User talk:Cyde

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Open Proxies

Hi. Your user name appears on the list over at Wikimedia as someone who may be able to help with open proxies. I'm trying to populate the IP Deny list on my domain with proxies, as I have a person who I am trying to block from seeing my site openly circumventing. I have found and blocked a few already - Hide My Ass, Easy Security, Guardster, Web Warper, Hidden Tunnel, Anonymizer, The Cloak and Anonymous. I've also found Snoopblocker, Proxy Web, Surfola, Proxify, Megaproxy, Uncork the Web, Sneak Me and a school filter of some sort. Do you know of any others? I'm very keen to block this person from viewing my website. If you don't do you know who I could talk to? Curse of Fenric (talk) 22:17, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Let me get this clear, you want help to secure a non-Wikipedia website from reading of all thing?! Sorry, I don't have the time. And what you're trying to do is impossible anyway; they can always use the Google cache, or any number of countless read-only proxies. --Cyde Weys 04:05, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

The answer to your question is yes - and I have to. The person I'm trying to stop is a crazed and deluded person that I am unable to control, even by ignoring him. Anyway, as long as I can block the sites that provide like the ones I named. I know that he doesn't know how to configure his computer to use the others. That's not all of them. If I can frustrate him enough I can stop him, and that doesn't need every proxy blocked. Even if you have just say half a dozen that I don't have, it would help. The more the merrier of course, but I don't expect you to give me all of them. Curse of Fenric (talk) 08:34, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Trying to prevent someone from being able to read a public website is a losing proposition. Even if you do somehow block out every website that allows one to browse from a different IP address (which is quite the impossible feat), all this person would have to do is use a laptop on any number of unsecured WiFi access points, or go to a library and use their computers. In other words, what you are attempting to do is impossible. --Cyde Weys 21:40, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Not with this person it's not. He can't afford a laptop or WiFi, and he hates libraries. He does everything from home and hides it from his family and friends. I've already blocked his provider completely, so all I need is the main proxies. It's the only way to control him. Nothing else works. I think I've caught his latest proxy (through the Raw Access logs) and I've blocked it. Curse of Fenric (talk) 00:20, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

You asked for my help and you got your answer. I'm sorry you don't like it, but it is what it is. Trying to prevent read access to a site on the public Internet is a fundamentally unwinnable proposition. --Cyde Weys 04:04, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

I see I've been wasting my time. I'll talk to someone else who is willing to understand the gravity of the situation. You clearly don't. Goodbye. (Curse of Fenric not logged in)124.181.127.98 (talk) 11:24, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

No, you didn't waste your time. You came to the perfect person to ask your question. That you didn't like the answer is your own problem. By the way, I don't know you or owe you anything, so the gravity of your situation is irrelevant to me. --Cyde Weys 15:10, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

A crazy deluded monster stalking my friend CoF is irrelevant?? Mal Case (talk) 06:47, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it is irrelevant to me. I don't even know who you are, let alone who CoF is. --Cyde Weys 19:11, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Bot has deleted two categories incorrectly.

This bot deleted two categories based on CFD's from 22 months ago! Category:United States Senate candidates and Category:United States House of Representatives candidates. I have recreated them, but their contents are also gone. Can they be fixed?—Markles 23:57, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

I had the bot speedily delete the categories based on them being re-creations of identical material deleted by consensus. I've advised Markles that we need an intervening WP:DRV to re-create the categories since as far as I can tell there's been no consensus decision to re-create them in the past 22 months. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 00:23, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for handling this Olfactory. --Cyde Weys 14:27, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Magic 8-Ball#Standard answers

• The probability of getting a positive result in a magic 8-ball is 50% or 10/20.
• The probability of getting a negative result in a magic 8-ball is 25% or 05/20.

Must be my luck this year. :) -- Cat ^chi? 11:13, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Oooh, I do give you kudos for your response. --Cyde Weys 14:26, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks... I think... :P -- Cat ^chi? 14:36, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Your post

Thank you for you post on my page, I suppose when one has been about the site as long as we all have, we come to see, albeit reluctantly, each others' good points - even old sparring partners like you and I . Thanks. Giano (talk) 21:22, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

No problem. I'd hate to see you run out on a rail for something you didn't do. --Cyde Weys 00:47, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Question about a speedy delete tag

I was quite shocked to see that a set index page, German submarine U-164, was tagged with a speedy deletion tag as a redirect to a nonexistent page (which it is most assuredly not). The speedy notice on my talk page did not identify any responsible party, so a quick look at the links to that page brought me to a subpage of yours, User:Cyde/List of candidates for speedy deletion/Subpage. If you have any knowledge of this, can you clarify for me why exactly this page was so tagged? Thanks in advance. — Bellhalla (talk) 04:22, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Here is the party responsible. You can ask him for more details. In figuring out these kinds of situations in the future, remember to use the History tab, not the What Links Here tool. --Cyde Weys 06:16, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Notice

Hello, Cyde. You have new messages at IRP's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Hello, Cyde. You have new messages at IRP's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Cydebot

Cyde,

I don't know what happened with your bot, but it seems to be duplicating content on pages. See this edit. I'm not an admin, but I am going to report it to try to get it blocked for now, just until someone can figure out what it's doing. I'm just letting you know just in case you see this before admins do. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 00:32, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Is it just the one edit or has it done this many times? --Cyde Weys 00:39, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Hrmm, looks like it did it a lot. Very strange; I haven't edited Cydebot in a long while. Maybe something on wiki changed? If so, look for many other pywikipediabots to begin malfunctioning like this. --Cyde Weys 00:41, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

I found quite a few. Shall I keep counting? BTW, someone in the AN thread said not to block. Could you clarify when it is and isn't appropriate to block your bot and which tick boxes should be marked or not? For example, does your bot run off the toolserver and hence need extra care taken when blocking? Carcharoth (talk) 00:42, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

There seems to be a similar bug in the AIV helperbots, see the history of WP:AIV. The Undo button is also acting weird, see WP:VPT. It might be a MediaWiki update, not a problem in your code?? Kusma (talk) 00:42, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm guessing the AIV helperbots are also using PyWikipediaBot. I fear that all PyWiki-based bots are going to malfunction until this is worked out. --Cyde Weys 00:44, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

It seems to have stopped now; I'm rolling back all of its article edits (the category edits seem to be fine). Thanks for the warning about other pywikipediabots; I'll try to keep my eyes out! —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 00:44, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Cyde, I don't know if this helps or not, but it looks like the run of edits Cydebot did before this (changing to Category:Switching and terminal railroads in a bunch of railroad articles) didn't malfunction; it was just the Category:Diseases and disorders in the medical articles that it started doing afterwards. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 00:52, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Why, thank you!

The first sentence especially - the legalese of course being just a framing device, but sometimes lapses in logic or nonremitted actions need to be clarified like that (at least by me, in order to be at my least incoherent...) LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:45, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

No problem

Thanks for your note on my talk page. I understand what you were trying to do. It's hard to tell sometimes when lower level pushback on a problem has been sufficient and when it hasn't; I thought not at the time, because he seemed to be hinting he might do it again, but I understand what you were trying to do in handling it less confrontationally.

As you noted on my talk page, it was interesting that he wandered over to my talk page and defended me from RHMED immediately after I warned him. I never doubted his good faith, but that was a great thing for him to do. I was just going to let it lie rather than start any escalation with him, but I think RHMED will get something out of seeing those responses.

Keep up your good work, and thanks for the side channel notes. I think we're all better off the more we do this... Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 19:32, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Category Deletion

Hi! I noticed that your bot deleted the Category:African-American businesspeople from various articles per a previous CFD discussion. My question is if other ethnic businesspeople categories should also be deleted...as I think this would be the only fair thing to do, plus it seems to align with the CFD ruling. Examples are Category:Asian American businesspeople, Category:Vietnamese-American businesspeople, and Category: German-American businesspeople. I wanted further clarrification before I proceeded and/or if the African-American category is the only one. Thank you --Krushdiva (talk) 02:28, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Your proposal sounds good to me. I would run it through WP:CFD first. Make sure to link to the prior discussion. It looks like the rest of the similar categories were overlooked during the first CFD. --Cyde Weys 03:56, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Category upmerge results in multiples

Hi, owner of Cydebot! I was wondering if this had been brought up before or if there's an easy solution. I noticed today that upon the closure of a CFD request that ended in upmerging several desert flora categories to a single category, that some pages that had several of those upmerged categories eventually got multiple redundant category entries: diff. Is there any way for the bot to run a check of the page to see if the category already exists there so instead of replacing the upmerged category again, it would just remove the old one? Or is this problem so rare that it shouldn't matter? Just a passing thought... Cheers, Rkitko ^(talk) 03:19, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

The same seems to have happened to some (of not all) of the articles which were recategorised from Category:Diseases to Category:Diseases and disorders: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] etc. etc. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 16:46, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. Luckily, having an article in the same category multiple times doesn't hurt anything (at least not immediately), but of course, it is messy, and down the road, if the category is adjusted by a human editor, they may only change one instance instead of all of them. PyWikipediaBot actually used to handle categories differently until I changed the behavior.

Originally, it would parse the wiki text of an article and then create a set of all categories that article was in (remember that, in mathematics, sets cannot contain duplicate members). It would then do any CFD operations on the set — so if one category was changed to another category that was already in the set, there could not be duplicate categories in the set. It would then strip all of the category tags out of the article and insert the set, in sorted order, at the bottom of the page.

Unfortunately, there was a big problem with this approach: it absolutely, positively mangled templates. It worked fine on articles, but anything using even a more slightly complicated syntax, especially with includeonlys, onlyincludes, noincludes, etc. — anything more complicated than a list of categories at the bottom, really — would get terribly broken. I could probably dredge up some diffs from two years ago or so to demonstrate. So I modified PyWikipediaBot to do category replacements using, essentially, a text-based find-and-replace rather than dealing with a whole set. This has the advantage of not terribly mangling templates, but with the downside that you noted above.

A possible middle-ground would be to use the old functionality for pages in namespace 0 and to use the new functionality for everything else. What do you think? --Cyde Weys 16:43, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure there aren't two different issues here. Could you have a look at this edit, for example, especially at the table of contents? This isn't about an article in a category multiple times, but about an article containing most of its text twice, and there might be dozens of this sort. Thanks --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 19:19, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that was a different issue. It was caused by an accidental single character insertion (of '=', if you must know) in the MediaWiki source code during a recent update. It not only affected all screen-scraping bots, but also the undo functionality. It was fixed in a matter of hours in the MediaWiki Subversion tree, thus permanently resolving the issue. Unlike that problem, the issue discussed above can reasonably be said to be a bug in bot code. --Cyde Weys 21:01, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Seasons Greetings

Wishing you the very best for the season. Guettarda (talk) 07:32, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

CfD request

Hello Cyde. Hope you are well. We have a request at CfD to recategorise a non-free logo category. I am wondering if Cydebot could do this. The request is to change Category:Football logos to Category:Football (soccer) logos, which means going through the original cat and changing {{Non-free logo|Football logos}} to {{Non-free logo|Football (soccer) logos}} . I could do this with AWB, but there are over 1000 pages, so perhaps this would not be such a good idea. Best wishes and thanks in advance, Angus McLellan (Talk) 14:57, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Sure, give me a little bit of time and I'll have this done. --Cyde Weys 16:44, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Done. And note that this work necessitated a small patch to PyWikipediaBot, so others should now benefit from this increased functionality as well. In other words, good task! --Cyde Weys 17:59, 27 December 2008 (UTC)