Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 21:12, 26 September 2004

For old conversations, see the subpage /Old for links to old revisions. Guanaco 00:31, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Noncommercial images

Hello,

Thank you for your message on my talk page regarding Image:HanscomBrown.jpg. I have a couple questions for you. First, is it possible to license an image for commercial use by the Wikimedia Foundation only? Second, what is the impetus behind the effort to do away with noncommercial licenses? I understand the committment to free distribution, but allowing commercial use does not seem to promote freedom to me.

Thanks,

Acegikmo1 20:41, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It's possible to license something for commercial use by one organization, but that still couldn't be included in print versions of the Misplaced Pages. The content needs to be GNU-free, so that it can be copied and copied again. If you use a copyleft license like the GFDL, commercial reusers will be required to give credit and allow others to distribute it under the same terms. Their commercial use would, in effect, make even more people able to use it both commercially and non-commercially. Guanaco 18:00, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Mike Garcia

Hey, I've been out of the loop for awhile. Is User:Mike Garcia really Michael? His user page seems to indicate he is still banned, meaning his account can be blocked (and theoretically should be under any circumstances until he is unbanned). Is that right? Just wondering what's going on... Tuf-Kat 00:16, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)

I've responded by email. Guanaco 00:56, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Please respond here. Why are you unblocking him? RickK 20:30, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC)

The IP address 130.95.106.154

Hi Guanaco. It's User:Mark here. I sat down at a random computer terminal at my uni (UWA), and found that it had messages waiting for it on Misplaced Pages. Random, huh? Anyway, you had left it a message encouraging them to get a user account, so I just thought you'd like to know, in case the IP address vandalises anything. - Mark 06:30, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

User:Guano & Co.

Just wanted to let you know about this new user -- User talk:Guano & Co. (contributions) ....

Thanks, BCorr|Брайен 18:40, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Very strange. It's probably just a troll trying to get me on their case or possibly Mike Church. They've only made three edits, which seem to be good, but if it starts vandalizing, I'll block it right away. Thanks for the note. Guanaco 17:43, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

George W. Bush

Why is this page still protected? Rex071404 07:57, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I don't really know. I haven't been paying much attention to that article, and I wasn't the one who protected it. But I'll leave it alone for now, because it looks like there's a serious dispute. Guanaco 17:41, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Contacting you personally...

I left a note about Mike Garcia on the VP, and was directed to talk to you. As it stands, Michael is banned, as far as I know. Do you have other information to alter that impression? If he is still officially banned, why do you believe he should be allowed to edit under his new username? Has he apologized to anyone he's insulted or to anyone who has had to correct his vandalism and consistently inaccurate content additions/edits? He hasn't apologized to everyone, I know, as he hasn't apologized to me. So, if he is not "officially unbanned", and if, as I suspect, he has not made any statement of contrition or repentance, why do you feel he should be allowed the privilege of editing here? I hope we can talk about this calmly and civilly, and if other, more inflammatory editors jump in, I hope you'll attend to them separately -- I know there are people here with little public respect for you, but I am not one of them, and I think we can reach an understanding. Awaiting your reply, Jwrosenzweig 21:17, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Danny and I should have answered your questions on the village pump. If not, feel free to bring this up here again. Guanaco 04:28, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Unblocking Michael

Well, if blocking a user doesn't stop Michael, then how can you stop Michael from editing Misplaced Pages?? 66.245.69.5 00:11, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps we can't stop him from editing Misplaced Pages. Danny's post to the village pump explains why in detail. Guanaco 00:17, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Tables

You've been colspanning=2 and removing "none" and "incumbent." I agree this is somewhat aesthetically pleasing, but is there a reason you're doing this beyond that? A particular notion of better layout or less confusing or what? Furthermore, I think it's better to label someone an incumbent than just colspanning 2, but I can understand colspanning 2 and removing "None." Any comments? I'm trying not to be critical, just trying to flesh this out. :) Thanks. --Golbez 22:26, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)

To clarify: I'm not just reverting your changes. I changed back George W. Bush because I was confused over the change and thought Incumbent looked better; then I saw John Adams and saw that you were doing this many places, so I wanted to chat first. Then I edited Dick Cheney because of the (accidental?) removal of align=center from the table def. So I hope you don't think I'm just reverting you. :) --Golbez 22:32, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)

I agree with you fully. I'll fix the "incumbent" cells. Guanaco 22:47, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Good, that works. :) Should "None" remain the same, though? That is, the way you changed it? Personally, I think None should still be there, but this is less a solid argument than Incumbent. --Golbez 23:23, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)

I would prefer None, but I don't really have a strong opinion on this. Change it back if you think that's better. Guanaco 23:28, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Might will do. So in the end, nothing changes... well, not really. The tables need |- align center to save space, and the dashes are probably better, and you did those.. I'll think about ways to improve it... --Golbez 00:29, Aug 29, 2004 (UTC)

IRC logs as copyvio?

Guanaco, could you explain to me why you marked the IRC log at User:Orthogonal/IRC ban by Snowspinner as a possible copyvio? Thanks. -- orthogonal 14:16, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I've just reverted you. I don't know if logs can be copyrighted as such, but even if they are this surely comes under fair use? Theresa Knott (The token star) 14:19, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Every comment made on IRC is "owned" by its creator. The massive log that was previously posted does not look like fair use, but it seems better now that all the bulk is removed, and nothing but what is necessary to comment on Snowspinner's actions is there. Guanaco 14:27, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for fixing up my user page :). I had no clue it had that many mistakes! Just out of curiousity- what's the difference between using frame and thumb in the image tag? Thanks again! -] 22:40, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

A thumb has an "Enlarge" icon that the frame does not. It also forces the servers to resize the image (to 180px, unless overridden), causing a loss of quality or an increase in file size in some cases. They're great for displaying images in articles smaller than their actual size, but if you want to include an image at its original size, use a frame. Guanaco 22:58, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

By the way, I've supported your nomination on Misplaced Pages:Requests for adminship. Guanaco 23:02, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thank-you very much for your support- it is greatly appreciated. Unfortunately, I just realized that my amount of contributions is not 1,906, as it states on the page. Instead, it is about 1,505. If you feel that you need to change your vote, I will definately not hold it against you, and you can feel free to do so. Thanks for your time! -] 23:42, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Taxobox tables

Hi there. I noticed the Guanacobot is converting some taxobox tables from HTML tables to wiki-markup tables. As it happens for taxoboxes that is unhelpful, unfortunately. Those of use who are working on the tree of life project are slowly converting the tables to templates for greater flexibility - and our automated converter works best on HTML tables. For the time being, wiki-markup tables are being converted by hand. If you want to get involved in speeding up the conversion of taxoboxes to template format, I for one would be delighted! THanks! Pcb21| Pete 06:20, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

RfC on Axis of evil / Asses of evil filed

See RfC here regarding this:

Axis of evil Should "AssesOfEvil.png" (see image on this page) be included in the article under guise of "parody"?

Your comments are appreciated.

] 05:39, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Touchy Problem

While I agree that Fennec cannot validly certify the RfC opened by Snowspinner against me, I don't think you (or anyone else) should move another user's signature, as you just did to Fennec's signature.

Doing this misrepresents what the signing user intends, and tends to decrease faith in the validity of signatures in general, which is harmful to wikipedia.

I would humbly ask that you to revert his edit and instead explain the reasons you believe Fennec should himself move the signature; possibly by endorsing David Vasquez's "outside view" which says as much, or by adding your own "outside view".

For obvious reasons of appearance of impropriety, I am NOT going to revert an RfC open on me. -- orthogonal 00:03, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

And PS, I appreciate your support, I do. I just want to do this right and in a way that isn't harmful to Misplaced Pages. -- orthogonal 00:04, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Since I really don't want to get tied up in this dispute, I've reverted my edit. I may later endorse a summary, but at the moment, I have more than enough wikipolitics to deal with. Guanaco 00:32, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

No pressure from me (especuialy as I'm the defendant -- it would be improper). Thanks for the quick revert. I really do think the sanctity of signatures is important. -- orthogonal 00:37, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Talk page reversion

While you're probably in the right with whatever Mr. Anon was going on about, it kind of looks bad if you revert someone else's edit, to someone else's talk page, when they're complaining about you. Ambi 00:56, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I have no idea wether you are in the right or the wrong in your quarrel with Cantus or somebody else but like Ambi I also think it looks bad for you when you revert someone else's edit, to someone else's talk page, when they're complaining about you. Unless of course you are the victim of somebody who is somehow usurping your identity and going around doing thos silly reverts to try to give you a bad name. AlainV 01:02, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I am simply trying to enforce a ban. His edits are to be reverted. If I truly made a mistake and/or the block is wrong, he can and should take it to the mailing list or to private email. We can't allow temp-banned users to cross-post comments to try to gain sympathy. That is seriously disruptive. Guanaco 01:11, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Then there is a flaw in the banning procedure and/or the banning enforcment procedure since his comments were available to me anyway by going into the history of my talk page and looking at what you had reverted. So, he was just as "seriously disruptive" as if you had not done the revert, and your doing the revert added yet another step in my trying to find out what this was all about. AlainV 03:14, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Unbanning Michael

Hi. Jimbo has stated that Michael is to edit only with the user:Mike Garcia account. What then is the point of unbanning user:Michael? - snoyes 20:38, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

If he were to log on as user:Michael, it would autoblock a bunch of AOL proxy IPs that someone would have to unblock. We should also assume good faith at this point and not use blocks on any of Michael's accounts. If he edits with a different account or anonymously, his edits can simply be reverted. Guanaco 20:46, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Cantus' edits in templates

Guanaco, I noticed you've reverted some of Cantus's edits in a couple navbox templates. He's been very persistent, without explaining himself at all. I've recently posted on his talk page, trying to explain to him why I think bullets are overboard, if you wish to voice your opinions, I'd welcome it. Here is where I posted about it: User_talk:Cantus#Regarding_bullets_in_templates and template talk:history of Russia —siroχo 06:29, Sep 4, 2004 (UTC)

My latest edit at Template:Terrorism if you count it as a fourth revert, falls outside the 24 hours limit. --Cantus 05:30, Sep 5, 2004 (UTC)

I noticed that. However, if you were to exceed 3 reverts in 24 hours on that template, it would be improper and wrong for me to enforce the AC ruling there, because I would be the one you've been reverting, and there would be a major conflict of interest. Guanaco 05:40, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

B-Movie Bandit stubs

Hi again.

There has been ongoing talk about the speedy deletion of substubs left by a very contentious anon nicknamed "The B-Movie Bandit." Although he hasn't made an official declaration, Jimbo Wales agrees that these stubs are, in fact, candidates for speedy deletion unless other users can bring these stubs up to standard. Thanks. - Lucky 6.9 07:36, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Guanabot fixing things again—more complaints

Would you please take a look at what your 'bot recently did to Conservatism? It looks mostly wrongheaded to me. Will you please clean it up? -- Jmabel 18:21, Sep 6, 2004 (UTC)

It does look wrongheaded, but it's only converting invalid Windows-1252 characters to HTML. I'll clean it up, but people really should stop using curly quotes at least while we're using ISO 8859-1. Guanaco 18:39, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The Guanabot has just changed First Council of Constantinople to "correct" the Windows 1251 items to HTML entities. Unfortunately, it changed an œ in an interwiki, thus breaking the link. I have reverted. Mpolo 18:34, Sep 6, 2004 (UTC)

Don't revert those; follow the links on the old revision and then change them to the %C5%93 format. Guanaco 18:39, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I have unreverted, but can't find a "move this page" link in the French wikipedia, so I'm leaving that link "broken".Mpolo 18:54, Sep 6, 2004 (UTC) Update: I created a redirect from the œ version of the page to the one with the character (assuming that the French Misplaced Pages must use a character set that allows œ). Mpolo 20:45, Sep 6, 2004 (UTC) Update2: Someone on the French wikipedia has decided that the œ version of the page is silly to have and has deleted that page and reverted First Council of Constantinople to the version using the œ character in the text. I'm just going to leave it. There are obviously interwiki issues that have to be considered -- since other wikis allow those characters in article names, blindly changing them to our encoding is going to break thousands of links. Mpolo 21:05, Sep 6, 2004 (UTC)

Now your bot has messed with Talk:Political correctness. There is no circumstance in which a bot should be altering people's comments.

I strongly request that you stop your bot right now and review the changes it has made in the last half hour rather than making the rest of us do it for you. -- Jmabel 18:58, Sep 6, 2004 (UTC)

The only change it is making to people's comments is a technical one because of character encoding problems. It is not the bot's fault and it is not my fault that people insert these characters directly into the page source. It does not make visible changes (except for possibly making things display as intended in some browsers on some platforms). There is no circumstance in which these characters should be inserted directly into the source. Guanaco 19:28, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Hi. Can you please point me to where it was "decided" that these UTF8 characters were "bad" and they need to be changed to character entities? As it stands, your bot is converting words I can read and edit, into something I can't... Nyh 19:44, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

See Misplaced Pages:Special characters. Guanaco 21:47, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Again, I would urge you to consider having the bot replace these with normal ASCII apostrophes and double-quotes. I commend you for seeking out these incorrect entities, but to me it's no better to be using ’ and its ilk in thousands of places where ASCII quotation marks are perfectly acceptable, or even more correct in many cases (as in possessive nouns). -- Wapcaplet 19:47, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• ‘ASCII quotation marks’ might be preferable due to Misplaced Pages’s current technical limitations (i.e. use of ISO-8859-1), but they are certainly not more correct typographically. An apostrophe appears identical to a right single quotation mark; you can confirm this by looking in any bound book. “ASCII quotes” are a typewriting/keyboarding convention—suitable for writing and emails—but they aren’t desirable in published books or designed web sites. —Michael Z. 17:02, 2004 Sep 7 (UTC)
  • (1) We are not doing typography here. (2) If the apostrophe appears identical to the right single-quote in typography, then why not use the apostrophe, which is more readable in wikicode? The only situation where an apostrophe would not be appropriate is when a left single-quote is intended (as in "The letter ‘A' is the first letter of the alphabet") (3) The straight ASCII apostrophe and ASCII double-quotes are currently recommended in the style guide. -- Wapcaplet 18:31, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I would support changing ” and the like to simple " as well, and ’ and the like to simple '. It would also help consistency within articles, since most editors don't use the fancy-schmancy ones, and it looks funny to use two different styles within one article. Of course that would have to be more widely discussed than just here. -- Mpolo 19:55, Sep 6, 2004 (UTC)

Yup, I agree--the somewhat less familiar html entities make it much more difficult to edit with the current wikieditor. Less HTML is better than more in the current editing environment. Much better to convert the curly quotes to straight quotes. ] 20:49, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Just a couple of rough statistics: I've just gone through about 100 articles' worth of Guanabot entity-replacements. Of those, roughly 80% of replacements were instances of ’ used where an ASCII apostrophe should be (nearly always in possessive nouns). Very few of these should not have been ASCII apostrophes - the only one I recall seeing that should not have been was inside a wikilink. Of the remainder, about half were left and right double-quotes (“ and ”) where normal ASCII double-quotes should have been. ldquo and rdquo, in all cases I saw, should have been ASCII double-quotes. I saw about four instances of ellipsis (...) replaced by …, in which case three ASCII periods should be used instead. I didn't keep precise track, but I'd say that about 5 to 10% of the entity-replacements that Guanabot has made were appropriate: ndash and mdash, as well as most of the accented characters, seemed to be appropriate in most cases.

I would suggest, if it is not too difficult, that you modify the bot to be a little bit smarter about these replacements. Simply including a quick check to see if the letter "s" immediately follows a right single-quote, and using an ASCII apostrophe rather than the rsquo entity, would eliminate a huge amount of the perceived problems with what the bot is doing. I would also suggest always using normal ASCII double-quotes in place of ldquo and rdquo, and always using three periods in place of the ellipsis. Obviously not all the cases can be caught, and these rules might create a few new problems, but I think they would do way more good than harm. -- Wapcaplet 01:26, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I don't think this is worth running. There seems to be too much trouble in getting things correct for a bot to do it. Assuming that if an s follows and apostrophe means that it's a contraction or possessive form, for instance, is probably not a good idea. At least not when the "fix" that is being made doesn't really accomplish that much. anthony (see warning) 12:26, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Are there any instances of 's' immediately following an apostrophe (or right single-quote) that are not possessive nouns (aside from the case I have just given, when 's' is the first letter in a single-quoted phrase - surely a rare occurrence)? Surely it's better to make this assumption than to convert them all to right single-quote entities, which are quite definitely wrong in the case of possessive nouns. And it's definitely better than manually fixing 80% of the bot's edits. I think it's good to have a bot replacing incorrect Windows-character-set entities, but it'd also be nice for the bot to be replacing them with better alternatives. -- Wapcaplet 18:08, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

you're all a bit funny suggesting "'s" be used to disambiguate quotes from apostrophes so the right html entity can be used. If the bot's job is to remove characters which use the wrong encoding, the *only* sensible thing is for it to drop things which have a meaningful 7-bit-ASCII equivalent down to 7-bit-ASCII. The CP1252 and Mac characters have not been inserted with a view to typesetting quality; a majority of articles use vanilla ASCII characters; anyone approaching Misplaced Pages with a view to typesetting it will take this into account. One option for automation is for the wiki-editor to translate ' and " into quotes leaning in the right direction *based on which side(s) are adjacent to letters*. I'd expect this would disambiguate quotes from apostrophes better than whether an 's' follows. —xoddam (not a registered user)

html characters and accents

Are accented characters (like è) supposed to be directly in the wikitext or is html supposed to be used for those? I've been confused on this one for a while, and saw guanabot fixing similar things, so I thought i'd ask. —siroχo 20:41, Sep 6, 2004 (UTC)

Take a look at the chart in ISO 8859-1 (not the Windows-1252 chart). All those can be used directly. Guanaco 21:13, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Edit link in templates

While I initially didn't like them, I've found the Edit links that have been put in some templates quite useful, like when fixing the inexplicable color change. Why do you think the edit link shouldn't be there? --Golbez 00:26, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)

I don't have an opinion on whether they should be there, and my edits are just for consistency with the other templates. I'd be happy to help add them to all the templates if there's a consensus that it should be done. Guanaco 00:44, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Guanabot

Just out of cuirosity, whats up with this?

Pud 03:33, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It was fixing a problem caused when someone inserted a Windows-1252 character directly into the page source. See #Guanabot_fixing_things_again.26mdash.3Bmore_complaints and Misplaced Pages:Special characters for information on this situation. Guanaco 03:38, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

yes, but what about the edit after Guanabot? Pud 06:19, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Regarding "changing unnecessary HTML entities to ISO-8859-1 characters" are you only changing these characters when they appear in plain text, being careful not to change them in links for instance where they might be there intentionally? anthony (see warning) 12:22, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Umm, I thought the idea of this was to reduce size of text at the expense of editability (&eacute; to é, etc.). In which case why expand HTML <br> to XML <br/> ? mfc

On simple:, your bot added an interwiki link to simple:Template:Colors. Since that would add the interwiki to every article page using that template, I removed it. Just wanted to let you know, so that maybe you can ake sure Templates aren't hit with it. Thanks. -- Netoholic @ 05:09, 2004 Sep 14 (UTC)

Images for deletion

Just wondering why you removed the entry for Image:Euhammerflag.png from Misplaced Pages:Images for deletion, when it hasn't in fact been deleted. zoney ▓   ▒ talk 15:15, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure. It may have been an accident. Guanaco 20:06, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Well, I've relisted it in any case, keeping the original date. zoney ▓   ▒ talk 20:11, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Gogr Wusintin

The guy's vandalizing other articles, an is putting nonsense text into thse so-called redirects. RickK 23:22, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)

Just try talking to this person. It's possible, however unlikely, that this is a clueless newbie. Guanaco 23:25, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

LlortTheehtTroll

From Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/User:Guanaco versus User:Lir:

When a Misplaced Pages administrator discovers an instance where a block was made without appropriate reference to the Misplaced Pages:Blocking policy, they may reverse the block but should post a note on the offending Misplaced Pages administrators talk page explaining why the block was reversed.

In light of that, a notice would have been appreciated. Or, if you were unblocking under the "in other appropriate cases" language in the policy, I think this was definitely a case where the advice, "In controversial cases, you should discuss things first" applies.

Also, perhaps you didn't notice in the deletion log an article entitled "Genuine Progress Indicator". You might want to check out the content and the page history; it's a normal EntmootsOfTrolls IP and the article is entirely typical. I find the sudden reappearance of LlortTheehtTroll right on the heels of 142.177.109.56 (talk contributions) extremely suspicious.

Now, from the block log:

• 01:56, 16 Jun 2004 Hcheney blocked "User:LlortTheehtTroll" with an expiry time of indefinite (EofT reincarnation)
• 18:22, 24 Jun 2004 Guanaco unblocked "User:LlortTheehtTroll" (It has been agreed that none of these reinc accounts should be blocked yet except for JRRT)
• 16:55, 8 Sep 2004 Michael Snow blocked "LlortTheehtTroll" with an expiry time of indefinite (reinstating block; sockpuppet created for purpose of causing disruption and reinstating the edits of a banned user; this is either a reincarnation or an account created to subvert Misplaced Pages policy)
• 00:18, 9 Sep 2004 Guanaco unblocked "LlortTheehtTroll" (This account is not an obvious reincarnation and has made several positive contributions. Its behavior does not match the other suspected 142 and EofT accounts.)

So apparently you once were agreed that it was a reincarnation. Has something changed your mind? This account still has all the hallmarks of JRR Trollkien (that would include using categorization and wikification as a cover for disruptive edits, an interest in Canadian Green politics, a focus on editing the articles GNU Free Documentation License and Internet troll). All that's happened is that he's added a new trick to the repertoire, namely that of using yet another identity to "adopt" his own edits and circumvent our policy of reverting edits by banned users. --Michael Snow 03:14, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Changing HTML entities for degree symbol

I disagree with changing the HTML entity for the degree symbol (i.e. °) to the ISO character for existing pages. Please do NOT touch the infoboxes for the mountains pages unless you first state your reasons for doing so on Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject Mountains. Your bot changes may get reverted if you do not get a consensus from the project. RedWolf 03:19, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)

I dislike the whole notion of 'changing unnecessary HTML entities to ISO-8859-1 characters'. Browsers shouldn't see any difference, so HTML entities are hardly 'unnecessary'. Use of ISO-8859-1 characters, on the other hand, can cause numerous problems — particularly when editing on the numerous operating systems where the clipboard discards them. I say if the author of a page decided to use HTML entities then they should be left that way.  – Lee J Haywood 18:53, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Just adding my vote for this too - please don't do this! Some platforms cannot edit these characters, some automatically mangle them during editing, some can edit them in principle but most users don't know how. Entities on the other hand were designed for the purpose and are universally supported. Securiger 06:24, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The argument against using HTML entities is that they are inherently unreadable and make it more difficult for users, especially those that have no knowledge of HTML, to edit the source. Are there any specific platforms you can think of that mangle ISO-8859-1 characters? Guanaco 20:08, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Well, here's an example: . I think Nsh is Finnish. Securiger 17:13, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

That looks like Nsh had incorrect browser settings and submitted the page as Unicode. Guanaco 17:18, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Template:PD-USGov

Hi Guanaco,

you have made edits to the license template for works by the US government that are released into the public domain. As it seems now, this is not the case worldwide - I posted a comment about it on the talk page. Could you have a look at it, please? Maybe the template text should be updated.

Best regards, --zeno 11:35, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I've changed it to "in the United States and possibly other jurisdictions". Guanaco 20:05, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Guanabot

Hi. Regarding your latest changes to wikitable code... Some pages are actually coded up that way by users for easier editing. Please don't make it harder for everybody to edit pages. Thanks. --Cantus 04:50, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

Requests like this really don't help if you don't give any specific examples. Guanaco 04:54, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

. --Cantus 05:03, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

I think you may be right. I'll comment a few lines of code out so it won't do that for now. Guanaco 05:08, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I've got a new task for you. Change all <b>/</b>'s and <i>/</i>'s to the appropiate wikicode, and <br> to <br />. Also, there seems to be a few <p>/</p>'s lurking around in some older articles. These should be removed and replaced by a new line. Then you should get rid of duplicate new lines, and leave only one new line between text. Thanks :) --Cantus 05:09, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

I have a bot that can change the <b>/</b>'s and <i>/</i>'s, but it has to be watched closely for things like "Saddam Hussein's" (note the apostrophe). It wouldn't be hard at all to make something convert <p> to two newlines and remove </p>.Guanaco 05:15, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Hi, are you sure it's worthwhile to change <br> to <br />? I think the MediaWiki code does that automatically when rendering HTML. Wmahan. 07:53, 2004 Sep 12 (UTC)

Yes, sufficient as wikitext code is <br>, wikitext code does not have to satisfy xhtml standards, it is another language, please change it back.--Patrick 08:29, 2004 Sep 12 (UTC)

Yes please stop the bot. It's completely unnecessary. Mintguy (T) 09:46, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I have blocked the bot. Let us first discuss whether the change is useful.--Patrick 10:29, 2004 Sep 12 (UTC)

You're right; it's unnecessary. Typing "Text<br>Text" in the edit box returns "<p>Text<br /> Text</p>" in the XHTML source. I'll have it change <br/>, <br /> and similar to <br> as a side function when making other edits since it has no effect except excessive verbosity in the wikitext. Guanaco 16:00, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

And be careful when converting <p>s to double-newlines. E.g. in Filip Konowal there's a blockquote with several paragraphs in it. Wikitext ignores the newlines within the blockquote, so manual <p>s must be entered (Wikitext's HTML Tidy does close the paragraphs). (And changing the blockquote to colon-indentation makes silly definition lists, so that's not acceptable) —Michael Z. 18:29, 2004 Sep 12 (UTC)

PS: does anyone know when en.wikipedia is switching to UTF-8?

That is a problem, but 99% of the time it's just lists that were copy and pasted from cia.gov. The best thing to do in this case is to look out for it and revert when it happens. Guanaco 18:36, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

PS: I think they're going to do it "soon", but the answer to when "soon" is is just "sometime".

Removing

in K-19: The Widowmaker completely broke the formatting. Please, BEFORE you start your bot doing some unnecessary crap, FIRST think about ALL possible cases of what could go wrong. If something is in Misplaced Pages, chances are someone made it on purpose. Paranoid 09:09, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Talk pages

There is usually no need to "fix" talk pages. The last example is the br/ change. Correct layout there is not really as important as that in the articles. So could you please consider limiting most of the changes to the article space. Thanks. Paranoid 09:53, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

<br>">

Why does your bot change <br> to <br />? MediaWiki already does that automatically. <br> is easier to read for newbies, so please leave it. Thanks. — Timwi 20:06, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I stopped it once I figured that out. Read the above conversation. Guanaco 21:53, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Personally, I use <br /> instead of <br> and I'm not sure what the big deal is. What I really don't understand is reverting the changes that were already done. --Timc 21:01, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Two characters extra code with no function is clutter. The only reason could be that for wikitext you like to use the same code as when writing directly in xhtml, but there are more differences anyway.--Patrick 06:16, 2004 Sep 13 (UTC)

Teach me

In this edit to ViP you said you bloked it because it was an open proxy. How do you know that? Theresa Knott (taketh no rest) 21:19, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The hostname of this IP address is proxy1.bezeqint.net, and it has been used by multiple vandals. This was reason enough to block it.

But I then confirmed that it was an open proxy. I scanned it for open ports, which showed that ports 80, 8080 and 3128 are open. Finally I successfully downloaded a Misplaced Pages page through proxy1.bezeqint.net 3128. Guanaco 22:29, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. I tried connecting through the proxy and guess what - I was blocked! (I like it when things work) Theresa Knott (taketh no rest) 21:22, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, going offline for a bit - good luck. :-) Evercat 21:01, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Mr. Treason

He is under a hard ban and is supposed to be blocked like one. Mike H 00:38, Sep 19, 2004 (UTC)

Danny, Mike Garcia, Goplat and many others on AOL are not under a hard ban. If they were normal IP addresses, they could be blocked, but this needs to be handled differently. Guanaco 00:40, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I thought you were just going to let him go at it for a while? Theresa Knott (taketh no rest) 01:20, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I've been patrolling RC in general. I won't go out of my way to revert his edits, but I won't go out of my way to avoid reverting either. Guanaco 01:26, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Ok but since he's only editing talk pages, It might be better to let him think he's won. Anyway i'm going to bed. I'll clean up his mess in the morning. Theresa Knott (taketh no rest) 01:33, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thank you for the revert on my user page, Guanaco. I fed a troll, so my hand was bitten. (troll? vandel? whatever he is.) func(talk) 03:23, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Why??

Why do people think it's okay to edit other people's User pages?? Do they just confuse User pages with User talk pages?? 66.32.244.71 00:38, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

There are usually three reasons to edit someone else's user page. The first is perfectly valid, the second is a common mistake, and the third is an intentional and rude violation of Misplaced Pages policy.

1. Making a correction (e.g. fixing spelling) or an addition (e.g. adding a barnstar)
2. Posting a comment (e.g. "Could you help clean up the POV on George W. Bush?")
3. Vandalism (e.g. "GUANACO IS DEAD!!! LOLOLOL!!!!11!!")

Guanaco 00:46, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

You user page

LOL that's prety funny. (Ireally am going to bed now) Theresa Knott (taketh no rest) 01:48, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Guanabot bad edit

I have reverted the recent stupid edit which Guanabot made to the BASIC article. It messed up the format. Please fix it so that it doesn't do that again. -- Derek Ross | Talk 06:44, 2004 Sep 19 (UTC)

I agree this was a bad edit, but it was easily fixed by removing the extra crlf in the middle of the sentence. That's why the italics didn't work in the first place. There is *always* a way to make italics and bold work without resorting to (b) and (i). --Golbez 07:39, Sep 19, 2004 (UTC)

Good to know that it was easy to fix it properly. But my point is that Guanabot should have fixed it the way that you did or it should have left things alone. It shouldn't be making extra work for people. -- Derek Ross | Talk 07:52, 2004 Sep 19 (UTC)

I'd like to see you fix Valentinian I without resorting to (b) and (/b). anthony (see warning) 16:22, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

And another one on Talk:Celt -- Derek Ross | Talk 07:29, 2004 Sep 19 (UTC)

As for this one, I agree - Guanabot doesn't seem keyed to notice upper-case letters. --Golbez 07:39, Sep 19, 2004 (UTC)

Another one on Talk:Europe , please fix Guanabot to change uppercase tags as well, or leave them all as is... zoney ♣ talk 08:21, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I've fixed it. It'll go through all the pages again and recheck them. Guanaco 14:53, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

That wasn't the only problem, when <i> is next to a ' you shouldn't change it, because it will turn it into a bold. anthony (see warning) 16:24, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Hmm, I think I know how I can fix this problem. Guanaco 16:26, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

HTML tags in nowiki

Might be a good idea to make the lovely bot ignore HTML tags inside nowiki areas, otherwise you end up with bad edits to example HTML. Thanks, Tom- 15:28, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Make sure you don't convert &#39; to ' (&#91; and &#92; are probably bad too), as these tags are sometimes used intentionally to keep something from being bold or italic. anthony (see warning) 16:17, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for the warning. I've been using &lt; and &gt; for < and > to replace <nowiki> tags where possible, so I was already aware of the difference. Guanaco 16:22, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, I only mention it because there were a few instances of ''whatever'''s that I changed to ''whatever''&#91;s to fix a parsing problem. But you don't seem to be running the bot that would change these back anyway. anthony (see warning) 16:27, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Bold and italics in mathematical formulae

Thanks for converting tables from html to wiki syntax. I reverted part of your edit to Misplaced Pages:How to edit a page because mathematical formulae/formulas use italics and bold for reasons unrelated to emphasis. Semantically, the italics in a mathematical formula say "this is a variable name", not "this is emphasised". —AlanBarrett 17:58, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

According to WikiProject Mathematics, '' and ''' are preferred, and some people choose to use <var>, but <b> and <i> are deprecated. Guanaco 18:09, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I don't see "deprecated" there, but I do see that it encourages the use of wiki-emphasis, so I have changed the examples to do that. (When I really want something italicised, I prefer to say so, rather than saying I want it emphasised, and hoping to get visually identical results due to quirks of the implementation; but this is not important enough for me to actively oppose the majority view.) —AlanBarrett 19:16, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Your changes

While I appreciate Guanabot, some of us (like myself) are having to clean up some of its changes. This is slightly annoying, it means you're not checking the output of your bot. Can you please do this? I'd hate to have to go through it's contribution list in an effort to find the few pages that were broken by the bot. An example is Talk:John F. Kennedy. A well-meaning, but obviously automatic, change. Using '' and ''' doesn't work if there's a crlf between them. --Golbez 21:31, Sep 19, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks.

Thanks for all your hard work on Possibly unfree images. Hopefully the project can get off the ground soon and the page will be up and running. Once again, thanks for your hard work and dedication. Regards, ] 23:06, Sep 19, 2004 (UTC)

Bot for "catmore"

Hello Guanaco, would it be possible to automatically 'clean up' the main article topic pointers (aka "catmore") of all the categories. It would help to make the WP categories more regular, and save lots of manual work.

The outlined procedure could be like this, I think:

• If the category already has the "catmore" template: do nothing.
• If the topic pointer exists as an article: add the "catmore" template to the top of the text.
• Else, do nothing.

Walden 10:01, 2004 Sep 20 (UTC)

Deleting Vfd

Why did you delete Vfd?? 66.245.99.179 23:32, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

User:Willy on wheels! moved it, after which the history of VFD became messed up. The deletion was part of steps taken to fix it; you'll see that VFD is in fact still there :) -- Grunt 🇪🇺 23:33, 2004 Sep 20 (UTC)

Bot not respecting nowiki?

Your bot of September 19th changed the line:

Consistently replaced <nowiki><i>italics</i></nowiki> with <nowiki>''wikitalics''</nowiki>.

in a comment I made on Talk:Exponential function to:

Consistently replaced <nowiki>''italics''</nowiki> with <nowiki>''wikitalics''</nowiki>.