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City of Golden Shadow

City of Golden Shadow, originally published as Otherland, is a science fiction novel by American writer Tad Williams, the first book in his Otherland series. The "Otherland" refers to a virtual world or worlds and the "City Of Golden Shadow" is a city in the Otherland network to which the main characters are being summoned. The novel tells the story of a frightening virtual network created by a group of rich men known as The Grail Brotherhood. These men include: Felix Jongleur, who was a child at the time of the First World War and is currently the world's oldest man; Jiun Biao, a Chinese economist described as "the terror of Asia"; and Robert Wells, the owner of Telemorphix, the world's largest telecommunications company. The book tells the story of a group of ordinary people who are drawn into the network to stop them.

Plot summary
The first character introduced is a man called Paul Jonas, apparently an infantryman on the Western Front of the First World War. In what he at first believes to be a dream or hallucination, he meets a woman with wings, who gives him a feather. He wakes from the experience to find himself back in the trenches, but realizes the experience was not a dream when he discovers the feather. Two of his comrades, Finch and Mullet, begin to express doubts about his sanity. Eventually, Paul runs off into no-man's land. There, he finds the bird-woman but Finch and Mullet have pursued him, and they have been transformed into monstrous shapes: Mullet is grossly fat and Finch has no eyes. Paul flees in terror and falls through a hole in space. He discovers himself in a place similar to the chess-land in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, where he is caught in the battle between the red and the white, as well as hunted by Finch and Mullet. He escapes with a young boy he met at an inn, whose name is Gally. They find themselves on Mars, which is inhabited by creatures who demand a sacrifice of a princess from the planet Venus each year. He recognizes the chosen woman as the winged woman he met earlier, but he cannot remember when he met her. His memory does not even extend to his time in the chess-land. With the help of other men from Earth, he rescues the princess, then flees from the angry Martians. He sees Mullet and Finch again, however, and tries to escape in a hijacked airship. He loses control of the airship and finds himself in a conservatory with a harp, which shrinks to the size of his palm. Mullet and Finch confront him, demanding that he give them the harp, but he refuses and appears again on the airship, which is hurtling toward the ground. Transported to yet another world, he is rescued from a frozen river by a group of Neanderthals, and a voice comes from the harp, telling him that friends will search for him on the river.

The story moves to the late 21st century. The most significant technological change is the wide availability of virtual reality interfaces among all parts of society. The internet has been replaced by "the Net," a vast network of online VR environments. In Durban, a VR programming instructor named Irene "Renie" Sulaweyo is teaching a Kalahari San named !Xabbu how to create such environments, while providing for her family. Her family is made up by her alcoholic father Long Joseph and her ten-year-old brother Stephen. Stephen spends much of his time online and frequently joins his friends in escapades to forbidden areas of the net. When he somehow ends up in a coma after visiting a forbidden club, she and !Xabbu decide to investigate. Inside the club, they discover a number of very unsavoury entertainments, and are very nearly trapped by the managers. Their most bizarre and horrifying discovery is a very powerful hypnotic entity, which Renie nearly dies trying to escape from. Convinced that the club is set up to damage the minds of children, as it has done to Stephen, she resolves to stop the people responsible. She finds an unusual and large piece of code, in the form of a golden diamond, on her machine, and consults her friend and mentor, Dr. Susan van Bleeck, about it. As they examine it, it erupts into an image of a golden city, then disappears. Renie's difficulties multiply, as it becomes clear that her investigations have earned her powerful enemies: she is stood down from her job and unknown persons set fire to her family's apartment complex. Finally, van Bleeck is brutally assaulted and dies after leaving Renie and !Xabbu with three names: Martine Desroubins, Blue Dog Anchorite, and Bolivar Atasco. The first two are hackers that agree to help them find the golden city, which is in a mysterious network called "Otherland", while the third is an anthropologist and archaeologist whose expertise is pre-Columbian Latin America. Blue Dog Anchorite reveals himself to be Murat Sagar Singh, a retired programmer who worked on the security system for Otherland, and whose colleagues on the same project have been dying in unusual circumstances. He also reveals that Otherland was commissioned by a secret organisation called "The Grail Brotherhood", and that Atasco, who oversaw the security project for Otherland, was an important member of that organisation. Renie, !Xabbu, Martine, and Singh plan to break into Otherland; Renie and !Xabbu, along with Long Joseph and van Bleeck's assistant Jeremiah Dako, travel to Wasps' Nest, a mothballed military base in the Drakensberg mountains, where there is equipment allowing Renie and !Xabbu to stay connected to the Net for extended periods. Preparations completed, they hack into Otherland, but Singh is confronted and killed by the security system. He is later found dead in his room from a heart attack. Renie, !Xabbu, and Martine manage to enter Otherland and make their way to the golden city, which is called Temilún. There, they meet the God-King, who reveals himself to be Atasco.

In suburban California, a terminally-ill teenager named Orlando Gardiner has become the most celebrated warrior in Middle Country, an online VR MMORPG based on swords-and-sorcery. However, while playing the game, he is distracted by a vision of a golden city and killed by a low-level monster. With the help of his friend, Sam Fredericks, he begins to investigate. Their investigations lead to TreeHouse, an online fringe community, and to Melchior, a code name used by Singh and others. Following the trail, they are mysteriously taken to a beach on a river. Across the river, they can see the golden city. They build a raft to cross the river, but are stopped by the police and taken to the palace of the God-King.

On an army base in North Carolina, the young girl Christabel Sorensen becomes friends with Mr. Sellars, a mysterious old man living on the base. She is unaware that he is under house arrest, and her father, a senior military security officer, is in charge of guarding him. She helps him to escape from his house into a network of tunnels lying underneath the base.

The Grail Brotherhood emerges as a small number of the world's wealthiest and most powerful people who have formed an exclusive society. Otherland is their private network, where many of them own numerous simulation worlds (others being leased out for very large sums), and they intend to use it for even more mysterious purposes. They meet in a simulation based on ancient Egypt, where their leader, Felix Jongleur, appears as Osiris and obliges other members to present themselves as various Egyptian deities. Jongleur commissions an employee, John Dread, to carry out a task referred to as the "Sky God Project." Dread promises to accomplish his mission, although it is not stated what exactly he must do.

Renie, !Xabbu, Martine, Orlando, Fredericks, and four other people in similar situations find themselves imprisoned in a virtual reality world so complex that it rivals reality. There, they meet Atasco and his wife, and learn that Atasco, though formerly a member of the Grail Brotherhood, has been uninvolved for some time (though he has been permitted to retain his simulation world), and is now secretly opposing the Brotherhood's plans. They meet the enigmatic Mr. Sellars, who tells them that the network is somehow built from the minds of catatonic children worldwide, and he calls upon the small group of adventurers to stop the Grail Brotherhood.

Before they can get their questions answered, however, the meeting descends into chaos. Unknown to any of those gathered, Dread and a team of expert assassins have attacked the Atascos' island home in Colombia, and Bolivar and his wife are suddenly murdered. Sellars gives the adventurers some brief instructions: they are to search along the river for Paul Jonas, who is at large within Otherland's many simulation worlds, then he too vanishes. Even as the adventurers flee Temilún, Dread, with the help of criminal hacker Dulcie Anwin, hijacks the simulation body of one of their party. The group sails down the river, hoping to find the answers that will enable them to free the children from Otherland's hold.

Characters in "City of Golden Shadow"

 * Paul Jonas: A person trapped within the Otherland network. When first introduced, Paul believes himself to be a soldier condemned to the trenches of the First World War. Because he underwent "treatment" (brainwashing) before being introduced to the simulation, he cannot remember anything that happened more than a few days ago.  As he explores the simulation, he struggles to discover who he is, as well as trying to escape from Mullet and Finch, agents of The Grail Brotherhood.
 * Mullet: Supposedly a companion of Paul Jonas in the trenches. When Paul escapes the World War I simulation, however, Mullet, in various incarnations, pursues him through the other simulations of the Otherland network. Later revealed to be Mudd, an employee of Felix Jongleur.
 * Finch: Mudd's companion, who pursues Paul. His real name is Finney.
 * Gally: A boy that Paul meets in the Otherland simulation, and who accompanies him in his flight from Mullet and Finch. He demonstrates to Paul the significance of the river that flows through the various simulation worlds in Otherland.
 * Irene "Renie" Sulaweyo: A South African computer teacher, whose younger brother Stephen falls into a coma, prompting the research that leads to her discovery of the Otherland network.
 * !Xabbu: A bushman from the Kalahari desert, and a student of Renie. He helps her research the cause of her brother's coma, and enters the Otherland network with her. His spiritual guidance keeps Renie sane, as well as providing her with a viewpoint that does not take the technology of her civilization for granted.
 * Stephen Sulaweyo: Renie's eleven-year-old brother, who spends a large amount of his time in virtual reality with his friends Eddie and Soki. He falls into a coma after visiting a forbidden area of the net, and is moved to a hospital, where he remains for most of the story.
 * Long Joseph Sulaweyo: Renie's father, described as a once-honorable man who became an alcoholic after the accidental death of his wife (Renie's mother). Apathetic about the problems and emotions of his family members, he resists Renie's attempts to keep him safe.
 * Dr. Susan van Bleeck: A rich technology expert who at one time taught Renie virtual engineering. Renie contacts her after her brother falls ill, and she is able to direct Renie to Martine Desroubins, Murat Sagar Singh, and Bolivar Atasco before agents of the Grail Brotherhood murder her.
 * Jeremiah Dako: Susan van Bleeck's butler and cook, who joins Renie and !Xabbu after van Bleeck is murdered.
 * Strimbello: A man who operates an ominous club designed to entice children to enter a situation where they can be mentally damaged for the benefit of the Grail Brotherhood. He is responsible for putting Stephen into a coma, and nearly succeeds in doing the same to Renie and !Xabbu.
 * Murat Sagar Singh: Also known by the code name "Blue Dog Anchorite", Singh is an elderly man who was an acquaintance of Susan van Bleeck and a worker on some programming for the Otherland project. He helps Renie, !Xabbu, and Martine hack into the system, but is killed by a malevolent aspect of the Otherland security system when he tries to enter with them.
 * Martine Desroubins: An acquaintance of Susan van Bleeck who lives in France, and who assists Renie and !Xabbu and enters Otherland with them. She is revealed to be blind, and interprets virtual reality through different mechanisms than the others, so the large amount of information in the Otherland system starts to drive her insane, and she is seemingly ill because of this at the end of the book.
 * Orlando Gardiner: A terminally ill teenager who plays the VR MMORPG Middle Country with his best (and only) friend Fredericks. After he discovers an image of a golden city, a location in the Otherland network, he becomes obsessed with finding it. Both he and Fredericks enter Otherland, despite the fact that he is very sick with pneumonia. At the end of the book, he is unconscious and at risk of dying from his disease, cared for by members of the other eight people who also succeeded in entering Otherland.
 * Salome Fredericks: Simply called Fredericks, she is a friend of Orlando's who wears the sim of a man, but is actually a teenage girl (Orlando, her best friend, is unaware of her true gender until late into the plot). She does not approve of Orlando's attempts to learn about Otherland, believing that they are likely to get harshly punished for their actions, but accompanies him on all of his exploits.
 * Mr. Sellars: An elderly man imprisoned on an army base in North Carolina, who 'recruits' Orlando and the others by leaving clues about the Otherland scattered across the net. Eventually, he meets them in Otherland, and tries to explain the situation and what they must do.
 * Christabel Sorensen: A young girl living on the army base, who secretly becomes friends with Mr. Sellars and helps him escape from the army base.
 * Felix Jongleur: The oldest person on earth, born before the outbreak of World War I, he is also one of the wealthiest and most powerful, and certainly one of the most ruthless. He is the leader of the Grail Brotherhood, and masterminded the creation of the Otherland system. Through much of the book, he appears in his preferred environment, a simulation of ancient Egypt, where, as Osiris, he presides over meetings of the Grail Brotherhood.
 * Johnny Wulgaru: Known by his adopted name Dread, this character's real name is only mentioned once, and then in reference to his unhappy childhood. He has the power to manipulate electronic devices, an ability he calls his "twist", and views his life as a sort of movie. He makes sport of hunting and killing women. Despite his dangerous obsession with rape and murder, Jongleur, who calls him "Anubis", recruits him to assassinate Atasco. He has an uneasy relationship with Jongleur, who has kept many secrets from him, and when he breaks into Otherland he welcomes the opportunities to secretly gain information about Jongleur's plans.
 * Robert Wells: A centenarian living in Oregon, where he heads the powerful technology firm Telemorphix, Wells is a member of the Grail Brotherhood, appearing in Jongleur's Egypt as the god Ptah. While his technical expertise makes him indispensable to the Brotherhood's plans, he is unpopular among many of the other members. He heads a minority faction which seeks to remove Jongleur from leadership.
 * Daniel Yacoubian: A general in the US Army, he is also a member of the Grail Brotherhood, appearing in Jongleur's Egypt as the god Horus. He schemes with Wells to remove Jongleur from his position of leadership.

title: City of Golden Shadow


text:
User talk:Interiot/archive1

My toolserver tools are listed at http://tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/.

For the edit counting tools, I have two versions that aren't on the toolserver, though I don't often work on them:
 * http://faleg.org/cgi-bin/wannabe_kate / User:Interiot/Tool — no longer in development; blocked by Wikipedia because HTML-scraping is a no-no. It may or may not be okay to run it on your own private server.
 * http://paperlined.org/apps/wikipedia/Tool2/ — I may sporadically work on this, as needed by ko and other sites that aren't available via the toolserver

Welcome!
Hello and welcome to Wikipedia! You might be interested in Welcome, newcomers, How to edit a page, and the Manual of Style. If you ever get bored, take a look at the list of open tasks.

You can sign your name and timestamp on talk pages and whatnot using four tildes: ~. Feel free to ask me if you have any questions, or inquire at the help desk or village pump. Add yourself to the list of Wikipedians if you like.

Glad to have you, and be bold! Rdsmith4— Dan | Talk 02:08, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

HI! Well the thing is i started off trying to hunt down movies that are somewhat related to computer science/programming/hacking/It etc. Even, google, a great search engine as it is, couldn't get me a decent link, so I thought I'd add one myself. The criteria for these movies is just that. Anything to do with Computers, Electronics, Hacking, Programming. I came across a list where somebody listed Final Fantasy: Spirits Within as a techie movie, which it is not. Its a futuristic movie but it has nothing to do with the afore mentioned topics, apart from the fact that it is CG. User:Harrisbhatti
 * (reply left on the article's talk page) -Interiot

Indiana Academy
The suicide issue on the Indiana Academy page is currently unsubstantiated. I think (and am considering acting on) that, until substantiated links are provided, references to the suicide rate at the Academy should be left out. Let me know what you think! --Martin Osterman 12:29, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I was just showing some deference to the original poster but trying to give a more balanced view. I would lean towards removing the material also.  However, I don't think it's wholly unsubstantiated, even without links.  At the least, there was a perception of a problem during the start of my class.  However, I don't think it's something that's important enough to mention in a three-paragraph summary of the school, especially if there aren't any solid references.  --Interiot 13:13, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
 * The perception isn't shared by just your class. :) Granted, though, I have heard nothing of suicides in the time I have attended or since then (2000 to present).  If someone can provide references, then I'll be all for keeping it mentioned. And yes, I agree that it's not wholly unsubstantiated -- just difficult to prove! (Sorry if I seemed cranky with that first comment... it's what I get for checking Wiki at 7:30 AM LOL)--Martin Osterman 16:23, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Sorry
I don't remember making that revert which probably means that either some got into my account or I had more than one article open at once and reverted the wrong one. My sincere apologies. -Voltaire|Talk|My Desk|[Français] 18:52, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Adding details to your uploaded images.
Hi,

When uploading an image, could you please mention the source of the image. Also, in the case of screenshots of computer games, could you specify the platform from which the screenshot was taken, and if the image has been scaled up? That's what the image-page is for. I have done this for you on Image:PopulousII.gif. Could you please do this yourself to other images that you've uploaded? Cheers. Ae-a 01:28, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Edit-counting tool
We have to show appreciation for things like this. Otherwise, the contributors might become so discouraged that they consider leaving Wikipedia. --TantalumTelluride 23:09, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Fantastic job filling in for Kate's tool. Many of us Wiki-stalkers would like to thank you. JHMM13 (T | C) 05:42, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Any plans to add features that Kate's tool doesn't have ? Maybe a month-by-month or day-by-day breakup. A list showing how many edits were made on each page. Etc. Tintin 00:44, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Those metrics aren't very difficult to create, so I might implement that. However my method is clearly sub-par compared to Kate's tool (slow, a bandwidth hog), so many users probably want those enhancements on top of Kate's instead.  --Interiot 01:25, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Okay, I updated it to include a month-by-month graph, with edit-summary information as well, hopefully that will be useful for RfAs.  Is there a strong case for including other statistics?  --Interiot 07:49, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Just a question to the bar-graphs: what are the meanings of red and green bars? --Gunter.krebs 09:13, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Thank you. Can you please put a link back from the generated results page to the query page. Minor bug report - it doesn't show the current month. Tintin 13:28, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Nitpick note
"Privileged" is mis-spelled on the info page for your editcounting tool. BD2412 T 20:02, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Greetings, he-whose-editcountitis-consumes-200MB-of-bandwidth-a-day.  [[Image:Smiley icon.png]]  Anyway, fixed, thanks.  --Interiot 20:15, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

 * It isn't possible to check edits on commons - as commons.wikimedia.org has one too many characters for the box. Thryduulf 11:26, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Fixed. --Interiot 13:29, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Re: My version of Flcelloguy's Tool
''Regarding the namespaces that are listed here, the current ones are for en.wikipedia.org. However, the namespaces for other languages are very different (example). (though, as far as I can tell, I think they're all at most "word1 word2:"). The best way that I've figured out so far is to fetch the language files via CVS (a copy is here), and extract the entries somehow. --Interiot 04:34, 9 December 2005 (UTC)''
 * True. I haven't worked on inter-wiki operability yet. That'll have to wait until we have the tool working properly here, then deploy to other projects. Tito xd (?!? - did you read this?) 04:35, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Software error on count
Hi, i've found en error. By the way what is the graph reds and greens:)

''Software error: Illegal division by zero at /home/interiot/faleg/cgi-bin/wannabe_kate line 199.''

I just want to inform you.--Ugur Basak 09:17, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Same error on
 * One more info. For example Wikipedia and its new form Vikipedi must be both counted as Vikipedi or Wikipedia--Ugur Basak 09:22, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the note, I've fixed it to some extent (eg. it doesn't spit out an error message). Unfortunately, support for other languages is currently somewhat limited (though EN, DE, and IT should work 100%).  Apologies to other languages, but the method that Kate's tool uses really is superior.  --Interiot 17:42, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Kate's tool may be superior, but you can improve yours:) there's no buggy program--Ugur Basak 22:37, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Bug report
Please see Nichalp's count here - and contributions at  He had 5 edits in Jan 2004 and 93 in Feb 2004. But the tool shows no count for January and 98 for February. Tintin 21:29, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the sharp eye. It was caused by a timezone problem, and it's fixed.  --Interiot 21:40, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
 * and thanks for fixing it so promptly ! Tintin 21:43, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Does your tool handle Portal and Portal talk edits? I've got a few and they're not showing up. Oh, and thanks for the tool, it's nice to have while Kate's missing. Blackcap (talk) 01:53, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Ahh, another bug. It should be fixed now.  --Interiot 02:43, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Lovely, thanks. Nice and fast, you are. Blackcap (talk) 02:45, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Hey
I give you this barnstar as a result of your hard work building Interiot's tool...a.k.a. "wannabe Kate." I like the graphs too, I say keep it up.  ε  γκυκλοπαίδεια  *  (talk)  02:06, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Seconded. Cheers! Blackcap (talk) 02:33, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Thanks very much. :)  --Interiot 02:43, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Suggested change for your tool
You should change the 's for the color bars into 's instead so they never force a line break for months where the total number of edits is greater than the highest green bar, which presently is guaranteed to happen at least once. — F REAK OF N URxTURE  ( TALK )  08:37, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I was thinking the same thing too. The bars are presently rescaled to fit into "500px", so most users wouldn't see a line break.  And it's not the end of the world if it breaks — no information is lost, it's just a little harder to compare.  But it's also an easy change.  *shrug*  --Interiot 17:00, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Your tool
I have listed on my page all of the articles that I have created. I believe that there are in the order of 100 articles that I basically created from scratch and are lengthy articles of a good standard. There were another 20 more articles that were merged, and about 30 others which were taken over by someone else. I think that you are wrong in suggesting that Mo0 has made more edits than me. If you check out his contributions, 90% of them were made in the past month. In other words, he is a newbie. Secondly, you will note that much more than half of his edits were simply reverting vandalism (or should I say "alleged vandalism" since I haven't checked them out - note that a lot of people claim it is vandalism when it is a legitimate edit). Just have a look at what I did on Peter Falconio disappearance, where I have made 90% of the contributions myself, as well as all of the associated articles, before you start saying that I haven't contributed anything. I have also participated in AFDs and in discussions of ways to improve Wikipedia. I don't think that Mo0 has done either. My point of course is that I am basically a newbie, and I don't know what I am doing and it would be ridiculous to suggest that I could make admin. Yet you are suggesting someone who is twice the newbie I am to be made admin. That is the ridiculousness of the suggestion, put bluntly. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy  Darwikinian Eventualist 09:46, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
 * (reply posted on your user page. Short of it: I didn't mean to offend you, or in any way discount your obviously large contributions)  --Interiot 17:00, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Edit counting tool
Hi I just wanted to let you know that I like your tool very much. The graph showing the edit summaries is a very nice plus. Anyway thanks for your tool. Knowledge Of Self | talk  22:09, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Improved tool
I just clicked on the link, and it is much improved! Thank you! It surprised me actually as to how much I'd edited certain edits. However, there is one note. My major contribution has actually been to Peter Falconio disappearance, its just that each edit has been enormous, and I have mainly only done this one day apart. Also, the first 50 edits I made to that page have not been counted because I didn't have an account then. Whilst I suppose that you can't do anything about that, I wonder if perhaps it could note just how much work I've spent on that one. Whilst other ones I've mostly just done fiddly bits for. For example when I made Barrow Creek, Northern Territory, that took me 4 hours to do that, with all of the research. I don't know if there is some way to do that. A word count? Maybe I am asking too much here. I guess it is all subjective. Also note that many of my edits were then merged all in to one file later on lol so in effect the talker page has had over 700 edits in it by me. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy  Darwikinian Eventualist 01:04, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Yeah, well, that's sort of what I was alluding to on the RfA comment . In the RfA process, I think the community generally prefers to see an edit pattern closer to Mo0's.

 * Unfortunately, it's not possible for my tool to do metrics based on the contents of the changes. And yup, it's all subjective in the end.  --Interiot 01:15, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

 * The new additions are just fabulous. Tintin 01:25, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Wow! I'm going to stay up all night counting edits! (Not really.) Your edit counter is amazing. Now it's as good as (if not better than) Kate's tool. I can't describe the utter coolness of your tool with barnstars. Your achievement is beyond barnstars. You are now a Wikipedia God-King. Please keep up the good work, and never think about leaving Wikipedia! --TantalumT e lluride 02:27, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

 * I have to say it, Interiot- I like your tool more than I like Kate's Tool. The per-page and the division of pages into types of pages helps me understand both the focus of my edits as well as where I am slackig. Well done.
 * →  P . Mac Uidhir  (t)  (c)  03:41, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Grr...
You beat us to implementing per-page statistics! :P Anyways, good job on the tool. Anyways, here's some minor nit-picking. You could change the following text on your page:
 * It should work with most wikis out there that use Wikimedia code, since it doesn't need privileged access to databases.

to:
 * It should work with most wikis out there that use MediaWiki, since it doesn't need privileged access to the databases.

This gives me an idea... perhaps there should be a WikiProject edit counters or something! :P Tito xd (?!? - did you read this?) 01:13, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Thanks for the note, I'll update it. I've got several more ideas to flesh out on the data counter, and perl lets me slice and dice data all day, but I'm pretty limited working from an HTML-scrapper standpoint.  I'd love to work with others, or otherwise get more direct access to the data.  --Interiot 01:18, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Well, there used to be a time when we could make direct SQL queries to the database, but that was disabled for performance reasons. So, the only way we can do this is through scraping the HTML (or getting a separate account on the Toolserver, but then, that kinda defeats the purpose of an alternate edit counter). But sure, it would be good to trade ideas and code every once in a while. Tito xd (?!? - did you read this?) 01:31, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Actually, I think the best backup to the SQL/toolserver is AJAX running on en.wikipedia.org itself (like Lupin's popups). It would be easier for users to set up, is browser-based, but unlike mine, isn't dependent on any outside servers (and especially not dependent on them providing free bandwidth).  Right now though, I'm more interested in analysis (which, for me, is easier to do in Perl) rather than a simplified backup.  --Interiot 01:38, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Edit counter (minor edits)
Is it possible for the edit counter to count how many edits were minor (and maybe give a percentage)? Thanks for the helpful tool. Gflores Talk 22:34, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

 * I was thinking about something along those lines too, as well as doing a count of how many edit summaries start with "rv" or "revert". Regarding minor edits though, I don't quite grok yet where they're used, or how they're useful.  Do you think many people would use the minor-counting functionality?  --Interiot 02:45, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

 * This could be useful in a number of ways. The first thing that pops into my mind is for RfAs. It could be useful in counting the number of reverted vandals, and the number of non-minor content edits on main pages, instead of lumping them together. Also another note, it could be useful to have the actual number for both commented and non-commented edits per month listed. The visual is pretty nifty, but it might be nice to get an exact count. Anyway, really nice work! —  The KMan  talk  17:09, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Yeah, I'm mainly only interested in enhancing the tool to support RfA at this point. I'll add these some time this week, if only to try it out.  With the extra analysis I've added so far, I'm always suprised because it ends up being more useful than I thought it would be.  --Interiot 18:02, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Aha!!! So I'm your model, eh?
Couldn't help noticing that you've used my edit count as the model at User:Interiot/Tool. Well, carry on, then. :-D BD2412  T 00:26, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

 * ;) Well, Ed Poor's history is downright ancestral, and takes way way too long.  But yes, yours is the second-scariest history I've run across so far.  I was wondering whether you'd notice.  :) --Interiot 02:45, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
 * How sad that I noticed it was BD without looking at this page... :P. By the way, I noticed something strange while testing my latest addition to Flcelloguy's Tool. Kate's Tool says I have 6,854 edits, but your tool (and Flcelloguy's) say that I have 6,855 (6,856 now). Does that mean that KT is not real-time? Tito xd (?!? - did you read this?) 18:17, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
 * No, it means I have a bug. Actually, I'd consider it to be a MediaWiki bug, in that when you hit the "next 500" link, the first link is actually a repeat entry from the previous page.  This is particularly bad if you ever try to look through your history one at a time...  hitting "next 1" actually ends up doing nothing!    Nonetheless, this is a known issue that I plan to change my code to accomodate.  --Interiot 19:55, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Using the edit counter with other sites
Hey, had a quick question, is your edit counter limited to the wikipedia only? When I try to use it with my wiki (http://brandt-watch.org) I get 'Invalid value. email Interiot if this is incorrect.'. No complaints here, if it is, but I'm curious ;] -- негідний  лють  ( Reply  07:03, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Ahh, I see the problem. I'll see if I can fix it soon.  --Interiot 18:02, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Pearle is breaking templates
Sorry about that...should be all fixed now. -- Beland 22:46, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

RnB-album-stub
I have created the template, because one previously didn't exist, and I found Back to the Future: The Very Best of Jodeci tagged as a hip-hop album stub. --FuriousFreddy 04:58, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Fillet
Thanks for splitting Fillet. I, too, am an eventualist and this is just what I hoped for. —BenFrantzDale 05:08, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Oinkness ( Newbie )
HELLO! Thanks for the welcome to Wikipedia by taking such a.... *cough*... interest in the Rainwound article! I'm slowly but surely figuring out how to use the discussion area of the site. I don't know if I am doing it right though, I hit edit on Fillet and put my thing in under the Fillet comment.... I don't know if that is what I am supposed to do.... well thanks! --Oinkness 19:56, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Edit counter
Would it be possible to add an edits/per day - overall, and maybe for the previous 30 days ? tia, Tintin 01:58, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Tool down?
Hmm... while trying to debug Flcelloguy's Tool by comparing our output with yours, I got a "faleg.org cannot be found" error. Is your tool down, or did we eat all your alloted bandwidth already? :P

P.S: We're thinking about moving the tool to a subpage of Tools. You should do it too, so all the editcounters are on the same place. Flcelloguy is the one who is organizing the move, so you might want to talk to him. Tito xd (?!? - help us) 05:56, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

 * sigh. No, the ISP's connection just goes away sometimes.  I can't SSH in either.  It should be back in an hour or two, sorry about that.  --Interiot 06:01, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Well, the server the CGI script runs on seems to be blocked by *.wikipedia.org now... until that's fixed, it looks like the tool is down, sorry.  --Interiot 21:46, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Does this mean indefinitely? I'm getting a 403 when trying to run the tool. Tedernst | talk 04:21, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
 * The tool should be back here in the next day or two, and hopefully it can be on the toolserver at some point, since the cache admins indicated that's the proper way to go. --Interiot 05:40, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Got it working that new way, but it's still missing the graphics from before ;-) Search 4 Lancer 03:08, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Yeah, should be working soonish. --Interiot 03:19, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

BD2412's RFA
By the way, thanks for supporting my RfA, Interiot (and for your tool, which made it possible for Prodego to track the thousand edits I made that week) - I'll do my best as an admin to help make the dream of Wikipedia into a reality! BD2412 T 22:06, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Feature request
In some respects, your "wannabe_kate" tool is actually better than Kate's original. I especially like the graphic display of use of edit summaries. Can you add a numeric percentage displayed next to each bar? Alternately (or maybe additioanlly), can you please add a lifetime edit-summary percentage column for each of the namespaces displayed? Thank you! Owen× ☎  17:53, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

 * The overLIB tooltips would work, although it may be an overkill for just showing the monthly edit-summary percentage (unless you planned on displaying additional information in the tooltips). As for the edit-summary column: the first list currently displayed is the lifetime total edits for each namespace. What I suggested was adding a second column, showing the edit-summary usage (in percent) for each of those namespaces. So if you, for example, have a total of 13 edits in the Image_talk namesapce and 5 of them have an edit summary, it would show a 38.5% next to the 13. Owen× ☎  20:30, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Yeah, some features people have asked for include: 1) the actual number of edit summaries, 2) the percentage of edit summaries, 3) what do red and green mean anyway? Plus, I'm going to add minor/non-minor, and some things like that, and the tooltip can be used to explain blue/green/red/purple, rather than having a legend.   Ahh, I see, yeah, the namespaces, I'm going to break them out sort of like I do the edit summaries, and major/minor (you'll see in a couple days/weeks, when I get it done).  Once those changes are in, ping me if you think they don't completely do what you were hoping they would.  --Interiot 20:58, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Sounds great. Thanks! Owen×  ☎  21:44, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Sorry, my edit counter was blocked, because screen scraping isn't the most efficient way to do it. If I'm able to do this in a more efficient way, or if I otherwise get it to be more accessible to users, I'll implement the above suggestions.  (my todo list is quite long, I was hoping to get the new features implemented over christmas break, but we'll see).  --Interiot 01:08, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Code.js
I've tried to get this to work, and I've made it all the way to where I can submit the username and it "retrives the data," but then it stops and shows me no information. Any suggestions? JHMM13 (T | C)  22:37, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Could you give me the server/URL/username you're running it with? Most likely, it's because the tool needs some amount of work to get it working on non-English servers.  I'm halfway through setting it up for the korean server, for instance, but still have a bug or two to work out.  --Interiot 00:01, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I honestly don't know what that means (sometimes you should dumb it down for us non-code-speaking people!), but I think I'm running it in your english wikipedia thing...I copied into my monobook.js exactly what is on your website and after a refresh, looking at your code.js page allowed me to see what you said it would see (the entry box and a "Sumbit" button). I typed in my user name (and several others), and it said "retrieving data" and when it finished that, those words went away and an empty page remained. Thanks, JHMM13 (T | C)  02:37, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Ahh, it's because of javascript differences between Internet Explorer and Firefox. I'm not currently maintaining the .js though.  But kate's tool is running properly here, and runs faster, and provides no less info than the .js, so that's probably better to use.  --Interiot 02:42, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Your editcounter
Hi!

When I call your editcounter it gives me this message: While trying to fetch http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=Klever&offset=0&limit=5000, de.wikipedia.org responded: 403 Forbidden <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <TITLE>ERROR: The requested URL could not be retrieved</TITLE> <STYLE type="text/css"></STYLE> </HEAD><BODY> <H1>ERROR</H1>

<H2>The requested URL could not be retrieved</H2> <HR noshade size="1px"> <P> While trying to retrieve the URL: <A HREF="http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=Klever&offset=0&limit=5000">http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=Klever&offset=0&limit=5000</A> <P> The following error was encountered: <UL> <LI> <STRONG> Access Denied. </STRONG>

<P> Access control configuration prevents your request from being allowed at this time. Please contact your service provider if you feel this is incorrect. </UL> <P>Your cache administrator is <A HREF="mailto:wikidown@bomis.com">wikidown@bomis.com</A>.

<BR clear="all"> <HR noshade size="1px"> <ADDRESS> Generated Mon, 02 Jan 2006 12:51:02 GMT by srv6.wikimedia.org (squid/2.5.STABLE12) </ADDRESS> </BODY></HTML> What is this??

Thanks, de:User:Klever

PS: At the time it was working it was much better than kate's...

 * I've posted a "summary of development" note at the top of this page. --Interiot 13:04, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Screenshot
Here's a copy of the UI as it appears now. We've finally figured out how to get around the local-file-save method, so we're going to start working on the tool more. The thing is, I'm not a Java programmer, I'm more of a BASIC writer... *sigh*. Just wondering, how much Java do you know? Tito xd (?!? - help us) 02:51, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, I do agree that the tool server is the best way to access the contribs, and I would gladly help out with the Javascript version, only that I really suck at Javascript. :( Besides, we were planning on adding additional features (like the ability to save queries to the local disk for storage, etc.) that might be blocked by the AJAX security restrictions, and we want to have something in case the tool server fails (which was the whole reason we started the project) so I'll probably keep programming here. But hey, I don't mind sharing code back and forth (We had already implemented minor-edit analysis, and we were working on per-month analysis to go with those). Tito xd (?!? - help us) 03:27, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

count_edits & namespaces
hi. you can't assume namespace 100 is always "Portal" - on meta, for example, it's "Hilfe" (German Help namespace), and on commons "Creator". (this will be easier when they're stored in the database...) kate. 09:24, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Ahh, thanks! --Interiot 14:53, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Edit counting tool 2
I've been running a edit counting tool at Requests for adminship for several days now (with discussion at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship), see sample. Well, today OwenX told me that you are working on the same thing, and that actually you had the code for a while. Now, what to do? :) I don't care much either way, I did not know you were working on that tool and you have it ready. I wonder if you can comment at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship about this. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 18:25, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

 * FYI, I've responded at Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-01-02/ArbCom candidates. Great work! Flcelloguy (A note? ) 23:28, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Minor edit message
Well, I was viewing it in normal non-preview mode the whole time, and I distinctly saw an external link appear. True, I don't know exactly what you were doing at the time, but something you did almost worked. And most likely that something was the. --Interiot 05:01, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Having tested it now on my home copy, I think you're right, Interiot. Do I try it out? I think the preview-edit thing was just a quirk cause by multiple servers. jnothman talk 08:05, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Edit counter
Hi! I installed your editcounter on my server today and my webserver gave me the error when I was trying to check de.user.Klever: Illegal division by zero at C:/Programme/xampp/htdocs/kate2.pl line 214, line 968. , What's this??

thanks, de:User:Klever

Unknown namespace
Thank you for your work. I was checking a user contribution for rfa and noticed Unknown namespace 100 and 101. Had not seen it before. What does it refer to?--Dakota ~ ε  23:21, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

 * That happens on WP:KATE too. On en.wikipedia.org, 100 refers to Portal: and 101 refers to Portal talk:.  Unfortunately, on other servers the namespace is used for other things (see kate's message above), so a more ambiguous message is displayed for now.  Eventually we'll get this displaying a server-specific namespace.  --Interiot 23:43, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Thanks for the reply. The edit summary function is especially helpful. Keep up the good work.--Dakota ~ ε  02:24, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

More on the tool
I see that you added links to your very userful tool in people's RfA, which is great. If you want, I can train my bot which is adding edit summary usage anyway to also add the link to your tools (edit summary usage tool and edit count tool). Wonder what you think. You can reply here. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 22:59, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

 * By the way, when your own bot adding edit stats to people's RfA pages comes online, I would suggest it use less graphics on the actual RfA pages than it uses on the server. One could write some shorter version in the RfA pages and refer for more to the server. What do you think? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 23:08, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Well, the current reports I generate here, I'm generating by hand, running a perl script from the command line. I don't want to get the script blocked again, so I'm running it the minimum times required.

 * Regarding the newer version, I guess I wasn't intending to edit people's RFA's directly like you're currently doing. *shrug*  I could, but like you pointed out, there aren't as many options for displaying a lot of data.  I had always intended for people to just visit the tool's URL like they always have (either individually, or by a human adding the link to the RFA, though it could be automated too, I guess...)

 * I don't know, the only advantage I can think of adding the report to the RFA is that it creates a permanent record that's still available if the tool goes down. What do you think?  --Interiot 23:17, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

 * I think the advantage of adding things to the RfA directly is that more people will see the data that way. Otherwise, if somebody wants to see a current RfA candidate edit count, one would need to open a new tab (window) in the browser, type or get from a bookmark the address of your tool or Kate's tool, type in the user's name, and wait for the result, then go back to the RfA. I don't think many people bother. And for myself, the edit summary usage is a very important benchmark of how attentive a user is, I truly want everybody to see it. :)

 * So, should I also add a link to your tool or not? :) (OK, there are two tools, one is the edit count, which is automatical, and the second is the edit summary, which you do by hand, so I guess I am asking about the first one). Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:43, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

 * I've always hoped that the people voting in RfA were experienced, that they were people who had watched a number of votes, and were familiar with the tools that people sometimes use. I guess it's possible that's overly optimistic in some cases.

 * I don't have a problem if you link to my tool. ;)  I guess, since you're already going to the effort to add another line to the history, it doesn't hurt to add more links.  At some point, the URL will change, to allow users to optionally get non-realtime data that's more comprehensive, but if you have your bot add the links, I can ping you once that change goes in.

 * Also, for what it's worth, kate's tool currently spits out a couple different kinds of output that can be used for data bots.   I dont' support this sort of thing now, because the data products are still changing, but something like that could eventually be used to give data to other programs.  --Interiot 01:13, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

 * OK, I will add the link to your tool, maybe tomorrow. I see you are not very enthusiastic about the idea though. I think we just have different mindsets, I like to use bots to edit pages directly, you like to do things externally. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:31, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

 * *shrug* I don't care much.  I have a timid personality, I'm often afraid of forcing things on people.  Go for it though.  --Interiot 01:34, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
 * He-he. :) So we are different. :) Each day I bug at least five users about missing edit summaries, poor style, bad use of the rollback button. Come on Interiot, that's the joy of life, bugging others (as long as one keeps some manners that is :) OK, I will add the link this weekend. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:45, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Tendercrisp Bacon Cheddar Ranch photos
Cool photo for the article. Do you have any of Hootie doing his thing? Youngamerican 04:28, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for Contributing
Cute edit to the user box. Next time, try adding something, rather than altering accurate information. Quite amusing. --Dschor 08:40, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Let me know if you want a hand formatting your user page - it looks a bit funny with that image running into the userboxes. --Dschor 08:43, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Much better. Thanks for the new box, too.  --Dschor 08:55, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm more good-natured than you might have guessed. BTW, your procrastinator box looks lopsided - is that intentional? If it is, it is a clever subtlety. I'm tempted to templatize that one, but I would probably center the emblem. Let me know what you think. --Dschor 09:21, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Does the pile-on...
Include me? - brenneman <sup style="color:#2f4f4f;">(t) <sup style="color:#2f4f4f;">(c)  09:19, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I think that's probably for each of us to decide for our selves. I think on balance you've been a moderating influence.   --Dschor 09:30, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Your arbcom stats parser...
...won't correctly interpret any lines starting with <tt>#*</tt>. Adding a <tt>*</tt> to the character character sets in your <tt>@supports</tt>/<tt>@opposes</tt> regexes will fix it, ie my @supports = ($support =~ m/^(#[^:#;].*)/mgi); my @opposes = ($oppose =~ m/^(#[^:#;].*)/mgi); to my @supports = ($support =~ m/^(#[^:#;*].*)/mgi); my @opposes = ($oppose =~ m/^(#[^:#;*].*)/mgi); —Cryptic (talk) 05:14, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

 * 1) * Fixed, thanks for the look over. --Interiot 05:17, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Hey...awesome idea and I bookmarked it. You may want to take a look at taking aranda56 off the list since he resigned. — Ilyan e  p   (Talk)  05:20, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Changing it now as soon as my SSH connection to the toolserver behaves. --Interiot 05:24, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Where is this ? Tintin Talk 05:22, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

 * http://tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/arbcom --Interiot 05:24, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Thanks Tintin Talk 05:25, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Lovely idea, very useful. Please put a word or two about this onto your entry on Toolserver/Projects. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 13:54, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Thanks, and done. --Interiot 19:57, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Hey, what does 'will beback' mean? — Ilyan e  p   (Talk)  12:40, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

 * User Will Beback's first edit was on 2005/12/31 08:30:08, and Will voted for several candidates, but it's not clear that the user has suffrage. --Interiot 16:39, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Of course there are exceptions that automatic tools can't detect, so that's what human review and whitelists are for, and Will Beback has been whitelisted. On the other hand, toolserver database replication is down right now, so my tool is currently...  less than useful.  --Interiot 17:15, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Gotcha... — Ilyan e  p   (Talk)  18:04, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Edit counter
Interiot, looks like the edits/day in http://tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/count_edits has got stuck. Tintin Talk 19:35, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Which specific field, and could you describe "stuck" a little more? If you're talking about "Median edits/day" though, that one's a tiny bit deceptive.  It really means "Median edits per month / 30.42, ignoring months that have 0 edits".  That statement has some tricky implications, but one of them is that, because it's a median, and because only one month's values are changing, typically "median edits per month" is constant over periods of time.  I guess it would be better to do some sort of operation to discount months that are outliers, and then do an average (instead of a median) of the remaining months, though with only two decimal places displayed, I'm still not sure you'd see any short-term change since you have ~4300 total edits over several months.  --Interiot 19:57, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Okay . I somehow interpreted it to mean edits/day from the day of the first post. Thanks. Tintin Talk 20:02, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

 * If that's the case, displaying it as "Median edits/month" would be the correct way, as it's not really calculating a daily median. Too bad you got rid of the edit summary statistics; any progress with implementing my idea? Owen× ☎  18:43, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

 * But it's divided by 30.42. :)  I don't know, I have the feeling that people grok daily edit counts better than monthly edit counts, because the default view of their own Special:Contributions quickly gives them some kind of comparison to say "this person is editing more than me" or visa versa.

 * Yeah, greatly improved edit counting is somewhere near the top of my list of things to do, though it's a little more difficult than I thought, and things like the arbcom script keep taking more time than I think they will. --Interiot 18:53, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

It appears that the tool is barfing on special characters again. ;) The 'á' in my own name as an example. Figured you would want to know. →  P . Mac Uidhir  (t)  (c)  19:17, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Old bugs crop up because the code is entirely new now. But thanks for the note, it should work now.  --Interiot 19:32, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

 * No, actually, I was going through your tool and manually checking (with Lupin's popups) the ones that your tool had highlighted. Most of them did not have suffrage, although one created an account (but did not edit) before the deadline. Great tool! Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note? ) 02:23, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I've removed the fake vote ...
Thanks for letting me know. --- ProveIt 20:46, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Oblique Shock
Hi Interiot. You put a cleanup and stub marker on Oblique_shock. It survived AFD after I rewrote it, but there doesn't seem to be any interest in expanding it. Any problem with letting it be redirected to Shock wave? AKAF 06:38, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Contrib tree tool
Hello, Interiot. Your contributions_tree script is quite spiffy! :) One thing, though: It sorts out the edited pages per number of edits by default in all namespaces, except the Wikipedia namespace (#4), which is sorted out alphabetically. Here's an example: . Is there a particular reason for that? Tito xd (?!? - help us) 22:13, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Uh oh, my first two bug reports are about the same thing, maybe it's not as user-friendly as I'd hoped.

 * This is actually a feature. On any of the namespaces, you can choose to either sort by name, or by edit counts (the header has a little link that you can click to change the sort order...  though I suppose that links like this, on webpages at least, often aren't intuitive to users).  Anyway, if the user doesn't choose a particular sort order, I usually default to number of edits, but I default to sorting by name for the Wikipedia: space so that 1) users realize there's more than one way to sort, and 2) because I think the sort-by-name is more useful in wikipedia space, because there are many different kinds of edits (wikiprojects, afd, etc) that are easier to sort through by name.  If any of these intuitions are off though, please let me know.  --Interiot 22:20, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Hehe, the <tt><blink></tt> is probably too obnoxious. :)  I've turned off the underline-only-on-hover for that link though too, hopefully that makes it slightly more intuitive though.  I'm not sure if there are any other good ideas to try or not.  --Interiot 22:24, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Please add a sum of the edits in the main page. Tintin Talk 23:38, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Thanks for the comments. I'm not too sure how far I want to take this, as there are so many people (you, Oleg, Titoxd, etc.) who seem to have far better programming skills than me. :-) Also, I've never worked with large projects like this - I've been mainly working on local implementations of Java, and some simulations. I'll consider your comments. By the way, I noticed that you weren't an admin yet - do you have any interest in becoming one? Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note? ) 00:08, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
 * *Blushes* :) A good idea would be to create a WikiProject (or a subpage of Tools) to coordinate efforts for this, and move both tools there, with a central coordination area. I've already got another user who has said he's interesting in helping, so it would better to do it sooner than later. Tito xd (?!? - help us) 00:13, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

 * What if I don't know SQL? :-) Anyways, I'll do a nomination for you, Interiot, as soon as possible (probably tomorrow; I hope you don't mind the delay). A WikiProject would be a great idea, Titoxd - I'm going to go ahead and create it. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note? ) 01:07, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

 * I was just noting that it's a nice opportunity either way. Tommorow would be fine, of course.  :)  Something like a tools version of Press_coverage would be good, or weekly digest of what goes on in wikitech-l, or...  I don't know.  Tools is something to start with too.  --Interiot 01:26, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, the link to the WikiProject is a bluelink now... :) Tito xd (?!? - help us) 01:29, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I've replied to your questions at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject edit counters. One question, though: are you going to add yourself to the member list? I'm a bit iffy to add a link to WP:INT until you add yourself to the list of participants... Tito xd (?!? - help us) 02:45, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the delay; I was busy yesterday. Your nomination is now completed at Requests for adminship/Interiot. Once you accept and answer the question, change the time (use the five tildes ) and the date, if needed, and then place the transclusion on the RfA page. Good luck! Flcelloguy (A note? ) 22:42, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Good luck! Flcelloguy (A note? ) 23:17, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Oh, by the way: your ArbCom tool, at the bottom, says it flags votes if "...the user created their account on or before September 30, 2005". Shouldn't that be after September 30? Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note? ) 23:18, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Buffer Overflow Article
Alot has improved in Buffer overflow, saw you linked to the article. still work to do, but what do you think? -- Tompsci 01:45, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Reply:Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections January 2006/Vote/Ultraexactzz
Thanks for pointing that out to me. It was just a mistake, and I have gotten rid of my "Oppose" vote. Jared 12:03, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Edit counter
Hi, sorry for seeming to bug you the whole day today, I had a look at youredit counter today and got the shock of my life. Median edits/day in my case was 6.02; however, a rough calculation shows me that mean edits/day is close to 20. In my case, the huge difference could be due to the fact that I barely edited for the first four months. Anyways, I believe mean edits/day is more intuitive and easier to understand than median edits/day. You may want to include mean edits/day as well or remove median edits/day. Thanks a ton for your great work in providing these tools, especially the tree - it is fabulous. and btw, your user page was one of the best I've seen around. :) --Gurubrahma 13:13, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

 * I was hoping to remove lower-end outliers, especially wikibreaks, but you're right, median doesn't do it, so I changed it per request. Read the caveats somewhere above about medians, the same caveats apply (I'm actually using months, not days), so that will depress the average a little bit.  If this is a noticable problem, ping me again, and it wouldn't take too much work to change it to use the two day-boundaries instead.

 * Thanks for the many kind words. :)  --Interiot 15:19, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

ArbCom
Thanks for asking! I'm afraid I'm not around much these days, but I did took the time to evaluate the new candidates. See my contribs for details. Yours, Radiant_ >|< 17:36, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Topaz's Wikiscripts
Have a look at my Wikiscripts... the edit count util lets people right click on links to userpages and load your tool instead! ~ Topaz ♪ ♫ ∆ 18:52, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Analysis of Wikipedia growth
The current articles analysing Wikipedia's growth are out of date, so I thought I'd try to update them. As a basis for that I would need data of the number of articles at any given time, and the most flexible basis for this would be a list of article creation dates. The database is a tad to big for me to install on my small server, though, so it would be nice if you could run a query for me, generating a list consisting of simply the date of creation of each article, without any other information about the articles. For example: 2006-01-14 21:51:51 2002-12-12 01:25:14 2005-11-13 08:28:27 and so on with about 900000 lines. Getting it in sorted order would be handy, but sorting it myself won't be too much trouble either. I will create a script taking such a list as input and producing a set of images showing the growth in various ways, along with predictions according to a few models. If this turns out well, it could be used to make regularily updated growth predictions, much like the current size statistics. Amaurea 20:14, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Yeah, that looks doable, I think. It would product a 17mb output file, and gziped it wouldn't be too bad.  Have you seen Wikistats though?  If you haven't, you might want to talk with Erik Zachte to see how much your interests overlap with his.  And, for example, this looks very close to what you're looking for?  --Interiot 20:56, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I am aware of the wikistats, but they are pretty low resolution, and they do not try to fit the data to a model (as far as I can see, atleast). It would probably be easy for Erik Zachte to expand his system to include what I'd like to make, though, since he probably is doing quite similar database queries anyway, so I think I'll try talking to him at some point. By the way: Would it be much harder to query for the date the articles fulfilled the official article criterion instead of just the creation date? It would make the numbers a bit more accurate, but it isn't important if it is harder to do. Amaurea 22:08, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, the toolserver has a table of the links as they currently stand, with no dates on them, so it's much easier to do the former. And just so I'm clear, the official definition of the 900,000 articles is...  articles that have at least one outbound link (eg. articles that link to at least one other article), right?  --Interiot 22:22, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Imposter
FYI, you have an impoter User:Interiot`. Of course, I've blocked indefinately. No damage done. --Doc ask? 22:51, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Cool. :)  --Interiot 22:59, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I was a tiny bit honored to have an imposter for the first time, but the vandalism was not so cool. If there are legitimate grievences about my behavior, bring it up in my RFA, or better yet, please let me know so I can try to make amends.  --Interiot 02:30, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Hmm? I'm pretty sure that if you had an impostor, you must be doing something right... Tito xd (?!? - help us) 19:58, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't have admin tools though, so I can't remember who I might have offended who also frequents RFA, though my memory is pretty poor. --Interiot 20:22, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Bug

 * In the last couple of days the edit counter has been inaccurate for my edits. It says that i have 1030 edits, but i have 1050+ edits. Maybe this is a bug? - «ßØÛ®ßÖÑ§3» T 12:42, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Hrm, that is a bit odd. It looks like database replication has completely stopped...  my edit count hasn't changed for over 24 hours either.   There's supposed to be a fix coming for the replication lag in the next ~1 week, hopefully it will be better soon.  (also, Kate's tool and mine use very very similar queries, so it's not any different AFAIK)  --Interiot 18:32, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Hi Interiot. My edit counts haven't changed in 2 days using both yours and Kate's. Still a good tool though. -- a.n.o.n.y.m  t 20:55, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Yeah, the toolserver stopped replicating information from Wikipedia around 2006/01/14 16:01:18 UTC, and this affects all tools on the toolserver. Hopefully it can be fixed soon.  --Interiot 21:24, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: User talk:Interiot/archive1


text:
User talk:Blueplanet547

Welcome!
Hello and welcome to Wikipedia! You might be interested in Welcome, newcomers, How to edit a page, and the Manual of Style. If you ever get bored, take a look at the list of open tasks.

You can sign your name and timestamp on talk pages and whatnot using four tildes: ~. Feel free to ask me if you have any questions, or inquire at the help desk or village pump. Add yourself to the list of Wikipedians if you like.

Glad to have you, and be bold! Rdsmith4— Dan | Talk 02:09, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

title: User talk:Blueplanet547


text:
Chief Cabinet Secretary

The chief cabinet secretary of Japan (内閣官房長官) is a member of the cabinet and is the leader and chief executive of the Cabinet Secretariat of Japan. The chief cabinet secretary coordinates the policies of ministries and agencies in the executive branch, and also serves as the government's press secretary. The secretary is a statutory member of the National Security Council, and is appointed by the emperor upon the nomination by the prime minister. The chief cabinet secretary is the second in line of succession to the prime minister, and 1st if the office of the deputy prime minister is unoccupied.

History
In March 1879, the precursor of the position, the Secretary-General of the Cabinet, was created. From 1885, it was included as part of the cabinet system, and the position was known in Japanese as 内閣書記官長. The modern position was created on May 3, 1947, shortly after the passage of the Constitution of Japan, and elevated to ministerial status in 1966.

Since 1947, the office of Chief Cabinet Secretary has been regarded as a stepping stone to the post of Prime Minister. The first chief cabinet secretary to become Prime Minister was Ichirō Hatoyama, who served in the position under Tanaka Giichi. Since then, eight other former chief cabinet secretaries have become prime ministers, most recently Shinzō Abe, Yasuo Fukuda, and Yoshihide Suga.

Yoshihide Suga, who later became Prime Minister of Japan, served as Chief Cabinet Secretary under Shinzo Abe for nearly eight years, making him the longest-serving chief cabinet secretary in history, having overtaken the previous record of 1,289 days in office set by Fukuda on July 7, 2016.

The current chief cabinet secretary is Yoshimasa Hayashi, who took office on December 14, 2023.

Shōwa era

 * Tsukamoto Kiyoji (December 25, 1926 – April 20, 1927)
 * Ichirō Hatoyama (April 20, 1927 – July 2, 1929) - later became prime minister in the mid-1950s.
 * 6 other holders (July 3, 1929 – October 19, 1934)
 * Shigeru Yoshida (October 20, 1934 – May 11, 1935) - not to be confused with PM Shigeru Yoshida.
 * 14 other holders (May 12, 1935 – April 6, 1945)
 * Hisatsune Sakomizu (7 April 1945 – 15 August 1945)
 * vacant (August 16, 1945 – October 9, 1945)
 * Daizaburō Tsugita (October 9, 1945 – January 13, 1946)
 * Wataru Narahashi (January 13, 1946 – May 22, 1946)
 * Jyōji Hayashi (May 22, 1946 – May 2, 1947)

title: Chief Cabinet Secretary


text:
12 Stones (album)

12 Stones is the first album by the American rock 12 Stones. It was released on Wind-up Records on April 23, 2002. Three singles were released from the album: "Broken" and "The Way I Feel" in 2002, and "Crash" in 2003. Each single received a music video. 12 Stones debuted on the Billboard 200 at No. 147.

Personnel
12 Stones
 * Paul McCoy – vocals
 * Eric Weaver – guitars
 * Kevin Dorr – bass guitar
 * Aaron Gainer – drums, percussion

Production
 * Jay Baumgardner – producer, audio mixing
 * Dave Fortman – co-producer
 * James Murray – audio engineering
 * Tom Baker – audio mastering at Precision Mastering in Hollywood
 * Dan Certa – assistant engineering
 * Jeremy Parker – assistant engineering
 * John Katsoudas – assistant engineering
 * Diana Meltzer – A&R
 * Victor Murgatroyd – A&R
 * Sean Murphy – photography
 * Ed Sherman – artwork

Appearances

 * "My Life" was featured on the soundtrack to the movie The Scorpion King in 2002.

title: 12 Stones (album)


text:
Area code 867

Area code 867 is the area code in the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) for the three Canadian territories, all of which are in Northern Canada. The area code was created on October 21, 1997, by combining regions that were previously served with area code 403 and area code 819 in one numbering plan area (NPA). As the least populated NPA in mainland North America, serving about 130,000 people, it is geographically the largest, at 3,921,739 km2, with Alaska (907) a distant second.

The numbering plan area is adjacent to seven provinces (Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Quebec) and one U.S. state (Alaska), as well as Greenland and Russia (across the North Pole), more jurisdictions than any other in North America. It is also one of two Canadian area codes that are not part of an overlay numbering plan, the other being 807.

The incumbent local exchange carrier for area code 867 is Northwestel, a subsidiary of BCE. Until 1964, the geographic area served today by 867 had up to five independent telephone companies, as well as Bell Canada.

History
In 1947, Alberta was assigned area code 403 in the first continent-wide telephone numbering plan by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T). When service became available from local regional carriers, individual locations in Yukon and the west of the Northwest Territories were served via the area code of the carrier. These companies were eventually merged into Canadian National Telecommunications, a subsidiary of the Canadian National Railway. CNT's operations in the territories became Northwestel in 1979.

The eastern Northwest Territories were among the last areas of North America without telephone service. When the area code system was created, the region was nominally part of western Quebec's area code 514. In 1957, those non-diallable areas were nominally shifted to eastern Quebec's area code 418. Bell Canada introduced telephone service in the eastern Northwest Territories in 1958. As direct distance dialing was rolled out in this area in the 1970s, the eastern Northwest Territories and a large swath of northwestern Quebec were reassigned to western Quebec's area code 819. Bell Canada sold its northern service territory to Northwestel in 1992. In 1993, Bell Communications Research, functioning as the North American Numbering Plan Administration listed the vast majority of the territories with area code 403.

Until area code 867 was created, area codes 403 and 819 had been geographically the two largest in the North American Numbering Plan. The area code commenced service on October 21, 1997. Since its creation, all of the former 819 portion of the Northwest Territories, as well as the portion of the former 403 portion covering five exchanges, has become part of Nunavut. The split reduced area code 403 for service of Alberta only.

All existing central office prefixes, with one exception, were retained in the change to area code 867. An assignment conflict between 403-979 at Inuvik and 819-979 at Iqaluit was resolved by changing Inuvik from 403-979 to 867-777. A minor programming error allowed for a few weeks late in 1997 callers in the Inuvik area to dial 403-777 and reach Inuvik when they actually should have routed to Calgary, which appeared on customer's bills, along with the higher rate.

Northwestel's proposal for a new regulatory regime was approved for 2007 to allow resale of local telephone service, but no competitors entered the market to avail themselves of the resale option. In 2011, facilities-based local service competition was approved by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) and so additional central office codes are now required for competitive carriers wishing to offer local service. The expense limits deployment so far to Whitehorse, Yellowknife, Inuvik, Behchokǫ̀, Aklavik and Hay River, four of which already have multiple prefixes. Communities that now have only one prefix are not likely to need a second prefix other than for local growth or the entry of a competitor (as in Aklavik and the twin Behchokǫ̀ communities, Rae-Edzo).

The sparsely-populated area is unlikely to exhaust telephone numbers in the foreseeable future.

in June 2021, the CRTC recommended implementing the three-digit code 9-8-8 for the nationwide suicide prevention hotline. The CRTC decision followed the decision of the US Federal Communications Commission to adopt 9-8-8 as the number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. 988 was already in use as a local exchange in the Yellowknife area, which would require ten-digit dialing in area code 867. In August 2022, the CRTC finalized its implementation plans for 9-8-8, effective November 30, 2023; it accepted a request from Northwestel to make ten-digit dialing mandatory only in the Yellowknife area and optional elsewhere within the region as of May 31, 2023, in part because it would ease the process of communicating the transition to remote communities and in Indigenous languages.

Numbering plan area
Area code 867 is the most expensive geographic destination in Canada. Iristel, the major CLEC in the region, bills subscribers in other area codes a 15¢/minute premium to call 867-numbers, and charges a $20/year premium to issue a 867-number in-region instead of assigning the same subscriber any other Canadian area code.

The digits of the area code were reportedly chosen to promote the theme "TOP of the world", as 867 spells TOP on a standard North American keypad. When combined with the NANP international dialing code 1, it spells 1867, which is the year of Canadian Confederation.

The area code serves the largest land area of any area code in the NANP. The territorial extent reaches 3,173 km from Cape Dyer on Baffin Island to the Alaska border, and 4,391 km from the south end of James Bay to the North Pole. The largest distances between exchanges are 2,200 km from Sanikiluaq to Grise Fiord, and 3,365 km from Beaver Creek to Pangnirtung. Four different official time zones are observed within the area: Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific.

Exchanges
Area code 867 serves all points in the three Canadian territories, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and Yukon

Some exchanges in the territories serve some customers in Fraser and Swan Lake, British Columbia (from Carcross and Swift River, respectively). Fitzgerald, Alberta, is served from Fort Smith, Northwest Territories. On a section of the Alaska Highway which crosses the BC-Yukon border six times in 6 mi, two highway lodges and area residents on the Yukon side are served by Watson Lake (867) numbers, not the nearer Lower Post (250) exchange.

 * Aklavik, NT: 375, 978
 * Arctic Bay, NU: 439
 * Arviat, NU: 205, 232, 341, 857
 * Baker Lake, NU: 793
 * Beaver Creek, YT: 362 862
 * Behchokǫ̀, NT: 292, 371, 392, 492, 731
 * Cambridge Bay, NU: 391 983
 * Cape Dorset, NU: 897
 * Carcross, YT: 733, 821
 * Carmacks, YT: 385, 863
 * Chesterfield Inlet, NU: 898
 * Clyde River, NU: 924
 * Colville Lake, NT: 709, 722
 * Coral Harbour, NU: 925
 * Dawson City, YT: 730, 991, 992, 993
 * Délı̨nę, NT: 589, 744
 * Destruction Bay, YT: 789, 841
 * Ekati Diamond Mine, NT: 880
 * Elsa, YT: 995
 * Enterprise, NT: 984
 * Faro, YT: 746 994
 * Fort Good Hope, NT: 496, 598
 * Fort Liard, NT: 770
 * Fort McPherson, NT: 377, 952
 * Fort Providence, NT: 373, 699
 * Fort Resolution, NT: 376, 394
 * Fort Simpson, NT: 695
 * Fort Smith, NT: 621, 870, 872
 * Gamèti, NT: 365, 997
 * Gjoa Haven, NU: 360
 * Grise Fiord, NU: 980
 * Haines Junction, YT: 323, 634
 * Hall Beach, NU: 928
 * Hay River, NT: 775, 874, 875, 876
 * Igloolik, NU: 201, 324, 934
 * Inuvik, NT: 620, 678, 768, 777, 888
 * Iqaluit, NU: 202, 222, 223, 794, 877, 974, 975, 979
 * Jean Marie River, NT: 491, 809
 * Kakisa, NT: 493, 825
 * Kimmirut, NU: 939
 * Kugaaruk, NU: 769
 * Kugluktuk, NU: 982
 * Łutselk'e, NT: 370, 785
 * Marsh Lake, YT: 660
 * Mayo, YT: 383, 996
 * Nahanni Butte, NT: 364, 602
 * Nanisivik, NU: 436
 * Norman Wells, NT: 587
 * Old Crow, YT: 325, 966
 * Pangnirtung, NU: 473
 * Paulatuk, NT: 580, 788
 * Pelly Crossing, YT: 537
 * Pond Inlet, NU: 899
 * Qikiqtarjuaq, NU: 927
 * Rankin Inlet, NU: 645
 * Naujaat, NU: 462
 * Resolute, NU: 252
 * Ross River, YT: 747 969
 * Sachs Harbour, NT: 690, 786
 * Sambaa Kʼe, NT: 206
 * Sanikiluaq, NU: 266
 * Swift River, YT: 851
 * Tagish, YT: 399 748
 * Taloyoak, NU: 561
 * Teslin, YT: 384, 390
 * Tsiigehtchic, NT: 490, 953
 * Tuktoyaktuk, NT: 340, 977
 * Tulita, NT: 374, 588
 * Ulukhaktok, NT: 396, 787
 * Watson Lake, YT: 536, 749
 * Wekweeti, NT: 713 745
 * Whale Cove, NU: 896
 * Whatì, NT: 494, 573
 * Whitehorse, YT: 322, 332, 333, 334, 335, 336, 337, 393, 455, 456, 457, 465, 466, 467, 469,                        470, 471, 632, 633, 667, 668, 689
 * Wrigley, NT: 495, 581
 * Yellowknife, NT: 200, 444, 445, 446, 447, 669, 675, 676, 677, 679, 680, 681, 682, 688, 765, 766, 767, 783, 873, 920, 988, 999
 * Premium numbers: 976.

Ellesmere Island is the northernmost terrestrial point in Canada. On Ellesmere, conventional telephony is available at Grise Fiord (1-867-980-xxxx), population 130, but not at two remote government outposts further north: Eureka, Nunavut (80.1°N) is host to an Environment Canada weather station and Alert, Nunavut (82°N) is a Canadian Forces Station. The only outside communication to Eureka is via satellite; the weather station lists various extensions of an Ottawa 613 federal number, an Iridium satellite phone or the Winnipeg 204 number of a main Environment Canada office. As Eureka is at the northern limit of access to geosynchronous satellite signals, a string of military terrestrial UHF links extends the signal from "Fort Eureka" to CFS Alert. There is a skeleton crew at each location which is reachable by Internet or telephone, but these links are satellite or military communication and do not use the area code 867 infrastructure.

title: Area code 867


text:
Mabel King

Mabel Elizabeth King (née Washington; December 25, 1932   – November 9, 1999) was an American actress and singer. She was known for her role as Mabel "Mama" Thomas on the ABC sitcom What's Happening!! from its premiere in 1976 until the end of its second season in 1978. King was also known for portraying Evillene the Witch, a role she originated in the stage musical The Wiz and reprised in Sidney Lumet's 1978 film adaptation. She recorded on the Rama Records and Amy Records labels.

Early life
King was born Mabel Elizabeth Washington in Charleston, South Carolina, the daughter of Rosalie Washington and Joseph Washington on Christmas Day 1932. She was raised in Harlem, New York where she eventually became a gospel and nightclub singer.

Stage work
She did not start acting until her mid thirties, in 1966, when she played the role of Maria in the national touring play of Porgy and Bess. The following year she played the role of Ernestina in the Broadway musical/comedy Hello, Dolly! Then in 1972, she acted in the musical film Don't Play Us Cheap, which went unreleased until the following year, after it had been performed on Broadway as a stage play. That same year, she played the Queen of Myrthia in the horror film Ganja & Hess. In January 1975, she played the role of Evillene, the Wicked Witch of the West in the all-African-American cast of the Broadway musical The Wiz. The role earned her a Drama Desk Award nomination for outstanding featured actress in a musical. Her performance in The Wiz brought her much attention and soon after she received roles in the films The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings, with Billy Dee Williams and James Earl Jones, and Scott Joplin, with Billy Dee Williams and Clifton Davis. In June 1980, King returned to stage work, starring in the Broadway musical It's So Nice to Be Civilized. However, the show did poorly and closed after eight performances.

Television and film
In 1976, she was offered the role of Mabel Thomas on the sitcom What's Happening!!. Her character often used the catch phrase "This is true", which she said to her children when she tried to prove a point to them. King played the role from 1976 to 1978, but due to disagreements with the direction the creators wanted to take the series, she left What's Happening!! in 1978 after two seasons. That same year, she reprised the role of Evillene for the 1978 film version of The Wiz. It was the second time in her career that she appeared in a movie after being in the stage version, the first being Don't Play Us Cheap. The following year, she appeared in the film The Jerk as the mother to Steve Martin's character. King received mostly guest spots on television series including Fantasy Island, The Jeffersons, Amazing Stories and Tales from the Darkside. In between, she signed on with then Hollywood agent Ruben Malaret, who negotiated her reprised role of Mama Johnson in the made-for-TV movie The Jerk, Too (1984). Her last two movie roles were Scrooged (1988) starring Bill Murray and Dead Men Don't Die (1990) starring Elliott Gould.

Personal life
King was married to Melvin King from June 1967 until September 1989. She and Larry Banks had one child, a son named Larry Jr., who died in 1996.

King was a staunch conservative Republican, strongly supporting the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

Later years and death
King was diabetic and in 1986 one of her toes was amputated as a result of the disease. In 1990, King suffered a stroke and entered the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California, effectively ending her professional career. In 1991, King's diabetes resulted in the amputation of her left leg. In 1994, her right leg was also amputated. King would also lose one of her arms to diabetes. On November 9, 1999, King died at the age of 66.

Recordings

 * "Alabama Rock'n'Roll" (RAMA Records, 1956)
 * "Mabel King With The Royal Sita Chorus – Symbol Of Love / Second Hand Love" (RAMA Records, 1956)
 * "Go Back Home Young Fella/Lefty" (Amy Records, 1962)
 * "When We Get The Word / Love" (Amy Records, 1962)

title: Mabel King