Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/Archive 8

message: Latest archive is number 7. Hope I haven't archived too many threads. --HappyCamper 18:07, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent archival 

message: (as a direct result of the following comment, this humorous proposal has been condemned to relocation to an undisclosed location for trying to be humorous about this serious topic. please contact this user for private showings)  :-(   hydnjo talk 16:28, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: <font color="gray">New Proposed Header (so as to squeeze in as many categories as possible)</font>

message: I got this table from .
 Edits           Unique users    Articles                                        Archived
 Total	Reg.	Reg.    Unreg.
 40240	97%	1496	607	Wikipedia:Votes for deletion archive May 2004   2368.2 MB  
 32037	40%	2756	9658	Wikipedia:Sandbox/History                       237.7 MB  
 29648	81%	1389	3196	Wikipedia:Reference desk/Miscellaneous          4764.6 MB  
 28578	97%	2266	480	Wikipedia:Copyright problems                    3563.8 MB  
 27827	46%	2908	8390	Wikipedia:Sandbox                               140.1 MB  
 25838	59%	2134	5920	George W. Bush                                  1679.6 MB
 ...
 8890	79%	496	1009	Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science                1757.2 MB  
 ...
 6018	69%	401	1180	Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities             850.6 MB  
It seems the reference desk is a greater burden on the servers than I would have guessed. —Ruud 11:35, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps this recategorization will help prevent duplicate questions :)--Urthogie 13:01, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Urthogie: I refer you to Hanlon's Razor. Nothing can make idiots stop being idiots. Cernen Xanthine Katrena 23:42, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  7 GB of Reference desk 

message: If the reference desk is going to be split, are there any volunteers who will agree to patrol the pages and add the date headers? --HappyCamper 03:33, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm usually editing around early morning UTC, so I could make it part of my routine to check for the date.  — Laura Scudder ☎ 05:18, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll watch the culture page all the time, what do you mean by add the date headers though?--Urthogie 12:11, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Every day someone needs to add =Date= to the bottom like this so that questions stay date sorted.  Really could be automated, but it doesn't take much time.  — Laura Scudder ☎ 16:01, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who is going to help out? 

message: -reversion or whatever, somebody erased almost everything!
:Done. Wikipedia:Revert explains what to do if you see a similar problem in the future. —Charles P.  (Mirv) 15:58, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Recall required

message: Has anyone asked User:Cryptic if User:Crypticbot could do the archiving of the reference desk? —Ruud 15:44, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I just did. That'd be pretty handy; it was getting fairly backed up for a while. I'm usually on around noon UMT; I can archive it for y'all if you like. It'd be like Hollywood Video's 5 1/2 days scheme. Cernen Xanthine Katrena 23:54, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Wonderful news! The last time I talked to someone, the archival was not possible because I wouldn't be around during noon or midnight UMT (whichever one is applicable). Speaking of which, let me archive the pages right now. It's getting rather long. --HappyCamper 15:50, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've run this in read-only mode for the past few days, and it seems to be working correctly.  I'm going to start running it on the live pages tonight.  Please let me know on my talk page if it does anything wrong, instead of just quietly fixing it, or it'll keep doing it wrong; but do fix it, too, since I'm not at my computer around midnight and won't usually get the message until about 15:00 UTC.  (I already know about the new day's header being misplaced if a new section sneaks in between midnight and the bot's update; it just appends it to the bottom.)  One question: how many daily sections should I leave on the pages (not including the new, empty section for today)?  Manual archival's been varying between six and seven. —Cryptic (talk) 08:27, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: When I archive, I don't really think too consciously about the number of sections I leave on the reference desk - but people seem to be happy with having 5 to 7 active sections. I leave only 5 sections active when the desk is extremely busy...this is usually during the late fall. The activity on the desk will also begin to really pick up by April. I guess for now, 7 sections at most would suffice, but do whatever is easiest with your code. Also, we don't have to be too concerned if the header is not added exactly after midnight. Hydnjo has been very kind to actually go into the page history and figure out the last question posted before midnight...but if the bot is off by one or two questions, I think it would be okay too. I hope this helps! --HappyCamper 18:13, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[User:Crypticbot]] 

message: I've noticed that there are a lot of "blank" questions, with a summary but no text.  I suspect this may be caused largely by MediaZilla Bug 4273: when a user types a summary and hits "Enter", instead of the cursor moving to the next textbox, a blank question is submitted.  This is a really poor interface, because hitting "Enter" seems like a very natural thing to do.  If this bug is affecting you, you may wish to comment on it, or advocate that it be fixed.  -- Creidieki 17:33, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Blank questions caused by Bug 4273 

message: Black Carrot' made a good comment  which should probably be reposted here. We offer the "Ask a question" link much more prominently than the "Search" box - no wonder new readers use it! We need a "Search" (or "Look up") box right under the Welcome line before we can even think about blaming others. This is more important and helpful than most of the other links in that prime place. It would also help if we added a search box to the top of this (helpdesk) page. Common Man 02:34, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's a fair criticism.  We can link to Special:Search, which is better than referring people to the search on the left. Superm401 - Talk 02:51, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it was better before. I also think the problem is elsewhere, and I've set things in motion to get it fixed. see Wikipedia_talk:Where_to_ask_a_question#virginity  and Wikipedia_talk:Where_to_ask_a_question#From the Reference Desk Black Carrot 21:13, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Why new users ask here instead of searching