User talk:EpochFail/Archive 1

User Page Fail

Really, just ""User:EpochFail is a researcher at the University of Minnesota specializing in online communities and mass collaboration."" You could be much more informative than that.Zath42 (talk) 17:06, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Reverted your revision 282605537 to User:EpochFail

Scrolling sucks in IE6. I don't know why anyone would want to continue using the god-aweful contraption. EpochFail (talk) 19:13, 8 April 2009 (UTC) Posted using the NICE gadget.

PermaNoob

oh noes! Ownership of users! :o. Heh, don't worry, there's plenty for all of us I guess ;) - Kingpin13 (talk) 05:27, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Reverted your revision 293786864 to User:PermaNoob

I reverted your stuff. Ha ha. EpochFail (talk) 20:06, 1 June 2009 (UTC) Posted using the NICE gadget.

re: NICE tool

Hi there EpochFail :). I do remember, I almost asked you about the nice tool at the time but it was obvisouly still being made from your many test edits which kept popping up on Huggle :). I have had a bit of a read through the links you gave me, and I don't mind installing it and trying it out. If it matters, I'm running Windows XP Home, with Internet Explorer. Also, I presume this tool can be uninstalled at any time right? Cheers - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 20:59, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Great! We have tested on Internet Explorer. Let me know if you run into any trouble using the tool inside of it. You will be able to opt out at any time if you like. --EpochFail (talk) 21:04, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I've added an "importScript" to my monobook. So this is supposed to change some stuff when reverting edits right? Could you give me some more details of it's functions? Also, I'm heading off now, but I'll get back to you tomorrow (or in around 10 to 11 hours if you're in a different timezone). Thanks - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 21:11, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

You should notice a modification to the interface when you revert editors using Wikipedia's built-in "undo" functionality. The change will be minor because it does a bit behind the scenes. Thanks again for giving it a try. --EpochFail (talk) 21:23, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Hi there again. I think there may be a slight problem with the installation instructions given here, you can see the changes I made here. Cheers - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 16:42, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm using IE8 (most recent), but I've now got the notice at the top explaining that I'm using NICE (which wasn't showing up before) so I guess it's working now, whether it was before or not *shrug* - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 16:53, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Automatic installation

Hi
Automatic installation just failed with the following message:

We were unable to install the gadget in your account in Wikipedia.
The Wikipedia API was unable to update your monobook.js page.
Editing your monobook.js page...
Reading Wikipedia's response...
Asking permission to edit your monobook.js page.
Successfully logged in as Anguy
Reading Wikipedia's response...
Trying to authenticate with Wikipedia

I don't know why. This would have been the first edit of this account. Doesn't it work if the page has to be created?
Anguy (talk) 20:24, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

The installation should complete even if you are installing in a new account. I see that you've done the manual installation and got it working, but I am interested in fixing the problem that you ran into. Could you tell me the operating system and browser (with version please) you used when you tried to install. --EpochFail (talk) 20:36, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Also, make sure you refresh your cache (Ctrl+F5) as well to make sure the new script gets picked up.  :) Thanks for giving the tool a try! --EpochFail (talk) 20:37, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Windows 7 RC Build 7100, Firefox 3.0.10 (non-English version). No problems in the javascript error console (I gather it's client-side?). I'm unsure when MediaWiki requires Captcha confirmation, that would have been my first guess, but it didn't ask for it when I tried manually. Your installation script doesn't log the error code it got from the API call, which makes it rather hard to reconstruct this. :)
Anguy (talk) 20:46, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

We just modified the install script to ensure that we are catching errors and logging better. If you wouldn't mind, could you try to use the automatic installation script again? Otherwise, it looks like cleaning up typos and fixing bugs is going to be the first thing on our plate tomorrow. Your testing has been invaluable and is much appreciated. --EpochFail (talk) 22:32, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, it's the captcha, you've probably just seen it logged:

{"edit":{"captcha":{"type":"image","mime":"image\/png","id":"XXXXXXXXXX","url":"\/w\/index.php?title=Special:Captcha\/image&wpCaptchaId=XXXXXXXXXX"},"result":"Failure"}}

Anguy2 (talk) 22:48, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm that will be a hard problem to find an appropriate solution to. We'll get on it. EpochFail (talk) 15:56, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

You could show the user the captcha and let him solve it, right? But anyway, that problem is not going to happen that often anyway, the captcha is only shown to non-autoconfirmed users. Anguy (talk) 17:45, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

 Done :D EpochFail (talk) 18:41, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

• Typos: "breif message", "Explaination". Wow.
  •  Done EpochFail (talk) 15:56, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
• The editnotice "You have installed the" looks rather broken here, the floating image is floating outside the div border: see here. My horizontal resolution is apparently too wide so that the text fits into one line, which is probably why nobody noticed during development.
  •  Done EpochFail (talk) 15:56, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
• I don't like the layout of the undo message tab at all. Despite my huge resolution, I can't even read the default undo message since I only have half my screen for the edit notice textbox. I'd very much prefer a vertical layout, with the message to the user beneath the undo summary.
  • That was a hard decision. I'll work on a better design after the conclusion of this study. If you are still interested, I'll drop you a message so you can give me input at that time. EpochFail (talk) 15:56, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
• If I don't enter a signature using ~~~~, I'm forging your signature with an outdated date: [1]. I notice it's hardcoded in User:EpochFail/No_Biting.js.
  •  Done EpochFail (talk) 15:56, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
• The revision left in the section header is using a hardcoded link to the http server, which means that people using the secure server are ending up at the unsecure server if they follow it. Consider using {{diff}} or {{diff2}}.
  •  Done EpochFail (talk) 15:56, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
• The revision link in the section header isn't using the title parameter. That means that navigation popups won't be able to preview the diff. That's arguably a bug with that tool though, and would be workarounded if you used one of the above templates.
  •  Done EpochFail (talk) 15:56, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
• The spam notice in the message "Posted using the NICE gadget." is not something I would enjoy, even during testing. Consider doing it similar to other tools, by appending " (using NICE)" to the edit summary.
  • Surprisingly, separating the section header from the summary is not possible using the Wikipedia API. See the docs on editing pages.  :(
    • Well, the docs ain't quite complete then. You just have to avoid using section=new, and use the appendtext parameter to append your own section header along with the section body. Anguy (talk) 17:45, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
      • Cool! We'll give that a try. --E_pochF_ail (talk|contribs) 16:09, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
      •  Done  :) --EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 21:44, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Just as a first impression.
Anguy (talk) 21:27, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. We are on it. --EpochFail (talk) 21:34, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Preview with Nice

Hi EpochFail. I just realised that this tool will save pages when you hit preview. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 19:58, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Yikes. That is an old bug. I thought we fixed it. I'll look at it right away. -EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 20:08, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

New users to use Nice

Hi there again EF. Most of the users I know use rollback (which I sometimes use too, although I've been trying to use undo more recently because of NICE). Nobody pops to mind, but I'll let you know if someone does :) - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 16:46, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Well the correct place to request rollback (although this is for individual users) is WP:RFPERM. But make sure you meet the "criteria" at the top of the page first :). There are also some scripts already written which do one click reverting, so you could probably see how they've written their code, and "steal" bits and pieces ;) - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 16:56, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Re: NICE interface modification: We need more users!

Sorry for not replying for a while and not having much to say. For a while, I was just trying to figure out what the script did, and I read somewhere that what it does is randomly assigned. I guess I got the one where if you undo a newcomer's edit it notifies you. I think it's great but it's just that. I don't really have much to say, the script's great and can help in making new users more welcome here. Maybe it can be more visually appealing? Sorry that I'm not saying much. -- penubag  (talk) 06:54, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback! We'll have a survey available soon. I'll drop you a message on your talk page once we're ready. --EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 16:00, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

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P.S. You received these suggestions because your name was listed on the SuggestBot request page. If this was in error, sorry about the confusion. -- SuggestBot (talk) 22:08, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

("User:EpochFail/HAPPI.js")

I'm using vector, I added your script. I went to create a "new section" on a page, I started typing, I hit "word trustworthiness," I got a blank box (obviously), I kept typing. Then I hit "preview" and everything I typed got blanked.

So I came to your userpage and wrote a complaint full of foul language that I would regret having associated with my name. Then I hit "preview," and again it got blanked. This is an abridged version of that feedback. Andrew Gradman ^talk/_WP:Hornbook 20:49, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Agradman... I'm sorry you are having trouble running our new, experimental user interface modification. Sadly, it is in no form to be released yet. With that said, I am interested in this bug anyway since it will be something that needs to be taken care of. Before any foul language comes between us, make sure you notice the warning on the top of the documentation page that says the modification is still in development and that the documentation for it may not be right. When you say "it got blanked", do you mean that the entire content of the page was discarded or just that your changes were not remembered? Also, which operating system and browser did you use to give it a test run? --EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 13:44, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

haha, don't worry, I saw the warning/documentation and I know I have no grounds to be upset -- that was just tongue in cheek. I'm writing to help you improve the code. (For that matter, the "complaint full of foul language" was a fiction for dramatic effect -- the only thing that actually happened is described in the first paragraph of my post.)

I'm using Mac OS 10.5.7, Firefox 3.5.2. When I say "I hit preview and everything I typed got blanked," what specifically happened is that the page reloaded as though to give me a preview, but the content of the body text was empty, i.e. it was as it was when I began (because I was creating a new section). However, the "header" that I had written in the header box was still there.

Let me know if there are other details I can provide to help you debug this. Andrew Gradman ^talk/_WP:Hornbook 18:23, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Haha! Thanks for getting back to me. I've been able to reproduce the bug. I'm not sure how that one slipped past us. I should have some time to look at it today. I'll drop you a message when I think I have it worked out. Thanks again.  :) --EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 19:21, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

 Done It was a strange bug that never would have occurred to me. When I make the formattable pane visible to do the highlighting, I "disable" the normal textarea and hide it. Apparently when you disable a textarea, it removes the field during submission. Simply changing to "readonly" as opposed to "disable" fixed the problem. Please let me know if you run into any other oddities. The tool itself should be pretty close to complete. --EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 22:12, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Oh, cool. I'm glad my tsouris was able to contribute to some good. Ironically, this bug popped up on my very first attempt to use the feature, so I haven't even had a chance to see what it does. Now I'll give it another spin! Andrew Gradman ^talk/_WP:Hornbook 22:16, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

re: NICE logging

Hmm, just very vaguely, I remember checking what the page looked like, and deciding to revert. But I can't remember what actually happened when I tried to revert. It's possible I just got the normal "Edit Conflict" screen. But I'm not really sure I'm afraid - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 17:43, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

No worries. Thanks anyway.  :) --EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 19:06, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Nice Survey Participants

1. Just completed the questionnaire form. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 18:14, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
2. Me too, though I no longer have the NICE gadget. --I dream of horses If you reply here, please leave me a {{Talkback}} message on my talk page. @ 18:36, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
3. Me too. RossPatterson (talk) 23:34, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

   FYI, I've stopped using NICE. The latest version is too intrusive. Good luck with it, though. RossPatterson (talk) 03:15, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

4. Completed. Viriditas (talk) 23:39, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
5. I have installed it in my monobook, but how do I get the questionnaire? Airplaneman ^talk 02:09, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
6. Done. Full version please :-) Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 03:58, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
7. Done and done -- McSly (talk) 05:23, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, EpochFail. You have new messages at I dream of horses's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

I dream of horses @ 18:42, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Hello, EpochFail. You have new messages at I dream of horses's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

--I dream of horses @ 19:08, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Hello, EpochFail. You have new messages at I dream of horses's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

--I dream of horses @ 19:28, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Hello, EpochFail. You have new messages at I dream of horses's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

--I dream of horses @ 00:43, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

{{talkback|I dream of horses|Full version of NICE to be released}] --I dream of horses @ 01:29, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

NICE problem

Hello EpochFail. I'd like to inform you that ever since installing NICE, Friendly hasn't been working. Also, I suspect Twinkle has gone under too, for although I don't use it as much as Friendly, I can't tag pages for Speedy Deletion. I'm going to remove it to see if it makes a difference. If it does, I'm going to have to keep it removed :( because I rely heavily on Friendly to welcome new users and Twinkle and Friendly to tag pages. I hope this is not the case, and I will keep you updated. Thanks for giving me the chance to try this new tool. Regards, Airplaneman ^talk 04:08, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Phew. It does not seem to be the perpetrator. I wonder what's going on then with Friendly? Airplaneman ^talk 04:13, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

I've heard similar complaints about Twinkle/Friendly problems after installing NICE from other users, but the problem disappears without uninstalling NICE. If you can replicate the problem, please let me know. There could be some strange interaction between the two gadgets and NICE. --EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 14:54, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, here's what happens in both Friendly and Twinkle: it freezes after I press the button that executes the action that tags the page. I hope I'm making sense. Hope this helps. Airplaneman ^talk 04:33, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

I want to report something. I undid an edit and I did not receive the talk page display. Any ideas? Do you think it's a coincidence that I was getting the pink Wikipedia server load delay message at the same time? Does that have an effect on the function of the NICE gadget? Viriditas (talk) 14:16, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia's API works differently when asking for information about anonymous editors so we ended up disabling the talk message box when the user being reverted was not logged in. We felt that this was acceptable due to the fact that anon editors often have a different IP address the next time they visit. It seems like this could be a useful feature though. I've already added it to the code base and am testing it. It should be ready in a bit. I'll ping your talk page when I am confident that it is working and I haven't broken anything else. --EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 16:23, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

 Done I got lucky. It seems I didn't introduce any bugs. Let me know how it goes.--EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 16:31, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm getting pretty frustrated right now. Just now I saw two cases of vandalism and had to use the regular rollback; Twinkle just would not work. Usually it displays, in a list, the actions it is performing. Now it displays the first action, or not even the first action, and freezes. Same with Friendly. I wonder what could be going on? Airplaneman ^talk 16:55, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

For some reason, I thought this issue was resolved. I'll get on it immediately. --EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 19:47, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

 Done I was lucky to stumble across the problem so quickly. I wish that javascript understood namespaces. That would make the installation of multiple gadgets much easier. --EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 20:19, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks so much! Airplaneman ^talk 23:37, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

General purpose banner

I was thinking that you might be more successful with a general banner ad that brings people to one of your subpages listing different tools they can try rather than to just one tool. Something to think about, perhaps? Viriditas (talk) 10:50, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

I like this idea. The only problem is that NICE and SuggestBot are the only tools that are ready for production. As soon as HAPPI clears its first round of user tests (it is still in dev) I'll make that banner and page listing the gadgets. Thanks!--EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 14:58, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good. I'm not entirely clear on how HAPPI works based on the description page. Can you explain it a bit more? Viriditas (talk) 08:19, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

HAPPI isn't production ready yet. We started working on the documentation before it was ready to be released. I should make that warning at the top include that the gadget probably won't work until we officially release it. With that in mind, I appreciate bug testers. I should have a stable instance up in the next couple days so that you can test it without me developing the code underneath you. I can let you know more at that time. --EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 15:30, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Trouted

Whack!

You have been trouted for: THINKING THAT THE WIKIPEDIA SANDBOX NEEDS TO BE DELETED. December21st2012Freak , (The world will end in 2012...) 20:32, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

AWESOME! --EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 20:37, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Also, sorry about that. I couldn't think of a better place to test Twinkle out. I hope that didn't cause too much trouble. --EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 20:38, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

HAPPI

Hey there. I've had a bit of a play with HAPPI, and I have a few comments and suggestions.

• The button to turn the whole thing on looks exactly like a standard submit button that's been disabled. It took me ages to realise that you could click it - I spent several minutes trying to figure out whether it was meant to switch itself on or something.
  •  Done I made a change to the css so that it is more obvious when the button can and cannot be clicked. Let me know what you think. --EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 15:43, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

    I prefer this. :) Ale_Jrb^talk 15:57, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

    I have to say, I still had the same problem, although I finally figured it out. Viriditas (talk) 08:35, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

• It's quite irritating that it moves the edit toolbar up and away from the edit window. I'm not sure if this is meant to happen, but I suspect you have a problem with your CSS somewhere.
  •  Done --EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 15:43, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

    It's a shame you can't get them on the same line, but I prefer this one than the other one. Ale_Jrb^talk 15:57, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

• It seems to remove whitespace at the beginning of lines when you turn highlighting on. When I tested the highlighting on one of my .js pages, the result was a pretty spectacular mess.
  •  Done Yikes! Luckily it was an easy fix. --EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 15:43, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

    Awesome! Ale_Jrb^talk 15:57, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

• Have you considered a 'update highlighting' button rather than making people turn it off and on again in order to update it for newly added text?
  • We had an update highlighting button in at one point, but it ended up cluttering the interface without adding functionality. If you can think of a good way to make such a button work, I'm very interested in your ideas. --EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 15:43, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

    I dunno. You could consider a small button with a 'refresh' symbol on rather than the words, but I dunno how cluttered it would make it look. Perhaps it's unnecessary, but I do find the behaviour where you have to disable than re-enable it a little odd (not bad as such, just odd). Ale_Jrb^talk 15:57, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Other than that, though, the whole thing is pretty cool - I like it :). Good job. Ale_Jrb^talk 13:20, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

File copyright problem with File:HAPPI example.png

File Copyright problem

Thank you for uploading File:HAPPI example.png. However, it currently is missing information on its copyright status. Wikipedia takes copyright very seriously. It may be deleted soon, unless we can determine the license and the source of the file. If you know this information, then you can add a copyright tag to the image description page.

If you have uploaded other files, consider checking that you have specified their license and tagged them, too. You can find a list of files you have uploaded by following this link.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thanks again for your cooperation. ww2censor (talk) 15:58, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

NICE error messages

Hi. Just wanted to tell you during the last several reverts with NICE, I used the the talk page feature, and I received error messages both times, telling me that NICE was unable to post (do I want to continue?), but in fact, the posting on the talk pages was successful. So, even though I received error messages, it still worked. I hope this helps you in some way. Viriditas (talk) 09:57, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

I'll do a little bit of quick testing to see if I can reproduce the problem. --EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 18:58, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

I was not able to reproduce the problem in Firefox 3.0.14 (although I discovered and repaired separate minor one). The only thing that should produce the kind of error you saw would be a strange response from Wikipedia's API. Is the problem still happening now? If so, could you point me to a specific revert and let me know what browser/version you are using? --EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 19:07, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

The error occurred using Firefox/3.5.3. I don't know if it is still happening, but I'll take a screenshot if it happens again. Viriditas (talk) 23:15, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

HAPPI colour

Hello, I've just started trying HAPPI and it looks very promising. One question though, why are the colours mapped white for new to red for old? Would it not be better to have the new text coloured red? That way an editor can easily spot new changes (red) in a sea of more stable text (white or pale pink). 84user (talk) 21:19, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

If you want the new text to be highlighted and the old text left white, you can select "novel" rather than "established" near the "Word Persistence" toggle button. --EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 21:25, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I did not try the novel button until after I had posted the above message. Unfortunately I have now uninstalled the User:EpochFail/HAPPI.js from my User:84user/monobook.js because it caused a double reload of the preview window. This second reload is annoying because while I am scrolling the edit window and start editing, the reload kicks in and scrolls the window to the top again, forcing me to repeat my scrolling. If that could be fixed I would be willing to retry the experiment. -84user (talk) 14:10, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Could you describe what you mean by a "double reload"? Is the whole page reloading or is it just the scrolling of the edit pane? Does this only happen when previewing or does it happen sometimes during the initial edit? --EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 15:09, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it appears to be just that the edit window reloads. For example I will click edit for a long section, scroll down to the bottom say, and start entering new content. At sometime during this process, the edit window "resets" to the top. It seems to coincide with the HAPPI icon

finishing its "HAPPI is waiting for the Grouplens servers to respond." activity. I have not touched the HAPPI controls at this point, but the icon shows activity. This happens when initially editing. I am not sure if it happens when previewing only, but if after a preview I quickly jump to the edit window and start making more changes, the "reset" will kick in again. Now that I think back, the "reset" did also occur when previewing, because it happened while I was scrolling the edit window for this edit. I use Firefox 3.5.3 with Adblock Plus, Flashblock, Quick Java addons, on Windows Vista. 84user (talk) 15:51, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't seem to be getting this problem with Firefox 3.0.14 on Ubuntu GNU/Linux, but I'll be able to test 3.5 on a Windows box tonight. If I can replicate the problem, I'll start looking for a solution. I'll drop you a message about the conclusion I come to either way. --EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 19:30, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I've tested in Firefox 3.5 now and I still don't think I am experiencing what you are describing. The text boxes will scroll to the top when you toggle highlighting, but they never do it unless I toggle highlighting myself. I may not be understanding the exact problem. Would you be interested in giving me a step-by-step and describing between the steps when the scrolling to the top of the page takes place? --EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 14:58, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

I just worked out a fix to a scrolling problem that I thought was unrelated, but could have been the same problem you were describing. I've uploaded my fix to Wikipedia. Please bypass your cache and let me know if you still experience the problem. --EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 21:42, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Test results

Hi EpochFail, I have just created this section to separate the topic from "HAPPI colour". I have created a new user account User:Test84user to make some more tests of User:EpochFail/HAPPI.js. I did this so that my existing User:84user/monobook.js and other preferences do not interfere with the action of HAPPI.

First, as User:Test84user I loaded User:EpochFail/HAPPI.js into User:Test84user/monobook.js (with this edit). Then I tested it using the Opera browser and the scrolling problem has been fixed. I made several tests with Show changes and Show preview with the edit window in various states of "scroll" and in all cases the scroll position was preserved.

However, then I started testing using the Google Chrome browser and found different problems. With HAPPI installed in monobook.js it appears the buttons "Show preview" and "Show changes" act as if they are "Save page". See Test84user contributions to see the history of my tests. -84user (talk) 00:30, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

For some reason, Chrome uses non-standard members to store information about what button is being clicked. I'm still trying to figure out how to get at it. That is why it isn't listed in our supported browsers. Once I can fix the problem you described, it will be. --EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 01:36, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

I think I have a workaround working to solve the problem, but I won't be able to thoroughly test it on Chrome until this evening. I should really get a virtual Windows installation up so that I can do this sort of testing in the lab. If you get a chance to give it a test run, it should stop submitting the edit when you click preview. Don't forget to bypass your cache! --EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 17:32, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

I just retried now, but Chrome still treats "Show changes" as if it was "Save" and it treats "Show preview" also as if it were a Save. I also tried to paste the whole source of User:EpochFail/HAPPI.js into User:Test84user/monobook.js instead of the importScript. See this diff. -84user (talk) 18:13, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

*sigh* It looks like Chrome performs event order different than the rest of the browsers. I'll get some more testing in this evening. Thank you for doing the testing. I really appreciate the time you have taken to do these bug reports. --EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 18:27, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

I found it. It turns out that it wasn't the event ordering that was a problem at all. I've tested it in Chrome running on Windows Server 2008 and it appears to be working now. --EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 20:45, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Stupid Picture

Hello EpochFail. Would you mind looking into why the picture in this article just will not sit inline with the text, please? I decided to clean up the article (which I found while newpage patrolling :D), and everything worked well except the picture. I want it to go at the top of the "Overview" section, but it's not obeying... Right now the messed up picture is stuck at the bottom left of the page. The only issue I can think of is that it is a .jpeg file, which I heard is not ideal for Wikipedia. Thanks, Airplaneman ^talk 03:49, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Yikes! That is a difficult positioning problem. I just spent some time working on it. I couldn't get it to behave yet, but I'll give it another try in the morning. --EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 00:20, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

OK I can't believe I missed this. If you wrap all of the infobox/campaign template stuff in a float, it will work just fine. For example: <div style="float:right">{{Infobox... }}{{Campaignbox ... }} {{Campaign ... }}</div> The problem was caused by a clear:right; in a few of those templates that was forcing your image to the bottom of the page. By wrapping them in the <div> tags, we contain the clear:right; to only the templates and let you float things around in the rest of the page. I've saved the change so you can see it in action. --EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 15:50, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Airplaneman ^talk 21:25, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

NICE survey

I just completed the survey as requested. – ukexpat (talk) 21:13, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! I've switched you over to the full feature set. Bypass your cache and the new code will work. --EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 21:55, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

HAPPI issue on IE8

See eg http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User%3AGwern%2Ffoo&action=historysubmit&diff=325477208&oldid=325476923 or http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Neon_Genesis_Evangelion_(anime)&diff=prev&oldid=325475429

I eventually traced it down to the HAPPI import in my monobook.js: with happi, whitespace; without happi, no whitespace. --Gwern (contribs) 18:46 12 November 2009 (GMT)

Thanks for reporting the problem! We didn't do any testing in IE8 because it was quite new at the time of our development, but I'm sure I can get some testing in now. I should have some time to look at it in the next couple of days. I'll report back when I have determined the cause. ----EPOCHFAIL^(talk|work) 19:58, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

• world-weary-sigh* So after two hours of fighting with IE8 on Windows Server 2008, I wasn't even able to get HAPPI to load let alone reproduce the problem. I should have an opportunity to test in IE8/Win XP this weekend. I'll let you know how that goes. --EPOCHFAIL^(talk|work) 22:37, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Ouch! Don't you have any library computers or maybe stations in the CS labs you could use?

Also, you may wish to modify User:EpochFail/HAPPI#Technical details. --Gwern (contribs) 23:46 13 November 2009 (GMT)

We do have labs of computers, but none of them are running XP. I think they are just in the process of upgrading from Windows 2000 now. Most of the machines here are Unix-like so the windows machines get ignored. No worries though. I should be able to have a look this weekend.

Thanks for the tip on User:EpochFail/HAPPI#Technical details. Updated. --EPOCHFAIL^(talk|work) 02:56, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

After staring at the problem and doing a lot of swearing, I've put a bandage on it, but the problem isn't solved. I've changed the behavior so that HAPPI won't load up and cause a problem when you are using IE, but I was unable to get HAPPI to a working state. I still have to do some more testing this evening to make sure that the bandage is doing it's job, but this should at least solve the ridiculous problem you pointed out to me. I'm curious whether you have ever had success with HAPPI in IE8. It seems to me that some essential assumptions in the program don't fly with IE's permissions model for interacting with iframes. --EpochFail^(talk|work) 00:16, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I never actually tried HAPPI on IE8; it's only useful for in-depth sessions and I do those on my home machine with Firefox. --Gwern (contribs) 04:35 19 November 2009 (GMT)

I see. Well now you should be able to at least keep HAPPI in your monobook.js without it ruining your IE wikiwork. ;) Thanks for the report! Hopefully we can get IE8 working soon.--EpochFail^(talk|work) 05:06, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

NICE typo

Hello EpochFail. I'm here to inform you about a small typo on the NICE banner, the one that shows up when you are undoing a change. It's in bold: "You have installed the NICE gadget, a tool designed the Grouplens research lab." It should say "designed by the...". It's small, but should be changed. Thank you, Airplaneman ^talk 04:47, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know about that. It is amazing--the things you don't see when you stare at something for so long. I've update User:EpochFail/No_Biting.js. --EpochFail^(talk|work) 16:17, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I know, it's strange... I had been using the tool for so long and never noticed it. Thanks for fixing it! Airplaneman ^talk 23:55, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Reverted your revision [2] to User:PermaNoob

Testing message posting EpochFail^(talk|work) 18:29, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Request to use HAPPI in Turkish Wikipedia

Hello Aaron,

I'm one of the sysops on Turkish Wikipedia, and I have been localizing the renowned scripts of en.wp lately. As you know better than I do, the scripts are a perfect way to improve the Wikipedia experience, and the response so far from my fellow Wikipedians is quite positive.

Your fantastic script was also among the ones that I had my eye on, so I localized it today (actually only the changes that are required in order for it to run smoothly on tr.wp are complete). I normally do not seek approval from the authors of the script (since I properly attribute them), but considering that there is an academic study associated with this one (and that the script needs your website to function), I thought it would be the right thing to ask you if I could use (and encourage others to use) the tool on Turkish Wikipedia.

I'd be more than happy to provide a feedback after a certain amount of time (and again, encourage others to do the same).

I've also done some testing with NOOB and experienced a problem. Page histories work fine, but there is a problem with the [hist] box on talk pages. But I won't bug you with the details right now (NICE is also on my shortlist :)

I (and the Turkish Wikipedia community) would be grateful if you could consider including us in your study. If you approve I'll take care of the translations as well, and inform the community.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Cheers

Vito Genovese 15:08, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Vito, we are most likely very interested in supporting the Turkish Wikipedia but the modifications we would need to do on the server-side would be quite time intensive. On the other-hand, HAPPI can work without the back-end server behind it. I'll talk with my collegues about the amount of work that would be involved in modifying the client-side system so that Turkish would be minimally supported. I think we'd be able to produce a working version pretty quickly. --EpochFail^(talk|work) 16:12, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, Aaron, for your response. I'm quite excited about this, and I hope you guys can come up with a mutually beneficial solution. I'll be probably checking your talkpage five times a day for the next couple of days :)

Also please note that NOOB is now complete and also available as a gadget. (see tr:VP:DK). It looks slightly different though due to my changes to the .css file and my horrific taste in colors :) I plan to work on NICE in a couple of weeks.

Again, thank you.

Vito Genovese 18:17, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Vito, I'm sorry for the late reply. Due to the recent holiday, my regular schedule was interrupted. I should have some time in the coming week to do some testing with the Turkish Wikipedia. I'd like to set up a full environment for interacting with it so that HAPPI will be able to take full advantage of the GroupLens processing servers, but I'll have to do this work in the evenings/off-the-clock so it could take a couple of weeks. I'll probably need your help in order to be able to understand the norms/conventions/language as I go forward. --EpochFail^(talk|work) 16:57, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Absolutely. I'd be more than happy to help out in any way possible. I look forward to hearing more from you on this matter.--Vito Genovese 19:58, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I just wanted to drop you a message to let you know I have been working. I've almost got the back-end ready to accept another language. It took a little bit more time than I thought, but it currently testing fine. Next I'll do some testing with the Turkish Wikipedia API and then the server work should be done. The only work to do after that is translation. --EpochFail^(talk|work) 23:35, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Fantastic news! As I said, I am waiting eagerly for the phase during which I'll be able to provide local assistance. Thank you.--Vito Genovese 09:45, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Reverted your revision to User:PermaNoob.

testEpochFail^(talk|work) 23:42, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Active member?

I just stumbled across your work and got sucked into its vortex. I wouldn't, at this point, consider myself a researcher or interested in research... I just wanted to help out. It looked like you two guys were flailing around on your own. I'm sure I'll get bored and wander away soon enough! Josh Parris 23:25, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Re: research

Sorry for the inactivity, I've been in India. Are we dropping SRAG for anything other than surveys or modding the site? I'm actually fine with that, even though we need another approval board for ethnographers, intentional vandals, etc. But that's a much less pressing issue, and can be done if SRAG is successful. Stu ^(aeiou)_{I'm Researching Wikipedia} 08:05, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

HAPPI

Happi isn't working for me. Please help!-- iBen^talk/_contribsIf you reply here, please place a talkback notification on my page. 03:15, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Can you tell me a little more about its behavior (or lack of behavior)? Did you just install it or have you been using the system for a while? Is it crashing with an error or just not doing anything? --EpochFail^(talk|work) 20:55, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Nothing is happening. Is there supposed to be a button to press? Where would it be located? I am using Google Chrome on Mac Snow Leopard. I've tried purging and more.-- iBen^talk/_contribsIf you reply here, please place a talkback notification on my page. 23:20, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Are you using the new/beta interface? If so, you'll need to add HAPPI to your /vector.js instead of your /monobook.js. If you have done this and refreshed your cache, you should see a button appear above the textarea when you edit main (non-talk) pages. --EpochFail^(talk|work) 15:47, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, EpochFail. You have new messages at IBen's talk page.
Message added 00:51, 30 January 2010 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

iBen^talk/_contribsIf you reply here, please place a talkback notification on my page. 00:51, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

HAPPI stuff

Hello Aaron,

Sorry for responding (and seeing the message) so late, but it's been a crazy week workwise, and it seems it will go on for two more days. As soon as it's over, and by that I "hope" I am referring to Monday, I will take care of the language file and notify you of its completion. In any case it will not be later than Tuesday.

Cheers

Vito Genovese 23:36, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

---

Hey Aaron,

It's done! Sorry for the delay, this week was crazier than the week before :=)

The translation may have some flaws, since the sentence structure of Turkish is the reverse version of English and some words have to be transferred from one segment to the other, and I did not get to see the whole context during the translation. I will notify you of the inaccuracies if I see any.

Cheers

Vito Genovese 12:14, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Awesome! Thanks for your work. I'll probably have something you can test out with me next week. This one is already packed :\ --EpochFail^(talk|work)

Response and a BITE-related issue

Hi EpochFail,

I responded to your messages at User_talk:EpochFail/NICE#Posting_revert_messages_in_duplicate. On a vaguely related note, I've raised a BITE-related issue at Template talk:ESp that might interest you. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 12:44, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Automatic edit summaries

Hello EpochFail. I recently acquired a script from simple:user:Microchip08/welcomer.js to use here on en wiki. It's at User:Airplaneman/welcomer.js. Basically, it preloads a welcome template whenever you click on a redlinked talk page (similar to FRIENDLY, but faster). I would like to use automatic edit summaries (so that the script inserts it for you so you don't have to type, like what NICE does when undoing an edit) but am clueless when it comes to scripts. Do you know what command will do that? Thanks, Airplaneman ✈ 03:37, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Hey Airplaneman, I've added a line to the code to do this for you. Change the text Welcoming user to Wikipedia to what ever you want it to be :). - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 08:42, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! Airplaneman ✈ 15:24, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

WP:Research

No. Watchlist notice at least for new policy these days (WP:CENT was a nice idea but never really caught on). New policies are a very big deal indeed. They are the stuff that every admin at least is expected to have a working knowlage of. As a result adding to them is not something that should even be considered before we have exausted all the options for not doing so.©Geni 22:55, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Just to make sure you are answering the question I think I was asking, are you saying that you would not support the consensus of an RFC for WP:Research that was properly advertised? If I'm mistaken and you were saying "No" to something else, could you advise me on how to properly advertise this RFC? --EpochFail^(talk|work) 23:56, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

I would not regard WP:CENT as proper advertisment.©Geni 00:21, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

" ... could you advise me on how to properly advertise this RFC?" --EpochFail^(talk|work) 02:27, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Well once the mfd has expired you might want to file a request at MediaWiki talk:Watchlist-details.©Geni 00:52, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

I'll do that. Thank you! --EpochFail^(talk|work) 21:06, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Please do pick apart my criticisms. As a technical writer drilled into my head, effective communication is about setting up the reader's expectations and then fulfilling them. I wasn't expecting a page called Wikipedia:Research to be what it currently is. Nifboy (talk) 19:59, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

I happened across WP:Research and shared many of Nifboy's concerns. I have little understanding of the process by which proposals become policy and I admire you and your cohorts for attempting it. Granting that it would be useful to researchers, I'm not sure giving researchers access to wikipedians at large as a sample pool is a good idea. The types of permissible research could be very broad and fall completely outside improving wikipedia. I noted in the work plan: "research Wikipedians should embrace (research for scholarly understanding)." I would change "embrace" to "tolerate" as many editors may prefer not to be contacted. Wouldn't it make more sense to have editors opt in rather than having SRAG grant access to them in a process in which these potential participants were not involved? I just suspect that many in the wiki community are focused exclusively on improving specific articles and not answering surveys. Won't they react negatively when they receive an official looking SRAG approved research request when they never agreed to be contacted? I hope the project has taken into account the perspective of the indifferent recipient who feels bothered having to opt out via template. Eudemis (talk) 03:29, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

I would argue that any research that seeks to increase understanding about Wikipedia, it's community or systems like Wikipedia will result in a benefit to Wikipedia (although sometimes this is more coincidence than intention). I fear that most people are misunderstand what academic research is and what the researchers motivations are. I'm currently working on a couple of essays to help clear this up. Hopefully they will be linked to from whatever WP:Research and WP:SRAG become.

I feel that "opt-in" brings about feelings that are really too strong for what SubjectRecruitmentBot would be doing through WP:SRAG. For example, SineBot follows editors around Wikipedia, editing talk pages without asking anyone to opt-in. As recommended by WP:Bot policy, SineBot has a simple system for opting out. This opt-out method has become pretty standard for bots that interact closely with users. So long as the bots activities are not disruptive to the editors, the opt-out mechanism is sufficient. I would argue that periodic postings on your talk page from a bot are not disruptive and should not require an opt-in. --EpochFail^(talk|work) 16:02, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Wow, I appreciate your full blown response to what was my drive by reaction to WP:Research. We agree editors will be much more receptive to research that benefits Wikipedia even in some marginal way than, say, pure market research for K Mart. I'll try to keep an eye out for the essays. Eudemis (talk) 02:10, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

WP:Research and WP:SRAG

You're welcome. You have my empathy. I recently went through something similar with sticky prods. Good luck. Maurreen (talk) 02:17, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Talkback

User:IBen/TB ℳøℕø 01:55, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Build it and they will come

From User talk:Josh Parris#SRAG -> Wikipedia:Subject Recruitment Approvals Group/Requests/Political Knowledge Production I think we should play along; what do you think? If so, we ought to get a group of community members involved. Josh Parris 01:07, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree. This one can probably work just fine without getting SubjectRecruitmentBot running as well. I think we should attempt to quickly extend SRAG's members to whoever would like the responsibility and do a bit of canvassing to bring in some people to discuss it. I've contacted Jojoona to make sure that he/she knows the state of SRAG/WP:Research. If Jojoona is fine with continuing, I'm on board. --EpochFail^(talk|work) 18:21, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

SRAG

I'm fine being your 'test case' ;-) --Jojoona (talk) 09:29, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

I have see that there was some discussion on the SRAG page. What are the next steps? This process is not so transparent to me at the moment ... sorry. Do you want to contact the users? I normally give them a chance to stay anonymous.... I think that are important key questions the SRAG is tackling at this point. I would be more than happy we might discuss this also with other researchers on the Wikipedia research summit (wikisym). Are you also coming? That would be a great chance! --Jojoona (talk) 14:26, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

At this point, if we weren't doing a trial run, I think we'd probably ask you to improve upon our canvassing efforts to bring in more discussion from editors who are like those you'd be recruiting. Since this is a trial run, I'd be in favor of leaving this up to you. I don't want to hold up your work just because we want to get the process right. We've learned a lot already. Hopefully, once we get this process honed a bit, these discussions won't take so long to come to a conclusion. --EpochFail^(talk|work) 18:26, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

I just realized that I forgot to respond to the second half of your message. Could you respond to me in the SRAG discussion about keeping your users anonymous? I think this issue is an important one to raise so that we can reference it later. Sadly, I won't be able to make it to the Research Summit at WikiSym due to the prohibitive costs. There is going to be a panel at Wikimania (which is collocated with WikiSym) that might touch on the issue of recruitment. --EpochFail^(talk|work) 18:40, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your answers! I will respond to the SRAG discussions as well. I know about Stuart's panel and will participate if there is no overlap with the Wikisym doctoral symposium. However, I will contact the users within the next days on my own as I need to proceed. Thank you so far for your support and well understanding of my sampling strategies and research needs. --Jojoona (talk) 09:53, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

SRAG members

Hi, EpochFail. I see that Cenarium has removed the list of members. What's going on? Axl ¤ [Talk] 06:20, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Since we're underoing a trial run, I've restored the page. -- PiperNigrum ^(hail|scan) 14:17, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Re: Interview request

Hi EpochFail, and sorry I've been so slow to respond. I'm happy to do an interview, though I'm afraid the logistics might be a little tricky... I can't really use Skype on a shared internet connection so would need to use google chat or facebook or something, and it would either need to be between 6 pm and midnight Adelaide time (8:30 pm to 2:30 am GMT) on a wednesday, thursday or friday, or else some time on the weekend (not tomorrow). Emailing me through Wikipedia is a little screwey at the moment so if you want to email me use myfirstname dot mylastname @adelaide.edu.au. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 09:21, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

No worry. Thanks for getting back to me! I'll send an email. --EpochFail^(talk|work) 15:15, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Wikimedia subject recruitment processes

Hello, EpochFail. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.— SalimJah (talk) 15:46, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Review of User:EpochFail

• Trustworthy: Strong disagree
• Unbiased: Disagree
• Complete: ---
• Well-written: Strong disagree
• Accurate: Disagree

sdfsdfsd EpochFail^(talk|work) 17:59, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

JeffRz

Hi EpochFail,

Just thought I'd draw your attention to JeffRz (talk · contribs), who seems to have similar interests to you.

Cheers, Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 13:40, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip! I'm familiar with Jeff and I've published a couple of times with his advisor. I appreciate that you thought of me, though. If you have a chance, you should check out meta:Research:Wikimedia Summer of Research 2011. It is a program that I'm involved in at WMF. It is just getting started so there isn't much output yet, but we could use your insight into the questions we are researching. --EpochFail^(talk|work) 16:34, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

New message

Hi. You have a new message at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:EpochFail#Your_continued_help_is_needed
--Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:29, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

A beer for you!

for wikisym! StuGeiger (talk) 20:03, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Flowchart or other approach for handling mass creation of new articles

Hello. Viriditas recommended that I ask you for input regarding this. Many thanks for anything you have to offer. Best, Anna Frodesiak (talk) 06:02, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip. I'm reading and I've gotten a couple other researchers/wikipedians pinged too. I'll be away a couple more days for a conference (WikiSym), but I'll get more involved when I get back. --EpochFail^(talk|work) 21:39, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

WP:UWTEST update

Hi EpochFail,

We're currently busy designing some new tests, and we need your feedback/input!

1. ImageTaggingBot - a bot that warns users who upload images but don't provide adequate source or license information (drafts here)
2. CorenSearchBot - a bot that warns users who copy-paste text from external websites or other Wikipedia articles (drafts here)

We also have a proposal to test new "accepted," "declined," and "on-hold" templates at Articles for Creation (drafts here). The discussion isn't closed yet, so please weigh in if you're interested.

Thanks for your help! Maryana (WMF) (talk) 01:21, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Refill for hand coding

Hello! If you still need help I can do another batch. --Bensin (talk) 08:19, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

 Done! --EpochFail^(talk|work) 15:36, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

More? --Bensin (talk) 16:11, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

 Done again! It looks like we are at the end of the coding set. I was only able to give you 12 more to complete. We'll definitely have some more to do soon though. Thanks so much for all your help! --EpochFail^(talk|work) 17:12, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

My pleasure! Drop me a line on my talk page if you need more help with this. --Bensin (talk) 17:44, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Re. Inline note

The following is an inline comment referencing a portion of the article. ^WG

Foo. This is a test note.

Foo response.

Update: new user warning test results available

Hi WP:UWTEST member, we wanted to share a quick update on the status of the project. Here's the skinny:

1. We're happy to say we have a new round of testing results available! Since there are tests on several Wikipedias, we're collecting all results at the project page on Meta. We've also now got some help from Wikimedia Foundation data analyst Ryan Faulkner, and should have more test results in the coming weeks.
2. Last but not least, check out the four tests currently running at the documentation page.

Thanks for your interest, and don't hesitate to drop by the talk page if you have a suggestion or question. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 19:15, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

HAPPI not working

I'm trying to clean up the WP:JS list, and so I am testing scripts to make sure they still work despite the recent MediaWiki upgrades. I get this error message when I try to run HAPPI (in Firefox 10, using the Vector skin, with the new toolbar): [17:39:09.928] mwSetupToolbar is not defined @ https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:EpochFail/HAPPI.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript:2962. The HAPPI consent form page is also down. Is HAPPI still being maintained? PleaseStand (talk) 22:44, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know the script was down. The system was part of an old research project and use of the system slowed after we found some serious performance issues on some pages. I'm currently working on a new system for maintaining the back-end data structures. I'm glad you pointed the bug out to me because I should be able to fix it in the next couple of days. I'll also update the description of the tool to remove the links to the consent form since we aren't studying the system anymore. --EpochFail^(talk|work) 23:22, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

This is a test message

--EpochFail^(talk|work) 18:33, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

This is a test

This is my message. --160.94.177.105 (talk) 15:49, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

User script listings cleanup project

I'm leaving this message for known script authors and recent contributors to Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts.

This scripts listing page is in dire need of cleanup. To facilitate this, I've created a new draft listing at Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts cleanup. You're invited to list scripts you know to be currently working and relevant. Eventually this draft page can replace the current scripts listing.

If you'd like to comment or collaborate on this proposal, see the discussion I started here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject User scripts#Scripts listing cleanup project. Thanks! Equazcion ^(talk) 00:56, 25 Mar 2012 (UTC)

I just saw your Wikimedia blog post.

Hi, EpochFail,

I saw a discussion on Hacker News that led me to your Wikimedia blog post about editor participation on Wikipedia. I'd like to discuss that further with you. I see your research interest is in this general topic, and I have some ideas about promoting constructive participation in online communities, forged from online experience dating back to 1989. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 20:08, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

WeijiBaikeBianji! Good to hear from you. I'm happy to chat more about this work. We could have a conversation in this page or you could drop my an email through Wikipedia's email system. --EpochFail^(talk|work) 20:59, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Invitation to events in June and July: bot, script, template, and Gadget makers wanted

I invite you to the yearly Berlin hackathon, 1-3 June. Registration is now open. If you need financial assistance or help with visa or hotel, then please register by May 1st and mention it in the registration form.

This is the premier event for the MediaWiki and Wikimedia technical community. We'll be hacking, designing, teaching, and socialising, primarily talking about ResourceLoader and Gadgets (extending functionality with JavaScript), the switch to Lua for templates, Wikidata, and Wikimedia Labs.

We want to bring 100-150 people together, including lots of people who have not attended such events before. User scripts, gadgets, API use, Toolserver, Wikimedia Labs, mobile, structured data, templates -- if you are into any of these things, we want you to come!

I also thought you might want to know about other upcoming events where you can learn more about MediaWiki customization and development, how to best use the web API for bots, and various upcoming features and changes. We'd love to have power users, bot maintainers and writers, and template makers at these events so we can all learn from each other and chat about what needs doing.

Check out the the developers' days preceding Wikimania in July in Washington, DC and our other events.

Best wishes! - Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation's Volunteer Development Coordinator. Please reply on my talk page, here or at mediawiki.org. Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation Volunteer Development Coordinator 20:16, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Also, please feel free to ask for mw:Developer access. Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation Volunteer Development Coordinator 05:52, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

User script list deprecation

Wikipedia's list of user scripts is in bad shape, in that it is disorganized and contains many non-working, unmaintained, or thoroughly obsolete entries. Cleanup has been on the to-do list since 2007, but little progress has been made. Instead, the whole list is now set to be deprecated on 1 May 2012, to be replaced with a new list. This draft list has been up for about a month, and in that time I've been soliciting script users and authors to come add scripts they know to be working and relevant.

If you know of scripts that you would like to survive this deprecation (and are confirmed working and relevant), you're welcome to add them to the new list. Note that the old list will be retained and linked from the main list, so there is no real deadline. Thanks for your help. Equazcion ^(talk) 00:56, 22 Apr 2012 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The FOR SCIENCE! Barnstar
		For your awesome work setting up the hand-coding software and doing all the difficult bits :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:45, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Barnstar Barnstar

		The Barnstar Barnstar
		For your efforts creating the The Science Must Flow barnstar. Stu (aeiou)I`m Researching Wikipedia 00:18, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Brilliant Idea Barnstar
	For your Wikignome gadget! ʝunglejill 01:11, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Hi

My message 2607:EA00:104:3C00:E979:4B8A:33CA:9F00 (talk) 16:35, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Talkback. Re: Structured edits

Hello, EpochFail. You have new messages at West.andrew.g's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Hello, EpochFail. You have new messages at West.andrew.g's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Again. West.andrew.g (talk) 16:00, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

NOOB

Hey Aaron,

Long time no see. A fellow user from our community (tr.wiki) has discovered that NOOB disables the sorting arrows of "wikitable attable sortable" table class (it becomes a normal table). I was wondering if it could be possible to work out a solution for this.

Cheers

Vito Genovese 13:52, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Level one user warnings

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Level one user warnings. (This invitation sent because you signed up as a member of WP:UWTEST) Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 18:18, 27 June 2012 (UTC) Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 18:18, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

File:AFTv5.FES.form.png missing description details

Dear uploader: The media file you uploaded as File:AFTv5.FES.form.png is missing a description and/or other details on its image description page. If possible, please add this information. This will help other editors to make better use of the image, and it will be more informative for readers.

If the information is not provided, the image may eventually be proposed for deletion, a situation which is not desirable, and which can easily be avoided.

If you have any questions please see Help:Image page. Thank you. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 15:10, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

WikiProject Editor Retention: You are the "Retain new editors" team lead

Hi EpochFail, I went ahead and created project teams for each of the general editor retention areas people have expressed an interest to work in. Please review the team lists here: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Editor_Retention#Project_teams. I have assigned you as the leader of the "Retain new editors" team. Assuming you are interested in taking on this role, please notify the members of your team, and verify each editor is interested in being on the team. I expect that there might be some shuffling around of roles and teams at first, but once the teams are settled, I will co-ordinate with the teams leads to put together goals and a basic project plan to make sure that the project as a whole is successful and makes a measurable, positive difference for Wikipedia. Thank you for for your involvement... Zad68 19:40, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

This sounds great. However, I'm about to be AFK for about a week and a half (wedding + honeymoon), so I won't be able to get organized until the end of the month. --EpochFail^(talk|work) 20:50, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Congratulations! I'll work with some of the other editors to get the organization started. Do you have any preliminary organizational plans that we can try to start on? Ryan Vesey Review me! 21:02, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Ha... I was just going to stop by here and ask who Epoch might suggest to get it started, and actually suggest the indefatigable Ryan, but Ryan beat me to it! Zad68 21:04, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm hoping to start exploring some techniques for improving retention. Specifically, I've been designing (very preliminary) an analog of Huggle (code named Snuggle) to help Wikipedians identify new users who are doing good work. I have some sketches and mockups that I plan to pull together as soon as I get back. In the short term, I want to try to get a sense of what makes a desirable newcomer desirable and explore some effective approaches for detecting them computationally and showing their work to Wikipedian mentors. In the meantime, I think it would be helpful to build a summary of What We Know(tm) about newcomer retention and effective techniques (if any) that we might borrow from other systems. --EpochFail^(talk|work) 21:24, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

I invited the current members to make sure they were on board. I also created Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Editor Retention/Retain new editors to organize some discussion and I'll note your comments there, unless you want to swing by and make the same comment. I'm also going to start some discussion on a "new editor mentor" system that basically involves being willing to answer questions for new editors. Ryan Vesey Review me! 21:38, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Please feel free to note my comments. I'll get in trouble if I spend any time on wiki in the next couple of days. ;) Thanks! --EpochFail^(talk|work) 14:25, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Welcome to the joys of married life. Remember:A happy wife means a happy life. ```Buster Seven Talk 15:03, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Rise and decline study

Hi Aaron, I came across your and your colleagues' very interesting study the other day and wondered (see Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signpost#Academic_study:_The_Rise_and_Decline_of_an_Open_Collaboration_Community) why I hadn't read anything about it in the Signpost. Am I correct in assuming that the study, which seems to have been online for the past few months, is yet to be published in American Behavioral Scientist? Best, Andreas --JN466 01:35, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Hey! Thanks for your interest in our work. I have been meaning to write something up for the Signpost. I was initially waiting to find out when the paper (now accepted, but unpublished) would go to publication. I recently found out the publication is still months away. Given that, I'm happy to just do the write-up now. I'm not familiar with the signpost's process, but I can have a draft of the summary together by the end of the day (CST) tomorrow. --EpochFail^(talk|work) 16:34, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

I had some time today, so I wrote up a summary on meta. See meta:Research:The_Rise_and_Decline. I'll start working that into a nicer signpost format in the next couple of days. --EpochFail^(talk|work) 22:19, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

That sounds great. I hope to read a summary there in due course! Best, JN466 01:26, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Group Lens Lab

I have asked a question on the talk p. there. DGG ( talk ) 20:09, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

"Researcher" Permission Flag

Hi again Aaron, I've noticed your account has the "researcher" flag, one that I am trying to obtain. I briefly mentioned my copyright violation detection scheme (WP:Turnitin), and being unable to look through histories of deleted articles has been a serious obstacle towards this goal. It seems the "Research Committee" isn't terribly active and this permission has never been granted to anyone outside WMF (despite multiple attempts to clarify the criteria). I'd imagine I have the credentials for this and wouldn't like to see this evolve into a month-long debate. Do you have any advice over who I could contact (I'm going to shoot Dario an email) to fast track this? Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 18:39, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Snuggle in the Tech Report

Hi EpochFail. I've prepared an editor's cut at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-12-17/Technology report to be published in the next 24 hours. I *think* it's just your version with some stuff removed -- people have such short attention spans these days -- but could you check it for me ASAP? Thanks, - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 15:08, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

It looks good. I approve of the trimming. It's hard to say less, so I appreciate your help. I've fixed some details. It should be good to go. Thanks so much for your help! --EpochFail^(talk|work) 15:19, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Brilliant Idea Barnstar
	The Snuggle tool looks like a great concept. Thanks for working on this! Pine✉ 08:55, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks!  :) Let's hope it comes together well. --EpochFail^(talk|work) 15:03, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi, yes, I think it feels like the germ of a very good idea as well. The only niggle in my mind is that if people have already been bitten (smacked round the head on their first edit by Huggle...) then being nice to them after their 10th edit or whatever could be too late. Could we use some of your findings to get something done to Huggle? Like a "Care! That's a new user, and maybe that's a good faith edit..." - something, somehow, to slow down that trigger finger, if you see what I mean. Some sort of tweak to Huggle's UI to make it less likely to bite the newbies... It feels to me that this is close to the crux of the problem of editor retention. I don't have a decent answer but suspect the question is in there somewhere. What do you think? (now a friendly Huggle, that'd be worth calling Snuggle too...) Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:30, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

We (WMF + me & Staeiou) tried to make Huggle a bit nicer by reducing the nastiness of the warning templates that were sent to new editors (see the research paper and writeup on meta). The TL:DR; is that we had a marginally beneficial effect on retention of desirable newcomers and no corresponding effect on undesirables, so the new templates were implemented and are the current default.

One of the hurdles I see to having a more-than-marginal effect with Huggle is that it would require a change in huggler behavior. Huggle is Wikipedia's front line of defense and its a bunch of work, so it's a lot to ask for Hugglers to accept more of a workload like helping to shepherd newcomers. But if Snugglers (mentors) and Hugglers (vandal fighters) can share the workload of filtering our the undesirables and guiding the desirables, maybe we can have our cake (efficient anti-vandalism) and eat it too (productive, good-faith newcomers). I'm not sure if that would work better with two separate tools or a merging of the functionality, but I'll soon have an open API for Snuggle's dataset so that the latter will be an option. --EpochFail^(talk|work) 23:15, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!

TheGeneralUser (talk) is wishing you a Merry Christmas! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Happy New Year!

Spread the cheer by adding {{subst:Xmas2}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Hello EpochFail! Wishing you a very Happy Merry Christmas :) TheGeneralUser (talk) 23:43, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Office hour announcement

May I suggest that you send an announcement to Wikimedia-l, Wikitech-l, and Wiki-research-l regarding your upcoming IRC meeting in #wikimedia-office for Snuggle? --Pine^✉ 22:20, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the reminder. I just contacted everyone on the signup list and posted to WP:Teahouse, but I don't want to do too much more. I don't want to publicize this tool too widely just yet since it is barely functional at this point. I'll do a proper announcement once the tool is ready for wider use. Right now I'm hoping to gather a good group of beta testers. --EpochFail^(talk|work) 22:50, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Snuggle Demo

Hello EpochFail! I feel so stupid - I missed the Snuggle demo thinking it was at 2:00 EST but it was actually at 1:00 EST. Is there any way we could have a private conversation to make up, either on IRC or on WP? Thank you! Vacation^nine 19:06, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Nevermind, User:Ironholds emailed me the log. Vacation^nine 19:41, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

I'd still be interested in having a chat. I have a few meetings left today, but I'm hanging out in #wikimedia-e3. Feel free to ping me when you want to chat. --EpochFail^(talk|work) 20:13, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you! I'm ready now if you are. Vacation^nine 20:58, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

New Wikipedians (who are also programmers)

Hello sir. How are you doing?

Another user told me to talk to you about my programming capabilities. He stated that Wikipedia is always glad to have new programmers work on some potentially useful projects.

I must give a warning or some sort of precaution - presently, I am still a university undergraduate. Therefore, I will not be able to produce Ph.D. level software for Wikipedia, unlike some users such as User:Macrakis. In fact, I will not be able to do this until many, many years in the future.

However, for my particular age range, I think I may be decent at programming, I suppose. For instance, if you would like to see an example of my work, here is one external link:

Mint Programming Language

The Mint programming language, which is obviously not notable enough to have a scholarly article discussing it, is a new programming language designed by me during the year of 2012. It is supposed to combine the worlds of JavaScript, Python, Ruby, and Lisp into a single meta-circular language that is both functional and object-oriented in nature. The Mint language is written in about 20,000 lines of Java, XML, and itself, much like how Python would be written in mostly C and Python. Unfortunately, due to my own inability to find willing open source partners, I had to write all 20,000 lines of code by myself.

I consider Mint to be a general-purpose desktop scripting language, in the same vein as Ruby or Lua. It took me about 3 or 4 months to get the language into a more or less usable state. Mint is unrelated to the Baldor MintMT language, which has a very similar name.

I do have skills in PHP and server-side languages. I am also capable of writing JavaScript, CSS, and various kinds of HTML.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. --Carrot Lord (talk) 11:03, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi Carrot Lord! I just checked out Mint. It's come up on my radar before, but I didn't know that much about it. It looks like a pretty cool project.

If your intention in messaging me was to offer your (programming) services if I have any interesting projects, you might be in luck. I've recently been working on a system to aid newcomer socialization in Wikipedia (as inspired by my research) called Snuggle. Snuggle is already up and running on one of the Wikimedia Foundation's analytic servers. See http://stat1.wikimedia.org:8080. I've been adding in functionality as time allows. Sadly, I just started a new job @ google and that has been eating up all of my spare time recently, so I'm a bit behind schedule. If you have any cycles you'd be willing to contribute to the project, I'd be quite grateful. The UI is HTML/CSS/Javascript + a python API (built with Bottle). There's also a model builder that is Python + a Mongo database that synchronizes with the English Wikipedia MySQL database.

Right now, a lot of the system is experimental (wasn't sure it was going to work until I built it), so documentation is sparse, but I could give you a walk through the system's architecture over a VOIP call and prioritize some docs if you are interested. In the meantime, you can check out the repo on bitbucket.

If you're not all that interested in my projects, I'm happy to talk to you about your ideas and help you get a new project hosted on the WP:Toolserver or WP:Labs. The more wiki-tool developers, the merrier. :)

--EpochFail^(talk|work) 20:26, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Hello again. I would be happy to work on such a project, if I could figure out my way around things. Right now I am focusing on the large scale (and therefore more challenging) software endeavors of highly experienced software engineers who also work for or edit Wikipedia in some manner. I have some of my own ideas, but those will be done in my own spare time. I am interested in entering a Wikipedia project, because it is a sort of online collaboration with other programmers that I have never really attempted before. It would be a very interesting experience, at the very least. Thank you. --Carrot Lord (talk) 04:07, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

I have looked at the Snuggle interface. It isn't as much of a Big brother scare as I thought. It seems to be pretty clear that a user is either a complete vandal or a complete contributor. Usually there are no in-betweens. It is a little confusing when the interface sends you to the next user down after you vote on the previous user. I would expect it to "close the box" or something similar so that you could expand the next user you wanted via random access and not sequential access. --Carrot Lord (talk) 06:22, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Now, about the dissertation, or at least the research paper. It seems to use useful and extremely clear language, unlike some other dissertations which are completely incomprehensible. It seems to me that the research is decent, but as for improving Wikipedia as a whole, it may not be Snuggle that does the job, it it may not be the research that reveals the entire answer. Anti-vandal bots are completely useless. Completely. I could vandalize a page (I will not actually do this) and get away with it very easily, by creating hoaxes or elaborate systems that appear as if they are cited correctly. Why would I use such complicated methods? Because regular vandalisms, such as blanking a page, are not funny. If I were a vandal, I would enjoy being a clever vandal rather than a completely uninteresting vandal. One other user suggested that, if an article swapping feature existed, a vandal could swap both the contents and the edit histories of Earth and Moon, such that the article Earth would point to Moon and vice versa. It would not be useful to blank the page. --Carrot Lord (talk) 06:48, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

The problem with Wikipedia is obviously the existing Wikipedians. Many Wikipedians are wonderful, angelic, helpful people. Other old-time Wikipedians are useless, stuck-up, angry ragdolls. They do not make a significant number of edits anymore, they assume they know everything about Wikipedia simply because they attended some sort of WikiMedia convention in person, and more importantly, they act extremely harsh to newcomers even for the tiniest simplest mistakes.

This is the Internet. I know you understand this, since your username is EpochFail and somehow your dissertation is the only one I have ever read that contains a tl:dr section. People on the Internet do not care about rules. There is a good reason why Wikipedia contains WP:IGNORE. We can ignore everything if (and only if) it makes Wikipedia better, even if that means being WP:BOLD about it. Why do old and stuffy Wikipedians need to go? They hurt Wikipedia by killing otherwise good faith newcomers WHO SEEM to be bad faith.

Snuggle should, in my opinion, should not be a tool that monitors newcomers and punishes them if necessary. Admins already understand how to handle troublesome newcomers.

Snuggle should be a tool to monitor old-timer Wikipedians. People who are experts. Snuggle should be used to punish expert Wikipedians who unfairly and unreasonably reprimand newcomers on their Talk pages. They are killing the new blood of Wikipedia. I am a newcomer to Wikipedia. I have experienced this first-hand. Yes, I know that original research is not allowed inside Wikipedia articles. However, this is not an article. This is research.

That's just my hypothesis. I am not capable of writing a dissertation yet, so you are free to ignore me if you think my explanation makes no sense in terms of your existing research. --Carrot Lord (talk) 06:48, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

You make a lot of good points, but I wouldn't go so far in attributing the behavior of many of these crotchety old-timers to bad-faith. Rather, I think they've seen another, equally nasty side of the internet: newcomers/vandals/trolls who waste their time. For many who have stuck with Wikipedia this long, Wikipedia isn't about feeling good or welcoming the newcomers; Wikipedia is about writing an encyclopedia, and anyone who is not contributing in that direction is merely wasting the time and energy of those who are. A lot of Wikipedia's social and technological systems are designed to minimize this waste in effort. One of the driving ideas in the Rise and Decline paper is that, while the intention of these systems (efficient quality control) is very noble and worthwhile, newcomers will end up getting chewed up in the gears if there isn't a good means for having their concerns to be addressed.

To that end, Snuggle is just a visualization of newcomers, quality control tools and gears. As you saw, the interface summarizes newcomer activity in a way that makes teasing out the difference between good and bad-faith newcomers trivial. The interface also juxtaposes the effects of the quality control tools -- warning messages. The whole reason I built the visualization of newcomers' talk pages was so that you could both find a good-faith newcomer and see if they've been sent a handful of warnings from the quality control tools like WP:Huggle and User:Cluebot NG.

It's my intention that these good-faith newcomers in distress can be quickly identified this way rescued. In the process, editors who tend to send overly harsh warning messages to good-faith newcomers will become more accountable for their actions since Snugglers will challenge the warnings that were inappropriate. I hope that putting an experienced Wikipedian in the corner of a good newcomers in distress will both help those newcomers stick around in the short-term and help us develop better quality control tools in the long term by putting social pressure on those who use the tools.

You've brought up some good points about what actions Snuggle *should* support. In order to take advantage of your insights, I'll get the next couple of features mocked up in image form so that you can give me feedback and we can discuss their implementation. I'll get the mockups in WP:Snuggle/features by the end of the day. --EpochFail^(talk|work)

Thank you for the response. Also, I have a small question. Is it permissible for regular Wikipedia editors to write PHP scripts and request that the PHP software be installed into Wikipedia for some particular purpose? See this section on my user page for an instance in which another user, who knows I understand PHP, asks me to write some functionality into the Articles for Improvement page. --Carrot Lord (talk) 18:17, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

For better or worse, there is a complicated process by which the MediaWiki software that runs Wikipedia can be modified. You'd have to submit a patch or get commit access and pass several other points of scrutiny to get your changes implemented in Wikipedia's installation of MediaWiki. I think a better solution for these sort of one-off problems is to develop a suite of WP:Userscripts and/or a WP:Bot to do most of the heavy lifting. These types of solutions don't affect the entire website and that makes them easier to get up and running. If you check out my user page, I've written quite a few user scripts to change the wikis behavior, but in order to take advantage of them, you have to convince people to edit their common.js page to import the script (see User:EpochFail/common.js for an example). Bots generally live on the WP:Toolserver or the new mw:Wikimedia_Labs cluster. --EpochFail^{(talk • work)} 21:35, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. Is it true that WP:Bots are just programs that login to an account using POST and GET requests, and then perform actions by just sending requests to the server? But that would work on any website, so a Facebook statistics engine could work the same way, by logging into a Facebook account instead of a WikiBot account. I thought that Wikipedia had some special MediaWiki software to avoid the use of very generic bots. Do these kinds of MediaWiki software exist? --Carrot Lord (talk) 22:52, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

As far as I know, there's no nice way to extend MediaWiki functionality short of writing an extension and convincing the staff managing Wikipedia to install it -- and this is no minor task. We might be able to eek through with functionality already available. For a good example of what we can accomplish with pre-loaded form content, see the process for applying to the Bot approvals group. If you click the button to create a bot request (don't worry, it will just bring up some pre-loaded content), you'll see what I mean. --EpochFail^{(talk • work)} 03:18, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Hello EpochFail. This may (or may not) be related to your research. I am a new Wikipedian. I am also a programmer. I am leaving Wikipedia forever (as an editor and young software designer) because I am sick and tired of administrators accusing me of things I did not do, especially sockpuppeting accounts. As a good man, I will hope you believe me when I say I've NEVER created a sockpuppet account.

Why is Wikipedia losing people? Losing community. The administrators are the worst. That is my opinion. If you were researching lab rats, that would be a different topic of research. However, this is Wikipedia with human editors. So far you have been observing the newcomers, the lab rats. Now one of the lab rats is talking to you about why he will stop editing Wikipedia. I believe this is a cause for concern. --Carrot Lord (talk) 13:05, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't understand. What happened? --EpochFail^{(talk • work)} 16:12, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Seems to be related to this edit, which was preceded by this edit and also a proposed deletion notice. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 16:26, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

See User talk:Dennis Brown#You'll probably say no for a little more clarification. Ryan Vesey 20:24, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Demiurge1000 - Illogical again. You know nothing. This is not about those. This is about accusing me of being a sockpuppeteer. I work hard to fight sockpuppets of Wikipedia, and this is the greatest insult ever. Horrific community. Misinformation you spread, Demiurge1000. You might as well be known as Uncyclopedian User:Demiurge1000. Tch! --Carrot Lord (talk) 22:38, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Hello, EpochFail. You have new messages at Carrot Lord's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Talkback

Hello, EpochFail. You have new messages at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Editor_Retention.
Message added 02:56, 1 February 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

FYI, folks are talking about our paper... - J-Mo ^{Talk to Me} _{Email Me} 02:56, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer! --EpochFail^{(talk • work)} 15:37, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Well said

Nice post at WP:EDRET - J-Mo ^{Talk to Me} _{Email Me} 23:05, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

:) --EpochFail^{(talk • work)} 03:32, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

The Tea Leaf - Issue Seven

Check out the Teahouse Genie Badge, awarded for solving issues on the Teahouse Wishlist.

Hello again! We have some neat updates about the Teahouse:

• We’ve added badges! Teahouse awards is a pilot project to learn how acknowledgement impacts engagement and retention in Teahouse and Wikipedia.

• We’ve got a new WikiLove Badge script that makes giving badges quick and easy. Add it here. You can give out badges to thank helpful hosts, welcome guests, acknowledge great questions and more.

• Come join the experiment and let us know what you think!

• And...for all of your great work and all of the progress that you've helped the Teahouse make, we hereby award you the Host Badge:

	Teahouse Host Badge
	Awarded to hosts at the Wikipedia Teahouse. Experienced editors with this badge have committed to welcoming guests, helping new editors, and upholding the standards of the Teahouse by giving friendly and patient guidance—at least for a time. Hosts illuminate the path for new Wikipedians, like Tōrō in a Teahouse garden. Earn more badges at: Teahouse Badges

You are receiving The Tea Leaf after expressing interest or participating in the Teahouse! To remove yourself from receiving future newsletters, please remove your username here

Thanks again! Ocaasi 01:56, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

EpochFail, we moved your Teahouse host profile

Hello EpochFail! Thank you for being a host at the Teahouse. However, we haven't heard from you lately, so our bot has moved your Host profile from the host landing page to the host breakroom. No worries; you can always just Check in and our bot will move your profile back. Editing any Teahouse-related page will do the same thing for you. If you would prefer not to receive reminders like this, you can unsubscribe here. Thanks for your help at the Teahouse! HostBot (talk) 22:38, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Test message

Test message body. --GLTester (talk) 15:55, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

The Teahouse Turns One!

It's been an exciting year for the Teahouse and you were a part of it. Thanks so much for visiting, asking questions, sharing answers, being friendly and helpful, and just keeping Teahouse an awesome place. You can read more about the impact we're having and the reflections of other guests and hosts like you. Please come by the Teahouse to celebrate with us, and enjoy this sparkly cupcake badge as our way of saying thank you. And, Happy Birthday!

	Teahouse First Birthday Badge
	Awarded to everyone who participated in the Wikipedia Teahouse during its first year! To celebrate the many hosts and guests we've met and the nearly 2000 questions asked and answered during this excellent first year, we're giving out this tasty cupcake badge. Earn more badges at: Teahouse Badges

--Ocaasi and the rest of the Teahouse Team 22:36, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Returning

Hello EpochFail. I did state that I would be away from Wikipedia for eternity, but unfortunately it is not possible to survive in the modern world without looking at Wikipedia articles.

I want to return to Wikipedia mainly as a software developer, and partially as an editor of articles.

I am working on a very intelligent AI that resembles Apple's Siri. It will be the first AI in the world to have "technical skills for real" - an AI that you can talk to as well as an AI that can write Ruby code, for instance.

I hope to one day see these automatons edit Wikipedia in a far less biased manner than many Wikipedians today. Thanks for being so patient with my short fuse of a temper.

--Carrot Lord (talk) 19:13, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Like :) Glad to see you back! Hope to be seeing you as a wonderful programmer here! TheOriginalSoni (talk) 05:18, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Hey! I'm glad to hear you're back. I'm still hanging away on Snuggle with as much of my freetime as I can manage. I believe we were half-way through exploring options for supporting an article queue for a couple of Wikiprojects. Let me know if you want to pick that back up. --EpochFail^{(talk • work)} 15:29, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/WikiProject desk/Interviews3

Please see this and also comment here. We would like to have your views. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 05:01, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for notifying me. I left some comments. :) --EpochFail^{(talk • work)} 17:30, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Hello, EpochFail. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

Mdann52 (talk) 09:46, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Snuggle Alpha-tester signup

1. As a Teahouse host and a trainee for the CVUA program, I'm interested in seeing what Snuggle has to offer and trying it out. Technical 13 (talk) 11:35, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
   • Thanks for your interest! I'll be releasing a new set of builds over the next few days that will clean up some of the UI bugs. I'll keep you in the loop. For now, you can access the most recent stable(ish) build at http://stat1.wikimedia.org:8081. --EpochFail^{(talk • work)} 13:34, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Bug with WikiGnome and VE

Left a bug report :-) -- tychay (tchay@wikimedia) (talk) 18:05, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Saw that. Thanks for reporting. I'll have a look. --EpochFail^{(talk • work)} 18:51, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

User:EpochFail/mrclean.js

Hi Aaron! I installed User:EpochFail/mrclean.js and realized that it was adding the edit option from the script ta the top of article pages, not in the sections. There I can't add a section tag with the script to..well..sections, it just goes to the top of the article. Just an FYI :) I'd love to use the script, but no rush of course in fixing it. Just a friendly bug report. Thanks for all the work you do. SarahStierch (talk) 02:31, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

hey! Thanks for reporting the bug. It looks like it was introduced by a recent update to MediaWiki. I've made the small fix to replace the section-level template pickers. You should be able to use them again if you bypass your cache.  :) --EpochFail^{(talk • work)} 18:46, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Huzzah! Thanks so much. Pinging User:Kaldari (since he told me about the script and noticed the bug) so he's aware. Thank you! SarahStierch (talk) 18:49, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

What is Snuggle?

Sounds like a type of WikiLove, which I think we have enough of.--Launchballer 19:50, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Have you read the docs? Snuggle performs an entirely different function than WikiLove. If you'd like to see more about the motivation for building the software, see my presentation proposal for Wikimania. --EpochFail^{(talk • work)} 19:55, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Snuggle on Labs

Hey! :) Just got your message about snuggle. If you ever want to shift it over to labs give me a shout :) ·addshore· ^{talk to me!} 00:29, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

I'd really like to be running Snuggle on Labs. I actually had Snuggle all set up to be on Labs (see snuggle.wmflabs.org, but I needed to switch away due to their terms of service for reasons that I don't actually disagree with. They don't want to let me take usernames and passwords inside Snuggle even if I'm only passing them on to MediaWiki and never storing them in Snuggle. It's just bad practice to have users type their passwords anywhere but wikipedia.org. However, there's currently no other option available and I didn't want to delay Snuggle's release for the foreseeable future. I'm working with Rob Lanphier and Chris Steipp at the WMF to get OAuth (which will solve the password problem) implemented as fast as possible. I'm hoping to be one of the first test cases of OAuth for MediaWiki. As soon as it is ready, I'll be switching Snuggle back to Labs. In the meantime, my only option is to host Snuggle under my research lab's domain (grouplens.org). --EpochFail^{(talk • work)} 01:43, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

See also a writeup I did in my work log for Snuggle for some discussion of the OAuth problem and what prompted the move. --EpochFail^{(talk • work)} 01:47, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Heh! The huggle team is also waiting for Oauth to create out web based version of huggle. :) ·addshore· ^{talk to me!} 10:38, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

A suggestion: new abstract for the stub: oculo-respiratory syndrome

Elevated Inflammatory Mediators in Adults with Oculo-respiratory Syndrome Following Influenza Immunization: A Public Health Agency of Canada/Canadian Institutes of Health Research Influenza Research Network (PCIRN) Study

http://infectious-diseases.jwatch.org/cgi/content/full/2003/411/1

Copyright © 2013, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.91.229.165 (talk) 19:45, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

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SarahStierch (talk) 23:25, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

EpochFail, we moved your Teahouse host profile

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Start Snuggle

IRC office hours for wiki-mentors and Snuggle users

Hi. We're organizing an office hours session with the Teahouse to bring in mentors from across the wiki to try out Snuggle and discuss it's potential to support mentorship broadly. The Snuggle team would appreciate it if you would come and participate in the discussion. We'll be having it in #wikimedia-office ^connect on Wed. July 17th @ 1600 UTC. See the agenda for more info. --EpochFail^{(talk • work)}, Technical 13 (talk), TheOriginalSoni (talk) 17:26, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, EpochFail. You have new messages at Prabash.A's talk page.
Message added 20:02, 12 July 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Prabash.Akmeemana 20:02, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Please take a look at Cancer

Hope you don't mind, but I don't know what else to do, and you seem involved supporting wiki at it's core.

I used Talk, and made corrections and additions to the second paragraph in Cancer. Are the other editors violating the 3RR rule, when they also violate the text of their cited source?

Cancer (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Please see the following [[3]]

What I wrote in Cancer is:

Mutations rarely have large effects on cancer risk in the general population (<0.3%), and "account for less than 3–10% of annually diagnosed cancers" at a few specific sites. Phytochemicals from dietary plants and spices have been shown to prevent cancer initiation, promotion, and progression by exerting anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidative stress effects, and have been shown to induce apoptosis in cancer cells and suppress tumor growth in vivo.

Replaced by Jmh649 and Zad68 with (which is absolutely not supported by the reference):

Approximately five to ten percent of cancers are entirely hereditary.

Please see their source material [[4]]. The 5 - 10% they falsely cite pertains only to breast cancer, and the review finds essentially the opposite conclusion compared to what Jmh649 and Zad68 write. Genes are actually not very important, according to the source they cite.

How can I make corrections and additions with editors don't read the source they cite, inaccurately use a citation, and seem to use other editors (so very quick to jump into a subject they rarely edit) to possibly circumvent the 3RR rule?32cllou (talk) 00:42, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes my error. I grabbed the wrong ref from the body of the article to support the line in question in the lead. Usually per WP:LEAD the lead does not need refs as long as it is supported by referenced content in the body of the text.

The perper ref for the 5-10% figure is this one http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18626751 Best Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:39, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

You do not address the main issues, which are implicitly violating 3RR, lack of using Talk, forcing less important information into the lead, deleting important review information into the lead, and not using a review to support your text (as you have required).

Your citation is a simplistic cherry pick of the research. The cite does not say "entirely hereditary" (as Jmh writes) by a huge margin! The sentence should parallel the citation, which says "Only 5–10% of all cancer cases can be attributed to genetic defects, whereas the remaining 90–95% have their roots in the environment and lifestyle." Lifestyle includes phytochemicals, and I am free to use that in vivo review.32cllou (talk) 02:40, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Could we please hear from EpochFail. Please help directly, or forward their edits to the wiki police.32cllou (talk) 23:24, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Hey guys. I'm no expert in the subject area, so it's difficult for me to say what content is apt or not. It looks like the initial confusion could have been mitigated with little bit of WP:AGF. I'm happy to see that you guys are continuing to move forward with a discussion on the talk page. If you guys think it would be helpful, I could bring in an uninvolved subject matter expert to help you guys work it out. --EpochFail^{(talk • work)} 16:07, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for looking. Jmh649 writes material that is absolutely not supported by his reference. In fact, it's a gross bias into Wikipedia. He writes (again, for the fourth time) in the lead "Approximately five to ten percent of cancers are entirely hereditary.[2]" [[5]]

The reference says (introduction) "...genes have very little impact on life outcomes. Our biology is way too complicated for that and deals with hundreds of thousands of independent factors. Genes are absolutely not our fate. They can give us useful information about the increased risk of a disease, but in most cases they will not determine the actual cause of the disease, or the actual incidence of somebody getting it."

Is there no way to sanction User:Jmh649 's repeated, known fraud?

I worry about bringing in an "uninvolved" subject matter expert, because we may just end up with another potentially vested interest. For example, Jmn649 says he's a doctor. He evidently has lots of friends in Wikipedia. Can you bring in say a Cochrane Collaboration representative editor?32cllou (talk) 18:17, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Dear EpochFail, Please send in anyone you think is independent. Also, please direct me to any Wikipedia ~police. Finally, please direct me to any conflict resolution body. See the recent changes in Cancer. It's so harmful to Wikipedia.32cllou (talk) 02:04, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

32 User:WhatamIdoing has provided some excellent independent third party advice. She did not support your suggested changes [6] and yet you now are attempting to edit war it into place without consensus.[7] and [8]. We at WPMED are more than happy to have further experts join us. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 02:08, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

I retract the accusation I made (above) about Jmh649. We should focus on accurate depiction of the best reviews (most comprehensive, most recent, most independent and respected source) in all subjects.

I welcome additional editors that EpochFail can encourage to participate in this evolving and difficult subject. To avoid semblance of conflict of interest, I respectfully request editors from outside the medical field.

I will read that 2002 book, to see if it actually says damaged genes "cause" death from cancers. Note that the two very high quality references already downplay the importance of gene mutation in the finding of death from cancer.

Everything I read (recent dated reviews) finds that the promotion of cancer (for ex, inflammation caused by tobacco smoke) is much more important than the mutation than the initiation the cancer (DNA damage from an agent in the smoke). Furthermore, several large population studies find a relatively low rate of death from lung cancer among smokers if they consume lots of fruits and vegetables.

"Approximately five to ten percent of cancers are entirely hereditary.[2]" is opposite what the citation says. Genetic defects (the 5 - 10%) are not usually hereditary, but rather a function of lifestyle and/or environment. From the reference Introduction: "looking to the human genome for solutions to most chronic illnesses, including the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of cancer, is overemphasized in today’s world." But, that is happening with that sentence in the lead! Is there no sanction for producing grossly inaccurate text?32cllou (talk) 16:53, 17 July 2013 (UTC)32cllou (talk) 16:57, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

I would strongly recommend that you sit down and discuss this with an expert in the field or read more extensively. This is not the correct interpretation of the sources in question. The mechanism of cancer is largely genetic. Most of the cause of these genetic problems is environmental. Only 5-10% of the genetic problems that cause cancer are inherited from ones parents. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:57, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Expect troublemakers

Hi Aaron. Interesting to see the progress on Snuggle (I'd seen it mentioned but had mostly ignored it).

Just to let you know, your office hours on it on Wednesday 17th have been trailed (canvassed?) at a forum frequented by Scientologists and their fellow travellers (in the loosest sense). So, if you haven't already, you may wish to make sure you have someone on hand prepared (technically and mentally) to deal with any disruptive behaviour that may arise.

I won't be there myself, but may check out the logs (assuming it's logged as per usual). Hope all goes well. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 19:40, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. Can you link me to the discussion? I'd like to get a sense for the type of trouble we're in for. Oh and I'll make sure that the conversation gets logged. --EpochFail^{(talk • work)} 20:10, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

No probs, I'll email you both. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:43, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks again. Luckily, we didn't have any trouble. EpochFail (talk • contribs) 17:48, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

That just shows that Sc... hmm actually I'll leave that unsaid. :) I'm glad it went well! --Demiurge1000 (talk) 19:54, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

EpochFail, we moved your Teahouse host profile

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Still trying to make small changes to Cancer and Cancer Diet

Dear EpochFail, Please alert and possibly send in anyone you think is independent.[[9]]

I think an Rfc would be a further waste of time, because they seem to have many backers.32cllou (talk) 18:32, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi 32cllou. I'm sorry to not have gotten back to you in a more timely manner. I have a lot of activities on and off wiki that make it difficult for me to edit frequently. In the meantime, I'd tapped my contact on medical info. Sadly, she just doesn't have time to get involved.

I think that an RFC is a good idea. You should keep in mind that Wikipedia is not a democracy. It doesn't matter how many "backers" there are for any particular issue. If the published literature makes a strong case, I believe that you'll find that independent commentators will side with that version.

If you do start the RFC, please make sure to make a concise case for the changes you propose and ping me again as I would like to observe and participate. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 19:04, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

P.S. Sometimes this sort of work can be difficult and frustrating. I just want to say thanks for continuing to push for what you think is right. We all benefit when the encyclopedia is better. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 19:53, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks you for your input. I still have much to learn. I'm going to try once more, one issue at a time, and reference that one change in Talk. Then wait for response. I will be careful to make a good case for each of those corrections / changes in Cancer. I will carefully set the stage for an Rfc. Thank you for offering to watch over and participate, if an Rfc is necessary.

An Rfc could be a sham, given Jmh649's probable network of connections. The Rfc is also decided by "consensus", and it is alarming that Jmh649 or associates recommend to me that I take issues to the Rfc. I read something in Wikipedia about collusion. Soliciting friends to a subject (or Rfc) to create a "consensus" is banned (but, I assume, hard to prove). I read a page in a slow glance, but I quickly forget where I have read supporting material. Right now, I can't find that rule.

A problem with Jmh649's behavior is editors get bogged down and simply quit Wikipedia. I feel he badgers, as opposed to providing constructive criticism and helping work to quick agreement. A nephew warned that he's spent hours researching and considering changes, then made well referenced independent changes, and found weeks later that everything was gone without comment. He's still a member, but simply stop writing. I have professional (PhD, great writer) friends who have quit, and several others who considered contributing to Wikipedia but heard about bad behavior (editors, administrators, and stewards with likely conflicts of interest) and decided it would be a waste of time. One friend thinks that most editors in Wikipedia are now paid. I quit once for several months, and recently stopped again. I was spurred on! by a recommendation that I quit.

More than anything, thank you for your encouragement. I know Wikipedia can really help people. Facts are valuable commodities.32cllou (talk) 16:53, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

I give up [[10]] Judge and jury the same actors?32cllou (talk) 21:04, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

32cllou, it's hard for me to keep track of all of the proposed changes and points of contention, but I've given everything a quick look to try to get up to speed. Please forgive me if I have misunderstood the situation.

Here's my recommendation: do some other work for a little while. It seems like the points of contention you have with Jmh649 and Zad68 have become far too heated for their consequence. It looks like you may have technically crossed some lines (e.g. WP:3RR and WP:BRD) due to your excitement to get the best information in place quickly, so I don't think that any formal discussion with dispute resolution will work out in your favor.

So yes. Please do give up, but only temporarily and only for this article. I recommend checking out SuggestBot in the meantime for a way to get recommendations of articles that you're likely to be interested in that need help. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 21:37, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

OK. It has been a waste of efforts, but know that Wikipedia recommending eating fish is quite harmful. It is an important issue.

See "Study confirms link between high blood levels of omega-3 fatty acids and increased risk of aggressive prostate cancer. Consumption of fatty fish and fish-oil supplements linked to 71 percent higher risk.”[[11]]

Also see "A review of methionine dependency and the role of methionine restriction in cancer growth control and life-span extension"[[12]] Fish contains more methionine than any other meat. Pharmaceutical companies are currently spending hundreds of millions trying to prove drugs to remove methionine from the bloodstream. I strongly recommend that you personally reduce your intake! Shouldn't other people know the risk?

Also, see the new high radiation risk (thank you Japan meltdowns and leaks). Being high on the food chain sucks.

Finally, the studies reviewed by the Australian cancer council are almost all relative in nature, in that they find less cancer when people eat fish if they are substituting for red meat. The American Cancer Society only recommends fish as an alternative (to more harmful) red meat.32cllou (talk) 22:33, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

I've got to admit that, unless a secondary source directly states that eating fish is a cancer risk, it's a dubious claim even if there is some solid theory behind it. Surely, many things can have correlations with the hazard for cancer, but it's still difficult to build evidence for a causal relationship without performing a controlled experiment. I should know. I do these sort of epidemiological studies professionally. While your criticism of the recommendations provided in the cited cancer research reports may be well grounded, they are better published along-side the academic research since they constitute OR (specifically, synthesis). In the end, Wikipedia's threshold for inclusion is verifiability, not truth out of necessity to both the article writing process and the needs of encyclopedia readers.

I am not trying to write anything like fish causes cancer. I am trying to correct Wikipedia, which currently recommends that people eat more fish to REDUCE the risk that they die from cancer. The best review (ACS 2012) does not recommend fish, save in the body of the text saying that fish may be preferable (an alternative) to red meats (pork, lamb, beef), which should be avoided. The fact that most recent primary research suggests fish may be risky simply supports my case that it should not be recommended in wikipedia to reduce cancer risk.

I realize that some of the things I've said may be frustrating. I think that this is one of the primary reasons that Wikipedia struggles to attract experts as you summarized via anecdote earlier. We don't know how to value expertise because expertise it is not verifiable. So instead, we value citations to the most reliable sources because they can be verified, both by us editors and by readers. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 14:32, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

I value independent current review references most of all. I read tons and retain most. I am extremely careful with choosing my sources. Fact is, diet recommendations are made (not proposed, per wikipedia), fish is not recommended to reduce the risk of cancer death (wikipedia says it is), and only approximately 5 - 10% of cancer deaths can be attributed to heredity.

I mostly came back to your page because Jmh649 threatened to have me "banned". How can an editor get that done? I have tons of evidence that Jmh649 harms the content of wikipedia, and also seeks to drive good editors to quit.32cllou (talk) 17:08, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Hey 32cllou you keep making unsupported comments about me. You claim I have edit warred yet when asked to provide evidence you do not. The dif is here [13] it states "no violation"

The issues we had at breast cancer are interesting. You attempted to claim that a leaflet was an update of a Cochrane Systematic Review and Meta Analysis.[14], [15], and a bunch more. You did this multiple times despite being explained by many editors that this was not true.[16] and [17]. In your most recent attempt you finally admit that it was not a Cochrane review [18]. A Wikipedia who is also an expert removed it in the next edit [19] as we should be citing the Cochrane review not a leaflet derived from it.

You state "I value independent current review references most of all" yet you keep mentioning primary sources such as [20] in this edit [21] and you have mentioned this popular press peice both above and twice on the cancer talk page [22]. In the beast cancer issue above you attempted many times to add a leaflet rather than the proper review article.

You continue to attempt to edit war content and wording changes into an article despite no consensus to add it and multiple requests that you get consensus first.[23] You have made many personal attacks against me and you have been warnned a number of times for the same.[24] Yes these sorts of activities are getting frustrating. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 21:00, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

One more interesting bit. 32cllou states "PS you might be interested to know that mammography is not recommended at any age?" [25] How does one deal with an editor like this? The US Preventive Services Task Force recommends screening every two years in women between 50 and 75.[26] Screening is also recommended in Canada.[27] Yes a Cochrane Review does not recommend screening at any age. But our article mentioned ALL this before 32 came along.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 21:13, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Question remains, how can an editor present a case to have another banned? Is it out of bounds for an editor (Jmh649) to make that threat against me? Please direct me to the appropriate body.

The "Last edited: 7 May, 2013" update to the Cochrane Collaboration (CC) conclusion on mammography [[28]] is valuable to Wikipedia, and should have been included. I contacted them, and they said it was their most current statement. In one of his edits, Jmh649 claims the CC statement is not usable (not a review or update to a review). The May 2013 update is more up to date compared to the US Preventive Services Task Force statement. Why did Jmh649 and associates seek to deny wikipedia access to this CC statement? Shouldn't editors be expected to do their best for Wikipedia?

The Canadian and USPSTF reviews are based on the same global research as the CC update. As new data comes in, recommendations may change. It's critically important for wikipedia to be up to date, using the best sources.

Why does Jmh649 seek to deny wikipedia current diet recommendations, which are made in the detailed American Cancer Society (2012) review. As it currently stands, these recommendations are only "proposed" (see the first sentence in Cancer Dietary [[29]]). That characterization is very wrong, and misleading to wikipedia.

Why does Jmh649 source from a very questionable "review" [[30]] Neither of the only two authors are in the fields of diet or cancer.

So much time wasted, sorry, but it's important.32cllou (talk) 12:53, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

This amazing. You state "In one of his edits, Jmh649 claims the CC is not a worthy organization!" WHAT? Please provide a diff? I have never said any such thing. I have added hundreds of Cochrane Reviews to Wikipedia. In fact I was the one who added the current Cochrane reviews to the article on breast cancer. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:05, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Make a distinction between Jmh649's unusual demand that wikipedia only use reviews, and the latest statement from the CC. Jmh649 claims that we can only use reviews (or updates to), and claimed I was trying to cite as though it was a review. [[31]], and later tried to water down the CC statement ("We could even sorten more "Cochrane states that, due to recent improvements in breast cancer treatment, and the risks of false positives from breast cancer screening leading to unnecessary treatment, mammogram screening may no longer be recommended."). Why does he seek to water down the CC statement? The CC no longer recommends at any age. I have corrected my text above.32cllou (talk) 13:32, 2 August 2013 (UTC) PS it was Zad who said we couldn't use the CC statement because it was a "draft" (that label was later removed) So I used the web page statement.32cllou (talk) 13:35, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Please do not edit your comments after someone has replied to them, quoting you, as you did here. It makes the conversation very hard to follow. I see you added "I have corrected my text above" but that really is not sufficient because it doesn't explain what you "corrected" or why. Zad68 13:37, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I was against using that leaflet that was clearly tagged Draft, not yet for distribution. at the time we were discussing it, see the conversation here. If you are now in agreement that Wikipedia should not consider reliable sources items clearly labeled "not yet for distribution" by their authors, that would be great. Zad68 13:42, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

I need to learn how to legal brief like make changes but leaving prior (specific to wikipedia code) writing. Another waste of time considering what we all could be doing to improve wikipedia. Here's the diff [32]] When I first cited that CC statement pdf, the "Draft" on the browser line was not there. I simply switched to the CC Web page, which had the "at any age" conclusion, and linked to the pamphlet. Note, printed out, that pdf did not say "draft." I don't know about you all, but this whole thing is hard to follow. Why are we here? I hope to improve wikipedia.32cllou (talk) 13:55, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Agree that having to have conversations like this seems like a waste of time. To modify something you wrote, the way to do it is to use the <ins> and <del> tags. For example, if you wrote this: "The sun is cold." and you wanted to correct it in a Talk page conversation, you should do it like this: "The sun is <del>cold</del> <ins>hot</ins>." The result looks like this: "The sun is cold hot." That is the accepted way to do it.

If whoever is reading this wants to review the history of our discussion of that document, it can be found here. Zad68 14:00, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Saying Hi

Hi Aaron. We met briefly at Wikimania after the Big Brother talk. I work at Wikia and would like to introduce you to some folks that are working on NLP. You can always reach me at christian@wikia-inc.com. --BladeBronson (talk) 07:42, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

hey! Pleasure to have met you. Thanks for sharing your contact. I look forward to finding ways to support each other's work.  :) --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 08:29, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, EpochFail. You have new messages at Talk:GroupLens Research.
Message added 09:15, 10 August 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Sorry for tagging without starting a discussion, I just forgot while I was busy with other articles. QVVERTYVS (hm?) 09:15, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, EpochFail. You have new messages at Matty.007's talk page.
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Matty.007 09:03, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, EpochFail. You have new messages at Talk:GroupLens Research.
Message added 09:15, 10 August 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Sorry for tagging without starting a discussion, I just forgot while I was busy with other articles. QVVERTYVS (hm?) 09:15, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

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Matty.007 09:03, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Your research study

Hello EpochFail,

I am willing to participate in your study. Say hello to TheOriginalSoni. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 02:02, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi, I would also be willing to participate.--Gilderien Talk to me|List of good deeds 15:48, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi Gilderien. That's awesome. I'll drop you an email to get us scheduled. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 16:33, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Me too. Cheers! --LukeSurl ^{t c} 18:59, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Awesome! Thanks LukeSurl. It looks like you don't have email set up in wiki, so you'll need to send me an email to get us started. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 19:02, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

EpochFail, my schedule is free for the rest of the day. Please let me know if we can do the interview. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 22:04, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

You've got mail!

Hello, EpochFail. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

I hope this is how you use this template... Thanks, Matty.007 17:04, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Answered your questions for me. Matty.007 20:59, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia

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• Main Introduction — What is Wikipedia?
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If you want to know more about a specific subject, Help:Help explains how to navigate the many help pages.

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Where next?

• Check out Help:Watching pages. Your own Watchlist can become your favorite place to visit.
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See also

• Help:Starting editing

Good luck and happy editing.```Buster Seven Talk 04:35, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Hey Aaron. This is the usual welcome that I have been using. ```Buster Seven Talk 04:35, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Question: The above welcome is not a template. It is the first thread (and sub-threads) at User:Buster7/Welcomes. I just copy-n-paste and deliver them. In that case, will they show up on Snuggle with the "W" in the talk page summary icon? I think not. ```Buster Seven Talk 05:31, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Good question Buster7. Currently, Snuggle won't pick up your welcome templates. Many of the common templates use a special "comment" at the end of the content to signify which template was used. For example, "<!-- Template:uw-vandalism1 -->" appears at the end of a warning for vandalism level 1. You can help me detect your welcome message by appending such a comment to the end as well. I've boldly updated the first message on you page with just such a comment so that you can see what I mean. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 13:14, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. So, AIU, moving forward, when I cutnpaste the comment will be part of the welcome and will notify Snapple that a Welcome was delivered and create the talkpage summary icon. Also, I tried to use Snapple this A.M. but when I clicked on the username or anywhere on that bar, nothing happened. I did sign in at Snapple as is requested. Just thought you should know. Maybe its me? ```Buster Seven Talk 14:38, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Yup. You've got it right.

I'm sorry your having trouble with Snuggle. I'm guessing that your issue with Snuggle could be a browser issue. I don't support Internet Explorer at this time. Could you try again in Chrome and let me know if it is still a problem? --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 19:34, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

AOK! I forgot the IE problem part. ```Buster Seven Talk 19:43, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

side note

@Buster7: Quick side note: Some prior WMF research came to the conclusion that "Welcome messages that are relatively short, to the point, and which contain only a few important links are more effective at encouraging new editors to get involved in the project.". Therefore I'd suggest drastically reducing the number of links in your personal welcome template. Also, for easier copy&pasting, I've got mine at its own subpage User:Quiddity/welcome, which allows an easy "{{subst:User:Quiddity/welcome}} ~~~~" to be pasted into talkpages. –Quiddity (talk) 20:22, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

I know what you are saying Quiddity and I dont disagree. If initial welcoming was all I was doing I would certainly change to a more "Welcome to Walmart. Have a nice day" type welcome. But my objective is a bit more. I want to provide them with a Rules of the Road type welcome...one they can refer back to when they get stumped and we all know they will get stumped. Or like the car maintenance manual in the glove box. When they are searching for an answer to "where do I go?" I want them to remember their welcome and refer back to it. What I might consider is a two-welcome approach. First the Walmart and then a week or two later, the Rules of the road. User:MarkMiller once suggested I collapse a large portion. Maybe that would work. I loved welcoming new editors but I haven't done it for awhile. Of course, I want my efforts to be effective. A lot of time is wasted on new editors that have zero idea of what they are doing. I appreciated their zeal, but I question whether WP gains in letting them "drive in the fast lanes" within moments of creating their account. Why are we so afraid of educating our newest members before we put them in the drivers seat. I have looked at the Welcome that I am using and I see all the links as important and valuable to teach the new editor what to do in a variety of situations. Consider: we don't know what situation any one editor will run into and we can't predict what source for that solution they will need. I will consider changing to a briefer welcome but I still think new editors are competent (In spite of not knowing what they are doing) and will not get confused by a few more words and choices. ```Buster Seven Talk 21:00, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia! Need a hand?

Hello! EpochFail, I noticed your article was declined at Articles for Creation, and that can be disappointing. If you are wondering or curious about why your article submission was declined please post a question at the Articles for creation help desk. If you have any other questions about your editing experience, we'd love to help you at the Teahouse, a friendly space on Wikipedia where experienced editors lend a hand to help new editors like yourself! See you there! Technical 13 (talk) 19:08, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

4

Snuggle

Hi, just to check, we are chatting on the IRC (##M007?) tonight at 19:50/19:45 GMT? Thanks, Matty.007 16:16, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi Matty.007. I hadn't planned on that. I never got a response from you after I sent my availability, so sadly, I've scheduled other things during that time. I'm about to start traveling for a week, and that will make scheduling difficult. We could try doing part of the interview via email if you'd be interested in that. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 18:18, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant to send it, having written it. I will find another time, the email either wasn't sent by me, or wasn't received. Sorry, I will attempt to reschedule soon. Thanks, Matty.007 18:30, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

I really am very sorry, I will have a look to see when I am next available. I thought I had sent an email, hence the 'You've got mail' template above. Thanks, Matty.007 18:36, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Oh, you got my email but it was the wrong time. Please can you template me for emails, because I don't check my WP email regularly. Can you give me an email when you return please? Thanks, Matty.007 13:44, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Matty.007, regardless I've just sent you an email with my initial question set. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 14:13, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, that sounds better, less time pressure. Please excuse any typos... Matty.007 14:17, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

No worries Matty.007. I grew up with IM. I don't even see the typos anymore. I built the Wikignome gadget for my wife.  :) --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 17:01, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

FYI

Starting with User:Esochem, about 9 of the first dozen have received Welcomes (some time ago) but they do NOT show up w/ the "W" Icon in the Talk page activity column. Ive only checked down to User:Vorliene. ```Buster Seven Talk 22:12, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Hey Buster7 It looks like two things were a problem. My synchronization server got wedged so that it wasn't picking up new changes. I've given it a kick so that it is running again. I'm 48 hours behind so it will take a little bit of time to catch up. The other problem is that Snuggle looks for talk activity based on level 2 headers (e.g. "== Foo ==") and your welcome didn't include a header, so it was ignoring your post assuming that it was general talk page preamble. I'm planning to fix that, so you shouldn't have to change the way you post your welcomes, but it may take a few days since I'll be traveling. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 23:14, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Snuggle study

Count me in. Please let me know when and how you'd like to do this. Chris Troutman (talk) 06:22, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi Chris troutman. I like to do the interview over Skype or Google hangout so that we can use screen sharing to allow me to look over your shoulder while you use Snuggle. If you drop me an email, we can get scheduled and share contacts. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 14:07, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Snuggle login issue

Hey Aaron-- having an issue logging into Snuggle. I messed up my password a few times, but then after getting it correct (for certain), I keep getting a message box that says "general: An error occurred while attempting to checking credentials with mediawiki". I closed out of snuggle, attempted to login again, but got the same error. Then, while typing this message to you, I was able to successfully login. Not sure if this is something you can resolve or clarify-- perhaps it's mediawiki rejecting a login? Thanks, I, JethroBT ^{drop me a line} 05:41, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Sounds like possibly a caching issue. mr. (not a bot), can you give us some information about your system? OS/browser information may be helpful. Thanks. Technical 13 (talk) 12:13, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Sure. Browser is Firefox 23.0.1, and OS is Windows 7. I, JethroBT ^{drop me a line} 13:27, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Hey I JethroBT. I just ran a quick test. Login functionality appears to be working now. There could have been a hiccup with the API last night. Could you confirm that the problem still exists? --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 13:44, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

On a different computer (at work)-- Mac OS X (10.6.8) and using Google Chrome (Version 22.0.1229.79). I can produce largely the same login issues again after around 5 failed password attempts-- when putting in the correct password after the fifth attempt, general: An error occurred while attempting to checking credentials with mediawiki appears, preventing login. Closing out of Snuggle and opening it back up to login does not work. Waiting about 5-10 minutes seems to allow login again. I suspect this might be something on the mediawiki side of things, though it's a weird kind of lockout because it's so short. I, JethroBT ^{drop me a line} 15:17, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

It looks like we're hitting the login limit for Wikipedia. It looks like the best thing for me to do at this point is to make Snuggle deliver the "too many login attempts" message. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 15:22, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

• According to mw:Manual:$wgPasswordAttemptThrottle the default is:

  array( 'count' => 5, 'seconds' => 300 )
  

  What I'm thinking EpochFail, is that a warning should pop up after the 3rd failed attempt saying, "You've made three failed attempts to login in the last # minutes/#seconds. Two more failed attempts will initiate a five minute (300 second) wait before another attempt is made. Please make sure that you have your password correct." and then do it... Two more failed attempts should gray out the screen with a light red popup in the middle with a countdown timer to the next available attempt. Just my idea to solve this issue. Technical 13 (talk) 16:37, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

I like the idea in general, but it sounds like a lot of engineering. One of the primary difficulties involves reading that configuration information since it will certainly be different for different MediaWiki installs. I figure that we'll get 95% of the benefit by just passing on the message from the MediaWiki API. I'll do that first, but I'm interested in automatically parsing the MediaWiki configuration for other reasons. Maybe we can put the nice user experience on the back burner until that point. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 20:52, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Re-imagining Mentorship IEG proposal

Hi there. Since the IEG brainstorming session at Wikimania, the Re-imagining mentorship proposal has been rewritten. As you have expressed interest in the past on this project, I was hoping you would give some feedback on the proposal, as it will soon undergo committee review. You can find the proposal at Meta. Your comments would be most appreciated :) (Also, if this is successful, I hope we can work with you on creating the matching system and identifying new users that may need assistance). Steven Zhang (talk) 02:07, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Hey Steven Zhang. Thanks for the ping! You should see feedback from me shortly. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 03:15, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Ping Steven Zhang. See my new comments & endorsement there. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 15:46, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Syntax highlighter and the Signpost

Happy Thanksgiving! (Assuming you celebrate Thanksgiving.) So last year you asked me for an article discussing the syntax highlighter gadget. I guess the idea of including the content in the Signpost fizzled and died, but I was wondering if you were still interested. The gadget is up to 1,513 users on the English Wikipedia and I think it's especially relevant given the recent uprising against the VisualEditor. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 00:43, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi Remember the dot! It's good to hear from you. While my work on making a regular column about wiki tools in the Signpost stalled, I still think it would be great if we ran this bit. When I got my work on Snuggle into the Signpost, I was working with The ed17. I'll ask him if he's still interested in helping us run this article. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 15:51, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Sure, I'm happy to work with you on getting this in the Signpost. Are you two thinking of doing a broader series again or just a one-off? Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 00:28, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

That's a good question. Did West.andrew.g (STiki) or Nettrom (SuggestBot) ever follow-up? If not, I could ping those guys again. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 19:40, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Forgot to ping The ed17. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 19:41, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

I did work on a draft in my userspace. If I remember correctly I was in touch with The ed17 who pinged one of the other editors, after which it didn't go anywhere. Could rewrite the draft to show off some of the new features we've added since then, of course. Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 20:14, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

The ed17, it looks like we have two summaries that are ready to be edited into the Signpost. How do we proceed from here? --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 14:56, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Notification of automated file description generation

Your upload of File:AFTv5.FES.help.png or contribution to its description is noted, and thanks (even if belatedly) for your contribution. In order to help make better use of the media, an attempt has been made by an automated process to identify and add certain information to the media's description page.

This notification is placed on your talk page because a bot has identified you either as the uploader of the file, or as a contributor to its metadata. It would be appreciated if you could carefully review the information the bot added. To opt out of these notifications, please follow the instructions here. Thanks! Message delivered by Theo's Little Bot (opt-out) 11:37, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Looks solid. Thanks Theo's Little Bot (and theopolisme). --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 14:56, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Great! You're very welcome (and I'm sure the bot would say the same ;) ) Theopolisme (talk) 23:21, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

NICE

I installed the NICE code. When I revert edits, I see a box indicating that I'm using NICE, but that's it. Has this project ended? Chris Troutman (talk) 18:05, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi Chris Troutman. NICE has been unmaintained for a while, but if you'd like to make use of it, I can get the gadget up and running again. I'm at a conference at the moment, but I should be able to sit down with the code in a couple of days. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 14:15, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Not necessary. If it's not being used then there's no need for you to go out of your way on my behalf. I was curious about it; I don't need it. Chris Troutman (talk) 17:18, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

You're right.

I read the article here and some of your work that it referenced. You're right.

Best wishes,

The Uninvited Co., Inc. 22:40, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Hey The Uninvited. Thanks for the support! I'm trying to help solve the problem too. See WP:Snuggle.  :) --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 03:12, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

• I recently came across the same article. "Kudos!" from me as well. :  }

--Kevjonesin (talk) 21:13, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Researcher rights

Hey,

What does researcher allow you to do, can you view deleted pages? If so what is the process for becoming one? Valoem ^{talk contrib} 03:11, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi Valoem. Sadly, the researcher right does not allow users to view deleted page content. In the past, I've needed to apply for temporary sysop rights in order to view such content and query the API for revisions to deleted pages. I don't know of a structured process for this. If you're interested in helping set one up, I'd be interested in working with you. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 07:38, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, I was hoping to set up a new special permission WP:RETRIVER which allows editors to apply for this ability, but if temp sysop is the only way, how would I start? Valoem ^{talk contrib} 13:30, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

@Valoem: Hmm... In my case, the first step to getting temporary sysop for research purposes was to get hired by the WMF to do research. Since that's not practical for most, I'd like to support a more general process. As far as the right way to create a new user group and permission set, I'm not familiar with that process, but I imagine that writing up a proposal and posting to WP:VPP or WP:VPM would be a good first step. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 05:29, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation#Help desk changes

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation#Help desk changes. Figured the new data for the AfC/HD might be of interest to your AfC research... Thanks. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 17:29, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Snuggle for other wikis?

Hi, do you think that Snuggle could be translated (and hosted) for wikis in other languages? In case it could, I'd be interested for it.wiki, so I would provide the Italian translations and do the rest I can do :-) --g (talk) 00:11, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Hey g. yes! Absolutely. I have an internationalization strategy for Snuggle that works pretty well for languages that are written/read left to right. See [33] for an example of what the En-US file looks like and [34] for an example of what the Pt-BR translation looks like. If you could produce a similar file for me, I could spool up another version of Snuggle for itwiki. There will be a little more configuration necessary to detect certain types of talk page messages, but we can take care of that when we get that far. Would you be comfortable submitting a pull request with a new translation file. If not, you could just post it on the wiki. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 02:46, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

fine :-) I'm in a hurry today, so I left you the translated page here. Please let me know about what to detect in talk pages and whatever else should be done on the local (it.wiki) side. Thank you :-) --g (talk) 10:02, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Will do. I'm off at a conference for the next couple of days, but I'll get back to you when I can. There's a hackathon coming up [35] early next month where I plan to get this work done. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 11:40, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

No problem, I'm here :-) About Zurich, you will meet there some Colleagues from it.wiki, I'm pretty sure they will help for details :-) --g (talk) 21:45, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

PS: we already have a page about the tool --g (talk) 21:46, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

g, Wow! That's great! We'll have to get some new screenshots in place once I have it up and running with the new language files. Would you be able to introduce me to your it.wiki colleagues now so that we might start planning the work? In the meantime, it would be helpful if you point me towards a set of example templates and other talk page messages that you think it would be useful for Snuggle to detect. For example, in enwiki, Snuggle identified vandalism warnings by looking for structured comments like <!-- Template:uw-vandalism1 --> in talk page messages. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 02:00, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

The l10n itself seems small enough, I can translate it myself any time if needed; however, it's missing message documentation and I would prefer to feel in the 21st century.

As for templates mapping, that's something that will require patrollers' buy-in and help, is it configurable on wiki? There is a cheetsheet table and a full list in the category. It's probably best to mimic whatever LiveRC does on it.wiki (it's the "standard" tool there); for this I or some other Italian-speaking user will be available to help in Zurich in case language skills separate from snuggle knowledge don't suffice.

All of this should be documented. --Nemo 13:21, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Re. translate wiki integration, I'd appreciate a pull request :D since I have other fish to fry and not enough time to heat the burner as it is. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 14:12, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

sorry for my late answer, I was afk for a few days. This one could be a vandal's average talk page (well, a little more than the usual amount :-) We have - in decreasing importance - the {{yc}} (a final warning just before a block), the {{Blocco}} (a warning he's been blocked, reason and duration), the {{vandalismo}} (with the vandalised page), the {{Senza senso}} (for meaningless edits); as far as I know, our templates don't hide commented text in the page, so if we are talking about a regexp looking for hidden text, we don't have any (apart from other MW's ordinary comments). We have several other templates about other bad habits, such as those about copyright violation, and other issues which I believe will more or less be the same here. Most of them will have a name starting with {{Avviso ... }}, and all the templates which name starts with this word ("avviso"=warning) are of interest.
In case Snuggle can detect ordinary (internal) links, it could be useful to add [[Wikipedia:Utenti problematici/{{PAGENAME}}| (this page is partly similar to the incidents' noticeboard, however it is the place in which we discuss about troublemakers, in different sub-pages under the troublemaker's username, i.e.: [[Wikipedia:Utenti problematici/Gianfranco]]. This is because when a discussion is being held about this user, the one who starts it has to link it in the talk page of the concerned user. This was for a first step, I will soon sort out a list of important templates :-) --g (talk) 00:54, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Hey g, sorry for the delay. Just a status update. I just wanted you to know that I've been getting some hacking in every chance that I get. One of the things that I needed to do before I could get the itwiki Snuggle up and running was moving the enwiki Snuggle from my old research lab's machines (snuggle.grouplens.org) to Wikimedia labs (snuggle-en.wmflabs.org). In order to make that switch, I needed to move away from the old authentication system which used your username and password to log you into Wikipedia. Snuggle now uses OAuth to do a handshake with MediaWiki instead. This was harder than expected, so I published a library and improved some documentation to make it easier for the next guy. I'm close to getting the next couple of language servers spooled up. I'll ping when I do. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 00:16, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

no problem, take the time you need, I can wait :-) Good to know that the authentication stuff was was brought... back home, this could actually have concerned some users. I believe it's worth the extra work to keep pws in the WMF's area :-)
OT, Nemo will have told you that your research about it.wiki is currently being commented at our Village Pump (just ask me, if you need translations :-). Might I ask you two questions: first of all, why are we talking about a "decline" for a 15% loss? I mean, we are a relatively small Community, we are talking about (grossly) 120/150 users (I'm looking at 100+ and 250+ users, the rest is hardly accountable), in times of a severe general crisis (in Italy, which is our main geographical reference), and in coherence with other "western" projects' negative trends.
Secondly, looking at other wikis' numbers, it seems indeed that we weren't the only ones in trouble, i.e. nl, pl, es, fr, pt, all have similar losses; what makes it.wiki so special?
I happen not to agree with the definition, but I'd really like to understand your point, I'm afraid there's something I'm missing, so thank you in advance for your thoughts (of course, you are always welcome to take part into the discussion, if you wish - we will gladly provide a translation :-) --g (talk) 22:14, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Technical Barnstar
	Thank you so much for your work to create m:Research:Ideas/Screening WikiProject Medicine articles for quality/Prediction table. This is going to save me many hours and much boredom. Thank you! WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:31, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Metrics

I came in thinking maybe I'd hear a naive talk, but of course it wasn't. You're very careful! :-) How can folks help?

--Kim Bruning (talk) 10:58, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Hey Kim Bruning. Good Q. Let's chat and see what makes sense. I have some other work to do over lunch today, but I should be available this evening. Maybe we can talk about value measurement after the final keynote? --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 11:33, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Real Life Barnstar
	Thank you for giving an interesting and insightful talk at Wikimania London on new article processes. It should give Wikipedians (especially on English Wikipedia) lots to think about to help welcome and retain newbies. —Tom Morris (talk) 14:48, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Authorship and weighting

I am working on an authorship tool. See here for an example of the output.

Be good to have a chat while we are both in London. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 11:14, 10 August 2014 (UTC).

Rich *clicks* Cool! This looks like one of the alternative uses of authorship/persistence I'd really like to support (whether via the api or by collaborating on code). I have some meetings over lunch, but I'll be around after the closing ceremony. Would you like to chat and maybe grab some dinner? --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 11:45, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

That would be good! All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 14:27, 10 August 2014 (UTC).

• I'm listening to your talk about AfC and would be interested in joining up for this talk with Rich and dinner. Andrew (talk) 14:17, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Rich & Andrew Sounds good to me. Let's meet outside Hall door 7 on the ground floor after the closing ceremony. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 15:33, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

• Will do. Andrew (talk) 15:46, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Ack! All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 16:22, 10 August 2014 (UTC).

Rich. The information theory based authorship tracking paper I was talking about [36] --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 16:52, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Many thanks. The rarity functions do indeed correspond to the entropy function I am using, I need to read the whole paper when I am less tired to see if I can improve my algorithm from what they have, but initially it does look very promising. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 14:44, 11 August 2014 (UTC).

German Wikipedia is weird

Hi Aaron,

just wanted to let you know that you can reach me at de:User:Braveheart and/or the email function on that site if you have any questions concerning German-Wikipedia-Weirdness. Cheers, Philip Kopetzky (talk) 22:17, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

P.S.: You can give me my 2 ₤ back when you come to Vienna sometime ;-)

Hi Philip Kopetzky. Thanks again and it was great talking to you! It might be nice to catch up again soon given recent events re. MediaViewer. You'll be hearing from me. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 08:26, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Well, things are heating up quickly: de:Wikipedia:Umfragen/Superschutz - basically a petition to strip WMF staff of superprotect rights and remove superprotection from any de-wp pages. Philip Kopetzky (talk) 21:11, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Hey Philip. I can't fault the dewiki editors for pursuing this option. I was honestly dumbfounded when I heard that Commons.js was locked down. The only way can I can seem to help is by aggressively pushing for the improvements to feature development/deployment processes that will make these battles unnecessary in the future. It's hard to sit by the sidelines and watch this unfold, but it seems that anything I might do about the current situation would add fuel to the fire.  :/ I'm open to suggestions though. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 21:59, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

No, sure, there's not much we can do at the moment, it's just a bit weird how quickly things are escalating. Just keep on doing what you're doing! Philip Kopetzky (talk) 22:23, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Not really weird, the interface between the community and the foundation, notably the old-school developers has been broken for some time. The mission statement says "empower and encourage", the attitude has been "command and control". Unless the hierarchy learns to chill, and work collegially, grim consequences seem likely, on de: and possibly on en: and Commons. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 02:11, 16 August 2014 (UTC).

Hey Rich. I totally agree. empower is an important word here. In the talk that Yaneer Bar-Yam gave at Wikipedia, he argued that hierarchical organizations are limited in the complexity of problems that they can solve (from a computational modeling perspective) and that organizations that distribute control can adapt to complex problems more effectively. see the talk. I think that is keen. Regardless of who you think is right in a given situation, I think that we can have a productive discussion about effective decision-making structures at the scale of Wikipedias and that it will inevitably lead us to an empowering role for the WMF. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 08:17, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

I have been banging on in various fora, trying to make it clear that this is not about the Media Viewer, or even about Super-protection, but culture. I'm not sure I'm making any headway, but I feel it is important to try. Thanks for pointing me to Bar-Yam's presentation, it is thought provoking and pulls a fair few strands together. I have been trying to explain the leadership imperative first discussed by Wilfred Bion in his Experiences in Groups to the community from time to time, but I think the particular expression "when something goes wrong the knee-jerk reaction is to put someone in charge" is pithy (arbcom anyone?). All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:14, 16 August 2014 (UTC).

Yes, the tendency to not yield any ground in a conflict makes things more difficult than they should be - I'm not quite sure as to whether this is a general "angry Internet" problem or specific to WP. People on :de are now applauding the "audacity" of certain administrators who "dared to stand up to WMF", fighting off WMF bureaucracy and thinking that the conflict is settled. If the cause of this mess isn't dealt with, we'll have the same situation with the next implemented feature.Philip Kopetzky (talk) 09:55, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I recently had a good chat with Birgit_Müller_ about the situation. While we worked through some ideas that would make upcoming deployments easier to foresee (e.g. call attention to "beta" when a beta feature is nearly ready for deployment), I think the real solution is to bring a user-centered process to product development and prioritization. Right now, there's not much insight into decisions about which products will be developed until they are nearing deployment. We identified three general groups of stakeholders who ought to have a voice in prioritization.

• Experienced Wikipedians: Can be engaged on-wiki. Community liaisons bring expert knowledge and engage on-wiki, but only after the product road map has been set. User testing at Wikimania is very important, but it happens after we've already decided what problem to solve (usually when we have a solution ready) and for the purposes of identifying minor issues to fix -- not setting priorities.
• Newbies: Can't really be engaged on wiki, but they can be surveyed and interviewed at sign up. Lots of relevant research here, but user studies will be critical to understand how to newcomers might prioritize their problems.
• Readers: Currently no direct engagement, but since mostly everyone reads Wikipedia, guerrilla testing can work for Western, English speakers. We'd need to broaden our strategies in order to know the concerns of the majority of our readers (not available for guerrilla testing in the bay area). AFAICT, we tend to focus guerrilla around new features. Have we ever just watched people browse Wikipedia to see where they stumble?

It makes me wonder if there should be a specific group tasked with understanding and advocating the needs of each stakeholder group. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 19:32, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Special Barnstar
	I am awarding this barnstar for the great job you've being doing with wiki researches. Thanks for all and keep up with all this amazing datahacks you provide to the world! Crang115 (talk) 18:06, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

Snuggle

Nice work with the interface and the logo. It looks brilliant! --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 16:44, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Rsrikanth05 Woo! Thanks! I hope you find it useful. Please do let me know if you encounter any problems. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 17:37, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Sure. Will do. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 17:42, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

re: IEG you might be interested in

Yep, this looks quit interesting. Thank you for notifying me. I just hope the end result is easy to use for code laymen like myself. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:52, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Piotrus! --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 15:35, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Mentoring vandal fighters who are using automated tools

Hi Aaron, I was reading your Rise and Decline paper (metapage) and I was wondering if there's been an effort to identify and mentor our high-volume vandal fighters, such as the ones using Huggle? Have we been able to get their response rate up from 7% to something more similar to Twinkle users? I know it could be a tricky subject to broach and we don't want to drive them away but I think it could be worth trying. II | (t - c) 21:17, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Hey II! I'm sorry to not get back to you sooner. I read your message from my phone and just forgot to reply when I got back to my keyboard. So, there have not been any substantial efforts that I know about to "re-train" recent changes patrollers. I've had some discussions with the Huggle devs about the design of the user interface and it seems that the new UI surfaces some positive messaging features.

I think you're right that this is a tricky subject. I think that part of the reason I have had little success in working with CVU is because my work tends to be summarized as "vandal fighters are ruining Wikipedia" while I personally prefer the refrain "vandal fighters continually preserve Wikipedia". IMO, nothing would render Wikipedia intractable faster than shutting down Huggle/ClueBot/etc.

OK, with that in mind, I think that a little bit change on the part of the vandal fighters could go a long way. As you brought up, the BRD response rate seems like a critical one. I think that calling attention to the positive messaging features and building a social practice around their use would be a great way to get started. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 19:55, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Snuggle talk page summary

Hello EpochFail, I've been trying out Snuggle, but noticed that some talk page templates don't register on the talk page summary panel.

The templates I've found not to register are:

• {{welcomeg}} - welcome message
• {{Welcome to Wikipedia}} - welcome message
• {{Uw-nothereblock}} - block notification

Hope you can fix this small bug: Noyster (talk), 17:02, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Noyster. (especially for taking time to list out the templates) I'll get to it ASAP. Regretfully, I think that means it will take me about a week to get some other things off my plate. In the meantime, could you link me to any example uses of these templates that you have handy? --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 14:44, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Will appreciate it any time you get a chance to work on this. Here are three uses of each template, that gave a blank talk page panel on Snuggle:

• {{welcomeg}} - welcome message

1. User talk:Parham1994
2. User talk:Vaivasvat
3. User talk:Thotananda

• {{Welcome to Wikipedia}} - welcome message

1. User talk:Txs400
2. User talk:Siobhanemurphy
3. User talk:Prinznaz

• {{Uw-nothereblock}} - block notification

1. User talk:Evanstansus
2. User talk:Daxriver920
3. User talk:CaidinHappyHalloween
   

: Noyster (talk), 18:14, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

 Done Sorry for the huge delay. I plan to start picking at the issue tracker more often over the next few weeks. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 20:51, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Article about you

I recently created Aaron Halfaker. What do you think of it? Everymorning talk 00:11, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Everymorning Wow! I'm flattered. Looks solid to me.

If you think it's OK, I'd love to share some things that might be relevant. Up to you. I've never had such a massive COI with an article before. It even feels sketchy to make suggestions. Either way, here I go.

• My thesis advisor was John T. Riedl.
• This is the most highly read article discussing the rise and decline work, but it also hit businessinsider, dailymail, usa today, popular science and a few other places.
• I've also discussed coverage biases in Wikipedia.
• The media coverage discussing my research about bots is mostly in reference to Bots and Cyborgs: Wikipedia's Immune System, Computer, IEEE.
• I give invited talks sometimes (e.g. Oxford and University of Michigan).
• Also, I can stand on one foot for like 10 minutes. ;) --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 01:08, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2015!!!

Hello EpochFail, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you a heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2015. Happy editing, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:01, 25 December 2014 (UTC) Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of {{U|Technical 13}} to all registered users whom have commented on his talk page. To prevent receiving future messages, please follow the opt-out instructions on User:Technical 13/Holiday list

Some boba for you!

Thanks for creating Snuggle! Bananasoldier (talk) 22:50, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Bananasoldier! --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 15:31, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

love you userpage

	Love your userpage
	from Dfrr. now what would really make you happy is if you watched a show called Happy Days a spin-off of Love, American Style. eeeeeyyyy Dfrr (talk) 17:40, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Wow! Thanks :). I've watched a bunch of Happy Days when I was a kid.  :) I had no idea about Love, American Style though. Also, a fun bit of language, but sad for the show was "jumping the shark" -- I find the term useful for describing when cultural things have run their course. Lots of good Happy Days before the shark bit. :) --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 15:53, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Re: Re: Growth team research

Dear Halfak,
Thanks for your reply, I am totally interested and I would like to join on your project that you are doing now. You may send me email to chihonglee777gmail.com. Here are some of my introduction: (Redacted), born and live in Hong Kong, Studying at a secondary school, I am joining zh.wikipedia, Wy/zh on incubator and ZH on wikiversity and I have went to wikimania 2013 Hong Kong. Thanks for your reply!
Regards,
Gabrielchihonglee (talk)

I removed a line of text; feel free to replace. Andrew³²⁷ 13:18, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Good call. Thanks Andrew. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 15:55, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

a user who may need a friend

hello epochfail this is your buddy dfrr. this user named User:Trimethylxanthine has not been getting that many messages from other users. in fact he has only gotten messages from one other user who welcomed him when he first came to Wikipedia. User:StuRat User:Conifer User:Matty.007 have gotten a message like this on their talk page. so lets send hi barnstars wikiloves messages anything to make him feel that people know about him. thank you and have a awesome April. (P.S. did you see my userpage it is awesome.) Dfrr (talk) 07:14, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi Dfrr! I'm always down to say hello and welcome a newcomer. But I'm curious about why you chose this user to reach our to. I looked through User:Trimethylxanthine's contrib history. It seems like he did some good work at the reference desk up until Feb of 2008 and then mostly dropped off Wikipedia. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 14:30, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

thank you Man i will award him with a barnstar for his good work on his userpage thank you very (note do you think that thi agenda 21 stuff is true if so reply back to me please):-)Dfrr (talk) 19:03, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

about the message a user who may need a friend

hello Epoch it is Dfrr I have sent User:Dennis Bratland the message about Mr. Trimet i need you to go to his talkpage and discuss the a user who may need a friend message that you both have and i also need you to go to User:Conifer User:Matty007 User:MrWooHoo User:StuRat User:Davejohnsan User:JackofOz and other users (who i will list later) aout the message i sent you and them about Mr. Trimet although Mr. WooHoo & Mr. 007 are inactive in it may take weeks to get a reply back from them although you may always leave a message on my talk page as i am always watching notifications that come to me. User:Conifer will be happy to talk to you as he has always helped me with editing (and i think i first saw him telling me how to edit something Trimet in portland or and has been my friend ever since for about a year if i can remember) and other things anyways thank you and have a good year. (P.S. do you think aliens are real if so talk to me).Dfrr (talk) 22:17, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Invitation

I am leaving

Epoch dfrr here I am leaving Wikipedia unless I decide to come back. this is because I may be getting blocked. anyways tell everyone this and this is my final message. farewell my friend and good dayDfrr (talk) 06:11, 22 April 2015 (UTC)(Talk to me:-))

hi dfrr here i came backDfrr (talk) 00:47, 28 April 2015 (UTC)(Talk to me:-))

WP:Labels

Hi, I had a question about Wikipedia:Labels/Edit quality and I was wondering if you could help answer it. I have been trucking my way through edits today, and I had a question about tagging them. I have been answering both the damaging and good-faith questions for each edit (for example a perfectly good edit I will mark as Not Damaging and Good Faith and I just wanted to verify I was doing this correctly. I also was wondering when you planned on notifying the other users who responded to your invites, since it appears the campaign has begun. I am also considering making some type of invitation banner template that I can put on user's talk pages and maybe a userbox, to help increase awareness of the project. Any answers to any of these questions is appreciated! EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 01:15, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

EoRdE6, thanks for signing on! Yes, that's what we intended. You should get a pop-up to warn you if you don't answer both questions. I realize that it is unlikely to find an edit that is both Not Damaging and Not Good-Faith, but our form system makes us ask those questions separately. Thanks for your help and let me know if you experience issues. We'll be on the look-out for bugs reports & feature requests throughout the week. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 05:33, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

NICE

In re your question: Every revert would be adequate; when removing (any) source would probably be ideal. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:16, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Invite to the Minneapolis Institute of Art

Minneapolis Institute of Art edit-a-thon

Date: Saturday, October 24, 2015, 12pm–4pm Location: Minneapolis Institute of Art Friends Community Room, 2400 Third Avenue South, Minneapolis Sponsor: Minneapolis Institute of Art You are invited to attend an Art+Feminism edit-a-thon at Minneapolis Institute of Art which will be held on Saturday, October 24, 2015. This editing event is dedicated to improving and increasing the presence of cultural, historic, and artistic information on Wikipedia pertaining to women artists. For more information and to RSVP: → click here ←, you may register online for the event or call (612) 870-6323 --gobonobo + c 20:59, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:49, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Nice talk tonight!

Hey Aaron! Our conversation was here. Can't promise too much bandwith, but I'd love to do what I can to help at some point. II | (t - c) 05:28, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Hey ImperfectlyInformed! Thanks for the pointer. Was great to chat. I wouldn't mind keeping the conversation going. A good way to do that is to add m:Research:Revision scoring as a service to your watchlist. I generally post updates to the talk page here and it's a good place to raise higher-level issues or discuss new opportunities. Anyway, I watch this page too, so no harm talking here. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 22:28, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Cool. I took a look at some of the project reports. I'm reluctant to distract you from real work with conversation, so I probably won't say too much until (or if) I get the chance to dig in and play with some of the code! But if you do a hackathon event or something, please advertise it and I'll show up... II | (t - c) 05:31, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Hey ImperfectlyInformed. /me puts on his scholar hat The conversation is the important part and the engineering is a means to furthering the conversation.  :) I'll definitely be at the m:Wikimedia Hackathon in Jerusalem. That might be difficult for you to get to, so maybe we can look into setting up a hackathon in the bay area. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 15:49, 26 February 2016 (UTC)