User talk:Philip Trueman

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[edit] RickK barnstar

		The RickK Anti-Vandalism Barnstar
		Even though you have so many already... For beating me to the revert button so many times you deserve another! Harland1 (t/c) 18:47, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The Option Knob

Hi, can you please look into this page being reinstated. I moved my previous comment to the NawlinTalk page as you requested. The Option Knob page was made by a 3rd party, and benchmarked the Guitar Pick wikipedia entry. It describes the use of the knob in the same manor that the Guitar Pick entry does with the guitar pick. This was not an advertising page, it is a descriptive page of a thing, just like the Door Knob, just like the Guitar Pick. The reason for 'speedy deletion' is not accurate and I hope that there can be a reasonable review of the entry. There should at least be a basic entry for this thing called an Option Knob. Thanks! --Chalhub (talk) 22:49, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Philip, thanks for your instructions - I requested the review and placed a note at the bottom of Nawlin's talk page about the request. I hope it works! --Chalhub (talk) 17:25, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Warning vandals

Hello. Regarding the recent revert you made: You may already know about them, but you might find Wikipedia:Template messages/User talk namespace useful. After a revert, these can be placed on the user's talk page to let them know you considered their edit was inappropriate, and also direct new users towards the sandbox. They can also be used to give a stern warning to a vandal when they've been previously warned. Thank you. – Tivedshambo (talk) 18:21, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Philip, please excuse me butting into this conversation, but I thought I would expand a bit on why it is important to warn all users after you have reverted vandalism edits. First, we deliberately give users several chances to become productive members of the Wikipedia community. Having dealt with numerous vandals myself, I can tell you that warning is sometimes very effective. If people know their edits are being monitored and reverted many of them stop, and some of them even start making constructive improvements to articles. This is much less likely to happen if they don't receive a warning.

Second, admins generally will not block a disruptive user who has not been warned. By not warning users who are vandalizing, you let them continue on longer before we can take decisive action against them.

In the long term, you save yourself work (and Wikipedia a lot of vandalism) by warning editors if you find them vandalizing articles. The warning can be done very quickly, especially if you use a tool like TWINKLE which automates much of the process for you. I recommend it. Best, Gwernol 19:07, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

S'okay - you're welcome to butt in. I repeat - I'm no stranger to dealing with vandals, and no stranger to issuing warnings. A very rough count suggests that I have issued over 764 warnings out of my not quite 12,000 total of edits. I am well aware of the policy on giving users several chances (umm, you weren't trying to imply that I failed to do that, were you?). I am well aware of the policy on blocking, as my 90 or so contributions to AIV might suggest. But I do not see, begging your pardon, that issuing a warning on every vandalism reversion is always the best idea. There are three cases where I consider it isn't: when this may well be the individual's very first edit (i.e. when WP:BITE applies most strongly), when the edit is by a dynamic IP (so that the individual may well never see the warning, and some other innocent person may get it instead), and when vandalism levels are so high that it's difficult to keep up. The last two applied in the case of yesterday's vandalism to Harlem Renaissance, where Tivedshambo and I were both active and he just beat me to WP:RFPP.

I don't use TWINKLE, because, as I understand, it doesn't work with IE7, which I am more-or-less constrained to use. I actually use PILT, which is a modified version of Lupin's AVT. It does have links for issuing warnings, but it doesn't autowarn on a rollback. I've considered adding autowarn to PILT, but it's a non-trivial piece of programming, I'm busy in real life right now, and, as I've said, I don't see that warnings are always appropriate. Philip Trueman (talk) 12:09, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Philip, let me respond to a couple of the points you raise. I am of the opinion that warning vandals is important. As I pointed out before, if you don't warn them, we can't block them. We rightly insist that except for extreme circumstances, we don't block accounts without at least two warnings on them and usually the full set of four. By not warning, you effectively allow more vandalism to occur before a block can take place. Dealing with your specific point:

• first edits - my experience is that warnings are most effective for people who have a first edit, they often stop after receiving a warning. The level 1 warnings are written to be extremely polite and helpful and not accusatory, so they really don't bite.
• dynamic IPs. Most dynamic IPs cycle on a relatively long timeframe - days if not weeks. The exception is AOL and we have separate procedures for dealing with those. Do you really mean shared IPs? Again there is no way to know how many people share an IP, so its hard to know who will get the waning; it often will be the vandal. Even if it isn't, it is important to let other users of the account know what is happening. If we followed your logic we would just block the innocent users with the vandals without warning them which really would be biting uninvolved users which would most unfortunate. At least with warnings, others know what is going on and have a chance to register an account and disassociate themselves from the vandals.
• difficult to keep up. I'm afraid that I don't buy "I don't have time to deal properly with vandals" as a good reason not to follow the proper steps. Looking at Harlem Renaissance, there were several editors working to turn back the vandalism, I don't see the dificulty in taking the extra few seconds to issue a warning too.

Anyway, if that doesn't convince you, I should point out that issuing warnings is official policy. Rest assured, I'm not trying to discourage you from helping us with the vandals, and if you decide not to use warnings more that's fine. Just wanted to give you my point of view. Best, Gwernol 12:06, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

To throw my tuppence in, if I'm reverting vandalism that's just happened, I will warn. If, as I often find, it's something taht happened overnight that no-one else has spotted, I'll rarely warn, it's unlikely to reach the intended target, and they are long gone. Stale warnings will be disregarded at a WP:AIAV so there's no point doing it from that point of view either. I do however always check the contributions of the vandal, and revert any further vandalism, and if there is still ongoing activity, then I will warn. Half the time you go to a talkpage, see warnign after warnign with no effect, unless there is activity going on sufficiently close together taht you can get a block via AIAV. David Underdown (talk) 12:19, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism

Please do not vandalize the page for Grimsby, Ontario, this small town is my home town and holds a special place in my heart. <3 Garetswrists (talk) 15:59, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

But it seems that Wikipedia doesn't, or you wouldn't've been blocked for vandalising it, would you? Philip Trueman (talk) 16:40, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] My revert

Hi,

I used the rollback feature of the Meta-wiki software, I will use Twinkle next time for that :).

The Helpful One ^{(Talk) (Contributions) (Review Me!)} 20:11, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Anti-vandal tool development

Hi Excirial! Welcome back, and Happy New Year! I see you've started doing your own development - I wondered when you would. I've a couple of ideas I'd like to bounce off you. One is to ditch all the hard-coded trusted users and use a PHP query to pull each registered editor's contribution count; any editor with over, say, 200 edits can probably be trusted. The other is to get MediaWiki rollback working for non-admins who've been granted the authority. Either I'm missing something enormous, or this simply doesn't, and can't, work at the moment. Comments please. Philip Trueman (talk) 14:05, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Philip, nice to hear from you again!

First off, i have to warn you that im pretty much a novice coder. I can read and understand any language from Perl to VB.Net and from X86 assembly to C++, but my own programming experience is below average at best(And even then im exaggerating). Have a look at the history of the script i edited, the comments are going to cause a fews smiles from you i guess :-). On the rollback issue: It actually works as intended on Lupin, its actually one of the functions that i value most in it. It seems to work by scanning a page history for the first non-rollback editor, then opening edit mode and automatically clicking save (I didnt look at the code, so this is mainly a guess).

On the ideas list, i would love to hear what you have in mind! I had some ideas myself, here is a little list of what i thought of:

1) Adding a link that submits a UW-4 vand warning, and my personal Excirial/AIAV to save some time (Rather personal/already done).

2) Add a link to the block log that allows a user to view the users block log (Would be great if it worked with popups). If a user is a repeating vandal, its easy to see this and report them to WP:ABUSE

3) This one is actually one i really want to pull off some day: Currently Lupin tracks all users that already received a warning for the duration of the session. My idea was to log these users to a text file, which lupin will automatically mark as hostile once an edit is found. Variations of this would be manually marking an IP as hostile, a bit opposite of the current safe list you have, but pretty handy to keep an eye on sneaky vandals.

As a little sidenote to point 2: I'm currently trying to develop a (Semi) automated bot that will scan the blocked user list(Perhaps just the Diffs), and then check each new user there for the total amount of blocks they received, and if the last few, say 5, blocks are received within 6 months. If that would be true, the bot would make an automated report to WP:Abuse to have the account investigated.

In all due honesty COREVA-Bot(Counter Repeating Vandals) is still heavily in development. Actually, thats to a degree that so far i only have a basic layout what it should do, and a name. I have no idea when, if ever, it will be done, but it seemed like a nice and useful start to learning some proper coding.

Kind regards,

--Excirial ^{(Talk,Contribs)} 20:15, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Couple of points: By MediaWiki rollback, I meant what's on offer here. Maybe you missed the great debate about it all? The value is in faster operation, nothing more, but we both seem to have an interest in that. This way of doing rollback has always been available to admins, but now it's been opened (on application) to ordinary users with good track records. What bugs me is that Lupin has both modes of doing rollback, but the fast way doesn't work for me from within my tool, even though I have access to it from ordinary history pages. I think I can see how to code it, but it needs half-a-day I don't have.

I think keeping a blacklist as a file may be difficult from within pure JavaScript. Maybe you could do a bit of initial processing on script startup to pull the list of the user's last 1000 contributions and extract the user names of the people you've reverted? Philip Trueman (talk) 23:45, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Philip,

Im currently working hard on Coreva, which means i haven't been around on Wikipedia itself to much. I indeed missed the entire rollback debate, as i have also been on a short 1.5 month wikibreak. Your indeed right that keeping a blacklist as a file wouldn't exactly work, and personally i think that parsing the last 1.000 edits every time isn't the most server friendly, or even easiest thing that i can do.

This is actually where Coreva comes into play; im already busy implementing the means needed to extend its functionality beyond my current request. One thing that i am currently working on, is a watch list with IP's that have been recently unblocked after committing vandalism. This data can be extracted from the special:block page that im parsing already anyway, so it should prove to be little extra work. By storing this data into a SQL database its easy to generate a list of IP's and usernames that will be unblocked soon, and then store those on a special page much like the badwords page that is currently used by Lupin. This way it should be possible to watch recently unblocked vandals for say, Unblock date + 2 weeks to spot repeated vandalism. Let me know what you think of this :-)

--Excirial ^{(Talk,Contribs)} 12:13, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] For your continued excellent work reverting vandalism

		The RickK Anti-Vandalism Barnstar
		For your excellent work helping revert vandalism to a wide range of Wikipedia articles. Please keep up the good work, Gwernol 15:35, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Barnstar

Why thank you! Keep up the good work! Sam Korn ^(smoddy) 19:48, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] AIV report on User:Xtrasimplicity

Post another report at AIV when the user continues, and also give a 4im warning following that. The user will then mostly be blocked indef for vandalism-only. I am now removing it in the meantime. Thanks. — E ^talk 11:28, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Catholic hierarchy

Philip, since it affects you far more directly than it does me, coudl you take a look at Category talk:Roman Catholic dioceses in Great Britain‎, User talk:Benkenobi18 and my talk page, and see what you think. It was my understanding taht the Church in England and Wales, and that in Scotland were for most purposes independent of each other. So whislt I can see reasonable grounds for having a category at the GB level, the dicoeses should almost entirely be categorised at the level of England and Wales, or Scotland. David Underdown (talk) 11:49, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. Could you please take a look at the discussion again? We are trying to establish consensus over how the category should be structured. I agree entirely with your suggestion, and I'd like to put it in place. Category talk:Roman Catholic dioceses in Great Britain‎.Benkenobi18 (talk) 12:26, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Newport Free Grammar School

Thanks for the reversion, I have tried to edit out the offensive material only to get it undone as you can see - How can I ensure that this sort of thing doesn't keep happening?

[edit] A new Oxbridge user box

Philip Trueman...I am currently in the process of writing a user box for all of the colleges that are part of Oxbridge. This template is meant to replace your current college template. Please take a look at the work in progress and comment on it. My main concerns are college abbreviations and color choice. I am using scarf colors for the colleges. Thank you. - LA @ 17:20, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Snap (physics)

Correct me if I am wrong, but the first derivative of velocity is acceleration, not a jerk; the third derivative of a jerk is not a snap it is a pop, I believe.

"...first, second, and third derivatives being velocity, acceleration, and jerk, respectively" <- This is incorrect.

Thank you --Pbroks13 20:37, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

My reply is at User talk:Pbroks13/Archive1#Your recent edit to Snap (physics). --pbroks13^talk? 00:53, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] warning vandals

Hello. Regarding the recent revert you made to Paul the Apostle: You may already know about them, but you might find Wikipedia:Template messages/User talk namespace useful. After a revert, these can be placed on the user's talk page to let them know you considered their edit was inappropriate, and also direct new users towards the sandbox. They can also be used to give a stern warning to a vandal when they've been previously warned. Thank you. Enigma ^msg! 19:42, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Re: This is odd

You are absolutely right. I am not sure why you are telling me that. If you are worried that you will be labeled as a vandal because I reverted you, don't worry. I have reverted Cluebot on many occasions when he misses vandalsim. I have to go to work, so I cna't really finish this how I want to do it. Sorry. J.delanoy^gabs_adds 18:25, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

There is no bug in my tool, the problem lies with my internet connection. I have 5 MB/s downstream, which means I see vandalisms almost as they happen. However, I only have 384 Kb/s upstream, so it takes an appreciable amount of time for me to actually remove the vandalisms once I hit the "revert" button. I have had this happen before, and I really don't know how to say this nicely, but I fail to see what the issue is. You reverted, and I reverted past you. The end result is the same i.e. the vandalism is removed. J.delanoy^gabs_adds 01:59, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

No, you did not revert past me. You reverted to my last version, while your edit summary claimed that you had reverted past me. That edit summary was misleading, incorrect, untruthful, and arguably defamatory of me. I am disappointed in your attitude and that of the writer of the anti-vandalism tool you use. Philip Trueman (talk) 11:39, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] AfD Nomination of Oxbridge

Hi, I have nominated Oxbridge for deletion since it reads entirely as WP:OR. You can find the discussion here. Coldmachine^Talk 22:41, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Gideon v. Wainwright

Thank you for reverting vandalism on this page earlier today. However, you only reverted the edits by one IP address, 168.99.161.117, and left the page as edited by the previous anon, 156.110.235.130. Unfortunately, this version of the page had also been vandalized. I understand your good intent in trying to keep Wikipedia free from vandalism, but in the future, please check the version of the page to which you are reverting to ensure that it, too, is vandalism-free. I have taken care of this incident by reverting it to the most recent un-vandalized version, but try to watch out in the future. Thanks. 69.138.181.174 (talk) 20:24, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

If the edit doesn't show up in my anti-vandalism tool, I won't see it. There's no obligation on someone removing vandalism to remove all the vandalism in the article - none of the bots does, and sometimes it takes an expert to see that something is vandalism (although that's not the case here). I don't see that I was at fault. Philip Trueman (talk) 11:36, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

It's a common mistake and it can be difficult to see when using a program or script, but it is recommended not to revert to a vandalized version. Not always avoidable, of course. Enigma ^message Review 18:15, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I didn't send you this i sent you the one below so why did you send me a Re: to this one instead of the one below? The C of E (talk) 15:54, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Status Bot

No, you're right, I didn't. I was trying to inform Chris G on HIS talk page, and if you look at the talk page, you'll notice a text box at the top letting you put a new message in. Well, when I did that, typing in "Status Bot" as the heading of my message, it created a page called "Status Bot". I've informed Chris G about it, and am waiting for a response. I was about to report to an administrator right when you messaged me. Cheers, Kodster (Willis) (Look what I can do) 14:37, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Edit

Why did you delete my addition to Carefree (chant)? I don't see what was wrong with it The C of E (talk) 15:14, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Your "addition" amounted to putting up different lyrics, ostensibly sung in derision by that team's opponents. Wikipedia is not a blog and it's not a soapbox either. The songs and responses sung back and forth, between opposite fans, can be practically infinite. -The Gnome (talk) 21:44, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] John C. Curtiss

Much thanks for the observation - it was a typo. Ludvikus (talk) 16:45, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Thank you for tagging 163.153.188.55's recent edits. The district has reported that they have identified the students involved and are taking appropriate action. --NERIC-Security (talk) 16:51, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Re: By way of explanation ..

Hello, Philip Trueman. You have new messages at Gary King's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} template.

[edit] Lady Aleena's RfA

Philip Trueman...Thank you for participating in my nomination for adminship. Your comments have shown me those areas in which I need improve my understanding. I hope that my future endevors on Wikipedia will lead to an even greater understanding of it. If you wish to further discuss the nomination, please use its talk page. Stop by my talk page anytime, even if it is just to say hello. Have a wonderful day! - LA @ 05:05, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Er, This May Be A Dumb Question

But is this edit acceptable? -WarthogDemon 17:43, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I would say it isn't - but why ask me? Be WP:BOLD and revert it. Philip Trueman (talk) 17:46, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Email?

Have you had an email from us recently? David Underdown (talk) 08:49, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] weiner

Someone added that template to page and I deleted it. You might want to look into that. I would appreciate a retraction. see?

Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 20:48, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Request for retraction retracted! I thought the statement was addressed to me, despite the paragraph indent. (I get ganged up on, in the math department quite a bit.) Anyway, my apologies, you are way ahead of me as usual. Thanks for your work. Be well, Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 16:51, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] discussion about phil of logic section of logic template

I am going to bring the phil of logic section up as a discussion at the talk page of the template. A request for comment has been placed. I invite your contributions. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 22:46, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ballistic pendulum

Yes, I'll fix that. That was a quick catch--I'm still adding content, haven't done the proofreading yet. I just found Benjamin Robins book at Google Books, so there's more to go into that section... scot (talk) 14:29, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Hey, I'm a fanatic about a number of issues! scot (talk) 14:52, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Your anti-vandalism efforts are appreciated Philip, on several occasions you've caught incidents on articles on my watchlist before I did. Kudos! Oberiko (talk) 19:58, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] my RfA - Ta!

Gwen gleans, wending keen by the wikirindle.

Thanks for supporting my RfA, which went through 93/12/5. I'll be steadfast in this trust the en.Wikipedia community has given me. Cheers! Gwen Gale (talk) 01:11, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wilhelm Gustloff

Thanks, I wasn't sure about the proper spelling.Shinerunner (talk) 11:26, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Aluminium

Sorry, I don't know much about chemistry, but the sentence as it stood seemed ungrammatical. Having reread it I see that the "as" was meant in the sense of "in the form of" rather than "because". Maybe you could rephrase to clarify that? Rachel Pearce (talk) 10:49, 29 May 2008 (UTC) PS I think someone has been vandalising your user page. Rachel Pearce (talk) 14:03, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] BarnStar

		The RickK Anti-Vandalism Barnstar
		Just a little something for your hard work at WP:AIV and reporting vandals for sysops to block, Keep up the good work! ·Ãḍď§ђɸŗЄ· Talk 17:18, 4 June 2008 (UTC)