User talk:Tmtoulouse/Archive18

Am I going to get a response?

 * YES OR NO.
 * Will you permanantly ban me from this website? 86.40.102.192 (talk) 15:31, 10 August 2010 (UTC)


 * No. tmtoulouse 15:42, 10 August 2010 (UTC)


 * And why so principled all of a sudden? You're prepared to stand idly by while Gerard brings about the wikipedian revolution here, why not solidify the revolutionary movement by removing your bogeyman? The thorn in your side? I want to leave this site, sooner rather than later, and would appreciate a rangle block and a 404 server ban. Will you please do this one favour for me. 86.40.102.192 (talk) 15:59, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
 * tmtoulouse is a libertarian at heart. He would rather do nothing in the name of being principled than put any thought into being proactive.--Llort (talk) 16:27, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah I have never done anything proactive for this site or its users. tmtoulouse 02:38, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I remember that time when Tmt pulled my fiancee and I from a burning car. AceX-102 02:40, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
 * And I remember the time he squashed a scary fucking spider for me. Trent is a brave man like that.   02:47, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
 * And when he lanced the giant pustule on my neck. Not squeamish at all is our Trent. AceX-102 02:49, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Don't forget the time he fended off a mugger for me! Trent learned karate for just such an occasion.   02:54, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
 * You've got to admit, it was awfully decent of the mugger to wait for him to finish. --Kels (talk) 02:58, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Better to be like Wikipedia than an Encyclopedia Dramatica wannabe. Plus I find it hilarious that I can provoke such a juvenile response out of you just by actually contributing. Oh well, you can't please everybody. And that's all the more I'm going to say on this. I feel as if I've feed the troll too much already IAMELIPHAS (talk) 13:08, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Template help
Hi! I'm pretty awful at wiki stuff. If I were to rename the template empiricism, say philosophy of science, would I need to go to every page using that template and change the name? sorry, pretty amatur question.-- Centimeter INCHES  21:11, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
 * If you leave it as a redirect to a new template it will still transclude properly, however, it is best to change the references to the new template, particularly if it is not too many. You can find them using the "what links here" options, such as http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Empiricism. tmtoulouse 21:26, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks!-- Centimeter INCHES  21:48, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
 * PS- Nobody will mind if I go ahead and change it, right?-- Centimeter INCHES  21:58, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
 * For templates it is best to have a simple name that people can remember, especially one that doesn't have spaces. This isn't a software issue, but for convenience. If you plan on a rename/revamp, it would probably be best to try to make a new one, either in a sandbox of your own or on a subpage of the template first. 10:45, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Vadal Brake
I found what seems like a bug in the vandal brake, autoblocks never expire -- 20:53, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * That's by design. -- Nx  / talk 20:54, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * The method behind the madness is that if an IP is used by a vandal/spambot, then it will always be used by a vandal/spambot so expiry isn't necessary. 20:56, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * s/method/shoddy, ridiculous justification that has no rational basis but helps us loft our noses a little higher in the air/ and you are much nearer the truth. 20:59, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * (ec) No, the method behind the madness is that a binned user can request to be paroled - it won't happen automatically after a set time, only when they demonstrate that they are no longer a vandal (which sounds nice in theory, but epic fails in practice). Therefore the bin does not support expiry, therefore autobinned IPs are binned infinitely. -- Nx  / talk 21:01, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Meh, with out the historical context for the development of the tools it is sometimes easy to go off the deep end with conspiracy theories.

Really, the main focus of the vandal brake was the initial user edit braking. The idea being that new users would have their editing rate slowed to a level that shouldn't bother a normal editor, but would disrupt massive vandalism. Take a look at the number of pages this vandal hit on RW compared to CP.

Once a user reaches a certain age and number of edits this restriction goes away. If such a user were to go on a vandal spree then the brake wouldn't do anything, and hence why the vandal group was created.

When this tool was created our approach to vandalism and vandals was very different than it is now, and the tool as created was a better fit for that time.

Our approach has changed, and while the initial user brake is still handy the vandal group should probably be replaced by judicial use of short blocks. But because if historical contingency and institutional momentum the vandal brake is still often used.

To attribute it to malice or pretension is in one stroke both giving us too much and too little credit. tmtoulouse 21:06, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Wasn't one of the reasons that blocked users could not protest their block because the ability to edit their talk page was either not available or you were not aware of it? -- Nx  / talk 21:10, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * A problem which is easily solved by putting a warning in the block screen -- 21:14, 23 August 2010 (UTC)


 * We were aware of it, but it was removed during one of our attempts to get rid of TK. Again, this was a time when there were maybe, 15-20 active users on the site, all old guard CP veterans and TK was about as power a lightening rod as you could get. We blocked him but allowing him to continue editing his talk page didn't change anything since it still continued the back and forth crap we were trying to purge.
 * This was also the first and only time I tossed in a 404 block on the server. That didn't go down well, and the compromise was to get rid of the block users editing their talk page and replace it with the vandal brake system.
 * This was also at a time when we often tried to purposefully engage our vandals in conversations, it was in general, a different zeitgeist. Things have changed, not really better or worse, just a different site. But institutional momentum is strong. I have being and advocate of the judicial use of 1-2 hour blocks as a means to stop vandalism for a while, but haven't gotten around to trying to curb the vandal brake as a tool. tmtoulouse 21:15, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * The problem is, whenever a "vandal" who finds an article that's less than favorable about them/their woo/their favorite writer etc. blanks an article or section, they are immediately binned, which doesn't exactly help with the whole engaging the vandal thing. -- Nx  / talk 21:29, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree that it is not something we really do anymore, personally I would do it very differently, for only a single incident of non-spam "vandalism" I would attempt to engage the user on their talk page. If that doesn't work or their are multiple attempts with no feedback then issue a 30-60min block and engage them again on their talk page. Most of the time that will either stop the vandalism or start the lines of communication. However, I am not here the majority of the time, and have personally dealt with very little in the way of vandalism in the last year or so. Maybe it is time to review our procedure for dealing with vandalism, with specific instructions and an eye towards moving things back towards dialogging rather than expelling. tmtoulouse 21:59, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not convinced the majority of wandalism is like that, however. If someone has an issue and wants to discuss it, they usually do. Page blankings and "HUURR!!! RW IS TEH GAYZZZ!!!112" wandalism is usually once-only drive by - we neither lose nor gain from the VB because they normally don't come back. I also haven't seen anyone drop a user or BoN in the bin for that sort of wandalism for a long time (I tend to wait to see if it's a clear repeat offender before using it, and issue a short-time block to calm it down while I find the bin link). 22:44, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * With serial blankers I prefer to just block for an hour or so, and perhaps nine hours if they return after an hour to continue their fun. Doesn't seem worth vandal breaking BoNs unless theres wandalism that goes beyond a single day. I do think though that it should be kind of exceptional to prohibit people from being able to edit their talk page while blocked. Worth a forum post to get some opinions? Concernedresident  omg!!! ponies!!! 22:49, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, the key problem is that there will be a range of ideas of what is supposed to be done. Some will say "that's not what RW does" or "freedom of speech" or something like that, while others will be more "it shouldn't be tolerated" or "Trent isn't paying a fuck ton of money to host this crap" or whatever. All quite valid opinions on the subject, I think. However, while we have choice, people will disagree about what to do and when and in what situations - thus, the only way to really get consistency is to remove one of the options; either ban OR bin, with both not available. 11:20, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

tomorrow I'll miss you
Close your eyes, and I'll kiss you, Tomorrow I'll miss you, Remember I'll always be true... And then while I'm away,  I'll write home every day And I'll send all my loving to you

All my lovin' I will send to you-ou-ou! 06:42, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

I think I screwed up
I just noticed a screwup in one of my DPL patches for the forum. Can I please have my server access back to fix it? (sudo passwd -u nx) -- Nx  / talk 20:42, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Done, let know if there are problems. tmtoulouse 20:47, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks, fixed it. You can relock my account. -- Nx  / talk 20:59, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Why are rangeblocks disabled?
I was going to give this guy a 30 minutes timeout, but for some reason I can't. Why? I know you don't like large blocks, but it was only going to be fore 30 minutes. Especially since the IPs are all Chinese proxies. -- 23:11, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
 * It is not going to do any good anyway, it takes him more effort to switch proxies than it does for us to block and revert. No need to fundamentally change our policy for one troll. tmtoulouse 00:51, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
 * So you think . What is going on at RationalWiki? (talk) 00:57, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

what are you?!
Turning into ken? deleting everything lol

Bayesian priors
Hi Trent - I have a quick question about priors, since I recall that you know quite a lot about the topic. As I understanding, generating priors for a binary event (P or not-P) is pretty easy; if we have no information whatsoever we can even just guess .5. But what about priors for a hypothesis that explain a given set of data (let's call it "D")? As I understand it, the space of possible hypotheses (H1, H2, ... Hn) that can explain D is nearly infinite, so our prior for any one hypothesis would have to be very close to zero. When more experimental results come in we can increase our priors for some of the hypotheses, but it seems like there would still be a nearly infinite number of hypotheses remaining, preventing the priors from rising significantly. How, then, can we use Bayesian inference in this kind of case? (In philosophy of science, I believe this problem is called "underdetermination.") Thanks for your input, 15:10, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Not sure how detailed you want to get, so I will start off with just a few general points and if you want we can go deeper from there. Off the top of my head here would be the major points I would raise:


 * 1) The issue is really small priors, the degree to which this is a problem is a function of the amount of evidence gathered, and the relative strength of the support that the evidence gives to various hypotheses. So the easy case is the strength of the evidence, if the probability of our data given one or two of the hypotheses is really really high relative to all the other hypotheses, they will quickly differentiate themselves. If the data doesn't quickly differentiate hypotheses we can still be saved by just collecting a lot of evidence, if the data can not differentiate the hypotheses given the time constraints of data collection then Bayesian theory still gives us the right answer, that all the hypotheses are equally likely.
 * 2) This is only a problem if you assume uniform priors. There is no reason to assume that we have to use uniform priors. Why cant we assign relatively high probabilities to those hypotheses that we think are most likely and then relegate the infinite number of highly unlikely probabilities to small p-values?
 * 3) And last, we can constrain our Bayesian stats to comparing only those models or hypotheses we care about by using something like a Bayes Factor to get relative probabilities. In this case we are not getting any sort of objective statistical data given all possibilities in the universe, but still have a perfectly acceptable tool for differentiating the handful of models we maybe interested in. tmtoulouse 18:03, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I see what you mean, but my concern is that the space of possible hypotheses is nearly infinite so priors (assuming a uniform prior) will be approaching zero. In this case, evidence can raise/lower the probability of certain hypotheses only slightly since there are so many other possible hypotheses. But based on what you said in #2 and #3, that problem is pretty much moot since there are other ways of reducing the size of hypothesis-space.
 * Yes, using Occam's Razor would seem to solve the problem. I have heard of formalizations of Occam's Razor that use Kolmogorov complexity to quantify how complex a hypothesis is. However, I struggle with the idea of Occam's Razor even though it seems so intuitively obvious because it is, ultimately, a generalization and an a very broad induction.
 * I've never heard of Bayes Factors before, I'll definitely have to do some reading on them. That would certainly solve the problem of absurdly low priors. 19:43, 30 August 2010 (UTC)


 * The issue seems to be revolving around the concept of "logical probabilities" or "objective probabilities." Is there such a thing? Can we really assign an objective probability to a hypothesis or model? If we abandon the idea that what we are looking for is the "true" probability of a hypothesis, and instead recast things in terms of subjective probabilities a lot of these issues fall away. Subjective Bayesian inference is pretty popular these days because of a myriad of problems with logical probabilities. I don't know how many people really defend objectivist Bayesian inference.


 * I find a mathematical analogy an easier way to understand this. Lets talk about curve fitting. For any set of data that we wish to fit a curve, there is an infinite number of possible curves. However, this is only a problem if we don't want to constrain our curve fitting algorithm in any way. However, if constrain our curve fitting algorithm to using only a bare minimum number of polynomials needed to fit the curve with some sort of desired accuracy there is often a "correct" fit. Why constrain the fit? We gain several key advantages: parsimony, tractability, pragmatism, and a solution.


 * So essentially we are subjectively valuing these things over the infinite solution space. If we have a list of principles that we subjectively value we can constrain our hypothesis space. Sounding a bit like Kuhn yet? Kuhn identified a variety of subjective almost visceral things that science values when comparing hypotheses. We can use these things to constrain the hypothesis space, and it doesn't matter as long as we are not trying to find an objective probability.


 * At the very root of this whole issue is the idea of whether or not we can determine truth, or whether the value of our ideas is rather a degree of wrongness. Encapsulated as "all ideas are wrong, some are just more wrong than others." This is what allows us to constrain that hypothesis space through various means such as Bayes factors, or non-uniform priors, etc.


 * Ultimately the question of whether or not we can objectively justify those principles we are valuing in our prior construction seems to come down to the struggle of the logical positivist, particularly with Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Or even Gödel's theorems. There just doesn't seem to be away to create the axioms or rules for evaluation of ideas within a system, using that system. So we must always appeal to something outside a system in order to evaluate claims within that system. This is going far afoot of where we started I think. The short answer is most people doing Bayesian inference are subjectivist, and as such have no problem constraining priors based on just about any reason at all. tmtoulouse 20:07, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
 * My belief in objective probability was shattered after reading two pages of E.T. Janyes, and I don't subscribe to it anymore. I suppose the problem I'm having is justifying the methods used to subjectively value things in solution space. (In my first comment above, I assumed uniform priors because I didn't find any of those methods viable. But now I do know better.) I do need to read Gödel and Wittgenstein; up until now I was intimidated by the level of math.
 * So it seems like the problem I was having is pretty much non-existent, since there are methods to decrease the size of solution space. This problem is just justifying them. But for that I will need to do some more reading. Thanks Trent! 20:17, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
 * No problem, I found Wittgenstein to be relatively accessible, Gödel was a slow slog. One interesting thing to look into, is the difference between informative versus non-informative priors. In my models where I introduce an agent to a new learning problem there is often no justification for priors at all. In this case you can use priors that are based around the types of functions your hypotheses have taken that essentially reduce the "power" of the priors to nothing, and so the likelihood functions dominate. Hence, "non-informative" prior. tmtoulouse 20:22, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Site notice
The sitenotice only appears for logged-in users, not casual readers of the site. Is that intentional? - David Gerard (talk) 16:58, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Somebody must've clicked "mark as read for anonymous users" on Special:Intercom. Probably Trent, IIRC only crats can do that. --  Nx  / talk 17:16, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Site not working right
The site is loading at speeds of 200-1000 bytes per second and is almost unusable! I can't even log in right now! Fixit! 71.29.172.145 (talk) 18:25, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I think it's over now. 18:32, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
 * A please somewhere in there wouldn't hurt! tmtoulouse 18:33, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Mm, seems to have been cured. 18:34, 12 September 2010 (UTC) TerrySmall.png [[Image:Toast s.png|alt=Toast|text-bottom|20px|link=User talk:SusanG]]
 * What went wrong? -- 18:35, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Its a secret. tmtoulouse 18:36, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Trent spilt beer on the server. 19:00, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

minutes
Are you gonna move those minutes to their correct location? 18:32, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
 * There all ready. tmtoulouse 18:35, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Happy! Happy!
Happy birthday! (well, it is by my clock, not my fault if you Canadians lag behind). Hope you have a great day. So, where's the cake? -- PsyGremlin  23:56, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Have some lovely goat pilaf! It's a party now! I'm sure we have some cake around here somewhere... Here on RW time has four corners, all holydaze last 48 hours!  02:26, 19 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Happy birthday! -- Nx  / talk 08:57, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Happy birthday chumley,
 * Love, England. 10:14, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Happy birthday, Trent! I hope the research is going well. 20:01, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Happy happy birthday, Trent! -- 20:57, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks all, its appreciated, that brain cake looks pretty good! tmtoulouse 20:54, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
 * That cake needs a bontal frolotomy! 01:11, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
 * [[image:Birthday.gif]][[image:Party animal.gif]][[image:Party.gif]] 01:13, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Backups
Did you get round to dumping the database backups somewhere public? I wanted to have a nosey. 22:37, 10 October 2010 (UTC)


 * The database backups themselves are not public as they contain personal information such as e-mail addresses, real names, and passwords. The content of the site can be found at rationalwiki:content dumps. If there was something you were particularly looking for I might be able to help with that as well. tmtoulouse 23:12, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
 * No that's fine. I wanted to have a poke around with the content. Cheers. 08:51, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Turning a trick
The main page says we should trick or treat you. So we've got all this goddamn candy left over and I already need to lose pounds. You want to come over and pig out on Reese's Cups and Twix? You can sleep on the sofa if you promise not to wake up the dog when you barf. Doctor Dark (talk) 02:23, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I am enroute! tmtoulouse 05:11, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

I want candy too. Or I will pelt your wiki with eggs. 21:40, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

DynamicPageList
So I did some digging around. There's a version of DPL in MediaWiki's svn which has the 1.16 bug fixed. However, the workaround depends on a change done to MediaWiki after 1.16, so it still doesn't work with 1.16. So, how would you feel about using more recent versions of mediawiki (specifically, the wmf-deployment branch, which is what wikipedia uses, so it should be relatively bug-free) and updating more often? I'd like to keep us more up-to-date instead of backporting and hacking in new features, but I didn't want to bother you with it and I feared it would result in significant downtime (like our MW1.14 update, though that was atypical). Normally though it should only result in a short period of read-only mode, the only problematic part with our current server is backing up the database before an update. How would that work on the new server? -- Nx  / talk 21:37, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * More frequent upgrades is a better POA then what we have now. Some social prep will need to be made though since the newer versions are a big change to the GUI. But basically if we can get the rwbeta site working right then I just say go for it. The backup on the new server is a much better system since the machine itself is VPS, so backup is a copy of the actual VPS state at any given time. So you can get a quick backup with out ever needing to do the usual of shutting down mysql service etc. tmtoulouse 21:49, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Can you request a backup at any time or is it just at scheduled times? Because if you can just click a button to copy the whole virtual machine updates are going to be a breeze. -- Nx  / talk 21:55, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Your allowed 3 backup slots, 2 for scheduled time one for whenever. So basically a daily, a weekly, and then a push a button and boom. tmtoulouse 22:22, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Also I finally fixed the bug in Liquidthreads that was one of the two things making it unsuitable for general use, namely rollback and mark as patrolled didn't work (apparently that didn't stop them from deploying it on several WMF wikis...), so I think we can install that too, but not enable it by default, so if anyone wants to use it on their talk page, they can. -- Nx  / talk 00:22, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

signature
I remember asking you years ago to put a link to your user or talk page on your sig (which you promptly did, of course, wiki-noob that you are). Now you've gone and confounded poor nxbot. It's a useful feature, not a "bug me" sign ;) 00:44, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Read my reply to Nx, it is my contrarian nature. Now go check your e-mail we are down to 3 weeks. Tmtoulouse (talk) 00:45, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
 * You haz reply. 01:11, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
 * And which reply to Nx? 01:12, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually it helped me find a bug in NxBot. I knew it was supposed to "fix" Tmt's sig, but it wasn't doing that because I forgot the left side of the assignment. -- Nx  / talk 00:46, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

There, Their
Sorry, Trent but you're driving me to distraction. 01:06, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, yeah, your just like every teacher I ever had. Believe it or not I know fully well what to use when, but I can't seem to do it reliably. Also I have been drinking rum tonight....Tmtoulouse (talk) 01:08, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Damn, and after my reply above I was going to ask "have you been sniffing ether, again?" 01:13, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Trent's recreational activities get two thumbs up. My late father-in-law helped build the Bacardi Pavilion. Doctor Dark (talk) 13:07, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

decapping Talk in custom namespaces (the hobgoblin made me do it)
While editing Rationalbeta's localsettings, I decided to see what would happen if I decapped the Talk in our custom namespaces. It actually worked without a hitch, so I did it on RW too. I'll probably have to fix a few templates and stuff, but existing links work automagically, and there's no need to do anything in the db. -- Nx  / talk 07:35, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Re email
Just thought we might be being set up for a Denial of service or something. 19:39, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
 * It's still happening. Look @ the log. 10:12, 11 November 2010 (UTC) TerrySmall.png [[Image:Toast s.png|alt=Toast|text-bottom|20px|link=User talk:SusanG]]
 * RLY? 14:18, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

EvoWiki
I notice evowiki's down at the moment. Is is going to be back up after the upgrade this weekend? What sever is it on, the new server RW's moving to or a different server? -- 01:35, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
 * EvoWiki is along for the ride on the new server. There is a lot still going on in the background as far as organizing that. Once everything is settled evowiki should be stable. Tmtoulouse (talk) 01:36, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Lawsuits
That userbox0r needs a link to a page detailing all the threats methinks :) 21:31, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
 * To be honest I dont know if I remember them all and have stopped keeping track of feedback expressed from anyone but the actual subjects of articles. A lot of "fuck you die!" e-mails get old. Tmtoulouse (talk) 21:54, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry... Occasionaluse (talk) 22:01, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I think we decided it would be a bad idea to "reward" them for their antics by publishing all the details. I think I was on the side of doing it, but agreed with that concern.  Perhaps.  00:27, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
 * You should do David Thorne-style replies to the emails, then publish the conversations here for lulz. 11:09, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh hell no... that way madness lies! 01:06, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Capture
Is beginning to shit me off. Why am I getting it even when I am not adding an external link? Why am I getting it at all come to that? Can you fix, please? -  π    01:26, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Kan haz eggsample? 02:03, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
 * See if its still a problem with out the user groups? Tmtoulouse (talk) 02:07, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Still got it. -  π    05:30, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
 * When are you getting it? Tmtoulouse (talk) 05:35, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Just then when I tried to add an external link. I got it only once when I wasn't trying. -  π    05:38, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
 * It seems to me that auto-confirmed no longer has skipcapture.  needs to be added to your magic table. -   π    05:41, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

CP Talk
I enjoyed that discussion, and thanks for it. --Leotardo (talk) 04:25, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Cheers, meta-site issues are always complex beasts, thanks for keeping it civil as well. Tmtoulouse (talk) 04:27, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, and the view you espoused is valid, I just disagree. But it's not like you didn't raise good points. --Leotardo (talk) 04:28, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I understand, and I think this case is particularly difficult to parse out. It probably ultimately comes down to different starting points. Tmtoulouse (talk) 04:35, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * True dat. hehe - when SR said RWers correspond with TK off-wiki, I was ready to jump on you and go "Gah!  You're protecting your secret friend TK!" until you said you junk his email.  I'm sooooo glad we edit-conflicted there ;-) --Leotardo (talk) 04:40, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * There is no love lost between TK and me, his e-mails went to trash after the last round of not so subtle threats against several members of my family who are public officials in NM. Tmtoulouse (talk) 04:41, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * My family is in Colorado, and I (perhaps superficially) know New Mexico. What a beautiful place.  Better than Colorado and it's wanton development that has blighted the front range.  --Leotardo (talk) 04:46, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah I have come to appreciate the subtle beauty of the high desert after living else where. But more than anything its the food, green chile is the most addicting substance known to man. Tmtoulouse (talk) 04:49, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * It is absolutely impossible to find good Mexican in New York. You know what I mean by 'good Mexican' - and by that I mean, you couldn't find it here.  Or, you *could* find it here, but only after a hunt, or talking with people who know it and pass it along ala grapevine.  Even then, it's relative.  "Good for New York" is the standard.  Barbeque (which I learned what is good and what is not for that in Texas) and Mexican (I learned in Colorado, NOT Texas) is a rare find in this city that does every other cuisine amazingly.  BTW, have you ever had Blue Moose salsa?  It's not available here; it's a Colorado brand that is, to me, the standard of salsas.  --Leotardo (talk) 04:57, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I've taken to making my own salsa lately, so I can keep adjusting the recipe until I nail what I want. If I miss a bit, I just give it away.  05:29, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * How prominent is cilantro in your recipe? --Leotardo (talk) 05:32, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * A teaspoon or three of freeze-dried leaves (the "fresh" was a rip-off). I'd say subtle, not prominent.  05:52, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Did you see this article in the NY Times? I loved Cilantro before I read it; but somehow that article made me both love it, and question my love for it.  That adds a satisfying-but-creepy bite to my taco.  --Leotardo (talk)
 * No, that's cool. I like cilantro, but I love coriander, in appropriate dished, of course.  06:21, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Is yours chunky, or pureed? I don't believe in chunky, but I definitely believe in a bite.  And...have you had Blue Moose?  --Leotardo (talk) 06:27, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Heh, Trent my taco link above to Human is for my favorite taco shack in my neighborhood, and the first four-starred comment says, "Best tacos in New York! Well, that's not saying much - NY is a pretty shitty place for Mexican food..." --Leotardo (talk) 06:35, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I preferred a "smoother" texture, better for getting all the salsa as I work through my nachos. Although, I still want a few "chunks" to give it some texture.  I really don't like what I am sure is good food, like fresh (uncooked) chunky salsa, which one needs to eat with a fork and can't readily be chip-scooped.  I just scored a $10 "food chopper" at Wal*Mart that I think will help in this quest on my next outing. PS, my chili earned compliments from a Texas native ("you balanced the red and the brown just right"), and not just because she liked me.  06:41, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * The grossest part of the cilantro article is that it is connected to bedbugs. There's a sweet spot with the "chunks" - they can't actually be chunky, but slight, a surprise feeling in your mouth that isn't overbearing.  If it's pureed with a bit of chunk to it, then it's find.  If it's chunked on the pureed side, I find it obvious.  Chili - wow - that's actually a hard dish to master to the degree you said.  It seems like chili is simple, but really it's not.  --Leotardo (talk) 06:52, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, my goal is puree with, say smaller than 1/4" bits for texture. The puree should be sticky enough that the chunks stay with it, rather than watery salsa with chunks that fall back into the bowl.  As far as the chili, not sure I "mastered" it, I might just have been lucky.  Again, like salsa, it might not come out as intended, but it's really hard to actually ruin it.  Since I make large batches, I think it's mostly a matter of matching 'gredients (like pound cake) - 4 lbs of meat, 2 pounds each of beans, onions, tomatoes, peppers, and a bunch of garlic and cumin etc., and just the right amount of salt to bring out the flavors.  And simmering just long enough to unify it without turning it to mush.  18:40, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

public figures, private eyes
Hi Trent - I will be busy with the work week cut half, holidays, and a big family thing I'm hosting all next weekend, so maybe we can explore the question in about a week/week and a half. Because some of the discussion will, like the WIGO talk page, include opinions and ideas that are better left unsaid publicly, I was wondering if you think it better at the onset to start an e-mail group of for a trusted group to share thoughts, information, etc. more privately? I set up an e-mail if you think so: leotardorationalwiki@gmail.com. I looked over my Ronald Rotunda Modern Constitutional Law (7th) textbook and read some cases, but as you probably know, the Internet has created a new frontier. There are open questions as to how case law decided during old media days fits with new media. I'm starting to read what is a decent law journal article dealing with exactly our issue at BU's Public Interest Law Journal entitled "Bloggers as Public Figures" The writing is accessible and not too heavy on the legalese (I'm only 6 pages in), it's a decent on-point background. --Leotardo (talk) 18:17, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Just to mention this, the issue isn't about what is legal, it is the narrower one of what we think is appropriate on RW. 18:33, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
 * You're still stuck on one issue, and we've moved on to another. --Leotardo (talk) 19:12, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Esther Hicks link
Skepdic just added Esther Hicks: http://www.skepdic.com/hicks.html. Thought you might want to add it as an external link to your page, but I didn't see a place for it. I tried to add to wikipedia but it didn't go over too well. Lesley1914 (talk) 21:58, 30 November 2010 (UTC)Lesley1914
 * It doesn't have an external links section, not too difficult to add, though. 01:25, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Advice?
Hello Trent! You have more experience in bootstrapping and running a wiki than I do, so, if you have the time, could you please take a look at my short-term plans for Tendrl and provide some advice? That would be much appreciated, but don't feel you have to. :-) Cheers,Thomas Larsen (talk) 22:08, 4 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your comments over there—they were really helpful. Thomas Larsen (talk) 03:29, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Beer
Happy to have fun drinking beers with you. :) -- 05:30, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
 * cheers, was fun! Tmtoulouse (talk) 18:20, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

That's what I'm talking about! You see brothers, there are girls on the Internet (just not enough for the likes of us). ~ Lumenos (talk) 12:26, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Russian section of the project
Dear Mr. Tmtoulouse!

I am writing to ask you about possibilities of creating the Russian section of project "RationalWiki" (for detail see http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Thread:User_talk:Armondikov/Russian_section_of_the_porject).

So, can I create this section and develop this section in the future?

Yours sincerely.--Bertran (talk) 20:15, 1 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I dont have anything against it, I would encourage taking some of our flag ship articles and starting with them if you like. Tmtoulouse (talk) 22:20, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Congratulations!
--Idiot number 59 (talk) 18:09, 3 January 2011 (UTC)