I loathe fragmented discussions. Please place comments relating to specific articles on their talk pages. If I post on your talk page, I will see any replies posted there. Unless you request otherwise, I will reply here to comments made here. Archives may be found in this page's history: [1]

thanks for your efforts to help clean these guys out of the system. -leigh (φθόγγος) 01:38, Jan 17, 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether the deletion and blank-protection of American Nihilist Underground Society was a good idea or not, but if it stands, it would be wise to do the same to anus.com (which was the formerly-deleted article anyway). —Korath (Talk) 03:40, Jan 17, 2005 (UTC)

On it, thanks. The way I see it, if American ... shouldn't have been speedy deleted, it should be undeleted (instead of recreated), which will need an admin anyway, so we might as well prevent recreation while we're at it. --fvw* 03:43, 2005 Jan 17 (UTC)

I'm using IE 6.0 on XP SP2. If you're referring to doubling on the Current Events page, it likely has something to do with WP's recent flakiness and server errors. I encountered them multiple times while trying to edit Current Events. I did notice that it resulted in there being two edits in the page history, but I didn't realize it had doubled the page. Carrp 22:34, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration#Matters_currently_in_Arbitration

Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Libertas/Evidence

Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Libertas/Proposed_decision

Note that Ollieplatt is Libertas and about a dozen other user IDs.

— Davenbelle 04:31, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for the links, though I'd already found them (from Ollieplatt's talk page). Nothing there justifies reverting him on sight (especially where the edits are good, as I thought they were on Barack Obama's caption once I'd looked closer), just keeping a close eye on him. —Korath (Talk) 21:20, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Libertas/Proposed_decision#Proposed_temporary_injunctions

I take issue with Olliplatt's behavior, not the caption. Best wishes, Davenbelle 05:22, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

Care to weigh in on the main talk page? -- RyanFreisling @ 03:15, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks a lot — Zeimusu | Talk

Just asking you to please reconsider your vote in Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Slogan:The foreskin is not a birth defect. If you refer to Category:Political_slogans you will find Evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet. Some of this stuff is pretty obscure, and is really not a slogan outside the Internet. While Wikipedia does put up with too much nonsense, in this case I believe we have an instance of political speech which is only being presented as slogans. Here is a United Press commentary including the quote [2] There are also T-shirts and bumper stickers available. I hoping you can suggest the slogan article should be kept, but corrected for NPOV, rather than deletion. DanP 20:05, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

"Evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet" garners 335 displayed hits (admittedly, this includes Wikipedia mirrors), and was national news in Canada. If something similar came up today, I would probably either not comment on it, or suggest a transwiki to Wikinews. While I'm sympathetic to those behind this slogan—heck, I think encouraging young girls to get their ears pierced is mutilation—even the sources you cite mentions the slogan largely as a joke. —Korath (Talk) 20:27, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

I had intentially posted links critical of the slogan just to counter the claim that it is non-existent. The pro-mutilation side of the debate seems to say everything is an anti-circumcision conspiracy. Obviously the slogan exists -- there are T-shirts, bumper stickers, and (yes) criticism of it. DanP 20:42, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Not every high school is notable, therefore is not included into the Wikipedia... as clearly seen from the VFD process. How can categories accomplish the same thing as a list when there is not an article for every high school? -- AllyUnion (talk) 11:07, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

You're confusing me with someone else; my comments made no reference to using categories instead. —Korath (Talk) 16:51, Feb 13, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up on Damnyourblastedeyes. I tend to clear out VfDs in big batches with many many tabs open in the browser, so when an article has a discussion page, it messes up my system. Joyous 12:18, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)

Hi. Thanks for the info on Wikipedia talk:Requested moves/Min edit count. We just had another page move vandal (Bignastyfart (talk · contribs) with Pelican shit). Related to this: What exactly are the features currently included in the mediawiki software to limit page move vandalism. You said it is the latest 1% of the users, i.e. with 200,000 users it is about 2000 users that cannot move pages. Is the perentage fixed? Are there any other options? What would be needed to turn this on? I think with the recent increase in page move vandalism this feature would be needed, even if only as an interim solution until other solutions are found. Thanks for the info -- Chris 73 Talk 10:08, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)

Disclaimers: I'm hardly an expert on php; the sum total of my experience working with SQL or any other relational database is a two-hour introduction ten years ago; and my knowledge of Mediawiki source is limited to about fifteen minutes of grepping the source the last time this came up on WP:AN (it should be in the general archive). Furthermore, I don't know why it was disabled, though I can think of at least one very good reason: it encourages vandals to create a great deal of throwaway user names.

I'm also on wikibreak for the forseeable future; I'm much more likely to see (and respond to) email than talk messages.

That said:

The feature should be able to be turned on without fuss by a developer with shell access setting the $wgOnlySysopMayMove configuration variable (note that it doesn't do what it says it does). This will prevent page moves by any user who is one of the 1% of most recently-created user names and is not flagged sysop or bot.

It should be trivial to alter the above requirements (they're in includes/User.php, function User::isNewbie()) such that a different percentage of user names is prevented, or indeed that only sysops are able to move; however, there are no configuration variables to control this, so it might be disallowed depending on development policy.

Making a certain number of edits be a requirement should also be feasible, though it would be less trivial. The query could be cannibalized from Kate's tool, if nowhere else. —Korath (Talk) 07:34, Feb 23, 2005 (UTC)

Hi - I am trying to understand what your edit to the KitKat article accomplished. In both the new and old version the images appear stacked on the right side. I tried looking at the page in all possible combinations of IE, Firefox, 1280x800 resolution, and 800x600 resolution. In all cases, the two versions of the page appear the same to me. If there is in fact a viewability issue I can't reproduce, I will need to go back to several other candy bar pages I have added photos to so I can correct them. Thanks - SCEhardt 04:50, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

In Opera 7.54, at least, they appear horizontally, with the first image listed in the source furthest to the right, before my fix. I'm not sure whether this is an Opera bug, something that's specifically left to browser interpretation, or a deficiency in the markup generated by Mediawiki, so let me do some investigating before you go to the trouble of changing your other images. This may take a few days, so feel free to revert me on KitKat in the meantime; I wasn't aware that it worked properly on IE and Firefox. —Korath (Talk) 06:51, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

Just in case someone else happens across this and is wondering, it's due to either a flaw or a misfeature of the classic skin, and can be fixed by placing div.tright, div.floatright, table.floatright { clear: right; } in User:YourUserName/standard.css. —Korath (Talk) 07:28, Mar 19, 2005 (UTC)

I've attempted to fix the overexposure problem. If it is now satisfactory, please consider changing your vote. Thanks. -- BRIAN0918  07:11, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

In reply to your comments: I wasn't actually serious about blocking (bad wording on my part), since he had only made one edit, but at the time I didn't know if he was going to continue "vandalizing". I've added "welcome" and "test" to his talk page, and clarified that no other action is necessary at W:VIP. -- BRIAN0918  17:05, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Had a block revision a.k.a. deletion bug. It's been moved out of the way should you wish to redirect Georgina Russell. It was noted that the majority of content was already in the main article. -- AllyUnion (talk) 11:33, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your suggestion. A mild disadvantage is that in that way, people looking at VfD/Log/<date> won't see it. Anyway yes, if it can't easily (or conveniently) be botted in I'll do that. Radiant! 15:10, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

I usually don't bother to protect them unless there's evidence they are likely targeted by vandals. When the bug gets fixed, I intend to participate to the mass deletion and after the category has been cleared, to iterate over my contribs to process all cases where the page has been edited after me tagging it. The Cornell Hangover case is somewhat special, because the VfD discussion cannot be found, so it is at least theoretically possible someone writes an encyclopedic article about it. jni 17:01, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Can you tell User:GRider about this please? He likes them I notice. Thanks. --Spinboy 20:43, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I have. Several people, in fact, have. Our complaints, so far, have fallen upon deaf ears, which is why I was a bit short with you above (for which I apologize). —Korath (Talk) 20:51, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

You're forgiven. He's not my favourite person, he left a message on User:Dbenbenn's talk page saying he would watch me and the Star Wars MUSH article. That offended me. --Spinboy 20:58, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

He seems to have removed all "negative" comments from his Talk page, including my note, and the one 3 people left him similar to the one you left me. Is he allowed to do that? --Spinboy 21:14, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

What are your intentions with regard to the relistings of Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Neo-catastrophism, Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Newly industrializing economy, and Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Il Tempo Gigante? Normally I'd think they'd just be handled as shorthand for closing as no consensus followed by an immediate re-vfd, but they're still on the February 18 page, so I'm confused. (I'm easily confused these days, alas.) —Korath (Talk) 12:46, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

We've seem to lost the process where discussions are considered as on-going. It seems now that we're allowing the closure of discussions after five days. Because we move the entire page of the discussion to the archive, I think it would be best to leave them open, close as many as possible, then relist the ones that have not reached a consensus. The thing is, we get so much, excuse the expression, crap on VFD that some of the stuff gets overlooked. I feel that relisting them and not closing them is the best option to assure that a consensus has been reached for certain. -- AllyUnion (talk) 13:05, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hi there! Several high schools have been listed on VfD with uncertain consensus. However, G/Rider has sent a list of these to a number of people, resulting in a large number of last-minute keep votes. (For example, see User_talk:SimonP. Is this a normal way of voting? Radiant! 23:08, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

Sadly, yes. See also m:AIW. (Factionalism sucks.) —Korath (Talk) 23:12, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

AllyUnion told me that a deliberate attempt at vote-stacking should not happen like this, and has put a note on the respective vote pages to tell this to the admins. He also suggested that I launch a RfC against G/Rider; however, I'd prefer to discuss this with G/R on his talk page. Radiant! 08:52, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

I don't think an RFC on this would be well-advised at this point; my guess is that it would just turn into an extension of the endless school inclusion war. It'll probably also make you look bad ("We almost got these articles deleted, but then GRider had to come along, make more people look at them, and keep us from abusing the system!"). If you can get him to talk, more power to you; however, I'm pessimistic about your chances. —Korath (Talk) 10:34, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

• Yes. Like I said, I'd prefer to discuss this on his talk page. I contacted him; he hasn't responded yet. I would personally like to start a consensus discussion about the high school topic (not a RfC against a particular user, it's not personally against him anyway). But I'm afraid such a discussion wouldn't lead anywhere at the moment, so I'll leave it be for now. Radiant! 10:29, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

Non-English pages (such as the one you vfd'd above) should first go through the process at Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English, FYI. —Korath (Talk)

• Even for stubs? Ok, I'll do that in the future. Yours, Radiant! 08:41, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

I updated VfU summary on this article with these new points:

• The main concern about the article was its title, but it was originally at the proper title and moved in November, 2004.
• There are many redirects to that page and there is no way to trace them unless the page is undeleted.

Please review your vote, or at least provide a constructive way to adress these concerns, especially the last one. This is a stock message, but I replied to each voter individually on the VfU page. Thanks in advance. Grue 05:26, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I took the advice of Chris 73 and cropped the photo. Sorry about that! I wrote an apology to Neep (Paul Vlaar) and asked him to weigh in on this. —Sandover 06:41, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hi Korath,

I notice you close some VfD discussions. How would you like to be able to close "deletes" as well as "keeps"? If I nominate you for adminship, will you accept?

dbenbenn | talk 15:55, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC) (P.S. drop me a line at my talk page when you respond, or I'll never see it.)

My current desire to become an admin is somewhere between little and none.

• I don't want my recent closing of VfD discussions to look like a blatant attempt at campaigning for a nomination, as opposed to the emergency catch-up in /Old that they were.
• I'm not at all interested in the enforcement side of things. (Though when the Mediawiki bug is fixed, I might be interested in resurrecting Fvw's OpenProxyBlockerBot.)
• I think it's likely that my bid would fail, probably rather spectacularly, due to an unpleasant juxtaposition of my strong deletionist tendencies and the fact that (as noted on my user page) my article-namespace contributions are subtrivial.
• I'm trying to cut down on my presence here, not increase it. :)

So in short, thank you for the kind offer, but no, not at this time. Maybe later. —Korath (Talk) 17:23, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for cleaning up my user page, who would have though voting to delete a college professor would cause such belligerence.--nixie 22:48, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm hesitant to say anything, since I'm sure you're acting in good faith, but I'm concerned that you're closing vfd discussions as delete. Is there an administrator you've been forwarding these articles to for actual deletion? I worry that some of these articles might get forgotten. See also Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/Deleted/Archive/Feb05#Template:Vfd delete, where a template to facilitate non-administrators closing vfds as delete was itself deleted. —Korath (Talk) 03:22, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

Hi. I began closing VfDs after I noticed a rather large backup. I work about 4-5 days ahead of the admins so that nothing will get left behind. When the admins catch up to my work in a few days, it will save them time by not having to add the top and bottom templates. Since I haven't been entrusted with making decisions on close VfDs, I only close where the vote is uncontested. Most of these are unanimous deletes, although there have been a keep or two. If anyone has a problem with my actions, I will stop, but I do believe it's helpful. Carrp | Talk 03:37, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The problem is that administrators working through /Old generally scan through the list, looking for discussions that don't already have the blue background, or—worse—by hiding closed discussions via CSS (putting ".vfd { display: none; }" in their monobook.css file). A closed discussion is usually taken to mean "this article has already been fully dealt with". They're also responsible for confirming that the vfds haven't been vandalized (for example, by someone going through and removing all the keep votes) before they delete the article, so I'm not sure that pre-closing deletes actually saves work. (I'm not, by the way, saying that this has happened; the ones that I checked on all appeared to be legitimate deletes.)

That said, the backlog in /Old is problematic. Vfds whose result is keep, merge, redirect, or transwiki can be closed by non-administrators, and this is much more useful. Non-delete vfds, I'm told, take significantly longer to close than deletes; this is especially true for merges. —Korath (Talk) 03:55, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

It would be slightly more efficient if the links were [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=National_Civil_War_Museum_moved_to_article_over_redirect&action=delete] instead of [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=National_Civil_War_Museum_moved_to_article_over_redirect&redirect=no]

But good work in any case! :)

Thue | talk 22:49, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I am done with that page; thanks for the links :). Thue | talk 22:55, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure that Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Old/To close is such a good idea; it adds another step to the closing process, for no benefit that I can immediately see. If the intent is to quickly get a list of discussions that still need to be closed, this can be accomplished with putting a .vfd { display:none; } into your css, which will hide closed discussions. (This is especially easy with Opera, since it can be toggled on and off with one key; I haven't used Firefox for about six months, though I seem to recall it has similar functionality.) If it's meant to help keep track of discussions closed by non-administrators (especially relevant at the moment - I've noticed several discussions closed with the edit summary "consensus to DELETE; admin: please delete" over the past few days), it's already in the instructions to doublecheck all discussions for a day before removing it from /Old. Are there any benefits to the extra step that I'm missing? —Korath (Talk) 00:28, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

There's no immediate need to update it actually. You could put a notice saying that this page may be out of date, and may be useful. It's not required for anyone to strike out or anything. But I thought it would be a nice thing to have. -- AllyUnion (talk) 00:54, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Also, as long as I'm here, could I trouble you to tweak Vfdbot to add a <!-- Please do not add new vfds here. Put it on the appropriate day's page instead. --> or something similar to the previous day's page when updating the list of days currently transcluded into WP:VFD? I catch two or three vfds a week being added to the first day listed on vfd instead of the current day, and sometimes two or three a day where they're added to yesterday's page just after midnight UTC. The latter aren't a problem if they're missed (and I don't bother to correct them even when I see them), but the former certainly are. —Korath (Talk) 00:28, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

I'll tweak VFD Bot later. I'm kind of suppose to be studying for my finals. ^^;;; Do me a favor and post in the talk page for WP:BOTS to make sure it gets approval. -- AllyUnion (talk) 00:55, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Will do. Korath (Talk) 01:26, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

The only thing in the history here, seems the anon asking for the article not to be deleted. Could you add your reasoning for nominating and tagging it? Mgm|^(talk) 12:48, Mar 16, 2005 (UTC)

Erm. Looks ok to me. Current contents below:

===Fuxd===

Non-notable misspelling of fucked. Gets 389 unique google hits; about one out of seven are used in this way, and most of the rest are gibberish. Does Wiktionary take ebonicsisms? I hope not. —Korath (Talk) 13:44, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)

• Delexd. Non-notable. Android79 13:58, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)
• Delete doesn't belong here, and is not widespread enough for wikitionary. If we're going to be super-charitable we could make it a redirect to fuck but even that is questionable. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 14:54, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)
• delete - DavidWBrooks 14:56, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Delete, not notable, neologism. Megan1967 05:18, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Granted, there's an unhappy anon on the talk page. —Korath (Talk) 14:46, Mar 16, 2005 (UTC)

Hrm, and on the vfd's talk page, too. —Korath (Talk) 15:12, Mar 16, 2005 (UTC)

Good evening. In a recent conversation with Carrp (now Carbonite), you mentioned in passing a way to hide the closed VfD discussions. Will you please teach me how to do that? Thanks. Rossami (talk) 06:06, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Pop a .vfd { display:none; } into User:Rossami/monobook.css (if you're using the monobook skin; for classic, it's User:Rossami/standard.css, and I'm sure the others have equivalents; you can find them by looking at the html source of any page while logged in). This will also hide the {{vfd}} template since it also uses class=vfd, which is somewhat annoying. If you're using a browser which lets you easily switch between stylesheets locally - IE doesn't, unless there's a plugin that I'm not aware of; Opera and Firefox do - then it makes sense to do it there, where it can be turned on and off more easily.

It should also be possible to implement it in javascript, the same way tables of contents can be hidden or shown. I'll make a crack at it tomorrow morning. —Korath (Talk) 06:27, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)

Thank you. I'll do that immediately. If you don't mind, I'll also post these instructions on VfD talk/Old. Is there a way to limit the command so it only applies on certain pages? I can see this being very helpful for closing out old VfD discussions but having lots of unintended consequences in other circumstances. For example, this would appear to suppress the discussion when looking it up for a renomination, evaluating the discussion on the Talk page when the article is kept, searching for the old nomination to see if a recreated article is eligible for speedy, etc. It would also suppress it on the main VfD page if/when someone abuses the process and marks a discussion as "closed" too early.

Failing that, can you help me write up some guidelines for switching styles in Opera and Firefox (and adding the disclaimer about why the poor IE users are out of luck)? Thanks. Rossami (talk) 18:03, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm working on a guide to a toggleable interface, which should handle this. The functions are in User:Korath/sb, though they don't have an interface yet (see User:Korath/standard.js or User:Kate/myskin.js if you're impatient). They work on both Opera and IE - I don't have Firefox on this machine to check, but they should be fine there too.

In Opera 7.x (and, from hazy memory, 6.x also), make a file with the line and save it somewhere. In Opera itself, push alt-P to get to Preferences, pick "Page style" from the list on the left, and choose that file in the "My style sheet" input box. Then click on "Configure modes" and make sure that "My style sheet" is checkmarked in one of the modes and not in the other, and that "Page style sheet" is checkmarked in both. Then control-g will then toggle that style sheet on and off.

Mozilla.org has instructions for installing user-side style sheets. I know there's either a feature or a plugin that lets you swap them with one key, since I've used it in the past, but I wasn't able to find it with a quick google.

The {{vfd}}-tag hiding, by the way, was caused by stale css on my part - I still had #vfd { display:none; } from when {{vfd top}} was id="vfd", not class="vfd". (See Template talk:Vfd top for why that was changed.) On the other hand, whether it's in User:You/whatever.css or handled locally by your browser, this will still hide the whole expanded box if someone forgets to put in a {{vfd bottom}} on a subpage. —Korath (Talk) 18:31, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)

User:Korath/sb is now reasonably complete for the Classic and Monobook skins, at least from a technical standpoint. The formatting is god-awful, mind, and it could certainly stand clarification for the less adept, since it assumes you already mostly know what you're doing. If you want to combine it and the above into a more general guide, I certainly have no objections. Note that I haven't tested any of it with a vfd rule in User:Me/whatever.css, so I don't know whether it'll override it; you should have either the rule in your .css file or this code in your .js file, but not both. —Korath (Talk) 20:32, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)

You did WHAT? You moved them to the right location? :) Thanks. I added that thing to my notes to self. --Cool Cat ^{My Talk} 20:33, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Would you be willing to upload this image again, since it seems to have been deleted for spurious reasons ("Used for vandalism")? I thought it was humorous, and I put it one a page in my userspace, so I was surprised to see it had been deleted. User:Rdsmith4/Sig 05:38, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I don't have a local copy to re-upload. I'll take a look at recreating it, though. —Korath (Talk) 05:43, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)

How are you getting the count of mainspace edits? – User:ABCD/sig 02:14, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Special:Contributions/ABCD, select (articles) from the drop-down list, and page through to the end. —Korath (Talk) 02:18, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)

When I feel Wiki-stress, I like to drop by and read your userpage as a stress-buster. Thanks. Joyous 03:12, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)

No, thank you. I'm glad that someone likes it. —Korath (Talk) 03:24, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)