User talk:Enigmaman/Archives/2009/February

Progress report: Country outlines

Development has been slow but continuous:

Penubag has done a fantastic job on the images for the awards we'll be using for our project's collaborations and contests. We now have 3 awards: a medal, a trophy, and a race ribbon. They all look tight. The trophy needs a small adjustment, but other than that, all 3 award images are complete and ready to use to create awards with.

Spartaz has warned us of (threatened to take) G4 (speedy delete) action if we run a competition that resembles the previously deleted Awards Center page. So whatever we do, any contests we run must differ substantially from the methods used there.

One type of competition I've been exploring is edit racing. I'm in the process of working the bugs out of this concept - the first race didn't work as expected - you see, because we only had an award for first place, the opponent didn't think it worthwhile to continue once it was clear who the winner would be. And since editors are in different time zones and usually need to start the race at different times, we need to base winning on personal start times - he who completes his assigned edits in the least time (rather than first), wins. And last but not least is quality control. What good is winning if your edits are ripe with errors? So I'll be exploring possibilities such as using a referee (whoever is overseeing a particular race), having participants watching each other for errors to knock them back, etc. I'm not sure yet.

Rich Farmbrough has been applying his bot expertise to filling in blanks in the country outlines (the population and area entries). I'm amazed at the number of edits he pumps out each day on a myriad of projects - ours makes up but a small time slice of his activity, and yet he has saved us many hours of manual work. Perhaps we should look into how he gets so much done.  :)

Zlerman has chosen to work on one outline at a time, and is taking on Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. He also has been keen on noticing and reporting design issues pertaining to the whole set of country outlines. Keep up the good work!

Highfields has been filling in the names of capitals, and is our first race winner. Check out the award on his user pages.

As you probably know, this project has expanded to include working on any and all sets of pages that are linked to from the country outlines. Once the set of country outlines go live (in article space), traffic will likely increase for all the links included on them. The quality and usefulness of those pages will reflect heavily on the country outlines (the outlines, which are essentially lists of links, are only as good as the links they present), and therefore we've branched out to solve the biggest problems with those as well. So far, we've taken on:

• The creation of disambiguation pages for country adjectivals ("German", "French", "Taiwanese", etc. About half done.)
• The clean-up of the CIA World Factbook statistics on the "demographics of" country pages. We've been renaming those sections to provide a key string that AWB can use for targetting (for skipping and filtering). Once that's done, we'll be able to break the clean-up down into simple AWB search/replace tasks, because we'll be able to target just those pages that include the CIA stuff.
• Renaming the "Cuisine of" articles to their adjectival forms ("Chinese cuisine", "Italian cuisine", etc.)

Blackadam2 and Thehelpfulone have been helping out with the "demographics of" pages mentioned above.

And we have a couple speed addicts (addicted to wiki-velocity, not drugs)...

Both Robert Skyhawk and Thehelpfulone prefer (and excel at) simple AWB search/replaces. Robert hasn't actually joined our team yet, but he has been helping out quite a bit from the sidelines (via the WP:AWB/Tasks page. Unfortunately, there has recently been a non-AWB chore that has been holding things up on the AWB front - an edit to all the the headings which had to be reverted before too many new edits were made, because any new edits would make the reversion more difficult. The headings have been restored, so now the way is clear for AWB operations, and there are many search/replace tasks in the queue. AWB assignments have started again!

There's a similar bottleneck on the "Demographics of" pages (the "keying" mentioned above), but that's almost cleared too.  :)

With my internet access somewhat crippled, I've been finding it difficult to keep up with you guys. However, I expect to be accessing a Linky-capable workstation on a faster server (I'm on it right now, as you can probably tell from my contributions list for today), and so I should really pick up speed. Feels goooooood.  :)

Recruiting has been a bit slow (but steady), due in part to my crippled access, and because we've been waiting for the images for the awards to be completed. I expect the team to grow more rapidly as the bottlenecks are removed.

Well that's what's been happenin', and here's what's in the pipeline...

I'm about to begin work on a set of lists that corresponds to all the standard links on the country outlines, and these will be presented on the Topic outline of countries which will be organized exactly like the country outlines. Aside from being an extremely useful navigation aid, it will allow editors to easily see the state of country coverage on Wikipedia. I'll provide you with a link once I get up to speed on this.

In the meantime, keep up the good work!

Cheers,

The Transhumanist 05:53, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

P.S.: When you get back, drop me a note.

Glad to see you're back

By the way, are you approved to use WP:AWB, and do you have it installed?

And do you have Firefox, WP:LINKY, and WP:WikEd installed?

I've got some tasks for you to work on using these, if you are interested.

The Transhumanist 21:47, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

You're back

Damn there goes the property values, anyways welcome back---I'm Spartacus! ^{The artist formerly known as Balloonman} 22:39, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I agree that few things arouse more curiosity than enigmas. :) Enigma^msg 22:41, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Good to see you back. Oh, and thank you for looking at Icos; the peer review has died down, but I'm always up for improvements. By the way, I took you off of Highly Active Users when you went on break. Shubinator (talk) 02:53, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm glad you are back too!

Thanks, both. I won't add back to WP/HAU quite yet. Enigma^msg 17:36, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Sean Conover

Hey where'd you see he signed with the Jets? I believe you, just curious since I can't find it.►Chris Nelson^Holla! 05:40, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

[1] Enigma^msg 17:36, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Changes to SAC Sayings

Just wondering why you reverted my changes. I was stationed at Offutt 1988-1992, and heard that quote directly from a member of the 544 TMS and later, USSTRATCOMM J6 describing a common joke in his office at SAC. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.10.254.61 (talk) 01:18, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

You're right. I misunderstood what was being added. I restored it. Sorry about that. Enigma^msg 03:21, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks - it's all good. You a former SAC-trained killer too? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.10.254.61 (talk) 15:18, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Nope. I have no experience, so I defer to you there. I had that article on my watchlist from when I merged another article with it. I removed it from said watchlist, because it's not my area of expertise. Enigma^msg 18:36, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Hand of God Goal

The section on the Hand of God goal is certainly smaller than the previously existing article, though this is largely because the context to the goal is merged more widely into the match article e.g. the 'subsequent admission' section is largely in 'aftermath'. One of the reasons that I created the joint article was that the two articles on each goal repeated some of this context information; it seemed sloppy. The other info that I haven't transferred over was generally the unreferenced points, though I also excluded the In popular culture bit because those sections are generally ugly and pointless. I don't think I left anything else significant out? If I did it was oversight rather than anything deliberate. --Pretty Green (talk) 09:36, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NOTNOW says I have the right to run the full term. Syjytg (talk) 05:46, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you section

Thank you. I didn't know about that archive tag. —SlamDiego_←T 08:18, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Ralph Bakshi filmography

I've addressed the issues you have brought up, and the list should be ready for featured status. (Ibaranoff24 (talk) 00:47, 21 February 2009 (UTC))

See this

Haha! Everything a 'See Also' isn't supposed to be ;-) Scarian^{Call me Pat!} 08:10, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Re: OnlyOne

No. He's fine. He made a few mistakes back in 2008 but he knows how to use them. I went ahead and blocked without looking properly and then realised my mistake too late. Sigh... - Next time can you show me where they've been naughty recently? Scarian^{Call me Pat!} 07:23, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Okay man, got that one. Not a big deal on the OnlyOne. I just didn't wanna look like an ass ;-) - I'm way too important. Scarian^{Call me Pat!} 15:20, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

User:The elegant professor

I don't quite understand why you wave a big stick at this newbie, who surely is clueless rather than disruptive. I'm going to remove your warning from his page and add a welcome template instead. Bishonen | talk 10:11, 22 February 2009 (UTC).

Not true. Look at his edits to my talk page, which were lies and one of which appeared to contain a threat. Enigma^msg 14:17, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

I see no threat, has it been oversighted or something? And the user only just registered: I believe the two posts to your page are misunderstandings rather than lies. Even on the worst possible reading of them, it's pretty darn bitey to start with such an aggressive warning (and to urge Useight to block!), rather than cycling through the various levels. Let's drop the issue, shall we? I have no further comments. Bishonen | talk 14:51, 22 February 2009 (UTC).

Now he has requested a page be made, here. I'm not sure if he is notable enough, from what I can tell he has not played on a professional or Olympic level. But The elegant professor (who ironically, albeit unimportantly, has misspelled "candidate" twice) is back editing the article, so we might want to keep an eye on it. Useight (talk) 17:39, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Alan Keyes

Regarding your edit here, it was my impression that the source for this information (a blog post at latimes.com by LA Times correspondent Andrew Malcolm is permitted under Wikipedia:BLP#Reliable_sources: "Some newspapers host interactive columns that they call blogs, and these may be acceptable as sources so long as the writers are professionals and the blog is subject to the newspaper's full editorial control. Where a news organization publishes the opinions of a professional but claims no responsibility for the opinions, the writer of the cited piece should be attributed (e.g., "Jane Smith has suggested..."). " What's your view? Best,--Arxiloxos (talk) 00:08, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that LA Times blog and a youtube clip constitute reliable sources, especially for the information in question. Enigma^msg 00:15, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I understand this is your view, and I take your view very seriously, and would like to understand it better. Doesn't the reporter's blog post, on the website of the paper, qualify under the guideline quoted above? If you don't think so, please help me understand why. Do you think there that remains doubt that Keyes actually said the things that the reporter says that he said, or is there some other WP policy at stake here that I'm not focusing on? By the way, the same information is also reported--with a partial transcript of what Keyes said--on a similar blog post by a Chicago Tribune reporter here. Thanks for your help,--Arxiloxos (talk) 00:53, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

One would think that he must've said it for it to be so widely discussed, but I cannot find a single reliable source that mentions it. A google search reveals many blogs, but nothing that would normally be considered a reliable source. To say that a LA Times blog is a reliable source is really stretching it. Enigma^msg 04:47, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Re: UV genre troll page

Check this out. Scroll down to see the entire gallery and then check out his BlackMath userpage (spec. "...sign of weakness"). Sorta makes you want to give a notice for Myspacing. Check out this and then blackmath contribs going back to early Feb. Socking too? His contributions on Blackmath include vast amounts of genre trolling... I'll rv the ones that aren't fixes when I have a chance but wow... this guy is something. Any ideas on what to do with him? Scarian^{Call me Pat!} 08:21, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

He appears to have stopped editing for now, so we wait and see. Enigma^msg 02:25, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

'Cause I blocked him and then he apparently "left". I'm a big bad bogeyman. Scarian^{Call me Pat!} 05:24, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Gorilaz

I have talked it on the talk page.Besides you haven't provided any reliable sources for any of these genres.So how can you blame me for not having sources? ThanxSolino the Wolf (talk) 00:55, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Spoken like a true pov G warrior. His first block is the standard 24hrs. His next one will be much longer. The Real Libs-speak politely 01:15, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

The idea is that when you're adding new ones and others dispute it, you must provide sources. Sources other than Wikipedia mirrors. Enigma^msg 02:25, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

List of dinosaurs

Out of curiosity, based on you being the only non-anonymous editor in the last couple of years to want the Scrotum entry removed, are you the same as the anonymous editor who periodically removes it from List of dinosaurs? (if it's not the same person each time, then there are a couple dozen editors in the NYC area localized to Queens College who have something against one pre-Linnean botch but not another [Rutellum]) I'm not interested in making a big deal out of this, but if you are the editor, I'd appreciate it if you would bring up your concerns on the talk page instead. If not, I'm sorry for taking your time. J. Spencer (talk) 23:32, 24 February 2009 (UTC) revised 00:00, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Nope. I had forgotten about that page. Perhaps semi-protection would be warranted? Enigma^msg 00:25, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't think semi-protection is warranted, as it's usually infrequent, with maybe one such change a month. Sorry for bothering you about this! J. Spencer (talk) 01:09, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Rocket Shoe

I dont see how putting in the stuff about my boy is vandalism. Im not falsifying anything, its all true. The Rocket Shoe was our special teams Ace. We had one of our best seasons in school history while he was on the team. Dayne, Fletcher, Bollinger, Chambers and Bennet. We were unstoppable, he was even awarded with the Ray Guy award. You threaten me with blocks, I havent read the rules and terms but I can guarantee that that is against them.BadgerGrad2003 (talk) 04:35, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

The name would be Bennett and stop inserting it into the article, or you will be blocked. Enigma^msg 04:38, 25 February 2009 (UTC)