Talk:Developers/Meta archive

=2004=

Status?
Magnus gave me developer access to the Wikipedia SourceForge servers two years ago when I asked to become a developer. However I've never had access to the Wikipedia servers that I'm aware of. What's my status ? Am I a developer or not ? -- Derek Ross 06:17, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * "MediaWiki/Wikimedia developers are people who write MediaWiki software and/or do systems administration work on the Wikimedia servers." So since you write MediaWiki software, you are a developer. Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 03:04, 2005 Apr 3 (UTC)

History
The following is the record of versions that are no longer accessible.

Legend: m = minor edit
 * 08:01, 28 Mar 2004 81.250.192.201
 * 07:48, 28 Mar 2004 T0xic (Tim Starling is a master of PHP)
 * 13:20, 21 Feb 2004 Tim Starling (+snok and gwicke)
 * m 06:55, 18 Jan 2004 Ojigiri (+ja)
 * 06:45, 1 Nov 2003 Tim Starling (Jason Richey -> Jasonr)
 * m 00:48, 27 Oct 2003 Tim Starling (wikification)
 * m 03:41, 26 Oct 2003 Tim Starling (+Neil)
 * 03:33, 26 Oct 2003 Tim Starling (Jimbo's status)
 * 03:21, 26 Oct 2003 Tim Starling (mostly rewritten)
 * 15:40, 15 Oct 2003 Ed Poor (silly developer poetry -- the verses are silly, not the developers (mostly)
 * 18:22, 10 Oct 2003 Ed Poor (re: sysop promotion & power vs. authority)
 * 18:19, 10 Oct 2003 Ed Poor (+ Tim Starling + Marumari + random comments on each Developer)
 * m 23:13, 17 Jun 2003 Derek Ross (typo)
 * 22:15, 11 Jun 2003 LittleDan (adding Eloquence (erik) to list of developers)
 * 04:43, 15 Apr 2003 Lee Daniel Crocker
 * 23:16, 18 Feb 2003 Enchanter (Updating)
 * m 10:12, 30 Nov 2002 Maveric149 (* Ed Poor ; there are others )
 * 06:43, 23 Sep 2002 The Cunctator (initial entry)

Alternative formats
How's this for a compromise (assuming one is needed)?

Name                 CVS   Shell   Root   CVS admin   Remote power Elisabeth Bauer       * Axel Boldt            * Camille Constans      *      * T.D. Corell           * The Cunctator         * Johan Dahlin          * Peter Danenberg       * Lee Daniel Crocker    *                      * Michael Dill          *                      * Mr E23                *      *       * Andre Engels          * Fantasy               * Jens Frank            * Guillaume Blanchard   * Jan Hidders           * Simon J Kissane       * Matthias Jordan       * Christian List        * Magnus Manske         *                      * Erik Moeller          *      *       *       * Christoph Mussenbrock * Nicholas Pisarro, Jr. * Evan Prodromou        * Nick Reinking         * Jason Richey          *      *       *                     * Derek Ross            * Valerio Santinelli    *                      * Chris Seaton          * Chuck SMITH           * Bogdan Stancescu      * Tim Starling          *      *       *       * Marian Steinbach      * Tarquin               * Timwi                 * Anders Törlind        * Luc Van Oostenryck    * Brion Vibber          *      *       *       *             * Ashar Voultoiz        * Jimmy Wales           *      *       *                     * Tomasz Wegrzanowski   *      * Gabriel Wicke         *      *                             *

Just a thought -- I'm not invested at all in this... BCorr | &#1041;&#1088;&#1072;&#1081;&#1077;&#1085; 04:52, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * Look like good. A &#9774; ineko 06:16, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Or, of course, we could use the MediaWiki table syntax! Reformat the below to your heart's content... IMSoP 18:24, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

ASCII art isn't that bad, I'm not about to get into an edit war with Brion over this :) -- Tim Starling 02:21, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Deletion of versions
as on #wikimedia nobody replies i put it here;

the listet versions are copyvio. please delete them:


 * http://de.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Juli_%28Musikgruppe%29&oldid=2271369
 * http://de.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Juli_%28Musikgruppe%29&oldid=2269374
 * http://de.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Juli_%28Musikgruppe%29&oldid=2269342
 * http://de.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Juli_%28Musikgruppe%29&oldid=2269295
 * http://de.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Juli_%28Musikgruppe%29&oldid=2269285 ...de:Benutzer:Sicherlich 21 November 2004

en:Wikipedia:Changing username
Could somebody please handle the requests at Wikipedia:Wikipedia:Changing username? --20 December 2004

=2005=

wikisarcoidosis francais
hello, I would like to add all the languages on my mediawiki, how to make? as well as the carecteres speciaus at the foot of the page in mode edict ggauthier http://www.combbs.net/mediawiki/ --17 January 2005

Please help identify User:KingOfAllPaperboys
Developers, I don't see a notice board so I am trying this page. Please help us identify User:KingOfAllPaperboys. He got blocked the evening of the 25th for harassing User:Netoholic, but a review of his history leads me to believe that he is the sockpuppet of an administrator. The user was created in december 2004, and after about 4 edits over two months on Feb. 10th there was a burst of activity helping to fight a vandal attack, on pages he'd never visited before, and he fought it like a professional. Therefore it looks like he is the alter ego of an admin. After very little activity for another month or so, suddenly he shows up harassing User:Netoholic who has made himself unpopular recently, especially among the admins with revert wars over templates and policies. However, that is no excuse for an admin to have a sockpuppet and misbehavior. I think there should be zero tolerance for such behavior and immediate revocation of admin status. But identifying the culprit requires developer assistance. I have tried to track it down via contribution histories and have three candidates User:172, User:Snowspinner and User:Itai, who each had the motive and some significant but not conclusive gaps that coincide with KingOfAllPaperboys activity.

Please assist in identifying this abuser of the community before the IP trail grows cold. He may be sophisticated so make sure he didn't come in under a separate IP, during the 24 hours KingOfAllPaperboys was blocked.

Please let me know ASAP if I have managed to reach anybody in this manner. Otherwise, I think my best hope to would be to try Jimbo's talk page, but I don't want to bother him unnecessarily.

-- thanx, User:Silverback 29 March 2005


 * The above message seems to be signed by a user with no userpage who was not logged in at the time. Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 05:26, 2005 Apr 3 (UTC)


 * See Wikipedia:User:Silverback and Wikipedia:User talk:Silverback. Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 05:30, 2005 Apr 3 (UTC)

"New" user ID'ing
Hi there! On en.wikipedia, there have been a couple of newly created accounts that went straight for some voting pages and had strong opinions on some controversial issues. While there's nothing wrong with that, it seems unlikely behavior for a newbie. Would it be possible to run an IP-check on two or three new accounts to verify they're not used simply for gaining a second vote? It would be much appreciated. Radiant 09:17, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Current main page featured article warning

 * from: .

Could there be a warning which displays when contributors attempt to edit articles when they are featured on the main page? Not everyone goes to the main page (or wait for it to load on your dial-up connection), and if one is expected not to Be bold, one should have a warning. If there is a better place to ask for this please point me to it. Hyacinth 03:29, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * As a stopgap measure, we could add some invisible text to it, like this:

Rad Racer 03:54, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * Which reads:
 * That is great, but would not prevent page moves, drastic section edits and deltions, and page deletions. Hyacinth 23:30, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * The next step up would be having this message display at the top of the edit page of currently featured articles (not in the article, but above the edit window, somewhat like the message you get when you have an edit conflict). Hyacinth 23:36, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * here and now

This is a request for developer assistance to create the feature described above. If there is a better place to make this request please point me to it. Thanks. Hyacinth 23:41, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia
Can you fix problem whit interwiki of this Wikipedia? Serbo-Croatian is Srpskohrvatski on Latin or Српскохрватски on Cyrillic. I suppose that name Srpskohrvatski/Српскохрватски is to long. Can you put Srpskoхрватски or Српскоhrvatski? --Pokrajac 23:34, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Becoming a developer
I'd like to become a WikiMedia developer. How do I start? By learning PHP or MySQL?

There are a number of minor fixes and improvements that I believe I could do, myself, without having to bother other people. I would, of course, test these on my own server (see Encyclopedia Project) where I am the main tech support guy. If they worked out, I would offer the source code to the MediaWiki project for possible use in Wikipedia.

I am primarily concerned with ease of use. Anything to save keystrokes or consternation, you might say.

I have a lengthy background in programming, architecture, optimization, database structure and software development methodology. I'm also very good at communicating with end users. That is in fact my primary job now: "coordinator" at ABC, Inc. (Application Engineering department).

I was once upon a time a Developer here. Jimbo made me one, because I intended to work on database structure, but I got caught up in administration instead and after the "bureaucrat" and "steward" roles were created, Brion and others asked me to choose between really developing or stepping down. I stepped down, because I had never written even one line of code! I hadn't even done any server administration. No hard feelings anywhere about this, I hope. (I instituted the practice of "voting for bureaucrats" at the English Wikipedia, so at least some good came out if it. ;-)

(Oh, don't worry about me being unilateral here. I understand the need for hierarchy in a programming project. So I will follow all orders given me. Tim, Brion, Erik, Magnus, feel free to order me around. Or even tell me to get lost and not apply! I'm actually rather easy-going. :-)

Please let me know if there is anything I might be able to help with, and if so then advise me on how I might prepare to be helpful. Ed Poor 15:28, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Request
Hi, I'm a italian developer. I know very well php language. Can I help you for a media wiki development? --Djdomix 6 September 2005

ru: MediaWiki namespace revert
Guys, has anyone made a dump before reverting the system messages in ruwiki? If not, it was most unwise to reset the whole namespace to default values instead of locating the bug and changing a single message. Right now, ALL messages have been, to my understanding reverted by SQL means and have no history. Please help our administrators get things back in order.

Please abstain from doing such reverts in the future. Thanks. --ACrush ?!/© 04:27, 12 September 2005 (UTC)


 * BTW, the monobook skin no longer works properly.--ACrush ?!/© 08:01, 12 September 2005 (UTC)


 * where was this "revert" requested? who performed it?  why?  it's not in the server admin log.  kate


 * Please see irc://irc.freenode.net/wikimedia-tech IRC log--ACrush ?!/© 17:12, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Today it was similar problem, with the same person (Ævar_Arnfjörð_Bjarmason). He started a bot that was intended to fix his previous damage in ru.wikipedia but blocked all the work, because he damaged linkprefix and linktrail MediaWiki messages. Most of his other changes were also not useful, since he does not understand what was he doing. He did not check the results of work of his bot, doing potentially very dangerous changes, and he did not chech messages sent to him when I tried to stop him. He is absolutely irresponsible, that's unbelievable. It is very sad that we have such a "developers"... I suggest to revoke from him rights to shell access - I'm sure it will help Wikimedia projects a lot. MaxiMaxiMax 18:36, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

http://wikibooks.org/upload/Wikibooks.png
This picture sends an wrong http-header. When you have http://wikimedia.org/ as your startpage it isn't cashed. When you fix this we can mybe save a litle bit traffic. -- 84.167.229.32 13:52, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Note on worldwide developer distribution
Of those whose nationality I know or have a good idea of, here's how the regularly active participants are split:

de: 4 uk: 1 fr: 2 belgium: 1 lithuania: 1 EUROPE TOTAL: 9

Australia: 2

US: 1 (plus JW and Jason who are around less than most)

We should be considerate of the clear US minority on the technical team.:) --Jamesday This is interesting. It should be updated and summed up one day. Anthere
 * Another interesting fact is that of this group, there are more the same number of native speakers of German than as there are native speakers of English. -- Jeronim 10:36, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC) ... Doh. -- Jeronim 08:19, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * Are you excluding Australian and American languages? :) Midom 18:53, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * I presume the implication was that the Belgian was a German-speaker, giving EN(uk+au+us)=4 vs DE(de+be)=5; otherwise, it's even stevens. - IMSoP 21:24, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps someone would like to compute a developer world map of MediaWiki developers somewhat like the OpenBSD project has done ? —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 21:15, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Question on an RSS feed to identify changes
I suspect that this is not the right place to post this question but I am unsure where I should post it .. Any suggestions gratefully received.

Is there any way I can arrange for an RSS feed so I can see changes to pages in my watchlist. Evansp 16 September 2005

Problem with the Mathematical formula (LaTeX)
Hi guys, i'm a german developer and i have a big problem with the formula editor... I have installed it as per discription (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Running_MediaWiki_on_Windows) Is there any other way to run the editor under windows? The error message is: Failed to parse (unknown error): ... I hope anyone can help me.

Best regards,

Oliver Hafner 30 September 2005

Things about Norwegian Wiktionary and Wikibooks
Hi, I'm wondering if there are some developers that could help out with a few issues on the Norwegian Wiktionary and Wikibooks; on both projects, the  namespace is set to "Wikipedia", where it of course should be "Wiktionary" and "Wikibooks". On both both projects, however, there are already pages with the Wiktionary: and Wikibooks: prefixes, and according to some guy in IRC, those would need to be renamed first.

Secondly, on the Wiktionary, I was wondering if we could get case sensitivity, like the English version. I brought this up on the village pump a month ago, but there has only been one reply; the replier and myself are the only people to be active for more than 1–2 days. I don't know if that is a consenus (I doubt it would pass as that, hehe), but it shouldn't be a big deal anyways? No Norwegian dictionaries use majuscules other than in proper nouns. Jon Harald Søby (talk, contrib) 17:42, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Welsh Wiktionary
I have a few requests for the Welsh Wiktionary.

Change the namespaces:
 * Wiktionary to Wiciadur
 * Sgwrs Wiktionary to Sgwrs Wiciadur
 * Help to Cymorth
 * Help talk to Sgwrs Cymorth
 * Category to Categori
 * Category talk to Sgwrs Categori

Give the prefixes Atodiad, WiciSawrws and Odliadur the same non-entry status as Wiktionary_Appendix, WikiSaurus and Rhymes on the English Wiktionary.

Sensitivity, so that entries can begin with a small letter.

Change the project title from Wiktionary to Wiciadur.

Thanks in advance to anyone who'll take care of this, --Adam7davies 18:21, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

=2006=

Request for sock puppet check
User Lumiere has started to edit the talk:transcendental meditation page with at least one anon IP and two accounts. The talk page, on Jan 4 has him editing as two users and one IP, and then changing the signatures on these edits.

Now I believe he might be editing the page as 24.52.17.93, however I may be wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=24.52.17.93

Would someone please look into this, or comment? 69.107.41.50 19:22, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Proposal for $wgSpamRegex User Interface extension

 * Moved to better location Proposals for new projects
 * --jwalling 02:48, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Content Index / Full Text Search at lb.wikipedia.org
Wonder wether I'm right here with my problem; if not please tell me where else I would ! In the luxemburgish Wikipedia I entered an article BEEZEBIERG containing the word STEEKAUL, since January, 8th, 2006. Nevertheless up to now a full text search doesn't show this article. Seems that the refreshing of the luxemburgish Content Indexing doesn't work any longer.--Menhir 21:03, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Setup Help
There is a Wikipedia in Pennsylvania Deitsch that has been approved several months ago that now has over 1 000 pages (on a non wikipedia site) and I believe the Wikipedia community is missing out by it not being part of the Wiki community. We have someone who set up our wiki where we are last July, and if you wanted, we would gladly help to move it to www.wikipedia.org and to set it up there. You can see our request on the approved requests page. Stettlerj 12:34, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
 * In fact, several language Wikipedias have been been approved but are awaiting developer creation. Jade Knight 06:21, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Account/password
I made the account: skyhawk

I don't remember the password for the account

I don't believe I have an email address linked up to it.

How do I go about retrieving my password?

The IP address should be the same.

(Feel free to use the talk page for this address when answering.)

And yes, I'm feeling dumb right now...

68.13.144.181 17:50, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

numerical bug in bn-wiki
In the Bangla language wikipedia, there is a small bug (or misconfiguration?). The time values in diffs and elsewhere are showing up in English numerals, rather than Bangla numerals. For example, see this diff. Here "14:17, ৮ এপ্রিল ২০০৬ তারিখের সংশোধন" has the date and the year in Bangla numerals, but the time is showing up in English numerals. Is it a mediawiki configuration problem fixable via editing anything in mediawiki, or does this need developer actions? Thanks. --Ragib 20:49, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

web service
hi, i think it's very powerfull to have a web service to develop a client software to show 'one daily word'. when i turn on my pc or connect it to the net the client ask to this web service a casual word on the database, only a small description. if you want you click and you jump on the page. --27 April 2006

Wiki-language reference
Hello,

I am a new French Wikipedia user (User:Bruno Vallette) and I discover step by step (and very slowly) the syntax I can use to create or modify pages (to create a link, a gallery, a title, and so on). Is there somewhere (probably on Wikipedia itself) a language reference where I could rapidly find new key words and syntax to create beautiful and useful pages? As I suppose the key words are somewhat different regarding the user's community (French in my case), is there only one reference book or one dedicated for each community?

Thanks in advance for your help. 18:10, 23 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Try Help:Contents. Daniel (‽) Check out Wikiscope! 14:27, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Great. Thanks a lot. Bruno Vallette 15:19, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Disable image uploads
I am the admin of the Chechen Wikipedia and I was wondering what motions do I need to go through before image uploads can be disabled on Chechen Wikipedia (so that if any image is uploaded, it has to go to the Commons). Thanks a bunch. Zscout370 13:38, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Wiki-marking
Hello! I am need disable wiki-marking and html-marking in all articles. Tell me, please, how I can do this. --23 November 2006

=2007=

Merging account and IP
Could you merge my account HiraV with the IP address 83.67.79.40 - I just wanted my contributions to be in one place...

Thanks!

83.67.79.40 10:56, 17 March 2007 (UTC)HiraV

Identity Crisis: User:Jeffrey Newman
I spent a little time with Wikipedia a couple of years ago, using my real name, and now want to resume my identity. However, the password does not work. I am happy to give my e-mail; I am happy to meet an admin in UK; I just do not want to start all over again with a name that is not me, please! I actually do not believe, with a little 'common' sense (qv Hannah Arendt), that it is difficult to tell that I remain the same person with the same interests! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#Regaining_Identity.21_User:Jeffrey_Newman (would there be a simpler way to make an internal link to this?) gives me some further suggestions and help. I am still not prepared to give up as 'impossible' but I will accept 'very difficult', 'highly unusual', 'nearly impossible', 'pain in the xxxx' etc.

I do apolgise for all this but I believe Joe Mabel user:jmabel perhaps [User_talk:Gadfium]] and User:AmiDanielpossibly understand why it is important - and I do apologise if I have quoted them/you inappropriately. Perhaps if I could find one or two other senior Wikipedians with a similar outlook, we could find a way through. Thank you. I have found my way here with the help of a comment: *See Developers. Uncle G 11:02, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I shall look for replies here, please. User:Jeffrey Newman [Also, please, why is this red, not blue?] 85.210.255.81 22:57, 17 April 2007 (UTC)