User talk:Gmaxwell

I prefer to keep discussions unfragmented. If I post on your talk page, I will notice any replies posted there. Unless you request otherwise, I will reply here to comments made here. I will usually post a brief note on your talk page to let you know that I have replied, unless your talk page instructs me otherwise. If you write a reply to me here, I may decide to move your text back to your talk page in an effort to keep the thread in one place. If you are just pointing out something written to me elsewhere, edit here. Such pointers are useful if you've written to a comment I made many days ago. I refactor my talk page, so To see older messages please view the history.

Nice Boat

I know this is sort of innappropriate and doesn't belong here, but... nice boat. Thhhh (talk) 01:49, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Linux amd64

Hi Greg -- the player installs without complaints. It first shows the opening image, but no video, and complains it cannot open the sound device. On reload, it complains "Sorry, your system does not appear to have any supported player software. Please install Java."

1. java -version

java version "1.6.0_02" Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_02-b05) Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 1.6.0_02-b05, mixed mode)

The java test at http://www.geocities.com/max1million/javatest.htm shows a moving "Java enabled".

What browser are you using? I was unaware that there was a 64bit java plugin for firefox.. this is good news for me. :) --Gmaxwell 21:09, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Pings

Hi Greg I am unable to play anything here? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.107.194.62 (talk • contribs) 2007-08-07T10:29:34 (UTC)

Hi. I'm sorry you are having trouble. Could you give me some more information? What happens when you try? Do you have Java or the VLC plugin installed? --Gmaxwell 12:54, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Bocal

Since you seem so good at getting pictures and what not, I was wondering if you could get a more suitable image for the Bocal page. I just thought it should have an image, and the only one I found already on wikimedia was the one you uploaded of a tromboon. I was thrilled that someone had taken the time to upload an image of such an obscure subject. Bassgoonist Talk 18:38, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I'd be glad to. Bug me if you don't see me do one in the next week or so. You also might find a crop from the top image on the basson article to be somewhat useful, the image is high enough resolution that a crop of just the bocal should look okay... but a really good bocal image will also offer some scale. Perhaps I'll do an image of a bassoon bocal in use, close up, lips, reed, bocal, over a non-distracting backround. Sound good? In any case... I'll do a bunch and you can take your pick. Any ideas will be helpful.--Gmaxwell 00:57, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Handicapped ISA image, again

Please see: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Handicapped ISA image, again

Another attempt at users trying to sneak the ISA image back on the Wiki. -- Ned Scott 23:02, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I had a question about that in the Board election. What I can't really fathom is why the organisation insist on keeping it under copyright in the first place. Looks pretty generic to me.

Anyway, couldn't we just create a free alternative which looks similar but isn't close enough so as to be a copyvio? --kingboyk 02:10, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

A free alternative has been created. See Image:Wheelchair.svg. It used to be in the {{access icon}} template before the Commons debate closed. Dream out loud (talk) 23:47, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Beats me as to why there is still controversy then. --kingboyk 12:06, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

It's not even clear that it is under copyright, I've talked to all the right people... and no one can manage to give me straight answers about it. In particular it's not clear that anyone who could be the rightful copyright owner (the author or their assignee) is claiming that it is copyrighted. There are some people who are claiming that it is copyright but all are not the author or the asignee by their own admission. Furthermore, the symbol is a typographical character in unicode, and under US law typographical shapes are uncopyrightable. ... though that puts in a weird situation where one might conclude that anyone can free anything by making it a character, which is obviously bogus but there is no case law here to guide us. Also, we have the problem that the only suggested reason for copyrighting it (to prevent misuse) is completely bogus: Nothing in copyright law would prevent me from buying a ISA sign in a hardware store and hanging it up over my non-accessible toilet, because in doing so I will not have needed any of the rights reserved to a copyright holder. ... and finally we have a pretty reasonable replacement for our uses, which I agree moots the issue. --Gmaxwell 00:48, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

my player ideas

he Gmaxwell. Did you get a chance to look at my player ideas already ? Wikipedia:Wikimedia Player (no idea why someone moved that btw) --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:11, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I did, but I didn't have a chance to implement them yet.. the server the loader was on was broken for a bit. There are some outstanding issues, that I need to address with you. One problem is I don't think VLC can be the preferred player over Application/Ogg support because VLC plugin is browser crashing for some Linux users. :( I think it's only older versions, but crashing the browser is bad enough that I'm worried about risking it. All the impacted people also seemed to have Application/Ogg support, so moving it first seemed like an okay work around. :( I'm also working on a new version that eliminates the toolserver dependence, since that has been a major source of reliability problems. --Gmaxwell 00:50, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

The annoyance with application/ogg is that you cannot make ANY assumptions about controls :( I guess that's where a "select your preferred player" configpanel could come in handy. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 02:33, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I know. :( A preference thing will be needed for sure. Question: is it helpful with VLC to know file metadata in advance? For example cortado will resize to anything you give it, and the aspect locking doesn't work... so you really must know the width and height. I've written a cgi which will extract all the Ogg and file metadata. My intention is to adjust the tool so that it's all driven from the local javascript, fetching the metadata from this new tool (unless it can't reach the tool, in which case it will fall back neatly). I need to know if there is anything fun I should be grabbing for VLC. Thanks. --Gmaxwell 05:19, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

For example, video, audio only. It's a bit slow because I haven't finished the caching code yet. It's also not extracting the HTML from the image pages.. yet. I'm also working on auto-thumbnailing videos. --Gmaxwell 07:10, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

VLC (new versions) can resize on the fly, but it needs JS hooks for that. knowing the media-info is probably easier though to set the framesize correct in advance. Definetly with Cortado needing it as well --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:37, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

ffmpeg2theora

As you requested, here is your reminder: I have two requests in the pipeline: (1) it doensn't convert quicktime videos shot by my (and apparently other) cameras. (2) I want a rotate-90/180/270 degrees option from the command line. Raul654 03:15, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

'Coord' change requests

Welcome back. As I wrote in April:

I've added a caution to the coord documentation, so that, in future, it shouldn't be changed and upset the database parsers. Please will you kindly check the wording, and add a link to a suitable page about that work, where future "change requests" can be discussed? Thank you.

Andy Mabbett 14:22, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Speaking of which, is there a more general place to talk about "database parsing"? I understand concerns like this, but it is important to avoid constraining editors too much. We don't want to get into a situation where editors have to wait for responses from "database parsers", as that could be unbearably slow, much like submitting bugzilla requests to Wikimedia developers can be. Equally, the "database parsers" will have to accept that sometimes there will be big changes in the way Wikipedia does something (most often improving things here), and that sometimes they will have to change the way they parse the data, rather than asking for the status quo to be maintained. Carcharoth 15:27, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

ie. "tools which parse the raw Wikipedia database dumps" - where can Wikipedia editors read about this and add input? Also, Greg, are you aware of Wikipedia talk:Persondata#Persondata on a subpage? There, I pointed out that Wikipedia:Metadata was underused, and could be expanded to cover these issues. It doesn't cover geographical co-ords, for example. Carcharoth 15:31, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Changing things is fine and good and needs to happen more often in more places, but changing them in ways which are actively hostile to users of the data is not. You speak of "database parsers" like they are all just third parties: but they include us as well. In any case, I don't oppose changes, but they have to be made with consideration of users in mind, and we should use every change as an opportunity to make our data easier to use and more accurate. I think I was pretty clear before: I'm strongly opposed to any change to the geolocation templates which won't help us reduce the total number of templates. There is a lot of duplication and opportunity to make new templates which are supersets of the old, so there really is no excuse not to do so.[edit conflict]

There isn't just one place where dump processing is discussed, thats like asking where article editing is discussed. :) People do all sorts of things with our data for all sorts of purposes, so there is no one place to discuss. As far as persondata goes, the biggest problem I see with it is that it is effectively invisible to both typical readers and editors. As such I would expect the reliability of the provided data to be fairly low. As far as putting it on a subpage, we should expect that it will make the reliability even worse, unless we start protecting that subpage (since the people watching the article won't be watching the subpage), worse, it would make it more difficult for automated tools to find it. If it is seperate from the article I'd rather see an additional associated namespace created, like a second talk namespace, which is autowatchlisted along with the articles. --Gmaxwell 15:42, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

"There isn't just one place where dump processing is discussed" - OK, I've used more general wording, accordingly. Andy Mabbett 15:50, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the link to User:Dschwen/WikiMiniAtlas. That is a great use of such data. It would be nice though if there were a list of such dump data processing applications so people became more aware of this sort of thing. If they wree more aware, they would be more likely to tread carefully. On the persondata level, there is basic biographical data about a person that is repeated in many different places. The birth and death dates are often in the article, an infobox, birth/death date categories, and a Persondata template. The name is in the article and in a Persondata template and in a DEFAULTSORT magic word and/or category piping sortkeys. There is a current effort to standardise the sortkeys using a bot. See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Polbot 3 if anyone is interested. The latest discussion is at User:Carcharoth/Polbot3 trial run and its talk page. Carcharoth 16:59, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

DC meeting notices

Just to point out that the parentheses on the messages have an extra escape character. :) Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 00:44, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Woops. --Gmaxwell 00:55, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Exactly what is this about?--Neofcon 01:56, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't quite follow your question. See Wikipedia:Meetup/DC 2 and Wikipedia:Meetup. I'd be glad to answer any specific questions that you have. Cheers! :) --Gmaxwell 05:52, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

You sent me a message regarding this.--Neofcon 15:22, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Just a note to say I replied to your invite on my talk page. I'll not copy the reply here per your request at the top of the page. Thanks. Hersfold ^(talk/work) 04:02, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Saw where there's another meetup in December. I won't be in DC, living five hours south, unless you have someone coming from Blacksburg, Roanoke or Lexington I can ride with. However, keep me on the list. Thanks!--Beth Wellington 03:05, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Image:Noparking-parkway.jpg

Hey there. Please note that I've brightened and increased the contrast of Image:Noparking-parkway.jpg because it's a great (and funny) image, but it was hard to discern the words on the sign. Anyhow, I figured I'd let you know what I did.

— _└^Jared_┘^┌_t^┐  21:32, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Great! Thanks. It was just a snapshot. I wish now that I'd been more serious about getting a good picture of it. :) I'll have to figure out where it was (Chicago someplace) so I can geocode it so others can visit the same location to take a better picture. ;) --Gmaxwell 21:50, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Edit to {{Wrong-license}}

I just saw your edit to {{Wrong-license}}. I don't think, however, that marking those images as such is the proper approach, as their problems are of doubtful information, not appropriateness of fair use claim. While some of the images may need to be fair use to be properly used on Wikipedia, the source information issue is what needs to be addressed. You might like to revise the edit, thanks. Paul_012 ^(talk) 16:50, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Greetings. Seems we disagree about how should be used. My primary application for that particular marker is keeping track of license-status tags which indicate "This has issues which prevent it from meeting our high standards for free content". Intersecting the set of images with tags marked by non-free media and the set of free license tags should result in a list of images with license problems, and tagging that tag should further that goal. ::shrugs:: It's not that important in this case, though, since that tag is not a stand-alone license tag. --Gmaxwell 17:01, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

DC Meetup

Sorry I missed it, got caught up in errands. User:Mcpaige went and told me he met ya, which is cool because you were one of the people I wanted to meet and talk to. Some other time perhaps.  immunity  talk  05:26, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Filmrationale

Template:Filmrationale has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — Abu badali ^(talk) 19:58, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Electronic door lock

Hi, I noticed you added a video to the Electronic Door Lock page and personally believe that it doesn't really merit inclusion. Frankly I think it is unprofessional and uninformative, all it really boils down to is someone playing with a door handle. Do you have any video more suitable, i.e. with a soundtrack or more info? RaseaC 22:45, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

It has a soundtrack, though there isn't much to hear, only the click of the lock and beeping as the code is entered. Were you looking for a voice over? Wikipedia exists in several hundred languages, if the video is without a voice over the same media can be used on all our projects, the moment a voice over is added the usability is decreased. There is a description on the image page for the video and the image page text will soon be displayed under the player for all videos.

Could you please be a little more specific about how you think the video is lacking? The basic operation is demonstrated, the normally locked behavior of the keyed side and normally unlocked behavior of the unkeyed side, etc.. What more information are you expecting about a fairly simply device? Did you look at the image page? Without more information I'm at a loss. --Gmaxwell 04:46, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Generally I think the video doesn't really add much to the article, just watching it it seems odd, I think mainly because of the lack of a soundtrack. Though you make a valid point about the various languages we cater for, because this is the English version it makes sense to include an english voice over. In itself I don't think the video explains the operation of the lock any more than the text description already included.RaseaC 23:09, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

It really would benefit, I think, from a soundtrack. Would it be possible to cue different soundtracks to run over the video in the different language editions?--Pharos 23:22, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

It would be trivial to just upload multiple copies of the video with different soundtracks, just like we sometimes do for images in multiple languages. The frequency of cracking pubescent voices in Spoken Wikipedia articles back when that was popular makes me dread the thought of videos with voice overdubs, but it would be easy enough to do for this. ;) Though given RaseaC's comment above I guess the video wouldn't be good enough even with it, so I probably won't ever bother fixing it. I'm in no special position to record a voice over, anyone else could do it... --Gmaxwell 04:09, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

I think even with a voice over the video wouldn't add much. My vote: remove it.RaseaC 18:02, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

I've placed the media up for deletion. [1] --Gmaxwell 19:16, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

From what has been written here (i.e. 2 to 1 the video needs a proper soundtrack), and because there is really no way (or reason in my opinion) for doing this, coupled with the fact that this discussion has all but stalled, can we agree that the video goes? RaseaC 21:43, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

WikiMedia Player problems

Hi. The player is very good, but I just want to point out a couple problems (I'm "Using Java." on Mac OS X with Firefox, and this was based on watching a short movie): If you restart or reposition playback position (which also restarts), it re-downloads the media. And, when it loads for the first time, it doesn't show the playback-position-tracker. Finally, the speaker button to change volume doesn't work. I realize this is beta, and if you would like me to make any nicer (glass-like) buttons (like play, pause, and speaker) or any other graphics for the Player, just contact me on my talk page and I can upload SVGs. Keep up the good work! Althepal 01:14, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback! The playback position bugs are because MediaWiki has no way to tell the player the length of the file before it is transferred. I asked one of the mediawiki devs for help with this months ago but they are too busy with other projects to work on video right now. I've cooked up a hack to get the length data but I haven't had a chance to make it part of the player yet. I will soon, and all the position selector issues should be gone. (I hope :) )

The speaker button doesn't adjust the volume because it isn't a volume control, it's an indicator light that tells you that audio is enabled. This was first pointed out to me a week ago, and I agree that it is confusing. I have a new version of the player which simply removes it... but I don't want to put it live without testing, and testing across all supported configurations takes so much time that I don't want to do it until I have some other issues fixed.

Right now I need to do some work to get the interface more uniform between multiple playback methods.

The player won't improve unless people give me feedback like yours. Two weeks ago the 'volume button' comment would have been total news to me, so it really is important. Thank you. --Gmaxwell 03:49, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

The player cuts off the end of this ogg file, even though the file plays correctly in winamp. http://tools.wikimedia.de/~gmaxwell/jorbis/JOrbisPlayer.php?path=Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.ogg&wiki=en —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.13.93.3 (talk) 19:29, August 21, 2007 (UTC)

Geonotice

Since you run the geonotice system, what do you think of this: User:TheFearow/RFGN. It's my attempt at a Request for Geonotice system. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 09:57, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good enough to me. Please feel free to merge it into the geonotice page. --Gmaxwell 19:16, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Whats the protocl for actually getting the approved requests onto the Geonotice? Do we PM someone like you? Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 02:21, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

For now, yes. That will be changed later, of course. --Gmaxwell 03:28, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

OK. I'm going to create a set of rules etc and a clerk group, and if necessary i'll PM you if there are a few requests waiting. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 04:56, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Great, first request+handling. Could you please implement the one request at The Approved section? The clerks (me atm) will move it etc if you put a {{RFGNClerk|Implemented}} ~~~~ comment on it. Thanks! Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 06:16, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

The pending one is done... though it might get better results if it covered all of NZ. We'll see what people say. --Gmaxwell 15:18, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, its working for me. It looks great :) One note, for the implented tag, put it under the discussion section of the appropriate request. It doesn't matter, and I fixed it for now, it just makes it easier to see which one it was about. Thanks! Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 21:08, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

		The Original Barnstar
		For all your great work with the geonotice, and your work on the RFGN system! Couldn't do it without you (becasue, well, then the requests couldn't be done) Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 21:19, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Adminship map

Hi, I was going to add info for some of the broken entries but I'm not entirely sure what all the numbers in the time/date stamp you're using are, so I just added info on the talkpage. You or someone else who knows what they're doing can add them :-). WjBscribe 09:30, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

It's yearmonthdayhourminutesecond of the nomination. It's easy enough for me to fill that in automatically if you provide a link to the RFA. --Gmaxwell 11:16, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Template:Contact

Can you explain the purpose of Template:Contact? In what sort of situation would this be used? --- RockMFR 03:47, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

It was used as part of the mass-contacting of images from a website which were uploaded here without a correct license (SXC.hu). A bunch of people went and attempted to contact the author of each of the images and the purpose of the template was to prevent single authors from being mobbed with requests. That project is long since done. I don't know if it has been used for anything else since. --Gmaxwell 04:18, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Elonka 2

Thank you for your support in my Request for Adminship. Unfortunately the nomination did not succeed, but please rest assured that I am still in full support of the Wikipedia project, and I'll try again in a few months! If you ever have any questions or suggestions for me, please don't hesitate to contact me. Best wishes, --Elonka 04:22, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

WikiMedia Player

Hello,

your player is very useful and I find it nice, but I have a question: Playing one of my videos (with Java), the player seems to crop it. So in this video, a part of the subtitles get lost. My video editing programm shows a field where subtitles probably can't be seen on a CRT television, but I didn't expect an ogg file to be shown there ;-)

Is this intended?

Regards, --MdE ^{talk (de) (en)} 09:50, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

It's a bug. It's known. I know how to fix it, I have to extract the size and pass it to the player. I've createdthe code to go extract the file metadata, but I have not had a chance to make the player use it yet. Hopefully in the next few weeks I'll get the change done. If you are good with Javascript, you could help. Thanks for your message on the player, I really do need the feedback. Please don't hesitate to ask more questions in the future. And thanks for submitting a video!--Gmaxwell 15:26, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Gmaxwell by David Shankbone

If only you knew how much I covet your camera. --David Shankbone 21:33, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

WikiMiniAtlas

Hey Gregory, looks you are a celebrity now with you own David Shankbone portrait :-)

Anywho, I recently found out that the WikiMiniAtlas has been activated by default for every user on the Portugese and Italian Wikipedias. They curently generate 24000 mapviews/day (it:15000, pt:9000), which is pretty much no problem for the toolserver as far as I know, but shows that it has not gone unnoticed by the users.

Since you've been pushing forward the inclusion into commons' default profile I was wondering how you'd rate the chances of en.WP adopting it too? You know the code, its overhead is fairly low as long as the map isn't clicked. --Dschwen 08:32, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

I'll try not to let my celebrity status go to my head. :)

So, I think making the feature more public would be good. It is nearly free if no one clicks it and your lookup code is quit quick and efficient when people do.

I have a small amount of concern that it may get used too much for the single backend server to handle if it's offered everywhere on Enwiki, however the current method of invocation is subtle enough that a complete overload isn't likely. We could try it and remove it if there are problems. Besides, the media player hasn't caused any problems and I would expect roughly similar load and use profiles. --Gmaxwell 16:13, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Great, so how should we proceed? --Dschwen 21:25, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Like this. --Gmaxwell 21:29, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, cool, I also just noticed your post on wikitech-l and the responses :-). I'm pretty excited to see how the reception will be and how the toolserver will hold up. --Dschwen 21:43, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Nice to meet you

Hi again. It was very nice to meet you and yours. When I get a copy of the photo of us three, may I post it on my user page or talk page? Bearian 16:22, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Royal Society stuff

Mace of the Royal Society, granted by Charles II, ours for the taking!

Hey GMaxwell-- I've been thinking about your wealth of data from your December downloads, & I wanted to make myself available to you regarding any projects you might spin out from them. Let me know how I can help! --mordicai. 18:09, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Geonotice

Per our discussion, please advertise Wikipedia:Meetup/St. Petersburg 4 using the Geonotice. Sandy is going to be adding a location soon, I think. Raul654 18:38, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

I've canceled the meetup due to low attendance, so disregard the above. Raul654 13:47, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

AfD nomination of QuakeSim

An article that you have been involved in editing, QuakeSim, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/QuakeSim. Thank you. -- Jreferee ^(Talk) 19:01, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

RFGN

Hey, there are two requests on RFGN waiting to be implemented. Thanks! Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 21:34, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

In that case, probably best to ask the requesters to clarify the dates. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 00:14, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Pics

Dude - did you happen to have taken a shot of Mother Johnson? ppl wanna see! -- Y not? 03:05, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Hello, Greg. Thanks for taking the nice photos. Do you have one of User:Broadwaygal (blonde in pink top)? --Ssilvers 23:52, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Java media player typo

Hello! On the bottom of the page for the Java-based WikiMedia player it says:
"The source code the Java player is publicly available. If you experience difficulties with this player, please report them to Greg Maxwell."

It should probably instead say:
"The source code for the Java player is publicly available. If you experience difficulties with this player, please report them to Greg Maxwell."

(Emphasis mine, of course). Cheers! --PeruvianLlama^(spit) 07:36, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Fixed. Thanks!--Gmaxwell 12:25, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Carn Brea

Hi Gavin, Tony Sidaway has said that you and he have been discussing the content of the Carn Brea article off-wiki, and that you have some material which could expand and benefit the article. Could you bring the discussion to the talk-page, so that other editors can contribute? Thanks. DuncanHill 16:43, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Java video player

Hi Greg. The Java player has come a long way since a year ago. Are you aware of a problem with the progress bar on the Mac? Stephen B Streater 21:20, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikimediaplayer

Hi Greg, the Wikimediaplayer is really great. Perhaps you could look into a small thing: We have a lot of pronuciation files in commons, and when you click on them, you hear only the second half. I think it is because the Wikimediaplayer needs one or two seconds to load. Perhaps you could add a 1,5 second retardation to playback the file. Example: Image:De-Dessau-Roßlau.ogg. Also, on some very short files the end appears to be cut off. Greetings, Longbow4u 21:36, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Copyright question about sounds of nature

Greetings. I asked a copyright question here. Since you know a good bit about copyright law, I thought I'd specifically solicit your opinion there. Thanks, – Quadell ^{(talk) (random)} 17:59, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Unused essasy

With respect to your remark on removing unused or unlinked essays - several of them can be found in CAT:E (which I suppose is easily sorted by number of incoming links and so forth); however, I suspect there are a bunch of others that we don't know about. Do you know if it's feasible to have Special:Uncategorizedpages include the namespace selector? Looking at uncategorized pages in Wikipedia namespace will likely find many of them. >Radiant< 11:24, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikimediaplayer item descriptions/license

Thanks for your efforts with wiki media player. I have a tonne of video I've shot that I'd love to contribute to the commons/wikipedia. At the moment, I host it all on my own website (for example UAE Videos in FLV format. I'm prepared to convert to OGG (despite the fact that OGG encoders for Windows users are very hard to use - I couldn't get VLC to encode to theora, and ffmpeg2theora is command line - Hello, we're in 2007, I try to avoid using the DOS prompt).

Anyways, I'd get over my OGG/Theora issues, but the "dealbreaker" for me right now is that for embedded video content using your java player, I have no way of providing more information for viewers - i.e. longer caption, license information, a link back to my website for more information/other videos/pictures.

FOr the moment, I'll continue fighting with page editors for including external links to my website for video content - but I know this is not the 'right' way to do this. Can you provide an estimate (ETA) on when 1) You will include the ability to include descriptions in the embedded video player 2) The player will be more formally adopted by wikipedia, so instead of a link to your page to get the player, it's a standardized wikipedia include.

Thanks again and please don't take my comments the wrong way - I really appreciate your efforts, I don't see anyone else doing this, and I think that media inclusion is the one remaining area that Encarta/Britannica smokes Wikipedia today.

Ian Isewell 17:16, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

I have a tool which can produce Ogg files which play back in Gmaxell's player. It also enables video editing, so you could add your own captions. You can see some examples on my user page. I could let you have an account, if it for a good cause. Stephen B Streater 18:25, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

I appreciate that, but it's not really what I was looking for. I don't want the captions/description/license information to be so intrusive in the video - just a short text description underneath the video itself. Isewell 14:56, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Request for feedback

Hi, I'm coming to you because I've seen you arguing against forcing people to write an individual fair use rationale when it's obvious that a particular use of an image is valid. If I'm not misinterpreting you, I think you feel that, for example, if a book cover is valid in an article about the book, the standard boilerplate tag for the book cover should suffice. I don't agree with you altogether, because I feel that insisting on a proper handwritten for every article an image is used in would help to prevent abuse, whereas having a boilerplate bookcover tag that automatically says it's fair use means that people can say, "Yeah, it's fair use. I'll put it into an article about this person, to illustrate the point that it was her favourite book when she was a child."

However, when you made the argument, I did wonder if I had on occasion been a bit too aggressive in deleting images from Category:Images with no fair use rationale. For example, should a book cover which would qualify as valid fair use in an article about the book be deleted just because the uploader hasn't written a personalised fair use rationale? I don't know. For one thing, I feel that if someone isn't prepared to take the trouble to write a rationale for their upload, we shouldn't feel unduly guilty at deleting it, after giving the standard seven days — especially since images can be undeleted. And when I'm ploughing through a backlog of several hundred images awaiting deletion, I don't feel terribly compelled to stop and write a rationale myself, instead of trying to get through the next 199 untagged images. However, I could be wrong.

I'm here to ask your opinion on Image:OneBahrainiDinar.jpg. I was doing a little deletion from the images for deletion category, and came across it. It seems to me that it could be a valid use of the image. I don't have the time or expertise to write a rationale. The person who uploaded it hasn't edited for over a month. And the article it's in (Bahraini dinar) has not been edited much recently. Just as a once off, instead of deleting, I removed the tags, and thought I'd ask for feedback for what I should do in general in cases like this. Removing the tags doesn't mean that a problematic image is going to be sneaked back in among the legitimate ones. If it needs to be deleted, I'll delete it myself tomorrow, without needing to replace it in a category for deletion. But I'd be interested in your opinion. Thanks. ElinorD (talk) 12:13, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Geonotice question

Nobody has responded to my 6-week-old question at Wikipedia talk:Geonotice#Reader information on use of geonotice-driven messages about basic notice-receiver information on this new feature. Since I turned off the geonotice for an earlier NYC meeting I couldn't attend, I'm half-expecting that I'll never see any notice about the next DC meeting, which was supposed to have been this month. If, as you said in the summary for your last Wikipedia:Geonotice edit, no one is maintaining that page, is there a better place to ask how people receiving geonotices are supposed to work with this feature? Thank you for your assistance. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 15:28, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I'll go respond there.. I'm sorry that I never saw your message.. my watchlist only extends back three days so it's easy to miss a single talk page note. --Gmaxwell 18:34, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Reminders

Just a couple reminders - (1) poke the Theora people to fix ffmpeg2theora to include 90 degree rotations and not be so picky with my camera's videos, and (2) to get me a dump of the most commonly played oggs (song and video) on the external player prior to yesterday's conversion to native mediawiki. Raul654 05:41, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Music encyclopedia topics

Hi Gmaxwell, long ago you made these lists for the missing encyclopedic articles project. Seeing them fall into inactivity, I'm trying to go through them and invite more people to work on them. I've been asked where they came from, do you remember how you compiled the list? Rigadoun (talk) 16:28, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I collated the indexes of several musical encyclopedias. Most of the items come from groves though, because it is the longest. --Gmaxwell 22:15, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Admins who do not have email this user enabled

You recently published a list of "guilty parties" that do not have email this user enabled on commons. Is there a policy that requires this? If so, can you please link me to it? -Regards Nv8200p talk 14:53, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware it's just highly recommended on enwp. It's mandatory on other projects such as meta and commons. My use of the words "guilty parties" were tongue-in-cheek. For commons I called the list the "wall of shame".. I couldn't say much about simple or meta because their lists were pretty much empty. --Gmaxwell 22:13, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. -Nv8200p talk 23:13, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

TonyBot Do: search|aka|{{{3}}}|{{{4}}}|{{{5}}}

Discussion on TIME issues and covers

Hi there. As someone who contributed an external view to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Ta bu shi da yu 2, I thought you might be interested in the discussion taking place at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content#First copyright renewal of TIME issues are for 1934. I've also invited the other editors who contributed external views to that RfC. Would you be interested in contributing your views at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content#Inviting more opinion on this? Thanks. Carcharoth 02:55, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Ogg template ugliness

Please comment at Template_talk:Listen#Eww regarding the serious UI issues with the new media player interface. Raul654 15:37, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Re: Sitenotice

I reverted ST47 with his permission, and then he corrected the sitenotice when it became apparent that the issues that were still being seen were due to caching. My apologies if I confused anyone. --MZMcBride 01:10, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Life goes on. It's not a big deal, but it is something we should learn from. I've posted about the issue on wikien-l. Please don't feel that I am singling you out. As far as I am concerned less than ideal handling of this issue is no single person's fault. --Gmaxwell 01:56, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Much Deserved Recognition

		The Commons Ambassador Barnstar
		I WilyD 16:02, 19 September 2007 (UTC) award this Commons Ambassador Barnstar to Gmaxwell for converting me from a blasphemer to a believer in Commons. Gmaxwell deserves much of the credit for the 63 new media files I've uploaded there.

Autoblock finder

		The da Vinci Barnstar
		For fixing the autoblock-finding tool. Admins have been running around like headless chickens fort he last month without it. And I all had to do was wave my arms and scream for help (highly dignified, I know...). WjBscribe 19:14, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Netmonger again

See this: [2]. Netmonger just got blocked again (72 hrs then I shortened it) and during that time Wiki Raja says Netmonger senthim a harrassing email. WR forwarded to me and it says it is from the one in that link. I can forward it to you if you like, but it appears to not have the original header info, so I'm trying to get WR to send it as an attachment. The text is "You must be really jumping up and down for that 72 hour block... The thing that wikipedia people dont understand is how "EMAIL WORKS" and that they do not own any email address. The thing they dont understand is that they fucking compromising everyones email address and making everyone a potential target of internet harassment.." If this is validated, wouldn't that be a case for a long, even indef block? Please advise, I'm watching your page. Tks.Rlevse 23:27, 10 October 2007 (UTC)...PS both involved emails are gmail--doesn't help, I know.Rlevse 23:29, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Because you can't prove the recipient didn't make it up... If that doesn't seem like a risk to you then block into oblivion. The email address discussed previously was confirmed to belong to netmonger. --Gmaxwell 00:42, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

What if I drop the text on Netmonger's page and ask him about it? Rlevse 00:54, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Well if he admits to it .. it would resolve the problem of it not being him. --Gmaxwell 00:56, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

New York City Meetup

New York City Meetup Next: Saturday November 3rd, Brooklyn Museum area Last: 8/12/2007

The agenda for the next meetup includes the formation of a Wikimedia New York City local chapter. Hope to see you there!--Pharos 20:28, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Percentage of biographies on Wikipedia

This has to be my favourite mailing list thread ever ! :-) One minor point and some serious ones. The minor point: "If an article is *currently* a living person bio it *always was*." - unless, of course, the person was born after Wikipedia was created, and/or if the article was created before the person was born (both have happened). But that shouldn't affect those stats much. Now the serious points:

• (1) "I don't recall seeing any appeals to write bios to offset the rambot geostubs." - I think this is purely attributable to people liking to write about people.
• (2) "ideas that include the words "follow the category tree" are generally complete non-starters if you care about remotely sane results" - in fact, the category trees for birth and death years (Category:Births by year and Category:Deaths by year) are remarkably well-organised, and are the best way to generate lists of biographies and stats on biographies. Because of the "unknown birth/death year" categories, those categories pick up all people where the dates have been categorised. The other way, to use the talk page template {{WPBiography}} has a few problems, as you noted, but that's a later point. I suspect there are still a fair number of biography articles that have neither birth/death year categories, {{WPBiography}}, or Category:Living people. Not large compared to the ones that are tagged, but still a fair number. Many are recently created articles that no-one has got around to cleaning up yet.
• (3) Robert Rohde came across the listas categories, which put together do give a sum of the articles with {{WPBiography}}. He correctly got the sum of around 445,000 biography articles and the 22% figure. I think I came up with this 1 in 5 articles is a biography article stat a few months ago. Quite an amazing stat, I think.
• (4) You then (correctly) pointed out that this total is polluted by music group articles and album articles. Hopefully, people still use the template parameter that identifies musicians. That populates Category:Musicians work group articles, which miht give you an idea of how badly polluted the list is. In general, the workgroups at Category:Biography articles by work group will give you an idea of which types of articles are the culprit. I would hope, for example, that Category:Sports and games work group articles only contains people, not teams, but I've never looked in detail.
• (5) "[WPBiography is] applied to talk pages which makes counting based on it more computationally expensive" - I would love to see a fully populated Category:People (or whatever name is decided to be best), which would include all articles about people sorted correctly using DEFAULTSORT. This would extend what we already have at Category:Living people over all biographical articles and would help disambiguation of people immensely. Part of the process here would involve using a clean WPBiography transclusion list to add this super-category to the articles (instead of the talk pages). Would you support a proposal like this, and would you have any advice on how to do it? (I think the first step would be to clean the list of what I call "group" articles and the redirects to albums). Part of the problem is that people tend to quail at tasks involving 450,000 articles (a fifth of Wikipedia). See WP:BOTREQ for a few current bot requests involving biographical articles.

I think that's enough for now. I think the general figure of 20% for biography articles is correct, but would love to confirm it somehow. Hope the above helps in some way. Carcharoth 00:39, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Query question

Can I get a status update on the query I requested? Raul654 21:20, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Propietary software

You wrote in an edit summary in removing {{POV-section}}

It has gone months without explination for this tag on talk... [3]

I just added this tag because I came across the article and saw that the section was heavily biased. I don't see how time passing makes the tag any less worthwhile.

I'm reluctant to edit the section to remove the bias because I share its pro-free software bis. I might be able to make it sound better, but I think I wouldn't do a good job. But the section is biased, and someone needs to fix it. Until then the article should at least note its own slant. Would you please restore this tag?

CRGreathouse (t | c) 17:34, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Geonotice

Please see Wikipedia talk:Geonotice#Defunct?. Thanks.--Pharos 08:54, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Please see my more recent comment at Wikipedia talk:Geonotice#Defunct?. And my new request at Wikipedia:Requests for geonotice/NYC4. And thanks for your patience.--Pharos 03:58, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

There appears to be a typo. The watchlist notice says "The next New York City is on [...]", as opposed to "The next New York City meetup is on [...]". See also Wikipedia:Requests for geonotice/NYC4. Thanks.--Pharos 23:32, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Fixed. Sorry about that. --Gmaxwell 23:36, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

A thought for a future query

Given the results of the living people query you did, I'd be curious if you could do a somewhat simpler query: All living people, as distributed by current age (since that's pretty tough to calculate, birth year would probably suffice). I'm curious how our articles on living people skew -- toward younger or older, and where it begins to drop off significantly on each side. Ral315 » 09:21, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Purging or reloading - what's the difference?

Hi, I hope this isn't too dumb a question. I've just seen this edit summary, and I'm wondering why purge would be needed on any page, if you can just reload. Why would a category page be different.? Thanks. ElinorD (talk) 20:16, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Normally, purging shouldn't be required anywhere. However, normal pages that contain templates with fancy parser functions dynamically change (such as ones with timers) will not reflect the new state until the page is edited, purged, or a template they transclude gets edited. This is an argument to avoid dynamic behavior in templates, since they won't work like you expect them to work.

Category listings are dynamically generated every load for logged in users (like some special pages, watchlists, history, etc), so there is no need to purge them. --Gmaxwell 20:45, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

On this note, I thought you might want to take a look at {{purge}}. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 14:53, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Okay, thanks (both of you). I'm not going to pretend I understand it completely, but I've got some kind of vague idea now. :-) ElinorD (talk) 23:12, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

anonymous article creation

Hi George,

I read your announcement about enabling anonymous editors to start new articles again. When will this happen?

-- Torsten —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.173.131.44 (talk) 09:04, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

I have posted my concerns here. Kaldari 18:54, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Geonotices

Hi G. I don't know if you can answer this, but if not, perhaps you can point me to someone who can. I'm wondering about the possible future capabilities of geonotices, specifically, being able to have a template make choices based upon the location of a user. This would make it possible to use different dialects for different regions. So for example a reference to a "fannypack" or "flashlight" in an article written by an American, would be displayed as a "bumpack" and "torch" for Australians. --☑ SamuelWantman 15:05, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

We can't allow it to do anything that will defeat caching, which kills ideas like the ones you've outlined above. It's also the case that we can't currently do geo-sensitive things for widely viewed pages (i.e. articles) due to traffic levels, but that could be resolved. There is also, of course, the philosophical issue with the loss of transparency which would come from magically substituting text. --Gmaxwell 17:31, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Might it be possible to use something like AJAX to make substitutions after an article is loaded? --☑ SamuelWantman 03:11, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

DC meetup #3

Interested in meeting-up with a bunch of your wiki-friends? Please take a quick look at Wikipedia:Meetup/DC 3 and give your input about the next meetup. Thank you.
This automated notice was delivered to you because you are on the Wikipedia:Meetup/DC/Invite. BrownBot 01:18, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

SF geonotice

Heya. Thanks for the meetup geonotice; I was wondering where all the new people came from ;) Is there a place to see what the message was & what geographical area it covered? I don't technically live in the Bay Area or anywhere near San Francisco, so I wouldn't see it. Thanks -- phoebe/(talk) 05:16, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I've posted a screenshot so you can see one here. The SF one is just like that one. (I'm in DC, so I pasted the actual notice that I'm getting right now).

Geonotices are very effective.

For the SF notice I'm using a geographic bounding box 40.27 - 35.57 lat, -126.0 - -118.0 long. This captures all of the bay area south to fresno, and as far east as reno. The geolocation isn't very percise or accurate, even more so becase we use a free database, so you must use an oversized boundry and even then it will still miss people. But it's better than nothing and better than spamming people on the opposite side of the world with a notice. :) --Gmaxwell 05:31, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Cool, thanks. Going all the way east to Reno means I can see it! I just didn't notice b/c I hadn't checked my watchlist :P cheers, -- phoebe/(talk) 18:46, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Hey, Gmaxwell, thanks for the geonotice for Wikipedia:Meetup/San Francisco 4! I don't think I would have heard about it otherwise. My first time meeting lots of hard-core Wikipedians! --Ben Kovitz 07:37, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Majorly

See also: Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard § Suggestion: Suspend or extend discussion

Could you please explain why you've made false accusations that Majorly is a sock of Matthew when it isn't even possible? This wouldn't normally be an issue, but considering you've used CU on commons to justify this, it's quite a serious breach of the CU policy. Ryan Postlethwaite 10:51, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Can I agree; I too would like to be filled in on the background to the statement, and the impressions or evidence or whatever underpined its making. (That's regardless whether it's later deemed flawed or not, right or wrong, still backed or withdrawn.) I'm aware of the SSP report in October, but that was dismissed. Has anything else come to light? It's a serious allegation and without any assumptions, I'd like reassurance how it was decided to be made, regardless of further findings.

"I would not have stated as much, were I not absolutely confident that exists, at a minimum, compelling evidence existed in support of my statement."

If there's anything genuinely private (checkuser, oversightable, personal info) please characterize it but include it. Thanks! FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 12:00, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Congratulations - now if you'd care to pop over to WP:BN and offer a full explanation that would be much appreciated. Ryan Postlethwaite 13:47, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

I'll echo Ryan on the first part, I don't understand why you said what you said regards to puppeting... Ryan, the chuckuser policy and privacy policy permits CU to be run to prevent disruption... it does not state that the CU has to remain on its project. There was no abusive use of CU, if CU was used. Maxwell, we just needed more information than you gave. Mercury 13:52, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

My point is that he went to commons and ran a check user when it was not required. He should have been well aware (or should have at least asked Majorly first) that these accusations have already been proven false previously. Then to suggest in Majorly's RfA that he is a sockpuppet of Matthew, when he quite clearly isn't per the evidence I've given at BN suggests to me an explanation is required. Ryan Postlethwaite 13:56, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

I too would like to know what type of evidence you relied on before making this serious allegation, whether you made any attempt to discuss it with the parties concerned before posting it on-wiki in the middle of an RfA, and in short what the hell is going on here. Newyorkbrad 13:59, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Brad, Greg said in an earlier post that he had contacted Majorly. I think we will have to wait for Greg to give the exact sequence of events, but there was private contact. See the diffs I have posted below. Carcharoth 14:36, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough; let's await further information. Newyorkbrad 14:41, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

This reminds me horribly of that other RfA that got messy when someone used checkuser stuff (though here the checkuser data was from a different project). The Tor one. Can't remember the name now. I'd suggest raising the issue at en, meta and Commons, and clarifying how cross-project checkuser information should be handled. I'm not entirely happy at what happened here either, and I think a lot of people will want the air cleared. I'd also suggest deferring to how Majorly wants to react to this, unless anyone wants to pursue this themselves. Personally, I think not resolving this now would be unfair to Majorly, Greg Maxwell, and those who participated at the RfA. There will always be doubt in some people's minds, and that does no-one any good. Carcharoth 14:15, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/CharlotteWebb. User:Veesicle 14:17, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Personally I think this use of checkuser could characterised as abusive as it is abusing the community's trust. We expect CUs to base their statements on conclusive evidence and check out the backstory first before ruining the reputation of contributors in goodstanding. User:Veesicle 14:17, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Factual observation: Note the user withdrew (at a point their renomination was looking very likely), and this appears to have been based solely upon the drama and upset of this one allegation. If the post was in fact ill-advised, then an RFA will have been derailed and a credible editor disheartened because of it. So the judgement that went into the decision how to interpret and handle any information, and inquiries by others whether it was interpreted fairly and in good faith, are genuine concerns. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 14:29, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

• For the record, Greg made five edits to the RfA: 1 (21:45, 7 November 2007 - discussion), 2 (22:32 - discussion), 3 (22:36 - support), 4 (04:36, 8 November 2007 - switch to oppose), and 5 (04:54 - standing by oppose). My reading of that sequence is that Greg did contact Majorly privately, and only came public when he thought Majorly was threatening him (see the first and second diffs). It predicatably degenerated after that as sockpuppet accusations during RfAs generally do. Please do read the full thread for the context - it is oppose vote number 17. Cyde's oppose vote (number 20) also seems relevant as it seems to be referring to the same thing. Carcharoth 14:30, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Let's be clear here that gmaxwell ran the first checkuser to be helpful in order to clear Majorly of the accusation of editing the RFA template while logged out. The checkuser showed that Majorly had used that very IP recently on Commons. Majorly's response was (to paraphrase), "No that wasn't me. I never even use that IP range. Where do I complain about checkuser abuse." After a few minutes Majorly changed his tune to "Well, maybe it was me from my grandma's house but I don't remember." That's a far cry from ZOMG Checkuser Abuse! I don't know who ran what checks on which projects to determine that Majorly and Matthew were socks, but note that checking Admin candidate for sockpuppet use is quite a reasonable thing to do, even if it is not done routinely (as far as we know). Thatcher131 15:33, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Thats right. In the past there had been some allegations of sockpuppetry by Majorly that I had, at least breifly, believed. I had since changed my mind but felt that I owed him some support when I saw he was being accused of logging out to revert war. So, I checked not Majorly on commons, but instead the IP that Majorly was insisting that he never used, fully expecting to go to the RFA and say "I'm a CU and did a quick check and it doesn't support that Majorly was that IP." ... but what I found was that Majorly WAS that IP. :( Rather than saying anything in public I went to Majorly and asked him to stop claiming that it wasn't him. His response was to threaten to report me for CU abuse if I told people about it. Had I checked my IRC logs first, I wouldn't have bothered to checkuser, Majorly frequently leaked his IP when logging into IRC, and that IP among many others was among them.

After the threat, I felt that I was obligated to speak up in public about the connection between him and that IP edit. Shortly I went ahead and supported Majorly's RFA because I thought that the IP edit was an honest mistake.

This whole mess resulted in additional investigation by myself and others throughout the day, which ultimately concluded in substantial evidence of the relationship between the Majorly and Matthew accounts. When I heard some people on IRC discussing speedy closing the RFA as a pass I thought it was important to make it known what I thought to be true. I regret the drama this has caused, but I expect it will be sorted out soon. --Gmaxwell 16:24, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

• Suggest further discussion takes place at Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard#Suggestion: Suspend or extend discussion, rather than here. Carcharoth 16:51, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Deletion of List of people who have taken psychedelic drugs

Hi Gmaxwell,

you have recently removed the content from list of people who have taken psychedelic drugs and tagged it for deletion with the summary "BLP nightmare. Previously deleted, moved back in an abuse of a curtosy undelete and userfy". JzG then deleted the page under CSD G4 (recreation of deleted material).

The page was not moved back "in an abuse of a curtosy undelete and userfy". The page was recreated and restored to pre-vandalism by me, not from the undeletion/userfication the wub made for Bill Huston (?). I have given a detailed explanation for the recreation on the article's talk page:

---

This article has been speedy deleted (see Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_people_who_have_taken_psychedelic_drugs) after the content has been completely replaced with a crippled version and the article has been moved from List of people who have taken psychedelic drugs to List of notable people who have taken psychedelic drugs.

The speedy deletion without adequate discussion was not justified, the arguments were either related to the crippled version and/or the changed title or do not justify the deletion of an article that merely needs additional, easy to find references. For many listed persons their article already elaborates on their psychedelic drug use.

Therefore I have undeleted this article, see also Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Psychedelics,_Dissociatives_and_Deliriants. Cacycle 21:50, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

---

The recreation does not fall under CSD G4 as the deletion discussion was about a substantially different article under a different name. Please see also the following related discussions: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Psychedelics, Dissociatives and Deliriants#List of people who have taken psychedelic drugs and User talk:The wub#redux: List of notable people who have taken psychedelic drugs.

I will therefore reinstate this article. Please do not delete it again without previous discussion and consensus, either on its talk page or in a formal and correct(!) AfD process.

Сасусlе 20:45, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

• WP:DRV, second on the left down the hall. Don't forget to bring sources for all those living individuals on the list. Guy (Help!) 21:28, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

RFC

Someone mentioned you haven't voiced your opinion at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Anonymous page creation despite being a major proponent. Just wanted to make sure you are aware of the discussion. -- Kendrick7^talk 22:35, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Commons administrator verify check not working

Hello, The verify check on your user page

This user is an administrator on Wikimedia Commons. (verify)

[4]

to verify that you are an Administrator at Wikimedia Commons does not seem to be working. Wikimedia Commons lists you as a Checkuser there, but not as a sysop.

[5]

The verify portion of the userbox looks like it was added to the template at a later time.

I couldn't find a corresponding Wikimedia Commons Checkuser userbox.

I see the rights log shows sysop was given though although it doesn't show up in the current list of rights.

21:28, 14 September 2006 Bastique (Talk | contribs) changed rights for User:Gmaxwell from (none) to sysop ‎[6]

Weird. Uncle uncle uncle 06:03, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

I think its just that his userpage isn't up to date - Gmaxwell stopped being a Commons admin in May (see Steward log entry). WjBscribe 08:44, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

WikiMiniAtlas, multiple tile servers

Just to let you know I implemented your suggestion to get the tiles from a bunch of different domains (all pointing to the toolserver) here. It does speed up the map display significantly (currently multiple tileservers are only active for the VMAP0 basemap). --Dschwen 23:54, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Geonotice request

Please have a look at Wikipedia:Requests for geonotice/NYC5. Thank you.--Pharos (talk) 21:47, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

By the way, I'm in Florida for the next week or so, so I'll be out of range for the geonotice. Can you please notify me when it's been activated? Thanks.--Pharos (talk) 15:25, 22 November 2007 (UTC)--Pharos (talk) 15:25, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Video policy

I notice that Chicken pox has a non free video link on it. Are you still deleting links to unfree video formats, or is Wikipedia more relaxed about this these days? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stephen B Streater (talk • contribs) 22:56, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

geonotice.py

Sorry to bother you, but I'm getting a bit tired of js error in geonotice.py, also see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Small bug in Watchlist: geonotice.py ∴ AlexSm 23:33, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Seems to be fixed now. Thanks! — Edokter • Talk • 13:39, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

DC geonotice appearing when it shouldn't

I've had the DC geonotice appear on my watchlist even though I live nowhere close to DC. It first appeared about 12 hours ago, though I believe this notice has been running for quite a while though. I've tried multiple locations and providers and it appears for all of them. Did you happen to change who the message is being targeted towards? --- RockMFR 03:55, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Geonotice request

Can you do a Geonotice for Wikipedia:Meetup/Miami 2 which is going to be early next month, make it from now up to the 12th, for all of Florida and Southern Georgia. The Requests for geonotice page is very dead. Thanks Secret ^account 04:52, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I noticed you editing again, it's now the 19th the geonotice, please we really need it. Thanks Secret ^account 05:41, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Philly meetup 6

I'm working on planning the sixth Philadelphia meetup, and I'm looking for ideas and votes about the place and location. Since you RSVP'd for the last one I thought you might like to weigh in. Thanks, and I hope to see you there! --TexasDex ★ 22:35, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Seasons Greetings

Wishing you the very best for the season - but with this full bag! -- Cat ^chi? 18:07, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Disputed fair use rationale for Image:007.svg

Thanks for uploading Image:007.svg. However, there is a concern that the rationale you have provided for using this image under "fair use" may be invalid. Please read the instructions at Wikipedia:Non-free content carefully, then go to the image description page and clarify why you think the image qualifies for fair use. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to ensure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If it is determined that the image does not qualify under fair use, it will be deleted within a couple of days according to our criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thank you.BetacommandBot (talk) 07:13, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

E-mail.

I've sent you an e-mail. · AndonicO ^Hail! 23:33, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Cattersect availability

Is Cattersect still available? http://tools.wikimedia.de/~gmaxwell/cgi-bin/enwiki_cattersect.py returns a 404 error.  :( --Iamunknown 05:46, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

You're invited!

...to the next New York City Meetup!

New York City Meetup Next: Sunday January 13th, Columbia University area Last: 11/3/2007

In the morning, there are exciting plans for a behind-the-scenes guided tour of the American Museum of Natural History.

In the afternoon, we will hold a session dedicated to discussing meta:Wikimedia New York City issues (see the last meeting's minutes).

In the evening, we'll share dinner and chat at a local restaurant, and (weather permitting) hold a late-night astronomy event at Columbia's telescopes.

You can add or remove your name from the New York City Meetups invite list at Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/Invite list.
This has been an automated delivery by BrownBot (talk) 01:04, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Updated Wikipedia:Requests for geonotice

I have updated Wikipedia:Requests for geonotice so that now requesters know that they have to personally contact you in order to get these activated; I hope this is OK. Thanks.--Pharos (talk) 05:30, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

• OK, I've merged this into Wikipedia:Geonotice and simplified the process, because it was too complicated and has been very underutilized of late.--Pharos (talk) 21:45, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Featured sounds

I noticed that you have participated in Wikipedia:Featured sound candidates in the past. There are now two candidates and the project appears to be abandoned. If you could look at the candidates and vote it would be appreciated. Zginder ^{(talk) (Contrib)} 00:38, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Template:Limited non-free media

A tag has been placed on Template:Limited non-free media requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section T3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a deprecated or orphaned template. After seven days, if it is still unused and the speedy deletion tag has not been removed, the template will be deleted.

If the template is intended to be substituted, please feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag and please consider putting a note on the template's page indicating that it is substituted so as to avoid any future mistakes (<noinclude>{{tranclusionless}}</noinclude>).

Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:19, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Template:Gregpedia

A tag has been placed on Template:Gregpedia requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section T3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a deprecated or orphaned template. After seven days, if it is still unused and the speedy deletion tag has not been removed, the template will be deleted.

If the template is intended to be substituted, please feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag and please consider putting a note on the template's page indicating that it is substituted so as to avoid any future mistakes (<noinclude>{{transclusionless}}</noinclude>).

Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:53, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Image upload and deletion stats (2007)

If you have time, would you be able to comment on Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria compliance#Weekly uploads and deletions and bot taggings? Discussion should be taking place at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content criteria compliance. I'm hoping it hasn't repeated too much of work you've already done... Thanks. Carcharoth (talk) 01:40, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Template:User instrument subcategory/5

A tag has been placed on Template:User instrument subcategory/5 requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section T3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a deprecated or orphaned template. After seven days, if it is still unused and the speedy deletion tag has not been removed, the template will be deleted.

If the template is intended to be substituted, please feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag and please consider putting a note on the template's page indicating that it is substituted so as to avoid any future mistakes (<noinclude>{{transclusionless}}</noinclude>).

Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:09, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

New mailing list

There has been a mailing list created for Wikipedians in the New York metropolitan area (list: Wikimedia NYC). Please consider joining it! Cbrown1023 talk 21:07, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Meetup notices on MediaWiki Sites

I was referred to you by this discussion. Please reply there! (I am watching that page.) Thank you Timneu22 (talk) 20:13, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

You are invited!

New York City Meetup Next: Sunday March 16th, Columbia University area Last: 1/13/2008

In the afternoon, we will hold a session dedicated to meta:Wikimedia New York City activities, and have salon-style group discussions on Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects (see the last meeting's minutes).

Well also make preparations for our exciting Wikipedia Takes Manhattan event, a free content photography contest for Columbia University students planned for Friday March 28 (about 2 weeks after our meeting).

In the evening, we'll share dinner and chat at a local restaurant, and (weather permitting) hold a late-night astronomy event at Columbia's telescopes.

You can add or remove your name from the New York City Meetups invite list at Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/Invite list.

You're also invited to subscribe to the public Wikimedia New York City mailing list, which is a great way to receive timely updates.
This has been an automated delivery because you were on the invite list. BrownBot (talk) 02:51, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

WikimediaPlayer

Hi, I have some problems with the player. I get linked to it through the German WP and the de:Template:Video. The resulting link looks something like that: http://tools.wikimedia.de/~gmaxwell/jorbis/commonsJOrbisPlayer.php?path=Longitudinalwave.ogg

Unfortunately, I get the message "Failed opening http://tools.wikimedia.de:6970/wikipedia/commons" (more text doensn't fit in). It also says "Using Java.(include this message in any error reports)". I use WinXP, Firefox 2.0.0.12, and I tried it with Java 1.5 and 1.6. Software firewall is deactivated. Also, I experience occational firefox memory leaks when visiting the player. Could you help? --Tantalos (talk) 16:10, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

DC Meetup on May 17th

Your help is needed in planning Wikipedia:Meetup/DC 4! Any comments or suggestions you have are greatly appreciated. The Placebo Effect (talk) 19:11, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Geonotice for Philly meetup

I've put in a request for a geonotice for the Philly meetup, for all the states near Philadelphia. I'm also sending the invites out much earlier. Hopefully we'll have a better turnout than last one. --TexasDex ★ 00:54, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Heads up

One of the barnstars on your userpage doesn't exist anymore. I guess the image was deleted. You may know of this already, but I decided to point it out. Heh. Enigma ^msg! 03:50, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

By the way, how can I access that tool you created for metawiki? Special:??? Sorry, slipped my mind when I finally got home. Enigma ^msg! 02:03, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Nevermind. I found it, and I started patrolling. Enigma ^msg! 05:32, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

RfC

I've started drafting a user conduct RfC that you might be interested in here. If you'd like to participate in drafting it, please feel free. Cla68 (talk) 03:52, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Non-free allowed in

Template:Non-free allowed in has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — Collectonian (talk) 08:08, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Geonotice of Wikipedia Takes Nashville

Please see Wikipedia:Geonotice#Wikipedia:Wikipedia Takes Nashville. Thanks! Kaldari (talk) 22:54, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Issues of access rather copyright

I know you are better informed than I am about the variety of issues affecting free content. I was wondering if you have ever seen anything written from the free content perspective about "shrinkwrap licenses" (Chapter 12 under Title 17) in regards to "Terms of Service" which might restrict content that would not be restricted under the normal means of the Copyright Act? I came across this issue recently background, but I can't believe someone in the free content arena hasn't already touched on this somewhere. Can you point me in the right direction to find more general info on this issue?--BirgitteSB 23:44, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

NYC Meetup: June 1, 2008

New York City Meetup Next: Sunday June 1st, Columbia University area Last: 3/16/2008

In the afternoon, we will hold a session dedicated to meta:Wikimedia New York City activities, elect a board of directors, and hold salon-style group discussions on Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects (see the last meeting's minutes).

We'll also review our recent Wikipedia Takes Manhattan event, and make preparations for our exciting successor Wiki Week bonanza, being planned with Columbia University students for September or October.

In the evening, we'll share dinner and chat at a local restaurant, and (weather permitting) hold a late-night astronomy event at Columbia's telescopes.

You can add or remove your name from the New York City Meetups invite list at Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/Invite list.

Also, check out our regional US Wikimedia chapters blog Wiki Northeast (and we're open to guest posts).
This has been an automated delivery by BrownBot (talk) 23:47, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Geonotice addition

Hi there,

I've added a geonotice request to the page and per instructions am informing you here.

Regards, Astral (talk) 00:56, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Audio Barnstar

		The Audio Barnstar
		You're getting an Audio Barnstar for adding great audio files to the wiki and for your work on the media player. Thanks!  Channel ®   08:51, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Geonotice and importScriptURI

Hello again Gmaxwell,

Currently, the code to import the geonotice script looks like this:

addOnloadHook((function (){document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="http://tools.wikimedia.de/~gmaxwell/cgi-bin/geonotice.py"><\/script>')}));

I got a comment on my talk page asking if we could use the built-in function importScriptURI to do this instead, thus simplifying the code and decreasing code duplication. The main difference is that importScriptURI adds scripts to the head of the page instead of the end of the body. Would this work for the geonotice script? —Remember the dot ^(talk) 01:21, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

The other difference is that document.write should be avoided because it can cause problems like these. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:54, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Stuff

Did you ever get the email I sent about the deleted contribs GFDL thing? Also, what should be done with {{Fu-na-in-why}} and {{Fu-re-in-why}}, they have not been converted to the new {{imbox}} format and aren't categorized anywhere? MBisanz ^talk 04:59, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

WT:FLR

Hello Greg. Thanks for your recent comment in that thread. I agree that, unless the sighted version becomes the default for non-logged-in users, there is not much value in adopting the new system. A discussion may still be needed as to whether all articles should have flagged revisions. Having a limited trial (with only a few articles affected by flagged revisions) could still have some value. This might avoid the backlash observed at de.wiki. I would like to see 20,000 sighters on en.wiki, which might avoid the backlash. EdJohnston (talk) 00:03, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

WP:GN

I've made a suggestion to you about this system by e-mail. Thanks.--Pharos (talk) 02:05, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

You should have just gotten mail from me. --Gmaxwell (talk) 02:10, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Fu-re-in-why

Template:Fu-re-in-why has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. ViperSnake151 20:08, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

The block

I felt it was obviously malicious. It did call itself a sock of a very well known user. That looked like a vandal with an agenda. See my reply to the previous comment for a full explanation, and sorry for the misunderstanding. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 21:59, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Children of Hiroshima

Hello! Why have you removed a link from Children of Hiroshima? Is the film public domain or not? --Snek01 (talk) 04:02, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't appear to be by any record I can find. If it is lets get it up on archive.org or another PD repository. Piratebay links were being used in pretty obnoxious ways on Wikipedia, linking directly to torrents of popular books, movies, and software on the articles about them. Do you have any pointers to the copyright status of the movie? my own searching turned up nothing. --Gmaxwell (talk) 07:25, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

It is the only one source for the film on internet. It seems that the film is public domain so the the link is completely all right. I have reverted your edit. --Snek01 (talk) 16:48, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

What is your source for the claim that the film is public domain? If it is actually public domain there are many places who will host it. It would be better to place the movie someplace where it will not be assumed to be a copyright violation.--Gmaxwell (talk) 17:00, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Hello, you can not presume that any internet source is bad. For example you can not presume that anything on bittorrent protocol is illegal or you can not presume that small internet websites are worse that big ones. On the other hand there is very few information about copyright status of Japanese film and even NOBODY on wikipedia commons is sure about it. You can read those few information there commons:Commons:Licensing#Japan commons:Commons:Copyright tags#Japan and you can discuss about it there. I would be very happy if you or anybody could add more information there. The link to bittorrent is all right according to Wikipedia rules. And even if there would be a website link and any other protocol link, so there can be both. You can not decide what internet protocol a reader likes to use. If you decide to delete any information in the future, do it more carefully, please. I am sorry about my simple English. --Snek01 (talk) 21:26, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with the protocol, but that particular site is particularly infamous for flaunting copyright law. The overwhelming majority of the links to the site has been to especially bold copyright violations, recent run movies and the like. The site has previously been blacklisted and only isn't now because it is validly linked from articles about P2P. Please don't mistake Wikipedia for a copyright violation advocacy site.

It does appear that the movie is probably in the public domain. Thank you for the link to commons:Commons:Licensing#Japan. I will be replacing the link with one to a more appropriate source for public domain movies once I find one, after that please do not restore the thepiratebay link. Thanks. --Gmaxwell (talk) 04:40, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

SF geonotice correction

Heya,

The SF Geonotice says "Sunday June 28" for the next meetup, but it's actually Saturday June 28. Thanks! -- phoebe / (talk to me) 22:54, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Gah. Fixed but it will be several hours until some people stop seeing the old message due to caching. Thanks. Sorry. --Gmaxwell (talk) 00:19, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick fix! shows up as Saturday now for me. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 02:00, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Fresh out of ponies

...but your answers in the RfA Review are outstanding (until the last section, where I'm neither experienced nor mature enough to know good from bad). I may steal your answers. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 19:12, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Email

You have email!¤~Persian Poet Gal ^(talk) 22:04, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Harassment

I don't know who the hell you think you are, but don't you ever accuse me of harassment again. Retract your statement immediately. - auburnpilot talk 02:27, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

I make 7 edits and that equals harassment? Seriously, please be more careful in evaluating a situation before making wild accusations. I addressed two comments to Pilotguy on his talk page, and my other comments were responses to you and Beta. The only other comment I've directed at PG? On AN/I. Your accusations of harassment are completely unacceptable and unfounded. Again, I ask you to retract them immediately. - auburnpilot talk 02:40, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

I am truly sorry you believe I've defamed you. I do not know you and as such I am unable to judge your character. I'll repeat it again, for the record, I do not and have not believed you intended to cause any harm. However, I believed your repeated activity on Pilotguy's talk page was excessively hostile, that it was causing him undue distress, and that it would have caused me distress if it had been directed at me. You, and others, may perhaps perceive the situation differently. If it makes you feel less offended, please consider me to be a mistaken idiot. I have no dispute with you, and I mean you no harm. --Gmaxwell (talk) 03:19, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Not a Democrcay Eh?

No, you are only too right. It is definately the most fitting example of an oligarchy I have ever encountered. 121.209.235.20 (talk) 23:32, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Glad I could be of help. --Gmaxwell (talk) 23:37, 8 July 2008 (UTC)