User talk:Nx/Archive2

whoa
The wiki is wobbling. I'm worried. Mei 00:16, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
 * It was just the backup script. -- Nx  / talk 00:17, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Have you polished all the wheels. Mei 00:21, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
 * No, there's still a lot of polishing to do. -- Nx  / talk 00:22, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
 * That is dangerous, I am confiscating your wiki license. Can you direct me to your series of tubes. Mei 00:23, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Any way to add a few more "hide/show"s to watchlist? Like blocks, moves, and stuff?  In your copious spare time, of course...  00:27, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Not really, not without hacking SpecialRecentchanges.php at least -- Nx  / talk 00:35, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Watchlist, not RC. I hate RC.  Now my WL is cluttered with pagemove, blocking, etc. crap.  Oh well....  04:35, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

So what was up with Ipatrol's MW space creation spree? Aren't all those things "defaults" until changed anyway? (Like the editing tabs, for instance) 23:06, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, he's customizing them with our custom language (such as replacing delete with vaporise everywhere) and adding some features. -- Nx  / talk 06:43, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh, ok. I think I saw the results... thanks.  07:42, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Bug
the "cp" interwiki link isn't working quite right.

cp:Prime Number

send you to:

http://www.conservapedia.com/Prime_Number%22_rel%3D%22nofollow

Which of course doesn't work without a little fixing.

Thanks, 20:09, 26 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Shit. It's not my extension, it must be Trent's old code that somehow didn't die in the update. I'm on it. -- Nx  / talk 20:14, 26 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Fixed. -- Nx  / talk 20:21, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Excellent, thanks! 21:50, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Scripts
Do I need the vandal log script any longer? 10:32, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * No, of course not, it's just one of the smaller things I forgot. --  Nx / talk 10:33, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, thanks. 10:39, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

RWW
You've jumped ship too? What we really need is someone who really cares about it. I would, but I'm terrible at writing articles. 17:59, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Noone cares, as evidenced by the saloon bar thread. The place is dead. --  Nx / talk 18:17, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Look. I care. -- 21:26, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * And of course, that means everyone should care, right? Because you're the center of the world, CUR! Fall down
 * Very well. --  Nx / talk 21:32, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Damn. 20:27, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Don't know about anyone else, but I gave up because of the constant CUR/falldown mutual wankfest. Could it be that other people are driven away by the stupidity? the only good thing about them doing it there is that it stops them doing it here. Totnesmartin 20:34, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The failure of the survey proposal, the utter failure of wigo rw and Fun:Drama queen. When one of the founders of RWW decides to post their article here instead of RWW, the place is dead. --  Nx / talk 20:52, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * By the way, I think BoN was actually Jinx. -- 21:00, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't care any more. --  Nx / talk 21:01, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * That was eggsellent, Nx. What a way to administer the final coup! 22:24, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * CUR has lots of free time and a reason to bitch and moan about RW, as well as a desire to prove himself as a leader. I think he is the perfect candidate. --  Nx / talk 22:32, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Not to mention that I can keep the wiki on life support virtually forever. I'm implementing several changes that I hope will stir up activity, such as making a Saloon Bar. -- 22:53, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * But there's no one there to talk to besides you and FallDown. 23:17, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually, theemperor and Redback are also there. -- 23:29, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Don't forget that the domain name will expire some day, and I highly doubt RA will pay for it again. --  Nx / talk 23:36, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I can pay for it. . . I hope. -- 01:50, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * It is about 30 bucks a year to register rationalwiki.com; we actually pay 90 to get .net and .org as well. 03:55, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * That's a lot. I think godaddy.com is charging about $35 for all three registrations. I use them for my crummy websites and have never had the sticker shock that $90 a year figure gave me. But hey CUR, it's more than you'll make selling tin cans and delivering newspapers. 04:10, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, we're overpaying. I pay 20USD for two years for my dot com.  04:42, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * GoDaddy is cheaper, but I think we decided to go with someone reliable. 04:56, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Of course, my $20 is via the site host, so they may be "discounting" the service for customers. Still, it ought to be less than $30/DN.  We're gettin' chewed, I tell ya!  05:02, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually that $90 got us three years for all three. Oh well CUR now I don't have to chip in for this years I pay for yours. 05:08, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah, ok, that's a good deal. Trent is no fool (and eats ramen noodles in order to keep the site alive).  07:04, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

That's rationalwiki.org, not rationalwikiwiki.org --  Nx / talk 07:07, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Intercom timeout
3 fucking hours max? What if I am trying to leave a message at 2 AM that I want everyone to see? Bummer... :( 06:20, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Oops, sorry. I see "other"... never mind...  06:20, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * See also: MediaWiki:Intercom-expires --  Nx / talk 06:23, 30 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Nice intercom. Please accept my apologies.  How easy is to add the "hot new article" category? (As if we needed it, everyone here is an RC whore)  06:24, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Mediawiki:Intercom-list --  Nx / talk 06:25, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

EC! haha
 * Thanks! (Now I know where to look in the future, too) Excellent job integrating Trent's creations into MW!  06:29, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Next question: Can you make the "sig" link to the sender's user and talk pages? 06:36, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, but you can also sign with, it works. --  Nx / talk  06:37, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * OK, but it's mildly redundant to do so. Can't it just be automatic?  Pleeaasse?  06:53, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * It's giving redlinks because of the order of parsing. I'll fix it, but I have to take care not to break messages from the old intercom (that are stored unparsed in the database), and messages that are stored parsed. --  Nx / talk 06:54, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Urgh, backward compatibility... is hard work. 07:02, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Ok, there's a link to the user's page now, although it can't be customized. --  Nx / talk 08:00, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Talk page would be better, if we can only have one link. Sorry to whine.  08:20, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * We can have whatever we want, but since it's uncustomizable, it has to be a sane default. I'll add the talk page link. --  Nx / talk 08:27, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I've added a contrib link too, the intercom uses the same function that generates these links on recent changes, except the block link is suppressed. I can remove contrib if you think it's overkill. --  Nx / talk 08:35, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The test looked good to me. Although, I haven't  gotten all "prettifying" on this yet.  Can you move the "tags" (mark as read, etc.) to the right?  Contribs seems a bit redundant, all we really need is user talk, though user is also OK.  08:37, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * It's talk only now. The buttons can be customized in Mediawiki:Intercomnotice, the html for them is inserted at $6,$7 and $8 --  Nx / talk 08:41, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Wow, thanks. Nice work. 08:50, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Some more info since I've got to go. The text in Mediawiki:Intercomnotice is for logged in users, Mediawiki:Intercommessage is for anons (site wide message group) (I know, the naming is stupid). The latter doesn't have the buttons. This text is first wikiparsed, then the $ placeholders are replaced by various parameters. This is why user and talk page links gave redlinks: they were parsed as links to User:$3, then $3 was replaced with the actual username in the html, which was already a redlink. Finally, the whole thing is placed into a div with the usermessage class and an id (intercommessage I think). Because of the id, the styling can be customized in Common.css. I gave it the usermessage class to be consistent with the "you have new messages" notice. The reason the outer div is not in Mediawiki space and is in the code and unchangeable is that a random sysop could screw it up and bork the whole intercom (the javascript that gets the next/prev message and that hides the message when it's marked as read relies on the id for example). --  Nx / talk 08:58, 30 April 2009 (UTC) incorrect, please see MediaWiki talk:Intercomnotice --  Nx / talk  07:49, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Fortnight in MW
I seriously doubt it. 07:05, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Interesting, I tried to block you distance instead of time (yards, furlongs, parsecs, light years) and the form pooped it out. Funny how it let you use fortnights, yet didn't actually work. 07:09, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * So it does recognize fortnight, but refuses to use it. Fascinating --  Nx / talk 07:11, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes. When CUR blocked himself past the heat death of the universe, it happily accepted it, but did not actually work.  It is very interesting. All I was trying to do was keep you a few furlongs from here, is that so difficult to program? After all, time and relative distance in space ought to be simple enough... for a Doctor...  07:27, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * PS, ain't it fun to have a wiki where we actually try to break every aspect of the software, instead of work with it? 07:28, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

hmmmmm now I wonder

 * Ok... --  Nx / talk 07:49, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Fantastic!
I found the script. Now what do I do? -- 00:43, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
 * RationalWiki:Bots --  Nx / talk 11:35, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Can't find a download link. -- 19:08, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
 * http://pywikipediabot.sourceforge.net/ --  Nx / talk 19:10, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Damn it Nx, I can't find a download link! I need a direct link to a website, not some little page telling me to go to a site without a download link. -- 20:29, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Allow me to translate: You can either download it using svn with the command  or you can download a nightly snapshot from this page. --  Nx / talk  21:16, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
 * This depends on whether CUR's lowly Windows machine has svn or not. 20:44, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
 * It doesn't. Can I just stick the python file under User:BorkBot/web_link_checker.py? -- 23:46, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Vandal brake
Doesn't it prevent the binnee from moving pages? (Well, it should, but apparently doesn't). 01:14, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Now that you are the go-to guy "when things go wrong"
Look at what I did at and please add more info on "what surrounds it", etc.? Or tell me things here or on my user page, I'll see them either way. Thanks! 07:20, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I've changed some things in the code (removed border from buttons, added a class so they too can be customized), I'll write detailed information on how this works on the talk page. --  Nx / talk 07:49, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks, it looks great. Sorry I couldn't "finish" it on my own...  20:35, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
 * No problem --  Nx / talk 20:36, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Vandal bin
It seems rather opaque. Can you/trent add some VB links to special pages, at least? Like, "see contents of VB"? Also, the VBuser page looks just like the block page, it's a bit confusing I think. And it doesn't show the user's VB history (or maybe it does, but the history got vaped in the upgrade?) 04:40, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
 * No, it doesn't show the history, I didn't write/copy that part from Special:Block, will do that eventually. --  Nx / talk 09:50, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
 * On special pages it has: Vandal binned IP addresses and usernames, although the IPs that are auto blocked are just given a number like #42. 04:42, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll add a link to Special:VandalBin on Special:VandalBrake. The row id is used to protect Autoblocked IPs, i.e. you shouldn't be able to determine a users IP address by vandal binning them with autoblock and then checking what IP got binned too, since that would essentially give sysops checkuser abilities. --  Nx / talk 09:50, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Doh, thanks. I hate the "new" special pages.  I guess I'll learn my way around them, I'll have to.  04:57, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
 * It is a bit of a learning curve. The old style's problem was the list was getting long and hard to find things unless you knew the exact name, now you are suppose to search by categories, but they are vague too and some of the things are placed in stupid categories. 05:00, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes. The catting was done by monkeys with typewriters and inexperienced teenagers, I assume?  05:03, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I've added several new features: Special:VandalBrake has convenience links and a log fragment similar to Special:Block (the code is mostly copied from MediaWiki), the vandal log has parole links, and Special:Contributions has links to Special:VandalBin and the vandal log in the subheading. I wanted to add a vandal link to recent changes entries (in the (Talk | contribs | block) part), but the only hook to do that would require replacing the code that generates a recent changes entry with code in an extension, or doing some nasty html-hacking. --  Nx / talk 13:21, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Barefeets (foots) and dead files
Hey, I didn't know there were other barefoot-o-philes around. ;-) Anyhow, real question I have for you.  The "wanted page" list has a whole bunch of redlinks that look like "File:Wigo1128 2.png ‎(1 link)".  I don't know what they are, nor can I find them to delink them or anything.  Any suggestions?  If I had my druthers (and the reason I spend time de-redding) is that I think the "wanted pages" is most useful when it's somewhat short, and the lists are things that people might say "oh, I can write that".  But if you have to wade through "templates" and "files" and of course CP-linked pages, it's harder to figure out what would be a useful article.  Any suggestions, help or advice appreciated.  yes, i'm rambling. i do that.  :D-- 16:45, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I think the denizens of CP are funny enough on their own, so there's no need to vandalize the place with goatses and stuff and I don't have the talent/patience for parody. That file looks like it's a capturebot upload, I'll see if I can find it. --  Nx / talk 16:48, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah yes, those are images that capturebot missed because the link was added later, when the img tag was already there, causing capturebot to ignore the wigo... Not much that can be done about it unfortunately, unless the linked page is still on CP... otherwise turning the img link blue would be misleading, since we don't have a capture of that link. --  Nx / talk 16:57, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
 * LOL. At least I know why I can't find them in the search.  Ok.  Thanks!  Enjoy your "color testing".  Programming seems fun.  "testing" however, seems a headache.  -- 17:04, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

close font tag
Was it really that lame? Thanks for finding it and fixing it. 08:28, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, the new parser is a bit more sensitive, so things like that will pop up. I've fixed all the userboxes I could find, but there may still be stuff that's broken. --  Nx / talk 08:33, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks. If you can tell me what to look for (and what to fix), I don't mind digging in and helping.  Thanks for fixing my pile'o'shit!  08:44, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
 * No problem. All the problems I've found manifested as a  appearing in the rendered text and the tabs moving away. Just in case only the cached version is broken, purge the page and see if it's fixed. If not, start removing stuff from it and preview to find what part is causing it. Most of the time the   will tell you where you should begin your search, in case of userboxen, the box before it has an unclosed tag. --  Nx / talk  08:51, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Errr, yeah, thanks again  But I appreciate your fixing my dumb bug. Thanks!  08:55, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Password reset request
I hear you can do password resets for people. Can you please reset the password for my bot account User:Weaseldroid & email details to my Weaseloid email address. Cheers. 20:17, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I've set weaseldroid's email to the same as your account's, you should be able to use the email new password feature now. --  Nx / talk 20:29, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not feeling Nx's dark & scary superpowers. User:Mei
 * Hey! Read this about an hour ago and it's slowly percolated through my little brain that Nx could hijack anyone's account using this? Scary's right. 23:53, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Nx, could you hack Fall down's account so that you log in as him, and post a big message saying that women are superior to him in every way and that we are his masters? -- 23:59, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Aren't women surperior in every way? I thought that was just a given? &mdash; Unsigned, by: WaitingforGodot / talk / contribs
 * Now that's one reason why people won't return your sysopship, CUR. 00:11, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually, that's the reason you won't give me site access. Note also that you need to stop taking everything I say seriously. -- 00:14, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
 * CUR; it's the attitude I mean, not the action. Could you please flag your non-serious comments with " ".  00:18, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
 * (EC>9000) Um, I thought it was obvious that I could hack into anyone's account? There's even a convenient Mediawiki maintenance script to change a user's password, and I did hack into Mei's account to reset her password. And no CUR, I won't give you the root password, because a) the server is not set up very securely, so for example even with a limited user, you can read the mysql password of RW from LocalSettings.php, and the RW user has full read-write access to the database, and b) because of your suggestion above. --  Nx / talk 00:28, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
 * What? I thought passwords were never stored in plaintext anymore. 06:46, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
 * They are not. They are hashed, so I cannot get your password and use it to break into your email account for example. --  Nx / talk 06:55, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I know that; you weren't there when I blew my top at Jeeves for a joke on the old server. I refer to the mysql password. 17:09, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh, that. Yes, that is stored in plaintext in Localsettings.php, because mediawiki needs it to access mysql. Encrypting it is pointless, since the software has to be able to decrypt it and the software is open source. --  Nx / talk 17:15, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Begging
Pleeeeeaaaase, pleeeeeeaaaaase disable editing of the MediaWiki namespace by all users on RWW. 06:44, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Haha, why, what have they done now? 07:03, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
 * (EC) I have disabled editing of the interface for janitors, police and bureaucrats. Try it. Access group can still edit the interface, so give yourself access and clean up, then tell me and I'll disable giving of the access group, but still allow removing it so you can remove it from the people who have it. --  Nx / talk 07:05, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
 * OK. Lockdown. 17:14, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Done. You shouldn't be able to give the access permission now. --  Nx / talk 17:20, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Confuzzuleification
A quick question that I can't seem to find the answer to. I am writing a Java program to read a file and print out seats based on a provided file. The rest is working nicely, but I can't seem to coax my nested for loop to work out. Could you lend me a hand?

for (i = 0; i <= array1.length; i++){ for(j = 0; _______; j++){ system.out.printline(array1[i][j]) } }

The problem I have with that for loop is I cannot for the life of me figure out what should be in that ______; What would your recommendation be? 23:15, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

I assume array1[i] is an array, since you use it like that (array1[i][j]), so _____ should be array1[i].length --  Nx / talk 04:14, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Ah crap *kicks self*. Well, thanks for the help... it works now. 01:14, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Redirectbot
Hi Nx, could you reset Redirectbot's password for me? 00:09, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I've set Redirectbot's email address, try "email new password" on the login screen. --  Nx / talk 08:02, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * It is telling me that no email is set for Redirectbot. 08:14, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Strange, it worked for Mei. Well, I'll just use the mediawiki password changer script and send you the password in email then. --  Nx / talk 08:22, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay thanks. 08:28, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Capturebot2
I think I have fixed the instruction to what you meant, rather than literally what you wrote, is what is there now correct? Also if you are running hooks over the page could you move the earlier entries up to being under the first 5? 00:38, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
 * You mean on WIGO:CP? That wasn't me (IMHO it's a bit too early to start advertising it, it might still have serious bugs like the two I just fixed), but thanks. I think the moving entries down part would be best left to a bot, since hooks don't leave difflinks, can't be reverted, and disabling them would also be problematic, as well as determining which pages to run them on. The current one runs on all pages, which is ok I guess, since it only kicks in when it detects vote nextpoll. The only disadvantage is that you can't write it into instructions without the nowiki tag directly before it (it's a hack, best I could do with a single regexp, I didn't want to write complicated code to detect whether the tag is in a pair of nowikis or not) --  Nx / talk 06:00, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Your username
Whence "Nx"? 21:05, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
 * The first letter of my first name and an x for everything else. It's the result of a windows registry crash, my previous login name was my first name, but it became unusable and I had to create a new one (with a different name obviously). It's also easy to type on various login screens. update to RWW article in 3,2... --  Nx / talk 21:11, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Ahem
FTW--Opcn 21:41, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah. Carry on then. --  Nx / talk 21:42, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

My concern
My only issue is that since it would be running on the server and using server resources a request to proccess one or several substantial images could cut severely into performance for the site. A user with malicious intent, or just stupidity, shouldn't be able to even have the option. Can we pre-check links and refuse to proccess the image if it will exceed a certain amount of resources? tmtoulouse 18:35, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure, but I think memory usage depends on how big the window is, so I can check the horizontal pixel size of the webpage before resizing the window, and cancel it if it's bigger than a set size. Since the command console and config page are locked (we can also enable bureaucrat protection and protect it further), I can add an option to the check command to override this restriction so trusted users can still use it to upload bigger images.
 * Also, the webkit2png.py script does active waiting while the page is loading, which means 100% processor usage, so I'll have to fix that. --  Nx / talk 18:55, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * For those who don't know what active wait is, it's the kid who asks "are we there yet?" all the time. --  Nx / talk 19:03, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * there used to be a warning that the file was over a certain size, but there was an option tocarry on anyway. i just uploaded a biggie and didn't get such a warning. Perhaps we could block large files completely when you're away Trent? Totnesmartin 18:45, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * (EC) That's not the problem. The problem is the uncompressed image while capturing which can be several hundred megabytes for large pages (which is then compressed into a few megabyte PNG file), all stored in RAM. --  Nx / talk 18:55, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I suspect that's a problem you can solve by painting to a QSvgGenerator rather than to a pixmap. I guess the generated SVG is more or less just a journal of the paint commands as they're issued. You go directly from the in memory render tree representation of tha page which is infinitely smaller than the pixmap representation to an on disk SVG image, bypassing entirely the need to render and save a bitmap. -- 20:03, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * It works, and it only needs 40 megs to render the largest page on cp (and it doesn't have the 32766 pixels limitation of QImage), but MediaWiki has to convert it to a png to display it anyway, so anything gained in the capturing process is lost there. And with large images like this, it locks up the server for minutes with 100% processor usage. --  Nx / talk 22:44, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * That's a shame. Isn't there a configuration option for "never rasterise SVG, get yourself a better browser you cheap fuck?" -- 00:38, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think so... --  Nx / talk 15:50, 3 June 2009 (UTC)