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Is file uploading blocked forever?

I went to File list and discovered that all file uploads are blocked since 6/2/2016, even admins have no uploads. Is it sort of technical glitch? Or result of fighting spam too hard?? I'm planning 3 new tasks with 7 pictures. Without picture uploads it is useless. Another interesting issue: Why nobody complains? --AnatolV 21:30, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Problems and a few suggestions

I’ve tried to send email to mikemol@rosettacode.org but it failed (no such email). This is my 2nd probem.

Suggestion: In OEIS Wiki we have a better solution (to avoid spammers): if user logged in and visit another user page, s/he can see link “Send email to this user”. In this case email could be any, e.g., topabracadabra@rosettacode.org, or real one, but sender can’t see it.

For your convinience I’m putting here another suggestion (from my User Talk page).

In some cases incomplete solution is reasonable, e.g., language limitations, too slow computer, etc.

Suggestion: May be editors should create Wiki tag “Incomplete task solution” (not red, but normal one, like Output tag). So, editors and/or authors can use it to mark such solutions.

And now, here is email (as is) with my 1st and prime problem that I was trying to send to you.

Dear Mr. Mol,

Recently I’ve ran at an annoying problem: RC is blocking my login, only because it decided that I’m overactive. I already described it in details on http://rosettacode.org/wiki/User_talk:AnatolV What is terrible, after this post (on User talk) I was denied to log in again!

I am not asking you about editor privileges, because I can’t spend much time on RC as editor, but at the same time, I hope you have (or can set) something like “trusted user” account property, allowing frequent access to RC (as for editors). Of course, it should be easily revoked, if compromised. What do you think?

As I said: I can’t be on RC often, now I’m active, but next 2 months I’m out. E.g., I wasn’t using RC almost whole February this year.

Another suggestion you can find on my User talk page. <<NOW FIND IT ADDED ABOVE>>

You know?? It reminds me old saying: “Any good initiative is always punishable!” LOL If r active, stop it!! Nobody needs it! LOL

Best regards,

AnatolV

<<Note: this is added now, not in original email>> P.S. At least 1 editor,- Gerard Schildberger, agree: this is/was a problem to him too.

Cyberbullying

Legal definition

Cyberbullying is defined in legal glossaries as

    actions that use information and communication technologies to support deliberate,
    repeated, and hostile behavior by an individual or group, that is intended to harm 
    another or others.
    use of communication technologies for the intention of harming another person
    use of internet service and mobile technologies such as web pages and discussion groups
    as well as instant messaging or SMS text messaging with the intention of harming another 
    person.

Examples of what constitutes cyberbullying include communications that seek to intimidate,
 control, manipulate, put down, falsely discredit, or humiliate the recipient. The actions 
are deliberate, repeated, and hostile behavior intended to harm another. Cyberbullying has 
been defined by The National Crime Prevention Council: “when the Internet, cell phones or 
other devices are used to send or post text or images intended to hurt or embarrass another 
person.

A cyberbully may be a person whom the target knows or an online stranger. A cyberbully may be
 anonymous and may solicit involvement of other people online who do not even know the target.

Michael I believe that the posts from http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Talk:Arithmetic-geometric_mean to Talk:Kaprekar by ledrug and Hignight constitute communications that seek to intimidate, control, manipulate, put down, falsely discredit, or humiliate me. The actions are deliberate, repeated, and hostile towards me. How else am I to interpret:

I'll make a few comments, but won't discuss it any more after that, since that would be
 obviously futile.

    I don't know what kind of antique lisp machine you have installed in your basement, but 
your code does not compile on either SBCL or Clisp. Maybe geniuses shan't be bothered by such 
trifles.
    Your code, once made compile with SBCL (change that do (...) () to do (...) (nil), does 
exactly the samething mathematically: raise a power of a base repeately, until either it
 splits the square of n with the right sum, or it's too large. Except you are doing it in a 
convoluted way, using non-integer methods on integers, and ends up with something literally
 100 times slower then my edit you reverted (on SBCL that is, I don't know about your antique
 lisp machine).

    You had one good idea of checking congruence, and a whole lot of terrible ones: being
 thoughtless in dealing with datatypes (pow and log on integers in C++, / and floor in Lisp);
 being sloppy in performance tuning (your "v.fast" C++ code isn't all that fast); being 
vengeful (paddy_cnt?); being narcissistic (own name as variable?); being inconsiderate to 
code readers (what kind of person posts unindented Lisp?); and generally being an all-around 
dick. 

    Your sarcasm in the lisp code was neither subtle nor funny. You give British humor a bad
 name.

You are probably not stupid, but it's safe to say you are not the smartest person on RC, by a 
long shot. And smart people around here tend to have good manners, unlike you or I. Stop 
treating yourself like you are the one true genius, and try to do something that's helpful to 
people instead of showing off, OK? (my guess: probably not. Oh well.) --Ledrug 00:10, 4 
October 2012 (UTC)

    Well said. He is clearly more interested in being a pompous dick then contributing
 quality code to RC. --Larry Hignight 08:24, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

I believe that the following:

I'm sure that Nigel will respond to these results in his usual manner: "that is hot air",
 "all of your implementations are flawed; Mine is the only true Common Lisp", "Surely, you 
must have my version and Ledrug's version mixed up", or even the classic "Why didn't you just
 fix my code!" Who knows... I'm sure that it will be amusing though. Therefore, I encourage
 everyone with a working CL implementation to attempt to compile both versions and post your 
results. --Larry Hignight 07:45, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

consitutes an attempt "to solicit involvement of other people online who do not even know the target." --Nigel Galloway 12:35, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Respectful behavior toward other users, and towards this site

Michael I would ask you to reread the Talk:Kaprekar_numbers page.

The comment "First, the message left on my user talk page by one genius" was posted by ledrug not me, you are wrong in fact.
Secondly the comment "A lot of hot air for somthing that doesn't exist! I did not break the origional solution, I made it solve the task" is in response to a long list of reasons why he feels his lisp style is better than mine, followed by "Yeah, it's kind of a shame that someone broke it though. --Larry Hignight 22:42, 23 September 2012 (UTC). Hignight maintains I broke his solution I did not. The proof is in the sample output showing it working (now lost to history). I had no problem with him undoing the changes. I have no wish to discuss my lisp style in a program which was not well written in the first place and had anyway been replaced by ledrug.
Thirdly, when have I been asked to sign my posts before? I usually do, and if I don't it is merely by accident as any reasonable person would think.
Fourthly I refer you to ledrugs comments on http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Talk:Arithmetic-geometric_mean "That was one of the most amazing paragraph to have ever graced RC, where except the first and the last, every sentence is wrong to some extent, and it was written sincerely (as far as I can tell).", and tell me how my response "Thank you for your interest, but why so angry?" can be considered agressive in any way to what is a very agressive posting from ledrug. Again in response to the bile posted on the Kaprekar page by ledrug starting "First, the message left on my user talk page by one genius" and finishing "You are probably not stupid, but it's safe to say you are not the smartest person on RC, by a long shot. And smart people around here tend to have good manners, unlike you or I. Stop treating yourself like you are the one true genius" "I responded "Again ledrug why so angry? I didn't revert your edit, it is a good solution, I left it there and reinstated my solution which you deleted, as, indeed, it was you who deleted Larry's solution". Again how is that aggresive?

In conclusion please reread the postings on the Talk:Kaprekar page understanding that you were mistaken in your understanding that I wrote "First, the message left on my user talk page by one genius" and explain to me how my response to ledrug's bile has been aggressive. He continually posts comments questioning my sincerity, I insist that you clarify that you for Rosetta Code do not support that contention.

As we seem to agree that "First, the message left on my user talk page by one genius" is agressive, it only remains for you to convince yourself that its authorship is ledreg for you to address your critism where it belongs. --Nigel Galloway 12:03, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Bleh. It does seem I've misread the discussion. My apologies. This is an artifact of my not having enough time...If you guys want me to come in and try resolving the conflict, I'm going to need information prepackaged, cited and digestible. I see some hope on Kaprekar Number's talk page, in that people started moving toward a structured resolution. That's good! Please continue! Unfortunately, I'm closing on a house this week, and I'm going to have zip spare time to go over the details for a few days. I'll look at it this weekend, if 'briefs' are readily available. --Michael Mol 13:19, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

I hope you are enjoying your new house. In your submission to my talk page I was dissapointed to see that you consider it acceptable for RC to be a hostile environment. When you encouraged people to continue moving towards a structured resolution were you calling for Hignights contribution of October 16th which includes:

The code that you submitted looked like something a drunk C programmer would have written while doing a first experiment with CL.

and

I called you a pompous dick AFTER you started dismissing valid criticisms with smart ass remarks, confusing the issue with lies on this talk page and then writing unwarranted comments on someone's user page.  If you don't like being called a dick, then stop acting like a dick.  It's pretty simple, really.  Regarding your latest lie and attempt at confusing the issue, "You have agreed that he replaced your version to 'reduce code; simplify; speed up; conform to task and extra'," I never said that Ledrug's version reduced my code, simplified my code, or agreed to anything on this page.  Ledrug's change comments were (once again) comments about his code.  He improved his code.  You should consider doing the same.

or do you consider it a kick in the teeth?

For the record:

(cur | prev) 04:55, 19 September 2012‎ Ledrug (Talk | contribs)‎ (84,438 bytes) (→{{header|Common Lisp}}: reduce code; simplify; speed up; conform to task and extra) (undo)
(cur | prev) 00:12, 19 September 2012‎ Lhignight (Talk | contribs)‎ (88,507 bytes) (→{{header|Common Lisp}}: Updated the description of the 'fast' implementation.) (undo)
(cur | prev) 23:54, 18 September 2012‎ Lhignight (Talk | contribs)‎ (88,429 bytes) (Undo revision 140330 by Nigel Galloway (talk)) (undo)

00:12, 19 September 2012 was the last time Hignight had code on this task replaced by Ledrug at 04:55 with the comment "reduce code; simplify; speed up; conform to task and extra". This was his first submission of code so I can see no way of interpretting this as referring to his own code. It is my sincere belief that it refers to Hignights, I may be wrong but I am not Lying. I am not nor ever have been drunk while submitting anything to rosettacode, and not at anytime that comes immeadiatly to mind. --Nigel Galloway 16:27, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Regarding signing posts...there is a note left by another user on your talk page, but on re-reading, it was on the structure of your signatures, not the lack of them. I misread it in a way that backed up a misrecollection. Again, my apologies. Re-reading your contribution history, you've even gone through and adjusted indentation of previous conversation. Whether that's good or not depends on whether it's what the original author meant, but I appreciate the attention. --Michael Mol 13:19, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

You are not precise as to which indentation you refer. The origional situation was:

    12 Common Lisp Implementation
        12.1 Conflict Resolution?
            12.1.1 Issue the first
            12.1.2 Issue the second
            12.1.3 Issue the third

with 12.1.1, 12.1.2, and 12.1.3 being my response to paddy3118. Hignight changed that as follows:

    12 Common Lisp Implementation
        12.1 Conflict Resolution?
        12.2 Testing Common Lisp Contributions
            12.2.1 Issue the first
            12.2.2 Issue the second
            12.2.3 Issue the third

my responses now being to his rant, and making no sense. I changed it as follows:

    12 Common Lisp Implementation
        12.1 Conflict Resolution?
            12.1.1 Issue the first
            12.1.2 Issue the second
            12.1.3 Issue the third
        12.2 Testing Common Lisp Contributions

please advise if it is any other change on which you require claryfication. --Nigel Galloway 16:27, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

How can I efficiently find out the author of a solution?

browsing the history is cumbersome

(This was written by Walterpachl (Talk | contribs) at 07:21, 8 June 2012 (UTC))

There isn't really an easy way; not everyone signs their code (if they do, they're encouraged to use an HTML comment so that it is only cluttering things up when editing) and MediaWiki doesn't track line-level or character-level provenance particularly much. It just has a sequence of diffs and you have to find it yourself. FWIW, I find that bisecting is quite a good way to find who wrote a change; on the rare occasions I've needed to know the author of an example, I've been able to find it in a few minutes by using that technique with the history pages' range functionality. –Donal Fellows 10:31, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Adding a language

Add a Language. How can I get ooRexx (I created a stub) into the list of languages. I want to add its solution to Abstract Data Type to the Algorithms.

User: Walterpachl

Check out Rosetta Code:Add a Language. Also, you can use --~~~~ for a convenient, automatic, timestamped signature when you leave notes on talk pages. --Michael Mol 16:13, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

I did but couldn't finish -- I created the page but kow is it added to the list- And right now I am stuck when I try to add the code to the task list :-( --~~~~

Now I added the code but apparently it did not like the syntax Is there some noformat option? and the --~~~~ doesn't do what you promised. Sorry for the difficulties of a real newbie here!

Don't use the <nowiki> / <nowiki> tags when you use --~~~~. The <nowiki> / <nowiki> tags tell the wiki software not to interpret --~~~~. --Michael Mol 17:38, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

It's now reasonably formatted and it looks good!!!!

Could you pls insert ooRexx to thje list of languages? (or give me instructions for the dummy (me) )? --Walterpachl 18:17, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

The page you created at ooRexx isn't in the right place. Take a close look at Rosetta Code:Add a Language#Category_Page. Anywhere you see "Ayrch" on that page, think "ooRexx" instead. --Michael Mol 18:22, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I managed. My PC in the country home seems to have this defect of crazily formatting :-( ( I noticed also stramge formatting when answering mails:-( )

Anyway. Here in Vienna it works. Pls point me at instrucions how to color my code. --Walterpachl 16:10, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Help:Syntax Highlighting --Michael Mol 17:35, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Hm. I see what's been done for mnay other languages. However, pretty much to do in a strange language for getting Rexx highlighted. Or am I too scared? Could I also use HTML tagging for a start? --Walterpachl 11:41, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Do not use HTML. That would make it very, very cumbersome to correct later on. Just use <lang oorex>(your code here)</lang> for now, and when proper support is added, things will just work. Chances are, Rexx's syntax highlighting support will work decently well for you, too. I should be able to make a tweak on the server to have 'oorex' apply Rexx's syntax highlighting support. It'd be a start. Getting out of the gate on a new language isn't usually easy. --Michael Mol 13:03, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks BUT unfortunately none of the Rexxes is in GeSHi :-( as far as I can see... no highlighting there either --Walterpachl 14:11, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Start with a basic language template that handles comments and strings (there should be those around; it appears to be C-like to me) and then add in the keywords (or at least the things that are normally used like keywords; I don't know whether the rexx-like languages are keyword-based in the first place). That'll give you enough to be going on with, and it's only a little effort if you know the language. (Alas, some other languages are considerably trickier.) –Donal Fellows 14:38, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

maybe it's easier than I (we) thought.. Where would i find the template and where would I store my 'extended' template? A friend of mine suggested that VIM is doing a good job on producing highlighted text for many languages --Walterpachl 15:42, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Download a copy of GeSHi. The per-language source files are pretty easy to read. This conversation needs to move somewhere else. (Perhaps to IRC?) I simply can't maintain communicating at this rate and latency at this time. --Michael Mol 15:50, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

okay. let's take that offline. I downloaded the php files of GesHi. can you (Dkf) send me a mail where I should put the first rexx.php in rosettacode in order to see its effect (I am sure there will be iterations necessary) pachl at chello dot at (the at's are different ones :-) --Walterpachl 21:54, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Tied to get to the list and got this for my append: Hi! You've just tried to send mail to geshi-users, and you're not registered. Please register at http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/geshi-users And the link does not work:-( --Walterpachl 18:46, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Attack page?

Template:Unimpl Page/Not implemented and Category:Programming Tasks were both recently, uh, 'vandalized' by User:Umobytuz who linked them to http://osobageqys.co.cc and http://evicijum.co.cc which seem to be attack/exploit pages. You may wish to check on the IP address of this contributor and/or check for other similar recent additions.

I removed both links.

CRGreathouse 06:38, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the clear-up and notice. I took a look then blocked the user immediately. If I was too harsh, then I'd rather SC unblock than leave the guy easy access. --Paddy3118 07:09, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

No, blocking isn't too harsh. That means it's probably past time to apply active protections on templates and transcluded pages, too. --Michael Mol 14:43, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

User:ShariPantoja‎ appears to be another spammer (using their talk page). –Donal Fellows 11:43, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Did some WP financial research

I just spent a little time digging through the Wikimedia Foundation's site, trying to find some info on how to get money from them. What results I got I put here --> Rosetta Code:Village Pump/Income#Dear Wikimedia Foundation <-- in case you missed it on the "recent activity" thing.

Not much helpful info, but I tried. Possibly you've already seen everything I found anyway. Shrug. -- Erik Siers 07:23, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

...and now something else you might ponder: Rosetta Code:Village Pump/Income#Paid Memberships. -- Erik Siers 16:00, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

RC used in a talk by Larry Wall (of Perl)

... And reviewed+blogged by me --> User_talk:TimToady#On "That Goes Without Saying (or Does It)".

Squid configuration

It looks like Squid's maximum request size is causing problems for AutoGeSHi. —Underscore (Talk)

Spammer

User:Debonairlazines6974 is a spammer (check their contributions). Alas. –Donal Fellows 12:08, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Got it covered now. Thanks Donal. --Mwn3d 13:06, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

I've made a right mess

Mike. I made a mistake with a rename, and I tried to fix it, but the fixes keep digging me deeper and deeper into a hole. Can you back out my changes from 19:29 to 19:48 today (11th July). Cheers. Markhobley 19:53, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Not automagically, it looks like. The 'undo' and 'rollback' features look a little more complicated for page moves that page-local edits. At work right now, and will be busy this evening. I'd suggest popping into (and hanging out in) the IRC channel and enlist some assistance and coordination there. --Michael Mol 19:56, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Book Mention

In "A Byte of Python". --Paddy3118 12:21, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Cool. :) --Michael Mol 12:25, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

More financial suggestions

...this time not from me, but posting here in case you missed it:

-- Erik Siers 12:46, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Saw it then. Just been generally busy, and coping with a hardware failure. Slowly resolving these things...--Michael Mol 23:25, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Spam users

I happened to look at the user creation log, and holy crap look at all the apparently-created-to-spam usernames -- things like "4Hjyo29LKb", "Gzs6na7KyZ", "4LwiEd2p", etc. Looks to be on the order of 5-10 spam accounts to 1 legit account.

I was thinking, there has to be a way to catch those, before they start posting their links. The only method that comes to mind is blocking their entire subnet, at least temporarily, say 30 days. That way, they can't just come back and create a new username and continue spamming, or just spam without logging in.

Might be harsh, especially if they're spamming from a normal ISP account, but maybe a short-term solution. Would likely reduce the amount of admin work, methinks. -- Erik Siers 20:20, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

They do get their source IPs blocked, and the IPs are disallowed from creating new users. I don't have a mechanism that allows me to block entire subnets, but that will become necessary when the site moves over to dual-stack IPv4/IPv6. --Michael Mol 20:32, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

And before anyone suggests it, I'm not interested in applying pattern-matching or bayesian tests on usernames. I've been caught by surprise before when an account that looked like a spam username started making beneficial edits. --Michael Mol 20:32, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

What about one of those tests that simply sends an alert to an admin? Make it a one-time thing, something like: "SpamWatchBot has noted an edit from suspicious user name apparent-spammer-name on page So-and-so. This is the only alert that will be generated for this user."

Then the bot (or whatever) could add apparent-spammer-name to an internal ignore list, and let the admins worry about it.

Eh... Looking at it now, maybe not worth the time to write. Shrug. Or maybe there's already a MW bot available to do something similar and could be modified appropriately; I haven't looked. Shrug again. -- Erik Siers 07:15, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Right now, I see almost every edit on the wiki, as I've got the Recent Changes feed pulled in via Google Reader. Anyone who does that can see when accounts are created or blocked, and when pages are edited or moved. Frequently, someone else gets in and repairs things before I have a chance to respond. I wind up blocking the offending account, possibly deleting any 'created' pages if the person who caught the edits first didn't have delete privileges. --Michael Mol 12:52, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

It might be worth considering doing more automated banning. I've been watching the war you've been fighting over the past month or so (and flagging problem pages as I see them) and I'm wondering if it's sustainable in its current form. Is it possible to change the rules to make things harder for the scum? The logs I can see don't let me find out whether there's some common feature of the hosts submitting spam, but I bet it'll prove to be a relatively small group that's targeting RC… –Donal Fellows 17:45, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the flaggings. I've been thinking of taking a page from Panopticlick and [mod_security http://modsecurity.org/] and use request fingerprinting to block automated attackers. The risk of false positives is very low compared to IP-banning, and automated attack scripts are highly likely--at least for the short term--to not change their fingerprints much between attacks. --Michael Mol 17:53, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Heads up: User:Healthytact23164, User:Gmalestripperx look very suspicious, but haven't spammed yet. –Donal Fellows

When I see new users in the recent changes feed, I add them to my watchlist. That way, I get an email when their page is created, so I can catch spam users in under five minutes, if I'm awake. --Michael Mol 17:00, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Uploading problem

I've been trying to upload a file and the interface won't let me. It's a png file which I've cunningly disguised with a .png extension, but when I attempt to upload it I just get

Permitted file types: png, gif, jpeg, svg.

Any ideas?

I had written an elegant solution to a task but I daren't post it without its output since I get harassed whenever I have the temerity to post a solution without giving its results.

CRGreathouse 07:15, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

This is a known problem. See Image Upload problem? ~~and Problems with uploading new versions of existing images~~ on this page. -- Erik Siers 07:31, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Ah. No solution known, then? I didn't see one at either of those links. CRGreathouse 08:22, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

The one I crossed off is probably unrelated. No response from Short Circuit so I assume no solution yet. He had a combination server move/upgrade planned; I don't know what happened with that but I guess that maybe he was hoping that the problem would disappear when he did that. If he did that. -- Erik Siers 08:27, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

There's some related discussion on my talk page, see if it's of any help. --Ledrug 08:51, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

There is a workaround linked to in the above discussion: [1]. --Mwn3d 11:57, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

I believe it to be related to "AJAX" uploads. That's what I found when I tried walking through the JS code. What I don't get is why people are still seeing that message even after I disabled AJAX uploads. Sorry for not replying directly in the other places it's cropped up; I'm beginning to think we need a real bugtracker for this stuff. --Michael Mol 14:03, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

I managed to make it work by disabling JavaScript on my browser. CRGreathouse 03:12, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

The MediaWiki software has been updated, serverside. Is this still going on? --Michael Mol 23:24, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

<math> not working?

Equations in the tasks are not being rendered for some reason. Could you check this? Thanks. --Paddy3118 07:00, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Also broken on all other pages; for example, “<math>1</math>” here renders as

1

(which used to render as “1” because the code used to spot that it was simple enough to convert to HTML; its definitely not getting as far as trying to send the info into TeX and failing). I guess it was the weekend's server changes, and could be as simple as a missing handler for the <math> tag. –Donal Fellows 09:18, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Should be fixed. --Michael Mol 23:23, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Michael! --Paddy3118 04:18, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Related Pages -- group them?

Greyscale_bars/Display, Colour_pinstripe/Display, Pinstripe/Display, and to a lesser extent Colour_bars/Display, plus their printer related tasks are all very similar. In fact, many of them center around 4 horizontal bars composed of a pattern of vertical bars, and the code is very similar between each task as a result. (Compare the AHK solutions for Colour pinstripe and Pinstripe; they differ by only a tiny bit: the few lines which distinguish between repeating colored vs repeating greyscale bars.) IMHO, they should all should be grouped together somehow, or even merged. — Crazyfirex 21:43, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Have at it! See Template:Collection...Though that kind of thing really should be accomplished using semantic tags and inline-queries, now. Take a look at Template:Mp community. --Michael Mol 23:30, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Hmm... how about "Graphical bars", "Graphics bars", or "Graphics patterns"? — Crazyfirex 22:07, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

More likely, something like [[task aspect::line drawing]]. At some point, we can have a box which lists the known aspects of a task, and then drill down to other tasks with the same aspect[s]. --Michael Mol 01:35, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Most tasks actually involve filled rectangles (looking at the sources there is usually a "FillRect" and very few "DrawLine" — one uses a brush, the other a pen), so how about "rectangle drawing"?

To my mind, it's the same thing if I use a one stroke of a pen with a square brush to fill in the same set of pixels as I could with filling a rectangle. I don't have a strong feelings to care which way it goes. As the thing becomes done more properly, ambiguous scenarios like this will be wrapped up in a tree of properties and subproperties.

It does bring to mind an interesting way to draw a distinction, however: The same task, except in a rotated frame of, say, 30 degrees counterclockwise. --Michael Mol 02:07, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Demo of IPv6 access from anon user.

SC here. Just demonstrating what an anonymous IPv6 user looks like. --2001:470:C5B9:DEAD:E269:95FF:FEC5:295F 15:24, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Another edit, from the same user, on the same /48, but a different /64. ('beef' instead of 'dead'. This is my wifi network, as opposed to my wired network.) The final 64 bits are different, because I'm using my wireless NIC instead of my wired NIC, and the two NICs have different MAC addresses. Also, if I were dedicated to it, I could automate coming at the wiki from 2^16 different /64s. The use of IPv6 privacy extensions would allow me to randomize the MAC-derived portion, too. If it were truly necessary to block my network, you would have to do it at a /48. That should be a last resort, though. Generally, you'd block the /128 (the full, specific IP) first, followed by the /64, followed by the /56, and then the /48. The larger the subnet, the more collateral damage, so larger blocks should be last. --2001:470:C5B9:BEEF:4EED:DEFF:FE93:63A0 15:37, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

IP address to nickname change request.

Hi. Recently I discovered that I created the page Canny_edge_detector not being logged in. Is there a way to change my IP address 87.224.129.185 to my nickname `firstfire' in the history? Thanks. --Firstfire 04:28, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Not something I can do, sorry. --Michael Mol 06:29, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, not a big deal. Thanks anyway. --Firstfire 19:06, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

"Edit privileges will now require email addresses"

Does this mean that anonymous edits are no longer allowed? -- Erik Siers 00:49, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Never mind; checked for myself. But is this likely to be a permanent policy change? -- Erik Siers 01:21, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

I'd like it to be. I don't expect spammers to adapt quickly, and it's already allowed me to relax restrictions on image uploads (the same restrictions that coincided with the problems with AJAX uploads). I'll probably drop CAPTCHAs for registered users next.--Michael Mol 02:58, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

I noticed what you wrote on User talk:XazuxiRasiha. In light of the new policy (especially the nice big notification banner) I would think that it's safe to assume that anyone who gives a false email address when signing up is probably trying to spam. -- Erik Siers 13:10, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

About one in three bounces I get are typos or other email errors, actually. Only two out of three are spam accounts, and it's worth the trouble (for now) for me to handle it manually. --Michael Mol 14:24, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

The spam continues

Well... I've been (mostly) away for a while now, and I'm seeing several users that have been approved, only to (apparently) immediately spam. So... what's the next step? Is there a "next step"? (In other words, given any thought to the matter?) The problem is obviously not automated spamming, but the people behind the spamming.

The only thought I had would be to "casually" ask them what their preferred language is, and then ask them to solve some trivial problem (in a manner different from what's already posted here, if applicable) before approving them to edit. (Re: asking about their preferred language... Most people that I've talked with, when they have a favorite language, are more than willing to discuss what they like about the language and why. Spammers generally aren't programmers, and I think you'd likely get a blunt answer: "Java" instead of "Java! I love how easy it is to do OOP and etc. etc. etc.") -- Erik Siers 20:05, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

We have spam, but it's nowhere near as bad as it was. For every created account that posts crap, three or four spam-like usernames are created which don't post anything. I'm pretty comfortable with the email policy right now. Also, things are finally settling down at home, which means I can start looking at the 'next step'. I expect that, were I to check, most of the verified spam accounts will have mailinator-backed email addresses. I should then be able to work with the Mailinator admins to get spambots banned from Mailinator services. This may require a change in our privacy policy to allow me to share email address, time and IP details with the Mailinator folks, and get the Internet cleaned up for a lot more than just RC. --Michael Mol 20:18, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Hmm... I think it would probably require a policy change at Mailinator. A major change. Mailinator is pretty easy to abuse. -- Erik Siers 20:24, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Mailinator has a bad reputation, but I'm told their people at the top have good intentions. So I'd be happy to work with them if they're interested. I haven't had the time+opportunity for the outreach, but that's coming. Meanwhile, our current spam input is manageable, and I'll be joining the rotation of people blocking spammers and deleting spam. --Michael Mol 20:28, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Is this change actually in place? Or is it still possible to create pages without verifying the code sent to one's email address at registration time? (I created an account with an email address that would not work, but didn't try to create any pages - but the registration message indicated that the only thing I would need the emailed code for was signing up for email notifications.) --Rdm (talk) 04:53, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Popular pages?

Hi, Whatever happened to http://rosettacode.org/mw/index.php?title=Special:PopularPages ? --Paddy3118 22:01, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

I think with the mega-caching that goes on here the pageview counters were pretty much meaningless (you'll notice them missing from the bottoms of pages). It might also save some resources on the server to disable pageview counts. --Mwn3d 01:32, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes and no. The mega-caching was getting partially punched-through to update the counters, but only essentially randomly. That wouldn't defeat relative measurements, as far as stat-keeping goes. However, as those got updated, they tended to purge cache, which hindered performance. They also pushed more work for reads and writes into the MySQL database, which, again, hinders performance. The last update to MediaWiki added more workload to the PHP code, and I found need to go on an optimization binge to improve pageload speed. As the site stands now, it could probably take a slashdotting in stride. --Michael Mol 01:43, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

And sorry for not responding sooner; I've been away on my honeymoon for the past few days. --Michael Mol 01:43, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

No problem about the page - I appreciate that its gone for a reason. --Paddy3118 03:41, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Congratulations

... And sorry for not responding sooner; I've been away on my honeymoon for the past few days. --Michael Mol 01:43, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

First things first Michael: CONGRATULATIONS!!! --Paddy3118 03:41, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

(I second that! -- Erik Siers 17:44, 11 May 2012 (UTC))

SPDY

Things I'm not sure of:

How much this would help us
How much this would help users
How much work you can/are willing to put into it
If this is even an applicable setup for us
If it's already done for us

I was looking at the FF release notes and saw that SPDY is enabled by default in newer versions. I looked around a (very) little bit and came across this. Hopefully we have everything necessary to support it. It could reduce our bandwidth a little bit and (more importantly) speed things up for our users. --Mwn3d 17:39, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Not going to happen soon. Apache doesn't face the public Internet, Squid does. I'd need squid to support SPDY. I'm also disinclined to use SPDY until it's been around a bit longer; right now, I'd consider implementations of the protocol to be immature, and thus a security risk. Otherwise, I rather like it. --Michael Mol 18:05, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Socio-PLT: Programming Language Perceptions

I just found the site and spent 40 minutes playing with the summary table. It seems to be a good way of showing programmers ideas on different languages in a comparative manner.

Is there a place for a link to this site on RC? I had thought of something akin to Similar Sites, but this site shows the opinions of programmers on languages rather than code examples. --Paddy3118 08:09, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Might make sense to rename Help:Similar Sites to Help:Additional Resources. That link seems worthwhile. --Michael Mol 12:17, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Proof issues

I have had a simple statement: that a computer implementation of an infinite type can represent only a finite number of distinct values (and, therefore, must fail to satisfy a set of axioms which require an infinite set of distinct values) removed, twice -- and without justification -- from the Proof task. Therefore, I am removing myself from the discussion, and will not be posting on this site until after either (a) the removal is explained to my satisfaction, or (b) the issue is explicitly described in some other fashion (where differences between implementations can be judged on their merits rather than because of some system which cannot be included in the task description). --Rdm 13:23, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Here's a (somewhat longwinded) attempt at stating my point of view on this issue: http://r-nd-m.blogspot.com/2012/05/glib-types.html --Rdm 19:52, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

I'll get at reading that as soon as I can. I did go back and read the talk page for Proof, and it sounded to me like part of the problem was people talking past each other. I could see ways to mitigate and try to correct the issue, but as I'm still getting back on my feet after a honeymoon/vacation where I was largely incommunicado, and as I have a backlog of major RC-related issues at home and on the server to deal with, I haven't had the time to wade in. --Michael Mol 20:25, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Ok, it's not all that big of a deal, but I do not want to be making the problem worse than it is. Honeymoon definitely takes priority over something like this. --Rdm 20:54, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

No code colourization at present?

Hi Michael. Just reporting that there seems to be no code colourization at the moment from lang tags and {{task}} isn't being processed properly. --Paddy3118 05:07, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Ow. I'll get right on it. --Michael Mol 10:02, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

I've just checked three random pages, and the syntax highlighting appears to be working there. Can you provide the steps to reproduce? --Michael Mol 10:10, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Sorry. It seems the problem is with my Firefox browser. Switching to Chromium the pages look fine. I'll restart Firefox, my login, the box - in order until it starts working again :-) --Paddy3118 10:25, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Something's up with the search/indexing...

I'm glad to have finally found this page -- http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Permutations_by_swapping If you try searching for permutation, permutations, etc, you get short-circuited directly into the "Permutations" topic, which incidentally should probably be broken down further into the individual algorithms for doing so. I can only assume that this Short_Circuit guy has gone overboard with the short circuiting on the search feature in a zealous attempt to short circuit the world. ;) Only by searching for "permutations by" or "permutations by swapping" do you actually get the chance to see that this swapping page even exists on the wiki. Further, searching for terms on that page like "Steinhaus" yield only a result on the Permutations topic even though that term is all over the "Permutations by swapping" one, while other terms like "Trotter" do yield the swapping page as a result. It's kind of like the wiki prefers the Permutations topic over the Permutations by swapping topic for some reason. I only even found it thanks to google's indexing in the first place. --CStubing 03:21, 29 October 2012 (UTC) P.S. I have a C++ implementation of the Steinhaus algo to put up there, but I just want to refactor a little first.

When you type permutations in the field, then hitting Search does what you expect. Hitting Go does as you described. Try hitting the Search button. --Paddy3118 07:18, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I didn't even notice there were 2 buttons, because I'm actually just hitting enter in the field after typing. I'd suggest making that default action on no button click perform a search rather than a go, as I think that behavior is more aligned with user expectations. --CStubing 16:26, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Creating a new user account

Hi, I logged out then logged in again to look at the page for creating a new user and it seemed to be missing a clear message about not spamming the site. Do we need one? --Paddy3118 11:02, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

It's not as if I think it would deter the seasoned spammer, I just thought that we needed to make it indefensible. --Paddy3118 11:05, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure a defense is even necessary; RC doesn't have a legal system, and the people who enforce what pass for rules are reasonably seasoned at distinguishing between meaningful links (i.e. things which are related to RC's interest domain) and useless links. If someone appeals, that puts them past the tens of thousands of automated spammer attempts we've had...and that's when I tend to step in. --Michael Mol 14:18, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Captcha, yay

I just got a captcha when creating RLE (a redirect). I can't recall getting one before, and I've created my shared of pages. Is this some sort of random thing, or is my memory just fuzzy, or...? (Not going to create more pages to test.) -- Erik Siers 17:12, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Used to be CAPTCHAs would only be triggered on account creation. Now they're triggered on page creation, file uploads and edits that introduce external links. I will very likely eventually create a group for whitelisted users. Not today, though. --Michael Mol 17:15, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia has an automatic book creator

Just found this. I created a book and found that they also create pages with all the authors names at the end. --Paddy3118 13:32, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Slick. I think I've seen it before, but I don't think it was as mature. --Michael Mol (talk) 21:53, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Problems with reports?

I was just trying to look at Reports:Tasks not implemented in Tcl, and I got a blank page. Same also for the equivalent page with Perl and Java. It looks like the MW upgrade broke the report system somehow. –Donal Fellows (talk) 10:52, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Rosetta Code:Village Pump/MediaWiki 1.20 Upgrade Issues --Michael Mol (talk) 13:52, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Possible vandalism

The User Cbasicuser has replaced the whole article Include a file with a page that just explains an example of IWBASIC. I thought this deletion was unitentional. Therefore I undid his changes. Now Cbasicuser has replaced the whole article Include a file again. I have not the time and the power (administrator rights) to deal with such situations. The changes of Cbasicuser look strange. His additions contain lots of empty lines and comments. I am not sure that Cbasicuser acts constructive. Please take a look at it. --Georg Peter (talk) 09:33, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

I have politely invited them to explain here. --Paddy3118 (talk) 16:25, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

I received a reply from Cbasicuser and will move it here: --Paddy3118 (talk) 05:14, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Explanation re: include files

1. I was still learning to use the wiki. So, it me a bit of time to get it to do what I want. Also, I was not feeling well, which is why I was staying in and posting here in my off time, and it had an effect on my level of attention.

2. When I looked at the user guide for the language again, I realized there were a number of ways in it seems to me there are a number of ways to do what could be considered adding source code to a file. And I wanted to give what I considered to be a good picture of the language in that example.

3. As I fairly recovered and need to catch up, I, in fact, really don't plan on posting anything more. I did come to see if there was anything I needed to clean up before and to double check a couple of pieces of code I posted actually worked, as I'd made corrections on the site but not in my files.

4. Happy?

We were all newbies once :-) Thanks for the heads-up. --Paddy3118 (talk) 05:14, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

On the Research Project

Looks great! - I read the PDF full paper and left some comments on their blog here; (although my comments are awaiting moderation.
I did question there use of RC for performance comparisons as I pointed out that Python was external frameworks that embed and extend libraries in other languages such as numpy, scipy, Biopython, PyPy Ipython, etc that are an alternative to switching from Python and are used by those wanting speed, but are very rarely used in RC examples. (Are they idiomatic)? --Paddy3118 (talk) 17:51, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm glad you left comments on their blog. Bearophile dropped into IRC to point out similar flaws, and I directed him there... --Michael Mol (talk) 19:54, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Spam Deletion

I guess I need to ask for spam deletion powers. I hate dealing with spam, and I don't really want to get into this, but it seems like sometimes I'm the only person around when there's fresh spam, and I sometimes get annoyed enough that I want to do something about it. But probably also I'll need to be pointed at some docs on policy and/or procedures. --Rdm (talk) 11:02, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

So... if this saves, presumably I have admin privileges. However, there's another spam page up, and I do not see an "admin link on the left" even when I try to edit it. --Rdm (talk) 14:08, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

See "Admin links" at the top, sorry. But what you're looking for for spam deletion is in the dropdown arrow next to the search bar at the top. Warning: Do *not* do IP bans. The IPs that show up are actually the CDN proxies; I don't have things set up properly to recognize the header that Cloudflare uses to identify the origin IP. Also, if you check the "Recent Changes" page, you'll see deletion and rollback links there. Be careful. --Michael Mol (talk) 14:23, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. I see the delete mechanism now.

And that cloudfront thing is a tough one, since you don't want to enable that http header for people talking to you from IPs they control.

But wait.. how can content delivery networks validly act as valid content-providing clients? Perhaps the right thing to do here would be to IP ban all of CloudFront's proxy servers? (At least while they are being advertised as serving in that role?)?? --Rdm (talk) 14:37, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

We're deliberately using CloudFront as our CDN. rosettacode.org actually points at their servers, and their servers pass requests back to us if they're not already cached. CloudFront does pack a header to identify the client's original source IP, but I've never gotten MW configured to recognize that header as containing the source IP. It's on my TODO list, but said list is very, very, very long, and even older... --Michael Mol (talk) 14:40, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Oh, and I have direct access to RC's origin servers firewalled off from anywhere except CloudFlare. Nobody is supposed to be able to access RC's server (except via SSH) except through them. --Michael Mol (talk) 14:50, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Oh, duh. And I should know that - I've seen the cloudfront fallback pages often enough. But CloudFront uses X-Forwarded-For for this purpose and when I read up on moinmoin wiki, docs they imply that it's supported. So I am going to guess this is a versioning thing and the pain is the inevitable pains and losses which come with any software upgrade. Well... I guess, good luck with your TODO list. (And my advice there - if I had to give advice - would be: go after some low hanging fruit, let some other things boil for a while, and good luck...) --Rdm (talk) 14:53, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Care to join in this topic Mike? --Paddy3118 (talk) 11:07, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Spammers

We have been having intermittent problems with spammers. And while a number of accounts have been used, they all seem to have a common focus.

So it might be a good idea if we could gather more information about these attacks.

One thing, in particular, that I would like to see, is the domain name that they used when verifying their registration. (The part of the email address after the @ sign, ideally with a few preceding characters also.) Just seeing that might tell us something useful about what they are doing (and would also help verify that email verification for registration is actively being used).

Is this something that we can do, now? Or, do we need to ask the mediawiki community for an implementation? --Rdm (talk) 21:51, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Rendering speed

We have been accumulating a number of Special:LongPages. And, that tends to make pages load slowly. And, I think you have already implemented the suggestions in the mediaikia manual page on performance tuning Anyways, I am wondering if there's some other ways to address this while retaining the usefulness of the site? (And, especially, I am wondering if there is some existing effort(s) underway that might help with this.)

(I suppose wikipedia's approach might work, but I don't know what all efforts that migration involves...) --Rdm (talk) 04:38, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

@@ Line 35: / Line 35: @@
 * [[User talk:Short Circuit/Stats]]
 = Put new stuff below here =
+==Is file uploading blocked forever?==
+I went to [http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Special:ListFiles File list] and discovered that all file uploads are blocked since 6/2/2016, even admins have no uploads. Is it sort of technical glitch? Or result of fighting spam too hard?? I'm planning 3 new tasks with 7 pictures. Without picture uploads it is useless. Another interesting issue: Why nobody complains? --AnatolV 21:30, 18 July 2016 (UTC)
 ==Problems and a few suggestions==