User talk:Sceptre/Archive 3

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
— Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

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Some handy links

I'm still around, pottering away, editing where I need to.

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Sceptre's talk page: Archive 3

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Soft redirect

Re: Eric Bauman, what is a "soft redirect"? Joyous | Talk 18:25, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See Soft Redirect. I made it into one to make the page look better Sceptr e ^(Talk) 18:27, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

But Wikipedia:Soft Redirect says that they're to be used to link an article to spaces outside Wikipedia. The link at Eric Bauman isn't outside Wikipedia space. Joyous | Talk 19:11, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Give me some license to make Wikipedia more aesthetically pleasing, please Sceptr e ^(Talk) 19:15, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

re: Vandalism Watch

Good evening. This afternoon, you made a "popups-assisted reversion" of vandalism to Gun politics. Unfortunately, the vandal had made two edits to the article in question. Your popup only pushed the version back by one. That left some of the vandalism still in place. I've cleaned up that article but thought you would want to know that the popup may not have worked the way you intended. Thanks. Rossami (talk) 00:14, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, thanks for telling me Sceptr e ^(Talk) 10:44, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Quit that

Please pay better attention to what your robot does. Deleting ones own talk page is standard when leaving WP. --Fenice 18:12, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a bot, i just saw it in Recent Changes. State you are leavingnext time >_> 18:19, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Inquiry

On my Arbcom voting page, you opposed my candidacy with the comment "due to recent Userbox controversy". Could you please explain what about that controversy moved you to oppose? Kelly Martin (talk) 18:24, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the deletion of Template:User AmE-0 was rather annoying, but it was the deletion out of process. It would've been nicer to put them up on TfD Sceptr e ^(Talk) 18:26, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

So you feel that one deletion, supposedly out of process, is grounds for opposition? Are you aware that I believe that that template violated WP:CIVIL (in that it is insulting toward those who speak American English) and that it is arguably deletable for that reason? I'm trying to understand why so many people are so virulently opposed to my candidacy, and from what I'm finding there is a great deal of misinformation about what I did and did not do. Kelly Martin (talk) 18:33, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe User-Ame-0 did, but I highly doubt that Template:User AI did. I believe you put that down to the image, didn't you? I'll change the vote to an abstention if you wish (so that's one less oppose) Sceptr e ^(Talk) 18:38, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Template:User AI was indeed due to two reasons: one, it indicated support for a political, religious, or ideological position (violating WP:NOT) and had what apepared to be a non-free image. I will grant that I may have been mistaken on the non-free image issue and that there is dispute over whether supporting political, religious, or ideological positions violations WP:NOT, but I still think that that Wikipedia would be better of without that userbox. I'm not writing you specifically to ask you to change your vote (although I certainly will not object if you do), since the chances of my candidacy succeeding are somewhere between slim and none anyway (especially with the active campaigning against me by userbox aficiandos; I've already run across their boilerplate calling for oppose votes on several people's talk pages), but more because I want to understand why people who either gave what are "soft" reasons for opposition or whose opinions I have generally come to trust are opposing me. I will still be an admin after this election, and a former Arbitrator (which is a position of some significant influence; former Arbitrators are nonvoting members of the Committee), and I would like to better understand the community as it stands today, as it is apparent that I have lost touch with where the community has gone in the past several months. This is likely a side effect of being an Arbitrator, actually; you spend all your time dealing with trolls and troublemakers and don't get to deal with the nontrolls that are out there. So I'm trying to reacquaint myself with the more reasonable part of the community. I hope you don't mind being included in that category. Kelly Martin (talk) 23:53, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No qualms about being called reasonable whatsoever. Good luck next time Sceptr e ^(Talk) 23:58, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you

Francs2000's Bureaucratship

Thanks for your support on my request for bureaucratship.

The final outcome was (70/5/0), so I am now a bureaucrat. I seriously didn't expect so many good comments from everybody and I appreciated the constructive criticism from those that gave it. If you have any queries, suggestions or problems with any of my actions as a bureaucrat then please leave me a note. -- Francs 2000

22:09, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

WMC's RFA

Just wanted to let you know that you forgot to sign. Guettarda 22:58, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Qwertysoup

Hi there Sceptre, Im Moe Epsilon. I would like for you to join in of the conversation about the above user at Wikipedia talk:Are You a Wikipediholic Test about his possible fake score on the test. I contacted you because you were one of the top scorers on the test, so you could probably tell if the score is fake or not. We would appriciate your input. — Moe ε 21:05, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My RFA

I have enabled my email, as per the requests at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Crotalus horridus. Crotalus horridus (TALK • CONTRIBS) 01:30, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

School ip

Hi Sceptre, just thought i'd say that I hope my 36 hour block of your school's IP won't affect you (much). Take care, dude! SoLando (Talk) 12:47, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, not at all Sceptr e ^(Talk) 15:29, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Teenage wikipedians

Hey there! I just noticed that there is a teenage wikipedians category. I thought you might want to put your name on the list. The template for you to put on your userpage is [[Category:Teenage Wikipedians|Your name]] :) --Ali K 14:33, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Your RfA

Fair enough. i hope to find my misgivings completely unjustified. if you are promoted and want any advice I'll be glad to provide the best I can. DES ^(talk) 22:29, 12 January 2006 (UTC) (Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DESiegel")[reply]

Congratulations!

Congratulations! It's my pleasure to let you know that, consensus being reached, you are now an administrator. You should read the relevant policies and other pages linked to from the administrators' reading list before carrying out tasks like deletion, protection, banning users, and editing protected pages such as the Main Page. Most of what you do is easily reversible by other sysops, apart from page history merges and image deletion, so please be especially careful with those. You might find the new administrators' how-to guide helpful. Cheers! -- Francs 2000 22:45, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My RfA

Sceptre, thank you very much for supporting me during my recent RfA campaign! Thanks to you, I am now an admin. Please drop by if you need anything - I'll be glad to help you. Once again, thanks! --M @t hwiz 2020 22:55, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Congrats!

You deserve it, I wouldn't have supported you otherwise. Use the mop with pride, congratulations! -- §Hurricane ERIC § archive -- my dropsonde 23:04, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Congratulations Sceptre! You deserve it. --a.n.o.n.y.m ^t 23:15, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Concur, absolutely! Gratz and stuffies! KillerChihuahua^?!? 23:41, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Congratulations, and you're quite welcome! --King of All the Franks 23:52, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No problem...congrats. PJM 03:41, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

AfD Deletions

Hi, second congrats on reaching adminship, and I notice you've started deleting articles that have been through AfD already! You fast mover!

Something that I have found from experience that works well, is when you delete an article that has been through AfD, link to the discussion in the deletion summary: that way if the deletion is disputed, it is easy to link to it from the deleted edit history of the article.

This is by no means a rule, and you haven't done anything wrong. It's just something that I have found helpful. Good luck with it! -- Francs 2000 00:06, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Huh, I was here to ask you the same favour. It helps because articles often are subject to more than one debate, and it can be hard to guess that otherwise. If you like, there's some javascript that adds a button to the deletion screen that will add the wikilink with one clikc. -Splash^talk 00:37, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/"oceanic flight 815"

Hi, and congrats on your adminship (even though I opposed).

You closed the afd in the subject header but seem to have forgotten to remove the notice on the article or leave a note on the article's talk page about it. - Bobet 01:14, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I did this for you since you seem to have gone for the day. I assume you meant 'move to Oceanic flight 815' in the closing statement since the page was moved there during the afd discussion? - Bobet 01:22, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

RfA thanks from rogerd

File:Baseball (ball) closeup.jpg

Hi Sceptre- Thanks for your support on my RfA. If I can be of any service please leave me a message --rogerd 01:42, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My late congrats

Congrats on your new tools, and happy editing! KnowledgeOf Self | talk 03:38, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:217.33.207.195

Umm... It appears that school had not quite closed. If the block on the IP is causing you any distress, just unblock it again, I won't complain. Sjakkalle (Check!) 15:49, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

School offically closes at 3:25, but some people use the computers after school (like me) Sceptr e ^(Talk) 15:52, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You might be interested in Wikipedia:Blocking policy proposal. Sjakkalle (Check!) 16:09, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Children of the Grave

Hi, I noticed you removed the {{db-move|}} tag from Children of the Grave (COTG). You stated in your edit summary "I'm not sure...".

I wanted to have the COTG article deleted because as it is, it's just a redirect to the album it appears on. There exists a proper article about the song at Children of the Grave (song) (COTGsong), and I attempted to move it to COTG, but the software doesn't allow moves where a page already exists. I could just cut and paste the contents of COTGsong to COTG, but that would erase the edit history.

The reason the article belongs at COTG is that there is no need for disambiguation; adding the suffix (song) or (album) or (computer game) etc is only done when there exists another possible definition for the title. I hope this clears it up. --Qirex 10:59, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Deleted the redirect, moved CotG over it. Sceptr e ^(Talk) 11:05, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hey thanks for doing that so quickly! Here's a flower :) --Qirex 11:10, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No problem. Sceptr e ^(Talk) 11:11, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Felbeast

Why is felbeast banned?None of my edits were vandalism. I was not even given a fair warning. User 69.236.222.13 kept harassing me and reverting my edits. I attacked his talk page for this.

Unblock me Felbeast2 13:13, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Youngest admin- you no more

You say on your user page that you're the youngest admin to be promoted at an (sic) age of 14 years, 10 months, and 9 days. Sorry to burst your bubble, but I think I now take up the mantle of the youngest admin. I became an admin on 3 December at the age of 14 years, 1 month and 19 days. <insert gloating comment her>!!--May the Force be with you! Shreshth91($ |-| r 3 $ |-| t |-|) 13:18, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I thought I was. Sorry!

I know a fellow Wikipedia who became an admin at age 13 years, 5 months, and 23 days. He was too shy, though, to post this himself since he didn't want others to know his real age. --M @th wiz 2020 23:13, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Your overboard reversions at Pink_Floyd_trivia

You reverted my 3 edits en masse. But my two first edits were genuine and clearly documented updates to the page. Only the 3rd one was an erroneous one.

The 3rd "edit", that prompted your reversion, is a bug of one sort or another: I am in the middle of alphabetizing the list (I'm still on it in another window, at the Show Preview stage) and apparently a corrupted version of the section I'm still editing has also been posted to the article (I don't understand it either, maybe another IE bug with the DEL key that sometimes acts as ENTER). You can see in the diff of that buggy "3rd edit" that the list was being alphabetized.

But you have reversed all three edits. You should have first looked at the history and seen the two first one were genuine. (Please also note that reverting a page and passing it off as "minor update" is an abuse of the minor flag.)

I'm going to revert the page to my 2nd edit (before the boo-boo), then finish off the alphabetization (hopefully sans bug this time).

62.147.113.126 14:36, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please use edit summaries for genuine edits, so we won't get confused. :) Sceptr e ^(Talk) 14:38, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

--

Sorry, but I did say: " my two first edits were genuine and clearly documented ", i.e. both did have an edit summary, and a rather longass one at that:

13:25, 14 January 2006 62.147.113.126 (Tributes - deleting blatant spam paragraph (unsigned internet remix band, not notable enough to be moved to remixes subsection) + adding "notable" in headers)
13:06, 14 January 2006 62.147.113.126 (no content change, TOC shortening/restruct: "Pink Floyd references" header, "TV shows references" + "Other references" subheaders, no third-level headers (bold title instead) & etc.)

All my (genuine, non-buggy) edits always have had a summary. But you had to look at the history before reverting to see them...

On a related but more interesting topic, I've found a bug in the MediaWiki, that explains the trouble with my 3rd "edit" -- and there's a real simple and classic software solution, too. I've thought about my sequence of actions during this 3rd edit, and here's how the bug can be recreated, and why it's actually a MediaWiki bug:

I started editing a section of the page.
At some point I wanted to "Show Preview". Obviously, I somehow clicked the "Save Page" button instead, unknowingly -- classic error.
However, right after clicking the button, I saw a typo in the (still displayed) edit window: so I had the reflex to immediately hit the ESC key (shortcut for the browser's Stop icon) in order to cancel the operation and edit a bit more.
But at this point, the browser had already started to POST the *first half* of the edit field's content, before it cancelled the sending operation (abruptly resetting the HTTP connexion).

This explains why you saw an apparently vandalized page, one that was missing the bottom half of the section's previous content: only the first half of my new version was posted, thus the "corrupted edit".

But the real bug is: MediaWiki should NEVER have accepted to commit to the database a half-sent contribution, whose POST operation was aborted and never completed, and thus whose integrity was undefined. Now, one really simple and reliable software solution is:

In the HTML code for the edit form, to add just before its ending </FORM>, a hidden field with a static "magic value", such as:
<INPUT TYPE="HIDDEN" NAME="EndOfForm" VALUE="Commit"></FORM>
In the PHP code for "/w/index.php" that receives and processes our edits, to accept as a valid edit only an edit that did send the "EndOfForm" field and with the exact magic value "Commit".

The logic is of course that if/when the sending of the form is aborted by any mean before its full completion, then the server will never receive the last field, or its complete value (worst case scenario it would receive a partial "EndofForm=Commi"), and it should react by not writing to the database. Conversely, if the server did receive the exact "EndOfForm=Commit" parameter, then it can be sure to have received 100% of the data that was all before that, and it can safely commit it to the database.

Since I saw you're an admin, hope you can forward this to the relevant authorities.

62.147.113.126 15:57, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Take it to the MediaWiki Bugzilla, they might do something about it Sceptr e ^(Talk) 15:59, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Deleting user comments

I came across your deletion of several comments by an anonymous user on his own talk page. Can you explain to me why you deleted those comments? I don't see any justification for doing so in this case. It's his talk page; he can say (almost) whatever he wants there. | Klaw ¡digame! 14:48, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I felt he was overusing that excuse. Restore it, if needs be Sceptr e ^(Talk) 14:50, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My new look userpage

Feel free :) Fir e Fox 20:44, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Small error in my RfA

Thanks for nominating me to be an administrator, but I think that the ending date you set here is incorrect. --NaconKantari 20:57, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Never mind, it looks fixed now. Thanks, --NaconKantari 21:18, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for nominating and supporting me, but as I can already tell from the RfA, one month is not enough experience to become a sysop. I'll try again in a few months. --NaconKantari 21:43, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Withdraw, I'll renominate you in March Sceptr e ^(Talk) 21:45, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My RfA

I don't have a fancy layout like other new admins, but I just want to thank you for your support at my RfA. It passed 48/3/1, so I have officially been promoted. I hope I won't let you down. If I'm not doing something properly, please tell me. Aecis ^{Mr. Mojo} ^risin' 21:06, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Adolf Hitler

No problems, but I really didn't mean to revert over the top of you. You must have just got to it quicker! Sarah Ewart 11:38, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Block of User:172.175.63.85

I notice you indefinitely block this IP, we don't normally indefinitely block IP's unless they are open proxies, additionally that IP is in the range for AOL proxies, so I've reduced the block to 15 minutes. Thanks --pgk^(talk) 19:35, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but that vandal is a royal asshole Sceptr e ^(Talk) 19:36, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes I know. --pgk^(talk) 19:42, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Though looking closer it is a bit odd, that address has only made two (anonymous) edits most AOLs have loads. It definitely reverse lookups to AOL. --pgk^(talk) 19:55, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

KC

Welcome to the Kindness Campaign! I must say, this is the most attractive userpage I've ever seen. Bar none. -LambaJan 23:33, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Lowtax vs Ebaum

If you had read the text on [[Image:Ebaum vs SA.gif]] more carefully, you would have realized that it was a parody of the MSN 404 page.

The original image is copyright of Something Awful LLC, which granted permission for it to be used. The modified version - well, Eric Bauman has stated that images online are public domain. DS 22:49, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Damn, that sounds harsh. It's not supposed to. DS 22:50, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Barnstar!

— FireFox • T • 11:47, 24 January 2006

RfA Thanks

Please accept my embarrassingly belated thank you for supporting my RfA, which much to my surprise passed 102/1/1, earning me minor notoriety. I am grateful for all the supportive comments, and have already started doing the things people wanted me to be able to do. And hopefully nothing else... Just zis Guy, you know? ^[T]/_[C]

AfD? 12:13, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Teenage wikipedians

You should add your name under [[Category:Teenage Wikipedians]] :)--Ali K 05:21, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My edit was not vandalism, please be more careful.

You reverted this change that I did (mentioning something I'd just heard on the TV news), as part of an edit that you labelled "revert vandalism". I assume you were targetting the unsourced image that another user added at the same time.

If so, please be more careful when reverting content that you consider vandalism, and check afterwards that only the content you intended to remove was removed.

Thanks. I've reinserted and reworked the comment in the "after big brother" section. Stoive 19:55, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

An Esperanzial note

As I remember, the last spam that was handed out was on the 20th of December last year, so I think it's time for another update. First and foremost, the new Advisory Council and Administrator General have been elected. They consist of myself as Admin General and FireFox, Titoxd, Flcelloguy and Karmafist as the Advisory Council. We as a group met formally for the first time on the 31st of Decembe. The minutes of this meeting can be found at WP:ESP/ACM. The next one is planned for tonight (Sunday 29 January) at 20:30 UTC and the agenda can be found at WP:ESP/ACM2.

In other news, Karmafist has set up a discussion about a new personal attack policy, which it can be found here. Other new pages include an introductory page on what to do when you sign up, So you've joined Esperanza... and a welcome template: {{EA-welcome}} (courtesy of Bratsche). Some of our old hands may like to make sure they do everything on the list as well ;) Additionally, the userpage award program proposal has become official is operational: see Wikipedia:Esperanza/User Page Award to nominate a userpage or volunteer as a judge. Also see the proposed programs page for many new proposals and old ones that need more discussion ;)

Other than that, I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and wish you an Esperanzially good new WikiYear :D Thank you! --Cel e stianpower ^háblame 16:57, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
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