User talk:ZachPruckowski

New Signature test: ZachPruckowski (Speak to me) 13:27, 27 February 2007 (CST)

Hi Zach, sorry, I screwed up the template. It shouldn't say "CZ:____ Editors". It should say "Category:____ Editors". The group should obviously be self-constructing in this way. --Larry Sanger 21:44, 19 November 2006 (CST)

Hi Zach, i was looking at the code for the template:Editor list and two things don't seem to work correctly. For biology, and apparently there is a similar problem for the other fields, the link written as [[:Category:{{{Field}}}_Authors|here]] actually links to CZ:Biology Authors rather than the category. Even stranger is that the link written as [[:Category:{{{Field}}}_Workgroup|list of articles]] does not show up at all. As you noticed i created the category:Biology Workgroup to determine if the absense of the category was the problem. However, this did not solve the problem. Is the problem due to CZ not catching up? Since these problems seem to reflect the original editor template you wrote rather than the most recent version. If so, is the CZ server alwasy so slow in updating templates? Chris Day (Talk) 23:27, 19 November 2006 (CST)

You might have to make some sort of inconsequential edit (e.g., add a space that won't do anything) in order to get a page (or template) to display correctly. --Larry Sanger 23:30, 19 November 2006 (CST)

You're right, after I edit one of the pages I see the most recent version of the template. Chris Day (Talk) 23:46, 19 November 2006 (CST)

Hi Zach, just looked on some profiles and recognized that the link to your facebook site (whatever this is *g*) isn't reachable... :) --Simon Koelsch 18:08, 30 November 2006 (CST)

• See this category--Versuri 12:55, 4 December 2006 (CST)

• Hello, Zach! I have worked on the blog article. Can you have a look at it ? --Jérôme Delacroix 12:15, 21 April 2007 (Paris, France)

Markup

I have noticed that ² gives a superscript 2 which works OK, but <sup>2<sup> then disturbs the next bit of text.Mark Rust

Images

I have noticed that "png" files which are commonly used at wikipedia do not work here when I try to upload one. But my jpg files work OK. Please could you tell me if png is supported here or not. Merry Christmas.Mark Rust

Thanks for the replys about the difference in the markup between the this wiki and wikipedia, I am not trying to moan and complain, I have just been trying to let you know about possible bugs at an early stage. I think that you should keep up the good work. By the way what are the rules at this wiki on the subject of fair use images ? Mark Rust

Approval

Hello Zach. I noticed that you have been active in the ToApprove template process and placement and it seems that you have a good handle on the process. Is there any chance that you can help with Approving the Chiropractic article? You are probably aware that Larry is out of town and asked that we work this out on our own. Are you qualified to Approve an article. We have the three editors in agreement and there has been no activity since 12/23/06. The constables on th constable list do not seem active. --Matt Innis (Talk) 09:44, 28 December 2006 (CST)

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction! User:Sarah Tuttle jumped right on it like you said and within the hour we were Approved! Hope you don't mind if I stop by occasionally to ask questions. --Matt Innis (Talk) 23:47, 29 December 2006 (CST)

Software to compare drafts with approved article? CZ with WP?

This would be useful. There is a lot of red tape on getting a minor 1 sentence edit, reference (anything) added to approved articles and this type of thing might speed up the process. -Tom Kelly (Talk) 20:46, 12 January 2007 (CST)

Templates

Is there a Template:WP or something like that for use on articles imported from Wikipedia. I am going to bring over about 15-20 articles from WP which I basically wrote and tidy up the loose ends for approval. I need a template indicating and referencing the source.

In some cases, where I wrote 98% of the article, I could just take only the stuff I wrote, but in others, there have been significant WP additions and they hvae to be credited under the terms of the GFDL. James F. Perry 11:07, 25 January 2007 (CST)

Here is some code (you'll have to call up the edit page to see the actual code) for a Wikipedia credit. To use it (assuming it is saved as Template:WP, you would type "WP|name of article" (in double curly brackets, I think - be sure to test it).

http://www.citizendium.org/images/Smallwikipedialogo.png

This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at {{{1}}}. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Citizendium, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.

I use this on the Highland Games wikia for articles imported from WP. To see what it looks like in actual use with the logo, see http://highlandgames.wikia.com/wiki/Vestiarium_Scoticum . James F. Perry 17:33, 25 January 2007 (CST)

Couple of questions

Hi Zach, I messed around with the main template so it could be used to include multiple references. i hope that is OK. However, in the process i destroyed the capability to pipelink the article name. Is there a strong reason for why you set it up that way? I could recode it to incorporate that feature if you think it is important.

Another issue is what is the status of our image code? Can we resize jpg pictures yet, or soon? It used to be that gifs could be resized but jpgs and png's could not. Chris Day (Talk) 12:18, 25 January 2007 (CST)

Too fast

You did ask for a delete, so I responded with a delete - after the jerks vandalized tonight

sorry, I was too fast with it. Robert Tito 22:52, 30 January 2007 (CST)

speedydelete? NO

please use a different name, since THAT was the template they tried to use. hence my speedy-deletion. Robert Tito 22:56, 30 January 2007 (CST) It seems one Shanya beat me to it every page, saving it before I could safe the page - so I found the template. I told her, thanks for the confusion. And asked her to give a small message if you see people are busy with it - so you might not been seen as a vandal yourself. Robert Tito 23:48, 30 January 2007 (CST)

darn

I wanted to delete :) Robert Tito 23:49, 30 January 2007 (CST) Yes the dropper-name is very handy Where can I find the code for this template? as the template just is "empty" (void is better. Robert Tito 00:23, 31 January 2007 (CST)

Good nightRobert Tito 01:04, 31 January 2007 (CST)

it seems you got the name-issue sorted Robert Tito 12:20, 31 January 2007 (CST)

W in the history logs

[1]

I discovered what W in the history log means. It seems to be done automatically when you call on special WP (command) I used some code (including a command) specifying small references and 2 columns from WP RNA interference article and the W appeared. David Tribe 01:43, 31 January 2007 (CST)

On second thoughts the W appeared when I un-commented Chris days pix montage code in Biology/Draft Two log entries earlier see log series at Biology /Draft David Tribe 01:57, 31 January 2007 (CST)

HIGHER?

doh! talk about an understatement: INSANE you mean. oh well - it was managed with us all. I just have had more fun with the so-called vandal kids. :) Did my description how to fast-recover their brain dead simple actions was any help? Just make sure ONLY ONE is doing the REVERT actions, not more. Else the mess is overwhelming. Robert Tito | Talk 14:49, 14 February 2007 (CST)

Yes we must work in teams. A lot of time has been wasted so far cleaning up the mess left after emergencies, which were understandable given that we had never trained for them. As far as my move block, Im at the moment locking key currently edited articles, articles and prominent active users and those articles worked on by prominent editors and authors, and those recently attacked. These are the likely targets. Yes locking against moves should, until we get better trained or have better tools, should be a default. But if we follow Roberts advice and all think through where the mess is being left, eventually locking moves may not be needed. But its helped many key article the last 48 hours. An easier way: better anti-vandal protect software thats coming. David Tribe 15:07, 14 February 2007 (CST)

only ONE slashdot

Is Wikipedia Failing? CmdrTaco Today, 02:43 PM thats it One small mention in a 4 page piece, pfffffffffffffffffff

so much has changed; could use your help

Zach, so much has changed with the Workgroups and recent changes. http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,539.0.html Also, it might be useful to check out my contribs history to see some of the conversations with Chris, David, etc. It is a million times better, but Chris is stuck on trying to make the new system even better and he thinks we need developer intervention. If you ever want to talk about how I envision some cool features on the website side of CZ, let me know. I'm busy for all of next week until friday but then could talk late friday night of next week. -Tom Kelly (Talk) 01:14, 16 February 2007 (CST)

getting vandalized

can you stop this vandal?

How do I undo his move of my user page? -Tom Kelly (Talk) 01:38, 16 February 2007 (CST)

Do I go here and remove the redirect? http://pilot.citizendium.org/wiki?title=User:Thomas_E_Kelly&redirect=no or will that delete my history? -Tom Kelly (Talk) 01:39, 16 February 2007 (CST)

You need to get you page deleted before the move can be done, but we know where your history is, See David Tribes talk page. Chris Day (Talk) 01:40, 16 February 2007 (CST)

Thanks for the welcome

So glad to be back! Nancy

==Server==

Zach, does Server imply: Workstation, Desktop, Laptop, Notepad, Client, Main Frame, Super Computing, Collaborative computing? Robert Tito | Talk 14:43, 20 February 2007 (CST)

dual-channel

memory seems the most appropriate name, since DDR2 RAMS, and FB RAM also are memory-units, flash is used as memory, so memory. Robert Tito | Talk 15:10, 20 February 2007 (CST) How about a redirect to graphical, they all wind up at the same page then Robert Tito | Talk 18:01, 20 February 2007 (CST)

Thanks.

I've begun to flesh out the All-in-One PC's page, if you could find a reference for the line stating that iMacs use laptop CPUs, that would be of great help. - Derek Anderson ~~~ or ~~~~ signs your remark. Try this link and you see everything. Robert Tito | Talk 17:11, 27 February 2007 (CST)

It works

It even is live in Oz Zach David Tribe 21:42, 21 March 2007 (CDT)

you'll notice, however, that if you check the logs for Talk:Main_Page, I was doing some editing before my parents were born (check this diff). -- ZachPruckowski (Speak to me) 21:48, 21 March 2007 (CDT)

Javascript Tools

The only outstanding issue with the anti-vandal script seems to be that non-admin rollback does not work (probably due the missing query.php extension). The navigation popups script - a requirement for the anti-vandal script - isn't displaying any text previews, however (this shouldn't require any extensions according to the documentation). --Nicholas Kaye-Smith 23:25, 22 March 2007 (CDT)

Wheat

Hey Zach, I just approved the Wheat ver 1.1 and also noticed the dislaimer still at the top of the page. Is that supposed to be there and if not, how do I get it off? --Matt Innis (Talk) 06:34, 23 March 2007 (CDT)

Fixing Life

Thanks, Zachary. I believe I can work with the version you replaced. Too late tonight to check thoroughly, but will in a.m. and get back to you. I understand your explanation. --Anthony.Sebastian (Talk) 22:37, 24 March 2007 (CDT)

Dual-channel memory page for deletion?

During cleanup activities I came across Dual-channel_memory, which looks to me like a candidate for deletion (it's an unlinked orphan from Wikipedia--just deleting stuff does not qualify it to be kept). Do you have a pressing interest in preventing it from being deleted? Since nothing is linking to it, I would just delete it for now until it is needed someday, and then we can create it if the Wikipedia version is no good or there is no other external website to reference instead. But I am afraid to delete it without asking you first. If you do want to keep it, I'd mark that prominently at the top of the Discussion page, along with the reason.Pat Palmer 22:34, 9 April 2007 (CDT)

Talk page history

Any idea why Nancy's talk page history has multiple (maybe a hundred) entries all on 13 April? If this is a glitch in the CZ software it could be a real problem. Chris Day (talk) 12:27, 16 April 2007 (CDT)

Dead link article

Zach, your name shows up in the history of the Dead_link article. Since nothing links to it, and I can't really see why we have it right now, I'm thinking of marking it for delete. If you have a reason to keep it here, let me know on my talk page. It seems we have many more urgent articles to maintain and work on at the moment. I'd like to get rid of any unused orphans.Pat Palmer 22:08, 13 May 2007 (CDT)

exams

Hey Zach, hope your finals are going well. When you have time to get back to action here, I have a request. Can you look at the {{ApprovedGallery}} template that I wrote. I can get the {{SUBPAGENAME}} to work in talkspace but not on the gallery subpage of the article. See example test pages at Life/Gallery and Talk:Life/Gallery. Do you know how to fix this problem? Chris Day (talk) 18:03, 14 May 2007 (CDT)

IP blocked

Hey Zach, this guy emailed the constables stating that he tried to contribute but his IP was identified as being malicious. Can you find anything out? If not, any ideas where I should send this one? --Matt Innis (Talk) 19:55, 16 May 2007 (CDT)

Your message on CZ forum

Hello Zachary, I saw your message on the CZ forum regarding the use of real name and adding a link to my user page. I was wondering if there is a way I can avoid this, I would like to keep my CZ activities private on CZ only but I've noticed that the forums are crawled and indexed by Google. Thus if I use my real name, my postings will be listed in search results for my name (this happened last week after my first post). I am a genuine CZ user and have no other reservation for using my real name other than for my privacy. Please let me know if you can think of any win-win solutions for this. Thanks.Hendra I. Nurdin 06:35, 12 September 2007 (CDT)

Bot block

That's no problem at all. Let me know when you're finished. -- Jitse Niesen 21:54, 26 September 2007 (CDT)

magic words

I have seen some strange things wth magic words. For example, {{BASEPAGENAME}} sometimes seen as BASEPAGENAME or similar. This is part of the lag too? Chris Day (talk) 22:44, 2 October 2007 (CDT)

There's no reason the lag should be having any effect on something like that. Can you point to the template or revision you're talking about? I'm kind of confused. Are you saying that the magic word is simply not doing what it's supposed to be doing? Is there some sort of weird situation like the base page not actually existing or something? --ZachPruckowski (Speak to me) 23:00, 2 October 2007 (CDT)

I had a theory I developed a while back but it never made it to the subpages template. I think I mentioned to Chris that we needed a new "magic word" to refer to the /PAGENAME from the URL so that we didn't have to rely on the TEMPLATE.. er... template to create the subpages. No existing variable in the mediawiki software would refer to the subdirectories in the url that we wanted. --Robert W King 23:03, 2 October 2007 (CDT)

Hi Zach, i just sent you some screen shots of the problem You might be able to still see it if you look at Test article/Catalogs which works as expected, however, magic words don't seem to work on Test article/Catalogs/USA. Chris Day (talk) 23:55, 2 October 2007 (CDT)

site.js

What's up? I assume we just sit back and wait for things to return to normal. Or are we going to lose some feature in the long term. I'm thinking of those clickable pictures, like the biology montage and the buttons in the subpage template. Chris Day (talk) 10:16, 5 October 2007 (CDT)

I think Greg turned it off while fixing something. I'm actually off to my parents for the next two days (and they live in the land of dialup), but I'll email about it before I go. I can't figure out why edit tools is still hidden though. I re-set it to default expand. --ZachPruckowski (Speak to me) 13:51, 5 October 2007 (CDT)

Collapsibility

Hi Zach, I noticed you made the community templates collapsible, but that caused the headers to be slightly off-center. Can you find a way to re-center them? If not, I'm inclined to make the header left-justified. --Larry Sanger 08:02, 7 October 2007 (CDT)

Are you talking about the special characters template? The heading is centered for me. Chris Day (talk) 09:42, 7 October 2007 (CDT)

OK I looked more closely and it is off set slightly, as are the other community templates. However, even with it offset slightly, I think it is better than on the far left. Of course much of this depends on how wide the browser is at the time of viewing. it looks worse iwith a narrower browser. Chris Day (talk) 09:46, 7 October 2007 (CDT)

Um, I think the best bet would be to toss a few spaces in there ahead of the title. We could also add something hidden to the left side of about the same width. The problem is that it's center-justified, but it establishes the right boundary as the edge of the hide/show "button" instead of the edge of the box. I'll try to look around some more when I get back to Charlottesville. There may be a way to make the button not count as taking up space, but I'm not sure. A "counter-weight" would definitely do the trick though. -- ZachPruckowski (Speak to me) 21:57, 7 October 2007 (CDT)

Thanks for volunteering for wikiconverting

Any ideas what file formats we should accept? Any other idea about this human wikiconverter project?. Will you convert a MS Word ".doc", say, directly yourself or will you utilize some intermediate converting program? If the latter, what program(s)? Comment on my Talk page, in the section asking for comments, so commenters can share ideas. --Anthony.Sebastian (Talk) 19:33, 17 October 2007 (CDT)

reducing size of the subpages template

I've been experimenting with a complete rewrite of the subpages template to reduce the size. It's not ready to switch in yet but I think it can reduce the size significantly. I'd work on it faster but at the moment i cannot devote the huge chuck of time required to getting it up and running. Chris Day (talk) 07:56, 24 October 2007 (CDT)

Hey Zach, i go away for a few hours, come back, and everthing is four times faster :) What happened? For you interest, I started implementing the blank template ({{x0}}) idea you mentioned earlier. So far so good, everything is still working and it seems that the template is only calling on the parts that are being used. This should reduced the size significantly. Chris Day (talk) 17:45, 24 October 2007 (CDT)

I think the best way to reduce Subpages is to do transclusion outside of conditionals. For instance, if we have {{#ifeq: X| {{A}} | {{B}} )} and we change that to {{ {{#ifeq: X | A | B }} }}, we are only including one of the two templates. The pre-expand size check comes before parser evaluation, so in the first one, both templates count against the limit.

As to speed, the servers went down for about 90 minutes. Greg Mullane was on them earlier, and I don't know if he had to do a restart, or if they both crashed or what. My usual diagnostic tool is broken and I don't have direct access, so I'm anxiously awaiting the log report (which comes out early in the morning). I suspect that the extra snappiness is a result of the servers restarting and is temporary. ZachPruckowski (Speak to me)

Yes, that is what I am doing, transitioning to the {{ {{#ifeq: X | A | B }} }} format. At least something similar. So I might not need to include the blank template, I'll test some more. Chris Day (talk) 23:03, 24 October 2007 (CDT)

Oh, with B = X0. Duh! Too much work, too little sleep. -- ZachPruckowski (Speak to me) 23:06, 24 October 2007 (CDT)

License Essay

Hi Zach,

I appreciated your license essay. I'm with you that the GFDL is a solid choice (I hadn't connected the dots that we'd get free advertising at Wikipedia should they import sections of our articles). The thing I wonder about the most, in the CC vs GFDL calculus, is to what degree going with (only) the GFDL for native articles would reduce our licensing overhead. It seems like it could be significant, but on the other hand, we'd still need to keep track of which articles have Wikipedia-sourced content in them anyway, per GFDL requirements. At which point, it seems like just going with e.g., CC-by-sa would involve about the same day-to-day level of complexity when figuring out how to tag content and in interacting with Wikipedia content.

In short, I think we're basically in agreement on the philosophical issues, but we may have different intuitions on how much of a time-and-stress saver simply going with the GFDL would be. I wouldn't say my intuition is particularly likely to be correct. :) Just trying to get a handle on peoples' practical forecasts for various scenarios.

Best, --Mike Johnson 21:11, 28 October 2007 (CDT)

Servers

Hi Zach. I've been away for a couple of weeks but I'm ready to start the User:Subpagination Bot again. Are the servers okay? Cheers, Jitse Niesen 09:12, 31 October 2007 (CDT)

test --ZachPruckowski (Speak to me) 13:10, 16 November 2007 (CST)

Comparing text on two different pages

Hi Zach, I expect you're busy now and this can wait but mull over this. On approved pages there is a yellow button that was for comparing diffs between the approved article and the draft article. I noticed that this does not work any more. This might correlate with the mediawiki update. The code i use for the button is as follows:

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki?title={{PAGENAMEE}}/Draft&diff=current&oldid={{REVISIONID}}

Which for the Life approved article looks like:

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki?title=Life/Draft&diff=current&oldid=100168022

Any idea why this would stop working? Perhaps there is an option in media wiki that is stopping comparison between different pages? Chris Day (talk) 09:15, 21 November 2007 (CST)

From what I can see, it's comparing the 100168022 with itself. That's all I got. I have a massive lab before I can go home for Turkey Day. --ZachPruckowski 09:48, 21 November 2007 (CST)

Not to itself. This would initiate from Life, not Life/Draft. Therefore Life/Draft&diff=current refers to the most recent version of Life/Draft and RevisionID refers to the most recent version of Life. So it should be comparing the two different pages. This did work but not now. I have not made any changes since then so the simplest answer is a setting change in mediawiki. Chris Day (talk) 10:22, 21 November 2007 (CST)

I guess that it's caused by this change to Wiki,php . If a URL specifies both a title and an oldid then it uses the oldid to determine the title and it actually ignores the title given in the URL. Assuming that this is indeed the cause, then I can't think of a work-around except by making an exception in the if clause introduced covering this case. -- Jitse Niesen 13:26, 22 November 2007 (CST)

Creating a single-button start article page

I saw that you're busy with a lab, so whenever you get around to this question is fine. In order to create a javascript page with a cgi/php/html form, what would I need aside from an extension to allow forms to be put on wiki pages? Would I create a new .js or would I be mucking around with the monobook? --Robert W King 11:42, 21 November 2007 (CST)

Sorry, somehow I never saw this before now. I think that if you use an extension to make a new special page, you can do whatever you want (including javascript functions relevant for just that special page or a special page cluster). That's really the only way to go if you want to use a cgi or php form. An extension would have to be written in PHP (a python extension is also possible, but not recommended)

If you want to add javascript (and this only works for javascript, not PHP) functions to be used everywhere, they belong in MediaWiki:Common.js (monobook would only affect the monobook skin, which could cause problems if we make other skins). -- ZachPruckowski 19:55, 29 November 2007 (CST)

Re 'wiki-converting'

Zach: Regarding your volunteering to 'wiki-convert' word-processor files from subscribers, please see: http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Wiki-converting. For tracking, use section with your name as title. --Anthony.Sebastian 19:41, 18 December 2007 (CST)

Thanks Zach

Thanks for the note, and Happy Holidays. It was an honor to serve Eric M Gearhart

thanks

Zack, thanks for merging the pres. campaign threads into the Politics forum (I assume that was you) and for posting on the topic to get it started. Cheer.Pat Palmer 21:06, 16 January 2008 (CST)

Help

Zach, are you still around? Could you check out my random thoughts on trying to set up conditional inclusion in the subpages template. I've hit a wall with the nested parser functions. In anticipation, Chris Day (talk) 09:31, 13 March 2008 (CDT)

StringFunctions?

Hi, any chance we can get Extension:StringFunctions added to CZ? It would be useful. According to the Bugzilla entry here, it's in pretty good shape now, and on another Bugzilla thread TimS or Brion said something about how they likely would add either that package, or something like it, to WP at some point.

Actually, there are a number of useful MediaWiki markup extensions we would use. Since we are doing a lot of stuff with templates (for a variety of reasons - i) lack of people who can hack PHP; ii) templates, which are purely local, are less likely to get bashed by MediaWiki development, etc), more powerful template semantics would help us. J. Noel Chiappa 21:33, 13 March 2008 (CDT)