User talk:SVTCobra/2015-17 Archive

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Re mass extinction article

I'm actually not sure whether I could have rearranged the lede enough. But the sad fate of that article was that I didn't get to it in time — at that time in June we had more articles on the review queue than I could keep up with. Then, evidently, the semester ended at UoW, and suddenly we're in a dry spell. --Pi zero (talk) 22:51, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't know. Shit! Did we disappoint a bunch of journalism students at UoW? --SVTCobra 22:55, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

I did my best; I don't really have overall feedback, so I'm not sure (historically brianmc has communicated with Professor Blackall, rather than I). Around that time we were putting a good deal of effort particularly into a big OR piece that several UoW students had collaborated on, because brianmc was personally in the middle of the story so had a severe COI and couldn't possibly cover it himself. That got published two days later: this. --Pi zero (talk) 23:20, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

archiving

Just to note. The convention we've mostly followed for the past few years has been to leave ten articles unarchived, postponing archiving of the oldest as necessary for that, so as to keep a useful variety of samples of our work on the main page at any given time even when our output is slow. It's not a guideline, of course, let alone a policy, just a convention to help keep things sane. There's a note on it at WN:ARCHIVE#Age for Protection; and WN:ARCHIVE#To archive is set up with a horizontal line after the first ten articles listed, so that if there's nothing below that line, there aren't more than ten unarchived articles (it'd be even cooler to have it list only articles that are both old enough and in excess of 10, but so far we don't have a way to do that). --Pi zero (talk) 18:54, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Ah, OK. Sorry. Well, 2 were archived today. I don't think you want me to undo it. I will keep it in mind going forward. --SVTCobra 18:59, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

That's the spirit of the thing, yes. Not something to get excited about; quite the contrary. I used to worry, each time we had a slow-down, about where to put the archive cut-off. Then we settled on a number, not worrisomely small, not worrisomely big; and I stopped worrying (about that, anyway :-) --Pi zero (talk) 20:56, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

I have the itch to write some articles. Would you believe the Obama White House is crappier than the Bush White House? Well, at least the website. Bush's version was great for photos and quotes. With that material I could write articles that were actually different than the AP and Reuters versions. But ... I don't see it on Obama's whitehouse.gov

Cheers, --SVTCobra 21:42, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

((editing}}

I noticed when you put the {{editing}} tag on that article there was a typo, the opening braces were parentheses. --Pi zero (talk) 12:03, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

OK, thanks. --SVTCobra 12:07, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

:-)  --Pi zero (talk) 12:24, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Pi zero and my article

Could you or Pi please review my article or does it need more information? Maybe someone could add more? Thank you. --Softstarrs23 (talk) 14:04, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Dupdet tool

A tool I've been relying on heavily these days, when dealing with articles by newcomers (though I generally find it a bad investment of reviewer effort when reviewing work by experienced Wikinewsies), described/discussed/linked at WN:Tips on reviewing articles#Copyvio. --Pi zero (talk) 14:32, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Report: Vice-premier of North Korea executed

I'm guessing the {{editing}} tag was meant to come off when the article was submitted for review, and I plan to proceed accordingly. --Pi zero (talk) 17:53, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Yes, absolutely. I thought the javascript took care of that (I am almost certain it did on my last article). Anyway, thanks. --SVTCobra 17:56, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Automation

FYI. Afaict all the major automation on the site is now down. In particular, it appears (to me, anyway) that both the review gadget and make lead have stopped working. I've just published an article and updated leads by hand (which is a pain, though I expect it'll get a little easier with practice, this being only about the second or third time I've had to publish entirely manually). If it's actually working for you, that would be interesting. --Pi zero (talk) 19:50, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I saw both your and Jason's comments. And I saw your post for Bawolff. Does he still come around if we need him? I can't remember how many years it has been since I've seen an edit from him. August 10, the review tool was working for me. Today the submit for review worked, but that was hours ago. --SVTCobra 19:54, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

I've gotten the impression Bawolff has been expecting for some time that one of these days they'd do something he wouldn't be able to fix re the automation he wrote for us in days of yore. You can see he has been willing-and-able to do a little tinkering for us, still, in recent times; Special:Contributions/Bawolff.

The submit button is hardcoded into MediaWiki:Common.js, and is pretty straightforward stuff (it's actually the first thing I have in mind to replace with my dialog tools, ironically since it may be the only thing that doesn't strictly need replacing). --Pi zero (talk) 20:04, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Btw, the review gadget and make lead both worked for me yesterday (August 11). --Pi zero (talk) 20:08, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

You are probably also the only one active on this project that could make heads or tails out of those javascripts. --SVTCobra 20:18, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

I've the impression even bawolff finds some of his early js for wn scary.

But yes, I'm aware of being pretty much the active js expert on en.wn, relatively speaking. My goal with my dialog tools being, of course, to make it possible for a wiki's community to build its own interactive stuff using only wiki markup; when I realized javascript was going to have to be a key element of the enabling tools for that, I asked bawolff to suggest a good book on javascript. --Pi zero (talk) 20:34, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

I have left a message for Bawolff on his Wikipedia page. He seems more active there. --SVTCobra 21:26, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Only thing worse than spaghetti code, is spagetti code that you wrote yourself, as you have nobody else to blame. I'm still around occasionally, mostly active at mediawiki.org and a little at commons. Bawolff ☺☻ 04:56, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

• Two things I might mention re manual publication. Remember to create the opinions page, by clicking on the opinions tab which automatically provides the appropriate dweomer for LiquidThreads, which you then just save as-is. And, for some time now I've been fully move-protecting all articles once they're published, because we had a page-move vandal a while back who screwed with several published articles before I blocked him (and I understand that to be a kind of screwing with published articles that we want to be impossible). --Pi zero (talk) 03:17, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Ah, yes. the comments. I was even thinking about that, but didn't make any attempt. But speaking of page moving. There was a user that tried to changer user name by renaming her user page (incl talk). This created redirects. Since there's no "undo" for page moves, I deleted the redirect and then moved the so-called "new pages" back to their original name. And then I deleted those redirects. But even hours later, I would sometimes get "redirect to non-existing page" when trying to access the talk page. But then when I accessed it via edit history, it would show me the correct page. I don't know if I did something wrong, mayber I switched the order of deleting and renaming. In any event it was the author of Why nobody understands the war User:User:Jessicalynnora ... yes and now it is happening alls the time.--SVTCobra 03:39, 13 August 2015 (UTC)--SVTCobra 03:39, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

I think you may have renamed those pages as if the user name were User:Jessicalynnora (whose user talk page would be called "User talk:User:Jessicalynnora") instead of Jessicalynnora (whose user talk page would be called "User talk:Jessicalynnora"). I'm going to try to repair it on that premise. --Pi zero (talk) 03:55, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, that was probably it. Iirc, the renaming dialog used to just ask for the page name, and you'd specify the namespace as part of that, but then they changed it so now the namespace is selected separately from the text box. I'm guessing if you select userspace from the menu and also, at the same time, specify a User: prefix in the text box, the software stupidly renames to User:User:... instead of, say, asking whether you really wanted to do that. --Pi zero (talk) 04:05, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

MH370

This is Jason. Can't log in from my phone. I replied to your comment. See:http://www.haveeru.com.mv/news/61522 in the 6th or 7th paragraph. The quote was reported on a Malaysian government news channel. 2600:1006:B04B:F619:CB95:23E5:7BC:2CA1 (talk) 22:06, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

"We (Malaysia) have an understanding with the authorities there (the Maldives)...we think the parts which were found about a month ago were parts of the aircraft,” Kaprawi said. 2600:1006:B04B:F619:CB95:23E5:7BC:2CA1 (talk) 22:16, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Let's keep the chat to your talk page so we don't have to double post everything, ok? --SVTCobra 22:23, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Hello!

Hey! Seen you active after a long time. Happy to see you again!
Agastya Chandrakant ⚽️ 🏆 🎾 🎬 🎤 📰 05:18, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, but I just visit from time-to-time. Glad to see new faces here that pay attention. :D .... cheers and happy editing --SVTCobra 05:29, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Support numbers

This is a sprawling problem we've had lately, btw. Lots of accounts doing this same kind of spam. I asked for a checkuser, and Cspurrier said "They do seem to all be the same, but the ips are all over the place. It looks like they are using a large collection of compromised systems to edit. Other than adjust the abuse filter, it doesn't look like there is any thing we can do." So, Zombie hoard. For my part, I've been indefblocking them. --Pi zero (talk) 17:22, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

OK, this was the first time I saw it, so I only did a 12 hour block. However, I did notice a few other usernames doing the same, but they had stopped at one article. Cheers, --SVTCobra 06:39, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

Russian Army is Modernizing Yuri Borisov

Blueparticle (talk) 01:03, 12 May 2016 (UTC) English is my second language. I tried my best to provide correct English and grammar. If it still lack, please help me to indicate it or to correct it.

Thanks

Articles pending review

Hello. There are several news articles pending review. You may go to either WN:Newsroom or Category:Review and review at least one. Thanks. --George Ho (talk) 06:51, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Deletion of an article I asked to be userified

@SVTCobra: On 8 December 2017 you deleted New book by Ellen Pao, former Chief Executive of Reddit, explores sexism in Silicon Valley which I had asked to be userified. I spent a lot of time writing this article, and do not appreciate my request being simply ignored without notice. Can you please explain why you did this? Please respond at User_talk:Ottawahitech#New_book_by_Ellen_Pao,_former_Chief_Executive_of_Reddit,_explores_sexism_in_Silicon_Valley. Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 19:42, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

@Ottawahitech: User-fying unsuccessful synthesis articles isn't something we usually do on a systematic basis; it feels kind of web-host-like. --Pi zero (talk) 19:57, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

@Ottawahitech: there should be a good reason to userspace an article. You were asked multiple times, but you ignored it each it. Unless you answer why is it so important to userspace an article, there is zero chance you would have any of the articles userspaced. (I remember you had asked for it when the the articles had hardly any meaningful content, with a bunch of sources)
•–• 03:13, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

I have basically asked the same thing on Ottawahitech's own user talk page. Cheers, --SVTCobra 08:46, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

Page protection request

Hey, just a quick question -- can you be online for some more minutes? I am about to publish an article and someone should protect the page [so that only admins can rename it] asap.
•–• 08:49, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

@Acagastya: Is there a special reason for needing this protection? Do you expect vandalism? Back in my day, this was not standard practice. Cheers, --SVTCobra 09:47, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

Well, yes, that is the reason articles are protected after they are published -- [What Pi zero said recently] (link) (link).
117.248.120.35 (talk) 09:52, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

Done I am not sure I agree with the practice. Perhaps auto-confirmed users should be allowed to move pages? Anyway, that's a discussion for another day. And I can hardly believe that Amgine has been around so much recently and even written an article! Wow! Cheers, --SVTCobra 10:05, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

it is not hard to acquire auto-confirmed status [I have only heard about this term on w'pedia] but precaution is better than cure.
117.248.120.35 (talk) 10:12, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

I tried to unaccept the changes because I don't think you actually cross-checked the facts -- I did not know you had the reviewer rights, however, if you have some time to spare, can you please cross-check and sight the article?
•–• 10:15, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

In fact, I had already read a Reuters article on this news. I can't speak to the accuracy of the translation of Morales' Facebook post, but the same sentiments were in the article I read. I verified the vote count and the rest is common knowledge. Cheers, --SVTCobra 11:11, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

It's been long enough that I don't remember all the details of the events that led me to start systematically protecting against moves, but there was a bunch of actual page-move vandalism involved, and given the massive potential for off-site visibility I adopted the systematic practice. We do discourage post-publish moves anyway, due to the possible multiple-feed-entries effect, and I hoped the impact of the protection practice might also be mitigated by reviewers being just a bit more alert about double-checking headlines since they're aware of the practice. --Pi zero (talk) 14:06, 25 December 2017 (UTC)