User talk:MarkDilley

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Mark Dilley wins another victory in the fight against unnecessary complexity

I guess I was expecting dozens of people to each insert their pet peeve into the WikiIndex talk:Blocking Policy#draft blocking policy proposal, making it balloon up into a huge monster of complexity.

I am pleasantly surprised that you made it shorter. Also, it makes me happy that you deleted my negative language about "warning" and replaced it with a more positive alternative. --DavidCary 01:44, 8 September 2009 (EDT)

The lunatics have taken over the asylum.

As pretend assistant to the sheriff's deputy, I do hereby tag this here section for banishment [duplication] to the less popular talk page of a certain uuuh "Fandom Poover", have I got that right? Something like that [rpeh (because rpeh undeleted this section after Lumenos deleted it)]. This is in keeping with Section 1 - C of "WikiIndex Policies and Guidelines" under section "Enforcement against editors". As always, your input on matters of policy would be much appreciated and any objections or modification to this here constructive information tag, would be as well. If you modify or endorse this informative tag, please place your user name after this message and strike out any names appearing there at the time of your edit. Thank you for reading this informative tag and considering ways we may work together to resolve sensitive issues such as these. (Lumenos) (Updated Lumenos 08:07, 11 September 2009 (EDT))[Updated Lumenos 04:39, 12 September 2009 (EDT)]

The policies you have made up are not site policy; they are written solely by you, and have no consensus. Phantom Hoover 13:19, 10 September 2009 (EDT)

What policy have I made up? Lumenos 17:57, 11 September 2009 (EDT)

It is more a matter of whether the administration or other editors mind (or prefer) that I relocate a section that appears to have no useful information in it. Lumenos 17:57, 11 September 2009 (EDT)

Is there a policy against doing so? Lumenos 17:57, 11 September 2009 (EDT)

That is all I have to say. Phantom Hoover 10:12, 8 September 2009 (EDT)

If you could write the rules, what would they say? Lumenos 12:48, 8 September 2009 (EDT)

Sysops should have to pass basic tests of mental age, and protection should only be used in the most dire of vandal attacks. Phantom Hoover 13:15, 8 September 2009 (EDT)

<rolls eyes> Another genius suggestion. I sure am glad rpeh undeleted your comment here so we can explore this further. Could you describe this test in more detail? Lumenos 13:25, 8 September 2009 (EDT)

There will be standard tests available; Trent might know. Phantom Hoover 13:32, 8 September 2009 (EDT)

You are serious? So do you think we should employ those tests here? Will they share them? Lumenos 14:02, 8 September 2009 (EDT)

I would recommend a little java appellate with a virtual square peg and two virtual wholes: one round, one square. Admins can't log on with out placing the peg in the appropriate whole. Tmtoulouse 14:05, 8 September 2009 (EDT)

Epic win. Phantom Hoover 14:15, 8 September 2009 (EDT)

Doh! This is nothing but HOBGOBLINTRIES! (That having been said.) Honor to speak with you, Sir. Lumenos 14:11, 8 September 2009 (EDT)

...if that's your REAL name. Lumenos 15:56, 8 September 2009 (EDT)

"Archive" most of this page to subpage

Mark if you don't object I plan to move everything on this page, posted before "143 Conservaèdia", to a subpage. It supposedly helps with compatibility and I think it makes it easier to read. I don't know how to make neat archive icons, I would just put a link at the top of the page. I'll wait four days for you to object. (This is to save you time in responding.) Lumenos 19:43, 8 September 2009 (EDT) [Updated comment in bold.]

Please let me know if you don't appreciate me doing things like this. Lumenos 12:29, 8 September 2009 (EDT)

Lumenos has a good idea for once. Archive the first sixty or so sections to a User talk:MarkDilley/Archive1 page please? Huw Powell 04:37, 4 October 2009 (EDT)

I found the code to make neat archives and went ahead and archived the page. I hope I did good. I can't imagine why you wouldn't want it archived but perhaps I am being presumptuous. Lumenos 05:41, 23 June 2010 (EDT)

Archive 1 contains two categories that were added with comments. They have nothing else in them and I thought they looked maybe unintentional so I archived them with everything else. They are in this section: User_talk:MarkDilley/Archive1#Category_Sorting -- Lumenos 05:41, 23 June 2010 (EDT)

RationalWikiWiki

Hi Mark. do you think you could comment on this talk page: Talk:RationalWikiWiki. thanks.--Bob M 03:49, 10 September 2009 (EDT)

Bob - will get to it tomorrow night or this weekend. Best, MarkDilley

Could you also address this "article": "Huw Powell"? I am not a wiki, I am a free man! Huw Powell 19:58, 10 September 2009 (EDT)

It is the convention of this wiki to put people with real names into the main namespace - and pseudonym accounts to stay in the user namespace. I have deleted the page as you requested. ~~ MarkDilley

I did not realize that convention existed here. It seems odd to me to have editors of the wiki come up on "random page", but then again, I don't know what thought went into the convention. Anyway, thank you for doing what I asked. I am editing my comment above to remove the "red link". Do you think it would make sense for me to get renamed as a pseudonym I often use on wikis, "human", so as to fit your convention? Huw Powell 16:52, 11 September 2009 (EDT)

Articles for users with with real names

This is inspired by comments by Huw Powell in the RationalWikiWiki section above:

I don't think that it is such a bad idea to index real-world people who run wikis. However, a lot of user pages do seem to be written in a very random fashion and I wonder how much usefulness someone will get from visiting a page that is not an encyclopedic entry about the person.

If WikiIndex wishes to continue with this (possibly very useful) convention, perhaps there should be some sort of templates that can add value to articles about users. For example, it might be nice to have a template that gives a list of wikis that the user administers and/or writes on. Or it might be useful for users to list the (WikiIndex) categories they are most interested in. There are already some infoboxes that allow people to tell others about the languages they speak, but these are not universally used.

I think that if you improved the 'people' articles it could also be worth going to the wiki articles and then adding a list of active WikiIndex users. That way, if anyone had a problem with an article about a wiki, they could quickly go and find expert help. David Shepheard 12:27, 12 September 2009 (EDT)

What David says makes sense to me. Huw Powell 04:38, 4 October 2009 (EDT)

7

Yes, you are right[1] :-) - it was a typo. Greetings, Wolf | talk 03:16, 16 September 2009 (EDT)

Philsworld

The creator of the article Philsworld recently blanked it as the wiki is no longer active. I have changed it back, but substituted the Template:Tl template for the Template:Tl template. I presume that this is generally how we would prefer to indicate wikis which have reached the end of their lifespan. --MarvelZuvembie 17:10, 22 September 2009 (EDT)

Please help develop explicit rules

Following the recent incidents surrounding the RationalWiki article, I have come to the conclusion that we need a set of really explicit policies and guidelines. I don't like this, but it's necessary. I have started work on Wikiindex:Policies_and_Guidelines and I would appreciate your input.

What I don't (yet) have is method. Not sure what should go on the talk page and what shouldn't. Felix Pleşoianu | talk 04:08, 4 October 2009 (EDT)

Proposed "policy" should go in sections on the page. Discussion, with the same section names, should be on the talk page. What gets accepted/agreed on at the talk page, becomes the eventual main page. I invite you to RationalWiki where we wrote, and then rewrote, our site policies in such a fashion. Come to my talk page (user:human) if you want me to show you around. I'm not telling you what to do, just offering an example that worked for us. Huw Powell 04:42, 4 October 2009 (EDT)

Spam blacklist fail

Hi Mark. For some reason, My spam blacklist doesn't seem to be working. The last time I tested it several days ago, it worked fine. Today it doesn't seem to work. I'm trying to use it to prevent the fraudulent essay spammers from adding links to their sites. --MarvelZuvembie 17:40, 8 October 2009 (EDT)

Never mind. I missed that the offending words had to be a part of a link, not just any regular expression. It's working fine. I just was too lazy in my typing. :-P --MarvelZuvembie 21:18, 16 October 2009 (EDT)

Welcome thanks!

Thank you Mark :) Sj 19:34, 14 October 2009 (EDT)

New status?

Question about New status at Category talk:New. --EarthFurst 19:48, 24 October 2009 (EDT)

Doppelgänger-Account

Someone created a new account User:MarkDiIley which could mixed-up with your user account. I blocked him. :-) --Wolf | talk 11:11, 8 November 2009 (EST)

The next one: User:MarkDiIIey - one combination left ;-) Greetings, Wolf | talk 03:33, 10 November 2009 (EST)

The last one of this kind: User:MarkDilIey. --Wolf | talk 07:14, 14 November 2009 (EST)

Oh, look! I have one, too! :P User:MarveIZuvembie. --MarvelZuvembie 13:46, 7 December 2009 (EST)

Broken Interwikis?

Hi Mark,

I've been gone a while, but in visiting today I noticed that the foreign language interwiki links in the "includeonly" section of Template:Tl are appearing as red links within the article (see English Wikipedia, for example) instead of as interwiki links in the lefthand column. Perhaps a change to MediaWiki's configuration has caused this? Just thought you should know.

--MarvelZuvembie 15:25, 1 March 2010 (EST)

Sysop

Hi! I request sysop status here. Thank you! Erwin 08:55, 29 March 2010 (EDT)

But why? Of...Erwin 11:49, 30 March 2010 (EDT)

See the confirmation from founder of site, give me now sysop status...--Erwin 15:54, 1 April 2010 (EDT)

Hi Erwin. For completing your sysop's button collection, take a tour around our wiki collection. And I'm sure, some of them will highly appreciate hour help. I guess for this wiki the answer is just no. (Maybe my English is too bad: I cannot discover any confirmation in John's answer.) Best regards --Wolf | talk 16:20, 1 April 2010 (EDT)

WoWWiki and PathfinderWiki both leave Wikia!

I've started a topic on the Wikia talk page, but hope you could give some input into how to proceed. David Shepheard 03:40, 5 November 2010 (PDT)

I am so sorry

I heard that you got impersonated on youtube. I am so sorry. WIll you block him? The preceding unsigned comment posted by Doon Harrow 00:26, 8 November 2010 - please remember to sign your comments with four tilde. ~~~~

wikiindex page about Recent Changes Camp?

Should there be a WikiIndex page about Recent Changes Camp? --EarthFurst 01:43, 14 November 2010 (PST)

Oops. There is one (at "RecentChangesCamp"). Move it to "Recent Changes Camp"? --EarthFurst 01:49, 14 November 2010 (PST)

will redirect the non-CamelCased one. Thanks! ~~ MarkDilley

Spam bots

Hi Mark,

Has there been discussion in wiki circles about the best way to stop spambots like Literacyguru before they change hundreds of articles? I'm sure there's some sort of rollback script, but I don't have the familiarity with bots that I do with other aspects of MediaWiki, so I'm rolling back the vandalism one article at a time. Still, if "editors" that edit multiple articles in an inhumanly short time frame could be flagged, that might be helpful.

--MarvelZuvembie 12:12, 16 December 2010 (PST)

Upon further research, the recent spam probably wasn't done by a bot. The edits weren't that quick. Also, it adapted to making a mistake—putting the spam inside of a comment field. Still, some kind of multiple rollback tool would be nice. --MarvelZuvembie 13:50, 16 December 2010 (PST)

I will ask person upgrading the site if there is a mass rollback on a unleashed spammer. Thanks for catching it, please don't hesitate to grab me on IRC or email to help. My best, MarkDilley

ACC Bible Quizzing Wiki

My only wish is for the article that I created about the ACC Bible Quizzing Wiki to be deleted.Joel amos 17:53, 3 February 2011 (PST)

Wikiversity

You look like one of the "people in charge". :)

As a bureaucrat on a Wikia wiki who does most of the editing, I do not envy you.

WikiIndex is much needed, but it would be nice if it were on a fast wiki farm such as Wikia or Wikkii. But then I am not sure if they would allow all this info about their competition. But the wiki index looks like it is struggling. It is very slow, and is using an old version of MediaWiki software. Putting this on an ad-supported wiki farm would ensure its longterm survival, and more up-to-date software and hardware.

Maybe this could be transferred to Wikiversity? You would think that Wikimedia would support wikis in general. I left a request for comment at the Wikiversity forum:

• http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Colloquium#Wiki_Index._Request_for_comments --Timeshifter 19:29, 26 April 2011 (PDT)

Universal Edit Button

Hi Mark, there seems to be a problem. Thus it is offline. I would be very sad to learn that it is gone entirely. :( Cheers --[[kgh]] 02:09, 8 June 2011 (PDT)

I am relieved to hear that it was just a struggle. I just had a look at it: It is happily back there it belongs and running. :) Cool. Cheers --[[kgh]] 14:24, 9 June 2011 (PDT)

RegioWikis in Europe

Hi. I just discovered this map. I'm trying to archive all them at WikiTeam, but an article at WikiIndex for them would be nice too. Add it to the TODO list, please. Regards. emijrp 01:44, 12 June 2011 (PDT)

New parameter into Template:Wiki for backups

Hi Mark. Can we add a new parameter into Template:Wiki to link to backups? wiki_backup for url and wiki_backup_date for date. If you are OK I can do it. Regards. --emijrp 03:11, 29 June 2011 (PDT)

You've got mail

User_talk:Varnent

Now you have more.  :)

SMW

Hi Mark, your welcome. I mostly made minor changes since Yaron already did most of the work setting it up. Cheers --[[kgh]] 04:51, 30 July 2011 (PDT)

Enable captcha

The solution to this spam attack is to enable captcha for all anonymous edits, not just if they're posting external links. Do it. Elassint, 07 30 2011

Looking it up on MediaWiki, it appears as though one of the five ConfirmEdit triggers would require use of a CAPTCHA on any edit. If I read it correctly, it appears as though the CAPTCHA is only required once, so, although annoying, this might solve the vandalbot problem. [2]

I do suspect it is a bot as I am seeing similar edits on other wikis from the same IPs. --MarvelZuvembie 18:39, 6 September 2011 (PDT)

Wikicareer.de = spam?

Question at Talk:Wikicareer.de. --EarthFurst 15:48, 10 December 2011 (PST)

Thanks

Thanks for the new bot and sysop privileges. emijrp 03:19, 16 December 2011 (PST)

delete nominations

Hi Mark, noticed you seem to have some concerns over some of my delete nominations - some of which frankly confuse me. This edit is one - this 'article' is clearly someone who is trying to use WikiIndex to actually HOST their wiki (rather than create an 'entry' here on WikiIndex with a link to an off-site wiki). TeraS checked out all my deletion 'nominations' relating to this particular article and user, and agreed with me - in that it was just spam. (And I'm sure you'll agree that spam doesn't just have to be trying to sell medications for erectile disfunction!!) ;p And just because some 'spam' which was created here in the early days of WI, and didn't get picked up on, surely needs to be treated with the same emphasis as spam created say yesterday! IMVHO, of course. :)

And this comment here - kinda would have been nice to include me in the discussion too, don't you think? :/ Anyway, my explanation for my recent 'deletionisms' - I'm sure you need no reminding that a (good) wiki works best when articles (along with all the other 'stuff') on a wiki site have lots of wikilinks. Having been on here a little while now, I became aware that many articles/talk page discussions/project pages/help pages, etc, are seriously devoid of wikilinks (and yes, I'm aware that in its infancy, these 'links' may not have actually been available). So, in trying to improve the 'wikilinks' issue, my first port of call (after attending directly to obvious articles) was to look in Special:SpecialPages at the Uncategorized templates - and either (a) link them to an appropriate template category (or one of its sub-cats), or (b) nominate them for deletion. Of those that I nominate for deletion, 99% of the time, I clicked on the Special:WhatLinksHere, and any that did have links, I let be. But those which had no links in the WhatLinksHere, after having checked their edit history, those that seemed to be 'test' edits had the {{delete}} tag, along with some hidden text to explain my rationale, which was then copied to the edit summary (and many of these were created by well-known spammer, wiki-irritant and banned member Jonah Musto.) OK, I admit to not checking every single template I nominated, simply because some appeared to follow a certain pattern - but then, I am only 'nominating' them for deletion - the Admin should also verify them too!

At the end of the day - I'm only here to try and help WikiIndex become a 'better' place - one of those methods is creating wikilinks; and the other is spam-hunting and trimming out niff-naff unused 'stuff' (templates, cats, etc). In doing so, these deletion nominations have all been in 'good faith' - so if I have nominated an item incorrectly, I apologise. But it would be nice to let me know if you think I'm doing anything fundamentally 'wrong'! I respect of my efforts of improving wikilinking - I suppose a good question to pose might be - "of those 5000+ wikis listed here, how many of those actual wiki owners are aware that their site is listed here on WikiIndex?" (I personally know that two of my UK nominations don't!). Anyway, best regards --Hoof Hearted 01:57, 6 January 2012 (PST)

Message from Escyos

EDIT: This was a new topic. --Wolf | talk 05:02, 10 January 2012 (PST)
thank you for the welcome....although I suspect it was to clear up redlinks in recent changes.... Escyos 20:10, 8 January 2012 (PST)

SopaStrike

About SopaStrike. Posted my thoughts to Community Portal/News AND Talk:Community Portal/News (since anon IP was the one that linked to Talk:Community Portal/News. Which page is the correct one to post SopaStrike thoughts to? Perhaps Community Portal/News should have headers instead of non-TOC subsections (where there is semicolon at start of line) so people can click on edit link of the section they want to edit? --EarthFurst 10:07, 16 January 2012 (PST)

wikiFactor 20

"is it correct that the wikiFactor would go to 20 when the twentieth most popular page reaches 20,000?"

You are indeed correct! All the best, -- Carl McBride (talk) 09:36, 1 February 2012 (PST)

Do we have the RenameUser extension?

I forgot to ask about this earlier. Elassint, 05 24 2012

WikiHorde page flagged for deletion

Thanks for starting WikiIndex page about WikiHorde. Delete tag was added to that article. I never visited wikihorde.org (and archive.org Wayback Machine doesn't seem to have any archive of wikihorde) ... so I have no first-hand experience with the site in terms of page whether WikiIndex should keep the page (I assume it should be kept). --EarthFurst 10:17, 12 June 2012 (PDT)

It was not a wiki, rather it was a WikiIdea. I am just going to redirect it to the wiki that inspired the idea for now. Sound like a good idea? Best, MarkDilley

Fine line between Dormant and Active

Where do you think is the fine line between dormant and just a slow but active wiki? How do you judge this site or this site? I want to know your thoughts on this. Elassint^Admin 17 June 2012

You are correct, there is a fine line. WikiIndex is more about how one things things should be listed than hard fast rules. I think the case could be made that the one edited just a few times a year could be dormant - I could also see the case that it would be active. What do you think? Best, MarkDilley

Universal Edit Button on mainpage

Ping from Universal Edit Button on mainpage talk. --Ciencia Al Poder 12:43, 20 June 2012 (PDT)

Wiki ideas?

Just saw that new category and don't think it should have a place here. That may be ideas, but they are also guidelines. Guidelines should go in the project namespace, and WikiIndex is a wiki directory, not an encyclopedia about wikis, or am I wrong? --Bachsau 00:08, 29 June 2012 (PDT)

From the front page - There are 13,842 pages about wikis, wiki people and wiki ideas.

-- What are "wiki people"? *lol* You mean people like you, whose personal website can be edited by everyone else? --Bachsau 23:16, 29 June 2012 (PDT)

From the edit page - This is not a free wiki hosting site, this is an index of wikis, wiki people and wiki ideas. Contributions outside of that scope will be treated as test edits and be removed.

Category:WikiIdea was started in January 2012, although the idea has been around since 2006, the beginning. ~~ MarkDilley

And what exactly IS a "WikiIdea"? --Bachsau 23:16, 29 June 2012 (PDT)

WTF is going on with the server? --Bachsau 00:16, 29 June 2012 (PDT)

Don't know, been watching it get worse, then get better. ~~ MarkDilley

Who's the admin here? The real admin, who operates the sever or webspace. --Bachsau 23:16, 29 June 2012 (PDT)

Thanks! :D

Thank you for the welcome! The Pirates of the Caribbean Online Wiki is the only informational wiki on the topic. There is also the Pirates of the Caribbean Online Players, a fan wiki where players can create articles about their pirate(player), guild, etc... Then you have the Pirates of the Caribbean Wiki, the informational wiki about the whole franchise. If you have anymore questions, feel free to ask, I'll be glad to help out in any way that I can. ~Jzfredskins^Talk

I'm sorry for the double post, but I have a question. On the Pirates of the Caribbean Online Wiki page, for the "Main Topic", is "Information" the appropriate category? Thanks again. ~Jzfredskins^Talk