User talk:Tim Starling
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changing usernames
Please take a look at those usernames that need to be changed or direct somone else to do that. Perhaps give some other people like admins the rights to do that.--Eliezer 06:37, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
vote on Wikisource
Hi Tim. As you might have noticed already, I have started to organize a new vote on language subdomains. There is a page (http://wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource_talk:New_vote_on_language_subdomains) where organization issues are currently discussed. One issue that have arisen is under which conditions a subdomain should be granted, if the vote passes. These conditions are currently being discussed on that page; however I believe the final decision will belong to the board. So I thought it would not be bad if you could say a few words on that... ThomasV 16:44, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Sockpuppet check
Could you check to see if User:ABCD is likely to be the same as User:Aplank, User:AlexPlank, User:Greenmountainboy, User:Sennheiser, User:Perl, or User:Lst27? There's some rather heated discussion going on on ABCD's RfA about this. --Carnildo 22:23, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)
ABCD
Tim, what is the story with ABCD? I intend to take the nomination down unless we have clarification that he is not a sockpuppet, which is the cause of a lot of negative votes? -- Cecropia | explains it all ® 22:54, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Hello Tim! Your ability to track down ABCD is quite impressive. :-)
If you have a moment to spare? There's just one little point where I disagree with you:
on Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/ABCD you state: "Well, you were wrong, identity is important".
I disagree and am saddened that you feel that way.
I know of several people on wikipedia, and on the internet in general who use alternate identities for differing tasks. There's many different reasons people might do this and I personally prefer to use a variant of the Turing test, which goes that if some identity acts in a consistent and reliable way, I'll treat that id as a real person, no matter who or what they might be irl.
I'd based my advice to ABCD on that principle, so unbeknowst to you, you were indirectly saying that I was wrong as well, hence the reply :-)
Thanks for your time! Kim Bruning 11:28, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Ukrainian Wikinews
Hello, Tim. In Ukrainian WikiNews all statistics working from 24, March. But project worked from March 21st.
For example: {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} show 3 articles, but all articles = >1000. Fix it please. And sorry for my bad english. Inetd Template:UTC
More Alex Plank (possibly)
Lst27, who previously admitted to being Alex Plank, is now up for adminship and denying it, saying that he was pressured into the admission. Would you mind taking a look to see what the technical evidence indicates? --Michael Snow 21:03, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
suspected sockpuppets (same person, using multiple usernames)
THOTH, Davenbelle, Stereotek, Fadix Please advise me. I also posted this on Jamesday's page --Cool Cat My Talk 01:12, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
- Absurd; check if you like. I'm no one's sock and I have none. — Davenbelle 02:32, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)
- However, if you are going to do a sock-check, you might want to include User:Cezveci (contribs) who just appeared and has only edited the Armenian Genocide article expressing the same Genocide-denial-POV as our Mr. Coolcat. — Davenbelle 09:23, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)
Developer assistence needed
Could you please check my IP addresses (Lst27) and prove that I am not the same person as AlexPlank, Perl, and his other sockpuppets? Thanks a lot! --Lst27 (talk) 01:28, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Sockpuppet check
Hi Tim,
I have reason to believe that User:Vandalizor and User:Sjrdude are the same person, could you please check if this is the case. Thanks. Rje 20:08, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)
- Ignore that, Sjrdude has just been blocked indefinitely for blowing his second chance from Thue. Thanks anyway. Rje 20:20, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)
Hi Tim - I'm going to ask the same thing, about User:NoPuzzleStranger and User:Starky. Could you check please? Thanks. Grutness|hello? Missing image
Grutness.jpg
00:01, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
wikipedia:WikiProject Chemicals
Hi Tim, I was so free as to move your name under participation from an action list for work on improving chemicals articles to the now active Chemicals Wikiproject, one of the Chemistry wikiprojects. That old action list is now much updated, and being worked on, so it don't hold participants names any more. Gladly I invite you to further participate on the work. If this name move is incorrect, my apologies, and feel free to delete you from that wikiproject. Wim van Dorst 08:27, 2005 Apr 13 (UTC).
Yet more sockpuppets
Hi there! Sorry to bother you, but would you please consider running a sockpuppet check on a number of now-blocked vandals? All of these, by their editing style, show intimate knowledge of 'pedia proceedings, and are therefore very likely alternate accounts of other users. I believe someone should warn those other users not to do this again.
- User:School deletionist and User:Navid (only edits are spurious VfD nominations, apparently to make a WP:POINT)
- User:GRuder and User:G Rider (both impersonators of legit User:GRider)
- User:Alkivar's_boyfriend (personal attack vs. legit User:Alkivar)
I hope this is not inappropriate. Thanks for your time, Radiant_* 12:00, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)
Thank you...
for pointing me in the right direction in regards to Russell Tribunal. If there is anything I can do for you to help out in the future, please let me know. KC9CQJ 07:40, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Information Request
Gadfium recommended that I contact you regarding a certain user. Last month I had a vandal who decided to play around with my User page. I think this user has come back, this time misappropriating a name that I use for several e-mail accounts as his user name (User:CDThieme) and in effort to establish guilt by association, focuses on editing articles on homosexual topics. I was wondering if you could find out whether this user (who has been making edits only since I have started an extended business trip and have had infrequent access to the internet) is the same individual who was the anonymous vandal from last month. Unfortunately, the vandal used a dynamic IP address that traced back to a server in Chicago that almost everyone uses, but it would at least be an indicator of probability. I have my suspicions on who this individual is in real life. The IPs from which the vandal did his work are: 4.143.107.116, 4.143.110.40, 4.143.98.30. I thank you in advance for your time and efforts in this matter. —ExplorerCDT 23:36, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
- Another IP to add to that list...4.188.213.145. Again, thanks in advance. —ExplorerCDT 22:28, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
User:¸
(contribs (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=%B8) sample diff (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jord&diff=12579574&oldid=12579223)) This is a vandal who has been impersonating me. If possible I would like to know who he actually is, as it is obviously a new account of an existing user. Thanks, Radiant_* 07:10, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)
- This is User:Himself!, User:Deletionism is Vandalism, User:Boox and User:195.188.152.10 -- Tim Starling 07:31, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)
Signature bugs
You said - "Relying on obscure bugs in the parser to render your signatures is a great way to piss off developers. Please stop it."
Can you take a look at Bugzilla:1491, and reopen it? The ability to specify a transcluded page in the raw signature block is a Bad Thing. Think of all those DB links that are needed, or page caches which are flushed each time someone decides their signature is not fancy enough. I'd like to see any curly braces get dropped from signatures when they are rendered, so transclusion isn't so easily done, especially now with so many people using {{User:Username/sig}} along with the raw signature option. -- Netoholic @ 21:10, 2005 Apr 28 (UTC)
Happy Birthday!
Happy Birthday. :) Angela. 09:26, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)
Gabe-birthday-part.jpg
Wikipedia is Communism
Tim,
Re the redirect of the UK W i C page to United Kingdom. Is that not potentially problematic? That page will show up in google searches. A better solution IMHO is either to delete the pages entirely so that they can't show up, or redirect all these pages to a special page on vandalism, telling the user who stumbles across them that they are vandalism and not representative of wikipedia, with attached to the message a real list of links to wikipedia, to allow someone who stumbles on them to discover the real wikipedia. Then each of these vandalism pages could be permanently locked, meaning that the SOB creating these pages cannot enter them to do anything with them, and cannot recreate them as they already exist. So every time this idiot creates a new page, all he actually creates is a new set of links to the one vandalism with links page, and as each page is locked he can never access them, or re-use their names again. If everything he touches is redirected to the one vandalism page, and permanently locked so that he then can never access again, he might eventually get tired of being 'checked' at every move and go away.
I think it would be a better solution than linking his nutty names to real articles, because it would avoid a new user stumbling on nutty names to real articles and thinking that strange names to real articles was someone normal on wikipedia.
Just a suggestion, FearÉIREANN
\(talk) 04:54, 6 May 2005 (UTC)
- It was only ever going to be there for a few minutes. When someone moves a page with a large history with lots of links to it, it makes the slave servers lag. Moving it back just doubles the problem. I was trying to do a cut and paste move, which is the best response in this scenario. At the same time, I was busy taking system administration measures to mitigate the problem. -- Tim Starling 06:02, May 6, 2005 (UTC)
Edit alerts based on content
Please could you cast your eye over Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Edit Alerts Based on Content and give your opinion if it is technically possible in (a) the way were thinking or if not (b) some other way.
Cheers, Thryduulf 23:11, 6 May 2005 (UTC)
wikisource subdomains
Hello Tim,
We are beginning to organize things for the creation of subdomains to wikisource.org. I would like to draw your attention on a problem specific to this project. In wikisource, in order to tell if a 500-page book has been vandalised, our only method is to check its history. Therefore we need to preserve histories when moving texts to a new subdomain. In order to do that, you might remember that I asked you if it would be possible to create subdomains that are initialized with a copy of the whole database. The idea is to then delete pages that should not belong to the created subdomain.
In order to minimize the amount of work, I proposed a method. Could you please take a look at it: http://wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource_talk:Language_domain_requests#A_proposal_for_moving_pages
I would like to know if such a process would pose any technical problem.
thanks
ThomasV 23:31, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
Preview text
Hi Tim. I understand that MediaWiki 1.5 is due for release fairly soon. Further to a discussion on the village pump, may I suggest that the piece of coding that sends
<<p><center><font color="#cc0000"><strong>Note:</strong> Remember that this is only a preview, and has not yet been saved!</font></center></p>
be changed to
<div id="previewtext" text-align:center;"><strong>Note:</strong> Remember that this is only a preview, and has not yet been saved!</div>
along with adding
.previewtext {color:#cc0000;}
to the MonoBook skin. This would allow users to customise this bit of design. In addition, it would get the code up to W3C standard! I hope you were the right person to come to... Cheers, Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 15:49, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
Wikisource:Thanks and apology
Hi Tim!
As you know already, it looks like the language issues at Wikisource are finally over for good. Since it is all over now, I decided I should apologize to two people whom I am well aware that I bothered a lot (too much) while it was going on, namely you and Angela.
I do appreciate your help at the time setting up the Hebrew Wikisource, and I'm sorry things got so totally messed up when the issue of other domains took off. I'm well aware that it was partially my own fault.
I am aware that ThomasV has been in contact with you about technical issues for the near future, and I hope you will enjoy working together on it! I hope you can arive at good solutions for some of the short-term problems that lie ahead. ThomasV is a fantastic Wikisource contributor: Intelligent, polite, and with a lot of hard work on an extraordinary number of really good contributions.
Good luck! Dovi 12:54, May 16, 2005 (UTC)
- Dovi: thanks for the recommendation. :-)
- Tim: I know it will take some of your time, but I believe en.wikisource.org should be setup soon. The reason is that there is a lot of enthusiasm on wikisource following the vote, with many contributors willing to participate in the "moving pages" process. This process will take some work, and I believe it would be great to use this enthusiasm before it vanishes... Following the recent discussions on wikisource, I request the creation of en.wikisource.org, with an initial database that is a copy of the current wikisource database. Other subdomains will not be requested before a few weeks.
- Please let me know if I should put my request on meta, or if I should ask somebody else if you are too busy.
- Thank you. ThomasV 13:17, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
- ok, following the discussion on IRC, I think we should wait. ThomasV 15:23, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
Your statification tool
Tim, this query (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Help_desk&diff=13856439&oldid=13855197) on WP:HD reminded me that you were working on a tool to make static versions of mediawiki wikis. Given the conspicuously worthy nature of this particular person's query, I wonder whether you may have some additional information on it that you might like to add to my answer there. Thanks. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 23:27, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
Problems with SORBS DNSBL
I put this request on your page since you seem related to that bot. I believe that using the SORBS list for blocking users is a big mistake. Many dynamic IP addresses are marked as spammers, and even more are marked as open proxies. At the very least, enhance the "User is Blocked" page to include a reasonable appeal page. On a personal angle, I was blocked for the past few days, since my new ISP-provided permanent address was marked as an "open proxy". I think that the spammer identification services of SORBS are decieving and have low quality, and I urge you and the Wikipedia staff to stop using them.
-- lightstep (I'm not a user on en:)
- Dynamic IP addresses are in the dul.dnsbl.sorbs.net zone. These addresses are often blocked from connecting directly to external SMTP servers, and rightly so. Dial-up users should use their ISP's SMTP server. However it's beside the point, since we don't block that zone, we only block http.dnsbl.sorbs.net. The SORBS HTTP proxy list seems to be the most accurate and comprehensive of any we've tried. They also have a system for retesting. If you recently acquired an IP address which is blocked, I suggest you request a retest by following the instructions at http://www.us.sorbs.net/faq/retest.shtml . The "user is blocked" page is not my responsibility, ask a sysop to change MediaWiki:Blockedtext. -- Tim Starling 09:33, May 24, 2005 (UTC)
Blocklist
Hi Tim, it seems I´m on your bots blocklist and therefore couldn´t create an account at Wikimedia-Commons:
Your IP address is listed as an open proxy in the SORBS (http://www.sorbs.net) DNSBL. You cannot create an account.
What can I do? I´m a registered user at de.Wikipedia and en:Wikipedia. Jesusfreund 09:14, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
- What is your IP address? -- Tim Starling 09:33, May 24, 2005 (UTC)
Range block question
Hey, if you get a chance, look for me on IRC over the next few days, I have a complicated question for you. ;) --Dante Alighieri | Talk 18:36, May 24, 2005 (UTC)
stolen username
wikiquote:User:Netoholic was recently registered by a vandal. Can you please scramble the current password, and assign to that account the same email address as what's on my en:wikipedia account? I'll then just use the forgotten password mechanism to get into it. Thanks. -- Netoholic @ 22:24, 2005 May 25 (UTC)
- Done -- Tim Starling 05:24, May 26, 2005 (UTC)
RE:HTML comments
Okay, thanks for the heads-up. I wasn't aware that using comments was frowned upon, and the occassion to which you refer is only the second time I have used them. Why is it that they are disapproved of? I do usually excise text to the associated talk page - but after seeing others use the HTML technique, I assumed it was acceptable.--Cyberjunkie 03:20, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Sock puppet/Proposal
Hi there! There has been some recent discussion on whether people should be held accountable for the actions of their socks (i.e. if someone creates a vandalist sock, the sock is quickly blocked, but should the original user be admonished?). I've put up such a proposal for public discussion at this page, and got quite a lot of supporting comments (in fact, the only opposition seems to be from people who think it's a good idea but redundant with existing policy). Since you're one of the main sockcheckers on the 'pedia I'll leave further decision up to you, but consensus seems to be that you're well within your right to seek out the main account of an abusive sockpuppet, if needed, and deal with that person accordingly. Yours, Radiant_* 11:20, May 30, 2005 (UTC)
raw MD5 cracker
A nice dictionary cracker is John the Ripper. It does not accept raw MD5 itself (at least last time I looked), but there are patches to add it. You can run it on the sockpuppeters' passwords to look for trivial ones. That should reveal if it is possible for some to be legitimate accounts (in which case I would notify them to use a stronger password of course)
HELP!
Hi Tim, how are you? I became an administrator on May 31, 2005, however my user page does not contain the administrator buttons. It looks exactly as before. I wrote to Cecropia about the problem and everything in the Bureaucrat Log seems fine but the problem still persists. Cecropia recomended that I write to you because you might be able to look into the database and find out what the problem is. I would like to mention that my son User:AntonioMartin has been an administrator for a couple of years. Once, when I first started, I was blocked and his account also appeared blocked. Maybe there is a relation with his account and my problem. He also has his own screen name in my AOL. account. Please try to help me, I would like to see those "buttons" on my page. Take care and have a nice day. Marine 69-71 18:42, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
- I tried logging in as you and everything appeared normal. You're using the "standard" (i.e. old) skin, there's a delete link and a protect link in your sidebar, block links in RC and rollback links on diffs. If you're looking for tabs at the top, they're not there because that's a feature of the monobook skin. -- Tim Starling 15:58, Jun 12, 2005 (UTC)
Atoms
I admit to my ingnorance in this field (Super-heavy atom and difference between nuclear and atom physics). Tnx for fixing this category, however, I think that my adding a (close, after all) category in good faith to uncategorised article shouldn't be condemned. This is wiki - I add a category, somebody more knowledgable fixes it. If you go condemning everybody who added a wrong category - or wrong piece of info - to an article, you are sure to scare away a lot of new contributors, at least. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 11:24, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)
CheckUser
Hi Tim Starling,
I'm one of the sysops at WP:PT and we been suspecting of 6 sucket puppets accounts that have been used to start small problems in discussions and polls and small personal attacks against other sysops.
Well, what I would like to ask is if you could "run" CheckUser on those users.
Thanks, Get It 02:43, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
- If possible, the users would be: Glum, Manoel Rodrigues Júnior, Flipperpaulista, FML, 200.232.195.128 and 200.218.180.151.
- Thanks, Get It 03:01, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Discovery of Australia
I'm disappointed that you give encouragement to this nonsense about the Portuguese discovering Australia. There is not a shred of evidence that Mendonca or anyone else saw Australia before Jansz in 1606. Adam 01:17, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
- What, by reordering the paragraphs and re-adding the original section introduction? I certainly don't support it, but I don't intend on getting involved with the argument besides correcting the editorial mistakes of both sides. -- Tim Starling 01:23, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)