%; background: #fff;" lang="ja" xml:lang="ja"> <a href="http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%A1%E3%82%A4%E3%83%B3%E3%83%9A%E3%83%BC%E3%82%B8" title="Nihongo"><big><strong>日本語</strong></big></a><br /> フリー百科事典<br /> <span lang="en" xml:lang="en"><small>505 000+</span> 記事</small></div>

or something similar that actually does what I'm trying to say. It's no big deal, but the number is kind of difficult to read the way it is currently. Thingg^⊕⊗ 05:51, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Difficult to read in what browser? The relevant page is m:Talk:www.wikipedia.org template. --- Tim Starling (talk)

(sorry for nt getting back to you sooner, been busy in RL) I'm using Firefox 3.0.1. It's not really a big deal. Sorry for the trouble. Thingg^⊕⊗ 16:40, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

replacing strokkur image

Hello Tim Starling - You have uploaded a nice series of photos of Strokkur geyser erupting that is used in the Geyser article. I would propose replacing these photos with this image: Image:Strokkur erupting closeup II.jpg. It doesn't have quite as nice lighting, but the resolution is significantly higher, and there is greater detail in the water. I just wanted to check with you before doing this replacement, since I don't want to cause offense. de Bivort 19:05, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Main Page rename

Just wondering if you had taken a look at the proposal to rename the Main Page, or the somewhat-but-not-entirely-related bug 15007. If not, would you mind having a gander? Cheers! ~ JohnnyMrNinja 08:37, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Quick question

Would it be technically possible to implement a feature that would allow admins to block someone's MAC address, similarly to autoblocking a registered account's IP address? With a feature like this, it would be far easier to deal with IP hopping vandals, such as the one that frequently "graces" Today's Featured Article. Thanks for your time, J.delanoy^gabs_adds 05:00, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

No. The MAC address is not exposed beyond the first router, and there's no way to determine it with JavaScript or Java. -- Tim Starling (talk) 06:06, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikinews has been hacked

[3] has been hacked with a message saying: "This is the Zodiac speaking. Do you think you cowards can run from me? No you cannot, for I am above mortal things. ЕНКЁШКААНЛЁПЕЦЦААЭАН ДАЛЫЧЫНВКЁШКАШЕАНЦА АМЫНЮЛЛЕЯЬЦЦЫМЬЫНЕ НКЫЫЪЕХЦЫЬЕНДЁЪПХЫ НЦЕХЁККААМПЫАКЮЫНКЁ ЛМЕЦЮХАЦЦАЁЪВАШМЕЯ АШЕЁННЫЫНХАЮШКААШ ЫНЮНПЫЦЬЫШЫЙЪЫЦЦ ЬЬЦЕХДЬШЕНПЙШЬККЫЁ НЦЙПЕЪЫЬШЫКЁЯА! " and more not included. Please notify the appropriate person. This is message is going to all system admins. Calebrw (talk) 04:57, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Plain old template vandalism, nothing to worry about. -- Tim Starling (talk) 05:27, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I found the list at through the Administrators page, but I'm not sure where. Calebrw (talk) 23:56, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Account hacked

Dear M Starling. I the user know as User:Gdgourou but my account has been hacked. My password has been change (on all wikis with the SUL) and i could reset it because my mail address seems have been remove. Please contact me via IRC or by mail ((gdgouour AT gmail DOT com). For information, I'm a french administrator. M account was unsysoped at my request via IRC. Could you help me ? --Gdgourou 21:13, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Problem solved by Brion via IRC. --GdGourou - °o° - Talk to me 23:32, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Need some teamwork

I know you're busy, but... before I go crazy...

Simple English Wikipedia is reporting same {{SITENAME}} as here so getting the redlinked category here. Have a number of similar issues here and etcetera with interwiki testing needs. Plz reply my talk here or commons soonest with a work around or let me know if nothing occurs to you as now possible to discriminate the two sister projects!

2) (Much lower priority) Trying to workout interlingual compatible template series (which is also site portable) and the link formation order for "simple" sites may be an impossible challenge without some SITENAME discrimination. This format tested fine for normal interlanguage connections... where the heck and in what order should "simple:" occur? (First stab v:Template:sew here is not robust, though forming links using [[...]] (here only as "temp tests" until I backup to {{Sew}}.) showed some promise.) I modeled it on the tested logic of v:template:Wvy... but the "simple:" prefix and ordering is an issue.

The broken links in Template:Sew seem to be a new behavior... I'm pretty sure an earlier version of {{WPD}} returned ":" here, and that didn't break link formation in {{Common cats}}, which seems to also be what is happening in {{Sew}} via the if statement. Without that 'spurious linefeed', breaking the links, I think the broken links in the examples would be working. So... very vexing... the only fix I've been able to work is failing when logic branching is present.
  [To clarify, ":" when imported into [[... as the leading character in a template provided string is manifesting with one or maybe two linefeeds... breaking the formation of the link. It also happens independent of the squarebrackets... as the diff-to-fix (last link below) shows... works fine if NOT part of the template... what my edit summary refers to as brute force.]

3) Can you point me to some kind of page listing various language simple projects. Thanks // FrankB 23:41, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Just an addendum: On simple.wikipedia, I'm seeing what looks to be two linefeeds (newlines) preceding a template that leads off with ":".diff ... see in particular by entering the oldest edit there and note the position of the pipes about the {{WVY}} "sandwisched"

but to get to a big wiki... need to precede links of those which have simple.XXXXXXX versions with the colon... like:
   ":en:V:namespace:pagename" or ":en:B:namespace:pagename". Conversely (And perversely!) "W:namespace:pagename" works just fine... haven't dared check "en:W:namespace:pagename" form... it probably crashes my computer or something. // FrankB 04:28, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Redirect bot (EPIC FAIL)

Hey, I'd just like to inform you that Redirect fixer echoed vandalism to a redirect page, which subsequently had to be manually fixed. It may be appropriate to increase the time it takes for the bot to react (your bot reacted in the same minute as the vandalism, which would make it hard for even another bot to have fixed the vandalism before your bot copied it). --Muna (talk) 06:06, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

• I'm currently having to fix every redirect to Failure now due to this (edit: or would have done, but someone kindly did it for me). Looking at your bot's contribution list, this seems to happen an awful lot. --Muna (talk) 06:17, August 24, 2008 (UTC}

Design process for date autoformatting & ISO 8601

In view of the renewed debate about date formats on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers). I have been trying to understand the design process for date autoformatting, especially with respect to the ISO 8601 format. I have written an essay summarizing what I was able to find on old versions of the "Manual of Style (dates and numbers)" discussion page from 2003 and 2004. I would like to invite you to view the essay and comment on whether it fairly represents the situation back then, before I draw any further attention to it. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 21:14, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Note that I don't actually support the use of ISO 8601, either in wikitext or in the HTML output. The format was added to the software as a concession to Eclecticology. If ISO 8601 requires a proleptic Gregorian calendar, then that's an excellent reason not to use it on history articles. -- Tim Starling (talk) 07:05, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

About ip checking

hi.i am HN from chinese wikipedia,i have been unjusted to use sockpuppets when i was banned.I suspect that someone pretends me and destroys other entries.Can you help me check this user [4]?What IP did this user use?

Thanksx100000--123.202.165.48 (talk) 09:50, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Page creation by unregistered users in Wikipedia namespace

Hi Tim, I sent you an email a month or two ago about the possibility of allowing unregistered users to create pages in project namespace. If you recall, the motivation was to provide an effective method for such users to submit articles for creation. Since then we have developed a new process which uses project talk space. There is a discussion page and a description of this new process. However for reasons I have outlined in a village pump thread, this solution is not ideal and we are seeking the possibility of using project space. That thread has not generated the discussion I had hoped it would. I'm wondering whether I should try to get more input on this. MSGJ 17:33, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Special:Export

Hey there. I came across your name on MediaWiki in connection to Special:Export, so I thought I'd bug you... (sorry!)

I wrote a python script some months ago that used Special:Export to export copies of articles, including history. However, recently it has stopped working, and none of the examples from mw:Manual:Parameters to Special:Export work anymore either. They all produce only the most current version. I looked at the source for SpecialExport.php from the most recent mediawiki (v1.13.1) but I don't see anything obvious in there. I noticed there is a now a history parameter, and while setting this to true on other wikis (for example, on a wikia: [5]) seems to fix the problem, history=true seems to have no effect on Wikipedia (example: [6]). Perhaps $wgExportAllowHistory has been changed to false for Wikipedia recently? Or something else? Maybe a 1.13.1 (wikia) vs. 1.14alpha (Wikipedia it seems) issue?

Anyway, sorry to bother you on Wikipedia, but I thought it had a high chance of getting your attention and possibly some help. If there is some better spot to ask this question or look for help, please let me know! --Falcorian ^(talk) 06:38, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry to bother you, I went to IRC and found out that it had been disabled due to performance issues. ;) Probably where I should have started anyway. Cheers! --Falcorian ^(talk) 21:17, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Music and Wikipedia

I don't want to bother you, but in a discussion on bugzilla (189, 9536, 14480) there is a hint that you are the right VIP for the there mentioned suggestion. There are several people who want to enter music lines into Wikipedia with a similar simple tool like TeX for entering math. Lilypond would be very approbriate for this purpose. It would be great, if you could take Lilypond or MusixTeX onto your priority queue of programs that should be examined whether they are secure enough and compatible to Wikipedia. --Brf (talk) 12:07, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

about X-Vary-Options

Hello , starling!

I need to install squid cache server for our wiki website.Could you give me the patch about "X-Vary-Options" for squid 2.6 STABLE21?

my email is chinawab at gmail.com.

thank you in advance! --Chinawab (talk) 02:02, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

I think this is what you're looking for. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:09, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you,MZMcBride! I have tried upgrade this patch in squid 2.6 STABLE21 , but it does not seem to effect. I do not know where I was wrong, or Tim Starling has been changed the patch.--Chinawab (talk) 15:04, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I have found the right patch in here. This patch has successfully been applied , and the squid could cache sites According to "X-Vary-Options". but now, I have got a new problem, the squid can't purge all vary objects of a url by the purge request from orginal server. Could you give me some tips? --Chinawab (talk) 06:55, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Image licensing

Hey there...

I am trying to clean up some of the images with minor licensing issues and I came across Image:Morwen.jpg which is only used on WP:Facebook. If you are going to use the image, could you go and fix the licensing on the image page and be clear about releasing the image under a GFDL license (or another free license). Thanks. If you have any questions, please drop me a note on my talk page. --Jordan 1972 (talk) 21:44, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

ParserFunctions

Hi Tim Starling

In the Mediawiki i can´t found you, so only here. I will glad if you can help me with this question about your Wiki extension ParserFunction.

I've encountered a problem when trying to get infoboxes to work in my wiki. My configuration is the following:

Linux
MediaWiki 1.13.1
PHP 5.2.6 (apache)
MySQL 5.0.67-community-log
Tidy 2.0

Extensions:

CategoryTree 
CharInsert
CheckUser
Cite 
ConfirmEdit
CurrentUsers
Deleted user contributions
ExpandTemplates 
Google Analytics Integration
Inputbox
Link Search
MultipleUpload
Newest Pages 
Newuserlog
Renameuser
ParserFunctions
SimpleAntiSpam
SpamBlacklist

I use the Mod Short URL/wiki/Page title -- no root access, that modify the file .htaccess (see here)

The file common.css was coping from wikipedia, for use the same infobxes (see here).

But when I set $wgUseTidy = true; in LocalSettings.php, an error with Parser.php shows up in the top of several pages:

Warning: Parser::internalTidy() [parser.internaltidy]: Unable to load Tidy configuration file
at '/usr/local/lib/php/default.tcfg'. in …….includes/parser/Parser.php on line 737

To fix this, we create the file default.tcfg with this:

output-xhtml: true
hide-comments: true

Now no error are show. But the infoboxes still don´t work, as you can see here (solved).

That same infobox are in Wikipedia, as you can see here (solved).

You can help me, please, to fix this? What are wrong?

Thanks in advance.--Letroo (talk) 16:27, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Looking briefly, it seems that you need to go here and change |\n<noinclude> to |<noinclude> (that is, remove the return after the vertical bar). That should fix the issue. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:42, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes! that´s right, thank you very much.--Letroo (talk) 12:08, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Image scaling

In Russian Wikipedia scaled images are not displayed. Example. Probably some server software update gone wrong. Can you fix it?DonaldDuck (talk) 15:54, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Fixed by River. -- Tim Starling (talk) 05:14, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Non-free use list

Hi Tim. As you may recall, you initially developed MediaWiki:Bad image list. Images on Bad image list are prevented from being displayed inline on pages, except for those listed at Bad image list. I found a situation that may benefit from similar coding. The fair use image Image:Ramones album cover.jpg endlessly is being add to and removed from the FA article Punk rock. As noted in the Image:Ramones album cover.jpg page, the use of Image:Ramones album cover in Punk rock "was considered at Wikipedia:Non-free content review#Image:Ramones album cover.jpg, and it was determined that its use in that article was not in accord with Wikipedia’s non-free content criteria." Would you be able to develop coding that would prevent Image:Ramones album cover.jpg from displaying in Punk rock while allowing it to be displayed everwhere else? Unless this is a bad idea, I think such coding will have significant usage for images where editors repeatedly ignore that Non-free content review consensus. Thanks. -- Suntag ☼ 01:12, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

The bad image list could be used for this purpose. Indeed, since non-free images are not supposed to be used on any pages except those for which they have appropriate written rationales, the current implementation would seem to fit the bill exactly. Of course, it won't scale to handling all the non-free images we have, but using it for individual problem cases like this could work. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 01:19, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Special:BlockIP might work well here as well. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:01, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

image loss - status?

Due to several broken image files in the German Wikipedia I came across your list dated 2008-10-10. I found the discussions "massive image loss" and "more image loss", but I just don't understand what to do now. Is there still a chance that the missing images will be restored or should the authors be contacted to upload the images again? I checked a sample of ten listed images from the German Wikipedia and all of them are still missing/broken, so there seems to be need for action. Best regards, --Ukko (talk) 20:53, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

FYI: there is a related discussion on commons --Ukko (talk) 23:18, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Main Page redesign

The Main Page Redesign proposal is currently conducting a straw poll to select five new designs, before an RFC in which one will be proposed to replace the Main Page. The poll closes on October 31st. Your input would be hugely appreciated! Many thanks, Pretzels^Talk! 11:01, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Lightweight OpenID-extension, please consider inclusion on Mediawiki servers

Hi Tim, we talked about the need for tools (e.g. on toolserver.org) to authenticate users of Wikimedia projects. You suggested that the user page could be used as an OpenID to achieve this. I have now created a very lightweight and small (read: likely secure) extension which will just allow a user to link his account to an external OpenID provider by adding the appropriate <link> tags to the <head> section. So the user page then could be used as a OpenID, but the authentication will be done by the third party OpenID provider chosen by the user. I believe this is even better than making Wikimedia itself a OpenID provider because this leaves freedom to the user to choose the provider he trusts or which has the features he wants (e.g. login by using ssl client certificate) and change it when he wants.

Please consider adding this extension on Mediawiki servers. As said it is very small and likely secure, so it would be a quick solution for now which can still be replaced by a full OpenID implementation later if desired. It would solve the auth problem for tools (e.g. the irc cloak bot, the auth tools, a tool by me for german wikinews). You can find the source code here: mw:Extension:LinkOpenID. -- Kju (talk) 14:02, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

{{delimitnum}} and {{val}}

• I’ve been conversing with Z-man, here and he suggested I contact you.

  Z-man wrote that the Extension:StringFunctions extension has some functions that might be able to be used for the below-described templates but it needs to first be reviewed and activated. That’s why I’m here.

  There are two templates, {{delimitnum}} and {{val}}, that delimit numbers (add narrow spaces) in values like this: 6.0224438467(40)×10⁻²³ kg. Unfortunately, both these templates must rely upon math-based techniques and both suffer from unpredictable rounding errors. For instance, coding {{val|0.29872813|e=-23|u=kg}} produces 0.29872813×10⁻²³ kg (note the …29) but adding 2 to the value, {{val|2.29872813|e=-23|u=kg}} produces the correct 2.29872813×10⁻²³ kg. Note that this was extensively discussed here on WT:MOSNUM and received broad support on both there and at WT:MOS.

  I had told Z-man that all we needed was nothing more than a character-counting parser function  to use in these templates. Such a parser function would continually be asked the following question: “are there five or more remaining digits in the string?” If so, move over three more digits, add a space, and ask the question again. Details are at bugzilla:15677 and a detailed description of its functionality is here.

  Can you help in any way? Whereas it would be nice to see an easier-to-use template as is described in bugzilla:15677, looking at the number of articles that currently link to {{val}} and {{delimitnum}}, it would probably be better, if we were going to just make one template, to just re-write {val} with the character-counting capability. And for that, all we need is a character-counting parser function (Extension:StringFunctions?) All it needs is to not choke on big numbers and not have rounding errors. Greg L (talk) 00:29, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

• If you can’t help, could you answer this one question: how long do you think it would take for an experienced developer to write a character-counting parser function? Greg L (talk) 18:37, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Forthcomming Book

It's been some time since I last Idle'd in #mediawiki, but iirc you were (for the most part) behind much of the db design in the current version of MediaWiki. I have searched for, and not found, disappointingly, a book, by you, on that topic; not within the context of MediaWiki per se, but db-design in general. If I am incorrect regarding you role in the development of the model, then, by all means, tell me who was. I wold also appreciate a referral on good design, that is efficient, and that is conducive to fast, repeat searches for similar content: (cached tables, fields, etc). Also, please confirm my finding regarding your book. Mrgenixus (talk) 15:58, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Hullo

Hi, I wonder if you can help me. You know we can WikiLink Special:Recentchanges/hideliu,10 to show the last 10 anon edits, right? Now how can I use a wikilink that shows bot-only changes? On the same note, could you answer a question of mine here? Thanks. Bennylin (talk) 13:21, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Need new hooks for hebrew and yiddish wiki

Hello. You could add to the parser new hooks for hebrew alphabet? Would operate similarly to the hooks lcfirs and ucfirst. Hebrew alphabet has a so-called final letter. Occurs only if you are at the end of words. It is five:

normal form		final form
symbol	name	symbol	name
כ	khof	ך	sofit khof
מ	mem	ם	sofit mem
נ	nun	ן	sofit nun
פ	pey	ף	sofit pey
צ	tsadek	ץ	sofit tsadek

and one additional (in yiddish language) – hebrew normal form letter פ with combination mark: ֿ

normal form		final form
symbol	name	symbol	name
פֿ	fey	ף	sofit fey

Example:

• {{lcfirst: Test }} gives "test"
• {{ucfirst: test }} gives "Test"

• {{hebrew-normal-form: אמשץ }} gives "אמשצ"
• {{hebrew-normal-form: אמשף }} gives "אמשפ"
• {{hebrew-final-form: אמשצ }} gives "אמשץ"
• {{hebrew-final-form: אמשפ }} gives "אמשף"

• {{yiddish-normal-form: אמשף }} gives "אמשפֿ"
• {{yiddish-final-form: אמשפֿ }} gives "אמשף"

Red is sample names new hooks. They may be shorter. But to be :)
Please, it's very important for advanced templates in all hebrew and yiddish project.

Sorry, my English is very bad. Best regards -- Joystick (talk) @ pl.wikt 11:47, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Parser Function ifexist non working on a wiki

Information:

• Wiki: http://wiki.erepublik.com/index.php/Main_Page
• Version: http://wiki.erepublik.com/index.php/Special:Version
  • MediaWiki 1.11.2
  • ParserFunctions 1.1.1

Problem:

• #ifexist not working
  • Evidence: http://wiki.erepublik.com/index.php/User:MiniBill/Sandbox
    • Result: 0 0 0
    • Expected: 1 1 0

Additional limitations:

• I'm only sysop, I don't have ftp nor SQL access

Ty, could you contact me via Jabber/email?[my account is cmt.miniBill at gmail dot com,which is also my email] --MiniBill (talk) 21:59, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Are you still there? --MiniBill (talk) 13:29, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bureaucrats

Hi! As a bureaucrat on Wikipedia, I'd very much appreciate it if you would fill in your details on the newly updated Bureaucrats page. Thanks! Majorly ^talk 14:29, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Data Crystal

Me and my mate were wondering if there is any way of taking over (becoming a bureaucrat) on this wiki: Data crystal , we are asking you because it has been inactive for a long time, and we were hoping to try and take over to help fix it up. I have tried asking people on this wiki but no one is ever on besides me, the only other contributions are random IP addresses that spam the articles (even more then they already are). If you could please reply on my talk page it would be highly appreciated, thanks (This message has been sent to most bureaucrat's). --MỸŠŦЄЯỸЊӘҒҒ (talk) 13:56, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Edit re-assignment

Hi!

I hope you're the right person to ask this. I had a username change done 2 weeks ago and my edits have still not been re-assigned. Is that something you could look into for me? I would appreciate it if you could.

Thanks. Big Bird (talk • contribs) 17:11, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Image Compression

I have compressed several major Wikipedia images(and may be able to compress them a bit further). I need a developer to take a look and let me know if it is worth updating. I have compressed the main wikipedia header (the Wikipedia title at www.wikipedia.org) by about 5kb. See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Smaller_Wikipedia_Logo_files. Thank you in advance.Smallman12q (talk) 04:17, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you

If it weren't for the no barnstars request at your user page I'd be giving you one now about the image thumbnailing issue. Thank you very much for your prompt attention resolving the problem. Best regards, Durova^Charge! 03:43, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Tidying developers' user rights - discussion on meta

Apologies for posting this in English...

There is a discussion currently ongoing on meta about "tidying" the developers' user rights": now that you are members of the global "system administrators" group (with the ability to assign yourself whatever permissions you need) there's no real need for you to continue to have rights like "developer", "steward" and "bureaucrat" locally on various wikis. Obviously the intention is not to say "you can't have these rights, we're taking them away" - that would be completely silly. If you need a particular permission on a particular wiki, however, it's now easiest simply to assign that permission to the global group using Special:GlobalGroupPermissions; the idea is to establish a precedent that, in the interests of tidiness, rights assigned by the developers in the course of their work are "easy come, easy go": they can be both granted and removed at any time.

I'd greatly appreciate your input to the discussion, which is at meta:Wikimedia forum#Tidying developers' user rights. Happy‑melon 13:43, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Job Queue fix

Hey, I heard you fixed a bug in the job queue that resulted in backlogged jobs being deleted. Is there any way to know the dates of jobs that got deleted? I'm on the orphan project, and now we're seeing false positives because WhatLinksHere isn't getting updated for templates that were edited/created around the end of February - see User talk:Addshore#Incorrect orphan tags. --JaGa^talk 23:12, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

No there is no way to tell which jobs were deleted. However, the links tables will all be fixed over the next week or two, there is a background process running which is fixing the links for all articles. -- Tim Starling (talk) 02:31, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I think there is a new bug. Lists of incoming links are not being updated. Discussed here. --Una Smith (talk) 17:34, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Password Recovery

Hello Tim,

My name is Mike and I hold an account on en.wikipedia under the name of Icestorm815. Shortly after I became an administrator personal events arose in my life that prevented me from being able to edit on wikipedia for a while. With those events in the past, I am now able to resume editing. Unfortunately, I have misplaced my password and did not set an e-mail to my account. My question for you is would you possibly be able to reset the password or provide me with the current one? Fortunately I still remember the phrase that I set for my SHA-1 personal identity code, so you can confirm that I am the original owner of the account. If you are unable to recover my password I would be willing to create a new account and just request admin privileges on the bureaucrat board (or if you would just grant them yourself that would work too). I would greatly appreciate your help. If you wish to contact me, you can just post on your talk page and I'll keep an eye on it or I can provide you with my e-mail later if you wish to e-mail me instead. Again, thank you. 76.232.148.134 (talk) 05:57, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Please disregard the above. I have corrected the issue with another system admin. Icestorm815 (talk) 02:10, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

a belated congratulations

Congratulations!

I know it's a bit late, but I just found out that you got married to fellow Wikipedian Angela. So here's a hearty congratulations and a big toast to you two! --Ixfd64 (talk) 07:18, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Flash based Ogg Vorbis support

A new library has sprung up the Fogg library (LGPL) written HaXe, auto ported from the JOrbis code base. FOggPlayer provides a GUI for the library, demo with some featured sounds. What would need to happen to get this implemented as a player option in the OggHandler Extension? 14:37, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Finding imagemap errors

Is there a way to find all pages with errors in imagemaps? It came up at Wikipedia:Help desk#Image map errors at Area code 480 and Area code 602. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:17, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Sir/Madam,

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am based out of Shanghai china and like to Inform something that us can use. I manufature PHP bots and i Sure we can use some of it for this wikipedia. Plase contact me at My America number +14152736293. Ask you talk back imediatelly. I will like to use some for this web.

To be sincerely,

Yep111111 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Yep111111 (talk • contribs) 22:17, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Forgot password... and I didn't have a valid email?

Hi, I saw you on the list of bureaucrat, so I thought I'd ask you. I have a bot (YATBot) that I created a month ago and that just got through a successful BRfA (now has a bot flag) a few weeks ago. The only problem is that I forgot the password to the account, and I some how didn't put in my email/a correct email. I know I can create an account and then usurp it, but then I would need the bot flag again (right?) and I would have a different user name. Is there any way that I can have the email set for that account? Maybe like the email I have for this account? Thanks. AHRtbA== ^Talk 13:05, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Query about lobbying to change thumbnail default size

Hi Tim—you may remember me from the WikiMania dinner at The Rocks a few months ago. There seems to be a lot of support for chaning the default thumbnail image size from 180px to, say, 220px. It came up as a proposal in 2006, I've been told, and failed.

Is it worth pursuing this, or do you think there will be technical/administrative/political problems? If it is worth pursuing, how would one go about it? Tony (talk) 08:06, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Update. Tim, to follow up this note, it promptly turned from a lobbying model to one of establishing community opinion, in an RfC that is nine days into what will probably be a two-week period. It shows overwhelming consensus to raise the default size from 180px to at least 220px. The RfC was advertised at VP, CD, Featured Image Candidates, and the WikiProject Visual.

Notes on the graph:

1. There has been little change in community preference for an increase in the default size as the RfC has progressed.
2. This is only one way of expressing the results of the RfC: it emphasises the total range of acceptability to each participant, weighting the points in 10px increments equally through each person's range. A more complicated display might weight a single preference, say for 250px alone, more than each point throughout their range, or might register the average of each person's expressed range of acceptability as a single data-point, or might give weight to the few instances where there's an expressed preference (say for 220px) within an expressed range of acceptability (say, 180–200px). I have a feeling these methods would not make much difference to the overall interpretation of the data.
3. I've made a few assumptions where participants have been a little vague, in which the intention was to be NPOV.

The graph shows that only 18% of participants find the current 180px acceptable. 31% would regard 200px acceptable. 80% would find 220px acceptable. More than 50% would find 250px acceptable.

I am hoping you are an appropriate officer to engage in this matter, and that you may be in a position to make the alteration, probably to 220px, if there are no technical or administrative hurdles to doing so. I think 220px is a no-brainer, but given the solid support for up to 250px, I'd personally be more comfortable with 230px (I believe sv.WP has 250px as a default). However, I'm prepared to be disappointed with a change to the more conservative 220px. I asked User:Jarry's opinion at the start of the RfC, which he gave in a preliminary way in the discussion section at the Image policy talk page.

I'll buzz you again when the consensus is to wind up the RfC (probably in five days' time), to learn what your response is.

Thanks in advance. Tony (talk) 03:11, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Templates for deletion nomination of Template:"

Template:" has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. Hairy Dude (talk) 16:40, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Expanding Article on Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd

There appears to be a group of individuals who consistently impede any constructive additions to the article in question. Undoing and blocking all editions pertaining to users outside their nest of selections.

The editing recently done to this article has been referenced to credible sources, some already available on other related articles, regardless of the fact of the neutrality displayed in the additions manifested in the facts and phraseology in use.

It would be detrimental to Wikipedia if a consensus is not reached on this question pertaining to all articles not only this one. If the material being added is not significant it would be understandable, yet where the facts could be correct and the community interested in the subject at hand are in conflict with the manner of its publication, the rational and professional solution would be to offer an alternative to the edition being proposed. Simply deleting and blocking any attempt to contribute to this and any other article in a constructive manner can only be viewed as autocratic in the least and a hypocrisy of what the globally renowned Wikipedia stands for.Wsa1 (talk) 22:44, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Happy Tim Starling's Day!

User:Tim Starling has been identified as an Awesome Wikipedian, and therefore, I've officially declared today as Tim Starling's day! For being such a beautiful person and great Wikipedian, enjoy being the Star of the day, dear Tim Starling! Peace, Rlevse 00:46, 28 October 2009 (UTC) A record of your Day will always be kept here.

For a userbox you can add to your userbox page, see User:Rlevse/Today/Happy Me Day! and my own userpage for a sample of how to use it. — Rlevse • Talk • 00:46, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Setting up SecurePoll for the ArbCom election starting 1 December

Tim, I believe you played a key role in setting up the system for the AUSC election. I wonder whether you've been approached to do the same for the ArbCom election. Can you let me know, please? Wikipedia_talk:ACE2009#Implementing_SecurePoll Tony (talk) 01:32, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Tim, any chance you could change the closing time for voting in the ACE2009 SecurePoll set-up? Sadly, we didn't get it right—supposed to be 23:59 UTC Monday 14 December, and it looks like it's set to close midnight 00:00 start of that day. Tony (talk) 08:09, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Bug request

Hello, there seems to be a bug request bugzilla:21676 that I think could be taken care of. It would be really nice if you can fix/resolve the bug request. Thanks:) —Terrence and Phillip 10:52, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Happy New Year

Best Wishes for 2010, FloNight♥♥♥♥ 13:19, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Bureaucrat discussion for Juliancolton RfB

A bureaucrat discussion has been opened in order to determine the consensus in this request for adminship. Please come participate. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 01:51, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Categories

Hi Tim, and Happy New Year's (& Decade), to you! - Constantly when a new edit is being made to any article lately, the "Category" section located at the very bottom of the page comes into contact (and sometimes conflict) with the template located there (see The Beatles for example). Since last early-mid December, this has been happenning often. At first, I thought it might be just me, or maybe my computer, but that is not so; as I mainly create "template:singles" (music) for musicians pertaining to their discography (hence my user-name). This has occured in many articles (like East Anglia, for one), and nothing becomes of the situation. If you could, please have a look into this, and possibly resolve this problem once and for all. Thanks Tim! Best, --Discographer (talk) 21:00, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Oversight on de:WP

Hi. Actually, nobody complained that you have the supress-rights on wikipedia in german language, it's simply that I as a local oversight would like to know how long you are going to keep this right. Cheers, --Sargoth (talk) 00:04, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you!

Thank you for fixing the high database lag! I think you are the one who did it. Really, thanks!!!! :) --Hadger 04:37, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Add a "public interest" clause to Oversight

A proposal to add a "public interest" clause to Wikipedia:Oversight has started at Wikipedia_talk:Oversight#Proposal_for_new_.27public_interest.27_clause. SilkTork *^YES! 10:35, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

New parser function: #wrap

I have a suggestion for an enhancement to the ParserFunctions extension. It seems like it would be simple to implement (famous last words), but given I have not done any wikimedia hacking, I have a lot to learn before I could implement it myself and even if I went down that road, I suspect it would be a long time before anything I wrote would be added to WP. I was hoping to get an existing developer interested to short-circuit that. Maybe you are that developer, or maybe you could suggest someone else.

My idea: a common pattern in WP templates is using #if to determine if a parameter is non-empty before wrapping the value with a prefix and/or suffix and emitting it. Here's one example from {{Citation/core}}:

{{
  #if: {{{format|}}}
  | ({{{format}}})
}}

In the example above, if format is not empty, the template emits a space and open paren (a prefix), the value of the format parameter, and a closing paren (the suffix). This could be replaced by a new #wrap function that accepts three parameters: prefix, value, and suffix. If value is empty, there is no output. If value is not-empty, the function emits the concatenation of the prefix, value, and suffix. prefix or suffix may be empty; if both are empty, the function should work, but using it is unnecessary in that case.

{{#wrap: (|{{{format|}}}|)}}

Building the test-for-empty into the function simplifies the code and reduces the parameter references by one. I suspect that's a marginal improvement, but this pattern is very common in templates and a small saving in lots of places would add up. In {{Citation/core}} alone there are probably dozens of places where #wrap could replace #if.

There are more involved use cases that follow this general pattern, including use cases that arise due to parameter variations supported by the host template. In the following made-up example based on parameters used in music-related templates, there are two parameters for the same thing (the album name) presumably arising from changes to template naming practices where the original parameter name was deprecated but never removed, and the template author decided to support both camel-cased and lower-case names:

{{
  #if: {{{Album|}}}{{{album|}}}{{{from Album|}}}{{{from album|}}}
  |[[Album]]:|{{{Album|}}}{{{album|}}}{{{from Album|}}}{{{from album|}}}
}}

The #wrap version is about half as messy as the #if version:

{{#wrap:[[Album]]:|{{{Album|}}}{{{album|}}}{{{from Album|}}}{{{from album|}}}}}

The #wrap function reduces the syntax load a bit compared to the #if pattern show above, and in the long run, that may be a better reason to implement it than a performance improvement. I am not wedded to the name, so if someone suggested a better one that would be fine with me.

What do you think?If there is somewhere else I should suggest this enhancement, please let me know. Thanks. — John Cardinal (talk) 18:32, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Hello. And Help.

Hello Tim. How are you?

I am the founder and President of My Free Wiki, a soon to be wiki hosting company. I need help installing a few extensions. I cant seem to download.Can you help?

Thanks!

Comppro —Preceding unsigned comment added by Comppro (talk • contribs) 00:24, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Congrats

Best wishes for you and Angela, and of course your baby expected! --Aphaia (talk) 01:42, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Proxy error 502 on secure server

Hello Tim. I'm not sure if you are the correct person to contact, since my question is more about hardware than software, but I hope that you can at least get me in touch with the right person. There has been a problem for several days with the secure server for the English WP, discussed at WP:Village pump (technical)#secure.wikimedia.org Proxy Error 502, and I'm not sure that anyone who monitors the servers has seen it at the Village Pump. It sounds like there is some kind of problem with the secure server communicating with upstream servers since the system outage of a couple of days ago. Thanks! --Tryptofish (talk) 21:33, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

I see now that someone more savvy than me has opened a Bugzilla report. Thanks again anyway. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:03, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

request username usurpation help

Since i am the owner of the username "Conte" on wikipedia italy and i'm trying to unificate the global account for this username. I tried to usurp the username "Conte" on wikipedia english, but i can't find the right way to do it.

In Wikipedia USURP section request [7], user "xeno" told me to contact a bureaucrat in order to vacate the unused username on wikipedia english (it has no edit since 2006) so I can assign it to my global account.

Take you in advance for you help.

Conte [8] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.52.87.0 (talk) 21:45, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Follow the directions here to file a request to usurp the account for a universal login. Be sure to indicate in your reason for the request that this is to unify a universal login. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 21:50, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

SecurePoll for POTY (Final)

Hello, Tim. May I ask you to create SecurePoll votes for POTY Final? Please make Kanonkas the main (root?) sysop, for it is a little difficult for me to set up MediaWiki extention. (The voting period is not fixed yet.) Thank you.--miya (talk) 17:42, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

I've e-mailed you just now. Please check it. Thanks.--miya (talk) 14:40, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Major flaw in New Features

Hi Tim, I've had to go back to Take Me Back (from New Features) because New Features does not accept the wiki "dot" when editing templates. Please try it yourself, edit a template and appropriately insert the "dot" separating titles, and you wull find I'm correct. Please fix this problem, if you could! Thanks. Best, --Discographer (talk) 21:56, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

CategoryTree

Thanks for re-enabling this feature! Nyttend (talk) 01:33, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Spam Blacklist Extension

Hi Tim, I'm Andrew West, a PhD student and security researcher interested in Wikipedia (you can see my user-page for the relevant credentials). I noticed you are the author of the spam blacklist extension for MW (on top of tons of other MW/WMF development). In particular, I was interested if statistics are available about the number of times the blacklist is "hit" and subsequently prevents a link from being committed (for en.wiki). Do statistics like this exist? Could such a set be made available for release? Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 16:12, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't believe that kind of information is stored or collected anywhere. However, the AbuseFilter keeps pretty meticulous logs. It may be helpful to you. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:19, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Template_limits Problem

Hello Tim, may be you know a quick answer? Where are the Settings in MediaWiki? Hopefully not hard coded?? --EnterpriseWiki (talk) 13:34, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Template_limits#what_are_the_limits_that_cause_.22Category:Pages_where_template_include_size_is_exceeded.3F.22

Special:UncategorizedPages

I was asked how often this list is updated.

My searching lead me to think it is Wikitech:Cron jobs#QueryPage update, which I think is once every 3 days at 5:00.

However, as of now, the special page says, "last updated 07:55, 10 August 2010". So... sorry to bother you, but can you clarify how often it updates?

I'd appreciate any info.  Chzz  ►  06:43, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

If you do get around to this, please respond to TiMike (talk · contribs) about it, thanks.  Chzz  ►  08:25, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

"The developers said that we couldn't turn the feature off and then back on"

This seems to be often-quoted on the pending changes discussion. If you have the time, could you please inform me of the technical details behind this or pointing me to where they are? Also, is the implementation of the German version different from English version, and if so how? Finally, if that statement true what would be the development time needed to re-implement it? Would like to know the facts rather the hyperbole that is going on, thanks. Ryan Norton 14:10, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Where is this discussion and where is it quoted? -- Tim Starling (talk) 02:37, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Pending_changes/Straw_poll and its talk page. Not sure where it originated from, Wikipedia:Pending_changes/Closure says in the lead:

"Developers have indicated it would be too complex to turn off the feature then back on in case of decision in favor to continue the implementation, so they'll wait for the community decision, unless it takes more than a month in which case they would turn off the feature. In the meantime, it is possible to ask administrators to cease from adding new pages under pending changes."

I just want to know what the facts are on the development side, so I can at least be educated on some level in this matter (because honestly as a past-developer it doesn't make any sense to me). Thanks for your time!

P.S. Controversial and partisian "debate" abound on the straw poll pages, recommend hardhat and bulletproof vest. Ryan Norton 05:27, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Replied at Wikipedia talk:Pending changes/Straw poll#Fait_accompli. -- Tim Starling (talk) 04:35, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks a ton for the technical reply, it was more then I expected. Sorry if that comment was a bit harsh; I don't want to waste anymore of your time, just wanted to say thank you for your work here. Ryan Norton 05:19, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

(Presumed) new user with no registration date

Hi Tim. If this is a non-issue please completely ignore me, but since you have fixed issues like this in the past I just wanted to draw your attention to this discussion. Thanks.  7  01:29, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick reply. Sorry for the false alarm.  7  01:58, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Re-upload license selector

Howdy. If you are willing, and have a moment, could you please read this and share any information you have that could answer my question? If you do reply, I'm still watching TheDJ's page if you post there. Thank you for reading this.--Rockfang (talk) 02:17, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

If you have a moment, could you please share any info you might have regarding this? Thank you.--Rockfang (talk) 02:48, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Volunteer time

Hello Tim Starling! I was wondering, could I help develop Wikipedia? This would get me volunteer time so I could get into the honor society. I know PHP, so I could definitely help code. Thanks, and please get back to me on that! Endofskull (talk) 20:03, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Congratulations to you and Yours

I just read about you in Signpost and wish to convey my congratulations to you and Angela. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 00:53, 20 October 2010 (UTC)