User talk:Brooke Vibber

I am trying to do ten billion things at once right now. :( I'd appreciate it if people who have been asking me to do specific things (mostly translation updates, fixes, and other things for some of the other language wikis) could put it all in one place so I don't lose track. m:User:Brion VIBBER/Todo list would be a good place for this. --Brion 07:57, 7 Aug 2003 (UTC)

If you must leave a message here, please put it on the bottom so I can find it. Thanks.

Hi Brion,

I tried to download "wikipedia-phase3-fromcvs.tar.gz" from 'Wikipedia talk:Software Phase III' but the file not found.
Can you zip for it for me. I do a large project of Taxonomy and MediaWiki does a great job.

Thanks a lot.

Grab the mediawiki-20030829 package off http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/ It's a little outdated, though, use CVS if you dare! Mwoo-ha-haaaaa.... See also the new mediawiki-l mailing list, http://mail.wikipedia.org/

Hi Brion,

I am inquiring about a read-only mirror for the French language Wikipedia in Paris. How much network load does it use ? Do you have a MRTG page for Wikipedia ? You can also answer by mail at <yann (at) forget-me (dot) net>. Thanks, Yann 16:28, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I think I already answered by e-mail, but for others' sake: webalizer graphs at http://fr.wikipedia.org/stats/ etc.

I thought I should make sure my modem works and am connected now at some blazing speed of less than 56 kilobits per second. I'm seriously considering clawing my eyes out, but I don't think it would help. At least Wikipedia is slow anyway, so it doesn't make much difference here!

__________

Hi, again. In case you don't Watchlist Talk:Interstate highway, wanted you to have opportunity to consider checking my full edit beginning

Seeking further discussion of Interstates, including Route Nomenclature

The topics of nomenclature for both Interstates & state routes have been idle 14 months on thisTalk:Interstate highway page. Before editing here on the subject, if it has been continued or made a standard elsewhere, can anyone direct me where? ... --Jerzy

Hi Brion,

there's a case of interlanguage [vandalism/newbie experiment] going on. User:217.226.214.120 adds non-commented links to unilingual german sites to articles in non-german wikipedias, including EN, FR, ES and NL (and probably others). While I reverted his changes to these 4 wikipedias, I don't want to explore all wikipedias to find all his changes. Can you do something ? --FvdP 22:46, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)

What would I do that you and other capable Wikipedians haven't already done or won't already do when they find the material? --Brion 08:27, 29 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I expected you could do some SQL query to find an exhaustive list of edited articles. W.r.t. 217.226.214.120, he seems to have ceased adding these links so the question is now moot. --FvdP 01:40, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Hi. There seems to be some trouble on the #wikipedia IRC channel. I think you may have unintentially instructed your irc client to disregard all messages sent by me. I hope this issue will be resolved and I wish you the best. Sorry for the trouble. Alexandros 01:48, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Oh no, it was intentional. I got tired of the 'wikibot' stuff filling up my screen when I was trying to communicate with people productively about the server, nothing personal. --Brion 01:52, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

--- Hi Brion,

The operators in the hebrew wikipedia does not visit very often. I was wondering if you could add permissions to some active users so they can help in the managment of heberew version.

pending wikipedinas are listed here - http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%95%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%93%D7%99%D7%94:%D7%9E%D7%A4%D7%A2%D7%99%D7%9C_%D7%9E%D7%A2%D7%A8%D7%9B%D7%AA

10x.

Hi Brion, it seems your bug fix about the double articles did actually make things worse - today several pages were created which are in fact duplicate in the database, including some which are half included in the database. See Village pump. andy 16:21, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It didn't make things worse, it just didn't fix another bug. --Brion 19:51, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

BRIONNNNNNNN, HELLLLLLP

j'ai fait une boulette !!!!!

A la demande de Jeff, j'ai voulu merger l'historique de deux pages (Eubactérie et Eubactéries) et comme le merge ne marchait pas (un des deux historiques n apparaissait pas), j ai resupprimé la page. Maintenant, l'historique mineur apparait, mais le majeur .... ne marche plus du tout. Regarde http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eubact%E9rie

C'est affreux; il y avait un bel article la :-(((((

Donnes moi une bonne nouvelle ... sauve l'article, please.

Ta présence is an absolute requirement. Clearly. The bugs just bow in front of you, just as sea open in front of others. Amazing. Thanks :-)

btw Brion

could you fix the bug in the list of blocked users, that is responsible for the name of Papotages not to appear. Since the name does not appear, we cannot unblock or block him again. If you see the list of people agreeing and disagreeing with maintaining the block, I think you can conclude that it is not clear. However, Papotages has agreed to keep quiet, and has done so, so far. I think we should have the right to unblock a user if we decide to do so. Now we cannot; it is not correct; could you fix this please ? ant

Thanks

Cher Papo maintenant n'apparait plus. The next time he bugs the place, anyone is free to block him again. It is useless anyway, as he uses non fixed ips. I prefer we keep track of a name contributions, than of multiple ips contributions. While for a sysop, the job to block an ip or a name is the same. Bah ! This is so vain :-)

Merci pour avoir caché HasharBot, it was getting real bad. I switched to minor edits hidden :-)

Papotages is playing quietly on his unblocking page. Not peace really, but ... tolerable :-) ant

Brion, we have a potential identity usurpation case, Utilisateur:Pap'otages and Utilisateur:Papotages. The former is currently editing, while the latter edited sooner in the evening. Pap'otages says (well...) he is not Papotages. Is it possible that you infer or not ?

Second point, the top of my screen is displaying You have new messages all the time. Is it normal ? Ant

Wait no, that is the opposite...Utilisateur:Papotages is our Papotages and Utilisateur:Pap'otages is our usurper. Err... I think

Brion, do not be upset, please :-( we do not need that on top of this.

Sorry, just in a mood. Off doing other things... --Brion

ok. Peace and love Brion.

Brion, I want to apologise for my behaviour earlier. Listing you on problem users was immature and pointless. I can't believe I would spend so long arguing about a bunch of numbers and acting as though the existence of a web page with the title 03-08 was going to have some major influence on my life.

I have removed Ec from problem users too and shall, in future, try to find something more useful to do with my time. Like writing articles instead of deleting them maybe?

Sorry,
Angela.

Left China so soon?

Shizhao said he did an SQL search and found that you're no longer a developer at the Chinese Wikipedia. Is this a misunderstanding? Because you're obviously still responding to the cries for help from the Chinese WP (albeit sometimes it takes months.... ;-) How's that new laptop we donated, eh? *Joking!!* I understand that there are 20 WPs out there, so we'll all have to wait until Brion-clone machine is invented by scientists of Jupiter.) So, are you still a developer at the Chinese WP? --Menchi 06:51, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The 'developer' marker in the database isn't actually needed for anything I do; the SQL write capabilities have been removed as it's safer to only do that directly over a secure login shell. As a general security rule it's best to use lower privledges when you don't need higher ones, so I've been removing my 'developer' priveledge marker when I notice it's there but don't need it. I'm not leaving! :) --Brion 06:55, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Brion, there is a spanish speaker that is beginning an encyclopedia on meta. Could you see about that :-( Thanks Anthère

Wikipedia:Orphaned articles

Something went a little wrong in your Wikipedia:Orphaned articles update yesterday. Could you make the adjustments to fix it? thanks in advance, Kingturtle 22:46, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Nothings's wrong with it. That's not a "real" page, it's a cache page for Special:Lonelypages. --Brion 04:48, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Testing talk page notification

w/r/t stupid OGG: See my talk page. Short version: I'm an idiot. --ESP 03:52, 30 Nov 2003 (UTC)

What is wrong with allowing XxWikipedia links?

Things like de:blah, w:blah, and es:w:blah are not explicit when used on non-Wikipedia wikis and in fact should point to different language versions internal to those projects (not always to Wikipedia versions). But things like XxWikipedia, XxWiktionary, and XxWikiquote should always work the same way in every MediaWiki wiki and in fact should also be adopted by other wiki software as well (Wikibooks and Wikisource can be single wikis, however). Simply turning this function off does not help establish this convention and furthers the Wikipedia-centricism and chauvinism of the MediWiki software. --mav 23:27, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)

As I've said before many times: Functionality is far more important than any specific implementation. Since [[{ProjectName}:xx:Page name]]] would do the same thing as [[Xx{ProjectName}:Page name]] I do not have any objection to depreciating XxWikipedia syntax. Sorry for the fuss. --mav

Thanks for the quick reply, didn't realize the watchlist was an intentional thing, and noticed the other was fixed right after I hit "send".

Will we be getting the search function going then? *ducks* ;) - Hephaestos 14:22, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Hi Brion

We are tring to update the catalonian wikipedia, how can we do it?

http://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki.cgi?Plàcid_Pérez_Bru

Plàcid

Hi Brion twice,

for our part we can do the change to the new program as soon as possible, because every day is increasing the number of articles in the catalonian wikipedia, and I saw that can be a problem. We have not new 5000 pages each day, only a few more than 5,000 pages in whole. Plàcid

Great. I'll get it done tonight. New wiki in the morning! :) --Brion 00:12, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Hi Brion,

User User:Maveric149 responded on my User_talk:Sterlingda page regarding questions about the cost of servers and such at Wikipedia.

Could you take a peek and add any clarifications?

I would also like to know what your bandwidth is.

I found most other information I needed from other users and Wikipedia pages.

Please post reply to my User_talk:Sterlingda page.

Thanks

Sterlingda 07:51, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC) http://www.pureenergysystems.com

Hi,

The photos were taken by me (I've been long enough with Wikipedia to know the copyright rules). I thought that it was enough that I had checked the box while uploading the image. Do I need to give my full name and other details or is it enough if I just mention my user name? I was initially apprehensive about distributing it free under GDFL.. or whatever- I haven't read any of the technicalities, I just know that anyone can use it for free. Am I right? Now I have reduced the size of the images to 300 pixels as I read in someone's user page that such a size might not have much commercial application:-) BTW, I want to keep only the current versions of the images and want to delete all the previous versions. Could you do it please, or should I ask in the VfD KRS 10:52, 20 Dec 2003 (UTC)

While on the issue of copyrights, a page I had started much earlier when I was a newbie (and is still unmodified!)-Vaastu Shastra- forms a part of a published article of mine. I had got permission through mail from the publishers for featuring in another site on the internet a couple of years back and so I thought it was OK though I don't have the communication now (It didn't get published in the site though). I had forgotten about it till now. Should this page be deleted because I haven't specifically got permission for free distribution? If so, please delete it immediately. On the other hand, I could do some rewording, but then should the drawings (which were done by me) be deleted?KRS 19:22, 20 Dec 2003 (UTC)

On second thoughts, I don't think that deleting is required- the images feature generic drawings(subject matter is a professed ancient science) that will in content more or less look the same whoever draws it. Maybe, I can change the font or something? KRS 19:53, 20 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for your hard work

Brion,

I just wanted to say thanks for your hard work on MediaWiki. Having been an SE and a project manager, I know that the users are often unappreciative of the effort that can sometimes go into coding a "simple feature". I hope you have time (or take the time) to be with the people you love. If it is within your tradition to celebrate Christmas, please accept my sincere wishes that you are yours will have a good one. -Anthropos 08:17, 25 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Seconded (and great to have Wikipedia back on line).

Adrian Pingstone 19:51, 26 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Image linking

You suggested that

"...[there may be] some sort of local web proxy; some people use these to filter out advertisements or potentially offensive material. Sometimes these will filter out images that happen to fall in the "/upload/a/ad" subdirectory, for instance"

I am not familiar with an "/upload/a/ad" subdirectory. I am currently surfing from my father's PC. He does run "Pop-up Inspector" and "Ad Aware", along with his Norton Antivirus in the background. He may have a filter toggled that I am not aware of (and he may not remember either), however, this is the first time I have had any difficulty with images from websites.

Thank you for such a prompt reply to my original post. This is my first foray into Wikidom, and have just registered as a user. The question is, after three hours in this WikiWorld, can I persist as a user and avoid obsession?

Azwaldo 09:38, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

New messages tag

For awhile now, my "you have new messages" tag was staying until I edited my talk page, but there seems to be a new species of an old bug -- it started disappearing and reappearing as I uploaded different pages, then stopped after I edited my talk page. Thought you might like to know the bugs are evolving... And so are the trolls... Tuf-Kat 08:06, Jan 3, 2004 (UTC)

Hi,

I've built a bot for the hebrew wikipedia, whick run through all the dates pages (eg. January 1) and takes collect all the occasions that happend in a particular year. Before I'll start to run it I want to make sure that it does not couse too havey traffic on the server (the bot asks for 366 edit pages each time I want it to run upon particular year). can you give me guidlines about how often I can run the script so it won't hurt wikipedia's availbility?

update never mind, I'll download the sql dumps and scan them instead. it'll be much faster.

Thanks,

Costello

http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%A9%D7%99%D7%97%D7%AA_%D7%9E%D7%A9%D7%AA%D7%9E%D7%A9:Costello

Sorry about that. Thanks for unsubscribing me. Lets see, an anti-spam developer letting several mailing lists (or at least their admins) be spammed with bounce mesages... no, not good at all.:) Jamesday 23:56, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Hi Brion,

I am working on recently started Tamil Wikipedia, and have done considerable work on this. I feel, If I have adminship it will help to improve the Tamil wikipedia more efficiently. I tried through English wikipedia, there I was told that it was not the venue for my request. Tamil Wikipedia has no "request for Adminship" page. Could you please advise me on this. Mayooranathan 17:30, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)

imgs

Hi! Recently some images I have uploaded were dissapeared, obviously because of the HDD problems. Should I upload again? thnx Post reply at my talk Optim 13:26, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Edit bug

I don't seem to have encountered it today. RickK 02:26, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Animated gif

Hi Brion, I understand you're really busy, so only if you have some free time, I solicit your opinion as to whether my proposed animated gif is a good idea. You can see it on Talk:Central limit theorem. Cheers, Cyan 04:18, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments! -- Cyan 16:05, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Bureaucrat

Just tried to create us two new sysops... says I need to have bureaucrat status... don't I? --Dante Alighieri | Talk 08:01, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Copyright of images

We do accept any image which doesn't infringe copyright (and meets non-copryight criteria). However, we also note that we strongly prefer GFDL or at least comparably free and request clear captioning to indicate to others that we're looking for a better image. Essentially, priority 1 is a superb enclycopedia and we'll accept less than ideal images as part of the normal wiki process of getting to the perfectly free end point, with those ultimately replaced where that's practical. There's a relatively new tagging setup for this, which is probably still evolving, and will help us to identify the ones we're most interested in replacing. This tagging is particularly important for the jurisdictions which can't use fair use images and may need to exclude or re-vet them all. We're inevitably going to have to expand our use of tagging to help deal with issues in various jurisdictions, because at least some courts have ruled that a site in their language is clearly intended for their jurisdiction. Jamesday 13:54, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Any such tagging should exist solely for the purpose of marking images to be removed. --Brion 01:29, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Very nice tweak to the images! Wetman 01:34, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

British English Wikipaedia

I would like to start a British English edition of Wikipedia. How can I do that? Thank you. Answer me here (not at my talk) or e-mail me. Thanks! Optim 03:12, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Impractical to say the least; we'd have to start up American, Canadian, Irish, Australian, New Zealander, and various other English editions to be fair, wouldn't we? --Brion 03:45, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Actually we would, but I doubt other spellings apart from the American and the British will ever keep a community big enough to maintain the project. Anyway, do you think it would be possible to automate the "Britishisation" with some sort of software? Optim 03:51, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Ukrainian WikiPedia Admin Request

Hi, my name is yuri. I have added over 80 articles on the Ukrainian WikiPedia Page. Since there is no administrator found on the Ukrainian WikiPedia, I would like to request for the administrator account. I heard you have priviliges to create an admin account. Could you please help me with getting an account on the Ukrainian WikiPedia?

yuri_koval 04:47, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Re blocked user agents. I ran into the Mozilla 3.0 agent blocking today on the MediaWiki site. However, I did so whilst using both Mozilla 1.6 and Internet Explorer 6.0. It's clearly something more than blocking early versions of Netcape that is going on. As I remember it, the blocking kicked in when I tried to sign a post on MediaWiki, but I can't remember the exact circumstances unfortunately. Sorry I can't be more help. David Newton 06:17, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I may have phrased what I wrote badly. It's just that I ran into the agent blocking software earlier, and I then saw the Mozilla 3.0 post on the Wikitech-l archive. I don't know exactly what bought the bug up, but since it was extant in both IE and Mozilla, I have to conclude that it was something to do with the manner that I was trying to edit in.

I was in the middle of making new MediaWiki messages when it happened. I was trying to sign a post that I had made using the ~ method, and when I clicked on the save link, the blocked user agents message flashed up. I really can't be more specific than that, since I just can't remember. I'm sorry if this has wasted your time. David Newton 06:26, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Hello, the copyright of de:Bild:Hitler.jpg is not specified. Would be nice if you could do so, because in the German Wikipedia only GNU or public domain images are allowed, no fair use! Stern 12:27, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Map of the EU

Heya. It's been noted on Talk:European Union (and probably other places) that Image:Europeanunion-med.png will need to be updated for the 1st of May; the image description page says to contact you to ask for any alterations. I know it's a few months in advance, but we know you're terribly busy running pretty much everything, so... (Oh, BTW, as you can see, Fonzy has updated it slightly to remove the colouring from the Isle of Mann, a change that we would probably want to keep, if you can.)
MTIA,
James F. (talk) 04:03, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

You might also want to indicate that the 2007 date for the next enlargement is provisional. It's very likely to take place then but it's not definitively agreed. KevinC 11:39, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Dear Brion,
I would like to ask you for a short statement. Currently we have in the German Wikipedia a discussion going on about the use of the MediaWiki namespace for article content messages. While the English Wikipedia is recommending the use, people are argueing against it, that this is mixing up text elements, that were only meant for describing the software (e.g. the element "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.") with real content.
So my question is: How is your experience in using these article content messages? Do people really use this feature? And do you think that there should be better a strict seperation between software text and article text?
Thanks in advance for your help, Ralf

See Image talk:Balkans-political-map-small.png Optim 04:00, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC)

User:Wik claims his watchlist has over 10,000 entries. Wasn't there some limit placed on our watchlists in order to avoid some sort of problem? Mine was never more than a couple of hundred, but I went through the trouble of paring mine down to a few dozen... and I'm not thrilled that I did that seeing as how 10,000 entries is apparently not problematic. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 00:04, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

You can have as many watchlist entries as you like, there has never been and probably never will be any sort of hard limit. A large number will however usually load more slowly; on relatively large watchlists, Special:Watchlist uses a relatively short date cutoff to reduce the amount of work it needs to do, by only checking the last 12 hours' worth of edits. --Brion 05:06, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Optim

Hi Brion. My user account has Administrator and Bureaucrat access flags. I left the project, but I feel somewhat uncomfortable to leave an account with bureaucrat access inactive. If you think there is any possible security problem related to inactive admin accounts, please feel free to remove the Bureaucract and/or and the Sysop flags from my user account. Thanks and Best Wishes, Optim 19:49, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)