User talk:Lcarsos

Moved discussion

Hi, just to let you know that I move the thread you started to explain xkcd:Community portal/Admin requests. Cheers, --Waldir (talk) 10:33, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Ruby Importer

For discussion of the Ruby Import assistant. Please create subsections for each item.

Multi-file Generation

I assume that ./importer.rb 100{0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9} would also work? Blaisepascal (talk) 02:08, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

I hadn't even thought of that. I'll try it and report back as soon as I get home after work. lcarsos (talk) 16:18, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

It'll work; it's not a Ruby thing, it's a Borne Shell thing. When the Borne Shell does wild-card expansion, it generates all alternatives enclosed in braces. So "echo 1{2,3,4,5}" is equivalent to "echo 12 13 14 15". I've been known to do things like echo 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 {1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9}{0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9} 100 to list all numbers between 1 and 100. Blaisepascal (talk) 16:34, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

I just ssh'd into a linux box, and yes that will work. But I still prefer using seq 1 100, much easier to type. lcarsos (talk) 17:17, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Removing Erroneous Categories

It seems to me that if you are removing the same "erroneous" category from three comics that all refer to the same thing (like Wikipedia) that perhaps a bit more explanation needs to be made as to why the category is erroneous. Blaisepascal (talk) 21:32, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

I was going through categories, and it looked like someone had started to tag any page that had a link to Wikpedia. I was putting a stop to it.

But now that you've elevated this to conscious level, it might be that 2 of the pages were tagged Wikipedia because the theme of the comic was Wikipedia. The first one that caught my eye, 548: Kindle, merely had the word Wikipedia, that one to me seems that it was incorrectly categorized. The other two, now that I think about it, would make sense if we're categorizing comics by theme. I'll go back, make restitution, and fix 739: Malamanteau and 214: The Problem with Wikipedia, and undo changes to the Wikipedia category. Thanks for keeping me honest.

lcarsos (talk) 21:49, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

LCARS

Saw this and thought of you: http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/12/star-trek-padd-app-is-a-lcars-sporting-trekkies-reference-bible/

Okay, first, I'd like to thank you for showing this to me. I'm always interested to see anything Star Trek related. Always. There should never be a Trek-less day, for anyone, ever. But, now, you've opened a can of worms so now I get to do a little bit of ranting.

With a few exceptions, anything "official" that Paramount/CBS Paramount/CBS commissions to be made based on Star Trek is crap. This is one of those things. The interface, while reminiscent of, and is close enough to scare away the children, is a tragedy that shouldn't have the privilege of being able to call itself "official" or "LCARS". The color scheme is vomitous, every color that could have been put into the interface is there, as opposed to the restrained every-color-represents-a-function style that is shown in the show. About the one thing they got correct is the use of the LCARS font. Other than that, the font is too large in every instance. The font should be bottom-right aligned, and there should be a generous amount of padding except for the bottom-right corner. And, except for actual paragraph text, everything should be all-caps.

They also got the elbos (the bits that change from vertical UI to horizontal and vice versa) wrong. The curves aren't skewed like that. A quick look at the fan-made LCARS Standards website would have showed them the correct way to build an elbo. Or, *GASP* they could ask Michael Okuda to consult on the project.

Final UI complaint: What is that panel on the bottom doing? You mean that the people that made this app completely missed the idea of the LCARS UI and just have a panel at the bottom with skinned buttons that take you to the main sections of the app? Also, don't mix the butt-ended buttons with the fully rounded buttons. Just don't. Someone should have slapped you in art school for doing that.

From reviews of the app in iTunes, it looks like the app isn't even fully baked. The database isn't full, just has entries for the popular characters and ships. This should be a front end for Memory-Alpha, but you'd have to do some work to strip out all the wikia bs.

Finally, still iOS only? It's apparently been out for a year, and been updated once, in October, 2011. Was this a one-off, did CBS hire Random Company LLC to "Make a thing for the hip kids, with the iPads and the what-not" pay them to get the app out the door, kept them for a month to fix bugs and then fired them? Have we heard of Android? Is this the 90s when developers had to pick between developing for Windows 95 or Mac OS 8?

Why is this catastrophe $5? There's obviously no development work going on, CBS makes bank off of the DVDs and other crap merchandise they sell (why are there no officially licensed replica isolinear chips?). This is pure, simple corporate greed.

Sorry for the rant, I get angry when my favorite things are mistreated. lcarsos (talk) 17:05, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Double redirect

You're right. I knew there had been a reason I didn't do that for the first pile of comics I created. That's for reminding me. TheHYPO (talk) 21:37, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Yep. lcarsos (talk) 21:38, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

To the human behind the curtain

Moved conversation to the correct talk page

Congrats on becoming Admin

Looks like my days of 700+ changes per month are a thing of the past! (What will I ever do with all the free time now? Edit, perhaps? ;-) -- IronyChef (talk) 06:32, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Grazie. I noticed Jeff do a little bit of work, and then go silent. So, I hoped that I could catch him with a tab still open pointing out our plight. It looks like it worked! Also, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't in part because you started that daily counter of edits on your user page. lcarsos_a (talk) 06:40, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Minor thing; do it too if you want to. When deleting spam pages, I "[omitted]" any link that appeared in the deletion comment, just so it doesn't even show up in the logs. -- IronyChef (talk) 06:50, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

I keep forgetting. Sorry about that. lcarsos_a (talk) 13:16, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Looks like you registered your account just two days before I I went on a hiatus for a while, so I'm afraid we never got a chance to interact much. Although away from editing, I've been following the wiki activity through RSS, so I'm aware of the huge amount of work you've put in, which I appreciate. And of course, I take the opportunity to congratulate you on earning your admin "badge". Cheers! --Waldir (talk) 17:05, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! I seem to have started contributing at the moment when everyone else went on hiatus. It got very quiet for a while, but it seems like it's coming back alive. lcarsos_a (talk) 18:28, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Category:Comic images

Hi Lcarsos. I noticed you categorized two images in Category:Comic images. I am actually using the ones that aren't categorized yet as a todo list of those which haven't been moved to the original filenames (lowercase). If you categorize more images, please make sure to also move them to the lowercase filename, and fix the redirect from the filename with only the first character uppercased. That is: there are typically 3 file pages for every comic: file_name.png, File_Name.png and File_name.png, with the first and third redirecting to the middle one, and the end result shoudl be the second and third redirecting to the first. I hope this isn't confusing :) --Waldir (talk) 18:30, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Sorry about that. I saw that BPothier uncategorized those two, but when I looked at them I saw they were redirection pages, and when I checked a few other images I saw the category was on the images. I thought I would be helpful and put the category on the File page instead of undoing the change on the redirect page. Sorry to be a nuisance. lcarsos_a (talk) 18:36, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Not at all :) You acted in a perfectly reasonable way. In fact I missed the fact that you were actually moving a category from a redirect to the real image, which makes perfect sense. I am the one using the uncategorized files list as a personal todo list, in clear unorthodox fashion :P --Waldir (talk) 04:29, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Captchas

I believe there's an option to force all users of a certain group to take the captcha when editing. Could you change the captcha settings to force all anonymous users to pass one to edit? This is getting stupid. Davidy²²(talk) 07:14, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

First off, this is a request for Waldir. I have no idea what I'm doing. Second, I've looked at the captcha pages in MediaWiki's manual, and it looks like I don't have the rights to do that, it would have to be someone who can edit the php files to change that over (*ahem* Jeff). Third, I've clicked on every link in Special:SpecialPages and I don't see anywhere that I can change that. I wish I could. Fourth, I am sick and tired of all this spam!!!!! lcarsos_a (talk) 08:12, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Deletion

I'm sure you only overlooked this because of being busy fighting huge amounts of spam, but there was actually some valid history behind explain xkcd:Community portal/Design, which I just restored (I left the spam edits under the carpet, though). It's not a huge deal, and as you can see, it's easily reversible, but it's generally nice to preserve page histories for archival reasons. Also, please comment on explain xkcd:Community portal/Technical#We need more maintainers when you have the chance. Cheers, Waldir (talk) 17:50, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Oops, again. I don't know if it was a case of unfortunate blindness, or I was too far into spam fighting that I simply deleted it. Sorry about that. lcarsos_a (talk) 20:35, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Patrolling

Hi, Lcarsos. I think this might be useful for you since you're doing so much work on spam fighting: mw:Help:Patrolled edits. I asked Jeff to change the wiki configuration so that edits by "auto-confirmed" users will be automatically patrolled. This means the feature should be more useful from now on. Let me know if it helps. Cheers, Waldir (talk) 21:28, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Edits from logged in people are still showing as un-patrolled. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. There are several editors that have created accounts that I'm not quite ready to blanket state that every edit they make are perfectly good. I think that if we had more people that were patrolling pages and edits the feature would be more useful. But, since it's just me going through and occasionally remembering to mark a page as patrolled, it's not very useful as I can generally remember where I've perused through. I think if we got Davidy22 rights to patrol edits too, I think that would push it over the mark into useful territory. lcarsos_a (talk) 21:43, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Jeff just enabled the tweaks to the autopatrolling feature as I asked him to. I know we can't immediately trust every edit a recent user does, but I find that well-intentioned mistakes (which we all make btw) are much easier to fix, and overall less harmful than spam/vandalism. Right now the threshold for autopatrolling is at 3 days of age and 10 edits (both conditions have to be met). We can tweak that if we decide different values would work better, but I am assuming that spammers and otherwise malicious editors would be caught and blocked before that. I intend to use the following links to help weed out the bad stuff from the wiki:

• Unpatrolled changes by registered users
• Unpatrolled changes by anonymous users

Of course, only edits from now on will apply the new parameters, so older edits by (non-admin) trusted editors still show as unpatrolled. But from now on it will probably make sifting the recent changes a little easier, since we can now filter out edits that we don't have to worry much about, leaving only new users and anonymous ones, the groups spammers/vandals are most likely to belong to.

Also, I agree that Davidy22 could have patrolling rights by now. I am liberal about adminship, so I'd suggest we ask Jeff to "promote" him, as that would do it.

Cheers, Waldir (talk) 03:33, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Blocking IPs

I don't think anonymous vandals should be blocked indefinitely. IPs are generally not static so we might end up preventing someone from doing a legitimate contribution, while the spammer will likely not use that particular IP for very long. I suggest changing all IP blocks to have a finite expiration date, say a week, or a month. What do you think? --Waldir (talk) 15:55, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't think that would be a good idea. Our second great spam bout was caused by the 1 month block that SlashMe placed on the IPs of a foregone spam attack expired, and suddenly all those computers had access to edit the wiki again. In theory IPs are not static, but the home I live in right now has had the same IP address since I moved in, and that's even with hard resetting the modem about weekly as Comcast fails to bond their channels together, and I suspect most ISPs work that way.

Maybe we could try an experiment where we let all the blocks expire and see what happens. But, I do not want that to be anywhere near any holiday, or major event, or major xkcd comic post (see Click and Drag or Congress) as it would be nearly impossible to hand pick out the good from the spam.

I do understand that theoretically, if this goes on eventually we'll have blocked the whole internet from editing the wiki. We need a better way to lock this down. A lot of the wikis I've looked at disallow editing from anonymous users (See the Valve Developer wiki and the Kerbal Space Program wiki, this would cut down on about half the spam, and then we need a better way to stop the bots from registering accounts, somehow both the VDC and KSP wiki don't have any spam activity (creation or clean-up) for the past few days, we're obviously doing something wrong, but I have no idea what. We may be more popular than the KSP wiki, but certainly we aren't more popular than Valve's own wiki. lcarsos_a (talk) 17:14, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

I see. Personally, I consider disabling anonymous editing as somehow admitting defeat (assuming bad faith by default) but maybe mw:Extension:SpamBlacklist could help. It uses a very extensive list maintained at meta.wikimedia.org. Do you think it could prevent spam rampages such as the last one? Otherwise, we could try some of the approaches listed at mw:Manual:Combating spam and mw:Anti-spam features. I am inclined towards more automatic methods, as most of those would require Jeff to edit the server, so a one-time config thing (using lists updates elsewhere) would be best. Thoughts? --Waldir (talk) 03:58, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Stick figure linking to Cueball

Hey there. Do you mind explaining why you reverted my comment on the Stick figure page? (that sounds like "argh how dare you do that" - not my intention, just looking to understand, since there was no explanation given in the changelog.) My thought was that "Stick figure" is a page discussing the art style that Randall uses for his characters. In such a page, it seemed appropriate to mention the one character that is the most representative of the "classic stick figure" (Cueball). I thought I added that sentence in a way that fit naturally with the rest of the text. Please let me know what the issues are so I can work on them. Thanks. - jerodast (talk) 15:26, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

The addition of Cueball was not necessarily helpful in describing what a stick figure is (and I'd like to start a debate on whether or not we should be in the business of doing Wikipedia's job, or simply restrict ourselves to explaining xkcd and providing links where appropriate). Likewise, including Cueball in the explanation of what a generic stick figure is, makes it sound like Cueball is simply a name we use for any character that has no defining features. Which is not true. Cueball has a specific set of generic traits (it's a complex way of thinking about it) which combine to form a geeky every-man who is quite annoyed by the rampant use of "literally", is banned from quite a few security conferences (and at least one grammar con), and is fond of showing security agents the flaws in airport security.

So that's why I did it. lcarsos_a (talk) 16:54, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Categories

Hey, Merry Christmas!

If I, or someone else creates an arguably useful category that you don't really like, would you please say so on the talk page, so that we can discuss it, as a community. I agree that two entries doesn't make a category, but there are several more than two comics about Internet arguments. The topic itself is very specific, but it is also recurring indeed, just like raptors. As for Flowcharts, I'm sure I know 5-6 comics containing them, just top of my head. That surely should be enuff? (At least get rid of the Axiom of Choice, if you are to be ... ::puts on sunglasses:: ... consistent.) ;) Swedish greetings from St.nerol (talk) 14:24, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

By that logic, I am now justified in reorganizing the entirety of Category:Dynamic comics. I hold up that as an example of exactly why I stopped opening this up for a discussion and started ruthlessly cutting down our category count. In general I go by a simple rule of "Huh, I wonder if there are other comics on this topic?" which is why, many moons ago, I created the Category:Axiom of Choice (created when we didn't have so many categories, and no one batted an eye at having a category with only two comics in it). This is why I think Category:Internet is a very good category, and that Internet Arguments was not. Now, maybe I would have felt a little more lenient if it was [[Category:Trolling]] but that's because it's not so specific as to only be a handful of comics (and now that I say that out loud, I think there's quite a few that would fall under trolling).

This is because, as the wiki has come into its own, the mainstay editors have decided (and I'm the only one to vocalize it) that the categories a page has is not a traditional blog tag cloud where you simply vomit out everything that the comic contains. We use the categories as a way to "find similar" comics.

It really rankles me to have deeply nested categories, like Category:Set theory, but I'm willing to leave it there because I can see people coming by the site, reading a comic in Set Theory and wanting to read all the other ones on the same topic. Though I would greatly prefer it if it wasn't deeply nested, if it was simply parented to Category:Comics by topic and then had a See Also section.

As for Axiom of Choice, I still believe that it's an odd enough thing to have in a comic, anyone browsing through might want to see other comics that make reference to it, but I'm open to deleting it.

--lcarsos_a (talk) 00:59, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your answer. I think i mostly agree with you. Especially on that it should not be a tag cloud "to vomit out everything that the comic contains", but to find related ones. So at least no comic should be alone in a category.

I've been thinking that, while Internet might be a reasonable category, it is not in any way remarkable that the topic "Internet" recurs (of course it does). From that viewpoint it is much more interesting when e.g. the Axiom of Choice returns. The comics becomes much more tightly related, and that piece of information should doubtlessly be given in the wiki! I can think of two ways: by making a category, or by linking to the other comic(s) from the explanation page.

Since one can argue that set theory is a subdicipline of logic, a subdicipline of math, or neither, i just, without thinking too much, linked to (added) the category from all those levels. Maybe "See also" would be better. Why not?

Lastly, I must confess that i didn't get the "dynamic comics" part. If you were making a good point, please spell it out.

-- St.nerol (talk) 11:25, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Ages ago (I believe it was when we were first working on getting the explanation for Umwelt fleshed out) there was talk about what do we want to categorize it as. Someone, brilliantly, added an "Out of the ordinary" category, and did the same to 961: Eternal Flame, justifying that amid 1000+ comics these ones were truly odd, and broke the format (an animated gif and a comic that was different for nearly anyone depending on where they were, what browser they were using, etc.) that xkcd generally followed (geeky discussions, charts, and the occasional large drawing. Some other editors, that didn't quite understand, went into the back catalog and started adding other comics as being "out of the ordinary" such as Money. This ignited another conversation about what makes something ordinary, what makes it extraordinary, out-of-the-ordinary, the difference between the three, and why we have to have the majority be ordinary so we can have an out-of-the ordinary.

Then Randall published Click and Drag. Amidst the insanity of everyone frothing at the mouth to completely, totally, and summarily flog that horse until it was dead three times over, it was put into the category "out of the ordinary" and then someone created an "interactive" category, and someone else put Umwelt into it. Then there was an edit war, and a conversation (about why we need to clamp down on new categories, what constitutes out of the ordinary, why Umwelt isn't interactive, and moaning that people should stop the edit war until a decision had been made) was started. It was cut short when Traffic Lights was posted and one of the editors went rogue and cleaned up "interactive comics", and moved "out of the ordinary" to dynamic comics. It's slowly morphed from there to how we currently have it set up today.

Anyway, months ago I tried to start a discussion that none of the categories/comics should be part of a "Dynamic comics" parent category because none of them are "dynamic" they are very static. Since then I've been promoted to administrator, but I haven't touched it because, even though I may be a BOFH at times, this is still a wiki, and I can't right every wrong simply by wielding the sword of righteous indignation.

And that's all for storytime today. lcarsos_a (talk) 16:29, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

I think this is gonna be good! First, i don't know if i have anything to add about the dynamic stuff. But if no one seems to disagree, why not give it a shot? I wouldn't mind if you changed the nestings in math/set theory either. :) To get back to the "by topic", if i may:

If two comics connect by some interesting topic or reference, I'd think it's neatest to just link them together with a note at the end of the explanation, like someone did to 994: Advent Calendar also about Zeno, from the last comic. (I added a similar note in 994). Zeno might or might not come back, but anyway it's nice that you can click a wikilink and read another Zeno-joke. If it's a third comic about Zeno, we could do the same thing, (slightly more complicated, since we'd want all three to link to the other two), or consider a category. If it's suddenly four Zenos, well... What do you say? :) -- St.nerol (talk) 17:51, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I lost this tab, but I just found it again. Exactly. lcarsos_a (talk) 01:27, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Great! Hope you had a good day at church! :) -- St.nerol (talk) 19:55, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Sections in talk pages

Since we/you don't want sections in talk pages, how should we suitably structure the discussions? Where do you think I should answer on the probability thing (latest comic)? On the bottom, or in the middle of the page? -- St.nerol (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

As I've said many times, simply commenting in a threaded chronological order is all that needs to happen. Chronological dictates that all new comments go at the bottom. Threaded dictates that if you are responding to a comment you indent one from the comment you are responding to. Together this means that a discussion starts at the far left, and the responses continue downward and rightward.

This is only for explanation talk pages, as it breaks the way that sections work through the transclusion of the talk page onto the explanation. lcarsos_a (talk) 23:32, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you very much for clearing that up for me, supporting me in the discussion and, hrm, signing my question! –St.nerol (talk) 00:16, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Yep. I'm here to keep discussion civil. lcarsos_a (talk) 00:51, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Two images to delete

A couple of users ran into a conflict with a KDE desktop file on the server when trying to upload today's comic. Here's two broked images to delete [1][2] Davidy²²[talk] 07:11, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Oh, and another one from a while ago when a user ran into a map stored on the server. People mess up so much when they're trying to make new explanation pages. [3] Davidy²²[talk] 06:29, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

✓ Done lcarsos_a (talk) 23:00, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

"Unacceptable username"

Hi,

Just wondering, what does the "Unacceptable username" user-blocking reason refer to? (apart from the fact that these users closely resemble users ready to spam...)

Just being curious. - Cos (talk) 14:09, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Maybe it's just that you don't know what else to put when blocking a highly suspicious account? In which case you could add a reason in MediaWiki:Ipbreason-dropdown, something like "User account suspicious compared to spamming schemes" (or a better phrasing than this one, which I'm not too sure of...).

Thing is, I don't see what's wrong in choosing for instance "Zbenjamin89" as a username. - Cos (talk) 14:41, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

You're right. I'm using "Unacceptable username" with the implicit subtitle "spammer-like username". I've been putting it on some of the block messages. I'm only blocking usernames that were created in blocks, that are suspiciously similar to known spamming accounts, and have no contributions despite the account being created hours before. If any one of them comes back and posts on their talk page, or gets in contact, to prove they are human I unblock them. So far, none of them have.

I got tired of having to clean up spam, and it seems that blocking these accounts that are created, left to sit for a day or a week, and then activated to spew absurd amounts of spam, has helped in some small measure. lcarsos_a (talk) 23:52, 7 February 2013 (UTC)