User talk:Guy Macon

We are only 992,828,622 articles away from our 1,000,000,000th article...
--Guy Macon

• "A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction into a battle of wills and add drama to an otherwise dull day." -- Calvin, of Calvin and Hobbes
  

--Guy Macon

• "Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game because they almost always turn out to be -- or to be indistinguishable from -- self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time." --Neil Stephenson, Cryptonomicon
  

--Guy Macon

• On the desperation of Jimmy's banners
  

--Guy Macon

--Guy Macon

Donations Needed: Wikipedia Has Posted An Appeal Asking For One Night Of Physical Intimacy From Each User
--Guy Macon

"The Revolution's main adversaries were the patriots and the people from Braveheart," said speaker Tim Capodice, who has edited hundreds of Wikipedia entries on subjects as diverse as Euclidian geometry and Ratfucking. "The patriots, being a rag-tag group of misfits, almost lost on several occasions. But after a string of military antics and a convoluted scheme involving chicken feathers and an inflatable woman, the British were eventually defeated despite a last-minute surge, by a score of 89–87."
--Guy Macon

User:Guy Macon/On the Diameter of the Sewer cover in front of Greg L’s house
(Note: needs a "in popular culture" section.) --Guy Macon

On User:Guy Macon/Wikipedia has Cancer it says: The MediaWiki edit toolbar ended up being used by a whopping 0.03% of active editors.<ref>[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title%3DUser_talk:Jimbo_Wales&oldid=779581521#Future_changes] ''Wikimedia Foundation''</ref>

But since the context is The outdated 2006 wikitext editor will be removed later this year. It is used by approximately 0.03% of active editors. it looks like that, at that point in 2017, only 0.03 of active users were still using the toolbar introduced in 2006.

So it didn't end up being used by a whopping 0.03% of editors, but most people no longer used it 11 years after its introduction because better alternatives were available (and also the VisualEditor). There is now a Wikipedia:Fundraising/Fundraising Hub btw. Polygnotus (talk) 04:34, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

If you have a reference showing a larger percentage some time earlier, I will be glad to edit the page to reflect that. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:06, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

The text as written implies they made something which was barely used. In reality few people used it after multiple better alternatives were introduced, and even then it was still on the Community Wishlist Survey 2019. And after it was removed 1200+ accounts on English Wikipedia were using it as a gadget as of October 2020.

If you have a reference showing a larger percentage some time earlier There is no need to prove that. I proved the text is misleading.

I will be glad to edit the page to reflect that But then it wouldn't make the point you are trying to make. You want to make the point that WMF software dev leaves much to be desired, there are better examples. Polygnotus (talk) 08:38, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

I certainly don't want to be misleading, but you have not established that the number I used was misleading. Neither one of us knows whether that "0.03% of active editors" number was the highest usage that the tool ever saw or (as you have speculated without any data to back it up) a low point after some earlier peak. You just waved your hands and said "There is no need to prove that".

I took that "1200+ accounts" number and compared it to total editors. Per Wikipedia:Wikipedians "There are currently 52,439,232 Wikipedia accounts, of which 275,757 have made at least one edit during the last month." Per that number has not been growing (but I would like more recent numbers to be sure). So that calculates out to be around 0.4% in 2020. But that's not a good number. It assumes that everyone who had the toolbar activated in the preference was an active editor and actually used the tool. Nonetheless, you claimed that you have "proved the text is misleading" when what you have actually done is guessed that the text is misleading. Not good enough.

Re: "there are better examples", what would you suggest I use as an example instead?

And, of course, if anyone reading this wants to argue that the WMF creates uniformly high quality software that always sees wide adoption and does so at a bargain price, I would be happy to see those arguments as well. --Guy Macon (talk) 12:59, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

when what you have actually done is guessed that the text is misleading. Not good enough.

All I needed to prove is that the text The MediaWiki edit toolbar ended up being used by a whopping 0.03% of active editors. is misleading. For that, simply linking to the list of editors and pointing out when it was introduced (2006) and when the statement was made (2017) was enough, and all that information is in the text in the link.

what would you suggest I use as an example instead? That depends on the point you want to make. You already list 2 examples.

I tested the Visual Editor not very long ago. It was bad. It looks like "Knowledge Engine" refers to Knowledge Engine (search engine) which, if the article is to be believed, wasn't a great idea. People ran into trouble with the new CORS updates which broke a bunch of my scripts and the anti-scraping stuff. Something like DiscussionTools is still unfinished. We still lack many basic features in the Action API (how many revisions does this article have?) and if you install MediaWiki (or, more realistically, spin up a Dockge container) you don't have the XTools API. Much of the codebase was written before the Industrial Revolution so I doubt you need that 0.03% to make a point. Polygnotus (talk) 13:34, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

Maybe you could use I've been frustrated as well about the endless controversies about the rollout of inadequate software not developed with sufficient community consultation and without proper incremental rollout to catch showstopping bugs. which is a direct quote of some guy. Polygnotus (talk) 04:38, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Way better than what I wrote. Thanks! See change here: --Guy Macon (talk) 08:29, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Thank you. Much stronger. Polygnotus (talk) 10:28, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Ha! Well said. I wish I had your candour in dealing with NPOV vandals. Chattenoir (talk) 00:54, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

Hello Guy, there’s no reply button for the thread. I think it’s a formatting hiccup that I don’t know quite enough about to confidently suggest how to fix. But I would like to add to the report. Mikewem (talk) 14:36, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

That's weird. Works for me. What happens when you click on Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#LateNightCoffee?

There are a lot of people at Wikipedia:Help desk who know more about this sort of thing than I do. Maybe one of them can help. --Guy Macon (talk)

It's because Guy didn't sign with a date. That's what triggers the reply tool to know it's a message that can be replied to. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 15:24, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

Ahh, that makes sense. I've always wondered why that happens sometimes. ^SMason_Garrison 21:54, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

You can try manually inserting text in the source editor if all else fails, colons for indentation when replying. The edit source next to the topic header will narrow it down to just that one topic. LithyLithium (talk) 15:27, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

I fixed the sig at ANI.

Whoever decided that using 3 tildes or 5 tildes should result in a malformed sig instead of an error should find another career. Creating software isn't for them. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:31, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

No personal attacks, drop and give me twenty push-ups.^[Joke] ( peanut gallery comment) LithyLithium (talk) 16:00, 20 April 2026 (UTC)