I'll reply to messages here, unless requested otherwise.

Index of stuff

Layout request

Bishzilla, like apparently also Richard Dawson, is a great fan of Xkcd. Rather pathetically, she has attempted to put a honorary banner on her talkpage — see it? Looks awful, naturally, especially the way it squashes up against the "User Wikipedian For year" box, that she doesn't want to lose. Could you possibly make it look decent? A proper centered box would be nice. And, while purple is good (she copied the whole thing from the talkpage of the slightly more proficient Darwinbish, and it was purple there), she'd rather have bright green. Damn that RGB code, prehistoric critters can't handle it. They generally prefer the divbox, where you simply type "green", but the divbox is too wide for this. (Do you know a way to limit the width of it, by any chance?) Bishonen | talk 16:30, 7 July 2016 (UTC).[reply]

Little 'shonen too stupid or lazy to supply convenient links: User talk:Bishzilla and [1]. bishzilla ROARR!! 16:43, 7 July 2016 (UTC).[reply]
@Bishzilla: I could probably hack something, but callling RexxS would give a better result. I consult Web colors#X11 color names (or is it another page?) when wanting to pick an RGB color.
Yummy, I don't recall seeing the edit notice at User talk:Bishzilla—wow! And I might post that xkcd cartoon at Talk:Ken Ham#Age of Earth Opinion vs Fact. Johnuniq (talk) 02:08, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
[Zilla effortfully check out little talkpage section.] Good place for it! Speak volumes! 'Zilla attempt placement herself, but unfortunately Bishonen yank leash. "No editing article talkpages, monster!" Bah. Roarr. :-( bishzilla ROARR!! 21:09, 14 July 2016 (UTC).[reply]

Lua: mw.text.split by backslash oddity

Please see Module:Sandbox/Sameboat/m3 and User:Sameboat/sandbox. When I attempt to split a string separated by backslash ('1\2\3\4\5'), it returns this: 1����. Welp~ -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk · contri.) 01:41, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Sameboat: The problem is that '1\2\3\4\5' should be '1\\2\\3\\4\\5' because you want real backslashes in the string. The black diamond with a question mark (what I see in my browser) is a symbol indicating that the UTF-8 code is not valid because, for example, '\2' is the byte hex 02 which is not UTF-8. Johnuniq (talk) 02:21, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Problem is the source which would be analyzed and split comes from something like this. Ultimately I want to trim strings like this '\\\STR\STR\\' into this '\STR\STR' by splitting the string by backslash and analyze the first value and last value if both are empty '', then remove them from the table and finally concat all split values again.
The markup is primarily analyzed by module:Routemap at line 228 and to form the diagram, but I have no idea how it avoids the black diamond. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk · contri.) 02:42, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Sameboat: Clicking edit at Draft:West Coast Main Line diagram shows lines including the first of the following, which for our purposes is the same as the second.
\\\\\\exKHSTa\\STR\\\exSTR~~((rws|Preston West Lancs)) (latterly goods only)
\\\\\\abd\\def\\\ghi
Considering the second line, what do want to do? The second line has 6 consecutive backslashes, then 2, then 3. That is exactly what a module would receive. Please use single backslashes only in our discussion unless showing a line of Lua because I can't work out how many backslashes you intended in the strings in your last reply. For example, if you write 'a\\b' I will assume it is 'a' then two backslashes then 'b'. For development you might use a comma instead of a backslash, then get the code working for commas. Then it would be simple to fix it to work with backslashes. Johnuniq (talk) 03:21, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry for troubling you all this time. I accidentally discovered that mw.text.trim helps ignore escape sequence which is like wrapping the string with double square brackets. The best part is that the Scribunto/Lua reference manual on MediaWiki doesn't explain this function at all! Should I amend it? -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk · contri.)
@Sameboat: Don't worry about posting here—I won't respond if I'm unavailable. I like stories with an ending, so please let me know when it all works. I don't think mw.text.trim does anything unexpected. I wouldn't update its documentation unless very confident! If editing a module, you can paste =[[1\23]] into the debug console, and it will show 1\23, whereas ='1\23' shows the black diamond, as you said. Can you post an example with mw.text.trim that shows what you mean? Johnuniq (talk) 05:33, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
You can see in Module:Sandbox/Sameboat/m3 and User:Sameboat/sandbox. I just apply mw.text.trim to the source and then the worry of escape sequence is gone. Routemap itself is quite complicated to explain, anyway the trimmer function is for reducing the visible row width of the icons without ruining the intended position in the whole map table. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk · contri.) 06:08, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I don't need to understand Routemap, but if you were to show test input and output, plus what was wanted for the output (assuming the wanted result is not happening), I could work out you wanted the module to do. At any rate, I'm sure mw.text.trim is not influencing the black diamonds, so I edited Module:Sandbox/Sameboat/m3 to remove the trim. Put it back when you have looked at the result. The result in the sandbox is different with something strange happening for trimmer2, but no diamonds. Have you checked trimmer2? It seems to set a couple of tables to {} each time around the loop, and that looks like a bug, although I haven't studied it. Johnuniq (talk) 07:46, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Range Block Tool

Hey I was testing out the range block tool you posted at ANI on the thread where I provided the range block information. The contributions function doesn't seem to work it spits out an error saying "User account "2600:8805:2100:A200:*" is not registered." Any ideas if this is a problem just on my end or does the contributions function not work yet?

--Cameron11598 (Talk) 04:15, 10 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

never mind turns out the gadget got disabled on me :/ --Cameron11598 (Talk) 04:16, 10 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'm glad you fixed it. Johnuniq (talk) 07:32, 10 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Huma Abedin

"drive bye tag" my ASSSSSSSSS!!!! Apparently failed to see the talk page!!!! BS!!! Thanks for your opinion but we all have them, I asked for neutrality check you just PROCLAIMED "DRIVE BYE CHECK" that woudl be true if I did not make an entry on the talk page otherwise SUBJECTIVE BULLLL!!!!PS tag is going back you failed to provide eitehr discussion on it's removal or a discussion now let me throughly analyse all your contributions and see how unbiased and not subject you are be back shortly, good day!!--0pen$0urce (talk) 06:00, 13 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No, I saw Talk:Huma Abedin#Undue weight and lack of NPOV on congressional Inquiries Sections and observed that it contained no statement to justify a tag other than a generic complaint. Is the concern that there must be plenty of dirt on anyone associated with Clinton? Having added the tag twice, you now have a total of two edits to the article. You don't seriously imagine that a tag is an unmovable object that has to remain until the tagger is satisfied? Johnuniq (talk) 06:23, 13 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

ANI notice

Information icon There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is Sea Lions. Thank you. Guy Macon (talk) 14:12, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Groan, that's the mind control fringe stuff from NPOVN. Thanks for trying to explain the facts of life to them. I commented. Johnuniq (talk) 23:52, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Admin?

Have you ever thought of becoming an admin? I find your comments at ANI and other noticeboards genuinely intelligent, thoughtful, fair, and helpful. And you have a technical background, and a thorough and varied tenure here. Would you be interested in becoming an admin? I know some folks are happy remaining at the civilian level, however I think the admin corps could use you if you were interested. Softlavender (talk) 08:46, 29 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Softlavender: Thanks, that's very kind. I have a vague feeling that one day I might run for admin because I would like to help with some of the cases at ANI where the matter is pretty clear, but the issue is ignored for whatever reason. However, running now is not going to happen because I still haven't done any significant article development, and I agree with those who say an admin should have created a few articles and demonstrated competence in that area, and have an appreciation for why an admin should avoid molesting content builders. I got sidetracked by my programming interests nearly four years ago and that has taken most of my energy since (index). One day I'll return to some of my old notes and do some article work, and then I'll remind you about this discussion!

Sorry about the peculiar edit conflict at ANI that occurred a couple of hours back. I prepared my comment in an editor, then clicked "edit" in the browser and pressed Ctrl-End followed by Ctrl-V to go to the end of the section and paste my comment. However, on preview, I noticed a typo which I fixed, then previewed again and saved. On saving, I saw my comment was before your new comment which had not appeared in my edit window, and the history shows your comment as a couple of minutes ahead of mine. I did not put my comment in front of yours! Very weird. Johnuniq (talk) 11:31, 29 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your reply; I didn't know you hadn't done much content (I didn't bother to check), and it's nice that you are taking the advice of content creators to heart. No worries about the ANI thread: I've noticed more and more that ANI has weird technical fuck-ups like that. Cheers, Softlavender (talk) 11:59, 29 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
(talk page watcher) Hello J. I've seen a few threads recently where there is a general feeling that content creation is not the must that it used to be - at least in part to the fact that WikiP has been around for over a decade now. You should still do what you feel most comfortable with. I do think you would make a good admin. On the other topic ANI and AN edit conflicts have been wonky for some time now. I remember a thread at VPT but no one seemed to know how to fix it. Cheers to you both. MarnetteD|Talk 17:15, 29 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks but I won't try running until I've done more—I've got quite a lot of to-do notes that I've accummulated... Johnuniq (talk) 05:21, 30 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A trout for you!

Whack!

You've been whacked with a wet trout.

Don't take this too seriously. Someone just wants to let you know that you did something silly.

Doc talk 12:09, 1 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]