User talk:Sulfur

This user believes in keeping talk page conversations in one place. If you leave a comment here, expect a reply on this page.

Welcome to the

• Sulfur •

Thanks for your recent edits! I'm Jimbo, your robot wiki representative! We hope you'll keep on editing with us. This is actually a great time to have joined, because we're now fully independent, and working on a host of new features!

We've got a couple of important quirks for a fan written wiki, so let's get them out of the way first.

British English, please

We generally use British English 'round these parts, so if you use another form of English, please be sure you set your spell checker to BrEng, and take a gander at our spelling cheat card.

Spoilers aren't cool

We have a strict definition of "spoiler" that you may find a bit unusual. Basically, a spoiler, to us, is anything that comes from a story which has not been released yet. So, even if you've got some info from a BBC press release or official trailer, it basically can't be referenced here. In other words, you gotta wait until the episode has finished its premiere broadcast to start editing about its contents. Please check the spoiler policy for more details.

Other useful stuff

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My 6th edit, and you finally noticed me! :) -- Sulfur 04:59, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

SciFi Wiki

Hi, I;m an admin on the SciFi Wiki and I've seen your work here and on MA and was wondering if you could help out at the SciFi Wiki. Thanks!!!--UESPA 02:16, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Series changes

Thanks for letting me know. As the user who was changing the information was only logged in for 1 of the edits I've given them a final warning. I'll keep an eye out and block them if it becomes necessary. Thanks. --Tangerineduel 07:24, December 31, 2009 (UTC)

Quote

Yeah I meant the narrator thing. Your right about that wiki rich thing though. Thanks--Skittles the hog 18:58, January 2, 2010 (UTC)

Rich Text Editor

I've contacted Wikia to ask them if they can turn it off or disable it by default for all users. Hopefully I'll get a response soon. Thanks. --Tangerineduel 08:00, January 3, 2010 (UTC)

There are none whenever I see a page after editing. As for the editor, it is very hard changing it. For once, it stays on the default rich text editer, and it takes ages for me to switch to the other format each time I want to change over, so it ain't pretty waiting for that, when there is the chance it might not even work because it seems to og very slow changing over. Delton Menace 16:55, January 7, 2010 (UTC)

Go into your preferences and you should be able to save it, and the rich text editor goes away for good. The spaces are not visible the first time the page is edited (generally). It's visible the second, and so on-th time. In fact, at one point this weekend, the end of the "End of Time" article had a single template on each screen. There were 60-70 lines of blank space between each one. -- sulfur 17:15, January 7, 2010 (UTC)

I got a message back from Wikia support, they said they're in the process of rolling out a update to the rich text editor see here for info on the update.

I am hoping that this update will fix some of the noted issues. The new updates will be rolled out in the next week or so.

They did say it's *possible* to disable the rich text editor for an entire wiki, however:

"it makes such a significant impact on the number of new editors, and the number of edits that they make, that we would very much prefer not to. We would need to see a community consensus that all editors want it turned off, and even then it's important to remember that the RTE is most helpful to the new editors who are least likely to participate in such a discussion. We would much rather work with you to solve any remaining bugs so that there is no community desire to turn the editor off."

I think we'll need to wait for this update to come out and see if that fixes the issues, and if not then if you wish to start with a forum topic to come to some sort of consensus.

The alternative I suppose is educating new users on how to turn it off / pros & cons of using it. --Tangerineduel 12:39, January 8, 2010 (UTC)

I know that it's something we did disable over on Memory Alpha. Best decision we made as a group last year! :)

I'll wait to see the updates, and if it doesn't, I'll be more than happy to start a discussion about it. -- sulfur 23:26, January 8, 2010 (UTC)

Vincent van Gogh

Hi, I've rolled back both edits the user made to the pages. I'm not sure if a merger is nessecary given the Vincent Van Gogh pages is/has been always been a redirect page. But if the new series titles him as Van then...we shall see. I'll also keep an eye on the VvG article in case of any further user copy/redirecting/edits. Thanks. --Tangerineduel 13:54, January 9, 2010 (UTC)

Vandalism

As yoru probally well aware were having a slight problem with it here at the moment, we can see one is a registered user. Is there anything we can do or is it a case of waiting for it to happen then fixing it ?--Ximodnic 03:33, January 11, 2010 (UTC)

Sadly, unless there is an admin about, there's nothing else that can be done. :(

I would suggest going back to a known "safe" edit revision though each time, and not just removing what you think is the vandalism. -- sulfur 03:35, January 11, 2010 (UTC)

Will do ! -- Ximodnic 03:36, January 11, 2010 (UTC)

Infoboxes + CSS

Looks nice. I will admit I know nothing about CSS and have mostly worked out how to do most of the infobox stuff by trial, copy and error. The 4000 is roughly how many articles use the individual infobox. Your additions seem to work (though how might I get the whole infobox to display on the infobox page in its entirety, as it did before your additions? If that's possible?). Also in the individuals infobox's case, we'd still need to look at all 4000 to check which ones need 'mentions' adding to them, but the method you've implemented means we wouldn't need to add 'mentions' to ever single one of those correct?

If I were to just copy the code from the astronomical infobox into the individual infobox (obviously changing the wording for it) it would work just the same I'm assuming? Many thanks, the 4000 infobox changes wasn't something I was looking forward to doing. Fixing the astronomical infobox was a mindnumbing experience enough. --Tangerineduel 12:13, January 14, 2010 (UTC)

Just making the same changes would do the trick for you. In terms of the CSS, something like the following would (should) do the trick.

It may not be perfect at first crack, but will allow you to make the infoboxen much simpler. (See after the code chunk here).

 table.wiki-sidebar td.sb-both {
	text-align: center;
        border-bottom: 1px solid gray;
        border-top: 1px solid gray;
	padding-left: 0;
	padding-right: 0;
 }

 table.wiki-sidebar td.sb-name {
        text-align: center;
        bgcolor=Mediumpurple;
        border-bottom:0px solid gray;
        font-size:larger;
        color:Lavender;
 }

 table.wiki-sidebar td.sb-both img {
	display:block; /*force new line after img in sidebar */
        bgcolor=white;
	margin: 0;
	padding-left: 0;
	padding-right: 0;
        border-bottom: 1px solid gray;
        border-top: 1px solid gray;
 }

 table.wiki-sidebar td.sb-left {
	width: 33%;
	font-weight: bold;
	text-align: left;
        border-bottom: 1px solid gray;
        border-top: 1px solid gray;
	vertical-align:top;
 }

 table.wiki-sidebar td.sb-right {
        border-bottom: 1px solid gray;
        border-top: 1px solid gray;
 }

So, your infobox code would look more like:

 |-
 {{ #if: {{{Released|}}}|{{!}}class="sb-left"{{!}}Release date:}}
 {{ #if: {{{Released|}}}|{{!}}class="sb-right"{{!}}{{{Released}}}}}
 |-

Or:

 |-{{#if:{{{type|}}}|
 {{!}}class="sb-left"{{!}}Type:
 {{!}}class="sb-right"{{!}}{{{type}}}
 }}
 |-

Much simpler. Putting the whole box on the page is pretty easy too, but best done on the documentation page. Over on MA, we've actually done those up as examples of each. See here for an example.

Let me know if you want any help converting templates or whatever. I have no problem helping out where possible (as you have likely noticed). -- sulfur 14:03, January 14, 2010 (UTC)

Hey, thanks for sorting all the infoboxes out, it's been on my "I should do something about this" list, but I haven't really got around to it. --Tangerineduel 12:59, February 1, 2010 (UTC)

Templates

Thanks for your edit to my templates but I am editing and there is problems with things appearing at the top and it won't go away. Please could you do something about it and when it's done, I'll email you back when you email me. Thanks! Trikster87 16:20 - 28th January 2010

When adding the new "acting" bit, you put a random horizontal break in the wrong place, and didn't close an "#if:" check. I fixed that. -- sulfur 16:24, January 28, 2010 (UTC)

Thanks!

Do you like my new templates! I love 'em! Now I'm going to make a new one about a series and please feel free to contact me whenever you feel like it! Trikster87 - 31st January 2010 16:55

A new series? What series? I'm pretty sure that there's already templates that cover all series. -- sulfur 16:56, January 31, 2010 (UTC)

Std pix width on infoboxen

Okay. I see what you're saying. Your templates at MemAlpha have all been rejigged to 292px with no borders so the true width is 292. Everything here should therefore be that as well. I buy that. Fine. I also think that here, as at MemAlpha, editors shouldn't be given a choice as to width, cause they'll put any old thing in. Moreover this means that if the site needs to change in the future, we change one template, and the whole site obeys. And I had infoboxen 6 months ago that did that. But they were shot down as they were being implemented, by the main admin. In the meantime, it seems like everyone is on the infoboxen bandwagon, but I don't really see that much changing. I'm not sure, at this point, if we're going CSS, as you've been pushing things, or if we're just making modifications to our clunky wiki code, as we've always been doing. If it's CSS, I don't think I as a regular user can get into that, can I? Don't you need to be an admin for that? You're probably closer to the seat of power now than I am, judging by talk page interaction. Have you addressed this point to Tangerineduel? And is there a bot that will help us to convert

[[Image:whatever.jpg|250px]]

into

whatever.jpg

so that we can easily make the conversion? CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 20:10, March 3, 2010 (UTC)

Most bots can do that easily -- I don't have one (can't get it to compile anymore :( ), but it's likely best to do something similar to MA and use a template to create the image calls, so that if the ads change or the widths change down the road, there's only one place that needs to be fixed. I've not mentioned it to TD, but could bring it up there easily. Wouldn't be a problem to do so.

Again, the big issue is the 20k pages that have infoboxen with images :( -- sulfur 20:14, March 3, 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and yes, to fix CSS, you need to be an admin (mediawiki: space). But CSS is a huge pain in the ass, as evidenced by a slew of changes we had to make on MA today to handle a quiet update done by Wikia. The pains of having a dark background. Heh. -- sulfur 20:15, March 3, 2010 (UTC)

So where would I get such a bot? Cause I think some of TD's resistance to making the kind of, for lack of a better phrase, "wholesale paradigm shifts" that we need to make to infoboxen is reasonable. None of us signed up to wiki editing in order to trudge through a thousand pages and make one or two tiny little changes on each page. Most of us just want to write, not, essentially, program. Any clues you could give as to finding and using bots would be much appreciated. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 20:57, March 3, 2010 (UTC)

I see that they've updated the one bot since I last used it, so I'll look into getting that working this weekend actually, and if I can, then I'll approach TD with the proposal on the matter. There are a number of other bots out there, but that was the one I had the most luck with. I'll let you know the progress on things this weekend. -- sulfur 23:56, March 3, 2010 (UTC)

I would like to defend and explain myself somewhat.

The infobox in question was implemented and then the the main user making the push was absent for a time, I went through Central Wiki and asked them about it, just in case there was a conflict of interest (for me).

I also preserved all the work and its history into a new page so it could be worked on without being pushed out into the rest of the site.

There are other admins and I don't want to be seen as the be all and end all of admins (there are other admins who were here before me and still put in appearances). Not that I'm volunteering but a lot of my early work pre-admin (and post) status was doing long tedious edits on all the TV story pages swapping them over from the old infobox to a the TV infobox (which I then went through again and changed to the classicTV inbox, which I've been thinking about tweaking once more; changing year to setting, a minor thing that's been irritating me, the same with the CD inboxes). Hence my somewhat fanaticism about the infoboxes working and being usable to wide range of different users (and my general dislike of the use of arrows in infoboxes).

The infoboxes need to be a balance of relatively idiot proof and simple to use and edit with. (It is hard enough to get new users to skim through the help pages before they edit let alone long infobox explanation pages, I'm not attacking CzechOut's efforts, but getting people to read great swathes when they want to come and edit and get their teeth into it is somewhat tricky and often makes me feel like Sisyphus) Being able to explain to new users easily where they've made a mistake, how to fix it (and why it broke) and things like that can make a big difference.

Central Wiki often rolls out updates designed to improve 'stuff' for the better, some things work, some are less than brilliant (the rich text editor for one), what's to stop their next roll out breaking something integral to the infoboxes.

The other thing I would note is that we've got a much smaller knowledgeable active editor population than MemAlpha, with our source content increasing month to month, so rolling out any big changes should keep this in mind. Also instructions and explanations can really help with intermediate editors/really active or curious editors, I've tried to do this with the Tardis:Current projects pages, just so anyone can step in and understand how the various things work, or be able to look through the histories and see how things change and whatever.

Though I shall also await the proposal of everything (I just kinda wanted to state my case somewhat). --Tangerineduel 14:48, March 4, 2010 (UTC)

As a followup, I've got a bot working now -- doing tests on MA with it at the moment (User:SulfBot fyi). When I get it nicely functional, doing lots of grunt work will (should) become a lot easier. I'll keep you updated on my progress. -- sulfur 14:52, March 4, 2010 (UTC)

Bot configs

Okay, I've taken your suggestion and gone to get this pywikipedia bot. I've got it sort of setup, but have hit a roadblock at login, because, I suppose, the specfics of this particular wiki are not included in the package. I'm gathering that they need to be manually setup. Do you know how I would alter user-config.py and a family for tardis? CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 20:34, March 4, 2010 (UTC)

Well, I've found some sample user-confg.py files for non wikimedia sites, and i've created that and a tardis_family based on those. But I'm still getting nowhere with login. I consistently get the following errors, and wonder if you've ever seen them before. Here's the Traceback resulting from the command python login.py:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "login.py", line 58, in ?
    import re, os, query
  File "/Users/WHEREVER/pywikipedia/query.py", line 28, in ?
    import wikipedia, time
  File "/Users/WHEREVER/pywikipedia/wikipedia.py", line 1182
    for link in disambigpages.linkedPages()
      ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Here's the family file. Don't really know about the language; I modeled this mostly on the mozilla_family.py file, because the instruction files at the site you gave me said Mozilla was a simple, one-language wiki like tardis.

import family

class Family(family.Family):
   def __init__(self):
       family.Family.__init__(self)
       self.name = 'tardis'

       self.langs = {
           'en': 'tardis.wiki.com',
           }

       # Most namespaces are inherited from family.Family.
       self.namespaces[4] = {
           '_default': [u'Tardis', self.namespaces[4]['_default']],
       }
       self.namespaces[5] = {
           '_default': [u'Tardis talk', self.namespaces[5]['default']],
       }

       # A few selected big languages for things that we do not want to loop over
       # all languages. This is only needed by the titletranslate.py module, so
       # if you carefully avoid the options, you could get away without these
       # for another wiki family.
       self.languages_by_size = ['en']
   def hostname(self,code):
       return 'tardis.wikia.com'
   def path(self, code):
       return '/index.php'
   def version(self, code):
       return "1.10.2""

My user-config.py file looks like this:

import os, re, sys (I've also tried it with this line absent)
family = 'tardis'
mylang = 'en' (I've also tried this with mylang absent, and with it set to tardis and defualt)
usernames['tardis']['en'] = 'WHATEVER'  (I've also tried this with u'WHATEVER')
minithrottle = 1
maxthrottle = 4
put_throttle = 4
noisysleep = 2.0

console_encoding = 'utf-8'
use_api_login = True

However, alteration of this file, and indeed the family file, seems to have no effect upon the message I get when I login. I always get the exact same Traceback regardless. Any thoughts? CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 21:42, March 4, 2010 (UTC)

Sorry on the delay in responding, was traveling. Here's a tardis family file that should work for you. Name it "tardis_family.py":

# -*- coding: utf-8  -*-
import family, config

class Family(family.Family):
    def __init__(self):
        family.Family.__init__(self)
        self.name = 'tardis_wikia'

        self.langs = {
            'en':'tardis.wikia.com',
            }

        # Most namespaces are inherited from family.Family.
        self.namespaces[400] = {
            '_default': u'Video',
        }
        self.namespaces[401] = {
            '_default': u'Video talk',
        }
        self.namespaces[500] = {
            '_default': u'User blog',
        }
        self.namespaces[501] = {
            '_default': u'User blog comment',
        }
        self.namespaces[502] = {
            '_default': u'Blog',
        }
        self.namespaces[503] = {
            '_default': u'Blog talk',
        }
        self.namespaces[110] = {
            '_default': u'Forum',
        }
        self.namespaces[111] = {
            '_default': u'Forum talk',
        }
        # A few selected big languages for things that we do not want to loop over
        # all languages. This is only needed by the titletranslate.py module, so
        # if you carefully avoid the options, you could get away without these
        # for another wikimedia family.

        self.languages_by_size = ['en','de']

    def version(self, code):
        return "1.15.2"

    def scriptpath(self, code):
        return ''

The next trick here is to remove your user-config.py file. Do: python login.py and it will prompt you as to which wiki family you want. Find "tardis" in the list (should be somewhere around 30). Follow the directions from there. You'll want to use a different account than your "CzechOut" user though. Just FYI. Let me know if you need any more help -- you can drop me an email if you want too. -- sulfur 22:50, March 4, 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I surely wouldn't have gotten that it was tardis_wikia instead of just tardis. Unfortunately, after following your instructions, I'm still getting the exact same syntax error. According to what I've read, it would seem to indicate that there's something python isn't liking about that "for" command on line 1182 of of wikipedia.py. But I've checked that against error logs on the net, and I can't find any reference to that specific line causing people problems. I've also come across several examples of this section of code, and people seem to be happy with it. I've occasionally seen some examples of for being prefixed by a hash mark, as in # for, but I'm hesitant about editing wikipedia.py. Any other thoughts? CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 23:41, March 4, 2010 (UTC)

No, wait a sec. A hash mark just means "don't compile" doesn't it? So # for would just mean the line isn't parsed. Well, that's not it then. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 00:04, March 5, 2010 (UTC)

Python issues

Oh, I suppose I should point out that if I try to get Python to compile just wikipedia.py — as with python wikipedia.py, I get the syntax error. Whatever's going on at line 1182 is definitely the problem. Is there some possibility I've got the wrong version of Python or something? I"m on Mac OS X.4, and the Python site said their recommendation was to upgrade. I did, to 3.1.1, but when I type python it's still telling me I'm at 2.3.5. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 23:46, March 4, 2010 (UTC)

Hrm... what shell are you using? bash? tcsh? You'll need to figure out where the new python binary is located. The pywikipedia bot requires Python v2.5 at a minimum. -- sulfur 00:06, March 5, 2010 (UTC)

It's bash. And, hmm. It's saying 2.3.5, but I have installed 3.1.1. And I really don't understand why I'm getting 2.3.5 at all, because within the Mac library system (Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions) there are two folders, 2.3 and Current. Which implies that for some reason the non-current version is being used. I have no idea why this is. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 00:46, March 5, 2010 (UTC)

Um, okay, how's this for weird. I installed 2.6.4, and everything worked like a charm. I've got it to go to the login screen. Now oddly I've got two tardises, #30 a 31. Any particular theories about why that'd be? CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 00:54, March 5, 2010 (UTC)

One was yours, one was the one from the text above. Use the one that I gave you, and remove the one you did from before. :) -- sulfur 00:58, March 5, 2010 (UTC)

Okay. Definitely making progress, but not quite there yet. Here's what it gave me after following the prompts:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "login.py", line 406, in <module>
    main()
  File "login.py", line 401, in main
    loginMan = LoginManager(password, sysop = sysop, verbose=verbose)
  File "login.py", line 103, in __init__
    raise wikipedia.NoUsername(u'ERROR: Username for %s:%s is undefined.
\nIf you have an account for that site, please add such a line to user-config.py:\n\nusernames[\'%s\'][\'%s\'] = \'myUsername\'' 
% (self.site.family.name, self.site.lang, self.site.family.name, self.site.lang))
pywikibot.exceptions.NoUsername: ERROR: Username for tardis_wikia:en is undefined.
If you have an account for that site, please add such a line to user-config.py:

usernames['tardis_wikia']['en'] = 'myUsername'

So I took its instruction and pico-ed the user-config.py as it requested. Now I get:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "login.py", line 58, in <module>
    import re, os, query
  File "/Users/WE/pywikipedia/query.py", line 28, in <module>
    import wikipedia, time
  File "/Users/WE/pywikipedia/wikipedia.py", line 143, in <module>
    from pywikibot import *
  File "/Users/WE/pywikipedia/pywikibot/__init__.py", line 14, in <module>
    from exceptions import *
  File "/Users/WE/pywikipedia/pywikibot/exceptions.py", line 13, in <module>
    import config
  File "/Users/WE/pywikipedia/config.py", line 487, in <module>
    execfile(_filename)
  File "/Users/WE/pywikipedia/user-config.py", line 15, in <module>
    usernames['tardis_wikia']['en'] = 'CzechBot'
KeyError: 'tardis_wikia'

How do we go from here? Do I need to be logged into User:CzechBot through the normal web browser interface here, first? CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 01:19, March 5, 2010 (UTC)

You don't need to be logged in. You need a "u" before the username, such as:

usernames['tardis_wikia']['en'] = u'CzechBot'

That works for me. With my userid (obviously) instead of yours. -- sulfur 01:28, March 5, 2010 (UTC)

I should've mentioned I tried that before. It gives me the same error as above, only this time adding the "u": So, truncating a bit:

  File "/Users/WE/pywikipedia/user-config.py", line 15, in <module>
    usernames['tardis_wikia']['en'] = u'CzechBot'
KeyError:'tardis_wikia'

CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 01:40, March 5, 2010 (UTC)

Ok, let's see your user-config file again? -- sulfur 01:42, March 5, 2010 (UTC)

Okay, this thing's huge now, cause it was automatically generated and has a lot of explanatory text.

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

# This is an automatically generated file. You can find more configuration parameters in 'config.py' file.

# The family of sites we are working on. wikipedia.py will import
# families/xxx_family.py so if you want to change this variable,
# you need to write such a file.
family = 'tardis'

# The language code of the site we're working on.
mylang = 'en'

# The dictionary usernames should contain a username for each site where you
# have a bot account.
usernames['tardis_wikia']['en'] = u'CzechBot'

############## LOGFILE SETTINGS ##############

# Defines for which scripts a logfile should be enabled. Logfiles will be
# saved in the 'logs' subdirectory.
# Example:
# log = ['interwiki', 'weblinkchecker', 'table2wiki']
# It is also possible to enable logging for all scripts, using this line:
# log = ['*']
# To disable all logging, use this:
# log = []
# Per default, logging of interwiki.py is enabled because its logfiles can
# be used to generate so-called warnfiles.
# This setting can be overridden by the -log or -nolog command-line arguments.
log = ['interwiki']

############## INTERWIKI SETTINGS ##############

# Should interwiki.py report warnings for missing links between foreign
# languages?
interwiki_backlink = True

# Should interwiki.py display every new link it discovers?
interwiki_shownew = True

# Should interwiki.py output a graph PNG file on conflicts?
# You need pydot for this: http://dkbza.org/pydot.html
interwiki_graph = False

# Specifies that the robot should process that amount of subjects at a time,
# only starting to load new pages in the original language when the total
# falls below that number. Default is to process (at least) 100 subjects at
# once.
interwiki_min_subjects = 100

# If interwiki graphs are enabled, which format(s) should be used?
# Supported formats include png, jpg, ps, and svg. See:
# http://www.graphviz.org/doc/info/output.html
# If you want to also dump the dot files, you can use this in your
# user-config.py:
# interwiki_graph_formats = ['dot', 'png']
# If you need a PNG image with an HTML image map, use this:
# interwiki_graph_formats = ['png', 'cmap']
# If you only need SVG images, use:
# interwiki_graph_formats = ['svg']
interwiki_graph_formats = ['png']

# You can post the contents of your autonomous_problems.dat to the wiki,
# e.g. to http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Interwiki-Konflikte .
# This allows others to assist you in resolving interwiki problems.
# To help these people, you can upload the interwiki graphs to your
# webspace somewhere. Set the base URL here, e.g.:
# 'http://www.example.org/~yourname/interwiki-graphs/'
interwiki_graph_url = None

# Save file with local articles without interwikis.
without_interwiki = False

# Experimental feature:
# Store the page contents on disk (/cache/ directory) instead of loading
# them in RAM.
interwiki_contents_on_disk = False

############## SOLVE_DISAMBIGUATION SETTINGS ############
#
# Set disambiguation_comment[FAMILY][LANG] to a non-empty string to override
# the default edit comment for the solve_disambiguation bot.
# Use %s to represent the name of the disambiguation page being treated.
# Example:
#
# disambiguation_comment['wikipedia']['en'] = \
# "Robot-assisted disambiguation ([[WP:DPL|you can help!]]): %s"

sort_ignore_case = False

############## IMAGE RELATED SETTINGS ##############
# If you set this to True, images will be uploaded to Wikimedia
# Commons by default.
upload_to_commons = False

############## TABLE CONVERSION BOT SETTINGS ##############

# will split long paragraphs for better reading the source.
# only table2wiki.py use it by now
splitLongParagraphs = False
# sometimes HTML-tables are indented for better reading.
# That can do very ugly results.
deIndentTables = True
# table2wiki.py works quite stable, so you might switch to True
table2wikiAskOnlyWarnings = True
table2wikiSkipWarnings = False

############## WEBLINK CHECKER SETTINGS ##############

# How many external links should weblinkchecker.py check at the same time?
# If you have a fast connection, you might want to increase this number so
# that slow servers won't slow you down.
max_external_links = 50

report_dead_links_on_talk = False

############## DATABASE SETTINGS ##############
db_hostname = 'localhost'
db_username = 'wikiuser'
db_password = ''

############## SEARCH ENGINE SETTINGS ##############

# Some scripts allow querying Google via the Google Web API. To use this feature,
# you must install the pyGoogle module from http://pygoogle.sf.net/ and have a
# Google Web API license key. Note that Google doesn't give out license keys
# anymore.
# --------------------
# Google web API is obsoleted for long time, now we can use Google AJAX Search API,
# You can signup an API key from http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxsearch/signup.html.
google_key = ''

# using Google AJAX Search API, it require the refer website, this variable save the refer web address
# when you sign up the Key.
google_api_refer = ''

# Some scripts allow using the Yahoo! Search Web Services. To use this feature,
# you must install the pYsearch module from http://pysearch.sourceforge.net/
# and get a Yahoo AppID from http://developer.yahoo.com
yahoo_appid = ''

# To use Windows Live Search web service you must get an AppID from
# http://search.msn.com/developer
msn_appid = ''

# Using the Flickr api
flickr = {
'api_key': None, # Provide your key!
'review': False, # Do we use automatically make our uploads reviewed?
'reviewer': None, # If so, under what reviewer name?
}

# for all connection proxy handle
# to use it, proxy['host'] have to support HTTP and include port number (e.g. localhost:8080)
# if proxy server neen authentication, set ('ID', 'PASSWORD') to proxy['auth'].
proxy = {
'host': None,
'auth': None,
}

############## COPYRIGHT SETTINGS ##############

# Enable/disable search engine in copyright.py script
copyright_google = True
copyright_yahoo = True
copyright_msn = False

# Perform a deep check, loading URLs to search if 'Wikipedia' is present.
# This may be useful to improve number of correct results. If you haven't
# a fast connection, you might want to keep they disabled.
copyright_check_in_source_google = False
copyright_check_in_source_yahoo = False
copyright_check_in_source_msn = False

# Web pages may content a Wikipedia text without 'Wikipedia' word but with
# typical '[edit]' tag result of copy & paste procedure. You can want no
# report for this kind of URLs, even if they are copyright violation.
# However, when enabled these URLs are logged in a file.

copyright_check_in_source_section_names = False

# Limit number of queries for page.
copyright_max_query_for_page = 25

# Skip a specified number of queries
copyright_skip_query = 0

# Number of attempts on connection error.
copyright_connection_tries = 10

# Behavior if an exceeded error occur.
#
# Possibilities:
#
# 0 = None
# 1 = Disable search engine
# 2 = Sleep (default)
# 3 = Stop

copyright_exceeded_in_queries = 2
copyright_exceeded_in_queries_sleep_hours = 6

# Append last modified date of URL to script result
copyright_show_date = True

# Append length of URL to script result
copyright_show_length = True

# By default the script try to identify and skip text that contents a wide
# comma separated list or only numbers. But sometimes that might be the
# only part unmodified of a slightly edited and not otherwise reported
# copyright violation. You can disable this feature to try to increase
# number of results.
copyright_economize_query = True

############## FURTHER SETTINGS ##############

# The bot can make some additional changes to each page it edits, e.g. fix
# whitespace or positioning of interwiki and category links.

# This is an experimental feature; handle with care and consider re-checking
# each bot edit if enabling this!
cosmetic_changes = False

# If cosmetic changes are switched on, and you also have several accounts at
# projects where you're not familiar with the local conventions, you probably
# only want the bot to do cosmetic changes on your "home" wiki which you
# specified in config.mylang and config.family.
# If you want the bot to also do cosmetic changes when editing a page on a
# foreign wiki, set cosmetic_changes_mylang_only to False, but be careful!
cosmetic_changes_mylang_only = True
# The dictionary cosmetic_changes_enable should contain a tuple of languages
# for each site where you wish to enable in addition to your own langlanguage
# (if cosmetic_changes_mylang_only is set)
# Please set your dictionary by adding such lines to your user-config.py:
# cosmetic_changes_enable['wikipedia'] = ('de', 'en', 'fr')
cosmetic_changes_enable = {}
# The dictionary cosmetic_changes_disable should contain a tuple of languages
# for each site where you wish to disable cosmetic changes. You may use it with
# cosmetic_changes_mylang_only is False, but you can also disable your own
# language. This also overrides the settings in the cosmetic_changes_enable
# dictionary. Please set your dict by adding such lines to your user-config.py:
# cosmetic_changes_disable['wikipedia'] = ('de', 'en', 'fr')
cosmetic_changes_disable = {}
# Use the experimental disk cache to prevent huge memory usage
use_diskcache = False

# Retry loading a page on failure (back off 1 minute, 2 minutes, 4 minutes
# up to 30 minutes)
retry_on_fail = True

# End of configuration section

CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 01:53, March 5, 2010 (UTC)

Here's your problem:

family = 'tardis'
usernames['tardis_wikia']['en'] = u'CzechBot'

Both should be "tardis_wikia". -- sulfur 01:55, March 5, 2010 (UTC)

That's true. But also, the name of the family file needed to be tardis_wikia_family.py. Okay so I was able to log in, but it dumped me back out to a normal bash prompt. Is that normal? CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 02:04, March 5, 2010 (UTC)

Yup, the family files end a certain way, and yes. You should get the prompt back. You then use the various scripts to do magic on the wiki. :) -- sulfur 02:10, March 5, 2010 (UTC)

Wow. This is amazing. Just moved a whole raft of categories. Thank you so much. I noticed a little thingie that said I might consider getting User:CzechBot registered as a bot so that its edits don't flood the recent edits. Good idea? Necessary idea? And who do i go to for that? TD? CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 02:19, March 5, 2010 (UTC)

Check out the MA Bot page. There's also a request example on the talk page at the bottom. In short, you need to identify it properly, and get consensus to add the bot flag. -- sulfur 02:25, March 5, 2010 (UTC)

Back to std pix sizes

Okay, back to what we were originally talking about. The ol' 292. IF you have a page with an infobox, I get how to build for precisely 292px width, cause I can define the width of the infobox, if any, and do the subtraction, if necessary. Personally, I'm hoping for borderless pics like at MemAlpha, but who knows what design might eventually get settled.

What, though, of pages that use an infobox-less picture? Am I right in calculating that a thumbnail frame is 10px? Thus, if you use the thumb parameter, you'd have to set your px width to 282px? Or does thumb|292px automatically resize the pic to 282 for you? I'd probably know this answer right off the top of my head if I weren't sleepy, but I just wanna make sure I'm getting the math right here. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 09:18, March 5, 2010 (UTC)

First off, the best way to do that width thing is by creating a template that the infoboxen use, check out the "sidebar image" template over on Memory Alpha. Now, the one used there is actually far more complicated than it needs to be. I would suggest actually creating a temporary sidebar template (in your user space), an image one, and playing around with it until you get the sizes correct. I seem to (vaguely) recall that we discovered that the border on "thumb" was 6px (3px on either side), but it's been such a long time, that I'm actually terribly unclear on that. Heh.

But when you're using pictures with no infobox, I would honestly just suggest using "thumb" without defining a px size. In other words, in those cases, just let the cards fall where they may. --

Note on my user page

Sorry, can I give you the reason why I did it. I didn't like the name 'Maker', so I decided to change it. Anyway, I think the Infobox Crew is better. Trikster87, 21:24, 6th March, 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't matter why you chose to do it. You should have used the "MOVE" command. -- sulfur 00:09, March 7, 2010 (UTC)

Main page madness

Hey, I wonder if you might be able to help me on another matter. I'm driving myself batty trying to switch over our main page to a new design, the basic philosophy of which is used by MemAlpha, Futurama wiki, and others. You know the drill, no doubt. Instead of putting the actual content on the main page itself, you create a template for each and every section, then populate the main page with a series of calls to those templates. This makes it then easier to switch out the sections by just changing the contents of an individual section, rather than hunting through a massive stream of code. And it works, almost. But there's this tiny li'l glitch that I simply cannot figure out. If you look at Doctor Who Wiki, it's pushing the three li'l ads at the bottom of the page down over the Wikia links at the bottom of the page. And what I've been able to figure out is that this behavior is somehow a function of the interaction between the column formatting and the wikia ads. If I put the templates for the left and right columns in a column structure like:

{|
|| {{template}} {{template}} {{template}}
|}

then it pushes those ads at the bottom down to an undesirable location. If I don't put 'em into a column structure, and just type:

{{template}}
{{template}}
{{template}}

then the right column is pushed underneath the left column. So it's a choice between neat little columns that play well with the ads at the top of the page (but not the bottom ones), or columns that don't play with each other.

I've thought that maybe it was something to do with the individual templates. But this was disproven by using fewer templates. Generally, the design will totally work if I only use three templates in the left column. But when I add that fourth template, I get the same undesirable behavior. And I've tried various combinations of templates to see if it was a particular template causing the error. But, no, all the templates will cause the behavior if I use "too many" of them. And some of the templates are very simple indeed, containing absolutely no formatting. So it's not an interaction of code within a template with the larger code of the whole main page.

I'll be damned if I can figure it out. But I do note that MemAlpha's "Panel" templates make reference to div class="panel". Clearly, that's a special CSS class that you guys have created at MemAlpha, and I can't just call it here. Do you happen to know what the coding of that class is? And would you be willing to take a look at my code as it currently exists on the front page to see if you can see some little trick I'm missing? I really don't understand what's going wrong on the page that's forcing the warping the flow of the page after the end of the right column.

Thanks for any help you can provide. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 02:05, March 10, 2010 (UTC)

I'll take a look at it in the morning, but chances are very high that we'll need to add some CSS to make it work properly. -- sulfur 03:36, March 10, 2010 (UTC)

This issue was resolved with a little help from the guys at Central wiki. I had forgotten to close a <div> tag on the template I used to create the headlines. THanks for any time you took to examine the problem! CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 00:14, March 15, 2010 (UTC)

Deleting a line of text with a bot

Hey, you wouldn't know how to use the bot to delete an entire line of text that begins with a particular string, would you? Like, for intance, if a line began with an html tag, is there a way to construct a regular expression that says, "Delete the line that begins with '<'?" Or for that matter, how would you delete every word that began with a "c" but ended with an "e". Been pouring over regular expression tutorials for a bit now, and I can't seem to find anything that is python-based that I can use to give me all the characters between two endpoints. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 17:17, March 27, 2010 (UTC)

You'll want something like (for example):

replace "<html stuff>.*</html stuff" ""

".*" is zero or more of any character.

-- sulfur 00:24, March 28, 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for this, btw. Now if I can only get my bot to login again, we'll be in business. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 19:19, April 22, 2010 (UTC)

Post signing

No problem, will keep that in mind for future reference. Btw, it's fine to leave messages for either wiki on my talk page on the DWCW; I use that one more often. Tardis1963 11:52, April 8, 2010 (UTC)

I prefer to leave messages on the wiki that they pertain to. :) -- sulfur 12:25, April 8, 2010 (UTC)

Image: to File:

I note on memoryalpha:Memory Alpha:Bots, you say that you're using your bot to switch from Image: to File: namespaces. Why? what's the difference between [[Image:pic.jpg]] and [[File:pic.jpg]]? CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 17:27, April 19, 2010 (UTC)

The "Image" namespace no longer exists and redirects to the "File" namespace. We discovered on MA (and MB) that files linked with "Image:" did not always show up on the "what links here" or the list of locations used on the bottom of the file page itself, unless the page with the link was updated manually. If the image was linked with "File:", it always showed up, no matter what. Thus the change from one to t'other. -- sulfur 17:33, April 19, 2010 (UTC)

Bot login problems

I've got another bot problem for which I could really use your help. I've been completely unable to login my bot, because an insoluble CAPTCHA has suddenly started to appear. I'll give my password and then this li'l CAPTCHA is generated in a window. It's a really short English word and I can see what I'm typing, so I know I'm not spelling it wrong. But I always get an error saying I've failed to provide the right CAPTCHA. I asked TD if he'd changed anything, and he said no, then directed me to Central. I submitted a report through Special:Contact, and Uberfuzzy|Uberfuzzy wrote back with this fairly cryptic response:

The problem is not with the captcha system. There was an emergency update to MediaWiki that was quickly applied by Wikia. This change went live last wednesday. It affects the way that automation programs login to wikis. You will need contact to who maintains your software for an update. That wiki has 4 admins that have been active in the last 24 hours, 2 of which are bureaucrats.

So he basically dumped me back to TD, but I have no idea what software he's talking about that needs an update. I've updated pywikipedia to the latest version through SVN, but that's made no difference. It's something on the server side. Have you experienced this at MemAlpha? Do you know what needs to be updated here? I'm not quite understanding how, if they did an emergency update to MW, why we need to do a further update. Why give a "half-update"? Any help you can give will be, as always, greatly appreciated. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 19:18, April 22, 2010 (UTC)

Never mind. I updated my software yet again, and it liked this newest version better. Dunno why. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 20

16, April 22, 2010 (UTC)

Hiding Forum:talk

Thanks. I've added it, though not seeing any affect, even after refresh / trialling in different browser, but I'll give it a bit of time with this one. Thanks. --Tangerineduel 14:04, August 6, 2010 (UTC)

I'm glad you noticed it! (Not sure I would've). Though...still not working, but I'll give it 24 hours or something to see if it's going to do anything. --Tangerineduel 14:14, August 6, 2010 (UTC)

Added to that also, still no change though. --Tangerineduel 15:16, August 6, 2010 (UTC)

It appears that something in the software is ignoring the "homegrown" CSS files, and I'm not at all sure what that might be. I'll poke about a bit more, and maybe be able to figure something out. I'll let you know if (when?) I do. :) -- sulfur 15:29, August 6, 2010 (UTC)

Tense Revision

It is incorrect to put the whole sonic screwdriver section in the past tense as the doctor still currently uses it, only past models and events should be put in the past tense. All uses of it should be in the present tence as the sonic screwdriver can still do all those things, newer models don't lose the old one's functions.

Please sign your posts.
Please read this here. It points out that everything should be in past tense. That includes stuff in the current episodes and series.

If that's not the case, then perhaps the Manual of Style should be updated. -- sulfur 01:39, September 26, 2010 (UTC)

Discussion in Forums

Could I ask you to leave your thoughts on the discussion on speculation in forum here?. Thanks. Mini-mitch 21:22, January 31, 2011 (UTC)

CSS: mouseovers

Sorry for not responding to you earlier. I thought I had, but apparently my push of "publish" didn't quite take. I did want to say thanks very much for your observations about my intermediate revisions to the CSS. You were of course quite correct about undesirability of a mouseover fundamentally altering the text style. As per your helpful suggestion, mouseovers produce a more helpful (and subtle!) color shift. If you see any other boneheaded things I'm doing along the way, please pipe up again. Your suggestions are always welcome.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  16:38:00 Wed 02 Mar 2011

Recent/related changes

Thanks for the heads up on recent changes. I never check that report, so I'd likely have never noticed it. I forgot that it was a giant table, so naturally a recent rule I made about tables affected it. Should be okay now. As always, let me know if you see me doing silly things with CSS. :)
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  17:26:22 Sat 19 Mar 2011

Regex to strip image linkage in infoboxen

Hey, I've been puzzlin' over this today and I can't quite figure it out. If we have

image=[[image:pic.jpg|250px]]

in an infobox, how can we make it so that that it becomes

image=pic.jpg

I've worked it out so that I get

image=pic.jpg|250px]]

by using

-regex 'image( *)=( *)\[\[([Ii]mage:)' 'image='

and that's good enough, in a way, cause the |250px]] bit just gets ignored by infoboxen code, apparently. But I'd love to find a way to get rid of the back end, if possible.

Got any ideas? And while I'm asking, is there any way to write a regex that will look for 'image:' or 'file:'? Or is a double bot run inevitable/easier?
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  02:38:39 Sun 03 Apr 2011

Try something like this perhaps:

-regex 'image *= *\[\[[Ii]mage:(.*)\|.+px]]' 'image=\1'

That may not be perfect first time around, but should to the trick I think maybe. -- sulfur 16:25, April 3, 2011 (UTC)

Wow, don't know how I missed that, but yah, it totally works. Thanks :)
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  16:09:27 Sun 22 May 2011

Mac specific issues with wikia skin

Hey, you're a fellow Mac user, right? Have you ever heard of any Mac-specific problems with javascript specifically targeted at the wikia skin? I'e been working with w:c:dev:User:Porter21 because my implementation of w:c:dev:ArchiveTool/code.js doesn't work for either Safari or (the latest version 3 of) Firefox, on Macs, while in the Wikia skin. (It works fine in Monobook.) Now I'm running a slightly older Mac, with 10.4, so maybe it's a 10.4 issue. I'm gonna assume that maybe you're on a version slightly ahead of me. So could you maybe go to a talk page here on the wiki and see if an option namdd "Archive" appears under the Edit dropdown? Actually, you don't have to go anywhere. It should be appearing on this very page's Edit/Leave message dropdown.

If you do see it, could you please tell me what versions of OS X/Safari/Firefox/your browser you're using?

If you don't see it, either, can you think of anything you've ever heard about Mac interactions with javascript in wikia/oasis being different from Windows interactions? Like, are there syntactical expressions in javascript tat just don't work on a Mac? Porter21 and I have examined Firefox' error console, and it's not currently producing error messages, so it's not working, but it's not producign an error.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  16:09:27 Sun 22 May 2011

Using FF4 on OSX10.6+ shows the "archive" option. I don't know of anything that would conflict, except maybe the version of Java right at the bottom of the stack. I don't know what version runs on 10.4 offhand, but that might cause it too. Mind you, I see 'archive' in the list twice. I also see it on the version of Safari that I've got running (v5.05) also shows 'archive' twice in the list. -- sulfur 17:05, May 22, 2011 (UTC)

Range block

Hey, 69.22.179.103 is vandalising, get blocked and then returns under a new ip. The word on the grape vine is that your the one to stamp this out. Could you take a look? Thanks--Skittles the hog - talk 20:25, October 1, 2011 (UTC)

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